This week I've had to spend the weekend here, which is always a bit of a chore. Our official pattern is every second weekend here, which means only home every second weekend also - I'm tempted to go home more often, in fact, but at this stage I feel it's better to save the money, as I'd have to pay any extra train fares myself.

The weather is not brilliant, being very cold, with fearsome frosts in the mornings, but at least it is not the dreaded snow that has turned to ice, as before Christmas, and on Friday we actually left the office in daylight! I hope it doesn't snow again, but I am sure it will.

Yesterday I went to Zwolle - the town where I passed through in the dark a couple of weeks ago on my involuntary tour of the region. It seems a nicer town and more lively than Apeldoorn, but as almost everywhere strikes me like this, I don't know if it is correct. It seems to have more shops, and among them is a very good yarn shop called "Astrid's Wol", which has more Estonian yarn than I have ever seen anywhere, even in Estonia. Plus some other things, of course, a great collection of sock wool, and some beautiful pure alpaca, very expensive, but the best I have ever seen. I looked around all of the shopping area, and had lunch in a very nice little restaurant, then came back to Apeldoorn with some regret.

When I returned, I then remembered I had decided to buy another camera battery charger, so out into the shops of Apeldoorn, with no luck whatever! Apparently Dutch camera shops do not sell these things, because as one salesman gratuitously informed me, Dutch people look after their possessions and do not require replacements. So I'll go to the FNAC next weekend in Paris. I actually think I left it in Cyprus, it wouldn't be the first time I put something in a hotel drawer - or the maid did - and left it behind.

I have finished my Pink Bird, as I said, and am also on the point of finishing "Pemberley" - which I am liking very much. It is the most blue thing I have stitched for ages, I don't normally do things in blue (all my school uniforms were blue, so I've never been keen on it since), but this is lovely. I'm going to find a frame and put the fabric around it as in the original Sampler Girl finishing.

Now I'm going to go for a walk around the deserted streets of Apeldoorn - may run into a colleague or two doing the same - then come home and do a bit more

Labels: stitching and knitting.