Not a bad day per se, but just about everything went a little bit wrong.

1. The pattern slowly rises away from the base.

1b. The circles, in two small groups, look just right. For once I have the confidence to leave it at that.

1c. I swap the flat circular for little cubes and oh my, it looks so much better.

2. I can see a flicker of movement behind the fence near the chickens and brace myself for a rat – but then Strange’s little head pops up. Much nicer!

3. The perfect trainers for me, reduced to half price.

0. To have the pleasure of being kept awake by a twit-twooing owl.

1. One of our lovely neighbours puts out our forgotten recycling bins.

2. The bed is a warm brown, rather than the hard cracked weedy grey it was earlier. One hundred onion sets neatly set out in five rows of twenty.

2b. A courgette ready to take home – and more that should make it before the frosts.

2c. The sun on the distant hills.

3. It’s on the verge of being too spicy – but not quite. (Well, not for me anyway.)

1. I play with fonts for a logo design. I find one I like and tweak it to make it cleaner – then add a little smiley face for good measure. I always smile when I type smiley face emoticons :)

2. Tilda is in a terrible playful mood. I pull her around the floor on the bathmat while she rolls on her back and grabs at the air.

3. The dogs grow bored as R and I grasshopper-chat about ancient preservation, bleeding edge technology and everything in between. Around us, the world grows dark.

4. I wind the yarn onto a niddy noddy and count up the threads: about 350m of between 2- and 3-ply in a lovely, textured sea blue tweed.

1. We both wake up from deep sleeps.

2. I’d got out of the habit of warming chocolate muffins but after having one at my mum’s last week, I stick my Sunday afternoon treat in the microwave. After 15 seconds, it’s perfectly gooey.

3. The collared dove sits on the bird feeder, alert to our approach. It flies away as we continue down the path but we obviously don’t look that scary: two more doves circle and land on the feeder before we’re passed it.

4. The black dog runs to us in the banana-style that Lily adopts when she’s very happy.

1. After the ones in Southport last weekend, John has an obsession with bacon butties. He gets up to make them for breakfast before I have to leave for my meeting.

2. My £10 cashback comes in the form of two fivers.

3. The setting sun shines softly on the cow’s field but in the wing mirrors, it glows an intense gold.

3b. “Why don’t we get two aubergine pizzas?” There is some disagreement of whether or not we need that much but when it arrives, it’s nearly all hoovered up and everyone has their fill.

1. The little seed pods flick off the window in a wave ahead of the wipers.

2. I can’t settle at the computer so I go back upstairs and spin instead. I try out a blue-and-greens merino blend, flecked with strands of white silk: the resultant yarn is beautiful. Like the purple I spun at the start of the year, the blend of shades makes it far richer and more interesting than if it had been dyed a single turquoise.

3. Every now and then the chickens lay an egg that has a soft shell – a rubbery membrane rather than the usual protective covering. They look almost like proper eggshells but when you touch them, it’s like handling a very soft rubber ball, with the additional worry of it bursting runny yolk all over your hands. (John hates them.) They’re not safe to eat so I throw today’s at the hard side of the compost heap: it hits with a pleasantly dull thud.