Pink Swings and Foam Snow

Sometimes you just have to be a bit silly.  Canary Wharf, London is full of drabness.  It's where a lot of suits work in Banks and similar establishments.  If you look around the station, you will see lots of people looking miserable at the prospect of going to their office.  They wear dark coloured suits and coats.

Today on the way out of the station, there was a set of pink swings as part of a promotion.  Very hard to resist.  So I just jumped right on.

Happy New Year!

Hello my friends and a Happy New Year to you all :-)

The hubby and I spent a nice long break with my family over Christmas.  It was nice to be out of the hustle and bustle of London for a little while, although our week was packed with visits to various places, walks in the village where my family live and a little trip to the seaside as well.

Although it was nice to be away, it was also nice to get home again, and we had a day to do a quick flat tidy-up before hosting our close friends for New Years Eve... As is usual, we played some cards, drank some champagne when the clock struck midnight and then settled down on the sofa to watch the remainder of Jools Holland, finally heading to bed after 2am.  It was fun at 7am the next morning when their baby girl woke up wanting attention and the whole house was shattered or hungover!

So now we are into 2013, yay! Hubby had a buffer day before heading back to work today, and we both did absolutely nothing except laze around watching TV, and in the evening we watched the last two Harry Potter films to make it feel a bit like it was still Xmas.

So, a happy 2013 to my followers, wishing you all Health, Wealth and Happiness.  I hope it's a good one.

It's coming...

Hooray, it's almost here!!!

The cards are up, the decorations are out, the lights are twinkling.

My stitching has been almost non-existent for the last few weeks as I've been shopping and wrapping and we've been away in Bristol for a couple of days where there was so so much rain that I ended up throwing away my boots as they got caked in mud and didn't seem to prevent my feet getting soaking wet.  It's a real shame about the weather, as it was all we could do to dash from shop to shop and coffee shop to coffee shop.

We are just having a bit of a tidy up now before Christmas arrives properly and I'm extremely glad that my hubby has now finished work and can relax - it's been 6 months since our holiday and I know he's feeling pretty burnt out.  Let's hope Xmas and New Year doesn't make us more frazzled!

So I just wanted to pop by before I snuggle up with my hubby for Xmas and wish you all a lovely time, I hope it's peaceful, relaxing and fun!  Thank you so much for reading my little blog, I've loved having all your comments.

Seeya next year!
Jo
x

Tusal - December 2012

Ho, Ho, Ho!

I made it to the end of the year of Tusals.  I looked at my little pot... and I thought... 'Is that all? For a whole year? Pathetic.'  But I think that is the nature of working on a big HAED and parking the stitches, you don't find yourself fastening off and cutting so much, you just keep going until the thread has run out.

This year I did something I have never done in my life.  I was in the mood to stitch a Pooh Bear design and I knew that I had started one a very long time ago.  I pulled it out.  I looked at it.  Then the pattern.  Then back at it.  I had gone wrong in more than one spot.  Then I looked at the fabric.  Quite grubby.  Then I looked at the back and saw the horror of threads going all over the place.  After that, I rifled through my fabric selection and pulled out a roughly the same size piece of cream Aida.

I started on this one all over again.  It feels cleaner, and neater and although the frog did come and visit me, I have fixed that now and it looks fine again.

So the colourful bits in the top of my jar this month are from the Tigger's Log.

My friend Jill...

... has started her very first blog.  Every year we get a wonderful handpainted christmas card and I get a beautiful birthday card.  I swear Jill seems to be good at everything she does!

Please go and pay her blog a visit here:
http://jillkeeley.blogspot.co.uk/

And you'll hear about the inspiration and stories behind her artwork... she can tell a good tale :)

TUSAL - November 2012

Hello there!

I'm a few days late with the blog post, but my TUSAL pictures actually were taken on the correct day.  (If you don't know what the TUSAL is, the link is down there, yes on the right).

Here are my threads from my stitching so far.  Finally some lighter colours as I have been working on the moon part of my Moonlit Waters HAED.  It's going much faster than the other pages and I am enjoying this page a great deal when I have time to stitch on it.  I'm hoping to have page 3 finished by the end of November, so wish me luck... it'll be a challenge, but I'm going for it.

Snapshots

With all the social media networks out there nowadays it's pretty easy to get sucked in and spend all your time updating whatever status or throwing tweets out into the big wide world.  I think my favourite of them all however has to be Instagram.

If you haven't heard of this one, it's sort of like a cross between twitter and facebook but for posting photos.  There is functionality to 'like' photos, follow other people, look at the latest photos on a particular topic (using hashtags) and post comments on people's photos.  Also some photo manipulation filters, although there are many other photo apps out there as well (a little shout to the guys at Woodcamera, which is one of my favourites).  The app can also post directly into Twitter and Facebook if you use those.

I'm pretty nosey, so something which allows a little peek into people's lives and what they see as they go about the world is just fantastic for me and for something that started off pretty modestly, it seems to have picked up in a huge way and is now on its way to being acquired by Facebook (let's hope they don't ruin it, eh?). I tend to use it when I'm out and about or with time on my hands or standing somewhere where I think 'wouldn't it be fun for someone on the other side of the world to see what I'm seeing right now'.  One of the great things about the app is that it's FREE!!

Until a few days ago, the Instagram application was only available to those people with smartphones, the idea being you take a photo on your phone quickly and easily, but then you can instantly upload it into the app, apply filters if you wish and anyone who follows you will see it on a timeline of posts of their followers immediately (that's how fast things move these days).   It is coming to the web also, although for the moment photos can still only be posted from mobile devices - you need to have it on a mobile device and therefore have an account in order to be able to log in and interact on the web, although it is possible to look at public profiles on the web without needing to sign up.

One of the things I find most interesting is that professional photographers, amateurs and total beginners alike can snap an interesting photo and they are using very similar tools.  When Sandy approached the East Coast of the US, I could see in real time the events unfolding from people who were actually there, and I think that is one of the most powerful uses of this tool, although I suppose the downside is that it is possible to fake photos and hard to tell if this has happened.

During the East Coast chaos, Time magazine gave 5 journalists access to its Instagram feed and one of those photographs was chosen for a front cover shot, which is yet more proof that social media is changing how we interact with the world and each other.  You can read a little more about this here.

I suggest you go take a look, have a nosey... if you have a smartphone, download the app and play - It is honestly one of the most fun apps I have on my phone!!  Their blog is also pretty interesting, with challenges to complete. (and if you are up for a challenge there are many many other groups on Instagram also doing this).

The only slight irritation at the moment for me are the spam comments so hopefully the team are working on a way to be able to delete those, but for now you just have to ignore them.

Here's my page...feel free to follow it!

http://instagram.com/ricketyjo or user ricketyjo from the mobile app.