Life’s a Gamble

Remember all the excitement about broody eggs and me whizzing off and purchasing 6 Bantam eggs. Well they took a little bit longer to reach me than I was expecting!! But in the mean time curiosity got the better of Buddy and he just had to poke is nose in and have a look to what was going on – a big no, to a broody chicken and within half an hour of that little incident, she was off the eggs never to return.

Still it was a gamble ... some you win, some you lose.

But Paul came up trumps with this ...


A very dusty Brinsea Octagon 10 Incubator, so after a good clean...





Paul told me the eggs should last up to 14 days if kept in a cool’ish’ place and I turn the eggs, (I have kept them in the box, so I am turning the box) periodically throughout the day, every day.



There were six lovely little bantam eggs in the box.


But on closer inspection, I found this ...



I am sure it didn’t get broken in the post, as the crack was on the in side but I have now had the eggs for a week, so I can’t go back to the supplier and say anything.

So down to 5 eggs, which I have placed in the incubator, it seems I should have sterilised everything first, opps, sorry eggs .... didn’t get any instructions until I did a search on line ... after having set everything up!

Oh well, as I said “life’s a gamble ...”

But I did find this very informative site about chickens and all you need to know, so thought I would share with you, if you are interested of course.

But if you can see I am doing something wrong or you can give me any more advice, I would greatly appreciate it.

The upside is all three chickens are now laying; we have been giving the most recently laid eggs away. Giving away! Well my thought process is, I will get my friends and family hooked on scummy fresh eggs, having already said that I will charge a little, to off set the chicken food costs!

Pay it Forward

I cut my neighbours grass as they suffer from hay fever. That is a return for me being sent an Interview Knits from Natalie at the Yarn Yard as she had two copies. Unfortunately I never did receive the magazine as it got lost in the post, such a shame. But I still wanted to repay the very kind gesture.

Knitting

I have completed my first monkey’s sock apart from the kitchener stitching, which will be saved until I have a quiet half an hour. Just now need to find the repeat of pattern, if that is possible with such a colourful yarn so that I can hopefully make the finished socks look similar.

I have never knitted a sock in a week, not even a month, six months being my average, I have knitted 3 pairs, and a couple of singles – having not got round to doing the second one ‘yet’, so not really a sock guru.

Therefore your guess is as good as mine to whether I get ‘second sock syndrome’ or the time to finish the second sock anytime this year.

But you must of guessed I am so chuffed with myself ... I finished a sock in a week - yay!

Year End

Last week was very much a hard week at work, however this was off set by lots of playing, it seemed that all the things I do, had come together in just one week, why does that happen; for weeks you have no social live and then it all comes together in one exhausting week?

I was getting up extra early in the mornings to do any chores and to arrive at work for 7:30am; this gave me a little bit of quiet time before the all the woodworking machines got turned on.

I needed to accomplish 4 major tasks, that had to be finished by the Friday, however to be able to do these tasks, several other jobs had to be completed first, like having every account reconciled from the bank accounts, credit cards and loans, you name it, it had to be reconciled.

If you do wages as part of or all of your job, then you will have had to submit all the P.A.Y.E., submissions for ‘year end ‘ 2007/08 by Saturday May 31st. (Note for me : NEXT YEAR IS THE 19 MAY - REMEMBER 19th!!) For me this means writing out 40 P60’s by hand, with no mistakes, or if I do make a mistake, I have to start a fresh one.

I was able to complete the on-line submission with no issues what-so-ever, unlike previous years by Tuesday afternoon, then on to finalising all of May’s worked hours and calculate everybody’s pay and submit to the bank for paying. The next big task was to make sure that all suppliers invoices, tallied with the appropriate suppliers statements. May is also work’s end of VAT quarter. Normally as soon as the invoices are sorted, it is just a short job. However QuickBooks has completely upgraded their VAT software and I could not get it to calculate properly – groan, however after much shouting at the computer, I managed to find before and end figures, did some math’s and have submitted a hand written form.

Every quarter, Gary and I have a small competition to who can get the nearest to the amount that has to be paid to HM Customs. This quarter I won, which means Gary meant a pound in the Prospect Hospice Box.

My final job was to submit all the bill payments for the bank to make the BACS payments.

I did it all and I am sure that the fact that I had such a lovely week helped me through.

Monday night, I finished Noel's socks off, I had completed the first sock including a terrible example of kitchener stitch, however sitting very quietly by myself, in the small gap between me getting home and everybody else on a Monday evening, I sewed up the second sock - quiet is the answer, I did a much better job.

Noel's socks - taken at this angle, so that I could use the wall as a back drop!

Tuesday I decided to join a Monkey Sock KAL on the CTnY Forum and that evening, I cast-on and knitted about 7 rows of the rib and then realised that it should have been twisted rib, so I frogged it all, again.

Wednesday evening, Poppy was sleeping over Kaan’s, so Noel suggested we go out to dinner, we decided to go to the local pub, the Iron Horse, because at 8 pm at this pub is where I have a fortnightly village knit/craft get together. It also happens to serve nice home-made food. We had a lovely meal together and then Noel, disappeared (he didn’t want to bump into any of the group) at 7:50 pm, I carried on knitting. I re-cast-on the monkeys and this time remembered to do the twisted rib and managed to do; 2 pattern repeats.

Thursday, started with me following Noel to the garage to get his car MOT’ed, then Noel dropped me off at work, and he went back and collect Kaan and Poppy; as they were all going to spend the day together, starting with the cinema and watching the new Indian Jones film, which they all really enjoyed, then on to Pizza Hut for lunch before going climbing together.

After work, we collected the car, it had passed, such a relief, with just the cost of a bulb (and the four new tyres we had bought the week before!!)

Thursday evening, I met up with Kate and Louise at the pub, (none of us had heard from Sprite64, which is a shame as we were then not sure what to do – hope you are reading this Sprite and you can let us know if you still want to join in), a lovely meal was had by all and a great time while we did ‘show and tell’. As we are all members of the forum, out came 3 monkey’s, which made us giggle, Kate’s were a plum with a splash of pink colour, Louise’s were a white, black and beige colour and then mine.

Friday afternoon, a bit later than planned as it had taken me longer to sort the VAT out, I went round to Ruth’s and caught up with all the family and showed her this blog!! Noel and Poppy went off to climbing the wall at West Swindon’s Leisure Centre and came back and picked me up at 5 pm. We had a relaxing evening at home together as a family and I carried on knitting.

And then Saturday, which broke with glorious sunshine, I travelled down to Hillier’s Arboretum, Braishfield, Hampshire to meet Linda. We had a lovely day together chatting, we are members of Hilliers, it gives us some where to go, when we just want to chat, away from husbands, children, ironing etc etc ... you know the sort of place. In between eating, drinking and walking I took 160 photographs of the plants; this is just a selection of what I took ...

More knitting ...

Yesterday was spent relaxing and knitting (progress photo below), while we watched the DVD; The Golden Compass. Poppy explained to me that her daemon was a Monkey, so I thought I would see what mine was; you can agree or disagree by following this link:


It was also the first day that all three chickens had laid eggs on the same day! One egg was so fresh that it was sticky and very warm.

My monkey sock as of going to bed Sunday evening!