Scary story for Halloween

Today is the 31st October, I saw a mask for sale in Tescos and it was worthy of something out of Buffy. I quite like the jack o lanterns and the bobbing apples, but I don't much like the fear selling that goes round at this time of year or the glamourisation of devils. So I thought I'd pass on one of my favourite stories of one of my favourite heroes of faith in honour of All Hallows Eve.

At the beginning of the last century, in the north of England there lived a holy man of God. His name was Smith Wigglesworth. He was used in many miracles, healings and he was a gifted teacher, leading by example rather than force of character, though he was no pushover as this story attests.

One night as Wigglesworth lay sleeping he was awoken by that weird feeling that one gets when one knows that one is not alone. The stink in the room was nauseating and a tremendously powerful presence was apparent. Wigglesworth fumbled for the bedside candle, lit it and focussed on the figure of the Evil One himself sitting at the bottom of the bed.
Imagine, the once beautiful now tortured face of the fallen angel. A form that once sang and danced before the throne of God now twisted by unspeakable evil within feet of an ordinary, rather elderly man.
Now Wigglesworth was a Yorkshireman, a race reknown for their unflappability and plain speaking, but surely he would be horrified by this frightful apparition. So, what did he do?
"Oh, its only you" he said. And he blew the candle out and went back to sleep, secure in faith, heart and spirit.
Wigglesworth gave glory to God and nothing else. Amen.

Z for Zachariah

We got the cat. Another big black tom and I triedto name him Fairfax but V didn't like it so we settled on Zac. It suits him, he has a lovely nature, very affectionate and although his coat is in a bit of a state and it needed to be cut right down to the skin which involved a fair bit of pulling about, he took it all really well and seemed to enjoy the affection.

Isn't he a sweetie?


I did a fair bit of work today on the purple jumper. Simple pattern in double crochet over twenty stitches on a huge hook 15mm surina wood. Hooking away quite merrily and then got distracted for two minutes to attend to something else and Eden, youngest twin unwound not only almost the whole ball of wool but about five rows of work which doesn't sound much, but with this guage wool and needle it is in fact about half the jumper.
Arrrgh!

Fifty two ways to name a cat

Today we are hopefully going to get a new cat. Our beloved beautiful big black tom, Arthur died only a few days ago, some might say that he is not yet cold in his grave, but the house seems wrong with no moggie slinking around and I cannot bear it. I am hoping that a new cat, though he could not replace Arthur, will stop me from seeing Arthur's favourite mooching places so appallingly empty.

So we are off to the cat shelter in the next valley with the lovely Liz in attendance, she matches pets to people, a feline matchmaker, and she told me that this cat might be right for us. I hope she is right.

So to names. It is hard to name a pet that has not yet been seen so we have come up with a few differing ones to suit his personality and in deference to the fact that this one is not Mr Right and we may fall in love with a female we have chosen a few lady names too And here they are in no particular order

Samwise; Bumble; Possum; Marbles; Atticus; Fairfax; Mango; Bandit; Littlefoot; Rochester; Cosmo; and V's particular favourite Bugger, only because he can then legally say Bugger the cat. I find it has a certain charm but I don't think that I would want to call the animal in to dinner chirping that particular word from the doorstep, or indeed having the girls use it at all, even though they hear their parents using it far more often than they should.
Girls names are Bea; Uma; Sophia; Josie; Ribbon; Feather; Cotton and Moth.

I went to this cat names search site on the web and there were thousands of names. I narrowed it down to fifty two on paper and the favourites are here.

We'll probably name him Arthur.

Wonderland calling

Wow, I thought spinning was addictive, it looks like blogging will soon become my drug of choice.

I've had real fun today playing with computer stuff, trying to up load photos - which is the easiest bit actually cos me camera requires not only batteries, yup I can manage that one, but apparently its integral memory is full. I know this because it told me so, then it blew a rasberry at me, told me its batteries were knackered and switched itself off. So now all I have to do is find a memory stick and do what ever it is one does with it to relieve my constipated little camera.
Several problems arise at this point

• What is a memory stick, what do they look like and where has V hidden them?
• When you have this stick what do you do with it?
  
• What is a USB anyway?
• The image has to be below 50 MB, okay managed that cos adobe did it for me, but it leads me to the next point of
• What is a URL and how does one get it shorter than 68 characters? I don't know if its me but the whack of gibberish I copied and pasted into the given space was almost as long as this post!

Never mind. Today I am Alice, Blogger is the white rabbit, lappie is the Cheshire cat, and V, my caterpillar - font of all things mystical, enigmatical and computerish is in Ludlow for the weekend and is faintly alarmed that I have ventured into Wonderland without him.

But I take heart that though this tecnical illiterate has killed two fridges, a TV ( a telly that is, not a crossdresser cos that would be illegal, dear children) and a video recorder, I have yet to seriously fry a computer

That said, the day is not yet over, indeed the night is young.
I may even manage to get some crocheting done before its time for cocoa and beddy byes

Todays things to do

Well,
Spinning - finish off the purple merino for Rose's Crimbo jumper. Fantastic fibre, just slippery enough to make it interesting to spin and I've made some whopping errors in it, snap or unravel., they have to come out somehow. I've made it into a reasonably chunky yarn and plied it double but with a tight twist so its not so very casual.

Crochet - start on the said purple. I'm adapting a pattern written for a lighter weight yarn and experimenting with a 15mm hook, so it could well be a disaster but it will work up so quickly that I'll soon know.
Thats the trouble with spinning your own yarn and not being conversant with yarn weights. Who knows what I'm going to get? But they do say that half the fun is getting there. Rose won't care, she chose the colour herself and while I think amethyst is a challenging colour for a child to wear and I'd have prefered her to go for the delphinium blue that would have matched her eyes perfectly - well it's what she wanted and it is her jumper after all. I've already knitted the hem and collar in a commercial velvet eyelash yarn in glowing jewel tones of sapphire, amethyst and azure with a dash of fuscia. I knit like a bear but I managed somehow. I could never have crocheted it - too fluffy and I wouldn't have been able to see where I was going.

As soon as I can figure out the digital camera and how to post a photo I'd like to get some progress pics up on here.

Wire work - don't know if going to get to this but I plan on designing some spinning wheel threader hooks to take to the guild's bring and buy next week. I don't use one myself as my Louet wheel oriface is large enough to do without a hook but the ashfords need them and it might be nice to have a beaded handle rather than the plain wooden ones they customarily have

Anyway, on with the day. Chores half done but the other half to do before the fun starts.

testing testing one two

Wow, I ve surprised myself. The worlds biggest technophobe has just started a blog. I feel like I'm about to take my driving test. Spooky and spooked