Dreaming Spirals

I’ve been playing with Paint Shop Pro again. I downloaded a free plugin filter for it and played with one of the spider’s web photos from the last post. And then I followed some instructions for how to create a drop shadow effect. I think I need to play around with the settings a bit more to get a smaller, more natural shadow, but at least I got one, after about 15 attempts!!

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Gill from An Elegant Sufficiency tagged me with this Weird Meme. So, groan, I suppose I had better try and come up with some! I like how she reckons I’m weird! Mind you, I’ve come up with several weird things fairly quickly…

So… Six weird things about me…

1. Following Gill’s lead about further education choices, I chose my university indirectly because it was the one that Darrell and Sally went to in Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers series! It happened this way… when I was looking through the list of prospectuses to send for, I saw St Andrews, and remembered that this was the one they had gone to. Having not heard of St Andrews before, I decided to send off for the prospectus just out of curiosity. When it came, I liked the look of it so much (old, by the seaside!) that I decided to apply… and got in. And the rest is history.

2. I see myself eyeing up any rusty objects with a view to using them to dye fabric… this one at the bottom of our road has been sitting there for a few weeks. I tried to extricate it from the other detritus but couldn’t and decided I wasn’t desperate enough to carry the length of carpet up the hill as well!

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3. I was once caught by a neighbour taking a print of one of the airvents outside our house for my City & Guilds course.
4. I hate driving. I hate cars. Well, I don’t mind being driven in them, but I hate having them around when I’m walking. I love walking.
5. For the last couple of years, I’ve cut my own hair. Just as well it is straight and level. I just never seem to get round to going to the hairdresser’s to have it done properly. I’ve got some proper hairdressing scissors which I bought at a hairdressers’ supply shop in Shaftesbury Avenue in London several years ago. I used to cut the kids’ hair too until fairly recently - short back and sides with some clippers. Now, they want more complicated styles so they go to the barber’s shop.
6. I enjoy cutting and ripping fabric more than sewing it together….

I’m not going to tag anyone, but if you feel like revealing your weirdness, feel free, and let me know!!

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After the foggy day last week we had a very cold, clear, frosty day. Despite having a nasty cold and losing my voice (to the kids’ relief) I ventured outside to take photos of the spiders’ webs on the climbing frame. I love the intricacy and fascination of these lacey structures.

I love the contrast between the webs and the rusty, delapidated climbing frame here and the peeling paint.

I didn’t see any sign of the spiders who made these! I hope they were safely tucked away somewhere warm in the soil…

This one was inside the compost bin - its structure is a bit different than the others.

Happy Christmas to everyone! I’ve been watching films all afternoon - Flubber from a video followed by Peter and the Wolf on Channel 4 and then we brought the presents downstairs and put them under the tree - I don’t let them do it earlier or little fingers would sabotage them…. All I’ve got to do now (I think!) is to put custard on the trifle.

Tomorrow we will open our presents as soon as I’ve got lunch ready and then go to church. For lunch we have duck and the usual roast potatoes, sprouts, carrots, parsnips etc. Cranberry sauce if I remember to put it out! In previous years it has languished in the cupboard all day… Christmas pudding with brandy-laced custard (lots of brandy!) for pudding and trifle, Christmas cake and sausage rolls and stuff like that for tea, if anyone wants any tea after that lunch. It is just us and the kids tomorrow and then we will go up to Stoke to see my parents later in the week.

Happy Christmas!!!!

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Yesterday it was very foggy here. In many parts of the UK it still is, and is producing disruption at airports - British Airways cancelled all its flights from Heathrow today because of it.

I took my camera to school and took a few photos of it. On the way there:

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And on the way back:

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I had to go out in the evening when it was dark. I like walking round the streets at Christmastime after dark because I love looking at people’s Christmas lights and Christmas trees all lit up. It all seems so festive. And the fog just added to the seasonal atmosphere.

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I love the glow from the streetlights and passing cars.

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This is a streetlamp under a tree. It looks almost like a spectacular sunset!

I emailed the last two to the BBC for their Your Pictures: Foggy Weather section but they haven’t put them up yet. But it’s worth clicking on the link to see the others. There are some gorgeous ones.

Today was crisp and cold - minus two apparently, according to the Met. Office. My two poor eldest sons were playing their violins in the town centre (my eldest managed to do it with his ski gloves on!!). A friend and I went and enjoyed hot chocolate and coffee in the nearby Starbucks instead (pity we couldn’t hear their playing over the Starbucks canned Christmas music….). Last day of school tomorrow so I have to get as much as possible done …. marzipan on the Christmas cake, visit the farmers’ market in town, buy a few last minute pressies….

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I’ve just been knitting and listening to Britknitcast, a relatively new British knitting podcast. It is hosted by Carrie Anne Dennison who lives in the North East of England. I particularly like it because she goes to shows and workshops and records interviews and conversations and it really feels like you are there!

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I’ll show you a photo of what I’m knitting later on but it is for a friend (probably late for Christmas but it gives me an excuse to sit and knit instead of rushing round like a headless chicken!) so I won’t reveal it until I know she’s received it.

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I can’t believe how much interest is still being shown in my Concertina Book photo Tutorial which I posted almost a year ago.

Sharon at In a Minute Ago kindly posted a link to it about a week ago and the Craftypod Podcast mentioned it as a resource in their Making Alt (not Altered) Books podcast .

If you are stuck for a gift or two and want something quick to make, I recommend having a go!

Meanwhile, I still have some presents to buy and all my cards to write and several other things to do …. it was my birthday yesterday - thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! One new phenomenon this year was the uncanny number of emails I had from online sales outlets and other sites like my webhost who also wished me a happy birthday…. I’m SURE I have never told them what it is! A bit worrying…

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Golly, I can’t believe it’s a week since I wrote a blog post. I have been busy. And then when I tried to get into my blog, my server was playing up… has anyone had problems accessing it this week? It has been pretty good for all this year since I signed up but over the last couple of weeks I have been having a few problems so if you have tried to read it and couldn’t, do let me know and I’ll try and sort it out with my webhost.

Leanne asked about rss feeds and it occurred to me that other people might not know about them, so I am copying an email I sent to the Quiltart list a few weeks ago about subscribing to feeds so you know when a blog has been updated.

Are people generally aware that you can subscribe to a blog’s feed and you can be emailed when it is updated? You can either subscribe to one online which sends you emails, either to tell you it is updated or with the whole blog entry in the email. Or you can download an rss reader which acts a bit like a browser, and you add blogs that you want to subscribe to. I use one of these, which is called Awasu.

So you don’t need to keep checking them to see if they have been updated!

Some online ones are Feedburner and Feedblitz. There are more, but I can’t think of them offhand.

When you are subscribing to a feed, if it asks you for its rss feed you can often find it on the blog itself - it’s the url ending in .rss or .atom. But most rss readers will find them automatically from the blog’s url.

Some blogs have boxes on them where you can subscribe automatically by filling in your email address like the box on mine at the top of the sidebar.

Then there is also Technorati, which is a blog search engine and picks up new blog entries quicker than Google.

So, what have I been up to all week? Hmmm… well, I went to the dentist on Monday and he took a cast of my lower jaw to make a special guard thing to wear at night. I’m collecting it tomorrow, so I hope it is effective! I’ve been having baths last thing at night to help me relax and that seems to have helped with the teeth grinding.

On Tuesday someone on Quiltart mentioned a free series of classes to help increase your Search Engine Optimisation on your website and so I signed up to that. It’s just getting going so we shall see how effective it is.

On Wednesday I started thinking about a series of work and brainstorming it but because of all the Christmas activities for the kids’ school and cubs I haven’t had much chance to do anything more about it yet!

On Thursday it was meant to be Zachary’s Christmas concert (well, advent service really) but it was postponed because of the weather - it wasn’t quite as bad as the mini-tornado in London but it got quite close! Squalls of gale force winds, torrential rain and hailstones were interspersed with deceptively sunny weather, lulling you into a false sense of security and then hitting you again… I just managed to escape one by sheltering in the doorway of an estate agents while returning home from the cancelled concert. At least Barnabas’ rugby match was cancelled too… he is usually a sub, which means shivering on the sidelines until half time and since he had flu last week I was quite pleased he didn’t have to! In the evening was the annual Cubs party at a restaurant halfway between Newport and Cardiff, and this WASN’T cancelled. It wasn’t worth going home in the meantime so I sat in the car, watching the windblown spray and listening to the hailstones clattering on the windscreen. And being inspired by the raindrops glittering on the glass all lit up by the streetlamps in the restaurant carpark.

On Friday I helped out at the church youth club, cutting out silhouettes of a nativity scene and trying to persuade the kids to help!

Yesterday, Zachary and I trawled the shops in an abortive attempt to find some aeroplane motifs to sew on to a slipper he is making for DT at school. Only one slipper, you understand…. So I rashly agreed to find one on the internet to sew out on my sewing machine. Although my machine has this embroidery facility, I haven’t used it very much, so it was very much a learning curve. 2 hours of internet trawling later I now have a selection of aeroplanes on my hard drive and a trial version of Buzztools so now I have to learn to use it and try and remember how to transfer it to the card …. all this for one aeroplane for one slipper which will never be worn!! It’s fun, isn’t it?! Or am I just a sucker?!!

Last Sunday Anselm put up the Christmas tree and festooned various decorations round the house. Here’s the tree!

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And a selection of candles and rather sad looking decorations on the mantlepiece… and that is probably our lot for Christmas! Next week it’s delivering Scout post, cubs town trail and various other fun things…

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Last week when I was under the weather, I was idly looking out of the window and noticed the wisteria pods hanging from the plant. They were swaying in the breeze and it amused me, for some reason. They looked so funny, hanging there. Who needs Christmas decorations?

I notice the wisteria pods now because I based three of my 2005 Journal Quilts on them - January, February and June.

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Here is a closer photo:

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I’ve just spent half an hour updating my rss feeds for all the Blogger blogs which have moved to Beta Blogger! Awasu doesn’t seem to automatically notice them, and I had wondered why a lot of them weren’t being updated recently… still, all okay now.

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Bristol-Myers Squibb - one of the large drug manufacturers with its hand in AIDS treatment medication - is donating $1 to AIDS every time someone goes to their website Light To Unite and moves the match to the candle and lights it.

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