Public service announcement: Alaric has a new OpenPGP identity (by alaric)

I've made myself a new OpenPGP key pair; the old one is still good, but it's time to start retiring it due to old age.

Below the fold is a message containing my new key, signed with my new key and then again with the old key; copy and paste it into gpg | gpg to see the signature verifications, then consider adding | gpg --import to the end to import the key.

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Knitted Poem – The Price of Art in Luton (by sarah)

Yesterday I went back into Cheltenham to photograph some more of the events at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival which was brilliant! But before they started I popped over to the Waterstones to see the knitted poem that Centre Arts has had all the local knitting groups taking part in. The poem is The Price of Art in Luton from the John Hegley - part of the Dog collection.

There is also has a knitted homeless guy and his dog on it.

I believe it is being auctioned off at the end of the festival! Alaric being from Luton examined the poem more closely - though in my opinion from the wrong angle!

My back is fixed! (by alaric)

Over the past few years, I've been getting worsening pain in my lower back. An ache just to the right of my spine (where it joins to my pelvis), with shooting pain down to my right knee; sometimes it would be so bad I couldn't stand up straight. At first this would only happen if I'd had a hard weekend carrying boxes or doing long drives, but it became more and more frequent, until I was having to carefully watch my posture in every aspect of my life for fear of triggering it. Read more »

A Birthday Surprise (by sarah)

Today is Alaric's birthday so he took the day off work to potter around tidying his workshop. Not all went to plan as there was a baby poo incident in the bath she was sharing with Jean and a lot of bath toys - it took both of us to shower children and clean both and toys ups.

He was just having a break and debating when to go our for lunch when there was a knock at the door. Three kids trying to rehome their kitten as they are having to downsize and have only just been told that it's no cats at the new place. Al explained we have too many cats already and that they should try and find someone else. Which they did - I was over at the neighbours and watched them try house after house.

Eventually they came back back to our house and Alaric took the kitten. I was still over at the neighbours when Jean appeared very excited - so excited she didn't want to stop for the chocolate the lady next door was offering her!

The kids mum appeared a bit later with all the kitten suplies. They were very sad and very desperate - we were first choice as we already have cats and kids. The kitten has been well looked after and loves kids!

So we now have a little kitten.

I may have gotten a little over excited over it - and indeed the first thing Alaric did was take a photo of me with a kitten sticking out of my jumper and post it on Twitter with the words 'Sarah in her natural element'.

I personally reckon that everybody should just call me Crazy Cat Lady from now on.

Broodiness issue solved for now!

Mary was so excited babbling about 'abee ca!'

Jean took her responsibility of kitten stroking very seriously.

She is so in love with the little thing - I've never seen anything like it. She loves the rabbit and things but this is a level up - I think it is because she's that bit older and it is smaller and more interactive. The baby bunny was still big enough you could see it looking after itself - Fluffy was a sub-adult when we rescued him were as this kitten is oly just old enough to be away from mum.

She automatically went into protection mode - worrying about it falling off of things and forgiving it if it bit her etc... (which is does a lot as it is a playful little thing unlike Hydrogen and Helium who have always kept their distance and would occasionally come over for snugs - this one loves being snugged with humans).

Once it as settled we went out for lunch were the girls both pretended they were She-Ra and then wizards with bread sticks. 🙂

The kitten had been called Kitty but we felt that as it was so young and that is more a description we could use our naming pattern we had started when we got the two girls. So the new cat was to be Lithium however Jean wanted to keep the kitty bit so we went through a few variations such as Hello Lith and so forth but in the end the poor things name is Lithium Hello Kitty.

We all wanted to get back to the kitten and even Jean shrugged at the suggestion of ice cream factory.

Jean, Mary and the kitten bounced around all afternoon whilst Alaric pottered in the workshop and I attempted to make him easter chicks for his birthday cake. When I checked all three were crashed out on the sofa!

Jean just kept saying how she hadn't realised how cute kittens were and how sweet it was that Mary was trying to look after the kitten 'it's a baby looking look after a baby!' with Jean supervising - almost made me cry with cuteness. Alaric didn't stop grinning.

So it looks like the Snell-Pym Zoo has a new member - also it turns out that Alaric shares his birthday with Grumpy cat 🙂 Lith is not grumpy at all! Though it's mews to be picked up heart Jean's heart she says so she just has to pick it up.

Spring Creativi Tea (by sarah)

Sunday saw the first ever Creativi Tea - I had wanted to run them last year but never got around to it what with all that moving mand festivals and what not.

So I invited people, and got tea stuff ready and baked cakes.

Lemon and lime - lime sponge with lemon butter icing and lots of butterflies 🙂 Which Al's cousins gave me 🙂

I made sandwiches - ham, cheese and humous to cater for vegi and vegan and meat treats people. And I had crisps in butterfly bowls because I am me and the house is infested with the creatures 😉

And then it was time for people to appear - I wasn't sure what people would want to be doing as I'd said bring your own project or tell me what you want to learn. Most people turned up with writing so were clustered in the lounge.

There was a variety of writing going on from poetry to prose, to essays to novels to short stories to computer programming. Even Jeany got in on the act writing and illustrating a lovely story about a mutant girl and her dad.

People were being very British about not actually taking the cakes until Jeany broke the icing (literally).

In the kitchen sewing and knitting occured - mainly Alaric finishing off the bag he began making me at Centre Arts during a sewing course I sent him on as his valentines day present.

I was sad I had some people drop out due to weather and moto bikes breaking and fuel costs and writing events but it worked really well. Extra nibbles even arrived with people 🙂 Having noisy/messy stuff in the kitchen and the quieter stuff in the living room worked really well.

I am planning on running one of these a season 🙂 If you want to be invited to the next one let me know!

Here are more pictures of cakes as I know you all love them 😉

Recipe will be appearing on Salaric Cooking soonly.