Is it in code???

OK, for the wool we are working with some lovely Italian people, but one of them is using an online translation engine to communicate with us. The latest (and potentially most exciting) mail runs thus:

Subject: Yarn Shipment
Message: HI!!!!
Expeditious like from fax to half your messenger already Thursday 23/ 11
she you doesn't have importance if then the payment was not still fact: we have sent equally and with big like.
Thank you.
To soon.

Y'wha???

I *think* (only think, mind) that this means that they are shipping the yarn even though they have not received confirmation of payment. Which, if so, is great news! If it doesn't mean that, then I am stumped. Any offers / alternative translations from you guys?

British Boot Fairs

I am working today (honest, not just putting entries on blogspot) so I had to get the train in this morning. On Sundays at the station they have a market / boot fair. I got there in enough time to have a quick scoot around. They always make me giggle. How many Catherine Cookson books do you think there are, on average, at a British boot fair? I think this one had more than the usual. Over a hundred, at least, and they were still only just setting up!

There was also the brilliant character with a sort of singing Tourette's problem. 'Oh what a beautiful morning!' he sings, sounding drunk, in the rain. Someone at another stall says, 'I thought I saw..mumble mumble..' 'I thought I saw a puddy cat a-creeping up on me!' he replies. Then, surveying his lack of customers, 'Things... can only get better....!'

I concur. As usual, weekend work has started off with problems. As it means to go on, I expect. Hey ho. At least we get paid overtime...

Happy Sunday, readers.

Back from Travels 2

This is only in two parts because Blogger has decided to limit the amount of pics in one entry. Grr. Anyway, back to - where were we? - ah yes, Nepal...

Flying Buddha Air over Mt Everest. Yes, another 5am start! Magical though.

Stupa at Bodnath, Kathmandu. I loved this. Hundreds of people and monks walking around it clockwise, humming the mantra Om mane padme hum, clicking their prayer beads. Buddha's eyes are on all four sides of the stupa so he can look out over the whole world. And I love the prayer flags. I walked one circuit at dusk, and the mantra certainly gets into your head.

After Nepal, on to visit Ted and Emily in Hong Kong. I got some time to chill out (finally some mornings I didn't have to get up at ungodly hours to see mountains!) and explore.

Big Buddha on Lantau Island. The new Ngong Ping 360 cable car is now open, with a great view of the buddha on the way in. If you could see people in this pic, they would not even come up to half way up his knee. This is a seriously big buddha.

Man Mo temple, Hong Kong. These incense spirals can burn for a week.

Won Tai Sin temple, Kowloon. People shake cans of sticks with symbols on them until one falls out. The chosen stick can tell their fortune.

And finally, the view from Ted's balcony. Yes, that is Hong Kong City. Not bad eh? It's a little unnerving though. You are chilling out in the evening, walk into the living room and catch a glimpse out of the window. 'Fcuk!', you think, 'who put those skyscrapers in the garden?'

So there we go. Sorry there are not many words, but the pics speak for themselves. There are many, many more, but these will do for now.

Wool update - it has been done and is being shipped back the Blighty this week! The website is nearly done, we have a house full of needles and accessories, so we are nearly ready to go! I'll tell you the URL in my next entry. Hope you liked the travel pics!

Back from Travels 1

It's nice to be back. England smells of Christmas and holiday expectation. But I did have a fabulous time away!

This is the group I travelled with in India and Nepal, posing at Fatepur Sikri near Jaipur.

£12,500 necklace I tried on in Jaipur. I also tried on another at at least £50,000 - a Maharani style collar of pebble sized uncut diamonds and rubies. Why didn't I get a picture of that? Why???

Me at the Taj Mahal.

Arty farty shot at Agra Fort.

Tiger in Chitwan National Park, Nepal.

Spotting Indian rhino from the back of elephants. All we needed were rifles, pith helmets and a gin and tonic and we'd have been right back in the Raj.

Bathing elephants - or so we were told. Don't fall for that one people!

Getting up at 4.30am to see the sun rise over the Annapurnas...




More in part 2...

I will be away...

I think we ate that comedy carrot with supper last night. I'm sure I had a leg-shaped piece on my plate. Either way, it was very tasty!

Anyway, I am going away for three weeks tomorrow, travelling to India, Nepal and Hong Kong. A bit of a whistle-stop tour, but it should be good! I shall be seeing the Taj Mahal and the Annapurnas, and doing far too much shopping I imagine.

I will leave you with a pic of some of the wool samples colours we received back the other day. Aren't they lovely and glossy? That's the natural lustre of Romney wool. Avail for purchase in December, all you knitters out there!

Have a good few weeks all, I'll type and post some pics in around three weeks.

K

Comedy Root Vegetables

Just pulled this fantastic carrot from the garden:



Can't get better than that! Apart from a slug has started to have a go at him already. Interesting that it went for the leg first and not his diddly dander. Must have been a postman-biting canine in a former life.

I must credit mum though - also from the garden I got: courgettes, butternut squash, beefsteak tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, chilis, beetroot, ruby chard and red onion. And some eggs from the hens. Anyone want to have a Ready Steady Cook go at a recipe suggestion from that lot?!

Successful knitting project

I have a problem with sizings in knitting projects - usually jumpers come out vast. So vast I can fit two people in them at once. I don't get it, I knit the test swatch, all the measurements match the pattern, and by the time I've finished the thing has grown like one of mum's courgettes (aka marrows). But it's only jumpers - cushion covers, toys, anything else comes out fine.

So, it was lovely to do a project where you are actually *supposed* to knit the thing huge to start with. And then, in this case, bung it in the washing machine on a hot cycle (another woolly disaster area we know all too well) and shrink the thing down to something manageable.

Here is a pic of the complete bag:

Here is a pic post-wash. Count the bricks!



And here is a gratuitous picture of Mir, requested following previous mention. I told you she poses shamelessly for the camera.

Teen Romance

I must be getting old. There is a teen romance blossoming in our office and it is quite gruesome to watch. For a start they get lunch together and it's a bag of Haribo and two cans of Red Bull. Huh? Nutritional value? Oh, and a box of chocolate zoo animal biscuits. This is the guy that passed out following a week in Ibiza a while ago and I had to tend in a first aid capacity until the ambulance arrived. (They biffed him about until he came around and said he was dehydrated. They should have biffed him more in my current opinion.)

Second, the bird is the reception airhead who gets my hackles up - yes me, and it takes a lot to get a rise out of me. She sneaks up here to get a cup of tea and pick a fight with him. 'I'm upset', she pouts. 'Oh, d'ya wan' me ta buy you s'more cloves then?' he asks without taking his eyes from his screen. Good grief.

Spamalot

Saw this last night - very funny. Tim Curry was great as Arthur - not ingenuous like Graham Chapman was in the role, rather slightly sexually subversive in his Rocky Horror Show way. Lots of laughs, lots of silly jokes, lots of risque jokes, and lots of dialogue from the original film too, which of course the audience loved. ('I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!')

I particularly admired 'Ye Olde Rippe Offe Shoppe' in the foyers, selling Spam sandwiches, special tins of Spamalot spam, 'Fetchez la vache' Tshirts, coconut shells for horse hooves and fiersome Rabbit of Caerbannog hand puppets complete with Big Pointy Teeth.

We also tried out Gaby's on Charing Cross Road (just south of Leicester Sq tube station), which I have walked passed a hundred times but it looks like a dubious salmonella emporium from the road. In fact it's a very popular Turkish/Greek diner and the food was pretty good. Starters great (vine leaves and falafels), lamb kebabs perhaps a little dry though. But very busy, which always bodes well. And they gave us free dessert and another half bottle of wine on the house. *:)

Technology

Well, I finally did it and bought an mp3 player. Not an iPod, praise be. It's an iRiver, so we shall see how that goes. However I think I have been too long in a tech department staffed (apart from me) wholly by blokes, as I no longer bother with reading the instructions, but just start pressing buttons until the damn thing does what I want it to. Bloke mentality seems to be contagious. I will have to be careful. *:)

The trouble is, I am dancing along with the music! I'm working a bit late as I'm going to see Spamalot later, sitting here with one headphone in, and can't sit still! Will I be boogying all the way home on the train? Steve says that sometimes he finds himself singing along on the train. I think dancing may be slightly less embarrassing!

Hey ho. Only two weeks to go until holiday.....

Congrats to Clare!

Clare's Three Beautiful Things blog has been a Blog of Note for the past few days, and her hit counter has now exceeded 50,000! Well done Clare, and well deserved. I agree with lots of the comments, that there aren't enough positive blogs about - things that make you realise that actually, life is pretty good. Clare's is a great example of being positive without being schmaltzy.

So, this morning I managed to brave the Indian High Commission and get a visa. The form says: state date of arrival, date of departure, number of days you want the visa for, and number of entries to India. The visa comes back: start date today, for six months, multiple entry. Huh??

However, it was a good morning. Despite not getting there until after 8am (Steve warned me that dire things would happen if I got there late) I only had to queue down the street in the rain for about 40mins. And I made it through the scrum successfully with visa in hand by 10.40am, which is not bad at all. I have to say I have never seen a more tin pot system in a government building. I have a premonition that is the flavour of things to come on our travels....

Shopping

I did it! I've bought myself a new gun. Here it is:

It's a Lincoln Premier 20 bore over and under. And because it's brandy new it's an absolute pig to open and close. I literally have to break it over my knee at the moment.




It's a bit flash harry - the trigger is gold! A little bling for me I feel. Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to bag some pheasants this winter with it.

Nothing like spending money just before I go on holiday / buy a house / buy a car... Let's just hope the wool starts pulling in come ca$h soon.

Speaking of which, they have done a test spin but they are going to wind a ball for us before sending it over to inspect. So we should have something next week sometime. The website is growing - the web man has put a few more pages on.

Right, I have to walk the dog and fill up the pheasant feeders. Here is the dog:

She's a little camera shy, but still smiling. And has been following me around like a shadow all day, demanding entertainment. She's sleeping with her head on my feet as I type. Such a soppy dog.

To grump or not to grump

Trawling across the blogsphere, checking out how Other People do their blogs, it seems that either blogs are (a) vents for vitriolic spleen, or (b) places to be positive and happy, to work towards being in a Better Place in a shrink's office sort of way, or share luck and contentment and joy joy thoughts.

While type A can be quite amusing, they can also verge on the offensive (viz, The Finger and The Thumb). Type B on the other hand can become saccharine to the point of requiring a bucket, and/or desperate and/or dull. It's hard to strike a type B balance. Type B bloggers also seem to own an inordinate amount of cats.

I suppose there are also type C blogs which are sort of observatory diaries. While a teenager in Tokyo, potentially a window on a different culture, completely fails to deliver ('I went to the cinema with my friends heehee'), sometimes these sorts of blogs are the most interesting. A mom living in the country in the southern states of the USA, telling you about her neighbourhood, can be fascinating in the detail.

So in this fledgling blog, what direction should I take? I think I have dabbled in a few type A entries, but that started edging into the rest of my thinking, and I am not a ranting type person. At the moment, in fact, I am more of a happy positive 3BT person. So I consciously and subconsciously edge away from rants. I don't believe I am teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown and require therapy and moral support from other bloggers, so type B is out. So should this be a type C diary and observation blog? To make that work I need, I think, to add some more *details*. Argh. Do people really care to read about my life?

What do you think makes or breaks a blog?

PR Dahlink

I've just done my first interview! The lady from the British Wool Marketing Board called as they want to do a story about Aragon Yarns in the farming press. Yay! We have to wait until the wool is back though as they want some pictures with it. So not for another month or so. Which is fine, because by then the website will be up and hopefully we will have some stock.

Isn't this exciting? Mum has been talking to people at meetings and ram sales and things and it seems that word is spreading unbidden. People are asking her how it's going. It wasn't all supposed to get this big!

I am going away for my three week holiday just at the wrong time... It was never going to be a good time really. Never mind. When else would I get to see India and Nepal?

New Business

Aragon Yarns is really happening! After months of planning it all seems to be coming together. In a Hannibal stylee. It's exciting and scarey at the same time. The wool is about to go to the spinners, having been washed and cleaned; the website man is making good progress and should have something to show me by the end of the week; I'm about to ask a printer to print some business cards and things, and we are also about to put in the orders for knitting needles and accessories too. And we need to do all the boring things like get merchant bank accounts open too. How dull.

I am struggling finding information about importing goods from the US - anyone know anything about that? What import tarriffs do we end up paying? UK HM Revenue and Customs say we need to pay them VAT at the going rate but there is no import duty, but I think we may need to pay something to the US Govt for exporting. Blimmin Bush.

Stresserama

It's been a bad few days at work, starting with working on Sunday and having a failed recovery on a domain controller. Screaming bunch of ar5e.

What I *really* want to do at the moment is just to stay and work at the farm. It's so lovely to be there, even though it's all flat out busy it's restful at the same time. It's pleasant to be working hard, rather than here it's just painful and/or dull.

I've been so stressed that I knitted through two balls of wool yesterday to try to chill out. I'm doing a felted bag from a free pattern I found at Drops designs at www.garnstudio.com, in Scandanavia. Thousands of free patterns! Fantastic. I will try to take a pic of the work in progress so you can see how huge it knits up before you felt it back to something sensible in the washing machine. Magic.

You have got to be kidding me

So I was on the train this morning (at some ridiculous hour, but that's another story) and this girl got on and sat down beside me, started rummaging in her bag. Oh-oh, I thought, here we go with the makeup. It is a pet peeve of mine, women putting their makeup on on the train. Can they not just get up five minutes earlier and do it at home?? Anyway, this girl didn't just do the makeup. The first thing she did? Undid one top button and dived in there with the roll-on deodorant. Wha--???

I have to put in a heartfelt Victor Meldrew 'I just don't believe it!' at this point. And a Peanuts 'Good Grief.'

School fete and dog show

We've been looking after my young cousins this week while their parents take a well deserved break. (I think we need a well deserved break now too...) Anyway, it was their school's summer fete and dog show today. And golf tournament. Yes, this is a country school and they have a nine hole 3par golf course in the grounds. A perfect opportunity for the suppressed competitive streak of many fathers to shine through.

Conversely, I've never seen such a lack of talent in a dog show. Training? It seems that is old hat. I don't think I saw a dog that wasn't towing its owner along. About half a dozen scuffles broke out amongst bolshy mutts. Fitness? Nope. These dogs were more rolling in fat than their owners. (Will someone bring out an Atkins diet for dogs? The Woodhouse diet?? Can dogs get diabetes? Will we be seeing 'if your dog's waist is bigger than this you should get it tested' posters at train stations?)

To show willing (honest, that was all it was!) Mum and I took a couple of our dogs along. Bee was entered into the Luscious Labrador class and the Obedient Gundog class. Millie and I went in for the agility class for a laugh, imagining a half dozen or so hard core mothers who take their uber-trained dogs along every week to do the seesaw and running through the sacking tunnel. Not a bit of it! Bee carried off third place in both her classes, and Millie and I came joint first in a dead heat at 23 seconds to complete the course! I think it helped that we weren't encumbered by a 5yr old child tipping over the jumps with the lead and going with the dog through the tunnel. Plus Dad showed his inner child this morning by doing a bit of pre-training. He came into the kitchen and said, 'I made a tunnel in the barn and Millie goes straight through it!' Aw. And I may have put some electric fence poles out on the lawn and done a bit of weaving practise too... Competitive? Us?

Dr Who Scarf

A popular request for newbies starting to knit is to do a scarf. Nothing fancy, no shaping, straight through until you finish the ball. A popular request from male partners of women starting to knit seems to be for their lady to knit them a Doctor Who scarf. So I did a little checking today and guess what? There is a site called: http://www.doctorwhoscarf.com.

I love the internet. *:)

Mr B

People who say the countryside is boring really can't have been there.

This morning, just as we were leaving for the station, a blue estate car comes into the yard.
'Who's that?', I say to mum.
'That's Mr B---', she replies, 'he used to be a minder for the Cray twins.'