The Strategy Sort Of Worked ...

When I drew up my plan to get through February unscathed by dedicating the twentynine days exclusively to jigsaws  , I hadn't allowed for the impossibility of buying Charles Wysocki puzzles in Holland and still having enough money left over to eat . They seemed to average 70 Euros each on Amazon ... about 55 Euros more than the common or garden ones available here of an Roman piazza , a Highland glen or a flower arrangement  .
Still , I did find an untouched 1000-piecer entitled Autumn lurking in the hall cupboard so set to  and quickly built up a routine ... eat breakfast , settle and squint at orange/yellow/brown jigsaw pieces till I manage to fit one piece . Eat lunch , settle and squint etc. till find another bit , eat supper , watch Dickensian if on or , if not , settle and squint etc. till realise I'm not able to tell all the bits apart any more . Go to bed . Get up and repeat .

 And start to see crossword pieces everywhere ....

And so the month slid by ...

I did actually leave the house occasionally , eating pasta in Amsterdam with YD after a day admiring graffitti

and shoes ( no , I resisted .... ) .

And I stirred myself to go to a talk about how Parish Relief was distributed in Leeuwarden at the beginning of the last century ( sparingly ) ... though I gave the one on Frisian poetry ( in Frisian ) a miss .

Kept Fit -ish .

And read loads of library books ... I can recommend Louise Walter's Mrs. Sinclair's suitcase and Rosalie Ham's The Dressmaker , but I wouldn't advise reading anything by Susan Lewis unless you share her belief that a child's smile is a treasure that  transforms the little poppet into an angel .  

And tomorrow it's March and , though wet snow is forecast , Spring is in sight at last ....