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Archive for the ‘Random Things’ Category
Sunday, April 15th, 2012
Despite being rather ill all week, I’ve had quite a productive weekend. In between the coughing and the headaches. Saturday morning I got up and baked some fruit scones :) I followed this recipe and it was great :) Apparently so great that we ate them all before I remembered to take a photo! Oops!
Then Saturday evening I finished my new set of table mats…
A nice 454g to add onto my destash total, and some rather lovely place mats and coasters :) I am slowly filling Chris’ house with crocheted items ;)
Helen popped over yesterday to collect her new laptop and came bearing a present!
Last weekend she’d commented that I needed an apron (I might have been covered in flour at the time!) and this weekend she appeared with one for me! :) Very happy me! :)
Of course, a new apron demanded I get up and do more baking, oh the hardship! ;) So in the oven this morning are some savoury muffins which smell delicious! Mine have got carrot, orange pepper, parsnip, and some of last nights leftover “rice, tomato and cheese bake” Chris made :)
Oh! Timer just went off! Let’s see how they look…
Mmmmm, smell and look gooooood! Now to see if I can wake Chris up and try one :)
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Tuesday, April 10th, 2012
Apparently I can’t focus on one craft project at a time right now. After dabbling on eBay and gaining some fun things for my parchment craft (a year of magazines with lovely patterns, more templates and stencils and card blanks) I haven’t done any more. In my defence, I had an incident with a bread knife and didn’t feel particularly capable of anything intricate.
So I did some knitting. My huge fluffy blanket is now past halfway! :)
Apparently, it’s impossible to take a photo of the blanket without a cat on it! They do seem to love the fluffy! :)
My pretty summery cotton top got to the point where I really needed to try it on and stopped because I needed a longer cable. I ordered and waited and waited, finally realising I’d ordered them to the wrong address! I have now tried it on and it fits so far :)
In the mean time though I started a plaited rug made from strips of denim taken from old jeans. It requires quite a lot of sewing which I’m not so fond of, and hence a lot of my eyes. Not a project for in front of TV I want to watch!
Saturday I decided I wanted to make some coasters :) A few hours later I had 4 rather pretty ones:
Then I finished off a fifth in a lacy pattern Sunday morning which might get a second to match later.
Then I decided I wanted to make placemats and am now halfway through the second one of those!
Oh and because I got my new cables I also got my new sock needles and want to start a pair!
I really need to focus on finishing some things and not keep starting things! :)
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Monday, March 12th, 2012
Two concerts over 3 evenings results in a sore throat and rather achey legs! :) However, much musical enjoyment :)
Friday night we went down to Wolverhampton to see Presidents of the United States of America (POTUSA from here otherwise my fingers will get worn out!) Their support band were the Straight Lines:
They had a good tshirt, so I wanted to like them more than I did. They were a little generic… nothing really stood out about them to make me want to spend money on their merchandise. Not to say they weren’t good and an enjoyable band. They were nice and chatty with the audience, they just didn’t grab me.
The main act of Friday night, POTUSA, are a band I’ve been aware of for a very long time. Oddly enough, Chris too :)
As you can tell from my photos, we were rather close… which turned out not to be a great idea! Apparently, POTUSA fans are rather, urm, crazy! I can cope with jumping around and enjoying the music… but it was all getting a bit vicious and dangerous. After a few manic songs of jumping with the crowd, some stomped on toes, and a fear of losing my glasses, we moved back a little which was much safer!
They’re a very silly group and quite chatty and enjoyed letting us all do the singing a few times :) A good night out other than the bruises!
Then on Sunday night we travelled up to Manchester to see Three Doors Down, supported by Seether :) I love it when you know and like the support acts, since it’s like getting two concerts for the price of one, rather than having to stand through randoms.
After the battering on Friday night we hung back a bit on Sunday. Seether were good, though clearly I need to buy their latest album as there were a number of songs everyone else seemed to know which I didn’t! Still, I thoroughly enjoyed singing and bouncing along to the ones I did (and still bouncing to the ones I didn’t!) :) It’s the second time I’ve seen them as a support act… maybe one day I’ll see them as the main act!
We managed to sneak a bit closer and more central before Three Doors Down came on. It seemed to take forever for them to make an appearance, which given it was a Sunday night and we were an hour from home, was making us a little grumbly! Again, I seem to be an album behind! So I need to go and buy more music (such a shame!) :) However, they played all the well known older ones too, so there was lots of singing along :)
He was nicely chatty with the audience and clearly happy we all knew the words! Though I really didn’t want to know that he flunked out of school and wrote the lyrics to some of my favourite songs at age 15 instead of paying attention in maths lessons! :( Fairly sure a band shouldn’t be advocating ignoring your education and aiming for stardom!
At one point he had the audience singing Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins a cappella – a little bizarre!
One slight upset is that because of the late start, they managed to get kicked off before playing Kryptonite! Nyargh! They came back for an encore and played some random new song most people didn’t know instead of the one everyone was expecting. So obviously that was the first track on once back to the car with my pretty new tshirt :)
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Thursday, March 8th, 2012
Some time ago, Nikki and I went to a craft show where we saw parchment craft for the first time. I was inspired by the delicate designs, by the fact it looked very similar to the embossing techniques I already love, and I wanted to try. Alas, the foolish people had no beginners set, no deal for a newbie to get the basics, no temptation to spend.
I was a little sad to leave the show without the new craft, but fear not! Nikki found a beginners kit in Hobbycraft shortly after and it was soon gifted my way :)
Then it sat. Forgotten in a corner for quite some time. Till Chris turned on Create & Craft TV and got me wanting to spend money on my card making again. Then I remembered I already had a lovely new thing to try :)
Finally last night I got out the kit, sat down for a couple of hours, and made this…
It was fun and fairly fast and created something rather lovely :) It’s a bit wrinkly and needs sticking to some card to flatten it down some! But it’s pretty :)
Tonight I made an actual card…
I think it’s a really lovely effect and I’m looking forward to making the rest of the patterns in the kit and then designing my own :)
What do you think? Have you ever tried parchment craft? What’s your favourite card making technique?
Posted in Random Things | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
I do a lot of crafting, particularly with yarn. Over the years I have built up rather a large stash of lovely smooshy yarn :) Perhaps too large a stash! So this year I intend to work at reducing the pile. Each project I complete is being marked on Ravelry with the total weight so I can keep track.
To celebrate my first kilogram I thought I would share my projects on here too :)
First up was Sasha’s bed:
This was an awesome stash busting project using a whopping 850g in only a few hours :)
Next came a pattern test for a friend:
This was a slow knit as I’ve not done double knitting before and I suck at following charts! It used up 85g.
A very quick donut mug cozy:
A random creation for Chris after he saw mug cozies on Ravelry but wanted something more unique. I particularly like that the side he drinks from says “nut” :) Only 10g though!
Then another pattern test of a cute bear:
Chris named him “Squidgey Yay Bear” which has stuck :) Including his stuffing, he weighs 35g.
Next up was some random yarn from Abakahn, bought in a sale and lacking a ball band. I thought the colours were lovely and it was soft enough to want near my skin, so I used up every last yard making these:
That was 120g of yarn used in some improvised gloves and hat :)
A total of 1.1kg so far and still going strong :)
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Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
Last Monday I took my friend Cleo to collect a kitten. Little did I know at the time that there were actually 3 little kittens looking for a new home as their owner is shortly to move to Australia. I should not be allowed little tiny bundles of fluff who need a new home… the following day I returned to collect one of my own ;)
She was born Nov 5th 2011, so she’s just over 2 months old now :) I’m sure you don’t need telling how adorable a kitten this age is… what with the extreme tininess… the chasing of everything… the vast amount of sleep required curled up on your lap… so cute! :D She also has these beautiful stripes which are a little hard to see without daylight, but this photo does a reasonable job…
Combine her cuteness with me finally finishing up two projects on Friday, and I couldn’t resist finding a project just for her :) So, most of Saturday was spent on a fabulous destashing project to make her a bright, fluffy bed. Most impressively, she seems to like it and keeps sleeping in it without me having to put her there ;)
There’s more photos over here and I’ll keep adding to that :)
Posted in Cats, Random Things | No Comments »
Thursday, January 5th, 2012
It would seem I’m not very good at keeping a blog. I have a couple of half-written posts… a review of a local restaurant and a techy post about some issues I had with a translucent status bar. It seems unlikely I’ll ever finish them, but I can’t quite bring myself to delete them.
With the beginning of 2012 comes a hope that I could start blogging again and maybe even keep up with it. To start, a brief round up of what happened last year other than the trip to Vegas which is apparently all I wrote about ;)
Kittens
Amy and Pixel joined the family. Two gorgeous kittens who were a complete surprise to the owner of their parents when she returned from a New Years Eve party! They’re now a year old and still gorgeous and cuddly :)
Games
We’ve released a whole lot of games! In chronological order…
    
    
Moving In
I have basically moved in with Chris now. There’s still a lot of stuff in my house, which I still own, but hopefully we can get that all moved soon and start the process of trying to sell it. One step closer to finding a new house together, though that will be challenging thanks to our many and varied requirements :)
Florida
Chris and I went to Florida for a holiday :) We did a lot of theme parks, which was tiring! We saw a Bucs game at the stadium (I now not only understand the rules, but can occasionally be found shouting at the TV screen to a game!) We went parasailing :)
More photos on Facebook
Paragliding
After the fun of parasailing, Chris booked us a one day paragliding taster course :) It was awesome! Extremely exhausting, but awesome :) We were flying!! :D
Chris Paragliding
Me Paragliding
2012
That probably covers all of the highlights of 2011, other than the Vegas trip which there’s lots of entries about already :) This year has already had some excitement… Meet Sasha…
Apparently, I can’t resist homeless kittens, particularly gorgeous ones! :) She’s only 8 weeks old and we’ve only had brief introductions between the cats so far. Fingers crossed that they all get along so we can keep her :D
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Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
My last beta post lacked images, so now that I have some I thought I would share them with you all! The app allows you to create pie charts in a unique way… I’m not going to go into details… instead I’m going to show you some of the strange pie charts people have been creating with the app! :)
  
  
If you would like to join in the crazy chart creation then you’ll need an iPad and to register with my blog and send me a message :) Always pleased to have more beta testers along :) Plus, I clearly need more silly charts! ;)
(Note: Spelling mistakes on charts made by their creators, not me! I only made on of these!)
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Friday, July 23rd, 2010
One of my favourite foods to eat and to bake is cornbread. It’s this really tasty, moist, slightly cheesy, slightly spicy, corny bread of awesomeness :) It goes really nicely with chilli or any kind of Mexican food. It’s great cold the next day too, should there actually be any leftovers. I adapted an old, american recipe in a number of ways, a few ingredients replaced with English equivalents, and some quantity adjustments so you don’t end up with random leftovers of yogurt and creamed corn. So without further ado, here’s a recipe for you…
 Ingredients
1 & 1/2 cups of yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup of plain flour
3 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs, slightly beaten
200g (small pot) of Greek/Natural yogurt
1 cup grated mature cheddar cheese
1 can (418g) cream style corn
1/2 cup sunflower oil
2 tbsp chopped jalapeño peppers
Instructions
The reason I like this recipe is because it’s really easy. All you need to do is throw everything into a big bowl…
and mix!
You can vary the amount of chilli peppers depending upon your taste (I’ve even made it without any and it was still very tasty!) Once it’s all mixed just pour it into a square pan…
and bake at 190 degress for 45 minutes or until a skewer/sharp knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Serve warm with a bowl of chilli :)
If you try making this recipe please leave me some feedback :) I’d love to know what you think :)
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Thursday, July 1st, 2010
I have been remiss in my posting duties again haven’t I?
In my defence life all got a bit stressful for a while there choosing between two jobs (I know, nice stress to have!) ;)
Monday marked my first day working full time for Lightwood Consultancy. I have been working for Chris for a few weeks already part time, but Monday was still an exciting day for a number of reasons :) Firstly, I got to spend the morning working on a new game idea (hopefully I’ll be able to tell you all more later, and maybe get some of you involved with testing) and secondly, the afternoon saw me gaining some new gadgetry :)
Working on iPhone/iPad development with my “pretend” Mac has been frustrating at times… when it works, it works wonderfully… when it doesn’t, it just totally refuses to work for anything up to 2 hours! :( So, as much as I don’t really like Mac OS… I am very pleased to have a 17 inch Mac Book Pro sitting on my desk! Even more pleased to have an iPad sat on my desk too ;)
Yes, my desk is suitably covered in gadgetry in that photo :) I had to have a bit of a rearrange as I’m rather too used to having Mac development to the right of PC work… which leaves the extra monitor for my email :) It is rather nice having a full time job where I get to work at home :)
 Since today I have been arguing with some silly image transformation nonsense, I took some time out this afternoon to write a little blog post for Chris. Being the strange person that I am, my first instinct when I got the iPad was to make it a case. Oddly, Chris seems quite content for me to put crochet patterns on his blog… I’m hoping for a recipe next time ;) If you’d like to make a case for your iPad and know how to crochet then you can find some rambling and a crochet pattern over on his site – A Simple iPad Case.
I haven’t forgotten about you, this blog, or Worcle. I’ve just been enjoying my new job and the new crocheting opportunities it brings! :D
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