Happy Birthday - Blog

I was flabbergasted to see that my blog is 3 years old, I haven't been quite as successful at keeping a record of my life, as I would have liked, I would only hope I can get better ...

Other things that happened 3 years ago:

A group of friends from the Crafty Threads n Yarns Forum meeting up at Get Knitted in Bristol and then enjoying lunch together at the pub.

Windows being put into the building where I work, we had done without windows for 2 years. The pleasure of natural day light and fresh air. Vistors still comment today about the fantastic view we have and how horrible it was before 'windows'!

A cardigan started, but yet to be finished, a little bit like this blog, perhaps?

Wishing everybody a Happy Birthday, who also may be celebrating today, especially to my dear friend Linda xx

Foto Friday

A hint of an evening to tell ...

Flowers by Micheal Bowyer.

£15,000

I visited Hillier’s Arboretum, Braishfield, Hampshire last Saturday, with my very dear friend Linda.

We have been members for quite a few years. For us this is a great place to meet. Linda and I are not shoppers, we only shop for a purpose.

We love to chat. We enjoy our 21 year friendship, having met when our boys were just 5 years old.

Linda loves to drink coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon.

Visiting Hillier’s allows us to do all the things we enjoy ... we start by having coffee (Linda) and a glass of milk (me). I so wished they would put toasted tea cakes on the menu, so that I could also have breakfast at the cafe.

Next, we go for a walk round the winter garden and beyond.

Returning to the cafe for lunch, we normally have a baked potato each and then in the afternoon we walk the other half of the arboretum, which takes us through the bog garden, the Ghurkha’s memorial and up to centenary walk.

This Saturday there was a wedding.

The swanky wedding car parked in front of Jermyn's House.

During the summer months, there is always a display of Art.

Every summer we pick up the price list and as we walk around the garden we try to guess the price of each of the pieces of art.

Normally we are way off, however Linda did extremely well, but we didn’t guess this one; a pregnant lady made of Portland stone.

She was smooth and warm to touch, her arms carved into the back of the stone.

Price: £15,000 for the garden

Swaps

I have been in two swaps recently and both surprises arrived this week. The first swap was a Tea Towel swap organised on Creative Living Forum. I needed to find a tea towel to depict the area I lived in. I came up with a tea towel from Steam Museum, showing pictures of steam trains and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

However I could not find a picture of the tea towel I sent but while searching on the internet, I found this tea towel (third picture down) and I wish I had known about it before, because it would have summed up my area!

The Magic Roundabout is a very well known roundabout, for a roundabout it is exciting, scary and gives you that naughty feeling, due to being able to drive the wrong way round!

While looking for a photo of the magic roundabout, I found this blog, I have no idea what he is writing however I think it gives a good 'feeling' of the roundabout! I hope he doesn’t mind me linking, "just let me know if you do and I will apologise".

The first time and for several times afterwards, I am told I held my breath, while driving through / round it! I hated to drive near it on a rainy dark night as the white lines disappear. Everybody else seemed to know what they were doing. However having now lived in the Swindon area for over 7 years, I have learnt that Swindonian’s actually have very little roundabout skills, surprising as the town is littered with roundabouts, lots of them everywhere. The local residents hesitate; I can be the last of three drivers at a roundabout and still be the first to move! Even worse these people when they do go will then tail gate. Therefore my first impressions of the Magic Roundabout were wrong; very few people know what they are doing, I no longer hold my breath!

I received a lovely Tea Towel from Gilly, Co. Mayo.

My FIL is from County Lough, however my in-laws now live in Florida – lovely. I have only visited Ireland once, as a family we visited about 6 years ago. We all had a very relaxing enjoyable short stay. Which included Hannah our then 6 month old puppy and our African Grey Parrot called Halo! We want to return, such a shame that a return ferry crossing is £350.00, I wonder if the ferry company remember the 'Smith family' for the entertainment they gave to a whole car park full of waiting cars with families, due to a force 10 gale that had been blowing for over 24 hours and give us discount *smiles*.

My second parcel was from Auntie Noo:

I have had the pleasure of meeting Noo a few times, she is a Moderator on another forum I frequent called Crafty Threads ‘n’ Yarns. This is very friendly, honest forum, no ‘funny business’ what-so-ever.

Noo and I have similarities in our job, we both deal with accounts and pay wages, which can be stressful at times. An HMRC Employers bulletin was my clue.

She sent me a heart felt box of goodies:

The presents wrapped in lovely paper with a little shower cream, apricot scrub, antibacterial hand gel and hand therapy popping up through the gaps.

The presents unwrapped; 5 x lovely stitch markers, a 150g ball of Kauni 8/2 EY, just the most beautiful purple and pinks AND a nearly knitted pair of socks for me all I have to do is knit 10 rows of 2x2 and they are finished, the yarn is Rico Superba Mexico, in pinks and blues - fantastic

This is Noo's comments about that unfinished sock in the picture: "The 9/10 knitted socks were a bit of a joke as I have been known to take the mickey out of GS* for taking so long to knit a pair, and I believe her fastest record is 5 months....... so I thought with just a bit on the ribbing to go, she would have a bit of a head start! *winks*"

The perfectly fitting finsihed sock - oh just brilliant and I haven't stopped smiling.

I was at a County Exec. meeting (Guides) last night, so no socking knitting done!

However just the thought of all the hard work and thought that went into my swap and socks, I found it to be ... well, quite simply over whelming, I just can not convey how much this parcel has meant to me especially the letter that Noo wrote to me, thank you so much xx

GS = GrannySmith - my forum name.

Make hay while the sun shines

And that is just what all the farmers are doing, the weather here in England has been glorious for weeks, enabling the farmers to move their sheep around and make fields of hay, ready for the winter.

We have had hardly any rain now for weeks, the grass is dying all around, the water butts are empty, as yet there isn’t a hose pipe ban, but to be honest most people I know are so much more responsible with hose pipes these days.

A question, is there any quicker way to produce a blog post than how I do it : I take photographs, save them to my computer, then choose the ones I like and upload them to Photobucket, edit them (which seems to take ages), then write my post, sl*t in the photos and/or any links, I think will be useful?

Everyday I still write informative interesting posts but never get round to uploading them to this blog, I feel lazy, I want to blog but the whole process seems to take over an hour of fiddling, why?

I’ve been very busy; I have joined and been promoted in a local (but national) club, reappointed and promoted in Guiding. Work has been really busy and then not ... and stressful, really stressful. I have got myself another part time job so that all my eggs are not in one basket.

I hope to bring you back up to date, I have decided that writing the blog is more important than being a member of several forums, I am going to try it out and see if I really can keep this blog going. I always wanted to write a diary, I never really succeeded and it seems blogging is in the same box.

A new annoyance, the word sl-ot, I did no link what so ever, but published the post, this word got underlined in green and a hyperlink to a games place attached it's self to MY post, why? There was nothing in the html, it just did it, now I am cross. It must be a key word that blogger picks up and a small programme running in the back ground automatically puts a link to certain words - grumble.