I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while, it's the computer's fault!

I bought a swanky keyboard to go with my new Mac, it had an inbuilt trackball and lots of programmable buttons and it looked great. When it arrived it turned out that although it worked....kinda....it wasn't actually compatible with OS X and I couldn't programme a lot of the buttons :(

Then after a couple of days of owning it, the bloody trackball stopped working! I nearly threw the whole lot out of the window in frustration! I e-mailed the eBay seller I got it from and he said to return it for a full refund and I bought a new keyboard in Maplin's and ordered a Logitech Trackman from Amazon.

It all finally arrived today so that I could get on and post.

Last weekend I went to iKnit, it wasn't as big as I was expecting but there was a bit of choice. I bought 200g of black Wensleydale, 2 zauberballs and 500g of Alpaca/Merino!

On the way home, I stopped at Gunwharf Keys to meet up with Karen and bought her Kromski Sonata from her.

Today we collected the camper - it's soooooo exciting! We're going to go to Brightstone Forest with the dogs tomorrow to give it a good run and to see if we can figure out how to use all the stuff inside LOL.

Next month we're hoping to spend a couple of nights in the New Forest.

I'd also like to visit some people too, so if you're in the UK and you fancy a visit - lemme know!

FIBREFEST!

Today was Fibrefest!

My alarm went off at 5.30am this morning. I'd only been asleep two hours - I can never sleep if I've got to get up early the next day!

I drove to Newport to pick up Su and Joy so that we could catch the 7.30am ferry.

The drive there was uneventful except for a brief rain spurt which reduced visibility to almost nothing and slowed our speed to about 40mph!

Fibrefest was held at Cold Harbour Mill in Devon and there was loads there! I meant to take loads of pictures, but only got these ones of the mill (sorry, can't tell you what half this stuff is LOL):

This one when I walked into the first tent.

Here's Su enjoying a flapjack and coffee.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh, do you know who that is? That's P/Hop Pete!

Sheep!

They even had an air raid shelter with lots of cool stuff inside (even a Mathematics book!)

But here's what you really want to see.................FIBRE!

Because a sheep is essential to the smooth operation of a spinning wheel:

I also picked up this little stash bag made by The Laal Bear.

I'd seen her around on Ravelry and was gobsmacked when she asked if my week had improved and admitted she reads my blog!!!

I also met up with Marianne, Helen, Gemma (KraftyKoala), Just Julie, Sarah, Anni, Fleegle and loads more people said "Hi" to me and I'm really sorry that I can't remember who everyone was LOL.

This week

Hmmmmmmm, this is probably going to be quite a long post, so be warned!

Phantom of the Opera - loved it! It was amazing! The young man who played the Phantom was Nic Greensheilds and his performance was so inspiring, I was in absolute floods of tears!

On the way to London we stopped at Drummonds, it's one of those places that strips the insides of houses before the houses get knocked down and then sells off all the bits and pieces. *whispers* Just in case you didn't know; they're famous LOL.

Mum has always muttered about going in there, so this time we did. They had soooooo much stuff! How would you like some of this in your house? A MARBLE toilet, sink & bath?

We also found this lounge bath - Mum was in hysterics because she said it looked like something you'd dip your backside in!

After we'd nosed around there, I took Mum into the Devil's Punchbowl Hotel for a cooked breakfast. I assumed we'd get a humongous meal being as it's a well known hotel. What we got was one sausage, two rashers of bacon, one fried egg, a spoonful of mushrooms, half a tomato and a bowl of beans.

The bacon was worryingly pink, the egg yolk very dark orange, the beans looked like they'd been reheated and the sausage HAD been reheated so many times; the middle had gone rock hard.

I called the waitress over and told her it was totally unacceptable and we got up and left without paying for the tea and coffee we had drunk. I was so upset, I'd taken Mum in there for a birthday breakfast and they served complete crap!

We decided to get back in the car, get to London and then find somewhere to eat.

We arrived with an hour and a half to spare before the performance, found a quiet little pub and had a pub lunch which was totally delicious!

Then we had an ice cream at the foot of the statue in Piccadilly Circus (is it Eros, it's not, is it?).

We wandered around like the gentry as we were both dressed up. Mum was wearing her birthday shawl - which she adored and I was wearing MD/AN.

We were sat in the second row of the Royal Circle - ideal seats except for the Italian students that were EVERYWHERE!

Twice we asked them to stop chatting and fidgeting throughout the first half and during the intermission, I complained to one of the theatre staff that the teens were unsupervised and spoiling the performance for everyone else. Just before the second half of the performance, a man came over and babbled at them angrily in Italian for about ten minutes then sat glaring at them for the rest of the show LOL!

Mamma Mia!

I have two birthdays to drain my pockets this week. Jess will be 14 on Friday and Alex will be 13 on Saturday.

Yesterday I took Jess to London to see Mamma Mia at the Prince of Wales Theatre. It's the first time she's been to London and she had a great day. We also got to see the Changing of the Guard which was great as I'd never seen it before.

Here are some pics of the guard, Big Ben, Jess with one of the lions in Piccadilly Circus and the audience in the theatre during the interval (we weren't allowed to take photos during the performance).

Driving home through the Lake District

I had already decided that my journey home from Scotland was going to go via the Lake District, I didn't care how long it was going to take, how much time I'd lose. I WAS going to see the Lake District!

It was beautiful! Shame about the clouds and I was a tad upset that I couldn't get really close to Lake Windermere, but I got a couple of fantastic shots!

Catch Up Time! At Kerry’s

I was going to try and be clever and do one long post detailing everything we did while we were on holiday last week, but due to the way blogger uploads pictures (why does it insist on putting photos at the BEGINNING of the blog?), I got myself all turned around and muddled up.

Therefore, I am starting again and I shall do a series of little posts. This first one is going to be about our time at Kerry's visiting Kerry & Herb, Herbie, Josh, Dominic (Nic) & baby Phoebe!

We arrived on the Sunday and stayed until Wednesday night, then we left for Scotland.Here is Alex with everything in the back of our little Peugeot 207!

During our stay we visited a park which is run by :location removed by Kerry's request: Council, it only costs £1 to get in and the kids had loads of fun. Here are some photos:

and here is the main reason for our visit - the newest recipient of my knitting - baby Phoebe!

Here she is with Matt (who's convinced his hair looks cool like that!) and Nic and here's one of Alex sneaking a quick cuddle!

I had to add this last photo of Nic, he was playing Guitar Hero, but was quite happy to stop and pose for photos for his fans lol