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I only have email addresses for many contacts so am posting this Christmas card of us on the Fox glacier in New Zealand. I'm not really this fat! I am wearing about six layers of clothes to combat the cold. On the glacier the temperature is just like walking into a giant freezer. John, poor soul was offered a multi-coloured hat but wouldn't wear it. He subsequently bought a white one. We were fortunate to be able to get the helicopter ride that day because all rides were cancelled the day before and all subsequent rides after ours that day were cancelled too because of the bad weather.
Here's hoping you all have a happy Christmas and do not over indulge too much over the New Year.

Some of the images links in older posts are now broken after a site upgrade. It may take me a while to get through sorting these out. Please bear with the broken-ness for a while.

The site has just gone through a major upgrade and consequently there are still a few bugs around that I am working on a fix for. Images that were inserted into into posts will display oddly. Rather than thumbnails you'll see a full size image. This while not impeding the meaning of the post will make it look uglier than it did ;-)

If you had 'notify' activated you will no longer get emails as I have removed this module. I have replaced it with something more like 'subscriptions' with hopefully better and more useful functionality. You can find these settings under the 'my account' link.

If you spot anything other than image display being off then please drop a comment in the form below so I fix up anything else that's broken during the upgrade.

Cheers. Kat.

A few weeks ago I came across the first issue of a UK Bead magazine The other mags I've seen have all come from USA so I was glad to see this with it's adverts for all things beading from UK suppliers. I liked the look of this necklace but hadn't made any small beads before so put off starting for a while. I finally took the plunge and decided to use red and green glass in honour of the season. I coated about 5 inches of each mandrel and wound 10 beads on each. The bugbear was cleaning all the beads but I'm looking out for an easier way than cleaning by hand with a reamer. All suggestions gratefully accepted. Here's the result.

I've added 3 pictures to my bead album on Picturetrail.
Pat from Canvey's Picturetrail
Basically, I was just playing around to see what the end result would be. I used a 1.5mm crochet hook and 34 gauge copper wire bought from an electrical suppliers because I couldn't find very fine wire anywhere else. As a plus, this wire is coated so doesn't tarnish and it is easy enough to string beads on the wire before starting to crochet and then incorporating them into the work as you go.
I wanted to try the crochet because I bought a book recently at a beadfair in Newmarket, UK. The book is called Crochet with Wire by Nancie M Wiseman published by Interweave Press and sells in US for $14.94. It has projects for all crochet skill levels and has a brief "How to" section.

Woohoo! My exam is over! I officially no longer need to feel guilty about doing something more fun that revision! The exam was odd in that there seemed to be more time provided than was required. Normally this would make me think that I had done really badly but there was so much more time than was required that I think it was just a weird exam. The exam was two hours long and you had to answer 3 questions. I'd answered the first two within half an hour. After chatting to the guy who was sitting it with me he said that his experience was similar. The first question I answered was a math related one so there's only one way that you can derive the equations and use them.

I didn't take my tripod to New Zealand this year because last year I used it very infrequently. Plus it is a bog standard tripod without a panoramic head. The view of the lake was so spendid that I decided to try a panorama by standing in one place and pivoting myself about 5 times, each time taking one photo whilst keeping my hands and elbows still. When I got home, my November issue of Your Family Tree magazine was waiting for me and one of the full products offered in the free disc that comes with it was a Serif program Panoramaplus 1.0. I thought "Why don't I try out this program rather than a couple of others I have to see what the results will be".These others have given me disappointing results and have required subsequent manipulation.

As I'm meant to be finishing off my coursework and revising for an exam next Friday I am of course wasting time in whatever way I can to put off having to do work. My flat is relatively tidy, the washing-up and laundry are done so now I'm looking for other things to do to procrastinate. Given this, I saw Exif Stats Utility linked a long time ago on one of the bulletin boards I frequent. I saw it again today so thought I'd give it a go.

We hit upon this seal colony by chance, just from looking at the map of the area. The colony is wild and the shore it inhabits is both rocky and full of shingle. Further away from the shore greenery surrounds a tarmac car park which was full of cars when we arrived. The seals blended in so well with the rocks that we frequently approached one without realising it and tourists passed the world along to others when another seal was discovered. People were laughing and pointing and some of the teens were just as funny as the seals when they suddenly realised they had nearly stepped on a seal and hastily jumped out of the way. The Bull seal in the picture was hiding in the greenery and one man approached a little too near. It lunged forward and emitted a roar of warning and the man hastily retreated.

Last year in NZ, we couldn't get on the Helicopter trip because the weather was bad in the mountains and all flights were cancelled. This year, we tried again but were determined to stay at least 2 days at Fox Glacier to maximise our chances of the weather being suitable. The first day was a no-no so the receptionist booked us on the early morning flight the next day, report at 8.15 am which meant getting up about 6.00 am in order to breakfast, pack up and get the camper off site and parked in the village before 8am.
There were lots of teens and twenties milling around waiting to go on the more strenuous hikes up the Glacier with guides. I don't think some of the people knew what they were letting themselves in for as some were dressed very inappropriately as we knew from last year that as you approach the head of the Glacier, it gets considerably colder until at a few hundred yards away, it's like being in a freezer. I say a few hundred yards because the area immediately near the head where the melt runs out is restricted because chunks fall off at intervals and the pieces are big enough to cause substantial injury.