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 Today, as well as Easter Monday, is also ‘Big Word Day’. One word which I shared with someone recently is not very big – ‘petrichor’: “the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil”. It is somehow amazing that there is such a word. Scientists first started noticing the phenomenon in the 1860s, but it wasn’t scientifically described until 1964. In March that year, Australian researchers Isabel Bear and Dick Thomas wrote that “the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, a metabolic by-product of certain actinobacteria, . . . [and] is emitted by wet soil, producing the distinctive scent . . .” (Wikipedia). Thomas devised the term ‘petrichor’ to replace “argillaceous odour”. The roots of the word lie in ancient Greek – ‘petra’, meaning stone, and ‘ichor’, “the golden fluid that flows in the veins of the immortals” (Met Office).
 View from the Trinkie Other words that had their first printed use in 1964, according to Merriam Webster, were ‘underprepared’ and ‘Quark’, meaning an elementary particle. ‘Quark’ was taken from James Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ by physicist Murray Gell-Man. ‘Pantsuit’, ‘loosey-goosey’, ‘soundscape’ and ‘snowmobiling’ also debuted that year. I expect ‘pantsuit’ has rather fallen out of use, but ‘folkie’, ‘humongous’, ‘grotty’, ‘pre-cooked’, ‘quasar’ and ‘posable’ have not.
 Happy Creels Apart from thinking about words, it’s been a quiet week. I did my regular weekly shop and filled the car. During the week, the strong smell of petrol crept through the front door. On Saturday, the fuel gauge was down by a quarter of a tank. I drove off to meet a friend, but while I was out, I did some internet research about leaky fuel tanks. As a consequence, the car went straight to the garage on my return. It might be the fuel filler system, they said, that tends to corrode. Looking at the large dark patch on the drive, I’m prepared for the worst.
 Feather in the breeze I’ve been preparing for the worst with the back of the gansey, which is nearly done. In a row or two, I’ll start the shoulder straps, which will be knit in pattern to the shoulder seam. Seeing it nearly complete, the narrow panels of small diamonds seem to add noise rather than enhance the overall effect; perhaps one wider panel would have been better. I’m still debating whether to rip it all out. There have been many ‘what was I thinking?’ moments, and also realising that I’ve done this before, many times. I think, “I’ll just knit this and see how it goes, it might work . . . “.
 Another week, another visit to the dentist. Not that I knew a visit to the dentist was in store at the beginning of the week. Months ago, after a checkup, an appointment was scheduled for two weeks ago, but it was cancelled on the day. They said they’d be in touch to reschedule. They phoned as I was heading home after my first ‘front of house’ shift this year at the museum. Could I come in for an appointment in an hour and a half? Wanting to get it done, even though it was only a filling, I said yes.
 Bird on the rocks The dentist doesn’t hang about, and I was in and out of the comfy chair in about 20 minutes. As I went to the car, it was impossible not to notice the plume of smoke in the near distance. My first thought was ‘tyre fire’. As I prepared to leave the car park, a fire engine went up the road. ‘Must be serious’, I thought. As I drove away from Thurso – for the dentist is in Thurso – the town was obscured by a pall of smoke. Soon thereafter, a fire brigade hatchback and a little later two engines sirened past, coming from Wick. Definitely serious.
 Daffs on the Braes The local evening news shed some light. There had been two wildfires that day, one in the southwest of Scotland, and the other in Thurso. In both cases the moorland was burning. Wildfires aren’t something you’d usually associate with Scotland, but they seem to occur in the spring nearly every year. The Scottish Fire & Rescue Service reports that since 2010 80% of large outdoor fires occur between March and May. Most are due to human interactions – cigarette butts, improperly extinguished campfires, discarded glass bottles.
 Along the path The trip to the dentist was one of the highlights of the week. The other? A saunter to the local hospital to get my eyes checked. This happens once a year now. A few years ago, the optometrist detected incipient glaucoma, which the consultant confirmed. They’ve put me on eyedrops, which reduce the pressure in the eye. Thus, once a year, I sit at a machine and click a button when a pinpoint of light appears, attempt to read the last row of the letter chart, and have bright lights shone in my eyes. But I am thankful it’s a problem that can be treated and that I don’t have to go to Inverness for the checkups.
 Frothy blossom On the gansey, the back is about 80% done. The final central diamond panel has been started. I am tempted to take out a few rows and end the back there, because the yoke is getting very long. Too long, in fact, and I can see problems to solve looming in the future. Either that, or rip out the yoke and do it properly. But even I don’t want to do that.
 Apologies for the lengthy hiatus. It’s been a very busy few weeks. I’ve travelled nearly the whole length of the country, only falling short by about 80 miles.
The trip started at mid-day on the 13th. It was a late start as I hadn’t been able to pack the day before. There was a lot to consider – I’d be at friends’ houses part of the time, but also at the family home and at a residential course. Plus there was a day-long bell-ringing event near Edinburgh. At the course I’d need music, tools, and instruments. For the stay in Northants, an extra suitcase to bring things back. You know how it is when you pack for a trip. You think it will take an hour, but you discount the time spent searching for things and don’t finish until much later.
 A foggy day I arrived in Edinburgh in the gloaming, glad of the lengthening days. The next day, I rested for the next day’s event, which was the Spring Rally of the Scottish Region of the Handbell Ringers of Great Britain. It was held in Haddington and I was attending along with 4 others from my team. The ‘rally’ was held in an old church tucked away in the back streets. After an AGM, each team played a couple of pieces, followed by all teams ringing together.
The following day I hit the road again, driving to Northamptonshire. I only stopped a night before heading down to Cornwall to pick up a friend. We were both attending the residential course near Exeter. This was plan B, plan A being to meet her at the course and follow her home. But her car developed a fault, and the simplest solution was to collect her.
 Tree-lined Avenue The next day the course started at Cadhay, east of Exeter. The venue, when we found it, was amazing. The main building, reached by a tree-lined drive, is a small Elizabethan manor house set in its own grounds. Half of it was under scaffolding undergoing roof replacement. The house has a forecourt in front, an internal courtyard, a ‘long gallery’, and spacious bedroom and reception areas. One of the rooms had a tester bed with a set of steps! It is probably the closest I will ever get to staying in a stately home.
After settling in, the course began. The purpose of the course was to introduce recorder players to bamboo pipes. To this end, four pipers and four recorder players came together to play and make pipes. The playing standard was high, and the recorder players took to pipes like ducks to water. It was a fantastic and busy few days, with all the recorderists completing their first pipe and playing them on the last day. It is hoped to repeat the course again.
Magnolias and daffodils at Caerhays After this, my friend and I needed a few days rest back in Cornwall. We had a look around the nearby harbour one day, and visited Caerhays park on another, to view the camellias, magnolias, and daffodils.
From Cornwall, I drove to Northants, to stay a few days and hopefully get some sorting done. I met with the folks who are helping us with managing my brother-in-law’s estate. Another day, a piping friend travelled up from London for a visit. We had a good look around a nearby garden centre and later went for a walk along the canal, all the while solving the ills of the world.
 Cornwall The last stop of the trip was a return to Edinburgh to spend another few days with my friend there. And finally, finally, last Sunday I returned home.
And the gansey. Yes, I took it along, but progress was ‘Tower Bridge’ – ups and downs. There were a few days where, like Penelope, I ripped and reknit as much as I had done the day before. The wrong side rows are proving difficult in the dark yarn. I’m constantly peering to see if the next stitch should be a purl or a knit. But despite all that, there has been excellent progress.
 Last week started on a mournful note, waking up with the feeling that the past was drifting ever further away, that the past 40 years have been a dream. I’ve been thinking more and more lately that it is time to do some house clearing. The thought of re-homing Gordon’s possessions feels like I’m abandoning him as well. I’m assuming this is natural, another stage on the grieving journey. Perhaps I should have done more clearing in the early days, when I was still in shock.
 Crocus However, getting up, bustling about, making breakfast, and swigging coffee soon lifted my spirits enough that I was ready to face the day. It was another morning at the museum, charting gansey patterns. Among the three or four charted, there were some interesting features. One was completely in basketweave – alternating squares of knit and purl about 5 or 6 stitches wide and tall – with a ribbed welt and cuffs. Another had buttons at the centre front instead of at one or both sides of the neck. The shoulder strap of another had a cable flanked by double moss stitch. While I am ever grateful that these photos exist, I sometimes wish that there were some extant ganseys in the museum’s collection. It would be great to see what the gussets look like, as these can’t be seen on the photos.
Quitter I’ve spent a lot of time on the computer this week, probably too much. Another website I look after that has been broken for five years, and it was time to finally fix it. This has been more complicated than anticipated, but it’s nearly done; the last thing to do is figure out how to get the files from the test site on my computer to the live site.
 Snowdrops under the trees Where would we be without the internet? We first connected via treacly-slow dial-up, which in turn wouldn’t have been possible without the telephone, which had its start on this day in 1876. For today is National Landline Telephone Day, to commemorate Bell’s first telephone call to his assistant Watson. Other ‘days’ today are National Skirt Day, International Bagpipe Day, Harriet Tubman Day, Commonwealth Day, and, um, International Day of Awesomeness.
 Celandine The gansey, to fit in with one of today’s ‘days’, is coming along awesomely. The interminable ribbing on the body is done and the border beneath the yoke is in progress, with the gussets started at the same time. The border is a simple net pattern and is nearly finished. I’ve used extra stitch markers just before the centre stitch to aid with pattern placement. The gansey is coming right along.
 Budding Hydrangea I’m off on my travels again for the next few weeks – to a handbell day near Edinburgh, a visit to the house in Northamptonshire, which I haven’t visited since last autumn, a workshop near Exeter, and finally a visit to a friend in Cornwall. Which is a long way of saying, I’ll be back in a few weeks.
 Here’s something you’ve probably never considered: Clouds, those ephemeral, ever-shifting phenomena in the heavens, have weight. Learning this is akin to pondering if, on your next visit to a Gothic cathedral, the ceiling will come crashing down. It turns out that clouds are heavy, very very heavy. According to the Meteorology Department at the University of Reading, a fluffy cumulus cloud, the kind you see on warm summer days or during the opening credits of The Simpsons, contains approximately 0.25g of water per cubic meter. An average cumulus cloud with an area of 1 km3 would therefore weigh 250 metric tonnes. A bigger cloud, like a meaty thunderstorm cloud, is 10 times larger and contains 8 times as much water – it weighs in at 2 million tonnes.
 Spring branches And these numbers only take into account the water in the cloud – the air has weight too. For the cumulus cloud mentioned above, the air within them weighs about 1 kg per cubic meter, which adds 1 million tonnes. For the thunderstorm cloud, add another 1 billion tonnes. A Gothic cathedral ceiling? If the internet is to be believed, it ranges from 450 to 2000 tonnes. We should worry more about the sky falling than a cathedral ceiling. Chicken Little had it right.
Clouds stay up because of the air – the water vapour is supported by the air’s weight. It’s like resting a feather on an ingot of lead. The feather won’t pass through the lead because it is heavier and denser. I’m still not sure how a cathedral ceiling stays up. I think it’s a combination of luck, craftsmanship, and physics. All this brings to mind, in a roundabout way, the old riddle of which weighs more, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?
 Wave of Snowdrops Someone who wrote rhymes, riddles, and improbable stories was Theodor Geisel, born on 2 March 1904 in Springfield, MA. He had a productive career as an illustrator and cartoonist before becoming wildly successful with his books for children. They are known the world over – his nom de plume was Dr Suess. I know I had some of his books as a child, and while I can’t remember any of them, thinking of them always has positive associations.
 Gorse Work on the current gansey is slowing, now that I don’t have seven hours on a bus to occupy. The bamboo needles are good to knit with and are thin enough that they have started to shape to my hands. One of the points has become a bit dull, but I have reshaped it with a file, which is something I wouldn’t attempt with metal needles. The joint allows for smooth shifting of stitches from cord to tip, with no snagging. The knitting itself has been more rhythmic than tedious, but concentration is necessary when stopping and starting. I’ve caught myself multiple times doing knitting when I should be ribbing, and vice versa. In a few more inches I’ll start the yoke and gussets.
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Today, as well as Easter Monday, is also ‘Big Word Day’. One word which I shared with someone recently is not very big – ‘petrichor’: “the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil”. It is somehow amazing that there is such a word. Scientists first started noticing the phenomenon in the 1860s, but it wasn’t scientifically described until 1964. In March that year, Australian researchers Isabel Bear and Dick Thomas wrote that “the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, a metabolic by-product of certain actinobacteria, . . . [and] is emitted by wet soil, producing the distinctive scent . . .” (Wikipedia). Thomas devised the term ‘petrichor’ to replace “argillaceous odour”. The roots of the word lie in ancient Greek – ‘petra’, meaning stone, and ‘ichor’, “the golden fluid that flows in the veins of the immortals” (Met Office).
