Sunday Silliness :) (by sarah)

After Mary's belated birthday party we had two of Jean's friends stay over for the first ever sleep over which was fun for them but did result in a wee-wee incident and a bedroom you could no longer see the floor of!

Jeany was a little pedant and when I'd told the kids to move the luandary from the bottom bunk so the kids could sleep - I unthinkingly told Jean to move 'All her cloths' so they emptied the wardrobe and draws too but left the baby's cloths in place :/

After they went we did a bit of a clear up and Alaric went off to finish his ladder. Jean and my friend Charlee who had also stayed disappeared off and our garden was suddenly infested by giant pandas! I think it was a mummy and a baby!

As we can see they had a good time.

I especially like this photo of the baby panda!

And this one of the big panda hugging the girls 🙂

Mary found a little LED flashing ring that Jean had bought at a festival and she would not put it down!

My mum has been knitting Jeany a rainbow jacket for ages and Sunday was the day of trying it on - Jean loved it so much she refused to take it off even though it is not yet finished!

Mary was very excited to be the bell ringer for lunch time 🙂

She had a great day of opening presents and cards and exploring the garden in the lovely sunshine which we had all so missed!

Crowd Sourced Creative Ventures (by sarah)

I love writing challenges and things like #FridayFlash and #StoryStarters on Twitter where there is an open community helping each other and giving writing prompts. So imagine my excitement when Neil Gaiman appeared on Twitter wanting prompts and inspiration for a set of stories!

He tweeted a question for each month with the hash tags #JanTales, FebTales and so on. I tried to stay up (he's in the US so time difference) to get all the months but only made it to July though the next morning I retraced and answered the remaining questions just for my own piece of mind.

I doubt any of my mine will be selected but that doesn't matter because if they are not then I have some prompts for my own writing.

The idea is sponsored by [BlackBerry who have been collecting all the tweets on a hub. And there will be charity calendar produced with crowd sourced art works as well (and yes I am hoping to do some pics for that to enter!).

This is a lovely idea as it draws in people and becomes something more than a story collection - it is in truth already a community - I have picked up one follower who was having issues with his writing prompt generator and I have suggested improvements to it and so on...

Anyway here are the questions and my answers:

Why is January so dangerous?

January is a time of change, the door way between one year and the next, a dangerous edge time #jantales

What is the strangest this to happen to you in February?

The strangest thing that has happened to me in Feb is I passed out in an art gallery & came round staring at a picture #febtale

What historical figure does March remind you of?

Queen Elizabeth the first as it was the first time I heard the legend of the Bisley Boy #Martale

What is your happiest memory of April

my little brother being born after so much waiting - that is the happiest April memory #AprTale

What is the weirdest gift you've ever been given in May?

A shovel over breakfast of a baby stoat in 3 pieces by an eccentric ancient aunt who thought we'd find it interesting. #MayTale

Where would you spend a perfect June?

The perfect June is spent with my family running workshops at festivals #Juntale not very interesting

What is the most unusual thing you have ever seen in July?

segway shopping basket grannies fighting and asking for gin - it was of course the stilt walkers latest get up #JulTale

If August could speak, what would it say?

My gown is covered in berries help me clean them up in time for a new golden gown of leaves #AugTale

Tell me something you lost in September that meant a lot to you.

A friend washed away in a flash flood whilst he was collecting soil samples in a small town near my home #SeptTale

What mythical creature would you like to meet in October? (&why?)

The Bunyip because when I was 4 my Australian aunts told me about it and I've always liked the stories #OctTale

What would you burn in November, if you could?

Hatred #NovTale

Who would you like to see again in December?

Too many people who I can't

Day 4 of making the ladder (by alaric)

I wasn't scheduled another project day until later in the month, but I had some spare time and the opportunity to grab a volunteer (my father in law, Len) to help, so yesterday I mounted the ladder on the wall!

(Background: Days 1, 2 and 3).

The first step was drilling the holes. I held the ladder up against the wall, and checked it with a spirit level, while Len pencilled the holes in.

Then it was time to drill. I'm very fond of my SDS+ drill (as I have mentioned previously) so it was good to have an excuse to get Vera out again:

Without further ado, I started to drill:

However, disaster struck on one of the holes - the bit suddenly went sideways, into some kind of void inside the concrete blocks of the wall. Doh! I fitted a smaller drill bit and managed to drill back into the route the hole was supposed to take, then drill that out so the bolt could go in straight, but now it was in the middle of a much larger hole than intended so it would just rattle around and not hold anything.

Thankfully, I over-engineered the design so that it had far more mountings to the wall than it really needed, so none of them were all that critical. What I did was to jam a piece of wooden dowel into the misaligned part of the hole to fill much of the space, then squirt a load of fine mortar (2 parts sand to 1 part cement) into the rest. More on that later.

With that done, I could fit the anchor bolts to the ladder. The anchor bolts consist of a normal-seeming bolt that goes through the ladder, into a sleeve that goes into the wall. The sleeve is a metal tube, but at the far end is a conical nut that the bolt screws into. When the bolt is tightened the conical nut is pulled into the metal sleeve, forcing it to expand to tightly squeeze against the surrounding masonry.

So to start with, I put all the bolts through the ladder and screwed the sleeves on a few turns to hold them in place:

Then we lifted it up and guided the bolts into the holes and wiggled it into place. Of course, as it's nearly impossible to drill holes into masonry accurately, the holes were a few millimetres out from where the holes in the ladder are, so beyond a certain point the bolts started to chafe against the masonry and had to be tapped into place with a mallet:

All except the hole packed with mortar, of course, which the bolt just slid into squelchily.

Then we tightened the bolts - all except the one in the wet mortar; I'm going to give that a few days for the mortar to cure before I tighten it, otherwise there's no resistance to the expanding sleeve and it'll just squeeze the mortar out.

And then it was time for a test.

After gingerly doing a few pull-ups on the ladder, I climbed onto it. And then to check it's really secure, I put as much strain on it as I could by stretching myself out to get the maximum torque:

This failed to tear it out of the wall, so the next step was to actually climb up to the roof:

See how the top rung protects the gutter? That's careful design, that is! 🙂

However, it was cold, damp, and slimy up there, so I climbed back down and had some lunch. After lunch, I put some sealant around the edges of the mounting flanges, to prevent water getting in behind them where it might soak into the wall through the bolt hole, or lurk around and make the flanges rust. Also, I like sealant and will use it whenever I can:

This stuff is "frame sealant", which is specifically designed to join metal, wood and masonry outdoors, as opposed to the stuff you use in your bathroom. It's extra sticky to bond to awkward surfaces and extra stretchy to account for thermal expansion differences.

I also cut some small cubes of wood and pressed them into the open ends at the top of the ladder, packed with plenty of sealant. I tapped them in with a hammer to about a centimetre below the open end and squeezed more sealant in on top, and domed it slightly to keep rain from pooling.

Now that ladder is done, as soon as I get some time I'm going up there to secure part of the plastic sheet that's flapping up, and have a general poke around to see if I can find any holes to seal. With more sealant! Yay!

Also, I need to touch up the paint on the ladder in a few spots where I dinged it moving it around. Whoops!

New Camera! (by sarah)

I hunted around and got this camera as a late birthday present - my family gave me some money and so did Alaric (mainly I think out of desperation as I kept stealing his phone). It was in a sale so was £40 cheaper than it should have been and infact still is on the manufactures website - this allowed me to get a case for it as well and stick to my £100 budget. It's 14 mega pixels - there was a lovely 16 mega pixel camera but it was only reduced by £10 and I would have had no money for a case.

The above was medium light levels with no flash - it would have come out very dark with the previous camera and grainy.

I am ecstatic with it and am driving everyone potty with it - Jean is now ignoring it!

One of the first things I did was check the zoom and light levels.

The shape of the camera makes it easier to hold without shaking which was a big problem with previous cameras - I am having the problem of zooming in too far and I am still adjusting to focal lengths etc... so am getting a few blurry duff pics. Of course I have not yet read the manual and am 'winging' it which is not the best way but a very Sarah way!

The Trike of Glee (by sarah)

Somewhere in moving house we miss placed the little noddy trike that we were given second hand for Jeany. This made us sad as Mary really loves the little push along thing my friend Becca and her sister bough up for us after little Millie had out grown it. This showed us that Mary would adore a trike especially as she started trying to steal Jean's bike.

So for Mary's second birthday we got her one joint with my family. It had to be assembled but has gone down a storm!

She loved it straight away to the extent that she kept stealing the wheels as the were being attached to it!

Since then she has been on and off of it constantly 🙂

She scoots it alone completely ignoring the pedals which she's not quiet big enough for yet anyway!

She got a late Christmas present of a tea set as well which she packs into the seat - takes for a ride and then deposits somewhere else in the room! Obviously it is an outside too but she is so excited by it at the moment we are allowing it to stay inside for a bit.