My new blog can be found at: dragonrambles.co.uk

It’s a little sparse at present but I have a few posts I plan to put up this week, starting with those recipes I was supposed to post before xmas, and the completed Blackstone that I finished while enjoying a stitching day at Nancy’s.

So farewell sweetestcondition and thanks.

This weekend is my last chance to enjoy my flat on my own for a while as I have someone moving in with me.  She’s just moving to Cardiff and needs a place to stay while getting settled so will probably only be here for 3 or 4 months.  That helps me out financially at the moment (duck races and trips to the other side of the world being very expensive) and I can decide if I want to get someone in again in the new year.

Stress levels are getting back under control, I’m really looking forward to the visit back to Australia and NZ in Sept/Oct and making plans for when I get back, and all is going well.  Things could always be better, but I’m not complaining and just moving forward one day at a time.

Hugs to all.

The rewrite of our data analysis program at work that I thought would just take a week has had me going round in circles.  I think I finally know what I need to do to get all the bits working now, but I think I still have a few days of solid work to do to get it there.

And with that lovely shawl I was knitting – I’m back to where I was two weeks ago.  I started stitching the borders one at a time (flat knitting) but the sides with all the yarn overs were too messy and I didn’t think it would look very nice once it was stitched together so I undid what I’d done on the first side and picked up all the stitches around the sides to stitch in the round.  Of course that makes rows of 472 stitches!  What does that mean?  Well when I stuff up, I have that much more to undo.  And yes, I’ve undone a lot… repeatedly.  Broken the yarn, had the join unravel one or two rows later which caused more unknitting.  Then when I think I finally have that sorted I find I’m two stitches short in one section an end up unknitting the whole lot back to the start of the border.  And of course all this has thinned the already thin wool so much that I’ve know joined a new ball at the beginning of the border, but at least this means I shouldn’t have to join one again.  Fingers crossed it gets better from here and that in two weeks I have some border to show you all.

On the plus side (progress in something), I’ve been up ridiculously early for the last 3 mornings to attend business meetings to try and get takers for corporate ducks for the duck race and have now got some great contacts for my yearly duck races.  From next year will be great, here’s hoping this year’s one isn’t too bad.  I’ve got to get up at 4.30 tomorrow for one last one (yes I know how crazy that sounds), here’s hoping it goes as well as I’ve been told to expect.

So summing up the last two weeks, lots of time spent getting nothing much done.  Hopefully that’ll change and I’ll have some updates soon.

Last year I was unable to go to the show as that was the weekend I was off in Dartmoor.  Thinking that it would be around the same time again (first weekend of Nov) I thought I’d be able to go this year.  After visiting Vicky’s blog I just went and checked the dates… they’ve brought it forward a whole month to the first weekend of October! No!  That’s when I’m in Australia.  

Another year with no craft show.  I think next year I’ll have to go to one somewhere else in the UK just in case the universe wants to go 3 for 3.  It’s a conspiracy I say!

I’m having a stack of fun doing this gardeing thing.  I’ve overgrown my tomatoes so they are taking longer to appear and ripen but the learning what to do is all part of the fun.  This year I started with tomatoes, capsicums, cucumbers, zucchinis, strawberries and potatoes.  Next year I have bigger plans.

And while on the topic of gardens, I have been working on Blackstone Garden lately.  I’ve managed to get quite a bit of stitching done now that I’m making a point of taking at least an hour each night.

For those interested it’s stitched on 28ct Pansy from Pictures This Plus.  The green knot is Dragon Opal (Vikki Clayton) with the outline in Moonglow (Room for Threads).  The other knot is in a custom variegated silk by Vikki Clayton with the outline in Mystic Pools (Dinky Dyes).  And all the blackwork, the colours assigned so far are: A – Rose Bay (Dinky Dyes), B – Noosa (Dinky Dyes), C – Deep Ocean (Vikki Clayton), D – Deep Blue Sea (Gloriana), G – Cabernet (Dinky Dyes).  So just the Rose Bay to finish and then two more colours to assign and stitch and it’ll be done.

I haven’t actually done any stitching for months.  I’ve been so busy doing other things instead.  I remembered in December that I had the first 3 books from Janny Wurt’s Alliance of Light series that I hadn’t read yet.  Of course since it’s been a few years since I had read the trilogy that came before, I had to reread those too.  So I worked my way through 6 books, bought the 7th in Jan and gobbled that one up too.  And I picked up the last one on Sat on my way to the plane.  Weekends seem to disappear on me when I have a good book, let alone a good series standing by.

I’ve also been doing some quilting.  The fast way though – on a sewing machine.  The reason for this is that I am planning on making 2 – 3 quilts over the next few months and raffling them off to raise money for the British Heart Foundation.  I’ve signed up for one of their world experience fundraisers and I have a minimum of 2,200 pounds to raise for it.  Some of that goes towards the trip costs so I’m putting in my own money and time to make quilts to help raise some money.  I’ve already done one quilt top and started the second.  I’ll post photos at the weekend.

Oh and I’ve started trying to organise a rubber duck race for the same cause.  I’ll tell you more about that another time.

But what I mainly stopped in here for today is that I’m having a break at a conference (free wireless – yay!) and was checking up peoples blogs.  Of course because I’ve been hibernating so long, I had to go and find out what a chart looked like – uh oh.  Now I remember why it has been so easy not to buy any new charts for such a long time… I haven’t been looking at them  Just a quick look at the new charts of HAED and I’m sunk.  And I haven’t even looked up the ones I went there for yet.  So far I’m sunk on: rainbow dragons (of course), as well as Felis and Tigris (surprise, surprise), and then I stopped myself from looking because, hey, I could get myself in serious trouble.

I have started another blog that is on my life in the UK.  I still have a few blogs that are typed in a word document and just waiting for me to paste into wordpress and add the photos.  I hope to finish those off this weekend when I get home.  But if anyone wants to go and see it in its ‘work in progress’ state, with just some posts there, you can find it here.  Part of the reason behind the name is I was planning on picking up a cute little red dragon ty-beanie baby and taking it everywhere as a travel toy.  Still haven’t got one though (well, bought several, just sent them all off to other people), but I will definitely have one ready for my next trip.

Ok, so I’ve gone from no posting to one massive one with no photos so I’ll end this here.  Fingers crossed I’ll blog again this weekend (after I’ve had lots of sleep).

He’s a good excuse not to make the bed

On Monday, despite my very sexy migraine, I got something working that I had been trying to get going for about a week.  Then on Wed I got the next step working.  Only, Wed afternoon I discovered that this had stopped the first step working.  At this point, after much attempts to back track and some screaming I went home   Then this morning I found it was impossible to backtrack and I had useless code.  Now why didn’t I save it before I broke it!  Thankfully I got an idea this afternoon and I have both steps all working and the next step done too.  Now I have a directory called unbroken.  I have copied all working versions there so I have it if I break it again

So hence, unbroken was born.  Thank god tomorrow is Friday!