KAL Tuesday #2

Hello and welcome to week 2 of KAL Tuesday the place to share what you are currently knitting along with.


I'm still plodding along with the fairies I was working on last week. I have three to make up now after knitting all the body parts and clothes. This is the first one (the rest are still in baggies waiting). I've decided I hate doing faces. I wasn't confident to do the painted eyes like Fiona McDonald uses in the book so I took what I thought was an easier option and inserted safety eyes. This one is turning more into monster fairy lol. I will be trying the painted eyes on the next one.




I'd love to see what you are working on this Tuesday.

Punky Scraps Is Back

Yes that's right we are back.

We are having a blog hop to kick things off again so you should have arrived here from Leah who is one of our guests.  If you arrived from somewhere else and want hear a bit more about the blog hop and see the amazing prizes Nat has lined up then you might want to head off to Punky Central

I have my own little prize giveaway and will choose a winner at the end of the hop. You can win by commenting here or over at Punky Scraps.

This is my little goodie pack you can win

During the hop we are showing you our favourite layouts/techniques.  I have loved being a part of the team and am very grateful to Nat for allowing me to stay on for a third term.  The one thing I have loved the most has been the discovery of using ink, mists and paints on my layouts. I don't think I will go back to 'vanilla' layouts anytime soon.  These are a few of my favourites.

I have lots to improve on, particularly photographing layouts, and I'm looking forward to getting my mojo back from its very long trip away.

Your next step on the hop is to one of our guests - Jaine Clarke

Thanks for stopping by.

Are You Ready?

I've got the bunting up




the little man is suitably attired




I've made use of the union jack bun cases I had left over from the jubilee




I've got my union jack earrings in



which came from Avon as a set of 3 pairs. I've been wearing the crowns for a few weeks and had lots of compliments




Even my plants are kind of shades of red white and blue. Note I said kind of lol











Love a just 'popped' fuchsia

Skywatch At Party In The Park

Last Sunday we were lucky enough to have tickets for Party In The Park at Leeds.

Most of the music was not particularly my cup of tea but it was a nice afternoon out.  The sun finally came out to play after all the recent rain and the kids really enjoyed it. I can't ask for any more than that.

There were 70,000 people there apparently  (love that sky)

This young man who goes by the name of Labrinth was outstanding and, in my opinion, was miles better than most of the other acts.

Although I have to say I really enjoyed the performance by Marcus Collins.  He was one of my favourites from X Factor last year.

and I surprised myself by quite enjoying the performance by a certain boy band by the name of One Direction. I think I went deaf for a few moments after they came on though.  Thousands of screaming girls isn't by idea of a fun afternoon.

I'm not going to bore you with pictures of every act but they included Stooshe (fab), Alyssa Reid (a way bit too much attitude about having traffic related issues and not that good), Cover Drive (quite enjoyable), Marcus Collins (fantastic), One Direction (surprised myself), Wretch 32 (another who was fab), Conor Maynard (was OK), Little Mix (really good), Labrinth (stood out as THE best act), Alexandra Burke (boring yawn yawn), DJ Fresh (OK at what they do but not really my cup of tea), Taio Cruz (boring until he sang Dynamite but even then not that good), Professor Green (not my cup of tea but the lady singing with him was amazing) and last up was Tulisa (quite why she was last up I don't know but she was rubbish in my opinion)

KAL Tuesday #1

I was looking through my stats recently and one of the most popular things seems to have been something I did a few times and as there was no interest I stopped. That was a weekly knitting meme.

Call me a bit slow on the uptake but I only just realised my initials and the popular knitting term KAL (knitalong) are one and the same so I am introducing KAL Tuesdays starting today.

I will post a picture of what I am knitting along with each week and provide a link service so you can show off your own projects. I can't wait to see what you are working on.

This first week I am working on an elf.  It is way out of my comfort zone.  Apart from a few monsters I've never really made creatures.  I have to say that I'm quite enjoying it.  I am a little nervous about putting it all together and the facial features make me particularly nervous. I'm just finishing up the jacket and then I can start sewing.

The pattern is very loosely based on a book by Fiona McDonald called Knitted Fairies.





If you want to play along then all you need to do is either leave a comment with a link to what you are knitting along with this tuesday or use the linky thingy.  I'm looking forward to seeing what you are working on.

Pad Of Lists

I spotted a notepad in wilkinson the other day full of to do lists.

For a disorganised person such as myself I thought it would be perfect for getting things done. A kick up the backside from my husband about the state of the house always works wonders too.

So today this is my list of 'to do'.

Exercise am and pm is the exercises I have from the physio for my Achilles problem.

Attempt a run - I wrote that last night but I don't think it is going to happen if the pain I felt coming downstairs is anything to go by. Even walking to school was difficult this morning. Probably due to the increase in exercises from physio.

Table - I've spoken about my kitchen table before and it is an ongoing dumping ground. I plan to have a good sort through this morning as it is mostly piles of what I would call crap but what my son calls his stuff. He finishes for the summer after lunch and it needs doing before he stops me filling the wheelie bin. I'm such an evil mum ;)

Next parcel - a parcel to go back today which I've repackaged and is ready to go - tick :)

Skywatch

This photo I took with my phone earlier in the week completely sums up our good old British summer so far.

High

I've never seen the river as high as it was last night. I'd been meaning to have a walk down during the day but never got around to it so prompted by it being bad enough that BBC main news had reported from the bridge we had a walk down after tea.



We were down there last weekend so I took some vaguely similar shots to compare the levels.







It's hard to convey properly on photos just how powerful the weir makes the river especially when it is so full.




It was so calm and peaceful last week to the point that my daughter and myself were saying that we could see the bottom.
I'm thinking this run off between the river and canal will be significantly higher now.




She is doing a geography degree and the river is the focus of her dissertation but it just isn't safe to work on the banks at the moment. She was taking readings last week along this stretch which as you can see is now flooded.




We didn't venture further along.
This photo was last week and shows some of the debris that collected a little further down river. It was all over the banks aswell.




I can imagine yesterday has produced a significant amount more than this judging by what we were seeing coming down the weir. At one point two tyres were fighting at the bottom of it. The boat wreck (bottom left of this pic from last week) was completely covered and it will be interesting to see if that has withstood such force.

Heavy and Persistent

is apparently settled in for the rest of the day.
This was the morning's attire for walking to school. I bought the packaway mac thingy from Primark because my usual raincoat is way too warm for this time of year. Yep despite the rain we have had rather a lot of this summer it has still been reasonably warm and inbetween the showers actually quite nice.
The mac thingy is huge and accommodates my ample tum and bum comfortably. So much so that the first time I wore it my first thought was pink tellytubby. The husband said more like Mr Blobby! Cheeky git!
It served its purpose this morning though. Not quite waterproof enough for the deluge that the clouds dumped on us but at least I wasn't sweating like a pig.

The little one was rather wet too in his more substantial and definitely more expensive raincoat but hey it's only rain and it never hurts to get caught in a downpour every now and again. My only regret is that his boots were left outside a while ago and were full of rain and creepy crawlies so he couldn't go in the puddles like he wanted.





I'm not moaning about it though. I don't mind rain, I love the sound on the roof, as long as I'm not out in it for too long and the drains don't flood then it can stay. I'm not a huge fan of warm sticky humid summers.

Fourteen

Fourteen years ago today our third child arrived in the world.

It was the most relaxed labour of the four I've been through. Just backache during the afternoon (10 days before my due date) which didn't feel right but certainly didn't feel like labour.

However number two arrived extremely quickly, think minutes, so I decided to get checked out plus I'd had a monster headache the night before.

We had car issues as ours had decided to set on fire the weekend before. I rang the husband whose immediate reaction was 'well the new car is on the ramps with no doors on'. I honestly can't remember how I got to the hospital but I do know that my mum was involved because she babysat the older two.

At the hospital I was monitored and told my blood pressure was high but that was maybe because things were happening. A couple of hours went by and I used the gas and air thing with the midwife popping in from time to time. She brought a student doctor with her on her last visit and as I said I needed to push she pushed the emergency buzzer because his heartbeat was way down and he was coming out with a double wrap of the cord around his neck. By the time the emergency had been answered he was born and due to the skill of the midwife he was ok.

As soon as I saw him I knew he was only small as he didn't feel much bigger than son number 1 born 6 weeks prem and 4lb 12 two years before. Turns out son number 2 was exactly a pound heavier. Luckily I still had some prem sized baby clothes from my older son so they had a second use. They didn't get much of a third use when son number 3 came along in 2004 as he was normal sized.

Anyway that's when my problems started. My baby was really good and passed all the health stuff they do in hospital but I didn't. My blood pressure was still high with no sign of going down so we had to stay in a couple of days. It was still high when I came home that Sunday but they were going to send somebody to check it frequently. By the check on Tuesday it was way too high so back we went to hospital for a few more days to get it settled back down with medication and frequent checking.

They reckoned the headache the night before I went into labour was pre eclampsia and it had taken a while for my bp to settle.

Eventually things settled and we were allowed home again and life as a family of five rather than four began.

Fourteen years later he has certainly made up for being small at birth. All three sons decided to be measured recently and he is now 5ft 11 and growing like a weed so will most likely end up well over six foot tall. His older brother was a scrap at 4lb 12 and when I measured them he was just a whisker short of 6ft 3 at 16.

Various health issues have caused problems and will always be with him for the rest of his life but he has so many positives the main one being that he comes out with some cracking one liners any comedian would be proud of.

Enough of my waffle. Happy birthday young man.