A bloggy meetup, and a forum move

Look what Lucy Locket has been arranging - a bloggy meetup on the 8th April, at an open farm, south of Oxford. It should be a fun day out in the Easter Holidays.

The other thing of note is the mass exodus from the Angel Yarns knitting forum at http://www.knittingforums.co.uk, to Phoenix knitting forums at http://www.knittingforums.org.uk/. The full story is a bit muddled, and probably the best place to get the back story is in the angel/phoenix forum on ravelry. I'm not going to speculate on motives etc, but it seems to me that a load of kerfuffle could have been avoided with a bit more communication.

A woman in technology

"I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same."

The woman I have chosen is Steve Shirley. Steve is a woman, short for Stephanie.

I chose Steve because she created the F1 group in 1962: it was a company which specifically employed only women as computer programmers. If that shocks you, it is because we have come so far since then - she talks about the prejudice of the past here.

In the early 1960s, discrimination against woman in the workplace was overt and blatant. Even professionally qualified woman could be told that they could only work in certain parts of an office and that they could not be allowed to meet clients. It was not in any sense subtle.

Steve chose to be known by that name because of the prejudice against women: it kept open doors for her. Now that she is a dame, she uses the name Stephanie again.

She was also a founding member of the The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, the 100th worshipful company to be formed (some of the others date back before the fifteenth century).

Surprise Conservatory

You didn't know we were going to be building a conservatory last week? Well, nor did we. I mean we'd ummed and arred about getting one and finally decided to sign on the dotted line. Maybe we would have somewhere to sit by the summer holidays.

On Wednesday the builder and the conservatory salesman came round to sort out the final details. At least, that's what I thought they were going to do. And then they said "we could start tomorrow if you want". "Oh" I said. "OK then".

Hence Thursday and Friday last week involved skips, and pickaxes, and wheelbarrels of rubble, and cups of tea, and paving stones. Today involved the pouring of cement, the arrival of bricks, and many more cups of tea.

Mothering Sunday

Some people get flowers for Mothering Sunday.



I get holes in the ground:




(One hole is the footings for a conservatory, the other is now a pond.)

Festival of Quilts

Some years I don't get to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC. It's in August, the middle of the school holidays, and hence I'm quite likely to be away with the rest of the family.

But this year, as I've told the rest of the family, I'm going to it, no matter what.

For there are two major attractions and I can't miss either of them. I knew about one - Ferret will be having a gallery there. I'll be there to support her - she's my friend, and a great person.

Also Jenny Bower is having a gallery. I really want to see some of her work in person. I've loved this one (the first version) since I saw it in the advert.

On to blogging things. The Wednesday giveaway isn't working for me. It's not that I don't want to give away my unwanted things to people who want them, it is just that the format seems to be dominating the way I think about my blog. I've found myself not posting because I'm about to, or have just posted, the giveaway, and that's not the way I want to run my blog. A regular giveaway seems to make sense from the point of view of people coming to look for them, but if it is up for a week then a specific day is less relevant.

OTOH, maybe I could just take it all to my knitting group, but that would only really work for yarn. I'm just not sure what to do about it - some things can go to a charity shop, but for others that option is wrong. I haven't quite decided, I do want to carry on with the giveaways, it's just knowing what format they should take.

In other news: Kiddo has got a place at the school she wanted to go to. Hurrah!

Through the hedge: image resolved.

Near us, the fields are full of fat, pregnant ewes.

However, today I went to the town the far side of the nearby hills and drove past a field of sheep there.

Through the hedge, I thought I could see a load of sacks in the field. They were scattered about, all over the field. White sacks, tied at the top to create two little handles. Small white sacks, tied at the top, with ewes very close to them.

And then the image resolved, and the field was full of ewes, and little baby lambs sitting next to their mothers.

Oxford Snippets

A young girl, perhaps no more then ten years old, gets a violin out of a case which she places on the pavement in front of her. Two older women are close by, perhaps her mother and grandmother.

Like a rank of soldiers, six employees of Boots in white shirts and black trousers stride across the road. When they approach the shop entrance, the rank dissolves into a small group.

The job agency window advertises vacancies for "temporary chemists" and for "scientists of all types".

I was in Oxford on Saturday, for the annual Research in Progress Day given by the British Society for the History of Maths. I planned to do a blog post, like this one from last year, with a series of "scenes from Oxford". However the editor of the BSHM's journal asked me if I could write a review of the day. I agreed with alacrity, and from that point on I stopped thinking about writing blog posts and started thinking about writing academic journal reports.


These bluebells are nestling at the roots a very old wisteria (I think) in Queen's College.

Wednesday giveaway - upholstery samples

Today's giveaway is a set of eight samples of upholstery fabric. The fabric is quite thick, about the thickness of denim jeans, although much softer. They came from Laura Ashley and are about 3.5" x 5" or 9x14 cm.



There are two of each fabric, in warm reds, to match our dining room curtains. One fabic has gold swirls on it. Apart from the white ones, obviously.



I could imagine them being turned into tissue holders, but I'm sure other people could come up with alternatives - a patch pocket on a bag? Mobile phone cases? Dice bags?

I don't know if they are washable, and the colour might run if you try.

Winner

We have a Wednesday Giveaway winner - Time for Tea and Cakes.

I've been a bit neglectful for this weeks giveaway - I did take some photos but they didn't come out well, and now it is too dark. So I'll put them up tomorrow.

Rainbow Comfort Pack Appeal

Bushfires are so alien to my comfortable English upbringing, where a heatwave means 30C temperatures. They are half a world away, and my knowledge of them was little more then a description of one in the Silver Brumbly books - all I could remember was the horses and animals fleeing for the creek.

And then, in one of the Australian news articles it had a comment from a firefighter from Bellarat. I know Bellarat - not in person, but from Trash's trip to Australia this year. They went to Bellarat, they met bloggers in Ballarat. Suddenly, the fire was affecting friends of friends.

Clearly, the most useful thing was money - a donation to the Red Cross sorted that. But that seemed to be the only thing that I could do from this side of the globe.

Until Trash sparked me into action with her Big Ask.

Pink and Blue's appeal for bags seemed to be the right thing for me to do last week. The bags will be filled with donated toys for the children affected. So on Friday I made some bags (using this pattern), and on Monday I posted them. I added a little note to them saying where they had been made (because they might be interested) and a link to my blog (because they might be interested) and then I thought if I've told them about my blog, I have to tell my blog about them.

I was in two minds as to whether to make this post or not. All I want to do is to remind you, the reader, that if you thought about it, but haven't done anything yet, there is still time. If you don't want to make a bag (I did, I had the material and the pattern was on the 'net), then Maria is offering to post a collection of Star blocks to one of the other appeals out there.

Week-end Roundup

As this is nominally a craft blog, I thought I'd better post some vaguely craft like things which I've done recently.

First is a pair of gloves made using Schoeller & Stahl Socka in colour Hummingbird. Both the yarn and the pattern came from Web of Wool and were bought at the Knitting and Stitching show. I thought I'd got them in 2007, but they weren't pictured in my blog. I know it wasn't 2008, because they were already in progress then (lets not say when they were started, other then "before October 2008").

Anyway, Web of Wool still sells the yarn, and I still think it is great: it is made of three strands of yarn which have been dyed with the same set of colours, and plied together. some of teh time, the plys match and you get it single colour, but other times you get this glorious multicoloured effect. It happened that one palm would have been single coloured, but that made the two gloves look too different. So I phaffed around, and knitted the thumb in that colour. I also tried to make the fingers semi-matching. I love the way they have turned out, and I've been wearing them for the last two weeks.

Also last week, I had one of those days when needles seem to thread themselves. So I threaded several at once, for use in my leaf quilt. I've since now used those threaded needles.

The other thing I did on Friday was to make some bags for the Rainbow Comfort Bags appeal, for children affected by the bushfires in Australia. Obviously money is what they need most (you can donate to the Red Cross in the UK), but this seemed like another, more personal thing to do for them. I'm not going to post pictures yet, as the little package hasn't yet been posted (the PO was shut when I got to it yesterday). There are lots of ways in which individuals can help with the appeal - Trash probably has as good a selection of links as I could have found. Oh and she also has a raffle.