So, I'm still thinking about the electric rice cooker. But I'm no longer thinking about the 30cm electric skillet - that arrived about a week ago along with a proper el-cheapo electric kettle I no longer need the jug and funnel to get the 1.7L of water into.

Yes, alright, the truth is, one - I really truly madly desperately needed that 30cm electric skillet. And er, well, two - I found JUST what I was looking for whilst browsing eBayUK for vintage latch hook rug making supplies. Buying kettle and skillet together from the same seller (on one of those 'Buy Now!' product pages) meant free post and nearly £5 saved on what I would have had to pay on AmazonUK (erm, well, yes, another favourite shopping-online site). It was a no-brainer, really it was, to buy those two kitchen essentials. So, I did.

Currently the electric skillet is being hidden in my sewing room under a pile of craft supplies my husband knows better than to even look at (my father didn't raise a total idiot no matter how much he thought he might have). Not sure when I'll casually introduce it to use, perhaps once I really get my horribly small kitchen reorganised (no, really, this is set to happen in this week, actually). The kettle is hiding next to the coffee pot my husband finally admitted he has to stop using (owing to something in coffee, caf or decaf, making his other conditions less manageable) - I'll bring it out for use sometime over the next week or so.

Oddly enough, I had recently replaced the hand mixer he lost during one of his Asperger's induced reorganising frenzies. Last night (here's the oddly part) I dreamt I woke up to hear him using the replaced hand mixer. He uses (frequently) the 42cm electric skillet to make his one and only speciality - beef or chicken curry, and uses the electric can opener now exclusively. I have a display shelf in the kitchen for 'kitchenalia' (ancient scales, equally ancient non-electric post-war hand mixer with genuine Bakelite grip, etc) and he suggested a few days ago his much loved non-electric hand can opener may be put on display there.

As for his Asperger's induced cleaning frenzies, after the last one (the kitchen one) he now fully understands he MUST control/restrain his frenzies to HIS and ONLY HIS areas - MINE ARE PERMANENTLY NO-GO ZONES!!! I pitched such a fit (lasting three days, and frankly still festering), and made such a threat ('God dammit, I will DIVORCE you if you do not stop throwing out things I need to run this household!') he actually asked permission for months after to even go in the kitchen.

Of course I felt horribly guilty about 'terrorising' the poor man. Until he decided my sewing-crafts supplies cupboard in the former airing cupboard would be better off in the bl--dy loft I can't get to owing to my dodgy knees and shoulder...I went to retrieve some cushion filling to plump the sofa  throw cushions just before autumn 2017 and found he'd moved the very things I told him NOT TO EVEN LOOK AT MUCH LESS MOVE SOMEWHERE I CAN'T GET TO! Grrrr, that sore point is still festering - those cushions desperately need plumping but I STILL can't get him to be bothered to climb into the loft and bring those ginormous bags (lifetime supply, really, and wowsa did I get those two bags on a tremendous Amazon offer!) back down where I can use them.

These frenzies are much loved, btw, by the skip workers and the local charity shops, and they wait with baited breath for his next one. When they see me out and about they brazenly dare to ask when he'll be doing his next 'clearing out'. Heh.

During one of his earliest frenzies he sent several boxes of stunning vintage Christmas baubles, vintage linens, and most of my off-season bl--dy clothing, ffs, to the charity shops. In another he sent a Hamilton Beech stand mixer (fully complete, perfect working order, and will cost close to £300 to replace, dammit) and blender to the skip. TO THE SKIP, WTF was he thinking?! I found out later those appliances were 'gratefully received and rehomed' by the local homeless charity - the skip workers know my husband and know if I am not in the motor when he arrives with something to deposit they should check his items for re-usability. Dammit.

Generally we bumble along nicely, and so nicely at that I do forget sometimes his Asperger's, and lose patience. But not often. Generally he's like most men of his generation, and it's best to use time-honoured 'workarounds' like putting a new garment/kitchen gadget/insert item type here at the back of the cupboard so when it is discovered the hider can honestly say to the finder-discoverer 'But really, we've had that for yonks, don't you remember?!'.

I've been encouraged by other Aspie wives/partners to write a book advising how to make living with an Aspie less, erm, frustrating. But I'm busy at the moment - I've recently rediscovered latch hook rug making and am writing a pamphlet on that topic.

I'll spare you, gentle reader, my over-enthusiasm that can set me off for pages and pages and pages on the wonders and Zen of latch hook rug making, and simply state a properly hooked and cared for rug lasts several generations but there exist no dedicated short book (really not enough about it to make it past 100 or so pages at most) making this craft accessible to the would-be rugger. So, I'm doing it.

A friend in America went looking for a new craft, saw a latch hook rug kit and bought it. This led her to searching eBay and Etsy for latch hook things, and those searches led her to vintage, and before she knew it she'd won a job lot with several vintage unworked painted canvas'. When she admitted her new obsession, and was delighted to hear I'd tried it over 30 years ago and had only given it up owing to cost, SHE SENT ME ONE OF THE VINTAGE CANVAS'! (a floral one, not her cuppa, she insists).

And so I had to find a way to afford the yarn to complete the thing, and a latch hook tool, and of course this led ME to vintage and WOW, have I become obsessed with latch hook rug making! I haunt eBayUK where job lots of vintage latch hook supplies yield the most amazing treasures - one of my first wins included what has turned out to be an 82 year old un-worked blank canvas and Art Deco chart! I'll be starting that tomorrow now I've managed to get the canvas to a clean condition for working (the rinse water ran brown until after 12 hand-wash woollens cycles). The canvas and chart were sold as a companion set to a larger area rug kit and how that set managed to stay together unbagged for 82 years is as much a puzzlement to me as my wonderings regarding why the original owner didn't make it. The set dates to 1936 - was it a gift not to her taste but unable to 'gifted-on' owing the identity of the giver? Did she mean to work it 'eventually' but WWII and rationing got in the way and eventually the set worked its way to the very back of her rug making priority queue once rug yarn was no longer rationed (sometime in the late 40s - early 50s)? Things to ponder as I work this canvas and chart - an acorn and oak leaf motif.

Posted please find the vintage floral canvas (completed but yet unbound), and an in-progress snap of another vintage piece I found on eBay (I'm calling that one a William Morris-Macintosh Rennie sort of thing) now finished and being bound for use not as a cushion front as the manufacturer intended, but as a small rug to be used by us as a shower room mat.