Find Ben Manning

A 17 year old local boy has gone missing whilst on a night out.  This is the poster the police have put out.  There is a massive search operation going on to find him but it hasn't hit the national news yet so I'm just doing my bit to highlight awareness out of the local area.

This is the police press office report where updated information can be found along with a cctv image of Ben.

Satisfaction

This week I have made it a priority to not waste my time on Facebook and get those jobs done that I have put off.

Monday I did my tax return - ok so the deadline date was looming but hey I got it done.

Tuesday I got my sons' passport renewed so he can go on a school trip later in the year.

Wednesday I papered the feature wall in my daughters room.

Thursday I tried (and failed) to get my eldest son to sort out a work experience placement for the summer. Work in progress I think.

Friday I got rid of the grey roots. I bought a different shade to usual called rich chestnut. After mixing it went orange which was rather worrying. I put it on anyway and started to rather panic when after 15 minutes the dye was still bright orange. I had visions of having to find a hat and make a dash to Boots the chemist for another colour. Thankfully it turned brown when the 30 minute development time was up so panic over.

Skywatch

Into the archives again I'm afraid this week as yorkshire skies are boring at the moment.

This one is from last June in Blackpool

What's On Your Needles Wednesday

Starting next week I am going to be starting a new feature called What's On Your Needles Wednesday.

I have looked around the net and there are all kinds of things like wordless wednesday, whats on your workdesk wednesday but I couldn't find a knitting one where we share what is on our needles so I thought it could be a bit of fun.

So what is it?

Every wednesday morning I will start a new post entitled What's On Your Needles Wednesday.  I will show you what I have on my needles and I will provide a linky tool thingy so you can show the rest of the blogosphere what you are working on.  I am always on the look out for new and interesting patterns to add to my ravelry queue (yes that thing which never decreases) so I thought it would be a fun way of seeing what everybody else is knitting and more than likely add to that queue and I'm sure you will probably add things aswell.

Design Team Call

I'm starting up the challenge blog again and am having a design team call.  All the details are over here if you are interested.

Punky Scraps Challenge 5

The new challenge is up and it is to use this quote.

It isn't my usual thing but the last couple of lines really struck a chord.  I have two sons on the autistic spectrum.  One is diagnosed as classic autism and the other as aspergers.  They can't help their quirks and eccentricities but people often label these as craziness when they really have no idea.  I hadn't a clue what autism was until it was first mentioned to me as a possible diagnosis for my now 12 year old around four or five years ago.

Also now the camera and the computer have kissed and made up here is my take on the sketch challenge for last week. First a reminder of the sketch

I flipped it 90 degrees so I could use a landscape photo instead.

Skywatch

Punky Scraps Challenge 4

This week the challenge at Punky Scraps is to use this sketch.

My version will follow later as the computer doesn't like the picture of my layout for some reason but please do stop by the blog to see what the rest of the design team have created.

Skywatch

Again we have miserable boring, grey skies so another August picture for you but this time from August 2008 taken whilst driving through the Somerset countryside. A bit of a jet stream thing going on again this week.

Another Goal I Forgot

When I was doing my list I forgot one.

FACEBOOK

I've begun to see it in a different light lately thanks to a handful of people.  They use a variety of tools to publish their blogs and have them linked to facebook so every tool publishes the same blog post to their facebook wall feed.  In some cases this is three or more things saying exactly the same thing.  Most of the time I spend on facebook catching up on news is on my phone and these posts take up quite a bit of screen space. Yes I know I can hide them and on some occasions have. Same goes for the obsessive twitterers. Linking their twitter accounts to their facebook accounts generates an awful lot of updates which to be quite frank I couldn't give a monkeys uncle about.  Twitter is twitter and facebook is facebook and I can't see why the two should have to intertwine. The way I see it - twitter is for frequent updates and facebook is more for less frequent updates and gaming/sharing links etc. I really don't need to know via twitter how many times somebody takes a pee during the day and that is why I don't use it.  I used to but then I saw the light (sorry twitter users). 

I have been guilty of status update overload a bit over the last year but not to the extreme some people have taken it via these publishing tools, twitter etc, boredom, simple self obsession, craving for attention or whatever reason.  I have however taken a step back and wonder how others must have perceived three or so updates in a day.  I think to be honest it is a bit self obsessive and that is not me at all.  I think these social network places turn us into something we are not and for that reason I am taking a step back.  I still do the gaming (farmville and frontierville) but my status updates will be a lot less frequent. That is my goal anyway and I hope I can resist being suckered back in.

Ongoing Winter Mystery Shawl

If you remember about 3 weeks ago I showed what I had done for clue one on the winter mystery shawl by Goddess Knits.  That was this picture.

 I have done three more clues since then and this is what it looks like now (part of it anyway because it doesn't all fit in the picture). I love how the last clue is like a snowflake.

There is just one more part to go (released today) which must be the edging.

Punky Scraps Challenge 3

The challenge for punky scraps this week is to use this photo as your inspiration

I have had the umbrella embellishment for a while from a kit by Kreatorville and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to use it. I kept it minimal as I wanted the umbrella to be the focal point.  The circle paper is Crate Paper, the ribbon is KI Memories and the chipboard letters are Buzz n Bloom 70s.  The brown spots are the centres of the two a letters and the d.  I used sugar maple glimmer mist on the chipboard.

Skywatch

It is damp and miserable here at the moment so I've gone for a picture from August.

2011 - What It Means To Me

This year instead of resolutions I have goals:

I will replace the kitchen cupboard doors (thanks Lizzie for the suggestion). They now come pre drilled with the biscuit hole thingies so much easier to replace.

I will redecorate the whole downstairs of the house - not too difficult as there are only three rooms and I already have the wallpaper for the living room.

I will not replace items just because I can - see earlier cooker rant - if it isn't broken then it isn't getting replaced.

I will curb my spending on scrapbook supplies - I have one scrapbook kit sub which is less than £10 a month but apart from that I will try not to spend anything else.

I will also curb spending on knitting yarn - I have joined a club called Victorian Writers by Woolgirl and apart from that I am going to try not to spend anything else on yarn throughout the year.  That includes patterns too. Ravelery is ripe with free patterns so I should be able to find something suitable for the massive amount of yarn I have.

I will try and do more sewing - I have accumulated lots of bits of fabric so will try and make use of them.

11 shawls in 2011 - this is a Ravelry project. The aim is to make 11 shawls in 2011 (well duh! obvious really lol).  When I say shawl it doesn't necessarily mean old lady sat in rocking chair sort of shawl. It also includes wraps and stoles which are basically just wide scarves.  The Victorian Writers includes a few suitable items.

Read more - again bringing the Victorian Writers into it. The knitting kits are based around victorian books (Sherlock Holmes, Little Women, Alice In Wonderland, Mrs Dalloway's Garden, Count Dracula and Great Expectations).  I am ashamed to say I have never read any of them.  That is going to change this year though.  There was a list of books on facebook recently, I don't know if anybody saw it, but it had 100 books on it and most people will only have read a handful of them.  I am one of those people so I really need to increase my literary knowledge.

 I won't increase my crafting commitments (apart from the existing ones I am signed up for and if I decide to apply for any dts).  I mentioned before that I had joined the knitting scarf journey and that the person who had my scarf to work on had gone awol. I started another and sent it on only for the next person to decide she was no longer committed and lo and behold yesterday the next person along the line did exactly the same.  Now this person had been insulted by personal message by somebody else and had decided to leave the group BUT she had also accumulated a stockpile of everybodys scarves and is passing them on without working on them. Her own scarf on the other hand is with me and apart from my piece of knitting is ready to return to her. Every other person in the group having worked on it.  Very unfair in my opinion. Anyway that is partly the reason why I'm not committing to much else craft wise because other people cannot be relied upon.  I am still doing the lace scarf journey and will be starting a cable one very soon. No more after that though for a while.

I WILL lose at least a stone this year. I need to lose probably three or four but it is very hard to say I will lose so much.  Small steps. 

All Over For Another Year

2010 you were rubbish so bye bye.  2011 I hope you are made of better stuff.

Happy New Year everybody

Picture from here