In the picture

Warning - very bad photographs are gratuitously scattered through this blog post.

At last I have a functioning digital camera again, albeit a very basic model.  I'm not complaining - it was free, thanks to Freegle, and I even got 10% off when I ordered a memory card for it.  So for the princely sum of £4.49 I am again able to publish photographs to this blog.

A swan.  I was actually quite close to it, but the camera helpfully adds distance.

Which is my lame excuse for how long it's been since I posted.  When I wrote a blog a couple of years ago, it was all words.  I didn't have a camera and didn't feel the lack.  But these days a blog post without any images looks and feels a little dry, so having posted once with only words I didn't want to do it again straight away.  Consequently it's been a while and I have a few things to tell.

This is the best picture by far that I have taken with the new camera to date.  Admittedly I managed to chop the top off the very nice belltower, and include someone's backside bottom right, but at least you can tell it's the right way up and what it is.

The table-top sale was several weeks ago now, and I am gutted that I couldn't take a photo of my table, because I was quite pleased with it.  I didn't sell much, so obviously my efforts at artistry didn't impress anyone, but they lifted my spirits and that's the important thing.

Amongst other things, I sold 600 grammes of superfluous yarn, which astonished my mother because she is firmly of the opinion that there is a one-way valve between me and the entire yarn stock of the world.  I do have a fair bit, it's true, and to be honest 600 grammes is a bit drop-in-the-ocean-ish, but it is a start and does at least prove that I am not totally obsessed with the stuff.

The money I took wouldn't keep me in groceries for a week, but the most interesting outcome of the morning is that one of the other stallholders is also a crocheter who runs a small haberdashery shop a few miles from my home.  We have very different styles.  She uses mainly natural fibres in neutral, classical colours, whereas I use almost exclusively acrylic yarn, having found a brand that is soft, reasonably priced and which comes in rather more than a rainbow of wonderful colours - Stylecraft Special DK.  She makes mainly small items such as hats, headbands and flower brooches, whereas I have a penchant for making blankets and baby/toddler clothes.  So although we both crochet, we produce very different items.  She suggested that we could probably come to an arrangement whereby she could sell my stuff in her shop for a share of the proceeds.

This is what I was crocheting when I met the haberdashery shop lady.  It's my adapation of the Mount Vernon Throw square.  I will be blogging further about this square, which I reckon is a corker.

I was pleased by this, but didn't get quite as excited as I probably should have done, mainly because I suspect she'll want quite a big percentage, and partly because I'm a bit of an old cynic these days and tend not to allow myself to rejoice before the good news event has actually happened.  So far I have visited her shop twice, but each time she's not been there, so I'm still not too excited!

But I have started making preparations.  I've been crocheting more stuff that I hope will sell, and I've bought some card to start making tags to hang off my things, giving care advice as well as price and dimensions.  I'm thinking of using my dad's old sit up and beg typewriter, to give the tags a vintage air, but I'm not totally decided yet.  Decisions, decisions.  Not my strong point as anyone who knows me will attest.

It was my birthday earlier this month, and Husband took the day off work so we could spend it together.  Unsurprisingly it rained quite a lot of the time, and we sheltered under the eaves of a chip shop eating our lunch out of paper with wooden forks, which wasn't quite the picnic I'd had in mind when the day was in the planning stages.  It brightened up enough to let us take a stroll alongside the body of water that runs through part of residential Emsworth.  I'm not sure whether it's a river, a long thin pond, a canal or maybe even a bit of the sea that stretches inland a way, but it's very pretty with lots of waterbirds and colourful cottages. 

My notice period is ticking away, and there are rumours that several interviews are to be held the week after next, which is encouraging, because I was starting to think that my replacement would turn up the day I left and that wouldn't be good for anyone.  It's a complicated old job, which nobody but me knows how to do.  Recipe for disaster or what?

Although I'm not in a position to look for a new job yet I've been scanning newspapers and websites for local opportunities.  Far and away the most active sector is care - care of the elderly in their own homes, care of people in residential homes, care, care, care.  You could say that in this area we specialise in care of the vulnerable.

I've done this sort of thing before - a little, a long time ago.  I've wiped bottoms and washed genitals and neither hold any horror for me beyond the initial embarrassment of such intimacy with someone you barely know.  But that passes quickly, mainly because the person receiving the help has done so many, many times before and is long past embarrassment.  So that is an option.  I would prefer to be dedicated to one household rather than skipping from place to place - I think I would find it more rewarding to be able to build a personal relationship - dare I hope for friendship? - with someone rather that just nipping in for an hour each week to wash someone's hair and push a hoover round, then onto the next person.  We shall see.

Well, this blog entry has taken a couple of days to write, consequently Emsworth has now been re-visited and the new camera tested out.  Hmm.  It has its weaknesses, as you may already have noticed. 

A wonky road in Emsworth.  I don't remember that man being that short and fat, so perhaps it was the camera which bestowed these qualities upon him.  Being overburdened already in both these areas, I shall be taking care never to be on the wrong side of this camera.

The photos it takes are not terribly good quality and the view screen turns almost completely black at the first hint of any ambient light, so you can't actually see what you're taking a photo of, which is something of a drawback.  So you don't know what you're going to get until you download it to the pc, at which point you notice the lack of tops of things and the attractive bollards in the foreground.

See?  And I'm sure said bollard was not at that weird angle - neither was I, so I again have no choice but to blame the camera.

 My old camera had an ordinary viewfinder like a non-digital camera, as well as an electronic screen, and I tended to use the traditional one because I could see so much better through it.  I know I sound like I'm describing the proverbial gift horse, but I really do need to be able to take decent shots of my crochet if I am to stand any chance of selling online, so I'm not being picky for the sake of it.  I'll download a manual for the camera (the one that came with it is written in Spanish, a language which is completely Greek to me) and see whether there are any helpful settings I can try.  Otherwise I shall have to dig into the coffers, and the timing on that is not good.

Emsworth (revisited yesterday) was pretty and interesting and the weather was the best we've had for ages, so I'm glad we decided to go there again.  I'm sorry I don't do it justice with my photos, but I will try to do better in future.  Discussions with Sony re my old camera and its eventual fate continue, but I think it's probably for the bin.  Which is sad as it was a present from Husband and has not had a lot of use.  I do hate waste!

Emsworth being pretty.  You had to be there.

No pictures, just words

My camera isn't right.  I took two pictures of my breakfast this morning - there was a reason, honestly - and neither of them made it into my camera's memory.  It's annoying, because I struggle with technology at the best of times, and this camera used to do all that I required of it.  But recently it's started on some sort of go-slow protest.  Unless the batteries are completely charged it won't work.

Like a good little greenie, I have a plethora of rechargeable batteries.  Well strictly speaking  I have a wooden box of rechargeable batteries, and under normal circumstances I would have inserted here a picture of the box, which my mother gave me as a tree present at Christmas.  But as soon as you store a charged battery, said charge starts to slowly leak away.  So I have been using non-rechargeables, much as it goes against the grain, because as mentioned, my camera will have no truck with anything less than perfection.

So my breakfast goes unrecorded, and those who don't like blog posts that aren't liberally illustrated will simply have to go elsewhere for the time being.

On other topics, I have at last tendered my written resignation to my boss, who still maintains that if we can just peel away the layers of my job that have grown over the years and stifled me, I may yet decide that my future lies with them.  Annoyingly, today has been the best day I have had, work-wise, for years. I feel empowered, invigorated, interested, invested, and all sorts of other positive words ending in "ed".  And just when I had decided that I was completely never going to want to do this job ever again and everything, ok?  Along with my camera, it is annoying. I am reminded of just how rewarding my job can be, but usually is so not.  My notice is three months long.  So much can change in that sort of time span.  I was determined.  Now I am dithering.  I will keep you posted.

Another subject - due to the amazing weather we've had the last couple of days, I have dug out the cropped jeans I lived in last year until incipient chilblains forced me into full-length denim.  I am chuffed to bits to report that I fit into them every bit as well as I did last year.  If I were to look at this from the glass-half-empty angle, I would be forced to confess that this means that I am no slimmer now than I was then, and considering that "obese" would be a step in the right direction, that is maybe not so great.  But I refuse to look at it that way.  Maintaining one's weight is, IMHO, more important than losing,  given that yo-yo-ing is more detrimental to one's health than overweight.  I would still like to be thinner though.

Another topic altogether - I have booked a table at a local table-top sale at the beginning of June.  I've not done one of those for years, so it will be interesting and I'll no doubt be reminded of how no-one is ever prepared to pay more than 50p for anything.  But I am looking forward to it, ever though my mother won't do it with me, being "overwhelmed with work".  At 84.  Good for her.  Perhaps I should apply to her for a job.

Maybe not.