More flooding 2014

After the flooding last month, the waters went back down again and everything carried on as normal. Except the rain carried on, and more and more water piled down the Thames, and since the weekend the flood waters have risen again. It's been a lot worse this time, and several of our friends have had to leave their homes. Ours is absolutely fine, and we've just had a few problems getting to work (road closures and trains not running) but so far have been able to pretty much function as normal.

It has however been very strange seeing the area we live in plastered all over the news, and visited by every politician possible (wearing an array of wellies).

 This road leading to the park is becoming one with the Thames.

 Flooded multi-storey car park on the banks of the Thames.

 This is normally a semi-circular seating area on the banks of the Thames, but the river's now so high all the steps/seats are under water!

 The road under the railway bridge is now closed to traffic, although pedestrians can still walk that way as the Thames is only(!)  halfway across the road.

River Colne going through the Two Rivers shopping centre. It's usually well over a metre below this level. That's a good name for a shopping centre...

Birthday

I am feeling spectacularly old and wrinkly (and don't mention the sagging bottom) today as I've just turned 30. The horrors of wrinkledom/sagginess etc were somewhat assuaged by a great day with the OH and some rather groovy presents! Although he did refuse my request to get cracking with the birthday cake at midnight last night (he seemed to think sleep was a better idea?!) I did get a chocolate cake with a candle for each decade!

And the best present! A digital camera! I'd been using the camera on my mobile until now. He took me out for lunch after church this morning and we went for a walk afterwards so I had a chance to experiment with some camera settings. Close up plant things:

It's got different aspect ratio settings - so I can take pictures of things and use them as my desktop background picture. So I had an experiment with some yarn pictures.

And played around with taking pictures of the water as we walked along the Thames.











And other presents? Well, a Mamma Mia DVD and Diarmaid MacCulloch's "A history of Christianity" were among them, both of which I'd been coveting! The OH must be able to read my mind. Actually, he wants to read the book too so we might need to take it in turns. It's got about 1300 pages so this might take a while.

Knitting pictures will resume shortly, once I've finished playing with the camera settings.

Iknit Weekender

Yesterday the Iknit Weekender beckoned. I was worried that all the yarn would have already disappeared as it started on the Friday, but I needn't have been anxious. The Royal Horticultural Lawrence Hall had plenty of stalls with plenty of yarn left, plus plenty of room for plenty of knitters to sit and knit. I may be wrong, but it felt like there was more space to sit and knit this year, although it might be that there weren't as many people around as it was spread over two days?

I'd wanted to get a proper Ravelry badge to wear, but they were all sold out, so I recycled the badge from the Immensely Dull Conference with Horrible Food and Uncomfy Beds (the one redeeming feature was bumping into Rosie as I wandered through Cambridge avoiding going to an evening reception) that I went to last week:

and the OH drew a sheep on it for me. Apparently it's a Lincolnshire Long Wool that's recently been shorn.

I met up with several people, including Littlemy, who I met for the first time after several years of being in touch online! Also, Faeroes from my fledgling knitting group here in Staines, Quitecontrary from back up in Nottinghamshire, Babylonglegs on the Fyberspates stall and Greensideknits who I had a cup of tea with. And I did see Woolly Wormhead in the distance but not close enough to say hello!

I bought two gorgeous skeins from Fyberspates. These are Faery Lace in colourway "Regal", it's 90% merino and 10% nylon and feels gorgeous.

I was fairly restrained with my purchases this time, but I couldn't resist two balls of Zauberball as I've wanted some for ages. On the left is the original Zauberball and the one on the right is the Crazy Zauberball. I got these on the Knitting4fun stand.

And I also couldn't resist a Herdy mug. In fact, I'm drinking tea out of it as I blog!

My OH met me outside and we trotted off to do some shopping, went for a cup of tea in the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, wandered across the Thames and along the South Bank (wondering where all the people came from, turns out it was the Thames Festival, not just people from Iknit) and then went for a meal before heading home.

I arranged the yarn on the train seat, partly because I wanted to admire it and take a photo of it, and partly to stop anyone else sitting there (!!) but the OH seemed to think this was embarrassing behaviour. Can't think why.

Moving places and swine flu

Eeek, it's nearly a month since I last posted! How did that happen? Well, once again, exciting things are happening. I will be leaving Slough far far behind on Thursday this week, to move to Staines with The Other Half. I'll be very happy to leave Slough behind (there is currently a pile of dog poo sitting outside the entrance to my block of flats, plus a lovely smell of excrement, and I found a used syringe lying around last week) and I'm extremely excited about moving to Staines.

Several people wanted to know more about my OH, so I thought I'd post a couple of pictures:

This is him washing the floor at our new house (we got the keys last week!):

And this is him cleaning Oxo:

Spoilt? Me?! See, isn't he lovely?! And he has seen the size of my stash and is prepared to move in with it... Although he has a LOT more books than me, but I'm much more interested in his books than he is in my yarn!

We've been out and about as well as househunting. Having fun reading the silly messages in Puccino's in High Wycombe:

Admiring the sheep at Deen City Farm in London, after we'd visited Morden Hall Park and walked along the River Wandle.

Oh, and avoiding having swine flu. There was an outbreak very very close to me so I ended up having to take Tamiflu - not nice, only 3 more doses to take. Horrible stuff. Fortunately neither of us caught it, although I suspect having swine flu is better than taking Tamiflu.

Knitting update soonish (I will be without broadband for a while after the move) as I still haven't blogged about the GetKnitted workshop! I'll leave you with a picture of the Thames at Staines: