Manic Kitty

2011-01-27T23:20:00.002Z

Blogger is weighing me down. I want to post but feel the need for a fresh start. The cats are old now they're no longer manic, just tired and a little grumpy... like me.

If you care to follow me I'm moving here celeste creates.

2010-06-10T22:00:00.003+01:00

This blog is sadly neglected, but I really want to kick some life back into it. Things have been happening which need documenting.

First and biggest, is:

I'm getting married!

Porl asked me on my birthday last year, but we didn't tell anyone as we wanted to have some idea about what we wanted to do before we involved other people.
Months later and we still haven't a clue so thought if we tell people we might be inspired.
It worked. We've decided we want to get married this summer. We're going to see the registrar tomorrow.
It won't be a big affair, after 14 years it'd be a bit silly. Also we have a very close, but very small circle of friends and we're only asking direct family members. We're going to the local registry office, onto a nice pub for a meal. Then maybe a night out in Manchester.

Bryher and my nieces will be Bridesmaids. I tried to explain to her today about weddings. I said there would be a party, and me, her and my nieces would dress up like princesses (she into dressing up and princesses at the moment.) I asked her what colour dress she'd like. She said "Pink". Then said my youngest niece should wear orange, my eldest niece blue, and I should wear red. I suggested silver shoes, but she said we should all have red shoes.

Needless to say I'll not be taking the advice of a 3 year old who doesn't know all her colours yet.

In other news in the months since I last updated....

Last October I was chatting to my boss, she's very slim (in my eyes, but I realise now that doesn't matter.) She signed up to Slimming World to shed a few lbs. Apparently when she was younger she was a lot bigger but lost it and kept it off through Slimming World, but a long stint of travelling meant she'd put a few lbs back on so she wanted to lose them again.
I've always though diets like Slimming World, Weight Watchers, weren't designed for me because I'm vegetarian, I'd tried SW years ago but they didn't include Quorn back then and I was stuck for ideas so gave up after a few weeks but what my boss was eating looked great. We talked about how the diet works, and the next day I signed up to my local group.

I'm now 3 stone lighter, and 4 dress sizes smaller. I hit target a few weeks ago. Now the hard work starts, keeping it off!

This is the picture I've been carrying in my purse for months. On it I've written "I'm doing this to be healthy and happy for her".

This photo was taken last June, and I didn't have the energy or inclination to run around the beach with her.

This is me now, desperately in need of a haircut.

So that's the main news. There are other things to tell, but they'll wait till another day.
Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with news of a date!

2009-09-15T20:14:00.007+01:00

I keep thinking about posting here... but thinking and doing aren't the same.
I've taken a load of pictures though so maybe, just maybe...

But first I have to get the house tidied. Bryher has discovered my bead stash so some reorganising/childproofing is required. I also have to sort out the garden. I managed the front at the weekend, not an easy task. It's not huge but if it was any steeper mountaineering equipment would be required.

I'm quite pleased that I've not tackled the back garden yet because it means I'll be able to take part in the Seed Swap being run over on http://marmaladekiss.blogspot.com/. I love swapping seeds and plants with people. It reminds me of that person when I see the plant. When we moved here the garden was mostly grass with very few plants. Now the back garden has no grass, half deck and a lot of plants. Most of the plants are ones I've got from my Mum, but she's had 30+ years of collecting them from people. Among my favourites are Mr Heath's Periwinkle, Joan's Rose and Peonies from Grandad and Mill Street.

So if you fancy having a reminded of a blogger in your garden then sign up over at Marmalade Kiss.

2009-08-14T14:12:00.000+01:00

I posted this as a draft for my reference ages ago, but I've been speaking to someone about it so figured I may as well put it online.

This list was published by The Big Read a few years ago as the 100 Greatest Novels. Apparently the average person has read only 6 of the books on the list.

Bold = Read

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factoy - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Anyone who has seen the wall of books in my living room (and the 5 sets of books shelves elsewhere in the house) will agree I read a little more than the average person. I've read 49 so far. There's a few on my bookshelves that I've not got around to yet and there's a few others that I really want to read but haven't spotted in a Charity shop yet.

2009-07-07T21:15:00.006+01:00

A few weeks ago we had a lovely weeks holiday in Anglesey. Unfortunatly (or fortunatly) someone put their small and greasy finger on the camera lense so I'm unable to bore you with too many pictures. I love Anglesey and would happily move there. The minute I drive across one of those bridges I feel more relaxed. It could be that I remember all my wonderful childhood holidays in Llanfairynghornwy, it could be being close to the sea, it could be that so long as I don't cross a big bridge again it's nigh on impossible to get lost, or it could just be something in the air.

So anyway, we had a lovely week staying here, I highly recommend it if there are just a couple of you, or if you have children who stay asleep once it gets light. We had to put towels up against windows to get Bryher to sleep past 5am. But we'd still go back, it was fantastic. I saw a young hare (very rare nowadays), and a stoat both just feet away from the cabin window.

Bryher had her first paddle in the sea. It was a bit chilly some days so we'll reserve judgement on how much she liked it. I built some sandcastles, Bryher ran round them (they're now called "round & rounds" apparently), and Porl and I did some excellent diverting of streams as the photo above just shows. Bryher showed absolutely no interest at this masterpiece of engineering.
One day she'll appreciate our skill.

The weather was glorious, (until the last day) so good in fact that we were trying to find things to do to keep us out of the sun. As usual when we go anywhere we visited lots of farm shops for Porl and lots of craft places for me. Luckily these things tend to be together, so the flour mill was also home to the craft guild shop.

My big purchase though was from a charity shop in Cemaes. We went in to look at books but there was a spinning wheel in the middle of the shop and several peg looms and drop spindles, all new. Apparently a lady went in a couple of times a week to give lessons. I've wanted to try weaving for ages, but I'd never seen a peg loom. It was a good price and they had samples made on it so I decided to buy myself an early birthday present.

Here's my first play at making "something" I'm not sure what it is, possibly a place mat, I didn't want to be too ambitious to start with. Now I'm hoping to get some raw fleece from somewhere so I can make a fake sheepskin rug. I'm tempted to go walking over the moors collecting bits off barbed wire.

My other new creative venture has been needle felting. Again something I've wanted to try for ages but I've resisted the lures of ebay. I could resist no longer though when I went to the gala in the village where I grew up and found a needle felting kit for £2.50. A night of vicious stabbing and I had created this.

Ebay was inevitable then. My kit only had 1 needle, so I bought some more of various sizes and a nice big bag of bright coloured fibre and a few days later was able to create this.

I'm addicted. I even took them into work so I could keep stabbing during my half hour lunch break.
3D is my next challenge. I think a fairy toadstool is in order.

2009-07-04T20:03:00.000+01:00

No doubt this will be another sporadic post, but I've got pretty things to show off.

A few weeks ago I discovered Twiggypeasticks blog. Then not long after Twiggy had a giveaway and I was one of the lucky winners!

So last weekend a pretty little parcel landed on the doormat.

Luckily I got to it before the usual resident letter opener or the pretty things would have been dispersed never to bee seen again.

Yummy chocolates, pretty buttons and a lovely felt and button brooch which is now living on my work bag.

If you like the look of this and fancy one of your own then you can visit Twiggy's Emporium

2009-04-17T22:02:00.004+01:00

Hi!

Yep, I'm still here, trying to get my act together to start posting again. I've been slowly building up the urge for a redesign, maybe even finding my own web hosting rather than blogger, then I may actually start posting again.

Quick update on life here. I have a new job as a Speech Therapy Technical Instructor. Only part time unfortunately so I'm still doing 1 shift a week on my old job. I love the new job though, really good fun, it's a great team and I feel like I'm really helping people. There's also a lot of cutting and sticking, playing on the computer and making pretty things involved so it's right up my street.

B is a star, she's nearly 21 months now, she really knows her own mind and she's got a very stubborn streak so we have quite a lot of tantrums. She's not very good at talking, in fact you could say she's rubbish, she has a few words which we understand, but we have to translate a lot. For example, "ot" (hot) could mean hot, or oven, or cup, or drink, or food depending on the situation. She certainly keeps us guessing. We're hoping when she gets better at speaking the tantrum will subside a little. I was rubbish at speaking till I was quite old so we aren't too worried. Her favourite word at the moment is "ditzth" which she uses to refer to anything she doesn't have a word for (so that's almost everything then). We constantly hear "Oooh ditzth" her tone of voice is brilliant, she sounds constantly amazed by everything.

On the crafting front I'm certainly getting my mojo back. Helped greatly by the fact that someone goes to bed without any arguments at night now. I got really into my cross-stitch again for a while (the Indian I've been doing for years has had a lot of attention, still not done though). I've also been busy knitting a cardigan, my first knitted item of clothing since I was about 7. I'm crocheting a gorgeous ripple afghan, which is about 3/4 done and I've just started some cushions to match it as the afghan has got a bit too big to cart around now.

I haven't got photos of any of these crafty endeavours, so I'll have to leave you with a picture of the gorgeous girl instead.

Hopefully I'll be back again soon.

2008-03-21T21:01:00.003Z

I'm a bad blogger. 2 months without an update!

I really admire all the Mums who manage to write blogs, make stuff, and bring up small children. I can't ever imagine it happening here. If we could persuade her to nap, then I might be able to blog, but she gets by on 2 x 45 minute power naps per day, and that's on a good day.

I am managing to keep up with other blogs, and I'm trying to comment more often too... when Bryher isn't trying to eat the keyboard anyway.
I must have made the comment karma fairy happy too because I was lucky enough to win a blog giveaway celebrating Sew-Eco's 200th post. The lovely Ruby has come to live with us.

At the moment she is making friends with Looby, the doll I knitted for Bryher. Ruby's label says that she likes to sit with other toys and watch the world go by, which is good as they will be kept out of chewing distance for a while. Bryher does play with other toys I've made her, other more chewable toys, but Ruby & Looby are a bit special, and not suitable for small mouths. They are spending their days in the living room, sitting on the little rocking chair which my Grandad made for me. The rocking chair which makes Bryher squeal with laughter whenever we let her play on it.

I tried to get a nice picture of Bryher with her "off-limits" toys, but the only time she's still is when she's about to drop with exhaustion.

Bryher turned 8 months old on Thursday.
I can't get over how quickly she is learning and changing. In this past week she has learnt to clap, sit herself up, and crawl, although to be fair it's a bit of a commando crawl/drag at the moment, even so it's still forwards and purposeful, it's just a bit slower... thankfully! She's also started grunting at us in reply to things, so we have conversations in "Cave-Girl". She still hasn't mastered rolling from front to back though which is supposed to be the first movement milestone.

Unfortunately 8 months means it's also time for me to go back to work. My first shift is on Thursday. It'll be the first time I'll have left her for more than a couple of hours.
I'm going to miss my little Goblin Goon more than I care to think about.

2008-01-20T21:32:00.000Z

My little girl is 6 months old today.

It's gone so fast!

I've not posted much over the past few months as I'm trying to make the most of every minute I have with her. She's such a happy, pleasant little girl. She has her whingy hour at night when she's tired, but don't we all? Generally she's a joy to be around.
I'm still saying this even though she woke me at 3:45 this morning and has survived on 4 power naps all day! Nights like that are thankfully rare and since Christmas she's usually slept from 7pm to 6am with a couple of nice long naps during the day.

Helping to wrap the Christmas presents.

She hasn't stopped fidgetting yet. She won't stay laid on her back for long now, it makes dressing and nappy changes infinitely more interesting. If you put her down she rolls straight onto her front, unfortunately she hasn't learned to roll onto her back yet so we have to keep helping her when her back starts to hurt. 3 times I had to get out of the shower the other day to help her out. Apparently it's far easier for babies to roll front to back and normally learn that about now, rolling back to front is normally learnt at about 7 months, but she's contrary... like her parents.
She's obviously desperate to be on the move, I think she'll be an early crawler.

Investigating my yarn stash.

She has a fantastic giggle. She loves me singing and dancing her around.
She finds the cats both fascinating, and hilarious, this is understandable. I pity them when she can crawl.
Less understandable is the fact that she also find cups fascinating and hilarious. Strange girl.

We've just started to wean her. She doesn't seem overly impressed. So far she's pulled faces at everything she's tasted, and some foods (broccolli and yoghurt) have resulted in whole body shudders. She might not like the foods, but at least she had a good attempt at digesting the weaning information a few weeks ago, so she should understand what's in store.

"What? You mean I'm not meant to be eating the leaflet?"

Happy Half Birthday little girl!

2007-12-31T21:36:00.000Z

A long overdue post.

After 9 days unconscious, 17 in intensive care and another 9 days on a normal ward Dad was well enough to come home.
We were flabbergasted as we were expecting him to be in for weeks/months. Only a few days before they had been saying he might be well enough to come home for the day on Christmas day. As it was his good health before the operation, and his determination to be out for Christmas meant he was well enough to come home a week and a half before Christmas Day.
He was still very weak when he got home, but he's slowly getting his strength back. It's going to be a long recovery, but we don't care, we're just so so pleased to still have him.

We spent Christmas Day at my parents house, my brother sister-in-law and niece were there too. We opened presents, ate a lot, laughed at my nieces antics, she took her first steps on the day Dad woke up so she's never still now. then we came home just as it started to get dark. Bryher was completely oblivious to the fuss, but did like the rain stick we bought her. the tickle-me-Elmo was less interesting to her, and terrified my niece.

A last minute change of plan means we're spending New Year at home. Playing online poker (not for real money). Bryher is sleeping through now, but has had a few unsettled nights becuase of her teeth, the Calpol is great though. Tomorrow we will go to Ormskirk for a day of music and merriment with friends and family.

I think overall this year has been good.
Bryher is a little star. She's so cheery and laid back all the time, she's a joy to be around and cheers everyone up. I've wanted kids for so long, and I'm so pleased that when we did finally get around to it we were blessed with such a fantastic one.
The end of November was a horrendous emotional rollercoaster, but it all worked out okay. One part of those horrid few weeks which I have enjoyed though was spending time with my family, especially my niece. She is great fun, loves Bryher, and I hope they grow up to be great friends. Bryher has another cousin on the way in March, so next Christmas could be a riot with 2 walking and 1 crawling.

I can't think what I have to look forward to in 2008, except for seeing Bryher grow and develop, she learnt to roll onto her front just before Christmas, so life is already more interesting. It'll be easier when she can roll onto her back again.
I have to go back to work in April, which I'm dreading, but I have 3 months of freedom first.

I hope 2008 bring everyone all they wish for, as well as good things you don't wish for.

Now I have to rush off to hear the chimes.

Happy New Year!

2007-11-27T18:56:00.000Z

Dad's op didn't go as planned and at this moment he is back in surgery a week after the original one.

I came back home to Stalybridge a few hours ago as Bryher is due her jabs tomorrow. I went to the hospital just before I left and the surgeon said he was stable and getting slightly better though he's still very poorly. He's been sedated for the past week since the operation but they were talking about lifting it and letting him come round.

Then Mum phoned an hour ago and said they had taken him back down to theatre. Mum isn't sure what's happened. They were going to remove some drains from his chest and now they've found a bleed around his heart.

The original operation was to repair one of his heart valves as he has a heart murmur, we knew there was a 2% risk of complications but as Dad was fit and healthy we thought everything would be fine, and this was the best time to do it. It wasn't until they opened him up that they found out what state his valve was really in. They tried repairing the valve twice, but it burst both times so they had to replace it. By this time he had been on heart bypass for about 10 hours and a lot of his organs had packed up. We were expecting him out of theatre at about 5pm, at 8:30pm Mum, my brother and I went down to the hospital and they had sorted out a room for us to use for the duration of his stay. That's when I realised it was serious. I had to go back to my brothers house at 10:30pm to feed Bryher, around midnight my brother phoned to tell us he was out of theatre and what had happened.

Over the week we've had ups and downs, he's been on and off dialysis and he's had a chest infection. They found a bleed in his heart so yesterday they did tests to try to find where it was bleeding into. Last night Mum phoned to say not to visit as they might be taking him back into theatre to repair the bleed so I might not get to see him anyway, she also said that his heart monitor was showing a systolic. Mum didn't know what that meant, but my brother and I did so we both made a mad dash for the hospital (Porl and I managed to pack up Bryher and everything she needed for an overnight stay in 15 minutes and were at the hospital in 30 minutes.) As we were rushing in the main entrance my sister-in-law phoned and said not to panic Dad wasn't going anywhere. They had decided the operation wasn't necessary right now, and he hadn't gone a systolic, it was just that his heart rate was dropping lower than the machine liked and so a pacing box was kicking in and the machine was flashing up a systolic.

It's taken hours to write this post, and Dad is now out of theatre, back on the ward, stable again and better than he was 4 hours ago... I can breathe again.

We've been told Dad will be in intensive care for weeks/months. It's going to be a very long slow recovery, and we will have ups and downs like this. He has all the top people looking after him, not just in that hospital, but consultants in other parts of the country too, we just have to hope for the best.
I'm trying my hardest not to think about the alternative outcome.

Mum has been staying at the hospital most of the time, we have been at her house and fielding phone calls. We have only told a few people he's in hospital, but if all the people who are phoning asking after him and wishing him well are anything to go by then he has to get better. Most people didn't know he had a heart problem never mind needed an operation so it's been a total shock.

I'm a big believer in Kama. Not that Dad deserves any of this, he's such a kind generous, soft hearted man... so all the people phoning keep reminding us of... but we need all the help we can get right now, so I've decided to join in with some others and Pay It Forwards.

The first 3 people who comment on here will get a handmade gift from me at some point in the next 365 days. A year to make 3 things seems just about achievable right now.
All I ask in return is you do something nice for someone else. Many people doing Pay It Forward ask that you post this same offer on your own blog, but I know some non-bloggy, non-crafty people read this, so I'll allow you to Pay It Forward in your own way.

My other request is that you keep your fingers, toes, eyes, and every other body part possible crossed for my Dad.

Not surprisingly the blogging every day failed as a result of this past week.

2007-11-19T22:44:00.000Z

Dad is checked in at hospital, probably doped up to the eyeballs by now fast asleep. Apparently he asked them to keep him like that until the worst is over and he'll be feeling okay again.

Bryher and I are going over tomorrow for a few days to keep my Mum company. I've spent today trying to catch up with washing so Bryher has some clothes to wear. I'm thinking for 3 days away we'll be okay with 6 outfits. We can always wash there.

I've also been packing crafty pursuits to keep me occupied. Mum and Dad finally got broadband a fortnight ago after months of me pestering them, but playing on the internet all day would be a bit rude. I've started crocheting a scarf. At the rate I'm going I'll have finished it by tomorrow evening so I'll have to have a rummage in the morning for something else I can make once the scarf is finished.

I know a few people are reading... even though they aren't commenting, so I'll make sure to update tomorrow so you know how Dad has got on.
I don't do prayers, but if you could keep your fingers crossed it all goes smoothly I'd be grateful. Thanks.

2007-11-18T22:17:00.000Z

We had a great night at a friends house in Ormskirk yesterday. I miss our friends in Ormskirk so much, but it's nice that even with Bryher around now we can go to people's houses, put her in a room at 7pm and not have to worry about her until about 11pm.
It's also great catching up with friends... and I had risotto... and for the first time ever I enjoyed eating rice!

Writing how good Bryher is has jinxed it though as for the first time in weeks she's woken before 11pm. Curse her teeth. Pass the Calpol.

Well that puts a stop to todays post anyway.

Night night.

2007-11-17T12:45:00.001Z

Going away for the day. Won't be back till late.

Must... still... post...

2007-11-16T21:09:00.000Z

Teeth.
Aren't they fun... or not.
Bryher cried for half an hour this morning. She's normally so happy in the morning so I knew something was wrong. I tried all the usual remedies but nothing was working. Then she grabbed my hand and put it in her mouth. Rather than suckling like she normally would she started chomping down on my fingers... Ahh teeth!
A dose of calpol and 15 minutes later she's happy again.

So the fun starts. She's been showing signs fo teething for a while, red cheeks, chewing on anything. the last couple of days I've noticed she's constantly had a toy or her fingers in her mouth, but this morning were the first signs of being in pain. Hopefully it'll pass quickly.

Later we went for a walk to buy some bonjela. It's bitter cold out and the fresh air knockd her out so she slept for an hour after we got home. She woke up in a very good mood so to kkeep her happy I put her in the carry pouch. We spent the afternoon dancing round the kitchen and making cookies.

She's getting an early education in baking and music. I have to get her liking my (eclectic) music taste before her Dad gets her all to himself and she learns to like his music choices. He says my music taste is dreadful... he may have a point, but I like it anyway. So far Bryher seems to like Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong, they have lots of songs about "baby" which have to be sung to her, resulting in lots of grins and wiggles. Teenage Fanclub is quite popular too. In fact I've come to the conclusion that many musicians are very broody as so many of them write songs about babies.

2007-11-15T21:50:00.000Z

If you're reading this, Well Done! Somehow I managed to let the manickitty address expire... I thought I'd updated the payment details but it obviously didn't work.

I found out last night so was going to sort it out today but The Lurg has hit the household again and Porl and I feel rotten. So far Bryher seems okay.

Porl started feeling ill yesterday and felt worse today. I didn't start feeling rough until later this afternoon. Porl normally does all the cooking, but as he was ill I decided to make some comfort food to cheer him up.
Shepherds Pie... or Cottage Pie... I'm never sure what the difference is.
Either way it tastes lovely.
One of the few good things about having a meat eater and a vegetarian in the house is that we end up with HUGE amounts when we make meals like this. It means for the next 2-3 days we don't have to think about what to eat.

2007-11-14T21:02:00.000Z

I've just nipped out to the shops and I noticed there are 2 (two) houses on our street which have their full Christmas decorations up!

Two!

It's the 14th of November!
5 weeks and 6 days till Christmas! (I only know that because Dads birthday is 6 weeks before Christmas.)
If they keep the lights up until 12th night (which I'm sure they will and far beyond) they'll have had them up for 2 months!
One sixth of a year!

They haven't even turned the Christmas lights on in town yet!

Sorry far too many exclamation marks, but I'm both shocked and horrified.

The worst bit is that neither of these houses is the one which goes berserk with their decorations. No doubt they'll realise they have competition and put them up this weekend.

2007-11-13T20:52:00.000Z

Happy Birthday Dad!

I love this photo. I must have been less than a month old. I'm judging that on the fact my brother is wearing shorts.

Unfortunately Dad spent this afternoon in hospital having a few last tests ready for next week. Hardly the best birthday ever.

This time last year I'd just got back from spending the weekend at my parents and Porl was excitedly phoning round all our friends letting them know I was pregnant. I'd done the test earlier that day. No waiting till the 2nd trimester for us.

2007-11-12T22:21:00.000Z

Yesterday I was going to write about how colourful my garden is looking for mid-November. I even took pictures, there were so many things in bloom. Not only my passion flower and nasturtiums, but also poppies, geraniums and several other things I don't know the names of.

But then I decided to make my life a little easier and save that post for today.

At 6:30am this morning Bryher decided she was bored of being asleep. I'm not a morning person so if it's before 7am I try to persuade her with a few cuddles and a little rocking that bed is the best place. But this morning she was having none of it.
We came downstairs to a very cold house and a frosty looking world.

All the flowers in the garden are looking decidedly limp now.

I freely admit that I cheated. I couldn't get a photo of both the pretty sky and the frosty hills so I took 2 and merged them.

2007-11-11T20:33:00.000Z

The verdict is (almost) in on the type trays. The seller got back to me and he's had them stored away wrapped in plastic for a very long time. So any woodworm is likely to be long gone. I gave them a good bash this afternoon to see if any sawdust fell off them and there was nothing and it's put my mind at rest.

I'm not being hasty and bringing them in yet though. I've got far too much lovely wooden furniture to risk it. I'm going to give them a good clean down... they need it. I might even see what effect Mums steam cleaner has on them. Then I'll wrap them in plastic and put them back in the greenhouse for another couple of weeks (the greenhouse is the only dry, non-wood storage place we have.) If when I unwrap them there's still no sawdust then I'll give them house room.

I really hope they pass the tests.

2007-11-10T22:16:00.000Z

Porl's had a bread making session again today. He made white breadcakes, some with sesame seeds some without, and a plaited loaf... he did the loaf, I did the plaiting.

I've told him he has to learn how to do plaits himself now he has a little girl. Especially as in a few years time he'll be having to get her ready for school while I'm still at work and she'll want plaits.
He said he'll shave her hair off instead :-/

Last week I ordered some printers type trays from ebay. I've wanted one for a while to use as a display cabinet but I'd never thought to look on ebay for one.

In the end I bought 2, and they arrived today. I opened them straight away before thinking to grab my camera. Then I parcelled them up again almost as quickly and put them out in the greenhouse. There are distinct signs of woodwork. Holes and wood coloured dust. I've emailed the seller asking if they've been treated but I suspect it's live woodworm. I'm hoping tomorrow is fine so I can give them a clean down (they're scruffy but I knew that before I bought them) then work out whether they're worth treating.

If anyone knows anything about treating woodworm I'd be grateful for some advice.

2007-11-09T23:15:00.000Z

Just a quick catch up photo post because the girl is stirring which means it's time for me to go to bed.

We had a bad night last night and I've been shattered today. But inbetween bouts of napping and cuddling I've managed to do some baking. Chocolate shortbread biscuits and chocolate brownies. I had made a lot more biscuits, but Porl is a big fan of shortbread. I'm a big fan of brownies, but it's a bit too sickly sweet to eat more than a few.

I ended up doing most of the baking with Bryher in her pouch on my front. She's still not well and it's making her miserable. Being in the pouch while I dance around to music is about the only way to keep her quiet. She seems to like Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong.

Also here's the finished ipod sock I mentioned. It's a bit baggy, nothing to do with the pattern, just my knitting skills. I might try making another to my own pattern.

2007-11-08T21:05:00.000Z

The problem with blogging everyday is it makes me realise how boring my life is. I'm enjoying my life. Being at home all day with Porl and Bryher is great fun. But it doesn't make for the most riveting posts. Especially when they're both ill. No pictures either, it's looked very Wuthering Heights outside today. Certainly not photo taking weather.

Today has been spent mostly cuddling a little girl who's very wheezy and pretty miserable. She's slept a lot, mostly in my arms.

During the few moments when I've had both hands free I've been working on making an advent calendar using Jenny's pattern. I've been hunting round for a decent advent calendar. We don't normally have one as I hate the idea of the standard chocolate ones. The chocolate tastes horrible for a start, plus the pictures are rubbish, and they're just generally tacky. But now that Bryher is here I think I should get one. She won't remember it but it might take me a few years to get Porl into the spirit of Christmas.

Not that he's a Scrooge. He just hates the commercialisation and tackiness of Christmas. So do I, I just haven't convinced him yet that decorations, Christmas Carols and all the rest of the razzmatazz can be tasteful and fun.

Anyway, back to the advent calendar. When I was younger we had a great one with a few lines of a poem behind each door. I loved it so much that Mum saved it and ironed all the doors shut so I got to use it for a few years in a row... or was she just being thrifty?

Jenny's advent calendar is great as it's far prettier than the square fabric advent calendars you get in the shops, and I can put whatever I like in the envelopes.
Maybe the prospect of Ferrero Roches each morning will get Porl in the Christmas spirit.

2007-11-07T20:10:00.000Z

We decided to try Bryher in the cot tonight instead of her carrycot. We've been meaning to do it for a while, the carrycot is fine in length, but getting a bit too narrow.

She seems to appreciate the extra space.
Sorry for the terrible picture quality but I didn't want to wake her by turning on the lights.

Today has been a day of sitting around lazing. Bryher's cold has developed, we went to the doctors this morning and she has a slight chest infection. She was still smiley and chatting this morning but then spent most of the afternoon either sleeping on me or crying.

In other news, my Dad has been given a date today for his heart operation. Next Tuesday is his birthday, but he has to go into the hospital for pre-op tests. What a great birthday present! As long as everything is okay he will have the operation on the 19th.

My parents have been coming up to visit us every week but I've told them they shouldn't see us until we're 100% better. It's not worth the risk.

2007-11-06T22:20:00.000Z

Today seems to have flown by. I did spend a lot of it making stew & dumplings (1 vege, 1 meat version). I'm almost recovered from the flu thing but Porl has caught it now so he was let off cooking duty and I made us comfort food. I suspect Bryher has it too, she's snuffly, coughing a lot and isn't quite as cheery as normal. SH'es still cheery though. Being cheery isn't good though as she makes a strange croaking frog sound when she's excited. This can make her cough at the best of times so it's even worse with a sore throat.

When not tending to the sick... actually I'm not very good at tending to the sick, but I am good at giving out cuddles... and I finished my ipod sock. Unfortunately it's too dark to take photos. That could be an advantage though as the big gaps where the needle joins were might not be so noticeable. I'll take pictures tomorrow when it's light.

2007-11-05T20:58:00.000Z

I felt a little less ill today so I've been rejigging the bookshelves. My Mum had told me to wait until she was up and she could help me but in hindsight it's better that I've done it alone.

When I was growing up I had the biggest bedroom in the house. With 5 built in cupboards. Every summer holiday Mum would make me spend a day tidying out the cupboards. I'm sure Mum dreaded it. I know I did. But it had to be done. I hate throwing things away. It's like throwing away memories. I think the thing Mum hated most was that I had to read everything. Even as I got older and should have been capable of tidying the cupboards myself Mum still had to supervise. If she didn't I'd get engrossed in something (a maths exercise book from when I was 7 for example) and the task would take me a week rather than a day.

Now I'm a grown up, with a house of my own I'm a little better. I still won't throw anything away (I have a file of notes left by my friends on my door at uni, as well as hundred of pages of song lyrics written my Porl and our drunken friends... certainly not by me.) Not throwing things away does mean I don't have to get distracted by reading them as I know they'll be there for me to look through another time.

However the bookshelves are still not organised. I tried not to read too much, my main distraction this time was a little girl who wanted to be played with. Once she was in bed I should have got finished quickly... but I found Please Mrs Butler and spent a happy hour reading it again. I used to know "The Headmaster's Hymn" (sung to the tune of When a Knight Won His Spurs) off by heart. I suspect it will be going around my head for the next few days until I've learnt it again.

2007-11-04T19:48:00.000Z

I'd love to be able to post about all the exciting things I've done all day, but I can't as I've spent almost all day in bed trying to fight off this cold. I'd call it flu, except I had flu a few years ago. It floored me for weeks.
This is bad, I ache, my temperature is going haywire, and breathing is causing problems. But I'm still capable of rational thought, I'm able to get out of bed with less that 30 minutes notice and I'm not thinking of calling an ambulance. So it's not flu.

I'm also still posting. If I can post today they may be hope that I will see the month out. I haven't done any crafting yet, but when I've done here I'll do a row of knitting... maybe 2, then go to bed.
I'm knitting a sock for my ipod using this pattern. I've got about another inch to go before I can cast off. I've never knitted a sock of any type before so while the casting off sounds easy on paper it may all go horribly wrong when I get down to the knitty gritty.

2007-11-03T21:16:00.000Z

I'm ill.
But I'm still posting.

I started with the beginnings of a cold yesterday and during the night it developed. It didn't help that when Bryher woke for a feed at 5am she decided she didn't want to sleep in her carrycot anymore and laid there jabbering to herself loudly. She does this occasionally and I usually just get her in bed with me where she falls asleep without any problem, but I didn't want her getting too close to my germs so I persevered with getting her in the carrycot. She wasn't having any of it though. At one point I got her to sleep in my bed, but she woke up again when I tried to put her back in the carrycot so eventually I gave up and she stayed in bed with me.
I'm hoping I recover from my cold before she starts with hers.
We woke up at 9am, at 10am Porl sent me back to bed for a few more hours sleep. Except for feeds (obviously) Porl has been on full time baby duty today. I've laid around convalescing and trying to keep my germs to myself.

I have still managed to do some crafts. I only made 2 cards, but it's something. Here are all the cards I'd made before today.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to have some energy, so I can rearrange the living room. We need more space for Bryhers playmat etc, and we'll certainly need more space when she becomes mobile, which at the rate she's going will be sooner rather than later, she's already an ace at wiggling off her playmat. I've pushed the settee up against the wall of books rather than it being in the centre of the room and I want to swap a couple of other things around too. The big job though will be to re-arrange the bookshelves so that one is level with the back of the settee. It'll look neater and can be used as a table, but I also want to put all the childrens' books one there too. There's about 800 books on those shelves so re-arranging them will be a bit of an epic task.

Then next week when I'm feeling up to it I'll take a trip to Ikea and buy a huge rug. We went yesterday with my parents but silly me didn't have the measurements. I should just measure everything in the house so I don't have to do these things twice.

2007-11-02T20:02:00.000Z

During most of my pregnancy I seemed to lose my crafting mojo. My brain was on other things and creativity took a back seat. As my pregnancy went on I started doing cross-stitch again, it required little thought so I could manage that, then when we finished re-jigging bedroomed round and I got a dedicated craft area I spent a few happy evenings doing some sewing and making Thankyou cards (I was anticipating needing some, it turned out I needed a lot more than I made.)
But then Bryher arrived so now my days revolve around her, and as she's sleeping in our room my crafting area has a carrycot in front of it.

Last week I went to my parents and my Mum asked me to help her design some Christmas cards. She'd saved the cards she received last year and rather than give them to charity she was trying to recycle them herself. Bryher was asleep so I spent an hour cutting and sticking, we got a bit of a production line going and made 10 cards. Mum laughed and commented that I'd come for a visit and she'd got me working, but I realised how much I missed crafting... even though I'm not the biggest fan of card making.

Mum decided my cards were far better than her attempts so she gave me all the old Christmas cards to bring home and carry on with. Yesterday I managed to get organised and grabbed a few essential supplies from my crafty stash before I put Bryher to bed so the past couple of nights I've managed to make some more cards. A couple more nights like this and I'll have made all the cards I need to send out. I only send about 30, Mum sends over 100! I'll make some for her, but she'll still have to buy some.

Making these cards has really got my brain rattling with crafty ideas again now. So instead of spending my evenings playing on the PC I'm determined to do more crafting.

NaNoWriMo started a trend and November now seems to be the month to take up new daily challenges. Porl is doing NaSoAlMo (National Solo Album Month). So I've decided to do Art Every Day (which I've heard mentioned but can't find a link for), and also because I want to get back into the swing of blogging again I'm going to try to do NaBloPoMo. I've probably jinxed posting everyday already simply by mentioning it, and to be honest if I fail I won't be too bothered, but I am determined to do some art... or craft everyday.

Wish me luck :-/

2007-11-01T22:31:00.000Z

I can't believe how quickly the weeks are going by. Bryher is 15 weeks old tomorrow. She's settled herself into quite a nice routine. We rarely have problems getting her to sleep for 7pm, we wake her at 11pm for a feed then she'll sleep till at least 4:30 am, but more often than not she'll sleep till 6am or even later. She usually wakes again at about 7:30 and chatters away to herself, if I'm awake we'll get up, if I'm still tired I get her in bed with me and can sometimes persuade her to go back to sleep for another hour until I feel vaguely human.

Vaguely human Mummy gets to take little girls on adventures. Sleepy Mummy tends to stay home.

In the past 4 weeks Bryher has got very chatty (especially at 7am) she's learnt to blow raspberries and tells us fantastic stories. She can gurgle whole sentences. She does a fantastic croaking frog impression which we try to copy but it makes us cough. Worryingly in the last couple of days she has also developed a cry that makes her sound like the Crazy Frog :-/

A few weeks ago we got very very lucky. A very generous friend of my parents gave us the use of her time share in Scotland. It was a very plush 5 star lodge on the banks of Loch Lomond. We had a sauna and spa bath in the actual lodge, and access to a gym and pool within the grounds, there was also a golf course, several restaurants and marina but we didn't take advantage of them. Previous guests included Sean Connery, Cher and Michael Jackson!
We had a very relaxing couple of days getting lots of fresh air and exercise, and evenings playing scrabble
We also learnt a valuable lesson. Next time someone offers us a week in luxury 5 star accommodation for nothing, take the week... not just a few days!

This was the view off our balcony. Getting woken at 6:30 by a hungry girl while on holiday does sometimes have advantages. You get to see the sunrise.

Bryher also had her first paddle in a Loch.
Shortly after this we were chased off the beach by a swan who wasn't happy that I'd fed the ducks and not him.

Now it's bedtime, but I couldn't do a post without any Bryher pics, so here's a photo Shelley took when we went down to her studio a couple of weeks ago. She took loads, but this is my favourite.

Anyone in Tameside or Stockport looking for a photographer then get in touch with Shelley at http://www.northernskyphotography.co.uk/

As it was Hallowe'en yesterday we dressed her up in the Cheeky Little Pumpkin outfit which my Dad bought her. I drew the line at the actual pumpkin outfit he wanted to buy her. She'll still be able to wear this in a few weeks time without looking totally daft... I love the trousers so suspect she might get a lot of wear out of them...

This photo is a rare one... maybe even a first... as she's smiling. Cameras seems to be a cause for great concern. She spends most of her day jabbering and grinning, but the minute anyone gets a camera out she goes quiet and serious. Hopefully this marks a breakthrough and there may be more smiley pictures to follow.

2007-09-29T22:15:00.000+01:00

Well it's been 6 weeks since my last post (bad me). Bryher was 10 weeks old yesterday and quite a lot has happened.

At 6 weeks old we started going to postnatal classes. We've made some friends and we've been learning about baby massage. It's taken 3 weeks to get her through the full massage session without crying, but after each session she fell asleep so it must have been good.
She also joined the library, I'm getting her started early.

At 7 weeks we had a day with my niece who is a year older than Bryher. We went swimming for the first time. Bryher loved it! We stayed in for ages, splish splash sploshing and she only cried when she had to get out. It has made bath times more interesting as she now splashes much more in the bath and gets me drenched. My neice didn't love it! She hasn't been swimming for a while and she screamed! I'm planning on taking Bryher regularly so she doesn't forget how much fun it is and stays confident.

The rest of the day was fun. My niece gave Bryher a thorough once over. She was totally fascinated, but seemed quite frustrated that she couldn't pick Bryher up. She gave her plenty of hugs though.
Later at night when I was winding Bryher my niece decided her monkey needed winding too and started copying me. It was totally unprompted and unbelievably sweet!

8 weeks marked Bryher's first cold. Thankfully it was no more than snuffles and she got over it quickly. She did manage to pass it onto me though and then get grumpy when my coughs disturbed her during the night.

At 9 weeks I turned into Evil Mommy as it was time for vaccinations. She hasn't screamed so much in all her short life. A few minutes of sucking on my finger calmed her down, but I think they gave her an upset tummy and she was still grizzly the next day. Grizzly though she was she did sleep though the night from 10:30pm (having finally done a huge poo) until 6:30am! Then last night she slept from 11:30pm till 6:30am. I'm hoping we can say goodbye soon to the the 3am feeds.

Her 10 week birthday was marked by finally managing to suck her thumb. It's taken weeks of knuckle sucking, punching herself in the face and poking herself in the eye but she's finally found her thumb.

The "Starfish" sleeping pose may have been replaced by the "thumbsucker" pose. I'm not sure why she needs to grip the back of her head with her other hand, but it's something she's always done.
Her thumb is definitely her new favourite thing. It's kept her entertained for hours today, which means it's also my new favourite thing.

In the odd moments that our life isn't being dominated by this little person Porl and I have been baking.
Porl makes bread. So far he's done plain white and wholemeal loaves, the white makes fantastic toast Also plain breadcakes (white & brown) herb and cheese breadcakes and garlic & rosemary breadcakes. All delicious.
I make biscuits. Cornish Fairings, which are like mild ginger biscuits and Catherine Wheels.
Yum yum yum.

I've also become completely addicted to Facebook... or more particularly Scrabble on Facebook. I'm always looking for more people to play against so feel free to challenge me. If you don't know my real name drop me an email first, my name is too unusual to publish here.

I'm also on Ravelry now and would be very grateful for friends on there. I've only got 2 so far and I feel very lonely.

2007-08-17T20:06:00.000+01:00

Bryher is 4 weeks old today and it's co-incided with 3 big events.
First, I don't know what I did differently last night but she slept for 7 hours straight!
I put her in her carrycot at 8:30, we have it downstairs during the day, I went to bed at 10:30 and took her up too. She normally wakes between 12 and 2, but she didn't wake till 3:45. I felt like Dolly Parton so tried to get her eat loads, I put her back down about 4:30, she settled almost straight away then woke at 7:30 this morning.
Oh if only every night could be like that.
Most of the time she feeds around 11, 3 and 7, but we have the occasional night where she has wanted feeding at 11, 2, then every hour from 4am till 3pm. Those nights/days have not been fun.
For the past couple of weeks she's also been quite colicky, it's settled down now thanks to the wonders of Infacol, but we still have some fun times where she's hungry, but windy, and can't decide whether to bawl, fidget, headbutt me, or feed. When she tries them all simultaneously it's quite painful!

The second event was going to get her her birth registered. She's all official now. I'm just a little bit sad that she doesn't have my surname anymore, but we've given it her as a middle name so it's not gone completely... she just has a strange middle name to go with her strange first name :)
As Porl pointed out, this does mean that when she's being naughty I'm likely to call her by her first 2 names, and she'll revert to being my child again... hmmm.

Lastly, she's definitely been smiling at us today. Not wind induced smiles. They were real, "I'm happy to see you and you're smiling at me" smiles.
Our baby girl is growing up.

And because we can't have a pictureless post, here's our little glow worm a couple of days ago with her Daddy who's teaching her all about loops and wavs and sound recording. Much better than when he teaches her about the "shooting people with guns" games he plays.
Porl was dead against giving her a dummy, but he's come round to the idea that with some babies it's a necessity... especially if I ever want to leave the sofa again.

Speaking of which, she's gurning so it's time for me to return to the sofa.

2007-08-01T18:55:00.000+01:00

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today I'm 30. For Porl's 30th we had a big party. My 30th has been significantly quieter.

I need longer arms to take pictures of the 3 of us.

Unfortunately Bryher didn't allow me to have a lie-in, but I did spend most of the morning dozing in bed between feeds while she gurgled in her carrycot. When I did eventually surface Porl brought me my birthday present, The Crafter's Companion, I haven't had chance to read any of it yet, but the pictures look great, lots of inspiration. My other big birthday present (other than Bryher) is from my parents and brother. They've treated me to a 60GB Creative Zen Vision M. It was due to arrive tomorrow, but Amazon are now saying it'll be next week. *Grrr!* I can't wait to be able to play with it, at the moment all my music is on my PC, and since I've moved all my craft things upstairs I've not been able to listen to any music while I'm crafting, although Radio 4 is a good alternative. It's also going to be great to be able to catch up on Podcasts, while feeding Bryher, I might even try out some audio books.

After Bryher and I had had a soak in the bath, separately, but Bryher takes almost as long as I do as she loves them and I haven't the heart to get her out, we set out for our first proper day out. It was also our first chance to play with the pram, we are very impressed. we've been itching to try the pram out sooner, but we realised last week that the brakes weren't working properly. We managed to get it back to the shop yesterday, and thankfully they did us a straight swap.
So with Bryher clean and fed, a working pram, and a picnic blanket, we stopped at the shop for some nice butties then headed off to Stamford Park to find the peacocks. We've never been before and we were pleasantly surprised, there's a lot more there than we expected so I think we'll be going back quite often.

This was the less mangy looking peacock

Do peacocks have a penchant for scary dolls heads?

Bryher slept the whole time she was out, we took plenty of pictures though, so when she's older she can see what she did on her first adventure into the real world. We were out for 2.5 hours and spent most of that time slowly walking around the park. By the time we got back I was exhausted, so we're going to have daily walks now to help me build up my stamina.

Within minutes of getting back Bryher woke and started gurning for food. Her evening feeding sessions can be marathons, so I've spent 4 hours sat on the sofa while she intermittently fed and dozed, any attempt to put her in the carrycot immediately woke her up. Thankfully Bugsy Malone was on TV, and it appears my singing voice calms Bryher down. Strange girl!

2007-07-26T19:00:00.000+01:00

I've been a bit busy the last few days.

It seems when I wrote my last post I was already in labour, but didn't realise. I woke up at 4:30am on Friday 20th with a sharp pain, I was half asleep so thought I was just desperate for the loo. When I crawled back into bed 7 minutes again and got another sharp pain I realised what was happening.

I woke Porl and told him to get the last few things for the hospital bag pack while I phoned the labour ward. Even though my contractions were only 7 minutes apart I was concerned because for the past couple of days I'd been leaking, I suspected it was my waters, but because I had no contractions I thought it might also have been that the fall had ruined my pelvic floor muscle and the babies head pushing on my bladder was making me wee all the time. (So embarrassing I felt like an old women!) Thankfully (sort of) it was my waters.

Anyhow the hospital said to come in immediately as if my waters had broken 2 days earlier they'd have to induce me come the morning anyway.

Its a good job we hurried. We were at the hospital by 5am my contractions had gone down to 4-5 minutes apart, and I was 4 cm dilated.

I was using the gas & air, but I'd only had 1.5 hours sleep so they gave me some pethedine too. Unfortunatly I had to be hooked up to monitors the whole time as baby wasn't moving much. At 11:30 they decided that if I hadn't delivered by midday they'd try forceps or ventouse.

I work well with deadlines.

At the stroke of midday I gave birth to a 7lb 1oz baby girl who we have named Bryher, after this place
.

She was whipped away as she had been in a bit of distress due to a knot in her cord, but a bit of suction and she was fine. I had a quick cuddle, then passed her onto Porl while they sorted me out, I was bleeding quite heavily. I got to hold her again at 12:15 and by 12:20 she was breastfeeding.

It feels like she's been feeding ever since. When babies are weighed on their 3rd day they are expected to have lost 10% of their birth weight, she had put on 3ozs!

She's very contented, in the hospital I thought it was due to the pethidine, but she's been the same since she came home, she's feeding brilliantly, sleeping for relatively long periods, and if I manage to shut my brain off a little I might sleep too.

I'm quite sore, and very tired, but that's to be expected.

I've still not quite got over the shock of having a little girl. For 9 months I've been convinced she was a boy.

P.S. It's so good having a friend who's a professional photographer :)

2007-07-19T21:51:00.000+01:00

I had an activity pencilled in my diary for today.
It doesn't seem to have come about though... yet.

So in lieu of other news, here's what a very pregnant lady might do in the last couple of weeks of pregnancy to stop herself twiddling her thumbs.

She may decide to knit a toy sheepie. (Which looks very cute from the front but slightly alien like from the side.)

She could spend a day sanding down an old blanket box.

Then spend another day staining and putting several layers of wax polish on it.

Or she could spend a few hours cutting out lots and lots of circles, then many more hours sewing them up with the eventual intention of making a mobile.

I highly recommend this last one as an ongoing project. It takes very little thought, can be picked up and put down easily, and will hopefully replace my need for "magazines" in my hospital bag. Most magazines drive me nuts, and when the time comes I don't think I'll have the ability to concentrate for long enough to read a book.

2007-07-18T15:47:00.000+01:00

My top tip for late pregnancy... Don't fall off chairs.

Yesterday afternoon I leant back on my computer chair and the back snapped. I just managed to keep upright but by the end of the day I was in a lot of pain. A decent nights sleep hasn't made it any better. I feel like I've got whiplash. Add that to the pain and discomfort of being 39+6 days pregnant and it makes for one particularly uncomfortable Celeste.
Twitch was very active after my little incident, and I hoped it might prompt it to put in a slightly early appearance. No such luck, and I'm now hoping the back and neck pain disappear before I go into labour.

So that now makes 1 chair, and 1 bed I've broken whilst pregnant... the bed was not my fault though, it hadn't been put together properly so could have fallen apart when anyone sat/slept on it. It was just unfortunate it was me.

We saw the midwife yesterday, (before I fell off the chair) Twitch's head is 2/5ths engaged again and she doesn't expect me to need the hospital appointment on the 26th. I pointed out I hadn't been expected to make this midwife appointment when it was booked a fortnight ago. :/
I'm wondering whether this baby knows that tomorrow (its due date) is also the date its cousin was meant to have been born last year. She decided to hold on for another week until the 26th, which is the date I have to go to the hospital, so maybe this little one is holding out for a shared birthday.
Right now that seems like a good idea. My back should have recovered by then... and I'll have finished reading Harry Potter :)

2007-07-06T23:19:00.000+01:00

Does batch cooking count as part of the nesting instinct?
We have 5 Spinach & Ricotta Cannelloni's, (made with pancakes instead of pasta.)
6 Vegetable Lasagnes
3 Meat Lasagnes.

Porl and I have made these over the past couple of days. They would have been all made in one day were it not for the fact I had a disaster with the pasta sheets for the cannelloni, which resulted in running out of pasta for the lasagne.
Thankfully Mum reminded me that cannelloni is delicious with pancakes instead of pasta. Although I think she came up with that idea because on the few occasions she's had lasagne she thinks the pasta tastes like pancakes. (?!)

I've spent the last week trying to relax a lot, when I haven't been relaxing Porl has usually been telling me to sit down and relax.
Monday we had our last parent craft class one of the topics which came up was what happens when you get induced. I'm now even more certain I don't want inducing on my 30th.
When we got back on Monday night I started getting period like pains, and back ache. No contractions though.
Tuesday we had a Midwife appointment, I told her about the pains and she seemed quite excited and told me it all sounded good, and she suspected I might not make it to the 19th. She was even confident enough about it that she double booked my next appointment which will be on the 17th.

So we'll see. I'm still getting a lot of period type pains and back ache, but no contractions, I haven't even noticed any Braxton-Hicks contractions (practice ones for those not clued up on pregnancy lingo) but then not all first time Mums notice them.

Twitch is fidgeting a lot, but then it always fidgets a lot so I'm not sure if it's more than normal. For weeks it's been laid sort of sideways, with it's spine towards my right side, so the legs and arms are on my left hand side, bum and feet under my ribs. Every so often it does a big stretch, sticking it's bum out, and trying to straighten its legs and arms at the same time.
My bump isn't very big, (people think I look about 6 months pregnant, not 8.5) but these stretches make my bump go square, and it grows sideways by about a 3rd.

Also... It flipping hurts!

If Twitch does this when Porl is around it gets a telling off, and instructed that the way out is down, not up through my ribs. :)
I've tried poking it to make it stop, but it pokes back. :/

2007-06-24T22:10:00.000+01:00

You do crafts dear, which are inherently messy things to do.

As Porl once said to me about my inability to keep my desk tidy.
This is my excuse for not having taken any pictures of my lovely new craft space. I moved all things up there, and got everything organised, then I started making cards, so the craft corner is a working mess.

I'm not generally a card making person, however I hate giving money to Hallmark etc, so I do try to make my own cards for Christmas, birthdays and other Hallmark holidays. The current lot of cards are just blank notelets as I'm sure they'll be useful at some point very soon.

For friends wanting baby related news, we went for our 36 week scan on Thursday. The news was very good. I'm all set for the natural birth with gas, air and a big bouncy ball that I want. Thankfully my placenta has shifted, and I won't be needing a caesarean. It's a huge relief, I really, really didn't want surgery. They are still being serious about the (very mild) latex allergy though, so in between screaming for pain relief I've also got to remember to scream at them to put on their blue gloves.
I wonder if I'll remember? Or be bothered?

It was nice to see bump again, we didn't get any pictures as it was laid awkwardly, and it's far too big to fit on one image now, but the sonographer was able to give us a pretty good look at the face by manoeuvring the scanner cleverly. Only about 3.5 weeks till we see the real thing.
All the measurements were done again, and even though everyone keeps telling me I'm looking very small (which I admit I'm relishing, I've never been thought of as small before, I'm short and plump,) but the baby is smack bang in the middle of all the growth charts. I'm hoping the fact I haven't put on much weight means I'll lose it again fairly easily, and maybe even lose some of the excess I had before too. If that turns out to be the case then I wish I'd got pregnant years ago, and I might have to consider having several more babies so I can end up waif like :)
Or maybe not...

2007-06-16T22:03:00.001+01:00

Typical! Yesterday I finally got the urge to post, and I couldn't get onto blogger. Better luck today I hope.

It's just under 5 weeks to go until the big day, not that I'm expecting this baby to be punctual, its mother never is.
I did my last shift at work yesterday, and my maternity leave officially starts tomorrow. Just in time, I do actually feel pregnant now, I've been feeling great most of the time, but this past week I've been feeling achy and tired again, I also have a tendency to waddle when I walk. At 35 weeks pregnant it's to be expected though, I'm just pleased I've had it so easy so far. I've finally got my head around the fact that in the next few weeks I'll have a baby to look after, but it's not quite sunk in yet that I don't have to go to work for the next 9 months.
9 months! That's aaages!
I bet I'll not be thinking that next March.

My hospital bag is all packed and other than buying nappies (we're going to get reuseables) and getting a baby monitor we have everything ready for this baby. I'd quite like it to arrive early as I'm getting impatient to meet it now, and I'd like to be feeling vaguely settled before my 30th birthday comes around 12 days later. I've also forgotten what it feels like to be able to sit for 5 minutes or eat something without my belly moving. I thought babies were supposed to move less towards the end of pregnancy as they ran out of space. This one is proving the exception to the rule.

If the baby is early though it'll rule out going to my old school reunion in a fortnight. I would really like to go, but I'm already getting to the stage where the idea of straying far from home, and more importantly, the hospital, is a bit daunting.

We've been busy sorting out the house. Well, our parents have. My Mum and Dad have created a gorgeous new bedroom with a crafty corner for me, and the nursery although still waiting for a few finishing touches (cushion covers and pictures) looks fantastic. Porls Dad has been working on solving the leaky shower problem, and in the next few weeks he's offered to repair the kitchen lights (we've been cooking in semi darkness for months) and also to put us in an outside tap, my pots and baskets have had to be severely limited this year because I'm not up to carrying watering cans. Here's pictures of half our new bedroom, but I'll have to tidy the crafty corner and the nursery up before taking pictures of them.

2007-04-27T23:21:00.000+01:00

Wow another post in April!
I'm hoping the nesting instinct has started to kick in. Today I cleared my desk, and for the first time in months I can actually see the top of it. Other cleaning has also happened in the past week or so too, we've Freecycled the surplus furniture from our spare room, and we're ready to start decorating and building wardrobes next week.

It's turned out to be rubbish timing though as within days of getting rid of the spare double bed I started with what I thought was hayfever (it probably was a bit) but turned out to be a stinking cold. At night I've been sniffling, snoring, & coughing. I can't get comfy because of either my bump, achy ribs, achy hips, or heartburn, and poor Porl hasn't been able to escape to a spare bed. For the record, he snores too, and hopefully mine will stop when the cold goes... or maybe not :/

The nesting instinct might also have triggered my craftyness again too. All I've done craft wise for months is cross-stitch, but Net posted about some badges she'd made and they inspired me to get my badge machine out. I've only made 3, but it's a start, and it's not cross-stitch.
Now I just need someone to inspire me to take photos of things. Maybe next post.

We've also had cat antics this week.
Saturday night Gonzo hobbled in on 3 legs. He'd done something to his left back paw, we checked it thoroughly but couldn't see any wounds and it looked and felt normal, he was also putting it on the floor but was obviously painful. We didn't have much option but to wait and see how he was on Monday before deciding whether he needed to see the vet.
By Sunday morning his paw and lower leg were swollen to about twice their normal size, he wasn't putting it down, and he was very very quiet (but still eating of course.) By Monday he was much more like himself, he still wasn't putting his paw down, but the swelling was going down so we decided we'd get away without the expense of the vets, or trauma of a car journey.
The last time the cats went in the car was when we moved house, it was a traumatic, loud and smelly couple of hours for both them and us.
Wednesday morning the swelling was almost gone and Gonzo was walking pretty much normally. He was also able to escape from the garden on his supervised toilet trips. He got away from me briefly in the morning, then had a longer adventure in the afternoon when he escaped from Porl but a neighbour managed to lure him back to our house.
Then Wednesday night Porl phoned me at work to say we had to get Gonzo to the vets as he had a wound on the top of his paw about the size of a penny piece.
The soonest anyone could see us was Thursday afternoon. Thankfully although he was loud in the car there were no unpleasant accidents. The vet was lovely, and Gonzo was very good. (Terrified into submission by all the dogs he could smell and hear, even though we went to a different waiting room.)
We think Gonzo had probably had a small wound which got infected causing the swelling, but the swelling got so bad that it ruptured the skin causing wounds on both the top and bottom of his paw *eurgh* So the swelling went down very quickly, but left nasty wounds. He's got a couple of types of tablets and orders to stay inside for a few days.
Hopefully we've sussed out how to get the tablets down him without argument (the technique vets show you about prising the jaws open and rubbing the throat till they swallow doesn't work with Gonzo, he's big, strong, and has claws.) I bought some potted meat, I cover the tablet with it, and Gonzo eats them... so far anyway.
Now we just have to suss out how to keep Gonzo from miaowing constantly because he wants to go outside.
His foot better heal soon!

2007-04-03T23:40:00.000+01:00

Hi, still here, honest. My life at the moment seems to revolve around work, and getting ready for the blips arrival and I didn't really want to bore everyone with the little day to day details this involves. So just one update instead, and I haven't a clue when the next will be.

Blip and myself are both doing well. We're 24 weeks and 5 days today. We had another visit to see the midwife today to check me out and listen to the heartbeat again. No problems with either of us. Blip seems to have inherited its fathers twitchy leg (for those who don't know Porl he has a habit of playing an imaginary drum kit if he has to sit for very long). The Blip also seems to be constantly fidgeting and kicking, which is a lovely reassuring sensation, except when I'm trying to go to sleep.
If only I could swaddle it now.

I'm getting quite big, well I feel quite big, but people have said I'm still relatively small for 5 months. That's fine by me, hopefully blip is using up some of the surplus weight I had before getting pregnant. Also I'm guessing that while my bump stays small I'm likely to have more energy, and I've got lots still to do (decorating etc.) so I need energy.
Not that the bump isn't getting a bit unwieldy. I keep walking into things, and I have think first before bending over. I suspect in a few weeks I'll be having to get the guys I look after to fasten my shoe laces instead of me fastening theirs.

As well as seeing the midwife today we also had a visit to see an anaesthetist. When I had my 20 week anomaly scan they told me the placenta was low, hopefully it's nothing to worry about, the midwife described it as "like drawing a dot on a balloon", so as I get bigger the placenta should move. I'm not concerned, especially as all my medically qualified friends have shrugged it off as nothing to worry about, I'm just looking forward to having an extra scan at 36 weeks.
But if the placenta doesn't move, then it means I may have no option but to have a c-section (which I really really really don't want.) This slight chance of surgery made the hospital think a little more carefully about my possible latex allergy, hence the trip today to see the anaesthetist.
I had RAST (general allergy) tests and latex allergy tests done a few years ago because of my job. I never saw the results but I was told the RAST tests were very high, (I'm allergic to lots of things, no surprise there.) The latex tests were apparently inconclusive, but it was probably best to avoid it.
Great, it meant I get to wear funky blue or purple gloves at work, but it didn't actually tell me whether I was allergic to latex, which makes me look a bit of a fool when talking to doctors about the possible implications of surgery. "I think I'm allergy to latex." "Have you ever had a reaction?" "Erm... no, but I had some tests done which didn't say much but the hospital told me to wear special gloves."
Thankfully I managed to get copies of the old test results and it turns out I am allergic to latex, but only slightly. At least I know now, and the hospital can get to work writing "LATEX ALLERGY" all over my notes.

The anaesthetist did wind me up a little by telling me I would be having surgery. I tried pointing out I was only seeing him as a precaution, he disagreed, and I decided to ignore him as he'd only just met me and only spent 2 minutes reading my notes. Porl spotted the look in my eyes and we had the "surgery, last resort" conversation as soon as we left the room.

So that's about it. I've got another week and a half of proper work, then I start doing part time hours to use up my annual leave. That means the clearout / decorating / re-organising will start in earnest. I've already Freecycled a few boxes of junk. Emmaus will get the bigger things like the bed and wardrobe, because they have a van and strong men who are probably used to carrying things up and downstairs. Once they are gone Dad will have space to start building our new built in wardrobes, and Mum and I can paint.

Now though I'm exhausted from all this typing so it's time for my nightly dose of Gaviscon, and off to bed.

What's the chances of me updating again before this baby arrives?

2007-02-09T20:57:00.000Z

Still pottering along, life is still good, but I'm still finding it hard to get the motivation to update (sorry Ormskirk lurkers, I'd make sure you knew if there was any interesting news.)
I've been trying to redesign the site a bit, especially as I realised that my "about" page is terribly out of date (I haven't worked for that phone company for over a year now, and I'm 29) but even getting motivated to do this seems hard, and I've not published anything yet. I'm hoping a redesign will make me happier with the site and I'll want to write often.

I have been doing some things though. The other weekend I went along to a members day at the spinning guild and had a great day getting to grips with my wheel. With some advice from Ali I managed to spin a fair amount without the yarn breaking all the time. I think one of my problems was confidence, but also since I've got home I've realised the sofa is too low and I can't keep the wheel spinning, so a change of chair and everything seems to be working. When I've spun some more and tried out plying I'll take some pictures.
The next day I went off to the G-Mex to the knitting and stitching show. I managed to restrain myself and only bought a set of coloured Susan Bates crochet hooks. I can't resist pretty colours. I saw quite a lot of yarn I wanted to buy, but they only seems to have 1 hank of each left, so next time I know to go on the Friday instead of the Sunday.

The Blip is doing well, I've definitely got a bump now and I've been feeling it moving for about 2 weeks, very early for a first time Mum apparently, but that sensation is definitely not indigestion.
We had an appointment with the Midwife a couple of weeks ago and got to hear Blips heartbeat. Porl keeps walking round the house making the "woog woog woog" sound.
I however have read that it can probably hear us now so I've taken to singing more... Porl is not impressed :)

The les fun bits are that my energy levels are beyond erratic. Some days I feel great, others days I'm fit to drop 2 hours after getting up. I find the gibberish I talk when I'm tired very amusing though, Porl just tells me to go to bed. I just wish he'd ban me from cooking when I'm tired, I never want to tackle anything more challenging than toast, but I must have burnt about half a loaf of bread so far.

I've also started having problems with my back too. I knew it was bound to happen, I've a dodgy back anyway, but I thought I'd be okay for a few more months. I've had some very restless nights and by tea time yesterday every movement hurt. I've booked a doctors appointment and I'm going to beg for physio. Last time I had physio it took 14 weeks for an appointment (well it would have if work hadn't helped me queue jump,) so if I ask now I might get some before the end of my pregnancy. I'm doing the exercises I was given last time, but my body has changed so much these past few weeks that I'm worried I might be doing more harm than good. Also some of the exercises will become physically impossible as I get bigger.

We've also been making plans for the nursery (sorry, having a nursery seems so grown up.) We're going to swap the bedrooms around so that we are in the biggest room. This means the baby won't have to live with things like amps and boxes of material, it also means I'll have space in our room for a dedicated craft corner. There's a lot of sorting and decorating to be done first but I'm so excited! If I wasn't banned from lifting things I'd have been getting stuck into it already.

2007-01-14T20:00:00.001Z

Apparently last week was National De-Lurking Week. In honour of this I feel it is only right to de-lurk from my own blog.

Life here is pottering along quietly and on the whole well. I had my first scan on Thursday, the little Blip is definitely a baby (the hospital even labelled the scan picture for me... just in case I wasn't sure.) Blip is doing well, it's now 7cm long from bum to head, which means I'm 13 weeks pregnant, and due on the 19th July, a week later than I thought.
This means that Blip is due to appear on exactly the same day my niece was due to appear last year... not that she did. Also the midwife told me that if Blip hasn't appeared 12 days after my due date they'll induce me... which would mean I'd be spending my 30th birthday giving birth.
I can't decide whether that would be good or bad. A baby will be The Best birthday present, there'd be lots of drugs available, (for me at least), but I suspect I'll not be handing out invites and party hats may be banned.

Here's the piccie anyway.

I couldn't believe how big a relief it was to get the scan done and to see the little heartbeat. I've been having a few problems, nothing too bad, but enough to make me worry, and to have the doctor/midwife/boss/family/everyone telling me to slow down. That's easy to say, but I've been feeling so lethargic that if I slow down much more I'll become indistinguishable from the sofa. Another thing which wasn't helping my panicky state of mind was that other than being exhausted I've had no other pregnancy side effects for about 3 weeks. The queasiness passed after about 2-3 weeks of suffering, and for 3 weeks except for being tired, and having an occasional stomach pain I felt fine, I didn't feel pregnant. Most normal people would be happy about that, but until the scan it was just something else to worry about.
Thankfully I hadn't been having bad dreams... until the night before the scan, and then it was so silly it didn't worry me anyway. I dreamt that I'd miscarried, nothing unusual for a pregnant woman there, but I wonder how many pregnant women dream that their miscarried child is made from some odd rubbery material with a magnetic backing?... probably only crafters.

On the crafting front there's been very very little going on. I've been feeling so lethargic that I just haven't had the energy or enthusiasm for anything. If I'm not in work you can usually find me sat on the sofa, watching some brain-destroying rubbish on telly while working away on my "Frederick the Literate" cross-stitch. The cross-stitch is coming on well, over half done now, but I can feel the telly making me stupider by the day.
My crafting mojo better return soon or I might end up watching Jeremy Kyle!

2006-12-08T22:27:00.000Z

Hello!

Sorry for the apparent disappearance from the face of the earth, especially after all the lovely comments everyone left. I seem to have spent the past few weeks either working, sleeping, or in the den I've created on my sofa with a warm blanket, a good novel, (or baby related info), rubbish TV, occasionally some beads, and sometimes a cat or two.

So far I'm thinking myself quite lucky that I've not really had morning sickness. Tea-time and middle of the night queasiness, but nothing in the morning. I've also discovered that lashings of ginger ale and the odd ginger biscuit work wonders too. Although I've managed to keep the sickness at bay so far, I haven't managed to do the same with all the bugs going round. I seem to have had a constant cold for the past 4 weeks, it came to a head this week when it finally kicked off my asthma so I've had to have a couple of days off work. I'm feeling mostly better, still exhausted, and most of the time my brain feels like it's been replaced by mushy peas, but I'm back in work tomorrow, and just trying to focus on the fact I have 3.5 more shifts before I get a week off. It'll be a hectic week though as I've done absolutely nothing Christmas related, so they'll be shopping, decorating, visiting, and maybe some baking to do too... or maybe not.

I did have other things I wanted to say, but unfortunately my brain has wandered again, and the mushy peas are back, the rest will have to wait, though hopefully not as long.

I quickly want to say how grateful I am about how generous people are being, from particular friends who keep finding un-needed baby things for us. To how my parents are doing wonderful refurbishment jobs on 35 year old baby things which were used not only for me and my older brother, but also the numerous children my Mum looked after when she was a child minder. I always thought they were a bit nuts not getting rid of things like our cot and high chair, as well as all the toys we had, but now I think they were very savvy.

2006-11-15T21:37:00.000Z

Shall I do the Good News or the Bad News first?

I'll get the bad news out of the way.

My neighbour died last Friday morning. I'm relieved for her families sake that it was relatively quick, when my Grandparents were ill it dragged on for months/years and it took its toll on even the toughest members of the family. It's still hard to deal with though. There are quite a lot of questions about her care that need answering, I hope things are sorted out quickly so that her family can move forward with their lives.

Now for the Good News.

The circle of life continues.
I'm pregnant!
I've never really kept track of my dates, but as we have been trying for a couple of months I've been good and written them down. Of course once I'd written them down I instantly forgot them.
I've been feeling a little queasy, but I've been upset, and I do tend to feel queasy when I'm stressed or upset. I've also had a sore stomach and boobs, but that's normal PMT for me.
On Saturday night I had a tough night at work. I didn't get much sleep, but did have a lot of time to think. I was getting cheesed off with these ongoing period pains, then something clicked in my brain. I did a bit of googling, and realised that instead of PMT it could be a sign of pregnancy. When I got home Sunday morning I dug out my bit of paper and realised I was 11 days late. *gulp*
Porl was still asleep when I got home, and I'd had no sleep so I went straight to bed. I woke up at about midday, told Porl my suspicions, then dissapeared off to Sheffield for the night as it was my Dads birthday, leaving Porl to pace the house and drink lots of rum. I broke the news to my family later in the afternoon, then on Monday I did a pregnancy test which my sister-in-law had which confirmed everything.

So that's the good news. I've been to see the doctor today, he didn't even bother doing another test, but gave me lots more information to read, and worked out that "Blob" (which is what is currently looks like) should be due about 11th July.

2006-11-08T16:51:00.000Z

Apologies for the "Woe is Me" post, but things aren't so great around here. My neighbour who was in hospital the other week is seriously ill. She's back home now, with all her family around her and she's not expected to live much longer. We were told last week she had about 6 months to live, but the next day we were told it was actually a matter of days.

I think it's rare now to be so close to your neighbours, especially for someone of my generation, even more so as she's nearly 50 years older than me. But when we moved here 2 years ago we knew no one and very little about the area. I've got to know her well, chatting over the garden fence, she's become a great friend. She's taught me about the local area, treated me with plants for my garden, and left-over pasties from the cafe where she worked. In return I did some of the tougher jobs in her garden, sorted out her bins for her every week (the slope down from our house is dangerous even on a dry day) and gave her some company. Her family keep thanking me for everything I've done for her, but I think she's been a far better friend to me really.

I didn't see any of my Grandparents in the last couple of weeks before they died. Partly because I lived so far away and it was hard to get time off work, but also because as I'm the youngest of all the Grandchildren I was kept sheltered from it all (even though I was in my 20's when 3 of them died.) Seeing my neighbour as ill as she is has been harder to deal with than I realised, especially as we were chatting over the fence as normal 3 weeks ago.

I keep finding jobs to do round the back of the house in the hope one of her relatives will be outside because if I'm honest I'm too scared to go round and find out the latest.

2006-11-03T23:15:00.000Z

I'm fed up with hearing bad news.
I thought I'd cried enough over the past few months.
I want the bad things to stop. Now.

Can I have the happy things back please?

2006-11-02T16:52:00.000Z

A rare meme which took my fancy, from Craftapalooza

1. Flip to page 18, paragraph 4 in the book closest to you right now, what does it say?

If you are incapable of resuming work: see Incapacity Benefit.

The only book on my desk at the moment is "Directory for Disabled People" which I bought for work (for 10p) but brought home when I suspected my boss was about to bin it.

2. If you stretch out your left arm - as far as possible, what are you touching?
A small version of my parents Wedding Album. It was my Nan-nans copy. Mum brought it round for me today.

3. What's the last program you watched on tv?
News 24 this morning before putting the radio on.

4. Without looking, guess what time it is.
5pm, not bad, 4:54pm

5. Except the computer, what can you hear right now?
Music from my PC, Pulp-A little Soul

6. When was the last time you were outside and what did you do?
About an hour ago doing the gardening (hopefully last grass cutting until spring)

7. What are you wearing?
Jeans which have paint on and holes in, a purple vest top, a blue fleecey jumper, a black zip up jumper (it was really cold outside, I had a coat on too) and orange, yellow and grey stripey socks.

8. Did you dream last night? If you did, what about?
Nope, I've slept really deeply for the past few nights, a pleasant change.

9. When was the last time you laughed?
Today when my parents were saying goodbye.

10. What's on the walls, in the room you're in right now?
My framed Mil-looney-um Tazos, a Da Vinci sketch and a 3D picture of a country kitchen. Very mish mash.

11. Have you seen anything strange lately?
A surprising amount of ghosts and ghoulies when I drove home the other night.

12. What do you think about this meme?
It's good.

13. What's the last film you saw?
Haven't the foggiest, I think I watched "About a Boy" on TV about 3 weeks ago.

14. If you became a multimillionaire, what would you do with the money?
Pay of quite a lot of mortgages for people, and buy myself a lovely big house in the middle of nowhere... maybe on some remote island, but with a helicopter for getting back to see family & friends.

15. Tell us something about yourself that most people don't know.
I think how I am in work and how I am around my friends and at home is very very different. At home and with friends I'm very laid back and disorganised. I think my normal friends would be quite surprised if they spent a day with me in work, and that applied to all the jobs I've done in the past few years, not just my current job.

16. If you could change ONE THING in this world, without regarding politics or bad guilt - what would it be?
I'd make people realise that if they want a decent world to live on in a few years time we've got to sort out our environmental issues.

17. Do you like dancing?
Ooh yes.

18. George Bush?
Please God No!

19. What do you want your children’s names to be, girl/boy?
At the moment, Matilda (but she would be called Tilly-Mint) and Seth

20. Would you ever consider living abroad?
Yes, depending on the country, there's a lot of countries I would hate to live in. I'm really happy living in this country though, I just want to move to one of our many little islands :)

21. What do you want God to tell you, when you come to heaven?
Too many assumptions there.

22. Who should do this meme?
Anyone who cares to.

2006-10-28T23:32:00.000+01:00

Believe it or not there are actually some occasions when I make things. Quite a lot of things actually. The problem is I forget to take pictures, or they're sent off to another part of the world and by the time they get to their eventual destination the sense of achievement I felt about making them has been dulled by the fact the post office has taken 4 times longer to deliver them than they should have done, so I never get around to blogging about them.
So I will now do a bit of a catch up post.

Ages ago I took part in the Craftster "Foreign Exchange Swap". My parcel took the scenic 3 week route to Joanna in Germany, but at least it got there eventually.

Here's the group shot:

I would have been gutted had it got lost, not only because the crafted things marked a turning point in the relationship between my sewing machine and I, (we made friends while making those coasters.) But also because I had sent one of my precious bottles of Hendersons Relish which I have to import from Sheffield to Stalybridge.

As well as the Hendersons I sent some Yorkshire Tea, a CD of British music, a load of papers, tourist leaflets, takeout menu's. The crafted things were the little flower badge, also this fabric recipe box.

The recipes are all traditional and regional dishes, like Scouse, Black Pudding, Haggis, Eccles Cakes, Yorkshire Pudding (I did point out that unless she'd got some Yorkshire blood she's struggle with these), and also details on how to do a English Breakfast and a Sunday Lunch. I did a few cards on traditions like bonfire night too, with some Bonfire Night themed recipes, and a bit of information too on accents and dialects, as well as some other things.

Lastly I made these Union flag coasters which I have to admit I love! I was tempted to keep a couple and only send 4, but I was good and sent them all. I had to borrow a photo off Joanna, because I'm daft and forgot to take a photo of the reverse. I used blue fabric and different width ribbons for the flag, the reverse is some red, white and blue flowery fabric which in a previous life was a summer dress of mine. I only wore it briefly when I was 17 when for a few short weeks it was too hot to be a Goth, so I'm glad it's finally being used.

As usual this post has taken an age to write because I'm so easily distracted. I could use the extra hour I'll gain this evening by staying up late, but instead I'm going to use it by getting a much needed extra hour in bed. If I can avoid distractions I'll carry on catching up on Monday.

2006-10-17T21:52:00.000+01:00

So this is one of the things which went wrong today.
The oven had been on for about 45 minutes 180C, there was a *pop*, not even a loud one, and the glass on the outside of the oven door had shattered.
It looks very pretty though, and I liked the crackling sound it made as it cooled and shattered more, it sounded a bit like Rice Crispies. It’s not very practical for an oven. There go any plans for nice biscuits for Porl’s birthday party, ad it’s a good job his Mum is buying a cake.
What confuses me most is that the glass inside is fine, it’s just the outside which is broken.

Other not-so-great news received today is that my Dad has an appointment at the hospital on Thursday. We knew this was coming as he has to have an operation on his heart soon so he’s going in for tests are in preparation. He'll be having a tube down his throat so they can put a camera down, it’s supposed to be routine, a 15 minute procedure. However last time he had it done it took an hour and a half, 4 nurses to hold him down, 2 consultants to get the tube in, and they even asked my Mum in, in the hope her voice would calm him. He fought them all the way, and this is all while he was sedated. He remembers none of it, Dad is as gentle as a pussy cat usually, he just really doesn’t like hospitals.
Hopefully Thursday will be better. I was going over to take them to the hospital, but the weather is due to be lousy and they've told me not to go.

After that news my neighbour phoned and asked if I’d go round. She's been sent to hospital tonight for some tests too, she's an old lady who I get on with really well, they're not sure what's wrong so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed. While she's in I'm looking after her psycho cat Frankie. This cat is unlike any I've ever met, certainly not the afore mentioned gentle pussy cat. He attacks anything & anyone, everyone leaves there covered in scratches and bite marks. When she first got him as a kitten I thought it would calm down but he hasn't. Even the vets refer to him as “Frankie the kitten from hell”.
My neighbour takes him out on a lead, with his temperament she daren’t let him out alone. Duke tries to befriend him, but Frankie just attacks him, Gonzo makes no pretence of friendship. I suspect a good thrashing from another cat would do Frankie good, but if I brought him round here I’m not sure who’d survive the fight.
I’ll be wearing my thick jumpers and gardening gloves when I go to feed him.

The last thing that happened today to cause problems occurred after an unsuccessful shopping trip to get Porl a birthday present. Somehow as I was getting back into the car I managed to thump the back of my head. I hit it so hard I actually felt my brain hit the front of my head and I wasn’t sure whether the front of back hurt most.
I spent a good couple of minutes sat in the car laughing/crying as the world span.
Several hours later and I’ve a lump on the back of my head, I’ve still got a headache, and my neck and back are really stiff.

So today hasn’t been the most successful day ever. I did manage to finish knitting a scarf though, I’ll take some photos of it tomorrow in daylight.
Right now I’m going to bed, there's not much of the day left, but I've had enough of this one anyway.

2006-10-04T21:10:00.000+01:00

The bathroom has been painted... again.

I tried living with the colour for a week, I even put the cupboards back up, and put all the decorative things back, hoping that it might just be the bareness of the room that was putting me off the colour.

But no, it was the colour putting me off the colour.

I learnt my lesson and bought some tester pots on the way home last night, so the bathroom is now the pale bluey-grey colour that I had first imagined. Mum & Dad have been up for the day, so while Dad put some shelves up in our bedroom, Mum and I got the painting done, thankfully it only needed one coat. After dinner Dad "rested his eyes" for a couple of hours while we got the glossing done. I still need to do some touching up, and another coat of gloss, but I can now go in the bathroom without getting a horrible restless feeling.

Next weekend we paint the hall/stairs/landing.
It is going to be white.

2006-10-02T22:48:00.000+01:00

We're quite proud of our Sunday Lunches at this house. We don't have them every Sunday as I'm often working, but they're certainly a treat to look forward to. We also know they're good because Porl's parents ask to come round to eat them.
One of the best things about a Sunday Lunch for us, is that it will also feed us for Monday teatime, and as I'm vegetarian Porl get's a whole chicken to himself, which means chicken butties until Wednesday. The cats also get the odd treat too. I like meals that last for a few days.

Our standard Sunday Lunch consists of; a roast chicken for Porl, roast potatoes, roast sweet potaotes, roast parsnips - which have been coated in parmesan, sprouts, 'special' mash - made up of normal potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and plenty of butter, stuffing, and Yorkshire puddings with sage and onion in. Also can't forget the gravy, I have Bisto onion gravy, Porl has his made with all the juices from the chicken. I also have mint sauce, the joy of being a veggie is you don't have to follow rules like mint with lamb etc etc.

It's a lot, but we don't have breakfast, we just eat this somewhere better 3 and 6 in the afternoon, then sometimes about 9pm we might be able to manage dessert.

We will always make a large saucepan full of 'special' mash, so that on Monday we can eat the leftovers. We often fry up the mash add some slices of fried aubergine and haloumi, then fry some red onion, baby tomatoes add lots of balsamic vinegar and serve with some salad. Porl will also have some of the chicken.
Another way of using the mash is to put it around some goats cheese before frying it up.
Whatever we do it's always delicious.

Yesterday however Porl cooked lamb.
Lamb is nicer for Sunday Lunch, but it isn't so good in sandwiches, and it's very expensive, so it's a treat he doesn't often have.
So he cooked the lamb and it was delicious (apparently).

I went to bed very early last night, as I was starting with a migraine, I woke at about 3am, couldn't get back to sleep, so laid there thinking of nice things to do with the lamb. I was still feeling ill, and craving comfort food, so I decided in the morning I would turn the rest of the lamb into a stew, I'd have a veggie stew and we could have dumplings.
Yum yum yum, fell back to sleep thinking happy thoughts.

This morning I woke up, came downstairs and noticed Porl had forgotten to put the lamb in the fridge. Now he might not have a Food Hygiene qualification, but experience of living with 2 cats has taught him to cover food that he wants to save. Our normally extremely well behaved cats know that the kitchen work surfaces are STRICTLY out of bounds. But the temptation of a juicey chicken, or joint of lamb has been known to tempt them so we ALWAYS cover the meat as soon as it comes out of the oven.

After making a brew and opening the door to let the cats out I went back upstairs to have a shower. I told Porl about my idea for stew which he thought was great, and we came downstairs to start making it.

I bet you can guess what we found...
The carefully covered piece of meat was no longer covered, in fact it was no longer there. Also mysteriously absent was Gonzo.
I couldn't help but laugh.
He had resisted the temptation all night until the door was opened and he was able to smuggle the meat out of the house. He returned several hours later without the meat, but looking as innocent as ever.

We still had stew and dumplings, but we had to go shopping for some more meat. Tomorrow we'll be having the remains of the stew in pancakes.

Both cats are being punished for Gonzo's behaviour, as we forgot to buy their tinned food when we were out. They're on rations of dry food and water.

2006-09-29T21:55:00.000+01:00

I'm feeling very 'meh' tonight.
I've had a busy few days, and I'm back in work tomorrow. I don't want to go, I just want to relax. So 'meh'.

On Tuesday my parents came up and we got the last bit of the decking and garden done. For over a year my parents have been coming up and putting in hours of hard graft building the deck, putting on the railing, clearing the grass off the garden, cutting down the privet, and putting in a lot of plants. I've been there doing it too, but I have to admit my parents have worked far harder than I have. I don't know how many days it's taken in total, but it was a lot. It's been worth it though.

(This isn't the finished one, it's just to give you an idea, it's too dark to take pictures now. I'll update with a proper picture soon. I sometime wish that this picture was a true representation... there are 2 of me.)

Wednesday I decided to paint the bathroom. It was quite a dark blue colour, I loved the colour, but the window is so small, and the neighbours privet is really tall (look at the picture above) meaning we needed a light colour to brighten it up. It's also a problem because we have no windows on the landing and it's really dingy.

I got back from buying the paint to find that the Law of Sod had kicked in, and the neighbours were busy in the garden cutting the privet down. It was about 14ft tall, it's now down to ground level and our house is so much lighter. If only it was still summer, I'd have a sunny garden all day instead of just 1 hour in the morning and 2 at tea time. *sigh*
But I'd bought the paint so decided to carry on.
Except for the glossing, which will have to wait till Sunday, it's all finished...The only problem is, I'm not sure I like the colour. It's a pale blue, but not pale enough, I was wanting something a bit greyer, it's a bit icey. Porl thought I was joking when I told him... I wish I was.

So lesson learnt ALWAYS get tester pots. I'll either learn to live with it, or I'll be buying some tester pots in the next few weeks.

The other thing which happened on Tuesday is that my Dad gave me his camera (for the record, I do know I'm spoilt rotten.) He'd left it here accidentally a few weeks ago, so I'd played with it until the batteries died. It's far better than mine for many reasons, but the most important one for me is that it takes a lithium battery which stayed charged for ages, weeks if you don't use it. My old one took standard AA batteries which didn't last very long when you were using it, and still drained the power when it was turned off. Every time I wanted to take a photo of anything I'd have to go hunting for new batteries. Too much hassle for me, and the reason that most of these blog entries are dull and pictureless. Hopefully things will change now.

Lastly, thanks to my new camera, I have finally got around to taking photos of my charity shop finds from the past couple of weeks. I wish I'd taken part in the $99 thrift challenge
My first lot was from my new favourite shop Emmaus. This was my second visit there, to pick up the things I found on my first trip but could pay for because of a power cut. I skipped the furniture this time (well maybe a brief look) and spent over an hour going through all the books and bric-a-brac.
I got these books,

From the top down "Pope: Poems & Prose", "The Origin of Species", "The Divine Comedy", "The Faerie Queen", "An Inspector Calls", "Little Women" & "Course in General Linguistics".
What I love most is that a lot of these books are quite old editions. I hate new hardback books which are over sized, but I love old hardbacks which are easy to hold, and often have titbits of information about their previous owners.

I also got these great embroidery folders. It looks like a monthly subscription thing. 1 file has all the techniques and a lot of patterns for every time of embroidery you could imagine. The other file is transfers. Lots of transfers. There are 24 parts, each one made up of 2 A2 sheets of paper. I've been getting ideas for embroidery for a while but my drawing skills aren't what they were and new transfers are cheap. I'm a happy bunny.

I picked up some silver leaf shaped decorating transfers too. I won't be decorating with them, they're good for making cards.

All this lot, books, embroidery stuff, and transfers cost me the grand sum of £3.50! I love Emmaus.

Then on Thursday I was on a course in Hyde so during my lunch hour I found these materials.

Total price Â£2.00

I love the bumble bee fabric. Infact I bought some a few weeks ago in a different colourway which had been made up into covers for patio chairs.

Not very useful as they are, originally I thought of cutting them into patches. Now I have a big piece too I'll have to get my brain working.

2006-09-22T22:01:00.000+01:00

The embarrassing mess from my last post is gone... sort of.
I spent that evening putting everything away, dusting, hoovering, and I even defrosted the freezer.
The next morning I came downstairs and decided to paint the rest of my storage drawers, and revamp my pin board. The tidy desk got destroyed, and for the past 2 days the living room floor has been covered in boxes and drawers which are newly painted and drying.
Tomorrow hopefully I'll be able to put everything back and take some pretty pictures of a nice neat desk.

It's days like these that I'm glad we've got no kids. I promise when we do have kids I'll be tidier... I'll have to be. I think getting all these messy jobs now is classed as nesting... I seem to always be nesting...

2006-09-21T02:42:00.000+01:00

It's not a good state of affairs when you realise the only way you're going to get the house tidy is by embarrassing yourself into doing it.
I posted these to Craftster thread Share your Mess... Then let's clean it up

That's what happens after a month of illness, 2 weeks of annual leave, and a lot of crafting. Not that it's been like that for a month, it's just been gradually getting worse for a fortnight. I've been saying for 3 days that I'm going to put it all away, but it's not been happening. This isn't even a room I can just shut the door on, it's the craft/dining room end of our kitchen/diner.
Sometimes I wonder if letting Porl have the little bedroom as a music room was a good idea, or whether I'd have been better in there... I'm not allowing myself to start using the spare bedroom as a craft room, that way lies madness...

The embarrasment worked. The dining table is now clear, the bead drawers are organised again, and my desk is clear, I can use the mouse again, and I found my car keys!
I've still got some things I want to sort out, but they involve making a mess again, so I'll let the room be tidy for a night before I start making a mess again.
In the middle of this cleaning frenzy I did also defrost the freezer... that wouldn't have waited till tomorrow :/

I was supposed to be going on an NVQ course tomorrow, the second towards my NVQ II in Care, I've decided not to go though because I'm still on Annual Leave, and not bored enough of being at home yet to crave the real world. Also my bodyclock is totally out of sync, it's 3:19am, and I'm not tired.

My list of things still to do:

Decoupage Horrid plastic index card box where I keep my family history stuff.

Cover pinboard in some nice material.

Paint rest of drawers white, and put the smarties fronts on.

Finish decoupage on stamp box.

Make filing cabinet less Grey.

Build cupboard in corner to hide electric meter, mops ironing board etc, put proper work bench in, put shelves up, paint....

Talk Dad into helping with the last lot :/

I'm hoping tomorrow someone will have received some post, so I'll be able to show some pictures of at least some of the things I've been making, if not then I might get around to posting pictures of my Charity Shop haul from a week ago.

Oh and thankyou to everyone who's wished me a speedy recovery from "the cold that will not be beaten". I did go to the doctors, it seems this lingering cold is doing the rounds, I didn't need antibiotics so I've just been on paracetamols and my asthma inhalers. After a month of having a cold I think it might have finally gone (I hope). Now I just have to wait for my irritating asthma cough to go... by which time knowing my luck it'll probably be winter, or flu season...

2006-09-13T18:02:00.000+01:00

I'm getting beyond cheesed off now.
I started with a cold about 2 1/2 weeks ago, I was bad for a couple of days, then it seemed to clear up, I had a couple of days of feeling mostly okay, then I started with a stomach bug, then the cold returned with a vengence. I slept a lot and thankfully it seemed to disappear in time for Porl's brother wedding on Saturday.

We had a lovely day, Ste & Karen are a great couple. Karen's family were really friendly, and as they're Scottish there was plenty of whisky being swigged from the early part of the day. It was good to meet some more members of Porl's family too, I'm sure I've met them before, but this time seemed less daunting as there were fewer of them, and I also know Porl's Aunty really well as she used to be my boss.

Porl looked ever so smart in his Usher's outfit, and at some point I'll have a look at the photos and see whether they've turned out. It was 5am by the time we got to bed, thanks to a residents bar in the hotel, Porl having his guitar, and lots of Scottish relatives singing folk songs.

We got back home in the early afternoon on Sunday, we had a quick play with the cats, then went back to bed for a couple of hours. When I woke up the dreaded cold had returned, and this time sleep isn't shifting it.

My sinuses are blocked which means I can't breathe, and I'm getting headaches, it's also slipping onto my chest, so I'm getting out of breathe all the time. This afternon I decided if I pretended to be fine it might go away, so I did weeded and hoed all the back garden (there's a lot of it to do now we've dug up all the grass). The garden looks great now, but I had to keep sitting down while the dizziness passed. I think I can safely say that pretending I was fine didn't work.

I'm on holiday for 2 weeks (well 1 1/2 now) I'm not meant to be ill.
If I'm not feeling significantly better by Friday then I'm going to the doctors.

2006-09-03T01:23:00.000+01:00

Post No. 2 of the day. Is this a record?

As I said in the earlier post I woke up yesterday feeling restless and needing air. I decided to follow some advice from Kirsty and I went to find a new charity shop in the hope of finding a TV table. The one we had was a horrible nasty Argos thing which we've had for years. A few weeks after getting it a friend fell over and broke it, but we still lived with it for about 6 years.

The place was huge! I wandered around but couldn't find anything, then realized there was an upstairs. As soon as I got up there I spotted this cabinet.

The front pattern matches the pattern on our welsh dresser, and the coal skuttle/shoe holder which are both in the living room. Quite lucky really considering the dresser is a proper antique, the coal skuttle was made by my Grandad, and this TV cabinet is made from chipboard and plywood. Also lucky because I couldn't have cut a hole in the back of an antique to push wires for the DVD player and video through.

I hurried downstairs to find out how much it was, £25, bargain! I carried on looking round, they have books! At cheaper than charity shop prices! I picked a couple up, then it all went dark, I carried on looking round in the gloom, they have bric-a-brac, clothes, yarn, patterns, a Celeste Heaven basically. Someone found out the whole village was without power as a substation had blown so they were closing the shop.
My disappointment at not being able to look around properly was soon put aside when they told me they couldn't access the tills. I had no change so I got the TV table for £20 instead.

I got home excited by my find, but my earlier restlessness had turned into illness. I felt rotten in ways I won't describe but I had to call in sick for my shift today, apparently I'm not the only one to have got this bug though.

I've spent today sleeping, lounging, and rigging up the TV... so many cables... It's all done now, and looks fantastic, I've even been able to unpack a box of videos which have been sat under the telly for 2 years since we moved here.

One day this house will be sorted.

2006-09-02T23:44:00.000+01:00

On Thursday we went up to Liverpool for a tribute gig at the Everyman for Chris our friend who died a few weeks ago. I'm not sure what I was expecting but I found it a lot harder to deal with than I expected. Ever since I found out about his death he's not been far from my thoughts which I've found quite hard to deal with in itself.

Chris was Porl's friend, they were at school together, they were in bands together, infact Porl was the one who first got Chris recording music and persuaded him to get a bass. Porl kept telling Chris he should be doing his own music, which is eventually what he did. When they left school they met new people and didn't see so much of each other. I probably only saw Chris a couple of times a year, usually we'd spend 2-3 days together doing things as a group, then not see each other again for another 6 months. We always did memorable things though, (like my first trip to Bugged Out, or setting off at 3am to walk to someones house 6 miles away, and many other things which a blog isn't the place to mention.)

The first time I met Chris he came up to my halls at uni, he made me laugh so much I ended up hiding under my duvet try to regain my composure so I could at least breathe!
Although Porl has told me he could have very dark periods, I can't think of a time that I met him when he was anything but happy, funny, and the centre of attention.
I think that's why I've found the idea of him committing suicide so hard to deal with.

At the tribute gig there were handout booklets of his Slak Fox cartoons, a donation got you CD's of some of the Monkey music. Also the walls were covered with posters from gigs, reviews up of the band, interviews from fanzines, and lots and lots of photos (especially those with John Peel.)
I was doing okay keeping myself together, but then at the end of the night I was sat next to one of the photo boards, deep breaths were keeping me calm until Porl commented on one of the pictures as being exactly how he remembered Chris, deeper breaths, they started playing a Monkey track and Porl fell apart, then I did.

We didn't get home until about 2am, but neither of us felt like sleep, so we sat up and watched a film together, a very rare occurrence for us, but our emotions were too charged to be able to sleep.

I woke up stupidly early yesterday considering my late night, but couldn't get back to sleep. I felt restless and in need of fresh air, I had a drive round and got a great charity shop find (which I'll do a separate post about). Then I went to a garden centre and bought some yellow Chrysanthemums for the garden. Whenever I picture Chris he's wearing a yellow t-shirt, lots of people at the funeral were wearing yellow, as well as all the flowers being yellow, so I'm pretty sure it was his favourite colour. Also the woman at the garden centre said yellow is for Friendship (I had to explain why I was crying while buying plants.)
I bought Chrysanthemums because the 2nd song Porl and Chris wrote together was called Chrysanthemum. The first was Christina. Apparently Chris hadn't realized the egocentricity of this until Porl suggested the next song should be "Chris is Great, Chris is Great, All Bow Down and Worship Chris."
But he was Great.
Yesterday would have been his 30th birthday.

2006-08-26T21:58:00.000+01:00

Still here... sometimes anyway. I've been working a lot of overtime these past few weeks, it's usually 1 extra shift a week, but my shifts are either 11 or 24 hours long. My pay check will be happy, but I'm spending my life in a permanent daze. I keep having to ask people what day it is because I honestly can't remember anymore. Thankfully I've got 1 more 24 hour shift, then I get a whole 2.5 days off! Then I'll start the countdown to my fortnight off.

So not much time off, and not much news to share... I'm sure there is loads, but I can't remember any of it.

We did go to the wedding of our friends Gareth and Nareda, had lots of fun, caught up with lots of friends, got compliments about my ruby slippers (they've been the hit of the summer), then on the way home Porl and I planned our own wedding. We even picked a month!

Never fear people, we woke up in the morning and realized it was completely and utterly impractical. We're going to continue living in sin for now. Who needs a marriage certificate? We've got a joint mortgage!

Earlier in the night we'd been discussing with another friend Jay how we'd be coming back to Gareths 50th anniversary party and still asking each other "so are you guys thinking of getting married?" That seems like a good plan to me.

On the crafting front I've been relatively busy, making some fun swap stuff for Banga off Craftster, I can't show it though or it'll spoil the surprise, but I will show what she sent me (she's far more organized than I am.)
It was a Foreign Exchange swap, so I've been doing lots of things about the UK, and Banga has sent me a guide to Rhode Island.

First I have this fantastic Rhode Island Recipe book. Rhode Island is known as the Ocean state, so there's plenty of fish and shellfish things for Porl to try, plus lots which I want to try like Spinach Pie and Wandis. Banga also made me the cute lobster keyring, and some sea inspired bracelets. The bottle is Coffee Syrup which apparently Rhode Islanders crave, and no-one outside of Rhode Island has heard of... sounds like a certain Relish I can't live without. Banga also sent me loads of newpapers and magazines which I've been reading, as well as some handy magnetics for food places. I wonder if they deliver to Stalybridge?

I've also had a great Freecycle donation. Two bin bags full of material. It's actually for the craft club, but there's So Much good stuff. The craft club is closed for the summer, and they're short of space there, so while the material is living at mine I'll make some things from it, then make some more for things for the club to sell, then pass on whatever's left.
I did take pictures of the neatly organised piles of colour co-ordinated fabric, but I seem to have deleted them during one of my stupid moments.

Lastly, my "it's a small world moment". I've been reading Vintage Pleasure for a couple of months, enviously eyeing up all her charity shop finds, wishing that I had the space or style to make them look at home in my house, but mostly wishing I could find anything nice in the charity shops round here.
Then this week I realised she lives about a mile away from me.
I'm obviously just looking in the wrong shops... with my eyes closed... or maybe I just don't have her talent.
She's been very kind though and pointed me in the direction of some places I haven't heard of before, so I'll be visiting some of them next week with my hard earned wages.

Must.Not.Buy.Craft.Supplies.Or.Boxes...
but I really would like to find an old dark wood TV table/video cabinet.

2006-08-02T20:39:00.000+01:00

Unsurprisingly my birthday was a quiet one. I had a lazy lie-in and some breakfast, then the postman brought me some fantastic presents from the CrAftermath girls. We have a birthday swap on there, but I haven't been on much recently so wasn't expecting anything.

This lot is from Samsara:

Then these from PhizzyChick:

And last but certainly not least, these plant markers from teraspawn who is the swap organiser. Thanks to her I had parcels to open on my birthday :)

These were probably the highlight of my day, and certainly cheered me up first thing in the morning. Thankyou Girls!

At dinnertime Porl and I went to Quarry Bank Mill, which is an old cotton mill near here. I've wanted to go for ages, but talking Porl into these things isn't easy, so I took advantage of the fact it was my day to do what I wanted. My dinner wasn't too great, I hate chilled quiche, but it was interesting seeing all the machines, a shame that a lot of them weren't running. The demonstration of cotton spinning made it look SOOOO easy, but I know it's not.

We came home from there, Porl made me some nice veg and haloumi kebabs, then we had the fun task of trying to get in touch with people and tell them the news.
I share my birthday with 2 of Porl's other school friends, and we'd been asked to let them know about Chris' death. We got in touch with one friend and he decided to spend last night in the pub with us, the other friend is celebrating his 30th this year and we think he's gone away for the week. Either way we've not been able to get in touch with him.

Tomorrow is the funeral, so we'll be up very early to fight the rush hour traffic and get back to Ormskirk.
I've done a birth, a marriage and a death in 8 days.

2006-07-31T23:09:00.000+01:00

I've just spent a lovely afternoon meeting my beautiful, 5 day old niece Evie, then to my parents for tea and a failed attempted at repairing their computer.

Came home got annoyed with Porl, very rare, but probably justified.

Phoned a friend following an unexpected email and found out that one of Porl's oldest friends commited suicide a few days ago.

It's my birthday tomorrow.

Duke is outside on the patio torturing a mouse as a present for me.

2006-07-22T23:23:00.000+01:00

I had an adventure today, I went along to the North Cheshire Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers. It's near Warrington, which is about 45 minutes from me, but it's the nearest one. I've been promising myself I'd go, but kept chickening out, then I realized that Ali, whose blog I've been reading for a while, is a member. I love how blogs give you enough information about people to think of them as friends even without meeting them, so that, added to the fact her photos of meetings showed young people gave me the extra courage I needed to go.

My plans were nearly thwarted by a colleague spraining her ankle, meaning I had to stay on at work and do the night shift, but thankfully the guys slept pretty well which meant I did too. I was still shattered, but I made it through the day without falling asleep (until I got home) I was just a lot quieter than normal.
We had a class on Rainbow Dyeing, which was good fun, I dyed some sample yarns which I'm sure I can turn into something, then I at the last minute I threw some merino fleece into the pot. I didn't soak it for very long, and wasn't expecting it to work very well but it seems to be a success.

I keep telling myself that next time I'll try muted colours, or shades of the same colour, but I always end up with rainbows. Oh well :)

Of course Gonzo had to get in on the action, and he got a slap for getting his claws stuck in the fleece.

Now I'm going to bed because I'm exhausted, and I have another sleep-in tomorrow. 3 more shifts till my next week off... and my birthday :)

Speaking of my birthday. We're thinking of having a barbecue on the Sunday beforehand, (if the weather is okay) it's the 30th July. Open invite to anyone who wants to attend. I'll probably get in touch with people a couple of days before though. I realize not everyone leaves things till the last minute like I do, so I'm trying to give people advance notice.

The fires are still burning across the road, they keep dying down in parts, then suddenly getting loads worse again. Shell took some pictures of them earlier today from higher up the valley. The area on her photos has got worse this evening, we can see flames there again now instead of just smoke. The helicopters were dropping water on them again early.

If we don't get enough rain by Sunday to put them out we could forget the barbecue and just go across the road to cook everything.

2006-07-19T23:11:00.000+01:00

Sorry for apparently dropping off the radar recently. After coming back from Cornwall I had a week off, where I was busy doing house and garden things, then since being back at work I can't get back into the swing of it. I still love it, but I want another holiday. Quite handy then that it's my birthday in a fortnight so I've got another week off.

So what's brought me out of my lurkdom?
Dramatic Pictures!

There may be someone out there who hasn't heard that it's Really Bloody Hot in the UK at the moment. For that person... believe me, it is... Really Hot.

I've been at work today, lounging around, trying to keep cool, trying to keep clients calm and entertained on a day when they can't go out. I've spent most of the day on the phone, trying to get a new fridge before the one at work dies completely. That was pretty much solved when we had drama!
There is an area of the garden overgrown with trees which we never venture into, we were sat relaxing in the lounge when there was a huge *CRACK* as a large branch fell off one of the trees. It didn't fall to the floor but stayed suspended high up in the air, just about supported by the other trees. There was no breeze at that time, so it can only be the heat that caused it. We spent a little time trying to figure out which tree had fallen and whether it was likely to bring anything else down, but the ongoing creaks and groans convinced us it wasn't safe (it felt like an episode from "Lost") so we retreated to safety and I spent the afternoon trying to phone people to find out who could look at it for us.

But, that drama wasn't what I have pictures of.

This was the view out of my window a couple of hours ago. The moors opposite have been burning since about midday today. The fire was apparently moving away from us, towards Derbyshire, and the smoke was blowing over towards Stalybridge town centre so missing us.

Here's the BBC news article about it. I think the picture must have been taken from the end of the road.

The fire was not near any property, and was thought to be about one mile away from the nearest road.

Yes, that would be our road, and I reckon it's a lot less than a mile.

Since taking this the wind has picked up a lot and changed direction, the view is now one big smokey blur blowing over our house.
Not only is it Really Bloody Hot, but it's Really Bloody Hot And We Can't Have The Windows Open! Even with them all shut it's making my eyes sore, getting to my throat, and bringing my asthma on. I can't see the source of the fire anymore so don't know if it's getting closer to us or not. I doubt we're in much danger either way... but I'm glad I'm not on the other side of the road.

One plus side is that icecreams are really good for helping to cool you down whilst also soothing on smoke inhaled sore throats (made worse by having to go cat hunting in it because we were getting worried about them.)

I've been busy making things, and tking pictures of them. I've also got pictures of the deck which now has a railing, so is safe to explore, also the grass has gone so at some point it will be full of lovely plants, at the moment it's mostly bare dust dry soil.

Finally, today is the day I'm due to become an Aunty for the first time, but baby obviously isn't ready yet. I'm not sure what seems worse, being 9 months pregnant in this heat... or being in labour in this heat. I guess hospitals are air conditioned though.
Mental note, don't get pregnant in September/October/November.

2006-07-04T23:30:00.000+01:00

I've a billion things I want/should be doing... most of them crafting for swaps... but it all feels a bit too much like homework... so procrastination it is then.

A meme pinched from Kat's Paws

Accent: Sorry, English Language student, my pet subject, forgive my rambling on this bit. My accent changes depending on who I'm talking to, or what I'm talking about. I pick accents up pretty easily (but wierdly I'm rubbish at imitating them.)
I've got a definite Northern accent, but beyond that it's a little confused.
It's definitely not Sheffield, (I don't sound like Jarvis Cocker or the Arctic Monkeys) even though I lived there for 18 years, but it does get broader when I spend any time there. Some words come out with a strong Scouse twang thanks to the 9 years in Ormskirk, sometime a Lancashire accent creeps in. Since moving to Stalybridge I've realized I speak quickly, a little quicker than the Mancs and Stockport people I work with , and about 10 x faster than the Tamesiders, I often get bewildered looks off people who haven't caught a word I've said, I'm slowing down though.
My Mum once told me that since going to Ormskirk my accent had turned "sing-song" which I quite like. Basically quick and the tone going all over the place. In my head my voice is far deeper than it is in real life. I always wonder who the squeaky person is when I hear recordings.

Booze: Not much anymore (except for all the cider I've drank since coming back from Cornwall.) The pubs withing easy walking distance are rubbish so if we do go out I usually drive. I'm too forgetful to drink much in the house. As for what I like, proper ciders if I can find them, good strong lagers like Staropramen, San Miguel and Stalla Artois, I occasionally like real ales too. If I'm not in the mood for lager then I'll have a Vodka & Lemonade (no ice), if I'm at home and determind to get drunk it's usually Gin & Bitter Lemon which I love but can't afford in pubs. I don't like red wine, it gives me chronic hangovers and makes me thirsty, I will drink a nice medium or sweet white though.

Chore I hate: All of them? unless I'm in the right mood. I always hate hoovering the stairs though

Dogs/cats: Two cats, Duke & Gonzo, love 'em to bits.

Essential electronics: Computer. Unlike almost everyone else in the world I don't care about my mobile phone. In fact workmates curse me because it regularly runs out of batteries and I don't realize.

Favorite perfume: Pass, I rarely wear it, I've got a few bottles that people bought as presents but I don't know what there are (one might be Calvin Klein, haven't a clue about the other 2.) I did find one called Celeste, or Angel though which I was quite tempted by, but it was a bit sweet smelling.

Gold/silver: Silver, but most of my decent jewellery is gold because it's all inherited.

Hometown: I still think of Sheffield as home because that's where I was born and grew up and my family are there. This house feels like home.. because it is, and it's mine, but Stalybridge as a town doesn't yet, even though I love it and the area. Plus Ormskirk will always have a special place in my heart because I had so many good years there and my friends are there.

Insomnia: Only at the end of the month :) I find it realy hard to go to bed before midnight though, even when I have to get up for work at 6 the next morning.

Job title: Support Worker (which is so undescriptive) so I generally say NHS Support Worker for Adults with Learning Disabilities

Kids: Nope... ask again this time next year. ;)

Living arrangements: Me, Blokey, 2 cats. He's my "Domestic Partner" oh how I hate that phrase.

Most admired trait: The ability to smile, laugh and stay calm, even when everything is going to shit.
My years in Customer Services, dealing with complaining customers 8 hours a day made me realize that shouting at people gets you nowhere. If you keep your temper and keep smiling people will go out of their way to help you, if you lose it you'll get put to the bottom of the pile (I know I've done it to angry people so many times myself.)
Now if only customers would realize this, then Customer Services might be a bearable job.

Number of sexual partners: :P Not a chance.

Overnight hospital stays: None, unless I was kept in when I was born, I'll have to ask.

Phobia: Spiders, getting water in my ears.

Quote: I've had a quote tumbling round the back of my head for months, but can't find it anywhere, these 2 give the general gist though:

"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it."

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "As You Like It", Act 5 scene 1

I've just found this too which I quite like:

"Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked."

Lord Chesterfield (1694 - 1773)

Religion: Technically a Christian, I was Christened, but only went to church at Christmas or Remembrance Day, sometimes Easter and Harvest Festival, mainly only when my brother was playing the trumpet or with Scouts & Guides. I was never taught about Christianity so know scarily little, maybe one day I'll read the bible, just for the story, and because I suppose I should know some things for pub quizzes.
I was once told my beliefs were Pagan, I believe in looking after the planet, treating everyone equally, and as Bill & Ted say "Be excellent to each other."

Siblings: A big brother Sam, he's 4 1/2 years older than me, and in about 3 weeks will be a Dad ! Scary!

Time I usually wake up: If I'm working then I have to get up at 6:30. If I'm rested and able to wake up naturally then it's usually about 10am. I don't go to bed till at least 1am if I don't have to get up though, often much later, so I'm not that lazy really... I just have an unsocible body clock.

Unusual talent: I honestly can't think of any. If any friends can think of any let me know, I feel so boring and dull right now.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: Peas & sweetcorn, if the odd one slips into a mix of something I will eat it, but if possible I'll pick it out. Also cauliflower and beans (the big long green ones). Pretty much anything else I'll eat, but some things, like cabbage I'll have to eat with potatoes. I know I sound fussy, especially for a vegetarian, but believe me, I'm far far less fussy than I used to be.

Worst habit: Procrastination. Messiness. Buying books and craft things. Pack-rat.

X-rays: Only Dentist ones.

Yummy foods I make: My Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies & Broccolli Mush (not together) are most popular, but I'm quite proud of my veggie stews and veggie lasagnes (the meat ones are apparently quite good too, but I've never tried them.) Basically I'm quite good at really hearty, comfort for type meals.

Zodiac sign: Leo. Star signs fascinate me, I've had my chart done and can see a lot of truth in the results, but then I think of my friend who is 8 hours 10 minutes older than me, yet so completely different to me it's unbelievable.

There, several hours wasted. Bed time now, crafting tomorrow.
Ni-ni

2006-07-03T17:15:00.000+01:00

I think I've found my spiritual home.
Cornwall has the wide open spaces and hills I love of the Peak District, plus the sea, plus little craft spots, (I passed so many wool shops and even managed to go in a couple) plus Cider, plus cream teas, plus ice cream (I ate soooo much!). They also seem to be making a genuine effort to do something about climate change, seeing Wind Turbines everywhere makes me so happy. And for any people who say "Hmph fine so long as they're not in my backyard".... well personally I'd be delighted if the vew from my living room was peppered with Wind Turbines.

To top it all, my hayfever was managable with a couple of tablets a day, and my excema seemed to clear up too. Unfortunatly both have come back with a vengence since I got home.

My nerves about my fellow staff mamber were unfounded, we got on really well and I'd be happy to go with her again. My client was also wonderful. At home he wakes somewhere between 6:30 and 7, then goes to bed about 8:30. We were told he was the same on holiday, but we got him to sleep in till 9 most days (10 on one day) and he was going to bed at about 9:30, though he stayed up till 11 one night, we couldn't believe it, we kept asking him if he wanted to go to bed but all we got was "no, not yet". We had to take a picture of him with the clock becuase we knew no one would believe us.

We visited The Maritime Museum at Falmouth (but it rained so didn't see much of the town), St Austell, which wasn't too nice, but it's going through a regeneration project at the moment so I'll let it off. Plymouth I loved, even though pushing the wheelchair up the hills was hard it was worth it. We went on a boat ride, then sat on Plymouth Hoe eating ice-creams that were melting quicker than we could eat them, I found loads of little junk/crafty shops and would have happily spent a few days there on my own. I got sunburnt too, but that's nothing new. I loved the Eden Project, annoyingly the other staff member wasn't interested so we only go a couple of hours to look around. We had ice creams at Widemouth Bay, then cream teas at Crackington Haven, then felt ill. A gentle stroll around the shops at Boscastle soon set us right though. We went to Bude beach a couple of times, but chickened out of pushing the wheelchair around the shops there, far too steep. On the second trip to the beach we swapped the wheelchair for a Sand Buggy which meant we could actually get on the beach, and even take our client for a "paddle", the weather was gorgeous, so we had a couple of hours sunbathing.

I missed Porl loads though, he must have thought I was gloating, I kept phoning him from places with spectacular views, or when I was eating ice creams, but I was just wishing he was there with me.

I've got 2 weeks off in September, so I think we'll have to go back there together.

2006-06-18T21:40:00.000+01:00

So tired, I want to sleep for a week. No time unfortunatly. Tomorrow is my 3rd sleep-in in a row (24 hours in work, 24 at home, 24 in work, etc etc). Wednesday I'm doing a 10 hour shift, Thursday I have off, technically, but Friday I'm going to Bude in Cornwall for a week on another client holiday.

I've never been to Cornwall before, well except for a brief look around Penzance before getting the ferry across to the Scilly Isles. I'm sort of looking forward to a nice week touring around, but I know I'm going to miss Porl like mad. EuroDisney was only 4 days, and we were so busy I didn't get much chance to miss him, but 4 days was enough. A week is a long time, plus this holiday will be a much slower paced one, my client is 85 so we're planning on alternating long days out (Plymouth & The Eden Project are definitely on the list) with quieter days closer to home so he can have a rest in the afternoons. Quieter days mean I'll have more time to miss Porl. I'm going wih a different staff member this time too and I'm nervous about how well we'll all get on. She's young, and can be headstrong, the client is old and can be head strong, and I'm going to be stuck in the middle negotiating. Luckily the accomodation has a pool, so on the quieter days I plan on escaping for a swim, or sending her off for a swim while I escape into a good book.

So far I've done absolutely nothing towards getting myself organised, except for buying some suncream (I'm hopeful). I'd best pack on Tuesday, so I can spend Thursday running round buying things I need.

There are just 2 things about this holiday which I'm really looking forward to:

1 - Spending time with the client, he's got some great stories, but at 85 he needs to be relaxed enough and have the right stimulation to remember them. It's not often at work that we get the time to sit and listen to him.

2 - Coming home and having a week off work! I'm planning a couple of days camping for Porl and I. The seaside is calling me. I'm torn between our old favourite, Anglesey, or taking Porl somewhere new, probably Filey, so we can visit Scarborough and Whitby too. The paddling opportunities are better on Anglesey, but I've not been to the East coast for years.

What to do, what to do?

2006-06-14T20:48:00.000+01:00

I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on...
The foul mood wasn't even shifted by the fun post that arrived today.
I got the 3rd mailorder, which has a little needlework project book to make, and a recipe for Lemon Ginger Cake... Oh how I love Lemon Ginger Cake! Now I can make my own instead of buying Mr Kiplings Exceedingly Expensive stuff.

The 2nd fab thing was even better. A copy of Super Crafty which I got for being winner of Craft Idol. Lots of fun stuff to make, but where do I buy those socks for making sock monkeys?

Lastly, I've finally worked out how to reinstate my atom feed which I deleted in a fit of peak a while ago when people on Livejournal were annoying me.
So if you want to add it to your bloglines, or what ever then feel free to do so.
The address for it is http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~daymaker/atom.xml. Or if you're like me you'll have a trendy like widget on your toolbar which should be lit up now and you can just click it to subscribe.
If none of this makes sense then I apologise, unfortunatly I don't really understand it either, you can ask questions but I doubt I'll be able to help.

Now I really am going to water the plants.... grumble grumble grumble.

2006-06-14T19:50:00.000+01:00

I've been restless and in a foul mood all day. I'm stressed about something (I know this because the insides of my cheeks are chewed to shreds) but I don't know what.

Maybe it's the weather. It's been overcast and threatening like rain all day but it's stayed dry. Which means I still have to go out and water the plantpots. I love plants in pots and baskets, but I hate watering them. I need to get the outside tap fixed so I can use a hosepipe (no bans round here) the watering can is too heavy to lift for the baskets and I always end up drenched.
Why then if I hate watering them am I considering going and planting up a few more to climb up the spiral staircase my neighbour gave me?

Today I was planning on spring cleaning. I cleaned the bathroom and fixed the hose to the tumble dryer, but by that point my mood was 10x worse, so decided that for Porl's sake I'd best stop before I turned green and nasty.
When we were little my brother and I (and mum too) always said Mum was like the Incredible Hulk, she rarely lost her temper, but when she did she went green and nasty. It seems I'm the same.

I have spent a good hour of so spinning though, well trying. I'm getting there slowly. I've found 3 problems, and 2 I've solved.

Problem 1 - can't get the wheel to keep turning, it was losing momentum before doing a full turn.
Solution - I realized it was doing a little jerk when I first treadled, so I had a little jiggle of things and realized there's a nut holding the top of the footman to the wheel, and it was loose, so the plasticy bit at the top of the footman was slipping. I've tightened it up, and hey presto, no jerk, and I can treadle properly again now.

Problem 2 - my yarn kept breaking.
Solution - stop being so adventurous (not that I was doing it on purpose) just stick to spinning bulky weight yarns. Once I can do a spindle full of nice thick, even yarn I can try spinning thinner, even yarn.

Problem 3 - Too much twist.... waaaay too much.
Sort of solved - I know this is to do with my tension, and not drafting quickly enough. I get the theory of it, I'll just have to keep practicing on the practical side. I think I need to try moving my hands further apart too.

I'm also better at drafting in new pieces of fibre now, I'm using some nice creamy white merino, and mixing it with some of the same stuff that I dyed pink with KoolAid a while ago. It's lovely and soft, and the bright colours are keeping me interested. Far better than the grey I started with last time. Too dull and I couldn't see what I'd done.

Anyhow now I'm going to see if I can find some black yarn to try and make a "fat bottomed bag" from The Happy Hooker book, then I'll sit watching Firefly and hopefully I'll have crocheted my bad mood away before bedtime....
Actually best go water those plants first.... grumble, grumble, grumble.

2006-06-13T22:14:00.000+01:00

Today I've been trying to get caught up with my life. I'm only about a week behind now.

I did manage to get to the post office and send off my part of the "Colours of Europe" swap, it's late, but at least it's gone now, and thankfully the person I was sending to does the same job as me, so she was very understanding. She knows what it's like to work bizarre shifts then on days off only be fit for sleeping. I'll post pictures of what I sent made her once she's received it.

I got a wonderful parcel off my partner Spicey for the same swap. The brief was to send 10 things, 3 of which we'd made in our partners favourite colours. My favourite colours are blue, red and orange. She sent me all this;

A HUGE bag which will be going to Cornwall with me. Babelfish tells me it means "A summer with the sun" which I hope it will be.
3 type of yarn, all are lovely and soft thanks to the mohair in them
2 parkly gel pens
Carrot and flower seeds, I'll be planting these next year.
Beads, I can never have enough.
A purse, I love the colours of this
Handbag shaped cards toppers
Sweeties, which I refused to eat until I'd take a picture, so they've been sat on my desk tempting me for a week.
Blue material, trying to decide what to turn this into.
Handmade lip balm and Caramel Apple scented body spray. The body spray smells delicious, my skin is so dodgy at the moment that I daren't use it as a body spray, instead I've been using it as a room spray. It's making me hungry though!
Lastly 2 lovely necklaces which are just my style, nice and simple.

The last few days have been hot... really hot, which I thought was wonderful except for the day I had to go to work. Thankfully my boss gave us strict instructions to take it very easy, and we took him at his word.
I hate being cold, I love summer. I love winter too, but only when it snows, the rest of the time it's rubbish. I spend my time wrapped in a blanket next to the radiator, I really miss being able to curl up in front of the coal fire. This evening it rained and cooled down a bit so I'm back in my cardigan and thick cord trousers.

Unfortunatly Porl is the complete opposite. He hates the hot weather, trying to get him outside in the sunshine is nigh on impossible. He's spent the last 2 days pottering around the house in my big baggy cotton pyjama bottoms (pale blue with flowers embroidered on the bottom.) Thankfully he got changed before leaving the house, we don't live in Skem* I'm going to have to make him some of his own in a more manly colour.

Porl spent 2 days moaning about the heat, before we had the following conversation.
Me: You know how you're really hot.
Porl: Yeees.
Me: And you know how you keep complaining.
Porl: Yeees.
Me: And you know how you've got a fan under your desk...

He is intelligent... honest.

* Skem = Skemlersdale, a few years ago I was at the supermarket there when I saw a young teenage Mum pushing a pram, she was wearing a pair of pink flowery pyjama bottoms. I felt sorry for her, thinking she was a young stressed Mum. I mentioned it to my collegue, who told me that no, pyjama bottoms were the current fashion "with the kids".

2006-06-05T00:50:00.000+01:00

Oh the luxury of a Sunday off. Shifts are supposed to be shared out equally among staff, especially weekend shifts which pay more, but there are a few staff members who can't work Sundays and others who don't want to work them, so I think this has been my 2nd Sunday off in 3 months. It's a shame, I like Sundays off, but I'm not complaining too much, at least I've had a few months of healthy wages.

I took the opportunity to go to Ashton Market as they have a table top sale on a Sunday which sounded interesting and I've never been. It was okay, I arrived quite late so probably missed the best things but I did pick up some cheap jewellery which I can dismantle, and some material for a swap.

I also had a wander around the shops, I was in a good mood so decided to brave shoe shopping. I hate shoe shopping. My feet are huge (size 7) except they aren't. One foot is a 7 one a 7.5, so usually 7's are too small, and 8's (if they have any) are too big. I can also only wear flat shoes because any heel would make me taller than Porl, which feels odd. I'm desperatly in need of some new trainers though, I bought my current trainers just before the last world cup. I love them, they're so comfy, and velcro, which is good for me because laces refuse to stay fastened on my feet, but they have holes in the front now and I keep getting wet feet. I really want a pair of converse style boots in lilac, but I'll settle for a bright blue, I'm cheap though and don't want to pay £35 for trainers.

Anyhow I failed with the trainers. I found some great ones for £7, but the 7's were too small, and they had no 8's. So I bought these instead:

I've wanted some ruby slippers for years, but finding flat ruby slippers which fit me without making my feet look like barges isn't easy. At last I've managed it though, and for just £12. God knows when I'll wear them, but they look good with jeans so I might just have to use them as every day shoes :)
Oh they do work as teleporters too. When I got how I clicked my heels together 3 times, said "there's no place like home" and hey presto I was at home. Porl pointed out the flaws in this, I pointed out he was boring.

Anyhow, going shopping late did mean that I was at the supermarket just before it closed, so I've been eating nice fresh baguettes, which were even nicer knowing they only cost 20p. I also treated myself to a couple of bunches of flowers at 25p each. I love fresh flowers, but they're an indulgence I can't usually afford.

I've spent this evening playing with the wheel. I've still not spun anything. Instead I've been reading all my books and learning what things are called, where I have to oil, how to string it (they don't tell you what to use though...I've used crochet cotton becuase it doesn't stretch) how to check the wheel isn't warped (it isn't thankfully) etc etc. I've also been trying to rub all the metal bits down with wire wool and WD40 as there are a few patches of rust. Most of the pieces are okay now, the only bits which worry me are the cup hooks and the orifice as the fibre might snag on them. I can buy more cup hooks easily but I think I'll have to use my jewellery files on the orifice smooth.

I'm also down to just 1 bobbin. There was some yarn on it which broke away when I was cleaning it up. My first thought was moths, but when I got to the centre I found the wood had been gnawed at too, then I spotted the woodworm holes. It's banished to the greenhouse until it proves to me that the woodworm is no more. It's a good job Dad is a woodturner and can make me some spare bobbins.

I can't find a makers name anywhere on the wheel, but the drum carder is made by a Canadian company Patrick Green Carders, and I think it's a Deb's Delicate Deluxe. It needs a new drive band as that has perished, but I've been looking and they are relatively cheap to replace. I'm not likely to use it for several months/years though while I'm learning so I've offered it to someone who would be able to use it on a possibly permanent loan. I'd prefer it was being used rather than sitting in my loft waiting for a day when I may get a raw fleece.

Carol, if you lived closer to me than you might have found me sat on your doorstep this weekend going "help meeee!" I'm muddling with my books at the moment so I can tell you it's a double drive wheel (I learnt the difference between double drive and scotch tension tonight). I'll take some better pictures of it when I get chance next week and you can tell me all the things I've done wrong in getting it set up :)

Now I should go to bed. Tomorrow is the first of 2 sleep-ins this week. Do you think they'd mind if I took my new toy to work?

2006-06-03T23:47:00.000+01:00

Isn't she pretty. She needs a name, everytime I look at her I see Clara, which then makes me think of Heidi, or Long Distance Clara. I'm trying to make myself see her as an Emily instead.
Excuse the mess in the background, it's tidier than it was, but the blue box is my rain bucket for colloect water for my plants.

I picked her up this morning, apparently she's about 25 years old, was used a lot but hasn't been for a few years. As well as the wheel I've got a drum carder, a couple of hand carders (on the bench) a lazy kate, 2 bobbins, a bobbin of green silk, and some magazines and spinning books. The lady said she'd call me if she finds anything else.
I gave her a box of chocolates and a very good bottle of wine, and lots and lots of thankyous.

Today has been spent gardening. We were going to go to Ormy, but the sun was shining, the garden needed doing, and I wanted to play with my new toy.
I resisted cleaning the wheel up (she was very dusty) until I'd planted all the plants I've bought recently. I now have 2 belfast sinks potted up, some hanging baskets, and a load of flowers in the front garden too. I also have a very achey body and sunburn.

The belfast sinks look really good now they've got their new coverings and plants in them. It's a good job they look good too, because there's no way we'd be able to shift them now, they're so heavy!

A bit boring now, but the should look great in a couple of weeks.

2006-06-02T17:26:00.000+01:00

[manchesterfreecycle] OFFERED: spinning wheel & carding machine - M21 Chorlton
Dark brown wood, small spinning wheel in working condition, not used
for quite a long time. Also carding machine & a few mags/books about
spinning.

Guess who just got their name picked out of the hat.

EEEeeeeeee!

I'm picking it up tomorrow.

If Sezer gets booted out of Big Brother tonight then today will have been a truely perfect day.

2006-05-25T13:47:00.000+01:00

Hello, I'm back.
Disneyland was FANTASTIC! But I pity all those parents who took all those children. Their bank balances must be feeling very poorly now. The place is sooo expensive. £35 for a main meal and a soft drink for 3 people, and that was the cheapest restaurant we went to. If you then add in all the merchandise which is thrust at you from all sides you'd need to re-mortgage if you took a child, or have your child screaming constantly because you're not buying them things that they Need.
There were so many things there that I needed to buy, but I was very good and restricted myself to a couple of books about how to draw cartoons, and a limited edition Dopey Model Sheet Picture which I fell in love with on the first day. I waited till the fourth day incase I saw something else, but nothing matched it so it's now adorning the living room wall.

Unfortunatly since I got back I've been feeling rotten, a mixture of hayfever, and a few particularly unpleasant ailments which I think have been brought on my the stress of the whole holiday. Not that it was particularly stressful, but being on duty for 4 days straight, takes it out of you. We also had a few hassles on the first day, like arriving at 11am, but not being able to get into our room till 3pm. I nearly cried when we found out, I'd been up since 2:30am and had only had 3 hours sleep anyway. When we did manage to get into our room we had other hassles to sort out too. Thankfully from the next morning everything went smoothly, but my body is currently hating me for the trauma and sleep deprivation it went through, so a trip to the doctors is on the cards for this afternoon.

In other news, Porl missed me, the cats missed me, and in 4 weeks time I do it all again, but this time for a week in Cornwall with a different staff memeber and a not quite so easy client.
*Sigh*

2006-05-17T20:56:00.000+01:00

Passport - yep
Tickets -yep
Suitcase - yep

Absolutly conviction that I've forgotten something - Yep

EuroDisney here I come - well soon, I'm getting picked up at the horrible time of 2:30am. Best try to get some sleep.

2006-05-16T23:27:00.000+01:00

That epic post down there looks so daunting, so I'm shoving it down the page with a nice short (I hope) post.

Today has been an odd lazy day, I got up early, had a fantastic appointment at the doctors (more on that in a sec) then when I came home I fell asleep, I've spent the rest of the day feeling vaguely confused and hungover. Very Odd.

The doctors was great though. It's taken us 18 months to get around to registering with a doctors here. We went for our new patient health check a couple of weeks ago with the nurse, and the subject of my excema came up. The nurse told me to go and see a particular doctor in the practice because skin was her speciality.

Anyone who's met me will probably know about my excema, I get it on my hands and on my scalp and it drives me nuts! The stuff on my scalp is also embarrassing because it looks like really bad dandruff, but no dandruff shampoo will shift it.
My job means I have to wash my hands a lot, and if I'm honest I'm a little obsessive about washing them anyway. After a normal day at work my hands are very dry, they crack and bleed and I keep scratching at them anyway. Actually I rarely scratch, I rub them on the edge of my jeans pockets or the creases which is just as bad as scratching.
My hands tend to heal up when I'm at home because I'm lazier :) I don't clean as frantically as at work, and we have a dishwasher. But as soon as I go back to work and they're sore again.

So I saw the nice doctor, she was lovely and very helpful. She asked all about my allergies and family history. She gave me a proper explanation about what excema was with diagrams and everything! No-one has ever done that before, so I now have a better idea of what to avoid, why to avoid them, and how best to treat it.

I came away with a bag full of goodies, which cost a fortune, but if they work I don't care, but even better than that I came away with the feeling that for the first time I'd found a doctor who actually cared and hadn't just fobbed me off with another steriod cream. In fact she's given me an Emulsifying Emolient which I can use to wash my hands with instead of soap and it'll work as a barrier cream. It seems to be working, my hands are much soften than normal and haven't itched... too much... all day. What's even better though is I don't need a prescription for it and it'll work out far cheaper than all the pots of hand cream I get through in a month.

While I was in the chemists and asking about the Emolient I was approached by another customer. She's just set up an online shop called Summer Naturals selling natural holistic products for both household cleaning and personal hygiene. A lot of the things she sells are things I've been looking into using anyway, I hate using so many chemicals for cleaning, but it's not very easy to find things like soda crystals, borax and citric acid. This shop sells them all though, and lots else besides. I like her ethics too, she uses all recycled packing most of which she gets from the shop across the road, but she also put a post on Freecycle today asking extra packaging.
I think I'll be buying some soap nuts for my washing, and maybe some ingredients for making my own soaps too.

2006-05-14T00:19:00.000+01:00

Well my excuse for being gone so long is that the sunshine has been tempting me outside. I'm making the most of whatever sunny days I can get out there, it won't be long before the air is completely pollen laden, and I become a Sneezy, Grumpy soul. Actually hayfever also makes me quite Sleepy and Dopey too... more Dopey than normal. I doubt it'll ever make me Bashful or Happy though, and Doc, well I've never quite understood what Doc was all about.

Anyhow what have I been up to?
Well the garden has a few more plants in it, a lot less weeds, and hopefully less ants. There's an ants nest somewhere under my front garden so I went a little berserk with the ant powder. I know ants aren't the worst bug out there, and they do no harm to the garden, but my first trip abroad when I was a child left me with a hatred of them, seeing them crawling everywhere, even out of plug sockets will do that to a young mind.

I've also been making mudpies and playing with ModPodge.
The mud pies were for my Belfast Sinks shown in the earlier post. I got the sinks last year off Freecycle to use as plant pots, but even after I cleaned them up they still looked messy, so Dad found a recipe, 2x sand, 2x peat, 1x cement. Mix it up, cover the pots, then moss and interesting things should start growing on them quite quickly. I've only covered 1 so far, I wasn't certain whether the mixture would stick, but it seems to have so next week I'll put some plants in it and make more mudpies to cover the other 2 sinks.

The adventures in ModPodge were even messier than the mudpies. Mainly because I was sensible with the mud and wore gloves, but ModPodge is only PVA so getting covered is half the fun. Porl commented on it being like "Fun Excema". I've not finished that project, but I'm halfway through covering a box with postage stamps. I'll be getting merrily messy again next week.

The big news of the day (other than Liverpool winning the FA Cup) is... I won Craft Idol!

The final theme was "My Hero". Well my heroes are my parents, for being generally ace people, being great crafts people, passing their love of crafts onto me, and lastly for generally spoiling me rotten.
I was going to try to make a doll, but I wasn't happy with it, and I'd set myself a personal challenge of doing a different craft in each round, so I made a necklace instead.

My parents initials are "R" and "S". So the chain is made up of lots of "S"'s and the pendant is 2 "R"'s. The beads are from a necklace of my Grandma's. She left me lots of costume jewellery. She asked that we not sell it, but she knew I made jewellery so I hope she doesn't mind that I've been dismantling it.

Porl got more into this competition than I did, he's much more competitive, he's been asking every day whether I've won yet, so when I told him the results he was dancing around the kitchen. On the other hand I always feel slightly guilty about winning things and feel other people deserve it more. I was really pleased with my last entry, but I know I only scraped through on some earlier rounds, the work people have put in has been great, and the different takes on the themes and the range of crafts has been amazing.

I've also been busy having a bit of a re-organisation. 1 trip to Ikea, 2 evenings with the glue and hammer, and 9 episodes of Buffy S7 produced a lot of boxes.

It took a couple more days and my Craft Idol entry to get the remainder of the series finished. It was very good, not as funny as earlier series' and it left me with a vague feeling of confusion. I'd watched them so quickly that I didn't realize I was on the last episode. Also the little bits I've heard about the ended were wrong, I was expecting different people to die, so when my favourite character died I kept expecting him to come back. I guess I'll just have to watch them again to see if the confused feeling goes away. :)

Update on the mouse. It seems to have defeated the cats. I made sure they were inside for at least some of last night. This morning we have no "presents" on the doorstep, and the mouse is no longer under the sink. I'm not going to start worrying about where he might be instead, there are plenty of hidey holes outside, and if he found some way into the house the cats have proved they would soon sniff him out and set up a vigil to draw my attention to him.

Our garden has turned into a haven of wildlife this past week. We've had a hedgehog scurrying around the patio at 4am. Then this afternoon a squirrel came running down the steps, right up to the patio window. It stood there with his front paws against the glass peering in. Then scampered off down the side of the house before I could turn my camera on. Gonzo slept through it all.
In the 18 months I've been here I've never seen anything more interesting than a Great Tit, we get Blackbirds, Magpies by the dozen, a lot of Chaffinches, Wood Pigeons (Although these would count as "Flocks" which is what my Mum calls particlularly fat Wood Pigeons. Far too fat to be counted as just 1 bird.) Then very occasionally a Robin or Great Tit, so Hedgehogs and Squirrels are something to get excited about.

We've also had some new kittens hanging around. (Anyone not remotely interested in cat/kitten escapades stop reading here.)
The most frequent visitor is Ollie. He's a jet black kitten who is impossible to photograph, partly because he's jet black and absorbs all light, and partly because he's a kitten and doesn't keep still. Every photo I've taken is a blurred black smudge, occasionally I'll get a picture of a black blob which has glowing eyes and a red name disk. We first saw Ollie a few months ago, but these past few weeks he's been practically living in our garden.
As I write Ollie is sat by the patio doors waiting for Duke to come out to play, and Duke is sat the other side waiting for me to let him out.
He's very timid of us so he hasn't been in, not that we'd tempt him of course, he obviously has owners, he has a name tag, we just want to play with him!
He loves Duke though, I think it's because Duke usually tolerates being randomly attacked in a playful kitten manner. Gonzo on the other hand doesn't, ever, and fights back in earnest. Ollie has quickly learnt to avoid this kind of play with Gonzo.

Our other kitten friend is more restrained, literally. Our road is too busy for a kitten to be near so my neighbour is taking him out in the garden for walks on a leash, (which he keeps escaping from). He's called Frankie and if he keeps still for long enough you can tell he is the double of Gonzo. In the 6 weeks he's been at my neighbours he's trashed several of her ornaments, all her plants are now outside because he knocks them over and eats them, she's covered in cuts and bites, I'm covered in cuts and bites, and the other kitten she got as company for him has had to go to another home because he attacked it constantly and it never fought back. He's now restricted to the kitchen. Duke has tried making friends with him, but Frankie keeps attacking him, (Duke is easily 3x taller than Frankie and probably 6 or 8 times heavier) thanks to the leash Frankie has been kept off Duke, and Duke is too soft properly to attack Frankie, he just play fights. However, whenever Gonzo sees Frankie there's full scale hissing and growling, which is quite funny to watch when Frankie is locked the other side of the kitchen window, or straining at the leash :)

Next week Frankie is going to the vets to have his bits chopped off. Hopefully being neutered will calm him down enough to enable him to join cat society without starting WWIII.

2006-05-12T23:29:00.000+01:00

Sorry, still here, even have a post half written, but we have more pressing concerns right now that need our undivided attention.

Don't worry, nothing dramtic, just the non-internet parts of life like, sunshine, friends, work, friends getting engaged (Congratulations to both pairs), gardening, DIY, and getting thoroughly covered in ModPodge (PVA Glue to UK people).

I'll get around to finishing the post and filling in the gaps once the sun goes in, which might be surprisingly soon.

Mouse is looking for a house.
Mouse wants a house that is:
Not too big,
Not too small,
Not too hot,
Not too cold,
Not too wet,
And not too FULL OF CATS!

2006-04-26T22:46:00.000+01:00

I love that the simpliest things can make you so happy.
Today has been full of simple pleasures.

We have hot water and heating again. The man came round at lunchtime and repaired the boiler, the second bonus was the price he told me the other day was for everything not just the part, which made giving him £200 just that bit easier.

My parents came up today which means the Spring/Summer season has officially begun. My brother lives near my parents, so he gets their help during Autumn/Winter when the weather is bad. When the longer days arrive, and the drive over the hill isn't likely to be bad they come over here. If they want to do anything to their own house it has to be planned weeks in advance.

We got lots of little jobs done today which will make life much better.
Dad drilled a hole through the wall for the tumble dryer. I can now dry clothes without having to have the patio door open. The luxury of warmth. We may also save a fortune on cat food as the neighbouring cats won't be able to get in and have a feast.
We also put shelves up in the hut. It feels like a proper little hut now. I might start spending more time up there. I'm pondering putting some curtains up, getting a comfy chair... and taking up pipe smoking.
Mum did a great job clearing rubbish out of the back of the garden in the bit of land the council have given us. So many bricks and pieces of metal (and the Thompson Twins single "Hold Me Now".) Our old fence has gone to the tip, and the land is all dug over ready for me put plants in... when I get some.

Now to browse the Ikea catalogue and decide what I might buy tomorrow.

2006-04-25T22:49:00.000+01:00

A picturey post, because I've been uploading things to Flickr, but not mentioning them here.

First we have pictures of what I got in my first ever Craftster swap, which was a US<->UK swap.

US Craftster swap" />

My partner was Raindrops and she sent me some great stuff. I can't remember everything I asked for because I forgot to save the email, but I can't think of anything that she missed. Roughly clockwise from the left we have:
- Local college newpapers
- Darth Vader Chupa Chup thing who raises his sword in vengence
- Beeeeads
- A box with a metal butterfly in the top... she asked if I collected anything :)
- Stripey fabric with flowers
- Stripey fabric that everything is stood on
- A ball of orange yarn
- Peeps (I finally know what they are, marshmallows coated in sugar, but I daren't eat them)
- Mod Podge (It is just watered down PVA)
- A grow your own farm sponge kit
- Hershey Kisses
- 12 packets of Kool-Aid (I'm going to have a dyeing frenzy and make the house smell sickly sweet)
- Knitting Notelets
- A Light up American Flag
- Sharpies I deinitely asked for these, they're great, I've used them loads already, and I'm hiding them from Porl.
- A Crafty Girl tin of mints (which is so cool)

Here's some close up's of the fabric, and the "Crafty Girl" Tin.

Hopefully Raindrops should receive her parcel in the next couple of days, and I can post pictures of what I sent. I had great fun buying all the stuff, I think it might actually be more fun shopping for someone else than for me.

The grow your own farm kit seems to have grown me a Gonzo. Either that, or he's decided he wants to join in this swapping lark. I'll try to explain to him about planes, quarentine and customs, and I suspect he might change his mind.

Next pictures of my entry for round 3 of Craft Idol. I decided that as I'd done 2 different crafts for the first 2 rounds I'd try to do a different craft for each round. The theme was "Party Time" and you had to tie it in to a decade in the last century. I chose 1920's and did a lino cutting of Noel Coward.

I was quite please with the lino cut (even though it confuses the scanner and indents the raised areas), but I ended up rushing to do the finished card and I'm not happy with it. It's not 1920's in the slightest. I wanted to do a nice Art Nouveau border, and I should have done it in black and white, far more 1920's than blue.
Oh well, serves me right for leaving everything till the last minute.

We haven't heard from our little man today, he said he'd call as soon as he had the part for the boiler, but I'll be phoning him tomorrow to check he is coming back.
I'm so cold! The house is so exposed, and gets very little sunlight, so this morning when it was raining and I was shivering under my blanket I decided that the gas fire had to be lit.
Even during winter it has to be an exceptionally cold day before I resort to lighting the gas fire, but 4 days with no heating meant I needed to take the chill off the house.
Now I'm going to bed. It's warm there.

2006-04-24T12:50:00.000+01:00

Still cold, but at least I have managed to get a lovely man to come out and look at our not so lovely boiler.

Not good news. The circuit board has gone, not the fan, so I'm currently looking for a nice surgeon to cut off my arm and leg. We haven't got a definite price yet, but we have been warned. *edit - a circuit board costs about £190. Gulp*

I was desperate for a shower this morning after having a particularly "shitty" shift. So at least something good has come out of this (I'm an eternal optimist.) I have finally got around to going swimming. Now I just have to keep going on all my days off. The pool is only open for 1.5 hours during the day, but there were only about 5 people in so it was quite nice. Tomorrow I could be really good and go to Aquaerobics if I get up early enough.... hmm we'll see.

In other news, we have another friend in Stalybridge. Daymaker may yet reform, as our drummer Danny has finally moved into his flat.
I think it's about a year since he first agreed to buy it, but it's taken forever. We went down there for a few drinks on Saturday, gave him a housewarming gift of shelves, and admired the echo. I might have to make him some cushions or curtains. Unfortunatly it was too dark to see the view, he can see our hill too, but he has other town centre type things to look at too, and in the opposite direction a wonderful scene of Cosmo Bingo's roof.

I now have 3 wonderful days off. Hopefully tomorrow the boiler will be fixed. I think Wednesday will be a gardening day as Mum & Dad are offering to come up. Then Thursday (payday) I might take a trip up to IKEA for some wooden drawers. I'm getting ready for the kitchen revamp Dad and I have planned, so I want to get my craft things organised in preparation.

2006-04-22T15:18:00.000+01:00

We're spending this weekend reliving our student days in Chapel Street.

Our boiler has died, leaving us with no heating and no hot water, in fact it's worse than our student days because at least we could have hot showers then. At the moment the soonest it looks like we'll get it fixed is Tuesday, and that was off someone who charges £52 an hour! I'm in the wrong job. Tomorrow I'm on a sleep-in, so at least I'll be warm. I'll not be able to have my usual shower when I get in from work on Monday mornng though, it's essential to wash away the feelings and odours of work. I might have to go to Ashton baths on the way home.

Several of the people I've phoned have told me to phone the gas supplies shop in town to see if they can find someone with a couple of spare hours to help me. So far no luck, but I'll try again Monday.

At least the day has warmed up, it's relatively spring-like outside. I'm going to keep myself busy and warm cleaning up the mess I've created over the past few days.

2006-04-19T23:21:00.002+01:00

Had a busy day.

I got a fantastic swap package from America... so much cool stuff! I'll post pictures when my camera batteries have charged up.

I finally went to Manchester shopping. (Armed with a very handy map.)

I went to Primark, could get out of there quick enough... so many people! But I bought a pair of jeans (£6) and a t-shirt (£2). Saw some nice t-towels and bedding too. I'll have to go back when I'm in a better frame of mind. Or the kids are back in school.

Then I went to Fred Aldous. My jaw did literally drop. I was very restrained, bought some googley eyes which were on sale, a tatting bobbin because Mum won't lend me hers, and something for my swap partner (not saying what just incase she reads this.) Then asked the lady who served me if I could come and live in the shop.

After that I went to Abakhans. I have been there before but didn't realize, I didn't realize there was an upstairs to it either. I stuck to the bargain bins, I love the idea of buying fabric by weight. I've bought some lovely stuff, and I now just have to decide what I'm keeping and what I can bear to part with.

I then got completely lost trying to find the Tourist Information (you'd think of all places that would be easy to find.) I couldn't find Afflecks either. Hunger and annoyance at people/traffic/cities (especially Manchester) eventually got the better of me so I made a hasty retreat.

All in all it was quite an adventure though, and one I will make again. I'll go earlier next time though and give myself more time to wander, or de-stress in a cafe. I'll definitely keep my map for next time too it was great, even if I did look a complete tourist.

Tomorrow I'm going to do some easier shopping in Ashton, I might even go to Hyde too.

2006-04-08T21:29:00.000+01:00

So much for spring.
The last few days we've had almost constant showers, hail and thunder storms. This photo was taken at about 7pm tonight. The thunder was rumbling in the distance, Porl was trying to decide whether to unplug the PC's or whether the storm would miss us.

We did manage to get out into the garden for an hour yesterday and tried to dismantle the fence at the back. We've cleared a lot of rubbish, thankfully it's mostly garden rubbish, we did find a rotten carpet there and I was expecting limbs to fall out of it as I put it in the bin bag. Behind the neighbours garden there's a metal bed base, and a scary doll, I daren't look any further the limbs may have been dumped there. The fence is half down, but it's base is buried and the hail drove us back inside before we could finish digging it up.
My poor little daffodils are trying to flower, but keep getting beaten into submission by the weather.
Maybe tomorrow the weather will hold off for long enough to plant up my seeds... or at least long enough for me to take everything up to the shed and I'll plant them up in there.

It's been so long since I posted that I'd best update on what I've been up to.
The Euro Disney holiday is pretty much sorted, and hopefully be this time next week I'll be able to relax knowing that everything is also sorted for the other client holiday I'm organizing. We should be having a lovely week in Cornwall. If we can get all the flights, car etc sorted. I'm the only driver, and I've flat out refused to drive all that way myself. I'm hoping that the extra pay will cover a proper relaxing holiday for Porl and I, rather than a working holiday.

I've also been busy crafting.

This is my Easter Bilby for round 2 of the CrAftermath Craft Idol competition. I'm through to round 3. I'd never heard of a bilby before, but I was stuck for ideas and googled the theme "Easter Creatures" and he came up. He's an endangered Australian creature, about the size of a rabbit, but rabbits are bad in Australia, so the Easter Bilby delivers the eggs instead. My nickname on all the forums I haunt is "bilblio" so I couldn't resist making him. He's my first amigurumi creature too, I'm quite chuffed with him.
In this house the Easter Bilby leaves beads not eggs.

I've spent today crocheting myself a string bag. The space beside the fridge is getting full of plastic bags, we don't even use them to line the bin anymore, so I just store them until I get fed up, then they all go in the recycling bin. It's wasteful, environmentally bad, and it annoys me, so I'm going to try to change our habits... but first I've got to finish crocheting a load of bags.
I tried knitting a bag at first, but the pattern expected me to use crochet thread with 13mm needles. Not easy. So I gave up and went back to trusty crochet and winging it without a pattern.
Maybe if I come up with the perfect design (and stop ripping out what I've already done) I'll write it up as my contribution to saving the planet.

2006-03-30T15:29:00.000+01:00

I'm going to meet Minnie Mouse!!! Weeeee! Excited!!!!

Going with work, client holiday, client will benefit loads, very hard work for me, 4 days on permanent duty, very tiring etc etc.

But still... I'm going to meet Minnie Mouse!!!
I was never bothered about Mickey Mouse as a child, but someone brought me back a Minnie Mouse toy from Disneyland and I loved her, from her red polka dot bow to her yellow plastic shoes.
Hopefully I'll see Dopey too, but I think all my other favourite cartoon characters are Warner Brothers. Where's EuroWarner?

2006-03-21T23:48:00.000Z

This migraine is give me a few bizarre side effects to accompany the more normal memory loss, confusion and lack of balance.

First I have a weird taste in my mouth, the only thing I can describe it as is similar to the taste you get after you lick the end of a battery. (Don't try that at home kids.) But it's at the back of my mouth instead of on the tip of my tongue. This could be related to the non-drowsy decongestants I'm taking which are pumped so full of caffeine that they recommend not taking them after 6pm.

The other side effect is the ridiculously irritating earworm I've been suffering from all day. My brain is inflicting me with "Greatest ever Sing-a-longs for Kids" This morning it was "Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the West", at the Craft Club I was inflicting myself with "There Once was an Ugly Duckling", and now I'm being irritated by "Gobollino the Witch's Cat", which is actually less irritating than the first two.

I'd consider going to sleep to rid myself of this torture, but I forgot to take the decongestant until 9:30 so sleep isn't likely to be happening anytime soon.

2006-03-21T16:48:00.000Z

The last few days have been odd, I feel like I've been walking around in a daze, doubting things that I've done, dropping things and at work on Sunday I did the bare minimum of housework and just spent the day watching TV and keeping the clients happy. That isn't like me when I'm in the house alone at work I don't usually stop, I tend to go berserk cleaning everywhere... unlike here.

Yesterday when I got home I went back to bed then woke up with the most horrendous migraine, so spent the day laid on the sofa telly on, volume low, lights off trying to make my sore head stop and the sick feeling go away.

Thankfully today the pain is gone and I've eaten, but I still feel like I'm in a bubble, at least I can account for my behaviour and I know I'm not cracking up.

Tonight I'm off to Craft Club for the first time in months, I'm a bit nervous, I hate going back to things when I've missed a while. I've got to go tonight because I'm teaching there again next week so I need to find out about supplies and quiz people on what they want to do. Should I let them get on with what they want to do and just wander around helping them? Or should I try to teach them something new? Last time I tried to teach them something new I ended up with 2 people doing that task and everyone else doing there own thing but calling me over for help. Meaning the poor people who were trying to do the new thing kept getting abandoned. I always print out instructions for the tasks, but there aren't many who are able to read them.
Hmmm to much thinking for my achey brain.

I remembered to brave the cold today (it's trying to snow again) and take some better pictures of the Parrot (who I keep refering to as either a Crow or Frog! obviously he's neither). Big Piccies so you can see his eye which I'm very proud of :)

I'm quite surprised at all the piratey type props I keep finding around the house, although this particularly item is used as an unusual garden ornament. We did consider burying it in the garden of the old house before we left, but I'm quite pleased we packed it instead.

Also a quick piccie of my latest Freecycling. 3 boxes of Prima, Burda, and a few other craft magazines which I picked up the other day. They're all from the early-80's to mid-90's so a lot of the clothes are only suitable for fancydress, but there are some great basics clothes as well as all the ideas for around the house. So far all the ones I've looked through are complete with pattern templates and guidelines, and I've been sticking post-it notes on all the things which I like. The magazines all belonged to the late wife of the man on Freecycle. I wrote to thank him and told him about all my crafty friends, Mum, and the Craft Club who would get to use them too. He wrote back to tell me he's glad they've gone to a good home and he's got quite a bit of fabric around too so when he starts sorting that out he'll let me know!

2006-03-18T23:32:00.000Z

I've spent today pretending The Lurg isn't returning, and making my entry for the CrAftermath Craft Idol competition. This weeks theme is Pirates.

What's under the patch?

"So that's why they call you One-Eyed Willie"
Actually he doesn't have a name yet, suggestions welcome.

The embroidered eye was Porl's idea. He also suggested I cut out a Skull & Cross-Bones to put on his hat. I told him if he could cut one out that small then I'd sew it on. I think I might try embroidering one onto the hat later.

Now though I'm off to bed. I'm due in work in 8 1/2 hours for a wonderful 24 hour shift. I don't mind the sleep-in shifts, except on days like tomorrow when I've got to spend 13 hours on duty with the one member of staff I don't really like. I can think of better ways to spend Sundays.

2006-03-13T19:29:00.000Z

I know I've spoken about my family history research a little on here, but I try not to talk about it too much. The main reason is that I have a very unusual name, and I'm scared of internet stalkers. I also don't want random friends and colleagues finding my blog by googling my name, so I don't think I've ever mentioned my surname on here, and I avoid my first name too. If people want to find me for family research purposes then they can search the relevant websites, but they shouldn't stumble upon this place instead.

This week has been eventful on the research front though, the skeletons have come tumbling out of the closet and I need to get it out of my system. They aren't my skeletons either, so I can't reveal all. You'll just have to excuse the lack of names and specifics. I hope you can keep track.

My Grandad always had a fascination with our surname, and where we were from, when I was little I used to quiz him on the family, and he'd tell me the odd story. I remember whenever we went on holiday in the UK he would always remind us to look in the phone books to see if there were people with our surname living in the area. I don't think we ever found any. He always encouraged me to research the name, but he always stressed, "look up the name, but don't try to contact people". He never said why, and I never really thought to question it. Genealogy at the time meant trawling through archives at Family History Centres, and I was only a child, so this wasn't going to happen.

Grandad died when I was 14, long before I had any real chance of finding anything out. All I really knew was that Grandad had 2 brothers, both had died before I was born, we had contact with the family of one of his brothers, however the youngest brother had spent time in jail, and then had been in an institution because he was epileptic. He had been married, and had 3 children, but we had lost touch with them.

A few years after Grandad died Grandma let slip a few details about the youngest brother and why he had been in jail, but it was a slip of the tongue and she wouldn't tell us anymore, we didn't even know if it was true. (I suspect she'd had a couple of sherries at the time.)

In 2002 my Grandma died. When Mum and Dad were emptying their house they found a lot of old papers which Grandad had saved. I had a brief look through them, but it wasn't until the 2003 after both my Grandparents from my Mums side died within 10 weeks of each other that I really started wanting to know more about my family. I discovered GenesConnected, and within a few months had traced my surname back to 1600. Having an unusual surname makes life lots easier.

I couldn't keep my promise to Grandad not to contact people though. It's hard to research your family tree without making some contacts, and I'd still be struggling to get past the 1800's if it wasn't for finding distant relatives who'd done all the work before me. Mostly though my new found relations have been 7th cousins twice removed, or something similar.

That is until this past week.

The papers we found at Grandads had made it very clear that the 3 children of my Grandads youngest brother wanted nothing to do with us, but they still gave us no idea why. What they didn't tell us though was that there was a 4th child who had been adopted when she was a baby.

This child had known from a young age that she was adopted, when she was old enough she had found out details of her adoption, her parents names, and that she had siblings, but then lack of funds meant she couldn't continue. She found my details last week and emailed me. Since then she's been able to confirm what Grandma let slip, as well as tell me a whole lot more. In return I've been able to provide her with documents which may help her find her siblings, and show her for the first time photos of her father and 2 of her siblings.

I'm finding it hard to get my head around the fact my Dad has a cousin who no-one knew existed, never mind getting to grips with the information she has revealed about the family. I can't even begin to understand how she is feeling.

2006-03-09T23:34:00.000Z

I had a play at dyeing this evening. The lovely Tangerine over at Craftermath sent me some Kool-Aid to play with, so play I did.

I didn't want to risk felting all my rovings, so I started out with something safer. A cream bag which I love, but never use because pale things and me don't mix.

I just used 2 packets of cherry first, but it was very pink, and I'm not really a pink fan, so a Grape one went in too.
20 minutes later, I decided the bag was as dark as it was going to get, so took the pot off the heat and rinsed the bag under cold water. While I was doing that I very gently placed some of my cream roving into the pot. I didn't stir it at all, I just left it soaking for 10 minutes, then careful took it out which trying to keep it nicely spread out. I rinsed this under luke warm water, then cold water, and left it to drip dry.

It seems to have worked. I love how the bag is so many different colours, but it's pink. I hoped cherry would be red, not pink. I think I should have gone with blue berry instead... maybe it'll go back in the pot another day. The roving has dyed brilliantly, and doesn't seem to have felted at all, but we'll see what it's like when I try to spin with it.

Then I got silly. The water in the pot was still very dark, so much potential, so I went hunting for things to dye. Normally it would be off colour undies, but I've just had a clear out, so a silk vest which I never wear got put in the pot.

I went and ate my tea at this point, so the vest ended up slightly tie-dyed. Or as Porl pointed out "like a Global Hyper-Colour t-shirt that's lost it power"

Porl saw the gleam in my eye at this point and ran for fear I'd put him in the pot. He was lucky... this time. The stained tea towels got dyed instead.

So that was my fun evening. Now I've got the confidence to dye rovings without ruining them I'm going to do some more, I've still got, berry blue, strawberry, orange and 1 grape left to play with... maybe I'll turn Porl a nice shade of blue in the process... he'll co-ordinate nicely with my slightly pink fingers.

2006-03-09T14:51:00.000Z

The lurg didn't go away.
I made it into work on Sunday and as my shift went on I got gradually worse. I couldn't go home early as the lurg had hit the house, meaning the girl I was meant to be working with had called in sick and I was on with Bank Staff.
6 o'clock was hometime, my temperature had gone through the roof so I phoned on call to let them know I wouldn't be fit for my Sleep-in the next day.
I've been off all week but I've said I'll be back for my Sleep-In on Saturday when the new client is staying over.

I know I'm properly ill because I've been watching daytime TV, going to bed at reasonable hours, getting up early, and worst of all I've been able to sit watching TV without having the need to do something with my hands. I knew I was over the worst on Tuesday night when I started doing some colouring-in.

I'm trying to decide whether to bid on a spinning wheel. I've been persevering with mine, but it's definitly an ornament. I managed to get a little done, not wonderfully successfully, it kept snapping as the bobbin wasn't slipping the way it's supposed to, and the fibre was being wound onto the bobbin without any twist being added.

The wheel I've seen is on ebay. It's an Ashford traditional, it has a lazy Kate, 4 bobbins and some carders. At the moment it's still only £60 + £20 shipping with 30 minutes to go. It is a bargain.
This is about the 3rd wheel I've bid on, I keep missing out due to being at work when the auctions end. There was another I saw last night which I had a part missing, but parts can be bought. I changed my mind on that one at the last minute.
However, Mum has put me in a conundrum. She phoned this morning asking if I'd won the bid, I told her I'd changed my mind and was going for a different one instead. Her and Dad have been talking. If I wait till my birthday in August, they will buy me a brand new wheel. They're concerned something off ebay might not work.

So do I wait till August and get a brand new wheel which will cost my parents about £200?
Or do I bid on this wheel which has lots of extras, but costs me money instead? (I could only afford about £120).
Answers on a postcard, to me, to arrive in the next 24 minutes please.

*edited to add* I missed out. By 10 seconds! grrrrr really really annoyed now.

2006-03-03T21:38:00.000Z

Tomorrow is my one day off this week (so much for only working 3 days a week... it all goes wrong when people take annual leave.)
So one day off, and what do I plan on doing... well probably lying in bed sniffling and feeling rotten. I've got the lurg.

I was going to post something interesting, but I seem to have sneezed it out of my brain and the thought is lost.

So anyway, some random words... like snow, great, except when driving home in it... spinning fun, but making ankles hurt... overtwist issues will be resolved... going to have fun with dyeing (pretty colours, not from cold).. nice person sent me lots of Koolaid for free.. like nice person... daring Porl to drink Koolaid... would rather eat whole lemons... have lots of lemons from pancake day... might eat them all to cure cold... been at work too much, causes all conversations to be cyclicle... is that a word? is it spelt like that? if I've made it up, then I mean to go round in a circle...

Think I'd best go to bed now.

Ni-night

2006-02-24T23:55:00.000Z

I found bargains today;

Claires Accessories are having a sale. This little lot cost me the grand sum of £5, full price they would have been £64.50!

I also got this.

Celestite. It's quite rare, I've only ever seen it once before when I was in Durham, and it was very very expensive. Thankfully this lump wasn't.
I've been reading up on the spiritual side of it, and apparently

Celestite relates to communication and creativity. Its special attributes are its ability to enhance peacefulness and mental clarity...Celestite helps us to quiet the circular and repetitive worries that so often fill our mind

Also;

It is an excellent tool to use in the pursuit of the finer arts - painting, music, sculpture, jewelry, designing, etc. One of the finest qualities of Celestite is its ability to bring one into a state of bliss.

Mmm... bliss... Personally I think it's pretty and a girl called Celeste shouldn't be without a lump of Celestite.

As I was in the photo taking mood this afternoon (I'd found some batteries that worked). I thought I'd show off my bargains from Tescos.

These boxes cost just 97p, somewhere like Hobbycraft would sell them for about £4.99. (They also had some twice the size.) I bought 4, and spent a happy night filling them up.
Why is arranging beads so much more fun than making jewellery?
I went back 2 days later to buy some more, and they'd run out. *curses*
Does that mean there's more crafters in Stalybridge? I bet if there are they only do cardmaking.
Please let Tesco stock these regularly. I hope they weren't just a one off.

Tomorrow is MOT day. I'm hoping that thanks to the crash in September my car won't need any work doing to it. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

2006-02-22T22:10:00.000Z

In other mundane news it looks like the council have given up about 3 foot of added length to our garden.
Over the past year they have been putting fences up around the front and back gardens of the council owned properties on the estate. The house behind ours is being worked on at the moment so my neighbour and I are rejoicing. The garden was stupidly overgrown and had a variety of household appliances dumped in it. My neighbour has been complaining to the estate committee for years because she was getting worried about rats.
Anyway it's being sorted now, for an idea of how overgrown it was, I'll tell you that it took 3 days to chop back the bushes and trees, and 2 to put up the fence. Their garden is HUGE, it's a corner plot which starts in line with my neighbours boundary, and goes all the way across the back of 4 gardens. How come people who don't want to garden end up with so much land?

This is what it was like, this was taken last year when we were just starting the deck, but it's the best one I can find of the mess at the back of the garden.

This is it now;

It still looks overgrown, but that's just the stuff they cut down waiting to be moved/burnt.
The fence posts have been put in about 3 foot beyond our fence, so we have gained a nicely pruned tree, and 2 clumps of privet which are the only thing holding our fence up. We were going to be putting up a trellis in place of our fence to keep all the rubbish from their garden out of ours, but we won't need to now, we'll just take advantage of our gift and plant it up with some nice tall shrubs (I bought a Mock Orange and Forsythia today from Poundland of all places), the privet will be going asap, I hate the stuff. We can hide the compost bin behind the hut, and all the random bulbs I keep digging up from the other parts of the garden (I should mark where I put things) can be put under the tree. So long as we don't build anything there no one can complain about us stealing their garden, we're just keeping it tidy. The council own the land, and the council chose where to put the fence, we just got lucky!

2006-02-22T21:14:00.000Z

I avoided ebay for such a long time because I was afraid of getting carried away and spending too much money. It wasn't until I got my old sewing machine that I plucked up the courage to make my first bid because I couldn't have bought the antique shuttles I needed in any shop. Then I bought a few other things, mostly craft related because the shops around here aren't great and I can get better quality items from ebay for the same price.

But then I started looking for things that I don't need but would love like a Spinning Wheel.
I know, I know, I already have one, but using it is a bit like driving a 1980's Ford Fiesta. It sort of works, but not wonderfully. Unlike a fiesta though it looks lovely. So I've been looking for another one (with the idea of sending mine off to an auction house where it should fetch far more than the £15 I paid for it.) I don't want the Ferrari of Spinning Wheels, the Ashford Elizabeth, I know I can't justify spending nearly £300. But on ebay there was a Haldane which had loads of accessories with it. It was at £35.50, 1 bid, and 12 hours to go. The auction was due to close at 10:05am when I would be at work, Porl placed the bid at 3am, and I kept my fingers crossed. At 10:02am someone else beat my bid.
I'm gutted.
One day I will find a wheel which I can afford and I'll be at home when the auction is due to finish.

I think I'm getting used to doing sleep-ins. I managed to get a half decent nights sleep last night, even though I was still woken at 4am. I got home and actually managed to do productive things like open post, do some washing, book my car in for an MOT, look at the snow, and speak to my Mum for an hour. It was her 60th yesterday (Happy Birthday Mum) but what with being at work I didn't get chance to phone her till the evening when it was quiet... and they'd left the phone off the hook, so I missed wishing her Happy Birthday on her birthday. 3 phone calls today have made up for that.
I was still awake at 12 o'clock and thought I might manage to make it through the day. I went upstairs to get some more washing, gave Porl a hug and next thing it was 3pm and I'd just woken up... oh well better than previous sleep-ins.
Next week should be interesting, I'm doing a sleep-in Tuesday, finishing at 8:30 Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon I'm on a course, Thursday I do another sleep-in. I can't wait till April when everyone is back off holidays.

2006-02-15T14:18:00.000Z

This 3 sleep-ins a week lark is killing me, everything aches, I'm exhausted, and I've still got one sleep-in to go.

Today I plan on doing very very little.
Last night I started knitting my version of a Booga bag. Noro is far too expensive for my tastes, so I raided my charity shop stash and found some mohair in purple, cerise and pink. I'm knitting it up with some cream aran yarn, on 10mm needles. I'm going to try some yarn painting when it comes to the colour change, but that idea may be scrapped if it changes the tension too much.

Tesco's offered me the perfect way to keep myself doubly occupied whilst knitting, as they are having a sale on CD's and DVD's. DVD's start at 97p... unfortunatly the cheap ones were all cartoons, but I couldn't resist 2 of my favourite films. "Bugsy Malone" for £2.84, and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" for £4.96.

My day is planned.

Shell if I do find some surplus energy, I'll pop down to your mums with the wool winder.

2006-02-12T19:27:00.000Z

How can I twist my ankle in my sleep?
Last night I was on a sleep-in at work. I went to bed fine, woke up this morning and my ankle is killing me. I can walk, but I'm limping so it's wrapped up... and I'm trying not to do my usual trick of sitting on it when I'm using the PC.

Today has been spent mostly sleeping, as I expect will be happening most of this week. I was on a sleep-in at work yesterday, working 8:30am-8:30am, I've got 2 more this week, plus a few hours overtime on Saturday. The money will be good, but I'll look like a zombie by Sunday. My boss came in this morning and admitted he hates coming in when I'm finishing a sleep-in, not because he has any problems with me, but because when I'm tired I get really bad black eyes and I look like I've been beaten up. It makes him feel guilty for putting me on the shifts.

In between the sleeping today I've been rearranging my bookshelves.

Ever since Dad built these shelves I've been looking for some lamps, not easy as the lamps had to be shorter than the height of a book. Yesterday I found these in BHS which are perfect and I love them.

I actually saw them months ago but had no money on me at the time, and the shop is out of my way. I was passing yesterday and nipped in, just in case, and was amazed that they still had loads left. I bought 3, they were £10 each. Annoyingly due to my tiredness I managed to smash one as I came through the front door this morning. Thankfully it has glued together and the damage shouldn't be noticed. I think I'm going to buy 2 more so that all the lamps in the lounge are the same.
Then I just need Dad to build me 2 more shelves to fill in the gaps so I can fit the rest of my books on there properly instead of having them stacked 2 deep.

My olympic challenge has failed at the first hurdle. I thought the yarn would be a bit garish when it was knitted up, so I was going to stick to small things like bags and socks, but I've decided I really like it, so I'm now on a hunt for a nice cardigan pattern, I'm eyeing up the chicknits ribby, but I'm not sure if I'll have enough. Suggestions welcome.

2006-02-10T18:03:00.000Z

I've found a photo editing program on my PC, so pictures as promised.

This is the patchwork blanket I mentioned.

It's not the best thought out patchwork, but it's full of memories. Clicking on the picture will take you to flickr where you can see all the notes showing where many of the patches are from.

I also love that the blanket is far from perfect. When I started making this aged 7 I was only just learning how to sew, so the stitches are visible and very uneven. I'd obviously just learnt how to do blanket stitch at one point so decided to use that to sew some patches together.

I'm having to go over a lot of these old seams as they are falling apart, but I'm trying to stitch them in a way that still shows some of my original immature efforts. Thankfully by the time I reached my teens I started going back over all seams as I sewed them, but there is still about half of the blanket which needs re-enforcing.

Last night I also had a productive night playing with my wool winder.
From this:

To this:

In just over an hour. It would have been quicker if Gonzo hadn't decided to "help" on the 7th ball resulting in a giant tangle.
When they were all wound Porl and I had a quick game of Curling in honour of the Winter Olympics.

We had a timely delivery today, just ready for the start of the Olympics, when the telly will be showing 24 hour sport, our new DVD player arrived. We've tested it, and it's successfully managed to play every CD & DVD, in every format we've thrown at it. I can catch up on all the films I've missed, and I might even get to watch S7 of Buffy. If nothing is on telly tonight I can stick a film on, and cast on my first sock using the yarn above.

2006-02-09T00:21:00.000Z

I took pictures to try to make this post more interesting, but photos need a photo editing program, which I haven't re-installed yet. So I tried re-installing Photoshop, but it's not working, and my brain is too tired to work out why right now. I'll try again tomorrow.

Instead here are 2 places I've been reading a lot recently.
CrAftermath hurrah for UK crafters. Especially ones who have a forum (tomorrow I might get around to posting in there too.)
Also Whip Up, which is oozing with inspiration... a link from there even managed to inspire me to tidy out my material chest this evening!

Must also mention The AntiCraft which I've been checking every few days for updates... I sort of wish I hadn't.

Every crafty blog seems to be talking about the Knitting Olympics. I wasn't going to bother, however, the spirit of The AntiCrafts Team Angstylvania has caught me, it seems to sum up my feelings at the moment.
In the true spirit of the team I haven't a clue when the Olympics are, and can't be bothered finding out. I can't decide what to work on at the moment, but I bought a nice bamboo circular needle off ebay which arrived today, so I'll probably try making a sock out of the multicoloured yarn I bought from the G-Mex months ago.
I'll be chuffed if I manage to finish one though, I never finish anything...

2006-01-31T23:01:00.000Z

We all know computers can be really annoying at times... but sometimes they can be ace.
Winamp Random play came up with the Chris Morris "Bushwacked" speech... basically a cut up speech by George W.Bush, saying about how he's going to bomb Britain, Canada, France, Australia etc, and fund the Muslims... very fun, but dark... followed by the nice cheery sound of "Here Come's your Man" by Teenage Fanclub. I giggled a lot.

Computers also let me use Freecycle. Last night a Tanglewood Left Hand Semi-Acoustic guitar was offered. Porl's semi-acoustic is snapped and beyond repair due to the makers, Washburn going out of business. We've been saying for ages we'll save up to get him a new one, but there's always something else more important to buy. I replied late last night to the offer, (actually 3am), we've had our fingers, toes and eyes crossed all day, but no response, so I think we're out of luck. Porl now knows the true feeling of Freecycle disappointment. The guy offering it hasn't posted a TAKEN message yet though so I'm not uncrossing anything yet.

I did try to weight kama in our direction though by posting about the spare lawnmower and strimmer that I wanted to get rid off. They were picked up this evening, so I have space in the shed again... and sod's law, the girl who picked them up also was on the look out for a shed, I told her she was 2 weeks too late.

Anyway, now back to watching Shameless... Those silly Manc's make me laugh...
I also like trying to spot the places when we looked at houses.

2006-01-30T17:20:00.000Z

The PC is alive again. It was the Windows Update I did which killed the machine. I was still running Win2k as my machine was wonderfully stable and I'd never had a reason to upgrade it. But the latest Windows Update didn't like my brand of hard drive (Maxtor) so it wasn't recognising it. So we gave up on trying to fix the problem, and instead plugged the drive into Porl's machine, backed everything up, and installed XP. It's been relatively painless... so far.

It's amazing how much rubbish you can accumulate on a PC in 4 years. I thought I was relatively tidy with my files, but my machine is in the kitchen so it gets used by everyone, Porl, random friends, I suspect even the cats have a play on it at night. There are wierd files and images saved everywhere.

Why have I got 2 karaoke versions of "Lady is a Tramp" by Billy Holliday
Why have I got a folder full of McDonalds Recipes?
Why have I got a whole bunch of text files with random sentences on them?
"lacuna a blank space or missing part"
Who in Emmerdale said "I've got more bling bling than J'Lo" and why did it warrant saving as a text file?

I also need to learn to be a bit more descriptive with my file titles. Names like "Stuff", "Document" and "hgnbvadgs", really aren't helpful.

I really should delete all this junk, especially some of the rubbish in the "Received Files" my friends send me some very odd things over MSN, but there are too many things that make me giggle and remind me of stuff, so I guess I'll be stuck with a computer full of odd files and images... I'll just sort them out into tidier folders instead.