Remember this post?
My tech support guy (aka husband) has retrieved all the data, including one set of specific photos I really didn't want to loose. I am, as you can imagine, very pleased.
I need to reset access to the website where I keep my photos, so although blogging can continue, it will be without pictures for a while. I also need to convert a bunch of files from one format to another, but at least I have them.
Like lots of the rest of England last week we had snow: 7 inches deep in the garden. This is a lot for our part of the UK, and it still covers the garden in a thick layer.
I came across a plea last week for people to put out food for the birds. With the ground covered or frozen, they can't get at their normal sources of food.
For the crafty among us, feeding birds does not have to be just a case of chucking out a few birdseeds: we can cook some bird cakes. These are definitely not "people cakes", but a mix of nuts (not salted), dried fruit, and biscuit crumbs held together by melted lard. There are lots of recipes on the web (and another one below).
We don't normally get many birds in our garden: there are too many local cats who cross through it, and anyway the countryside is over the fence. But in the last week there have been lots of birds: the crab apples which I felt guilty about leaving on the tree are all eaten now, and this means that probably there is very little food for them.
This morning, we had four pheasants come into our garden. We sometimes get one or two, but I have never seen more then that. But today, there were four.
As a craft-blogger, I know you will have fun making bird cakes. You may have the ingredients already - lard left over from making pastry for mince pies, the open pack of dried fruit that looked a bit too iffy for Christmas baking and maybe a pack of out-of-date walnuts. (Or is that just my cupboard?) Melt the lard and mix in the other ingredients. (I soaked the chopped apricot in boiling water for a few minutes first, because they were completely dried out.) Meanwhile prepare some yoghurt pots by making a hole in the bottom and threading string/wool through them: as I didn't have any yoghurt pots availble I lined a ramekin with greaseproof paper through which I'd threaded my string. Tip in the mix and leave to harden. When ready, tie to a tree.
Ideally, you will keep doing this til spring: the birds' reserves are spent, and they need to keep going until the breeding season. But even just a few times will help.
PS Please consider publicising this if you have a blog. Thank you.
My waking-up drink of choice is coffee. Few things are nicer then a cup of coffee drunk sitting up in bed while I slowly wake up.
Alas, a cup of coffee in the morning is not what my laptop likes. This morning's cup was not drunk, but dropped and spilled in equal parts between my laptop and the duvet.
The laptop is drying in the airing cupboard: DH is hopeful that the data might be retrivable...
It might only be a few days into the new year. However I've already started four new bits of knitting since Christmas, finished two of them (admittedly they were tiny), and finished an 'old' project as well. Pictures to follow...
I was waiting for written confirmation, but the post van containing the letter seems to be stuck behind Father Christmas's sleigh, so here goes;
The result for my A297 Latin course with the Open University was a very good Level 1 pass with a Distinction!
As you can imagine, I am very pleased.
Now back to wrapping presents and making mince pies.
At last my waistcoat is finished and I am extremely pleased with it.
The kit was bought from a charity shop some time ago: at the time, it looked very dated, but I loved the colours. So into a cupboard it went, waiting for the perfect project.
And then, about this time last year, I went into Next (a UK clothing retailer) and was surrounded by garments in the colours and styles of the waistcoat from the kit. The perfect project was for it to be itself.
Yes, it needed a little bit of work to be the self it ought to be. The dark brown was wrong for the twenty-first century: when I piled some other yarns near it the red Rowan felted tweed livened up the other colours, and made it more modern. The kit waistcoat was too short, so I lengthened the ribbing (8 rows instead of 4) and made the body a lot longer. This had the effect of using up a lot of the main yarn, so I changed the colours above the yoke, and also the armhole.
There were lots and lots of ends to sew in, but I finished on Sunday. It was looking good.
On Monday I put it on, and it was instant love. I was hoping to like it, but instead it is gorgeous. Modern and retro and rustic, in colours I love.
A year ago, I was commenting on the silent ending of a family tradition.
I'm happy to say that about a month ago, Middle Kiddo and I bought an advent candle from a pre-Christmas fair in Milton Keynes shopping centre, and it lights up our evening meals.
There is a change to the tradition though - I don't light it any more. The kiddos take turns. Young Kiddo uses extra-long matches and blows them out immediately but Old Kiddo uses normal length ones and sees how long they will stay burn.
Last week was crochet week.
I designed the following flowers - the colours come from the use of variegated yarn:
Then I went onto another block in my never ending Learn-to-Crochet Blanket. The stitch pattern was based on one I half remember from Magknits, a now defunct knitting magazine that used to be run by the owner of Yarn Forward.
It's currently about twice the size of this now: however we have started watching the DVD of the TV series 24 - we missed it when it was first broadcast, so are finding it compelling viewing. But it is also not the kind of program you can crochet through, too many things going on.
The closure of a bookshop is a sad event, but it does enable a reader to buy a now of books at reduced price. Borders bookshop was extremely busy on Monday lunchtime, but I managed to get Amigurumi and 201 crochet motifs, as well as a selection of other books. Plenty to keep me going for a while!
It's a bit wet up there. The cottage where we stayed is not actually in the flood warning area, but it is very, very close to it ....
ETA: It's not our cottage: we stayed there for two weeks in the summer (and took the photo, which is my current blog-header).
I'd planned to post that my new header is a photo of the baktus scarf: I hung it on the drystone wall where we stayed. However this is not that that post.
I'd planned to show photos of the finished collar on my waistcoat, except it is just waiting for the final grafting together. So this is not that post.
I'd planned to find something particularly nice to make as a blogavarsary giveaway, but I haven't. So this is not that post.
However, it is four years since my first post on this blog. I've met people in cyberspace that I wouldn't have without it. I've met people in peoplespace. I've made things because of it. I've enjoyed it. And driving to work yesterday I thought about stuff and decided my life is good, and I am happy.
This is the post that says those things.
PS Thanks for the nice comments about the new header.
The Latin exam has been and gone, but it has taken a while to get back into blogging. Even crafting was neglected: no knitting, no sewing, no crochet. Possibly I might have extended the break for longer, if it hadn't been for my forthcoming blogaversary coming up in mid-November.
Yesterday however I got out the waistcoat again to see what I was doing. There had been a difficult decision to make about the collar - I'd got up to the place where the collar needed to bend round the neck.
Now that it had been left to ruminate, the decision was quick to make and easy to put into action. The collar is seven stitches wide and instead of knitting back and forth, I added some short-rows.
It is hard to find instructions on the web, so this is a simplified version of what I did: the collar is seven stitches wide. In reality, the inside stitch also picks up one of the waistcoat edge stitches, thereby joining them together, and the outside two stitches are garter stitch
*Row 1: K7
Row 2: P4 W&T
Row 3: K4
Row 4: P7*
Repeat two more times.
Two rows stocking stitch
Two more short row sections.
Continue in stocking stitch.
