Numbers are not my forté

3
1
1
1
1
1
1

You would not believe how many times I counted up that tally and made 11.

I packed what would fit of my Dulaan items into a big shoe box and filled in the inventory form – the three purple hats could be grouped together, the other items were listed separately. A quick count of the tally. Eleven … What? How is that eleven when two items from what was yesterday a total of eleven items are still on the sofa?

Count again.

Eleven.

Count AGAIN.

Eleven.

Unable to understand how I was doing this, I opened the photo of the knitting in Photoshop and, with a big white brushstroke, marked off each piece that had been packed against the inventory. I counted up the brushtrokes: nine. Right. So why does that tally add up to eleven?

I started counting again and suddenly cottoned on to the problem: Me. It turns out that counting up that tally as 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 is not correct.
4 and 5 like a look-in too.

Working from home is good

It means you can sit in front of your computer knitting hat after hat, reading blogs, looking at Flickr and crying with laughter at funny things on YouTube. Granted, there are some people who might call that “being at home” rather than “working from home”, but we don’t talk to those people. Those people are stoopid.

When I finish an item for Dulaan, I tuck it away in a shoebox under the spare bed, ready to be posted to the F.I.R.E. sorting centre in America once the box is full. We’ve got a good stash of empty shoeboxes under the bed, ready and waiting.

Of course, the problem with stashing these things away is that I sometimes don’t realise how much I’ve done. Or, rather, how much I’ve done and not blogged. So here, in all their knitted glory, are the eleven items I’ve made so far for the 2007 Dulaan collection. If you click on the pic, you can go to Flickr and see all the notes I’ve added about what’s what. Actually while I was doing that I discovered that I’d Flickred some of the items already, but they hadn’t been blogged. Don’t start.

Yes, I am still making silly hats for Dulaan

why do you ask?

7 Days: The Return

You may remember that over Christmas last year, I did a little selfportrait project for seven days with some Flickr people whom I know in Real Life. I called said little project “7 Days”. I know, amazing.

We all had a lot of fun doing it, so in a month’s time I shall be throwing open the doors of 7 Days again. This time I am inviting all and sundry to partake in the mass narcissism. I’ve opened up the Flickr pool, so you’re welcome to toddle over there and join now in readiness. Please also feel free to pass the link to anyone else who might be interested. I’ll put up another reminder nearer the time, but some people wanted a more advanced warning.

Souvenir

I’m notoriously slow at unpacking and putting things away. This is why there’s still a pile of my Christmas gifts on the living room floor, exactly where I left them on 25th December. As far as those items are concerned, I figure that my deadline for moving them is Christmas Day 2007. Simply because they’re in the space where I always sit to unwrap my gifts.

It occurred to me this morning that perhaps my big rucksack was still sitting by the computer because there were still some things I hadn’t unpacked from my Cannes trip (from which I returned 3 weeks ago). The majority of the stuff had been unpacked, but fishing about in the depths of the billion pockets I found a couple of biros, a cereal bar, a street map of Cannes, a nail file and this:

Phew, I’m glad I didn’t lose that.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Blogger’s ego dangerously enlarged after publication of her photos in the Austrian press!

Having seen my photos from Cannes, a nice journalist I know at the Bad Ischler Rundschau asked if he could use a couple of them in the paper. I happily obliged as he’s been a very helpful soul over the past 6 years or so and asked for a copy of the paper in return. One photo was published last Sunday in the Bad Ischler Sonntagsrundschau and the other photo was published on the front page of the Salzkammergut Rundschau last Wednesday. The papers turned up in the post today and will take pride of place in my ego archive (and I shall leave you to decide whether or not that’s a real thing). It’s rather nice seeing my name in print :-) You can see pics of the papers on Flickr.

A weekend of food

We’d originally planned to celebrate Suzy’s birthday (a bit late) last Saturday, but then Madame came along and asked to move the date to Sunday. As if it was all about her. I mean, really, the cheek!

So as to have the last word (first) Lauren and I made our own lunch plans for the Saturday. She was going to be in Tunbridge Wells anyway because her old man Dave was due to be indelibly stained in exchange for money and she’d be at a loose end for a few hours while she waited. We batted a few ideas as to a venue back and forth via email and plumped for the Gourmet Burger Kitchen.

We arrived there a little after noon and found the place almost empty. Window seats at a table for four, thank you very much – our bags like to be comfortable too. I had a cheeseburger and Lauren opted for a chicken burger with extra avocado. Tart that she is. Very yummy food and we recommend the restaurant to all and sundry. Except to those of you who don’t like burgers. You guys probably wouldn’t like it so much. Oh, and we did have fun befuddling the waitress – evidently she’d not previously had any customers who produced enormous cameras and started snapping away, admiring shallow depth of field when she brought them their burgers.

[This laptop is doubling my core temperature by the way. If the story tails off at the end, it's because I've burst into flames. Just saying.]

On Sunday I’d just about made room for a bit more food when Suzy picked me up to go to Wagamama. Lauren was running a little late, but fortunately turned up just before Helen and Suzy had to resort to eating their own limbs to stave off their hunger. As soon as we started yakking (talking, not as it perhaps sounds, throwing up) we remembered what trouble we’d had hearing each other last time we went to Wagamama. It wasn’t especially noisy in the restaurant, but the acoustics just swallow the sound you’re making before it reaches those sitting 12 inches away. BUT! We – and by “we”, I mean Helen – made the grand discovery that ear trumpets are in fact the business when it comes to hearing aids AND those big paper menus on the table roll up to make beeyootiful ear trumpets. You can tell we went to grammar school, can’t you? I think it’s also pretty plain that we were the cool ones.

Having had our fill of noodles and rice and some kind of weird soupy thing that Helen had, we spurned the dessert menu and headed down the hill (because who (apart from Wagamama) thinks that wasabi in a chocolate cake is a good idea?). We ended up at Caffe Nero and settled down with coffees, hot chocolates and a variety of scrummy cakes. The late afternoon light coming through the window was perfect and so we whipped out the cameras once more while we waited for our drinks to come somewhere below scalding.

‘Twas a wonderful weekend of food and talking. Now click on that big pile of cream for the photo set.