1. Being in bed is nice.

2. The puppy bounds up to us and leans into my legs just like Friendly Black Dog. I tell its owner that I like dogs, but Lily doesn’t.

3. To avoid an over excited pack of dogs, we take a small detour. It’s only slightly off our usual path but I haven’t walked on that side of the hill for years. I remember the thrill of exploring the woods when Lily first came to live with us. I remember how special and exciting they seemed.

1. After twelve hours sleep, I feel wacky wide awake for the first half hour of the day.

2. All the girls hanging out on the sofa together. As always, when three animals (including John as necessary) are in a row, I draw venn diagram circles around them. Today’s categories: to the right, cats; to the left, neurotic.

3. The warm dense sponge.

1. The roads are so clear that I reach the station in time for the early train: as I reach the platform and look down the track, it curves around the corner into view.

2. I have a buying mission today: some nice yarn and a fluffy pom-pom to make a hat. I head straight to one of the alpaca stalls for the latter and pick a buff-coloured puff. It is impressively silky soft.

2b. I take workshops on paper piecing patchwork, chiffon landscapes, Japanese rice bags and distressing textiles using bondaweb. My favourites are the paper piecing (which I’d been wanting to try for a while) and the Japanese rice bags – the latter using beautiful geometric prints.

2c. I say a quiet hello to a dog on the station and it looks up at me with beautifully intense eyes. It stares at me with such longing as I approach and then as I pass down the platform that I want to run back and give it a hug. Later, when I’m stood opposite it on the other side of the tracks, it sees me again and we share another gaze.

2d. John comes to pick me up from the station. He (correctly) thinks it’ll be cute for him to meet me on the platform but unfortunately I had arrived earlier than he thought, and had already crossed over to the other platform, to wait in the shelter next to the car park. Eventually, after we’ve both waited more than ten minutes in the cold and rain, I text him to see where he is. When he says “the station”, I turn around and we see we have been stood across the tracks from each other but hoods had disguised our identities. We chat on the phone across the dangerous divide.

3. Lily is delighted to see me and there is a curry slow cooking in the oven. We cuddle up on the sofa and laugh at funny things.

The first of my two days at the Knitting & Stitching Show in Harrogate.

1. I get to chat to one of my favourite crafty people about tablet weaving, which has caught my recently. I took a single hour long workshop with her two years ago but she recognises me, and I tell her how much her methods, and her videos, have helped me: that workshop and her techniques turned me into a spinner. I’m glad I have an excuse to talk to her again and to thank her.

2. I take four workshops over the day – two using recycled sari silk (one machine sewing with it, one making kantha bag), one on needlelace and the final one on cordmaking with a lucet. The luceting is one of those things that is a bit tricky at first but then will become automatic once it clicks – I buy a nice wooden lucet to practise at home – and the needlelace blows my mind at the end – I hadn’t realise the whole thing would be removed from the pad and self-supporting.

2b. I tour the exhibitions at lunchtime. There is some amazing applique/art quilting and some interesting felt work (especially the map with neat squared-off buildings), but it’s Michelle De Silva’s graffiti-ed wall and Stella Harding’s basketry & weaving that really captures my attention. I stare at some of Stella’s willow swirls until they make me feel dizzy.

2c. The hummus at lunchtime is surprisingly enjoyable. Ditto the chocolate brownie.

3. We nearly have to abandon our evening plans but they snap back into focus at the last minute. We start to watch something but then end up just chatting instead. I love my friends.

3b. The night is clear and (despite the waning moon) dark. I can just about see some tiny little clusters and the constellations are strangely clearly defined.

1. The dog’s wagging tail as I approach to say hello – it’s only been five minutes since she last saw me but it’s apparently exciting all the same.

2. I explain to John that onion rings are mostly air so it’s alright that we had a bagful.

3. Two fun games to while away the evening.

1. I take advantage of the clear sunshine to go to the allotment. The plots are looking a bit sorry – neglected during the bad weather and patchy because of the season – but there are bright spots: the green shoots of next year’s garlic, thick nodules replenishing the earth underneath the old runner frames and by the time I leave, there is a netted off section of bed incubating overwintering broad beans.

1b. After the digging at the plot followed by a shower and a walk in the cold, my body feels like it does after I’ve been swimming: exercised but still alert.

2. A range of packages arrives: a pin badge and handmade mug for me, and an old broken accordion for John to fix. I’m glad we can afford to indulge our hobbies and interests.

2b. The mug is nice – don’t get me wrong – but it’s also interesting to see that it’s flawed (the base could be a lot neater, the handle is a bit wonky, the glaze is very even but not perfectly so) and that’s ok. It gives me more confidence in my own pieces.

3. We look back through our old comic strip. It features photos of our friends (well, their bodies) and our old house – I spend as much time looking at those as I do the words. We laugh as we remember the photo shoots and the other parts of creating it – I laugh as I spot my leg kicked high and remember when we faked a shot of a bum using John’s arm, or him having to pose on the toilet for another strip. Ten years ago now.