Knot two posts on the same day?

I recently had cause to tie a knot, and the knot I chose was the alpine butterfly.  This knot causes me great joy whenever I am reminded of it, because it's so perfect.  It creates a stable loop which won't tighten up. It is tied "on the bight", meaning you don't need any rope ends to tie it.  When completed, you can pull either end against the loop, or each other, or any combination, and it stays stable. And it doesn't "block"; meaning that you can always undo it, even when it's been under severe load.  And it's very simple and beautiful looking.  And once you know how, it's almost impossible to get it wrong. Of course, other knots have their place, but this one really is a doozy.

Here it is in its resplendent glory:

seen from one side...

...and the other

I think you'll agree it's a handsome piece of work.  And now, of course, I'm going to show you how to tie it.

First you get a bit of rope and twist it twice, as if winding a clock, with your right hand.  It should look like this:

Then you fold the top half down behind, so that it looks like this:

Then you wrap the lowest loop (as seen above) around the cross just above it and push it downwards through the hole in the middle of the pretzel.  If you got your fingers out of the way, it would look like this:

but if fact you push it through until you can pull it right through from the other side.  Congratulations, that's it.  You might like to manipulate the way the bits sit as you tighten it up, to make it into the thing of beauty which its geometry surely deserves, but it works as a knot even if you are so callous as to not bother.

What a knot, eh?

Happy anniversary!

It's May,  which makes it also the first anniversary of my retirement - wow.  I must say, it's been a blast.  I think I can truthfully say that I haven't had a bad day, which is pretty remarkable.

So on that basis I can thoroughly recommend retirement, if you can see you way clear to funding it somehow.  Of course, it helps a great deal if you have a definite end of retirement date in mind, which I do; I have a specific intention of retiring completely from the world not later than my 80th birthday.  This seems only sensible to me - the idea of going on and on though an inevitable loss of faculties, mobility, capability, and probably a lot of other things until the money runs out, and then trusting the government to look after you until their so-called "carers" can't keep you alive any more strikes me as a very undesirable scenario indeed.  Not to mention being a tremendous waste of resources.

So that means that I am now 1/20th of the way through my retirement, and some sort of review is in order.  Being a nerdy numerical sort of fellow, I will try guessing at how often I have done various classes of things in the last year:

Boring commutes	0
Dull motorbike rides	0
Woke up with a care in the world	0
National Trust sites visited	1
New camper vans bought*	1
Proper projects actually completed	1
Foreign holidays	2
Rescue missions for Lammie**	2
Fantastic motorbike rides	3
Musical offerings created	3
Loaves baked	a handful
Things mended	quite a few
Meals cooked	loads
Crosswords completed	dozens
Late nights	scores
Morning lie-ins	a plethora
Bottles of wine consumed	do we really have to do this?
Days spent looking after Layla***	25

* Actually to be quite precise, we haven't really bought it yet, but we have committed to buying it and we're going to finish the paperwork later today.  It's a proper coachbuilt motorhome (not a van conversion), it's insanely expensive, and it looks like this:

Still, the lovely Jackie says it's A GOOD THING so all will be well.  It fits up the road with a full 1.5in to spare on each side and has an electric drop-down bed, so I'm pleased.

** Lammie is a small cuddly sheep toy, which is essential to Layla's sense of wellbeing when those pesky adults try to convince her that it's time to sleep.  Sleeping without the comforting feel of Lammie's ears is practically impossible.  As a consequence, the discovery that Lammie has been left in the wrong place can require desperate measures, such as cross-town motorbike sorties at the dead of early evening.  Lammie was once left at nursery, whence he couldn't be recovered until the next day.  Somehow, we managed, and everyone is still alive to tell the tale. Phew.

*** This is probably right, since we now take Layla in for one day (and night) a week, to the gentle benefit of all concerned.  The house of luuurve gets a brief period of R&R, we get some quality Layla time, and Layla gets a more varied experience of life, not to mention a great deal of personal attention.  She seems to like it (most of the time), and between the two of us, the lovely Jackie and I can cope with the intensity for one day a week (just about).  Phew again.

Overall, this retirement lark is not panning out how I expected at all - but that's not a problem.  I suppose it might be looking a bit boring from the outside, but it certainly isn't from where I sit.  Meanwhile,  we've just put our house on the market, in an exploratory kind of way, with the intention of enhancing our garage/workshop capability (and getting more house for friends and family too) so we are definitely not finished yet.  Stay tuned...