That's a great line Kaimoana!!
Thanks for the valentine's card Cherry it's the only one I had.
Thanks to bonbons too.
I was given however a heart shaped donut today when I bought windscreen wash.
I'm having a lovely weekend with the potters. I'm in my element.
I've just come to bed having been firing the kiln for a few hours. Others have taken over now. I'll go back in the morning to see how it's doing.
I promise I won;t bombard you with cutsey sayings but my granddaughter, having been asked to go upstairs to bed said, "Okay but you'll have to carry me because my legs aren't interested"
Never had a Valentine's card, Kaimoana, that's unfair, you deserve them as you're such a loving person.
Here's one to all my lobStar friends 🧡
Blimey, Kaimoana, you've had it hard.
Here's a Valentine good wish from me.
❤️
On the topic of clearing a loved one's home, my mother was most put out at my brother's misplaced sense of humour one birthday😳
The Sallies rep came to inspect the property only but over the years she and I have formed a casual but genuine friendship.
She said there would be help with packing when I move and also properties I can choose from should I still be judged safe living alone.
I'm not really. So hard to do anything when you can see so little and I feel my life diminishing so rapidly - even plain knitting of scarves is becoming hard.
My forearms have burn scars and my finger ends have been sliced so often they are numb! 
All this is my own fault for being stubborn and trying to do what I should admit is now beyond me (or more accurately, behind me).
Valentine's Day today and I was reading Maeve Binchy short stories in which, coincidentally, a woman had never received a V. card.**
Neither have I but I was given the choice by an obstetrician, "Would you like a Valentine's Day baby?"
That was in 1979 and my son has been an absolute joy ever since.
We've never had a single quarrel in all these years.
We don't always have the same opinion or point of view as he is so very like me in most things.
We are both slow to anger and laughter comes easily and often.
A most welcome and precious child.
** I once gave my husband a Valentine card, from love but hoping he might take the hint and reciprocate.
The following day I saw the card in the rubbish bin and mentioned it.
"Valentine's Day was yesterday" he said.
Perfectly true of course but the death knell of any hopes the hint might be taken
Hey-ho
Grammaretto, I love your photos.
I thought the second one with the flash of yellow, the cables, the tree, the bumpy wiggly curvature of the road and then the snowy hills beyond is really perfect
Thank you
Ixion, well done you on being rejected by the oven man!
Clearing out is hard. I have to be in the right mood and preferably with a helper to stop me wallowing in nostalgia.
Like you Doodle, my friends think I shouldn't go for a doer upper.
Music man came today and he's as optimistic as ever about his music school here.
I shall just have to keep looking and maybe the right place will appear.
I am disappointed in the planning system. That's an understatement.
It snowed a bit today and I am supposed to be driving north this weekend for another wood firing.
We have just had a formal contents evaluation for probate for my dear mother-in-law's home by a highly experienced auctioneer
It was truly a shock how little the things she loved are worth. I had no expectations that her glass and China would be worth anything (she has a few Royal Doulton and Lladro for example) but he struggled to find anything of significance and said the dining chairs she had valued at £400 each many years ago would struggle to sell
He was unsurprisingly sad about the way people are turning their backs on second hand whilst still being ostensibly "green". He said he was forced to bundle up huge lots of China - and even then that was only selling to Korea!
He said there was a big market in Korea for dinner services and he had a guy who came to him once a fortnight to packup all the dinner sets he'd bought
The signed prints, oils and so on she'd collected over a lifetime are worth a fraction of her purchase price - obviously she has bought things she liked by either lesser-known or prolific artists now out of fashion
He did point out that selling everything privately, item by item, would raise more than trying to sell at an auction - but obviously it will take time and effort.
Anyway, it just made me sad. Her little folder labeled "valuables" included her silver cutlery teaspoons/ fish knives and forks, a silver sugar shaker and salt and pepper set. Also a gold watch, a beautiful sapphire and diamond dress ring (£80), a gorgous chest, aforementioned chairs and numerous other surprises.
He said his son and daughter-in-law who are also in the business never want anything from the auctions and he said he recently "cleared" his mum's house and it was exactly the same.
It really wasn't the fact that so little was of financial value there - it was more the sadness of it all. It made me remember sending lots of my parents' furniture to auction and how little it raised - it was more the reminder that the love is in the memory rather than the "stuff". The items in our house that we have loved are likely to be unwanted by our children and their generation too
I think I need to give myself a wobble and get rid of our surplus old stuff/ antiques that we don't use.... and why did I think my lovely daughter-in-law might be pleased with my parents' exquisite bone-handled fish servers!
I sent a message to my children asking if any of them have a special memory of anything at my mother-in-law's house and if so to let me know so it won't end up at a charity shop if it's not something my husband wants.
I had a reply from the one daughter I know was especially close to her (and really gave time to her). She said she wanted her little bag of nail care items as she used to do her grandmother's nails for her - and please could she have the nearly empty Chanel "Chance" perfume bottle and also the wooden washing-up brush
😭
I think this will be a long job
Was the Passmore Edwards library in London or in Cornwall Ixion. I've been looking it up but there seem to be 2.
It's good that there are still libraries although very different from those of our childhood. In our town the library is beneath the gym and next to the swimming pool and high school. It works quite well.
I sent the link for the doer upper to my architect who thinks it would be easy to make liveable.
The planners have refused our application for a new build in my garden.
Thanks for the warning Doodle. I know you're right. All my DC think the same.
I don't think developers would get permission to build a block of flats but they may.
It's not stopped raining here either. But we're expecting snow next.
I'm going to knit my DD a vest/gilet/waistcoat in a minty green wool.
I hope all Lobstars are bearing up.
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