In other news...

So, as you all know it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago. You didn't know? Is that why you didn't send me a card?

Tut!

Well, people on Ravelry came to my rescue, look at all the stuff I received!

I also placed an order with Alison for some teeny tiny 4" DPN's, some Wendy's Happy Yarn (it's gorgeous stuff, 75% Bamboo and 25% Nylon; sooooooooooooo soft!) and a chart holder.

Alison is the person that Kerry bought my KnitPicks needles from for my birthday last year and look what Alison did this year!

Remember WWKiPD? Well we were in the local paper!

I've also received my first installment of Knitting Goddess Sock Club yarn and it's gorgeous!

I can't wait to find a gorgeous pattern for that one!

I met up with (what felt like) half the knitting group last night to do some spinning. We had great fun, I'm still struggling a little bit, but I'm slowly getting there! I let Jake and Rachael have a play on the wheel too - they both loved it!

I think Joy was right to begin with; I think an Ashford Traditional is too heavy to me - maybe it's the single treadle, not sure. But I shall be on the lookout for a new wheel at iKnit!

How does your garden grow?

I hate our garden, truly!

Our garden is a work in progress...ok, so I know that ALL gardens are considered a work in progress, but mine truly is. There used to be a huge shed in the middle of it which we knocked down (but we haven't got around to digging up the concrete floor yet), my mother has regular bonfires out there too.

The outside is starting to look ok, but the middle is a shit-tip!

But, I decided to try and be all inspired today and get some practice is with the camera and I wandered around my garden looking for things to photograph.

Here is the Russet Apple Tree and the 'working' part of the garden.

I found plants beginning to flower.

Roses in full flower.

Other flowers and plants growing well and in full bloom.

Fuschias!

Ladybirds working away industriously.

But it was all too much for Doyle!

E-mail link

This is a follow on from my hyperlink how-to.

Have you ever been on a website and seen a hyperlink that says send us an e-mail and you click on e-mail and it takes you to your e-mail program with the address already filled in?

Clever, isn't it.

It's VERY simple to do.

Type your word or phrase, how about: Contact me

Now, highlight it and click the hyperlink button. In the pop up box type "mailto:" immediately followed by your e-mail address and click ok, now you should have a hyperlink to your e-mail address

How-to

I have written several tutorials throughout my blog, I'm going to do this whenever I see one and they will be tagged with How-to so that you can find them if you're so inclined!

Today's how-to is hyperlinks.

Hyperlinks allow you to type in a word and then make that word a link that will take you somewhere else, for example here is a link to Ravelry.

First off, you need the address that you want to link to. There are a few ways to do this, you can either memorise it (if it's a straightforward address like http://www.ravelry.com then that's quite easy, if it's a great long address, it's a bit harder. If it's a longer address, the easiest way is to go to the page, now highlight the address in the white address bar and click ctrl+c to copy. If you see someone else has posted a link, for example here is the hyperlink to Ravelry, now right click on the link and click 'copy link location'.

Now, go back to where you want to put your hyperlink. Now you type your text, and then highlight the bit that you want to be the link - in this case the word Ravelry.

Now you need to look for the hyperlink symbol, on blogger it looks like this:

On Ravelry, it looks like this:

It's usually one of those two little globe symbols (sometimes you can also find it by right clicking on your highlighted word), click that and in the box that appears either paste the address that you copied earlier or just type the address if you know it. Click ok and there you go, you've created a hyperlink!

Spinning

OMG! How hard is that?!? I was sooooooo blasé a week ago; I thought it'd be easy! I suppose it's like trying to read without someone to teach you; it was so hard.

I actually got really upset and frustrated because no matter what I did, I COULDN'T DO IT!!!

I'd go on twitter and say, "why does the thing with the hooks on do that?", "is the bobbin (I knew that word!)supposed to do that?", "this thingy is doing that, is that right?"

Then I'd get this techno talk back about how the flyer (I now know that's the thing with hooks on) is supposed to do whatever it was doing and that there's too much twist and I need to adjust my tension, but no one would then tell me how LOL

It got to the point where I was beginning to think I was going to chuck it on the bonfire!

After a plaintive rant (with swearing, no less) on twitter, darling Joy came to my rescue! She dropped everything and came to my house EVEN THOUGH we're meeting tomorrow night at the restaurant that our knit nights are held.

Then she patiently stood and waited while my son gave a witness statement to the police (he witnessed a bloke hitting a woman) before sitting me down and taking me through it all!

And look at what I did!!!

Joy, I love you to bits!

I also want to thank wyndwitch and Knitcave1 (and everyone else on twitter) for putting up with me lol

The King of Pop

I've just heard that Michael Jackson has also passed today after suffering a heart attack.

Goodbye, Angel

Farrah Fawcett, one of Charlie's Angels, has died at the age of 62 after a 3 year battle against cancer.

Prom & Socks!

Friday night was Matt's prom night, we spent Friday getting him all dolled up; we dyed his hair black, painted his nails black he even put on black eyeshadow...you get the idea!

AND he wore his pink prom socks!

Here are some pictures of him with his date, Milly.

As you know, my first attempt at Vortical was a failure and I've had to reknit it. I finished the first sock this evening and it fits! It fits so well that it's given me more enthusiasm to finish the second one!

Oh, but if you stay...

I just called Sky, they were lovely and polite until I refused to discuss staying with them. I told them I wanted to cancel and the guy says "Oh, we can give you a 25% discount for six months." So I asked what would happen after six months and he says "Well.....it'll go back up to what you're paying now!"

I asked him what the point was and he said "Well, it'll save you 25% per month." I explained that by cancelling, I'd save 100%...he didn't like that.

Then he tried to tell me that if I went into a shop and they offered me 25% off, I'd think that was a really good deal. I said "Not if I've been giving them approximately £65 per month for 11 years with nothing in return!"

He went awfully quiet for a minute and then told me that I wouldn't get TV any cheaper elsewhere, so I repeated that we barely watched it and it would be a WHOLE lot cheaper without it at all and I wasn't at all worried. He said "Well, this 25% off offer won't be valid after today." I was all blase and just said "Yes, I know." LOL

Funny, how their politeness drains away when you can out argue, in a cool, calm and collected manner, them!

I hope I don't find it too strange, I've had Sky TV for over 11 years now!

Sky TV will go off on July 22^nd.

A Day in London

As you can see from my Bittersweet post, yesterday was my birthday.

As a birthday present, my mum took me to London to see The War of The Worlds musical at The o2 arena.

We got up early and caught the 9am ferry to Portsmouth, we drove to London. I missed the turning for teh M25 and ended up having to go through London!

What should've been a 2 and a half hour drive ended up being 4 hours!

We had also booked shows at the Planetarium, so we caught a bus to the observatory.

Here are some pics of the observatory, the view from the observatory and the o2 arena.

Here are some other pictures of the GMT stuff, the telescope enclosure and a REALLY old meteorite.

We had lunch there then we saw a couple of shows down in the planetarium. One was about the night sky and we were shown all the constellations and then we saw one about the life of stars. It was all very interesting and I'd love to go and spend the day nosing around there. I think the kids might enjoy it too!

Then we headed back to the arena to see The War of the Worlds.

It was great! I'd never listened to the album all the way through before and I really enjoyed this. They had done a CGI representation of Richard Burton and shown it as a hologram on a film screen. The whole performance was an almagamation of cinema screen and live performance, but what they showed in the middle was fabulous!

It's a fighting machine and it blew smoke and sparks over the audience in front of the stage!

It was a very long day though and we didn't get home until 2am this morning, I'm shattered.

I wonder if I'll get around to spinning today; can you believe I haven't actually managed to spin on it yet?!?!