Up to London yesterday to buy some curtain fabric. I've just started a Soft Furnishing Workshop and last Wednesday evening was my first class. Following that I had to think what project to start off with and after some pondering decided that I would make some curtains for the main bedroom. This room has one wall with a window alongst a door that leads onto the patio at the back plus another (ordinary sized) window at right angles to it on another wall. I decided to make one set of ordinary sized curtains, plus a second set which would run from all along the back wall of the room right down to the floor. So I knew I would need a fair bit of fabric. The place to find the best selection is, of course, the John Lewis store in Oxford Street and so it was to there that the Husband and I set out.

After spending a fair amount of time looking around I decided on a curtain fabric with a pattern of lilac and light purple Iris flowers on a white background. How much yarn? 17.5 metres in all, plus the same length of lining fabric and the Header tape. When we set off for London the Husband was saying pessimistically "this lot is going to weigh a ton to get home". Fortunately I was offered the shop's delivery service, which I accepted. This was for delivery within 24 hours. OK, that was yesterday morning and at 7.00 pm today day the delivery has yet to arrive. I am not too worried, however. The class is not until Wednesday evening. If the parcel does not arrive by early afternoon I'll just pop down the road to the shops and pick up a metre of fabric, and accessories, and spend the evening at the workshop practicing making a cushion cover "professionally" (obviously I know how to run one up in a "home made" fashion).

What I don't understand is why curtain/furnishing fabric is becoming so difficult to find. The shops that used to sell it are still around - they just sell only ready-made curtains instead. That's why we went up to John Lewis, although their second floor used to be full of furnishing fabric and now has areas which sell ready-made curtains and other furnishing items. Obviously soft furnishing as a craft is dying out, probably because many just don't have to time to make their own curtains, cushions etc.

The Husband had his own agenda for going with me. He also started an adult education class last week - one in Interior Design on Thursday mornings. He is not deterred at being the only male in the class. Anyway, as a piece of homework they were given a black and white picture of a bedroom and asked to suggest colours to be used. He has really thrown himself enthusiastically into the challenge. I estimate that, compared to the amount of time I spent deciding what what sort of curtain fabric to buy, we must have spent at least four times as long looking at paints, curtain fabric ( a 20 cm sample was purchased), bedlinen (pictures of which I later had to download from the store's website and print off for him) and carpets (he got a free sample of his final choice). If he plans to do this for the rest of the 30 classes he can go up to London on his own. It was exhausting. (And what made it doubly trying is that looking at the samples this morning in daylight he has decided that they don't really match as well as he thought.)

Anyway, we were both shattered today and so we've taken things a bit easy. This means that he decided to burn a few CDs of collections of music, where all the songs are ones he would want to listen to at the same time, like us all most pop CDs have one or two songs you want to listen to a lot, compared to the rest that you only want to listen to occasionally (if at all)He has a fair number of CDs of pop music (although not as many as the 3,000 or so that he has of classical music). So, I've been unable to get near the computer all day until now, and have had to move piles of CDs off the computer table so that I could reach the keyboard.

One infuriating thing was that he wanted to buy a piece of music from iTunes, namely "Crying in the Rain" by Art Garfunkle and James Taylor (?). When I tried to buy this from iTunes they refused to sell it because it was "only available from their US store". Whatever happened to the World Wide Web?

Housework this morning and both cats promptly ran away from the vacuum cleaner. I wouldn't mind but if I'm out in the garden with the lawnmower they run towards me and I have to chase them away. They clearly don't understand which is the most dangerous machine.

I am exasperated about cuttings. The ones I took from a root cutting of my Chocolate mint plant are beginning to show and look really healthy. However, the ones from the French Tarragon have just died. Guess what? The Mint is hardy, the Tarragon - not at all. With our bad winter frosts the likelihood of it surviving outside is very small. SIGH