Wreck this journal - it begins

Remember I said that in a bid for creativity, I was going to try and be a bit more destructive, through the medium of a copy of Wreck this journal? Well, my journal finally arrived at the weekend, and I was keen to get stuck in and complete some of the tasks.

First, I followed an instruction that I found VERY difficult:


However, it was quite cathartic and I felt all liberated afterwards :o) I cracked it once....


and then twice....


and then a whole lot of other times just for good measure!


Next, I completed a slightly easier one:


And I've done a couple of others too, but I'll have to save those for next time as the NBM is getting grumpy and wants me to leave the computer alone now.

We're going away for the weekend, but I will be taking my journal with me, and I will try to do a journal-wrecking update when we get back. Bye for now....

Wednesday giggles

OK, so I know this is too late for ITLAP Day, but...


Well, it made me laugh, anyway :o) It is from the ever-wonderful Savage Chickens site.

And, because I'm in a cartoony moody (you'll probably need to click on this one to make it big enough to read):

It is by Roz Chast, and the NBM found it here. I think that both of my Grandmas could probably relate to it on a very personal level :o)

In Mojo news: thank you all for your kind words of support at this difficult time. Sadly, it's still AWOL. I had a good look for it at the weekend, but it wasn't at bikefest in Cheddar, where our crazy friend was spending 10 hours cycling up a gert big hill and then zooming back down again, far too fast (the energentic fool), and neither was it in Morrisons at Cribbs Causeway, or in the enormously long queue at the bank (it was a *very* exciting weekend, as I'm sure you can tell). I've got a few tip-offs though, so I'm hoping to track it down soon.

Must go now, but leaving you with a thought-for-the-day, courtesy of my Dad, who saw it on a sign outside a cafe:

"The future is uncertain. Eat dessert first!"

Wise words, indeed :o)

Has anyone seen my crafty mojo??

Because I seem to have lost it somewhere :o(

I'm fairly sure I had it a while ago... I think I remember that I used to quite like knitting things (mainly little monkeys and hairy-face-furniture, if memory serves...?). And, according to my bloggy archives, it appears that I may also have tried my hand at other crafty things: I've found evidence of rudimentary jewellery-making, sock origami, bra-embroidery, and pretending to be a card maker.

But, I've searched high and low and the mojo is definitely now in hiding. Please let me know if you find it, and tell it to come home. I'll even consider re-negotiating its contract and offering it free biscuits.

In the meantime, however, I have been inspired to order a copy of this after looking at some amazing and beautiful pictures here, and when it arrives I will attempt to be creative with it (in a destructive kind of way, obviously!) I'll also have a whirl at putting together some little wooly hats and see if they might tempt my mojo back home.

And just cos it looks a bit wordy without, here is a gratuitous picture of a monkey in an octohat:


Off to go and knit something similar but a bit less tentacley...
VCxx

PS. Was about to sign off when I remembered I really wanted to link to this. Please go and watch it. I'll wait.

*humming*

Oooh, you're back. Did you watch the clip? I love this remix - it's so funny - even better than the original Phil Collins version :o)

OK, awkward rambling PS over now...

Byeeee...

(***edited to add: if the video won't load, there's another version here, although it's slightly lower quality***)

Don't forget!

Today be a very special day, folks! Yarrr :o)


Yarr, it be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! The most piratey day o' the year! Avast! Do enjoy it, mateys!

An' for those o' ye that be interested in yarrr-n (*giggle*), why not pick up yer sticks, an' go Knit like a Pirate? Hooray! Knit on, me hearties :o)

An' shiver me timbers. Or something.*
VCxx

PS. If ye be wanting t'promote ITLAP day in "workplaces with no sense of pirattitude" (in the words of the official ITLAP website), there be a subtle an' brilliant poster, here. It tickled me more than a jellyfish's tenticles. Yarr.


*It be harder than it looks to talk like a pirate. I did me best.

I am very proud of my knees

Now, please don't think I have finally lost the plot. The title of this post is perfectly sane. I am proud of my knees because they did not give way under me yesterday when I made them carry me 13.1 miles round the Bristol Half Marathon.

Some of you may remember that I did this run last year, and at the time I wasn't sure if I'd ever run that far again. However, yesterday morning I found myself lining up with nearly 16,000 others on Anchor Road, contemplating the more-than-two-hours of plodding that lay ahead. And on the first warm and sunny day we've had in weeks, too; just when I'd got used to running in torrential rain!

But anyway, the long-story-short is that I finished, and that I am still on speaking terms with my knees, for which I am very thankful.

And for those of you who wish I would shut up about my knees and get back to knitting-based-pursuits, here is a picture NBM took of me in the runners' village, looking perplexed by the words spray-painted onto the ground:

(For those of you who can't read it, it says "knitting needles")

(oh, and please don't laugh at my oh-so-fetching silver skirt space blanket)

Knitting needles, eh? Hmm.... But running with your knitting needles is very dangerous, surely?? How odd. And quite apart from that clear health-and-safety issue: where, in fact, were these promised knitting needles? It was a mystery.



...... Or at least, it would have been, had I not been standing in the very same spot one week before, watching this:

Some very, very large knitting. Very large indeed.

Mystery solved :o)

If I've done my sums right...

... then my blog is exactly one year old today. And also - quite by chance - this appears to be my 150th post.

If I'd been a bit more organised, I'd have put together a giveaway for this occasion, it being the perfect opportunity to do so. Sadly, though, I'm not. So I haven't.

Instead, you can have the promise of a belated giveaway, sometime in the not-too-distant future :o)

And for those of you who prefer instant gratification, please go here to watch a brilliant short cartoon that is suitably celebratory.

Heck, because I'm feeling generous, you can also have this very informative video showing how balloons are made... because balloons are celebratory too, right?



Wow - it's complicated, innit? I shall never look at a balloon in the same way again...

I'm still here

Sheesh, I've been such a bad blogger lately. But I am still here, honest...

I had a good time seeing my Gran in Shetland, where I spotted a goodly number of Shetland Bumblebees:


For all you Latin fans out there, this subspecies is Bombus muscorum agricolae (I think).

And when I got home, I was even more excited to find that my Bumblegarden had become populated with not one, but two happy little buzzers:

Buzz

Buzz 2

And here's a group shot, to prove that the above pics are not just two different angles on the same bee:

Buzz (on the left) and Buzz 2 (on the right)

(Latin-fans: the flavour of these guys is either Bombus terrestris or Bombus lucorum... I can't tell the difference with absolute confidence... and I believe the best way to do so involves dissection... which probably isn't much fun for the bumbles...).

Sadly, they shuffled off their little bumbly mortal coils about a week ago - as bumbles tend to at this time of year - so the garden is now very empty again. *Sigh*. Roll on next Spring...

The flip side is that I might shut up about bumbles now for a while - so it's safe to some back again soon in the hope I'll have posted something a bit different :o)

Which is what I want to finish up with actually. Is anyone else disconcerted by this picture of our oven clock, spotted at midnight a few weeks ago:


What kind of a time is that?? 00:00, surely...?