The big advantage of micro generation is that electricity loses power over distance because of resistance, so creating the electricity close to where it is to  be used is important. Also – it grants a measure of independence from centralised systems. With this in mind I’ve been thinking about building a mill wheel utilising the water which should be coming down the stream into the pond. This is going to be a big undertaking and quite frankly, beyond my own capability so I’ll need help. There is embeded energy in anything moving downwards because of gravity, if we could capture the energy of falling rain, for example.

To this end I had researched dynamo generators to be placed within rain water down pipes in domestic homes. The amount of power generated can be calculated using available data on average rainfall. There is nothing on the market at the moment – with electric generators being too expensive. There would be a natural coupling between times when we experience rain the need for heat and light (in all situations where the temperature is above freezing!) – if only it was possible to take the wasted energy of gravity on rainwater and convert it into something useful…

This year I put up Christmas lights with more though than previous years. There are people who decorate their houses so extremely that they end up with a massive electricity bill. This is clearly a waste, but to say so too loudly would be rather Bah Humbug about Christmas. Wouldn’t it be nice to have decorative lights which didn’t waste energy, and provided cheer on dark winter evenings? LED fairy lights don’t need much energy – which is why there’s that big black box with the plug – to convert the high currents of your household electricity down low enough for these bulbs. I had been thinking of hooking up lights like these to my bike to create something truly spectacular (alongside my Pedalite flashing pedals & magnet powered front and rear lights) but wasn’t sure how safe this would make me in the eyes of startled motorists.

Today, I was thinking about the mill wheel, and drawing designs for a wheel to go on the north wall of the house, simply capturing water from the roof guttering and carrying it towards to ground. I would love to create something beautiful and useful for the back wall as there is a large space with no windows which is permanently in the shade. It would need to be aesthetic as well as functional, and built of something light and durable, with as many reused/recycled components as possible. Of course – as the scale increases, so does the energy capture capability as well as the complexity… but how nice it would be to convert that freely available energy into useful heat or light on a gloomy day. Would it need to be one large wheel? Or would several small wheels be a more efficient way of capturing energy? What do we have available in the way of light, strong wheels? Old broken bicycles. Of which we have, by a fluke, more than one (I cannot throw things away), some even with dynamos. As I’ve though so many times before… I wish I’d studied engineering.

What I have learned from previous projects is that it’s important that I can take the first steps using only my own ability, so my first experiment will be with an old bicycle wheel, some guttering and my non-friction bycicle dynamo generator (from http://www.freelights.co.uk ).  Wish me luck!

After experimenting with several types of chocolate, I prefer to use a 35% cocoa chocolate from a Papua New Guinea plantation (bought in Lidl) because there was no sugar on the cherries and they really need the sweetness of the chocolate to balance the flavour.

If you plan to post the cherries, it’s best to remove the stems because these will cause the chocolate to crack in transit. Otherwise, just remove the pit using a hooked bit of wire or a (new) hair pin with the plastic stripped off.

You can prepare these vodka cherry chocolates a couple of days in advance of a dinner party and serve them with coffee after the meal.

To make vodka cherry chocolates you will need:

• 80 pitted cherries which have been pickled without sugar in neat vodka
• 125 grams of good quality chocolate
• some cocktail sticks
• A metal bowl
• Grease proof paper

Float the metal bowl in a saucepan of boiling water which has been removed from the heat.

Break the chocolate into the bowl and stir until it has melted.

Add 10 cherries at a time and stir them into the melted chocolate.

Remove one cherry at a time and place on the grease proof paper to dry using the cocktail sticks.

Repeat until all of the cherries are used up. You can use a little of the left over cherry vodka to make a chocolate sauce by using it to ‘clean’ the metal bowl.

Leave the cherries in a cool place overnight to set. These will keep as the cherries are preserved by the vodka, but it’s unlikely that they will get the chance as they are rather delicious.

Sand znamená písek
Příběh Angličanky Nikol Robinsonové a jejího dědečka, kterým Češi za druhé světové války zachránili život. Cesky Rozhlas 2

I phoned my grandfather to let him know that it went out, starting with ‘the ballad of high noon’ in English, and ending with the Czech version of the same song. He’ll be delighted!

The bright sunshine is making me feel that spring has come early, as if it’s time for our period of hybernation (in other words: knitting season) to end, I worry that other hybernating mammals will feel the same. Of course it’s entirely possible that we will have a second winter arrive to take us through February and March, and given our experience of the seasonal patterns of weather, we have absolutely nothing to go on. M was complaining earlier about the irony that the severe winter a couple of years back lead to the collapse of half our property a couple of weeks after we bought it, but we’ve had hardly any snow here since then. Will the winters here continue to change? Who can know. We had best prepare as well as we can for all possible weather variations. And at least we’re not down at sea level with the ostriches living on Sandbanks.

So, tonight I will go through my instructions to double check them, then list the pattern on payloadz, etsy and ebay.

So… gone is so much work from 2007. At least I have a clean slate with the Novy Mlyn project plan again.  Redoing my accounts for tax return was no fun. It really isn’t the sort of job you should have to do twice.  Maybe next year I will have an accountant.

With the temperatures hovering around minus 5 degrees c (daytime), there have been all sorts of good reasons to knit rather than undertake any arduous DIY (like the paint doesn’t work at such levels of cold). Knitting by the fire has been more on the cards. I think that having spent 12 months living (as much as we can) at the house will give us a good perspective on our priorities for the reconstruction.

I am praying for inspiration, and motivation to get through the next year. It’s been a tough few months with many dissapointments… but soon it will be spring.