Friday, January 25, 2008

A wet week

But luckily I was mainly unaffected by it. Despite torrential rain in West Yorkshire on Monday and widespread flooding about the area, my house (on top of a hill) remained mostly watertight. I say mostly as my roof has leaked slightly where the waterproofing in the gully along the bottom has deteriorated. But this has been sorted now so (fingers crossed) it should stop now. And I MUST remember to get it redone every now and again rather than waiting for it to leak again!!!

Many people were less lucky and some people in Armitage Bridge; the village at the bottom of the hill had the River Holme through their houses. In Calderdale where many of my work colleagues live the situation was similar with many getting calls from neighbours telling them that the water was lapping up against front doors. The situation wasn't improved by someone having reversed an articulated lorry INTO the river.

By two thirty am when I left the house on Tuesday morning the rain had stopped and there was a coating of frost on the windows of the car (inside as well as out). Bit too much weather for my taste! Despite all this the roads were okay and my run went quite smoothly. I was diverted in Upton-on-Severn (clue's in the name Rachel) where a road was underwater but apart from tat no problems. As promised I took some pictures of the flooding round Worcester, but they're not brilliant.

I was able to spread a little knitterly wisdom on Tuesday. A shop assistants at one of my customers is a knitter and was talking about knitted bikinis, so I told her about the knitted knickers I saw at Woolfest. She was intrigued; both by the knickers and by Woolfest which was entirely new to her. I told her there was a similar thing in Wales (Wonderwool) and went on to tell her about Get Knitted which despite living in Bristol she didn't know about!!! She's quite young and fashionable so it's nice that she's enthusiastic. Another one in the eye for the people who think knitting is confined to grandmotherly types in rocking chairs.

I'm sort of mentoring a new knitter at work as well. She's only very recently started but is very keen and I was able to tell her about Coldspring Mill's wool cellar. She went there last weekend and got some stuff for a scarf. She's bringing it to the co-op general meeting this evening for me to cast an eye over and a spot of KIPing. I'm taking my latest sock!

Lastly I was talking to a male colleague at work yesterday and Penelope Cruz came up. I said that whilst not generally being particularly interested in Hollywood stars I was a little envious of her as I consider her to be particularly attractive. "Bet she can't knit though!" was his response. (I know she probably can, but I appreciated the thought anyway! And I bet she can't drive a truck!!!)

blogging in bed (new laptop). Excellent!!!

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Action Packed Weekend

Sorry chicks, no pictures again. I really must get the old camera out and take some, but the light is so bloody awful. Mind you having said that I really wished that I'd had it with me last Wednesday morning as I drove from Inkberrow to Leigh; a distance of no more than twenty miles. I made the mistake of doing it between eight and half nine in the morning and that's about how long it took. It was an absolutely beautiful morning though, clear and clean; probably because of the torrential rain of the previous night. I'd have loved to be able to post pictures of the floods around Worcester, I had plenty of time as I sat stationary in the rush hour traffic to take any number of pictures, but alas I'd neglected to pack my camera. I'll try to remember to take it with me in future.

The weekend has been action packed as I splashed out and bought myself a laptop and a wireless router on Friday and have spent the best part of Friday and Sunday setting the damn thing up. Still it's done now, security all sorted out after a (second) trip to PC World in order to ensure that I had the right end of the stick re: how to protect my network from unwanted intruders. And I've just finished rearranging the living room so that there's a table (with a handy socket) for it to live on when I'm not carting it around. Why is it that when you move stuff around you're always left with a load of junk that you can't find a home for? This is currently in a pile in the middle of the living room. And there's a chair in front of the TV. No, it's RIGHT in front of the TV.

So now I will be able to listen to the Tigers' away games in the comfort of my living room instead of upstairs in the computer room (chilly) and I can watch TV progs that I've missed when out driving (I bought a cable to link the laptop to the TV as well so that I can view stuff again on a decent sized screen). Don't really know that it's enough to justify the expense but I know that I'll use it; I'll probably just be like Ro though and never use the PC again!!!


ha, gotta photo. Over Christmas I Knitted the "Lighthouse Gansey Socks" from Knitty for my neice from New Zealand. Just checked up on my email and Ro has sent me a picture of them being modelled by Jenn.
Another of them being modelled by jenn and a ferret (Ron). They said in Ikea that they're weasles but I've seen a weasel and they're far smaller than that.
I've also found a picture of "My so called scarf" by Sheep in the city, which I knitted for big sis (Jenns mum) recently returned from the land of the long white cloud.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Now I feel bad!

I've just been reading a discussion on Ravelry and one of the things that came up was how much the poster hates it when a blogger just drops off the scene. In particular she says ones that are part of a web ring so you're happily trolling along and you come across a blog that was last updated in June 2006. Well it's not quite that long since I updated but it's going that way and I appologise to anyone who feels that way about my blog.

I was seriously considering folding it up and taking it away as I seemed to have lost the will to update and I'm not sure why. I have a feeling that people are now spending time on Ravelry that they once spent reading and writing their blogs. I'm sure that I am. This is a bit sad because Ravelry is still an invitation only site so a lot of people are probably getting left out.