Monday 28 May 2007

Windy on the hill

What Bank Holiday weather! At one point it even hailed here, driving straight down across the Vale of York from the North York Moors. Its a good day for backing up computer files. We had a minor panic yesterday when the external hard drive (with all of our photos on!) started making a strange noise & not talking to the laptop! Its OK now but it prompted me to add alot more photos to my Flickr pro account. Its a fairly slow job, but I have been able to keep bobbing back to the computer whilst doing other things, hopefully they will be safe in cyberspace. I mainly use Flickr for sharing photos, especially ones taken at work, but I may as well use it for our own photos. I use 4shared.com for other documents, again for files that may be shared (e.g. via Geographylost or Geography Room blogs) but it also has the advantage of storing files in cyberspace.
Its a good day for reading as well as knitting (with the aid of a book deckchair!). I have just finished reading 'Winterdance' by Gary Paulsen. It is the story of running the Iditarod, the sled dog race to Nome in Alaska. When son & heir was younger we read many of Gary Paulsen's books, especially 'The Hatchet' & the other stories of Brian in the wilderness, but this is a non-fiction story for adults that I forgot I had & have never read. Awesome! For anyone who loves dogs & wilderness it is a 'must'. Some of it is 'laugh out loud', but mostly its just a fantastic insight into a man & his dogs as they complete this huge insane journey. Race doesn't seem to be the right word. Alaska is high on my 'places to visit before I fall off this planet list'. British Colombia, Canada is the nearest I have got yet & Vancouver Island the most remote part of it that we visited.

I promised pictures! Firstly Mr J's sock..... Pretty! Early progress on the VLT offering -I have now done eight repeats of the pattern! There are mistakes but....... wait until its blocked!


....and some blue flowers. There seems to have been a spate of blue spring flowers on a few blogs so here are some of mine. I have only seen the highlights of the Chelsea Flower show on TV this year & I was fairly underwhelmed! Seemed a bit 'over designed' & corporate. Rather see a woodland filled with bluebells or the first lupin in my garden really. Not sure what variety of Aquiliga this is, it probably self set anyway!

6 comments:

Artis-Anne said...

Yes typical Bank Holiday weather over here too :(
Oh thanks for eminding me O too could do with backing up stuff on my computer. I have lost everything once and its such a pain.
Must check out that book sounds great dogs & wilderness just my sort of thing.
I too haven't watched much of Chelsea this year for pretty much the same reason . I too am a defo cottage garden type, love the 'Granny's Bonnet' mine seem to have cross pollinated and I have a lot of doubles in all shades

sarah said...

We've got a lot of self-set Aquilegia in a very similar colour; I wondered if it was a default setting, er, dominant colour. As a teen I dreamed of driving the AlCan, the road to Alaska that starts at Dawson Creek (I did manage the first ten miles as part of another holiday). In those days cars required some mods to cope with the washboard gravel, but I'd guess it's less of an adventure since the road was paved. Now... I want to see Byzantium and the shores of the Black Sea. Ah well, Scotland awaits.

Enjoy Folk Shawls -- there are so many classic, beautiful projects in that book. I'm suffering from lace withdrawal at the moment :-)

SueJ said...

Granny's bonnet! I had forgotton that -much nicer for a cottage garden!

Dipsy Doodle said...

Gosh, we had the same terrible weather over the holidays - but actually we were in dire need of rain, so we shouldn't complain too much. And yet, I would have loved to be out in the sun ;(
Thanks so much for telling us about this book - it sounds highly interesting indeed, so I'd better go check it out immediately! Like you, I'm totally fascinated by Alaska, so I'm sure I'll love reading it!
Your knitting looks awesome - the sock is particularly beautiful in these happy and cheerful colours!

Kath said...

That book sounds great - DD & I watched 'Alaska' this Bank Holiday weekend and were in love with the scenery so that's a timely review for me! I love the lace and the socks are looking great. Can't help much re toe-up but am expecting a new sock book in the post so shall do some reading up! My Granny's Bonnets seem to be the same sort of colour as well - that may well be, as Sarah says, the dominant colour - lovely either way though!

SueJ said...

Alaska is one of my favorite 'family films' S&H may be 17 now but will still watch it. Perhaps Free Willy 2 is our all time favorite though (1 & 3 are also highly rated in this house as well)