Can't blog, reading

I seem incapable of focusing on more than one thing at the moment. Once life starts happening, blogging stops happening, which shouldn't really come as a surprise to me.

Anyway, I've been reading and then talking about said reading for Alex's March Blogging Good Read and you can go and read about what I read by clicking right HERE.

Go get some book recommendations.

The Weekend in (not real) Verbs

Debating

Lots of debating happened over #TheDress - pretty much anyone I've come across since Friday has asked me this question. I am well in the gold and white camp. It doesn't change colour for me like it seems to for others, my jaw actually dropped open when I saw a picture of the actual dress. A friend who sees blue and black said to me that she wished she could take out her eyes so that I could see what she sees. As a less violent offering I can show you this photo - these are the colours that I see the dress...

Dog Petting

I went to visit Mum's friend to help her learn how to use her Smartphone. It was every bit as painful as it sounds. But the upside is that I got to see Ozzie with his floppy ear, whom I love very much.

Shopping

Not just any kind of shopping but my particularly favourite kind of shopping. The kind that involves you not actually spending any money. I have some vouchers from Christmas and I ran round Matalan like a whirling dervish trying to pick up as many things as possible. Including this bedding which I came home and put on my bed immediately; a testament to how much I love it because I really hate making the bed.

Seaside-ing

I had an urge to go to the sea whilst I was vaguely near it. Living in the Midlands is nice for access reasons, lots of things aren't too far away, unless you want to get to the sea. Then the sea is far. Very very very very far.

So Mum and I headed to Hornsea for the most typical English visit to the seaside ever in that we ate fish & chips, bundled up against the howling wind and looking at very ominous grey skies.

In other words, it was brilliant.

Fred and Lily-ing

You didn't think I'd forgotten about them did you? Obviously not. Fred and Lily were in true crazy Fred and Lily mode. Just look at the photo of Lily's completely manic face at the prospect of being in the vicinity of crisps and dip. And Fred has a fun new trick - jumping on top of the door and then trying to get you as you walk past into the kitchen.

When they are not being totally mad, they are still mostly fond of relaxing, something which Lily is particularly good at doing...

Edward's Menagerie - Caitlin the Giraffe

Hot on the heels of  Benedict the Chimpanzee who featured in my review of Edward's Menagerie last week I had another project on my hook.

Much as I am a lover of colour I've been really enjoying working in more muted shades for these guys. They just look more friendly somehow which is a statement I am well aware makes no sense.

Anyway, this guy's face is just a little bit too much for me. It's off the cute-scale by about a hundred degrees. And I also really love his ossicones. I also love that I now know the word ossicones. Let's all try and get it into a sentence tomorrow, although I'm pretty sure the only sentence you can get it into is one that's something along the lines of "Oh look, that giraffe has a lovely set of ossicones." You never know, it might crop up at some point.

The part I really enjoyed about making Caitlin though was the body. Again, as with everything I love about this book, it's so simple and yet looks absolutely amazing. The patches of darker colour are just worked randomly as you're working the body, not cutting the colour off each time you change but keeping it at the back until you need to pick it up again.

Working anything randomly is a huge struggle for me and I had to resist all my natural urges to basically have a very long necked zebra. Stripes are neat, I can handle that.

It also meant that a stitch counter and stitch marker were absolutely essential as it would be very tricky to work random numbers of stitches and still keep count of what you were doing over all.

But totally worth it, am I right?!

Caitlin is a new firm favourite for me and I'm looking for an excuse to make another one as soon as possible.

She's also a good old size once she's finished. She's sat next to a 6x4in photo frame so you can see how tall she is. As she should be, she's a bloody giraffe!

The only thing I would do differently next time around is makes sure I stuffed the neck more so that she's able to keep her head up. I followed the general rules to not overstuff and keep everything floppy but I just don't think it really works for Caitlin. These photos involved an awful lot of balancing to keep her head up and I felt a bit rubbishy at how floppy her head was.

I'm still in love with this book and I've got to tell you right now, that I've already finished my next item from it.

And now that one might be my favourite...

A little bit of internet love: Part VI

I know I should do these more often and then these posts wouldn't be showing you links to posts that were written about three weeks ago which I always worry makes me look ever so slightly creepy. "Oh hai, I've been saving this blog post of yours to share with people....along with the cutting of your hair that I took when I crept into your room last night..."

Anyway. Enough of being creepy. Time to share the love...


1. You may have noticed that I talk a lot about the fact that I'm from Hull - I'm a fan of anyone who talks about their love for Hull, and although our experiences of living in Hull are vastly different, Ryan's post, In Defence of Hull and his love for our city resonates with me.

2. Elise has been crocheting from a book that I've had for ages but have yet to dip into - check out this little Grim Reaper...

3. I'm going to sneakily move into Janet's house and set up camp at her new home office. Don't tell her I'm going to do it though...

4. Chloe talked about feeling attractive and I wholeheartedly agree with what she said. Especially about getting a shower/washing your hair - whenever I feel crappy I always force myself into the shower and it never fails to make me feel a little bit better.

5. Rachael wrote a post called Don't Assume Your Blog Followers... which really resonated with me in a couple of places. Especially the bit about assuming people use Bloglovin'.

6. Hayles went to a Black Heart Creatives jewellery workshop and I am outrageously jealous about it.

7. Christa over at A Voluptuous Mind posted Shall I Rise, a poem by Maya Angelou. It came at an incredibly appropriate time for me and I cried big, fat, blobby tears when I read it. It is beautiful.

Photo an Hour l 21st February

I should have been in Manchester this weekend, after my last weekend was cancelled. This weekend got cancelled as well. Need to cut these flaky people out of my life really don't I?

Anyway. No plans. Nothing happening. Yet another Photo an Hour date came round and I had a day of nothingness ahead of me. These Photo an Hour posts that I'm taking part in seem to serve the purpose of highlighting how crap my life is...

This was Saturday 21st February...

9am Slow start to the day as it was a late night the day before. Got up and made myself a cup of tea and retreated back to my lair to watch Goldfrapp videos on You Tube. For absolutely no reason.

10am It's not a weekend unless bacon is involved somewhere, at some point. This might be the finest bacon sandwich I've ever made myself, I got the perfect crispiness.

11am Decided to get up and get dressed but was faced with the everlasting problem of a wardrobe full of clothes and nothing to wear. My plan was to head straight out but got waylaid by a lengthy phone call with my Mum and the weather going absolutely batshit crazy - hailing with blue skies? What?

12pm Suddenly remembered that I needed to send off a package to a friend. I finally managed to crochet one hundred hearts for my friend's wedding and needed to send them off to her. Made use of my washi tape stash - everyone loves pretty post, right?

1pm Finally made it into town and to the Farmer's Market which takes place just beside the ruins of the castle. Thankfully the weather seemed to have calmed down and I did a big race around, ticking off everything that I wanted to get done in record time.

2pm Back home and noticed the rather lovely shadow being cast in my bedroom

3pm Turns out one of my headlights has gone out so I ventured out to Halfords to buy a bulb and get it fitted. Yeah you can fit them yourself but for the stress of it I'd rather just pay £7 and get it sorted thanks. Also, trying to take a surreptitious photo of someone fitting your new headlight is really hard.

4pm Time for a cup of tea and crochet time. Already got another couple of things waiting on my order book so time to get knuckled down. Care to venture a guess as to what it's going to be?

5pm More tea needed. This time accompanied by a beast of a doughnut that I bought earlier in the day at the Farmer's Market.

6pm Went to my sister's for dinner which means lots of time with my favourites - Rosie was in the middle of taking all her toys out of her toybox and sitting down surrounded by them.

7pm Whenever Blinky behaves like a normal cat it freaks us all out a little bit. Nobody really knew what to do when she jumped up on my sister's chair at the dining table - and certainly nobody wanted to risk moving her, you can never be sure when she will strike...

8pm TV watching with my bestie, Rowan. I actually think that if I could take Rowan home with me all the time then I wouldn't miss having a man in the house at all - I'd just hug her all night and it would be brilliant.

9pm On the way back home I figured it was essential to go to the 24 hour Tesco and stock up on crisps and booze for the rest of the evening. Late night shopping is my all time favourite - it's so empty you feel like you're doing something you shouldn't be doing.

10pm 30 Rock time. It arrived this week and I've been dying to watch it, perfect Saturday night TV.

11pm Still there, watching 30 Rock. Where I remained until much much later on. I think I watched eight episodes in a row which may be considered overkill by some people.

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So I don't know, I'm torn between thinking "Hey I did do some stuff, even though I had nothing really planned" and thinking "Well. This highlights how empty my life is doesn't it?"

Only time will tell...

Thanks as always to Jane and Louisa for hosting. Check in with them for March's Photo an Hour date and don't forget to join in on Twitter and Instagram using #PhotoAnHour

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2015 Photo an Hour Posts
January

How Shrove Tuesday 2015 Went Down

I nearly forgot about Shrove Tuesday this year. And when I did remember I found it hard to summon up the energy to actually make some.

I always remember pancake day as being a hugely social activity. We'd all be gathered in the kitchen, fighting over what we were going to put in our pancakes, I'd be begging to be allowed to try and flip one, then most likely crying when it didn't work.

Hanging out on your own, giving yourself a little cheer when you managed to toss the pancake in one swift, professional movement, just felt a little tragic.

But who was I kidding? I'm a pretty tragic individual anyway, why try and hide from it? Just embrace it and get on with it.

And I was absolutely gutted when my first pancake, you know, the one that always turns out horribly for some reason, was absolutely perfect and I had no fucker to share my triumph with. I did however take a picture for posterity so I could share it all with you guys almost a week later...

Then I remembered that of course I'm not alone. I'm never alone whilst I can walk into the lounge and see this little face looking at me...

Ser Jorah Mormont is no fool. He remembered last year when they got pancakes made for them on this special day.

Not really, they just appears whenever he smells food or hears the rustling of something that sounds like it might be a good packet. 

Like last year I decided to make both the boys a little tiny pancake each, garnished with half a slice of banana, a gerbil chocolate drop and a pumpkin seed. Last year these were whipped away and gobbled so furiously that I didn't get the chance to take a decent picture so this time I was prepared. I put them on a plate and held it outside the cage, meaning if they wanted a pancake they were going to have to come pretty far out, thus maximising the photographic opportunity.

Seriously. This is my life.

Sure enough Ser Jorah Mormont took the bait and came out to have a little investigation. Tyrion Lannister had unfortunately just taken a bit of museli out of the food bowl and was furiously trying to eat it as fast as possible so he didn't miss out. It's hard to eat quickly when you only have a little gerbil mouth though, I bet they wish they had pouches like hamsters.

What I hadn't counted on is the fact that after a year has gone by, the gerbils are cool as a cucumber when it comes to being around me. They're not frightened of being picked up and most importantly they know that if they stay still they are almost definitely going to be rewarded with food.

And so, rather than whip the pancake back into the gerbilarium to eat it, Ser Jorah Mormont just decided to hang out on the plate I had kindly provided.

LOOK AT HIS FACE.

Have you ever seen anything so ridiculously cute in your entire life?

Can you also see how even when you think you've given a gerbil a really small pancake, it actually turns out to be outrageously massive?*

Can you imagine how cute two gerbils eating pancakes are?

*After a minute or so and a lot of pictures I took the pancakes away as I really didn't think they should be eating so much. I know, I'm super mean.

How I won at Valentine's Day

I saw a plethora of blog posts last week all revolving around the subject of Valentine's Day. All started with the same sentence "Personally my boyfriend and I don't really bother with Valentine's Day..." and then proceeded to either try and sell me something from a company that was loosely related to the day or (my personal favourite) provide a list of "alternative" things to do on Valentine's Day.

I eventually had to move my laptop to another room to prevent myself from throwing it against a wall.

Smug fuckers.

And the thing was I used to be one of those smug fuckers. Kind of. I've never understood the whole hating on Valentine's Day thing. Sure I've never gone the whole hog, buying insane presents and going out and awkwardly sitting in a restaurant with every other couple in the vicinity, but I have appreciated the day for what it is; a nice opportunity to turn the person you love and go "Hey, did you know I love you?"

No you shouldn't need just one day to tell someone you love them and yes it probably is a sad indictment of your relationship if you throw a tantrum because your other half didn't get you a big enough bunch of flowers, but why would you pass up the opportunity to be a bit romantic?

Which is probably why the lead up to Valentine's Day was rough as this year. Everywhere I went it was as if there were flashing red and pink neon signs up saying "YOU'RE ALONE!" something of which I'm already aware thaaaaaanks.

Luckily for me I had a hot date in the diary for Saturday with lovely bloggy people Gemma, Maria, Sarah, Emma and Katy. That means there were four of Team Norbury around a table which made me happy. (Really I just like an excuse to link to that blog post, it stills makes me laugh like a drain.)

At Jamie's we did the usual - ate food, drank some stuff and inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) cringed at the over-familiarity of the wait staff. It was my first time at a Jamie's and it was...you know....okay. I'm all down with the aesthetics they have going on but the food was only alright for the price you pay and the acoustics were dreadful. It was absolutely rammed and there were times when we could hardly hear each other speak.

I don't really know where the time went but before I knew it I was racing back to the train station and hopping on a train to go back home.

The bad feelings could have returned again, coming back home to an empty flat whilst everything on the internet and the TV was all about love, romance and the sexy stuff, but I knew how to keep those bad boys at bay.

All I needed was two simple ingredients.

A Chinese takeaway and Top Gun on TV.

Oh and a third ingredient. 

Twitter so I could just tweet quotes from the film ad finitum.

Suck it Valentine's Day. I win.