1. I think my favourite thing about compiling the puzzles is that they’ve been a puzzle for me too: how to fit all the words in, how to position the shapes and how it all has to fit together.

2. I don’t think the felt is going to come together – the surface is too webby with too many neeps – but then it sorts itself out. The result is uniformly fuzzy.

3. I place a pile of Lily’s biscuits next to her but she doesn’t wake up. Her nose wriggles and her leg jiggles in a dream. Eventually she does wake up and the biscuits disappear in seconds. She looks a little confused (was she dreaming of food only to have it appear? ) but happy. She licks her lips and sniffs my face.

1. The reflection of the washing in the dark glass of the door. The underwears’ spots and stripes keeps catching my eye.

2. She becomes a puppy again when her favourite John comes home.

3. Squid that is meaty but not chewy and chicken that melts in the mouth. We are serenaded as we eat by familiar songs sung in a familiar voice.

4. On the way home, driving through the north of Leeds city centre, I realise how much I miss it. It takes me a moment to put it into words but I finally figure out: I had been so accustomed to it but while I wasn’t paying attention, it had changed and there was no way back to what I once knew – I would have to start all over again. It’s how I feel about Southport too: the Southport I visit note is not the one I lived in, and Southport develops at a much slower pace than Leeds!

4b. I can’t explain it to John without sounding like a wanker but there is something about the names of the streets around where I grew up that resonates with me on a primal level. Achingly familiar.

5. After an hour of burnishing, the side of the pot looks like liquid. Another pleasant reflection – they top and tail the day.

0. (from yesterday/last night) Lily and Strange snooze together on the sofa, then at bed time, dream alongside each other at the foot of the bed. It’s funny to remember the tension between them when Strange first came to live with us: they’re besties now.

1. Lily gets to eat her first cleavers – her favourite green – of the season. Later on the walk, we come across a pile of sticks, presumably gathered to be kindling for a campfire that didn’t happen. Lily selects a stick and carries it a couple of metres from the rest. I expect her to chew on it but no, she just wanted to move it away from the others.

2. I forgot how nice it is to travel westward across north Bradford at sunset: the dying light silhouetting the chimneys and steeples, and warming up the distance hills.

2b. The sliver of a moon bright against the sky.

3. G fixes C’s collar – without asking permission or explaining what she is doing. It is incredibly endearing.

1. I comb Lily as we talk and her fur turns from dirty grey to shiny white.

2. The cherry plum’s blossom stands bright against the night.

3. A new stitching task to practise “doing it better” – 25 boxes on a piece of calico to be filled in fun ways over the month ahead. Sorting the threads, leftover scraps from old projects, into colour sets is almost as fun as my filling my first square.

1. I hunt through the small box and pull out three tiny bundles of ribbon then in the big box to find four reels of cotton in the most perfect shades.

2. I suggest we look for rocks in the water and the first one I pull out is a deep black triangle. I find it hard to top it.

3. For the second time in a day, John is laughing so hard that he nearly chokes.

1. The boys are nervous, clearly not used to getting on the bus by themselves. They break into relieved smiles when they finally have their tickets. Next time will be a little easier.

2. Bright sunshine on the foreground with a moody deep grey sky behind is perhaps my favourite combination.

3. Nothing has come out quite as I planned but two of them are better for it.

3b. Sometimes I find record keeping a drag but I do very much enjoy documenting and reviewing my afternoon’s work when I get home from pottery.

4. Adding our own commentary to a nature documentary.