Hello world!

I need a fresh start. A lot of things happened last year (a lot of gigs, lost 3 stone, holidays… oh and Porl and I got married, finally.) I wish I’d kept a better record of it all. My old manic kitty blog was weighing me down. I didn’t like blogger but I wanted to blog. So a fresh start is called for and here I am.

Some things are the same. I still craft, still too many projects at once. I still often get fed up and unravel them, but occasionally I finish them. I’m trying to be better and get on top of things. I managed to finish some on going projects last year. My “Frederick the Literate” cross-stitch and an Apocalypse Hoodie which was 3 years in the making… although truthfully it still needs blocking and a zip… though with the weight loss it may not fit.

The big task of this year I’ve decided it to de-clutter. The amount of “stuff” I have in the house has been getting me down. And it is my stuff, I admit it, however Goblin’s stuff also needs reining in, and hers is more visible. I’m very good in that I know where everything is. I amaze Porl by being able to describe exactly where something is, even if we’ve not used it in years. But I’ve got fed up of not being able to close drawers and cupboards, and we can’t get in the loft anymore! We don’t have elastic walls so it has to go.

I’ve been trying to do a little every day. So far I’ve Freegled my knitting machine and all the wool that went with it, glass jars, and a doll’s cot that Goblin doesn’t play with. We’ve taken 1 boot load of things to the charity shop and there’s another boot load of things ready to go. A fair amount has also been binned. I hate throwing things away, but these were truly fit for nothing, unless you have a use for dried up make-up? I’ve still a long long way to go, but it feels good already. The shelves in the living room are tidy. I can open the Welsh dresser drawers without a fight… something which hasn’t been possibly for Years! And the top shelf in our wardrobe is empty. I put things up there when we built the wardrobes, just before Goblin was born and I haven’t touched them since.

I should give some credit regarding the decluttering to a couple of people who are keeping me motivated. Flylady, who I signed up to years ago when Goblin was first born. It didn’t last and I thought I’d unsubscribed, but for some reason I started recieving the DailyDigest emails again at the start of the year, so I’ve been reading them and doing a few of the suggestions.
Secondly TheThriftyMrs who is also spending 2011 decluttering. Today’s post about decluttering her handbag is one task I regularly try and fail at. I blame the Goblin and multiple jobs for the amount of things I need to carry.

So that’s me. Hopefully I’ll keep this up this time. Now I’m off to play with wordpress and see how I can make this place pretty.

About time!

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!

Seed Swap

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.

Book meme

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.

Anglesey and fibres

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.

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

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.