Nik's Saga

The Icelander is still on Rock Star Supernova, it seems.

This is entirely due to large sections of the population being mad enough to send text message votes - multiple times, in many cases - to the show. Now this might not sound too surprising, but when you realise that the show was broadcast live at 02:00 local time and that the lines closed at 06:00, you have to start wondering.

In an attempt to keep him in the show people held all-night parties. Telephone companies slashed the cost of a text message to the voting line by 80%. In his home area tented parties were held with wifi networks to encourage people to bring along their laptops and set them to send multiple text messages. Secondary school classes were cancelled to allow children to catch on on their sleep after the evening's excitement.

And in another 'Only in Iceland' moment, it was reported today that a former member of parliament who has served time for fraud and extortion has been given a complete pardon by the Icelandic president. It is interesting to note that to in order to stand for parliament you must have no criminal record, and a presidential pardon is the only way to remove such a record. The president actually has nothing to do with this; like the Queen, he just signs the paperwork the prime minister puts in front of him. We await the return of Árni Johnsen to public life with bated breath.
0 comments

There are not fifteen apartments in my block.

This fact occurred to me when I looked at my front door as I came up the stairs after work. It puzzled me for a moment, until I remembered that F was a normal letter. This is entirely due to my spending the entire afternoon on my feet doing two two-hour student labs on binary and hexadecimal notation ready to do scary things like memory addresses in a later lecture. 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10 - no problem there.

It wasn't as if it was a difficult lab, just something that a lot of people aren't used to. The only thing I have to think hard about is how to do subtraction in base two, although I have pointed out to several students that even computers cheat with that one and really just add one number and the 2s complement of the other... A few of the non-computer scientists were still quite happy that they weren't going to be asked to do lots more stuff like this. The rest of the labs will concentrate on teaching them how to use Windows though learning how to use Word properly.

All bar four or five of them anyway. I have approximately seventy students doing these labs but the university's largest computer lab holds only twenty people. Fortunately about half of them have their own laptops in any case so we've had to split the class into two and then split each of these into the laptop/non-laptop groups. And some of these laptops are Macs... Although this doesn't worry me particularly, it might have caused problems for other people.

After this marathon session (plus more meetings :) ) I'm shattered. I've take to coming in and immediately unwinding to an episode of Spooks or one of the other DVDs I haven't watched yet. This forces me to calm down and relax a little. I think that I have approximately 14 episodes of Spooks left followed by four (six?) of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy before I have to go in search of new material. Maybe a month. Sounds like I'm going to have to do some serious DVD shopping come Rent-A-Don to see me through to Christmas.
0 comments

The mountains have gone grey.

That's the Icelandic poetic metaphor for the first snow on the mountains, the snow that does not reach down to the lower inhabited areas. I've only caught glimpses of it today as the fjord has been filled with low-lying cloud - the cloudbase was certainly well below 500m as the ski centre at Hlíðarfjall wasn't visible. It is now officially autumn, heading towards winter.

This seems somehow appropriate; after all, lectures have started again so the summer must be finished. Thankfully I've not got any 08:10 lectures this semester, so I won't be doing any of the rather disconcerting completing a two-hour lecture before dawn business. There has been a commensurate drop in temperature as well. Throughout the summer I've had the door out onto the balcony open every night - sometimes all night - but yesterday I closed it after only half an hour in order to keep the heat in.

I find myself wondering what sort of a winter we're in for this year. We've had two very mild winters, I'm told. The year before that we had a storm in February that dropped about four feet of snow overnight. I don't think I'd mind that; it would certainly make for an interesting experience. For now though, we have normal-length days that are a familiar UK-west-coast grey. I can live with this.
0 comments

Floating across the currently grey and miserable sky.

I think it's the aftereffects of the first lecture of the year, this time to about seventy people, which is rather more than I've had to lecture to for quite some time. With that sort of number there is only one lecture room in the university that's big enough, and it's rather long and thin. A room where lesser mortals use the microphone and speakers setup, but as I've a) got a Field Herald sort of voice that carries quite sufficiently to the back of the room and b) have never got the hang of speaking quietly in to the microphones business (possibly in part due to a) ) I just carried on regardless. Naturally there were people sitting right at the back of the room, but they could at least hear me. They probably couldn't see the slides from back there, but they could always read the hard copied I spent an hour creating this morning..

Microphones for singing are even worse - how is my voice supposed to be heard if there's this big THING in front of it? Bah.

Once I'd finished for the day I went off on the Search for Shreddies again, and can confirm that nowhere in Akureyri stocks them. Bah again.

In spite, or possibly because of all this, I feel very detached from things right now, as if I'm viewing them from somewhere outside myself. It happens sometimes, and can be quite constructive. Other times it leaves me with no ability to focus whatsoever. I think that tonight might be the constructive sort, as I've already printed out the snowflake patterns to transfer to the felt, and now have the urge to do a bit of tidying up.

Hopefully I'll be back to normal again tomorrow.

0 comments

Iceland is going Reality TV mad.

It turns out that one of the remaining contestants on Rock Star: Supernova is an Icelander, Magnus Ásgeirsson. Of course, this means that the usual insanity that these programmes generate is being massively hyped up. It's not quite on television every night, but it certainly feels like it.

I've been trying to work out if there are any reality tv programmes that I like. Well, I did enjoy what I saw of Only Fools On Horses... or at least the showjumping bits. I saw a couple of episodes of Strictly Come Dancing, and that wasn't too bad either... or at the least the dancing bits. And I rather liked the bits of Springwatch I saw... or doesn't that count? It was, after all, an exposé of the day-to-day life of a group of life-forms under constant surveillance. :)

OK, so I'm not a people person. I'd rather have a constant supply of fresh new science and history documentaries, together with the occasional classic comedy and some good science fiction and thrillers. Didn't that used to be called BBC2?
0 comments

And breakfast cereals in general.

I've never been a big fan of museli. It looks like rabbit food to me. Possibly very pampered rabbits, I happen to be looking at one of those deluxe muselis with added fruit and nuts, but rabbit food all the same. My idea of a breakfast cereal is more basic - cornflakes, rice crispies, maybe shreddies, and if I'm feeling extremely decadent then I'll go for the frosted equivalents thereof. I've never been one for chocolate cereals (what a horrible idea!) nor for the honey-nut-cheerio-puffs that seem popular with kids. Maybe my palate is just too refined. :)

That said, I do actually eat quite a lot of cereal. It's not uncommon for me to have a bowl for breakfast, another when I get in from work, and a third before I go to bed, all with plenty of milk. At present it's rice crispies, although most of the time it's usually corn flakes. Yesterday, though, I had this urge for shreddies. Not a chance - given that sometimes I can't even get rice crispies hoping for shreddies was perhaps unduly optimistic.

I'm sufficiently desirous of this filling and malty treat that I'm going to pay a visit to the two expensive supermarkets in search of it. But I'm not going to look at the price if I find it.
0 comments

That's what I need to copy on Monday.

Monday is my first lecture of the academic year, a first year module in practical computer skills that I'll be delivering to approximately eighty students. And that doesn't include the distance learning students, for whom I'll be repeating the first two lectures next Saturday morning. The standard approach here is to produce a copy of the notes for each student, which in this case means nine sides of A4 at six powerpoint slides to the page. Even copied double-sided, that is four hundred sheets of paper, most of a ream. The distance learning classes are even larger, at closer to a hundred students - fortunately I don't have to provide paper copies to them, although they will get paper when they attend the residential week and do the other half of the module.

This means that my half of the course, once you take into account the requirement for lab notes as well as lecture notes, will take at least six reams of paper - twice that if I can't get to a photocopier that prints double-sided. Which is a ludicrous amount.

You might be thinking along the lines of nine pages at six slides a page... that's fifty four slides! What sort of sadist subjects a class to a powerpoint display that long? Allow me to explain...

I am teaching students for whom English is a second language, in a country where a Terry Pratchett paperback costs approximately £14 (so you can imagine how much textbooks cost). As a result, my lecture slides are the closest to a textbook that many of the students will get, so it's vitally important that all of the relevent information is on the slides. I can't assume that they will be able to understand everything I say as I say it, so they can't necessarily take notes as they go along. Nor can I assume that as I've put the slides on my website that they'll print them out in advance - as a member of staff I can photocopy course materials for free, but students have to pay for every sheet of paper they print, which could become very expensive very quickly.

The latest innovation is that as well as giving them all of the notes, we will also be videoing the lectures and making them available to both local and distance learning students through WebCT, the university's academic content management system. Now this is indeed a little scary, and I may not be able to watch the generated files without a massive crisis of confidence. On the other hand, I suppose it does mean that I have the opportunity to watch myself lecture for the first time and see what annoying habits I must have and how I can improve my lecturing style.

For now, though, I'm going to try put that all aside and have a very quiet and relaxed weekend on my own. I will do a bit of tidying and vaccuuming around the flat. I might go swimming. I won't (or will try very hard not to) find myself working on an introductory questionnaire for my students that should help me to gauge what sort of a spread of computing experience they already have (guess what I was doing at 03:30 this morning when I couldn't sleep?). I may even play a little World of Warcraft. And I will definitely do some embroidery.
0 comments

When did I become responsible?

In one of today's meetings I finally realised that I am now considered to be a responsible manager-type. Over the last couple of days I've sat through meetings discussing budgets, recruitment, how to get the best out of a team, and strategies for turning a project into a cash-earner rather than an academic exercise. On top of which I had to give a welcome and introductory session to a room packed with 120 or so students, mostly business students, over half of them distance learners and many of them mature students.Tomorrow I chair a departmental meeting (I've already bought the biscuits to go with the coffee).

I'm trying to work out when the transition happened. I fear that it might have been May 2nd... or possibly May 12th. It is not a pleasant sensation, as I feel that I've lost something important. As if I've actually had to grow up. Of course, it might also be isolation speaking, a case of the post-holiday blues. Perhaps everything will get better next week when I've got time to breathe again and have got past my first set of deadlines.

I certainly hope so.
2 comments

Is it possible to die of a surfeit of meetings?

When I arrived at work just before 08:30 I discovered that I had a meeting at 09:00. OK, I thought as I looked at it, this has the potential to go on all day. Which would clash with the other meetings I've got today. Oops... So I've spent today effectively catching up on all of the meetings I've missed over the last week and a half while I was in the UK.

Now while I can understand the idea of catching up on work, on lectures, on gossip, I can't get to grips with catching up on meetings. Squeezing two weeks worth of meetings into three days has made me realise how much time I actually spend in them. No wonder I have no time to do much real work any more - there are meetings to prepare for, meetings to attend, and meetings to follow up from. It's a good thing I wrote the lectures I've needed during July when everyone was away and consequently couldn't schedule other meetings.

Not all meetings are bad though - my final meeting of the day was a barbecue meeting held in the garden of one of my colleagues. This started off complete with flip chart (although I missed that as I was in a different meeting at the time) and eventually turned into a beer and barbecue session with some very nice Icelandic lamb. If only more meetings came with barbecues attached...
0 comments

Where there is still snow on the mountains.

It's quite impressive how the weather can change in a matter of 250 miles. :) In Keflavík it was grey and windy. By the time I got to Reykjavík it was grey, wet and windy, and I had to fight my way through the wind to get to the aircraft. Here it's clear, sunny and a balmy 21 C. This has a lot to do with the fact that we're in the base of a fjord, which keeps most of the wind off us. Once you get into the nearby valleys the weather gets a bit more extreme, but down here it's generally quite clement.

Now I just have to psych myself up to the semester ahead. Teaching starts on Monday and I've got the handbook to finish before then, together with a meeting or two. Ah well. It pays the rent.
0 comments

I am now safely ensconced in the Crowwood Hotel on the A80.

It's quite pleasant and has a reasonable bar/grill - I just partook in steak pie with seasonal vegetables followed by sticky toffee pudding with ice cream, which were good solid bar fare. I was originally planning to have dinner with Marianne, but it was 16:00 before I actually got away from the caravan, so we're planning lunch next time I arrive in Glasgow instead.

I'm not very good at leaving the caravan. It is definitely a 'safe place' and I never want to pack up and leave it. It didn't help today that even though I've bought very little this time home, the restrictions on hand luggage have still hit me because I've managed to fill the space in my suitcase with Lego Mindstorms (which I need for work this semester). As a result I've had to leave some magazines and craft stuff at the van rather than putting it in my hand luggage. The sooner the luggage regulations return to normal the better.
0 comments

That's the normal fare for breakfast at the caravan.

And it's particularly welcome now that sausages and real bacon are something that I can't get in Iceland. Tesco in Carnforth now do a particularly good variety of thick cut bacon and both cumberland and pork and apple sausages. On top of that, Tropicana have now introduced some exotic new fruit juices for us to try. Simple though this fare may sound, it's a gastronomic delight. Particularly as Martin cooks the meat while I do the eggs, beans and tomatoes. Cooking half a meal is quite fun, even if I like my scrambled eggs a bit softer than everyone else so they have to come out a minute or so before the others. Fortunately Martin and I sorted out the logistics of breakfast some years ago. :)

Breakfast doesn't generally occur until at least 10:30, so is more brunch than breakfast. We then nibble crisps, cakes and biscuits for the day until the evening Indian takeaway. I'm monotonously boring about that, as I do like the chicken dhansak (with boiled rice and peshwari nan). Even though we only eat two real meals I feel that I enjoy the food more while I am here than anywhere else. It may have something to do with the 'safe place' aspect of the caravan.

No gaming today, although we did do character generation for a Babylon 5 campaign. And... I'm not playing a telepath. I was tempted, strongly tempted, but I'm beginning to feel that I ought to play something else to keep other people happy. So this time I'm playing a Minbari religious caste archaeologist. You have to admit, that is different.
0 comments

Don't you just love the way journalists misrepresent things?

I've been watching the discussions about 'the size of the solar system' with interest over the last week. As far as I know, the solar system is exactly the same size it's always been, instead it's human knowledge that has changed. There was a wonderful comment from a British astronomer on News 24 the other day to the effect that of course Pluto was going to remain a planet - after all, it was the only one that had been discovered from the US. Ah, what a cynical (and probably true) view!

I'm all for dropping Pluto. It's just an oversized KBO after all. I look forward to seeing the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and so on 'planets' being announced over the next few years. Maybe that'll teach the IAU the error of its ways.

This morning's gaming session involved a visit to a new planet - which begged the question 'what type of planet - rocky, gas, water, or pluton?' I am happy to imagine that all over the world other geeks are asking just the same question of their GMs. Or at least I hope they are... I wouldn't want to be quite the saddest geek on the planet.
0 comments

Caravan style.

I am now chilling out at the caravan. And it is Good. No-one else has arrived yet, although no doubt Martin will be here within the hour and Fred should arrive at about 01:30 in the morning. Penny is due at about 10:00 tomorrow and then We Will Be Three.

This morning started off just as hectic as the past couple of days, as I had to go off to the Palm House to collect the remaining stuff, then off to Mum's embroidery group meeting. Aunty June and another one of the embroidery ladies had actually come to the church yesterday (Aunty June knows Kate a little and it was a good excuse to see me in The Dress as last time I was home I'd shown them the fabric) so everyone else was regaled with tales of the service, the weather and the dresses. Then I dropped the collected stuff off at Kate's parents' place before returning for lunch.

Eventually I got away to head up to the van via Aberkan to collect a steamer chair for Penny. Thankfully I was restrained, and bought nothing more exotic than a piece of beautiful soft lilac linen to make a new shirt or two. Eventually. :) Then up here and to T'Other Chippy to collect a serious 'comfort food' meals - sausage, chips and gravy.

Now I am at last unwinding and listening to the music of the rain on the caravan's roof and walls. I can almost feel the stress draining out of me the way it drains off the roof. Ahhhhhhh.
0 comments

And what a long day it was!

We started at 09:00 at the hairdressers, where both of us acquired huge amounts of metal to keep our long hair piled up on top of our heads. While Kate was getting hers attended to I finished the handstitching on my dress.

There was a final bout of stitching - Kate's veil, finishing the handbags and beading Kate's one - and when we eventually got dressed my stomacher was pinned in place with safety pins. Ah well... pinning it in place is traditional... as is having something incomplete. :) Before we went to the service we took a couple of photos in the garden so that at last you can all see The Dress.



The service was, well, weddingy, I suppose. Kate looked absolutely fantastic, and neither of us managed to trip up on our dresses or anything embarrassing like that. As we arrived at the church the heavens opened - thunder and lightning, the lot. We didn't, therefore, take many photos at the church but postponed them to the reception in Sefton Park Palm House.

The Palm House was fantastic. It's been renovated since I used to spend my school lunchtimes there and it looks quite stunning. The greenery isn't as wild as it used to be, but it's an excellent place to hold a function.

It was almost 1am by the time Kate, Robin and I left, and it has taken me over 20 minutes to remove the 34 hair pins and 47 kirby grips, together with the 12 decorative spirals, from my hair. I am looking forward to a good night's sleep.
1 comments

And things are hotting up!

Kate was feeling rather stressed and a bit weepy this morning - not surprising, since she's done almost all of the organisation of her wedding herself - but once all four of us (Kate, myself, her fiancé Robin and Phil the best man) had got together and parcelled out the last tasks she was a lot calmer.

We did the rehearsal today in the church. This was definitely a little strange, as it's well over twenty years since Kate and I last processed down that aisle and at that point we were both wearing Girl Guide uniforms and carrying flags. The minister was quite impressed that not only did I know just how far behind Kate to stand, but that we both automatically fell into step and at the right speed. He was later amused when we let him into the secret!

I used to carry the Union flag, while Kate carried the Guide flag, as the Union flag was a bit bigger. It also had tassels and a large brass thing on the top which made it quite a bit heavier. It used to be the case that after church parade we'd take the flags home with us, but nowadays they're stored displayed in the church. In fact the Union flag in the church is a new one, the same size as the Guide flag and no longer bearing tassels nor such a large brass thing. It seems that the old one wore out. I wonder where they retired it to?

After a bit of driving around to collect and deliver things I took Kate's dress away to do the hem. When I returned it this evening she was happier, although tired, and we all sent her off for an early night. After all, tomorrow bids fair to be a long and very busy day.
0 comments

And the dress still isn't finished... either of them!

At least I've got the eyelets done, and Kate likes it. That was something that worried my quite a bit - Kate pretty much gave me carte blanche on the design of my dress and I didn't want to produce something that she wouldn't like. Fortunately she does like it. Her own dress looks absolutely stunning - cream satin covered in chiffon with a lace jacket. Like mine, though, it isn't quite finished, and I turned up the hem for her this evening. :)

It's been a little hectic today, as as well as the dress I had a meeting about the Garston Tapestry. It's definitely going ahead and we have some design ideas already. It looks like it'll be done as lots of slips which are then stitched onto the main background. Although that's not what Mum originally had in mind - she was thinking of crewel-work panels - but it should work and the individual slips can be done by a large number of people.

The next couple of days are going to be extremely busy.
0 comments

And an interesting discovery!

This morning we got up insanely early to go to the airport to meet Jane's flight... which was two hours late and required us to sit in the temporary waiting area drinking coffee. It was a Costa, which was good, but the service was a little off (although that might just have been due to the volume of customers they had to deal with).

Then I was off down to Liverpool for the wedding. I had quite a straightforward drive down, stopping off in Carnforth to pick up the now-framed embroidery (which looks super now it's mounted and framed) and got there just before Dad arrived back from his normal Monday session down at the Museum.

The evening was devoted to the hem, and I did indeed manage to finish it. I've been planning to do a stomacher with it, but according to my newly-arrived copy of The Tudor Tailor I could sew a bodice front down one side and just hook it in place on the other. This would be great as I'd only have to use hooks on one side, not two. Tomorrow I need to do the eyelets and then I can finish the front and sew in the rest of the lining.
0 comments

Tonight was Goody Night.

Yes, tonight was the night I'd been looking forward to for weeks, when I got to see Tim and Graeme live on stage in Edinburgh. Woo-hoo! A lot of the material was repeated from the BBC Christmas special (that will be repeated later this week) but all the same it was great to see them in person. I came away with the programme, the t-shirt, the badge and even the baseball cap. Yes, I am sad. :)

I also saw, far too briefly, Jean-Loup. All of my original plans (which included dinner in Edinburgh and a chance to chat) were changed by the airport situation as Debby needs to meet a plane at Edinburgh tomorrow morning, so it made more sense for her to stay at Elizabeth's overnight rather than go back to St. Andrews and then return to Edinburgh for an 08:00 arrival. So in the end Elizabeth got the Goodies ticket and her husband Steve managed to get one too, which meant that I was dragged away back to Prestonpans immediately after the show. All the same, it was good to see JL, even if ever-so-briefly.

And at last I have The Dress ready to hem. Debby and Elizabeth turned up the hem for me and tell me that it looks wonderful. Even I have to admit, it doesn't look too bad. All I have to do now is put in the eyelets, hem the skirt, finish sewing the lining in place and add the stomacher. Ah well... I don't need to sleep, do I?
0 comments

Ah, the joys of having a social life again!

Since I've returned to the UK, I have been out to a dinner party with one group of friends, had lunch with another, and spent an evening playing games with another group. I have so missed all of these people...

The dinner party was at Toby's house to celebrate some mutual friends being in the UK for a short time. Good food and good company most certainly led to a good evening's entertainment.

Then today Dan and I went to Ziggy's in St. Andrews for lunch. It's only been er.... many years since I was there last, and they've changed the menu a bit (Death By Chocolate was removed some years ago, they told me) but it was still a serious blast from the past and another thoroughly enjoyable meal.

This evening a group of us got together to play Buck Rogers. Again, it's something I haven't done for a while, and I played a very mediocre game, but it was jolly good fun. I so miss gaming sessions! The scary thing was that two of the players were the sons of other players. It's a little freaky when your old gaming buddies introduce their offspring into the gaming group. Still, new blood is a good thing.
0 comments

What security alert?

A couple of days ago I got the latest email newsletter from Icelandair telling me about the latest innovation at Keflavík - self-check-in machines. Hurrah, I thought. The queues at Keflavík are always horrendous, and the prospect of bypassing them appealed greatly. So when yesterday's security alert went off I cursed because I was convinced that they would not allow passengers on UK flights to use these.

So when I arrived at Kef I looked for signs telling me what to do about the new hand luggage restrictions. Nothing. Just the usual long queues and four new (and unused) check-in machines. I couldn't resist trying them... and lo and behold, I was checked in without any problems. When I went to hand over my luggage I asked the girl at the desk what new hand luggage rules applied. She looked at me as if I'd grown a third head. As a result I've flown into the UK with a big handbag full of stuff together with a bunch of duty-free bags.

It wasn't until I got to Glasgow that I saw any changes. I've pretty much got used to seeing the occasional pair of armed police at airports but not the sheer numbers that I saw at Glasgow today. It just feels wrong to have so many armed police in the UK. The sooner we get back to normal, the better.
0 comments

I'm flying to Glasgow tomorrow. This should be interesting, given the current security situation. At least it's only a two-hour flight and Icelandair do provide in-flight entertainment.

Hmm... once you get past security you get to the shopping area. I wonder if you can still take duty-free stuff onto the plane?
0 comments

For some reason the bodice is too small.

This is intensely frustrating, as I made it from the actual pair of bodies, not the pattern, and made sure I had the extra space in order to be an outer garment. Curiously, I'm not wildly annoyed at this, just miserable and resigned. I think I can get around it with the aid of a stomacher, and I'll have to reinforce the front edges so that I can put small eyelets through them to lace it instead of using hooks and eyes.

I wonder if it's that the PoB is giving more than it should? The four layers of heavy linen are at cross-bias to each other, so it shouldn't be stretching, but it still doesn't feel as tight as it should feel. Maybe it would work with a different corset... although I don't have time to make a new one now. Especially as I fly out to Reykjavik tomorrow night (I caved in and booked a room in an 'cheap' B&B'). This will give me the time I need to make the collar, which should all be hand sewn anyway. :)

And I'm out of ice-cream with which to cheer myself up. Damn.

0 comments

How can you run out of white cotton thread?

It's a universal object; no matter what other colours I have in my workbox I always have black, white, navy blue and bright red. Almost every time I buy thread to match fabric I also think Oh, I'd better get some white while I'm at it. So why did I have to go hunting in strange obscure places to find the thread to make the farthingale? And specifically have to buy more in order to make JL's cavalier collar? Clearly the end of the world is nigh or something.

On the plus side, my need for white thread sent me into the expensive fabric shop in town (I happened to be passing) where I also managed to find a very nice narrow but edged lace for the collar so that it'll look decorated but not wildly over the top in an Aramis sort of manner. I plan to make this tomorrow, having added the skirt to The Dress later this evening.

My current concern with The Dress is that I really need to have the farthingale done before I can see if it sits properly, and the boning on the farthingale (the metal stuff I use for the engineering part of the pair of bodies) doesn't seem to hold its shape too well. It may just be that I need to work from the top down rather than the bottom up, and once I have all four hoops in rather than just the bottom on then things will be much better. I hope so, otherwise I may have to pay a visit to Letham on Friday to get some basketry cane to see if that works any better.
0 comments

Why do dresses have to have sleeves?

And formal dresses tend to need set-in sleeves, which are the worst. Today I did the bodice and the sleeves of the dress. Normally I could do two t-sleeved or raglan-sleeved dresses in the time it took me to do the two sleeves today, but at least they look pretty good. The only problem is that I've discovered that I'm horribly asymmetrical - both sleeves are exactly the same size (I checked) but the right sleeve fits perfectly while the left sleeve is tight. I checked my arms, and yes, my left arm is definitely bigger than my right arm.

Except it's not muscle. The skin just hangs there looking terrible. This is something I object to about losing weight - at least when I was bigger I fitted into my skin. Now it hangs loose all over the place.

Tomorrow I'll attach the skirt. I've modified the pattern slightly so it's even simpler than it was, so there's no showy linings, just deep sleeves. The satin will survive not being lined, and I can use the lining brocade for detailing and the stomacher after the wedding. I'll just do a satin stomacher to match the rest of the dress for now.

And in between stitching sessions I finished Ice Station by Matthew Reilly. Rather fun, but I was rooting for the SAS in the middle.
2 comments

It's 23:45 here, and we've just had a fantastic municipal fireworks display which I could watch from the balcony. If any small children were asleep beforehand, I doubt that they're asleep now. These displays occur quite regularly - at least every month - and are extremely loud. The weird thing is that I get the sound twice, once directly and a second time reflected off and focussed by the mountains behind the town so that the sound and light seem to be coming from different directions. Very odd.
0 comments

Complete but unboned.

Finally, I have got started on the dress proper. I admit that so far I've only cut out all of the bodice pieces (fabric and lining) of the main dress, but I have finished the farthingale to go underneath it. The interesting problem with the farthingale is that it has to be possible to completely disassemble it for travelling. I really don't want to try travelling with a metre-wide parcel. So my final design has removable boning which, when fitted, slips into an extra sleeve to keep it in place. The advantage of this will be that it will pack down quite small, so I won't be limited to only using it at events when I'm in the UK before and after so that I can store it in Liverpool.

I'm also making decent progress on the celtic beasties embroidery I got in Carnforth. I've had to rearrange the pattern rather, as the designer has clearly come up with five designs, strung them together and fitted a border around it instead of making sure that the designs and the border are in line and in harmony with each other. It's not often a kit gets it quite this badly wrong, but I've managed to fix it. Even the colour numbers on the key fail to match up with the colour numbers of the threads provided.

A lot of embroidery was done during the Grand Prix. Yay Jensen! About time too!
0 comments

And not just small kiddie tents either.

These are genuine family-size tents capable of sleeping at least three people each. There have also been suspicious noises of children playing in the garden, which is also unusual. I suspect that someone has visitors for the bank holiday weekend and well, there's no way an extra family of six would fit into one of these apartments, so the tents in the garden are probably a much better idea.

This holiday - Verslunmannahelgi or "Workmen's Weekend" - is the big summer holiday. The theory is, as far as I can work out, that you go somewhere to get drunk with friends. From what people have told me it's the most alcohol-laden weekend of the year. A scary thought, when you realise how much Icelanders can drink on a normal weekend. These are people who, on the whole, drink whatever's cheapest in order to get drunk as quickly as possible. The idea of savouring the flavour of the drink, enjoying the subtle differences between different wines or whiskies, does not seem to have made it this far north.

Not that I'm taking part in this. I may indulge in a G&T or a glass of madeira once I've finished writing this, but my weekend is far less hectic. Apart from anything else, I still have a dress to make. I've now got the pattern, but I'm paranoid enough to want to make a toile just to be on the safe side. This is tomorrow's task, lower back permitting. Lower back not permitting, I'll go for a swim until it submits and then start sewing.
0 comments

I got a very strange telephone call.

When I answered it the voice on the other end said "The Emperor's been assassinated." Recognising the voice, I knew exactly who he meant, and was absolutely horrified. It was going to cause chaos! What would happen to the Imperium? Would the Domain of Deneb suddenly find itself fighting a sixth frontier war, hit Tech 16, win, then declare its intent to re-unify the fragments under the authority of Emperor Norris? Weighty questions for Traveller players such as Fred and myself, and we spent a good hour or so discussing possibilities.

The reason I mention this is that in the post today I received my CD-ROM containing the entirety of MegaTraveller, the Traveller version that covered the Rebellion. Thanks to the vaguearies of PayPal, which meant that I couldn't put in a delivery address in a different country to my billing address (how am I supposed to send gifts, huh?), I had to have it delivered here and pay Icelandic customs duty one it. Which turned out to be $25 on a $35 item.

I'm consoling myself with the fact that I've saved at least $150 on the sourcebooks I didn't have, and which would have been difficult to get nowadays anyway. It reminds me how fortunate I am that I can have other things sent to the UK for collection when I visit.
0 comments

Neil is a dark blue-green 16 valve, Toyota Carina E 2.0 GLi Estate



Yes, I know that last time I wrote about cars I was being tempted by a (red) Toyota Starlet, but yesterday I went back to the dealership to take a longer test drive and found that the Starlet had been moved. It was now parked next to a Toyota Carina of similar age but larger size, which bore a special offer notice telling me that it had approximately 30% off... which made it slightly cheaper than the Starlet and much more comfortable-looking. So I took both of them for test drives.

The Sarlet did indeed have heavy steering, but not too heavy. Of course, as I'd had power steering on the Saab and the rental VW it was partly that I'd got used to it so it wasn't a major problem. What did worry a little was that the engine chugged a bit at low and medium speeds.

The Carina had power steering, which was nice. It responded very well to both the accelerator and the brake and felt really rather good to drive. But it was big...

I came home and had a look at Parkers.co.uk before going back this morning to do the actual buying deed. I think I've got a bargain - it handles better than the Starlet and has loads more extras. Once I'd taken the rental VW back Martha gave me a lift up to the garage to collect it and my first action was to take it through the car wash. It now looks good as well as feeling good.
0 comments

Alright, maybe not mayhem then.

Having previously got to grips with the A&E service here in Akureyri, today I made my first foray into the world of Icelandic GPs. I went in yesterday to register and to make an appointment and was given one just over 24 hours later. The health centre here lives on three floors of one of the building on the main street, and appears to have about eight doctors plus a selection of specialist clinics. Until now I'd managed to avoid the need for medical services, but the A&E doctor told me to visit my GP to arrange physiotherapy of my neck and shoulder after the accident, so here I was.

Instead of actually registering with a GP, which was what I'd intended to do, it seemed that I was to see the locum who'd been brought in for the holiday period. Not a major problem, she'd write me the referral for the physiotherapist and also a prescription for more of the tablets. When I mentioned that I was having problems with depression (it's exactly three months today since Mum died) we talked a little and then she asked if I would mind if she referred me to one of the psychiatrists because she didn't have much experience with it, and certainly not with medication outside the normal SSRIs. (I've tried a number of these and they don't work for me, so I need either Tricyclics or MOIs.) I was quite impressed with this, that she admitted her ignorance rather than try something and make a mess of it.

In the same way that the A&E visits cost, so did this. Each appointment costs approximately £5, which isn't too bad and again the pharmacist told me that she had a generic equivalent that was cheaper than the prescribed medication. So although the health service isn't free it isn't extortionately expensive. And I'll be able to claim it all back from the insurance eventually.
0 comments

Or, at least, of coffee cups.

When I went into work this morning I was sufficiently motivated to break out my new coffee cup. Shortly afterwards I was horrified to discover that it's quite delicate bone china - no, not because I dropped it and it smashed to smithereens, but because I realised that it was thin enough to see both light and the external decoration through it if you look inside. This is not normal when it comes to coffee cups, I thought. Particularly since my previous coffee cup is quite thick with blue and purple strips around the outside and an orange inside. Solid earthenware, that's what it is, bought in Whittards of Chelsea in Aberdeen about four years ago.

The new one is a translucent white china bedecked with a bright red cartoon soldier and the words "Tivoli" and "København". I bought it because it's quite bold and bright and looked about the same size as my admittedly-large mug. Then I came to put coffee into it, and I've discovered that it's actually larger than the previous one. It's a good thing that I only tend to have one cup of coffee a day in the morning, or I'd be shaking like a leaf by lunchtime. Nevertheless, it was a good cup of coffee, as I'd caved in and bought some Kenyan Blue Mountain in the coffee shop in town. I may never go back to Maxwell House ever again.
1 comments