killclaudio

I've been doing some productive pottering with natural dyes, picking things from the garden, simmering and steeping, washing and drying. The yellow threads are dyed with the flowers of dyers chamomile, the doily thing with the leaves and stalks that were left. The silk on the top of the pile, and the linen at the bottom were dyed with St John's Wort - plant tops including flowers - and they are the most delightful chartreuse. The linen is an oversized M&S shirt I picked up for £verylittle last year, and I'm pretty excited about it. I have a plan to use some of the various threads I've dyed recently to stitch into it and make it even more interesting.

We have bought into the F*tb*t thing - somewhat to our surprise, but prompted by an enthusiastic friend - and so far I'm pleased with the difference it is making to my life. I like the little nudge each hour to get up and do 250 steps. When working hard means sitting at the desk for hours on end, it makes a quite an impact on the way I feel, the stiffness in my legs, and my mood, if I'm never still for more than 50 minutes. I think that's helped with the dyeing too, because once I'm out of my chair I'm more inclined to potter and commit small acts of productivity. Until my tendinopathy is healed, I'm not focusing on the total number of steps per day, but I don't think that's going to be the most radical impact anyway.

We got in quite a few steps at Northampton General this morning, when I took abrinsky to have a pirate scar installed on his cheek, courtesy of the NHS. He was lucky to be paired up with a surgeon who likes to start early, so he'd had his little op (an excision biopsy) and was back at home eating toast before 10am. abrinsky points out that the installation was performed by a female doctor, Dr Woo, with a female assistant.

With both of us at home the cats are finding it rather disconcerting when, at 10 minutes to each hour, all the humans start rushing pointlessly around staring at their wrists. I think they'll get used to it.

Despite the explosion, we made an early start in order to get over Sela pass and all the way to Tawang before sunset. Fortunately we are an early and prompt bunch and consistently left ahead of schedule.

Unexpected CS Lewis



Beautiful scenery. Spectacular mountains. Watched the vegetation change again as we climbed to 4,170m. At Sela there was a gate welcoming us to Tawang (the district), a partially frozen mountain lake, prayer flags, and a shack with tea and snacks. The drivers had noodles, their breakfast having exploded. We had tea. There was a family of Indian tourists also having tea; they seemed impressed by our enthusiasm for India.



( enter on foot )

Judging by all the signs, 'fooding and lodging' is official terminology in the region.

J didn't feel at all well at 4,200m, but hoped to feel better as we dropped from the pass.

Yaks!!! Roadworks. Waterfalls.





Our driver decided to put on some music and after cycling through many tracks we ended up descending from Sela to Wham!'s 'Wake me up before you go-go', which felt somewhat surreal. After that it was 'We are the champions', followed by some other, unremarkable pop before moving on to Bollywood tunes.

Lunch was at a place serving noodles. T and abrinsky had the real deal, J had Maggi noodles, and I had some veg fried rice provided by last night's crap hotel. My rice wasn't bad, especially after I stirred in some ketchup.

The hotel might have been a bit rubbish, but the views were pretty fantastic.



The massive dining room - with only about eight occupants - had a massive window from which we admired the scenery, watched soldiers jogging (some more enthusiastically than others) and driving up and down the road, and observed our drivers and guide. The driver of the second car was carrying a small gas cylinder and supplies so that he could save money by cooking his own breakfast and packed lunch. The three of them spent quite some time messing around with his stove, then they drove the cars out of our field of view, and anyway our breakfast was served.

As we were eating - puri bhaji for abrinsky, cornflakes and a masala omelette for me - there was a VERY LOUD explosion that echoed round the mountains, and something that looked like a large red football arced past the window. We assumed the army was responsible, given how much of it there was about. When D arrived in the dining room, he explained that the red object we'd seen was the driver's gas cylinder, which had exploded. The stove had malfunctioned, which is what they'd been trying to fix, and then they'd had the sense to move themselves and the cars out of the blast zone in time to avoid damage or injury. The driver was understandably shaken, and remained unusually quiet for the rest of the day.

The hotel was quite attractive on the outside and was, we discovered, equipped with fire pits which we would have welcomed the previous evening. We were not sorry to leave.