Mar 31

Dieppe Kite Festival - Video

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In theory I ought to be able to insert a link to you-tube into this post which plays the video I shot a the Dieppe Kite Festival in September last year.  I spent all day Sunday watching, choosing, editing the many bits of video we shot and the two cameras we took with us - cutting it down to 10 mins was a real challenge and there is so much I had to miss out, or cut later, to shorten the clip enough to be able to upload it to you-tube.

As with a lot of things that I do, I like to make sure the end product is the best I can achieve, and I even managed to add music where needed (most of the sound on video shot at a kite festival is wind noise!), and cut the clips to fit the music - the result was something that I was pretty ok with, so I uploaded it.

One small thing I forgot about…….copyright on music!  Thanks to trying to use an extract from Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” (seemed appropriate!), you-tube muted all audio entirely - what good is a 10 minute video with no music/sound?

So…back to the drawing board, and until I mange to sort the problem I have deleted the video from you-tube as I don’t want it to be viewed unfinished.  Watch this space…..

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Mar 28

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

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I don’t often take too much notice of the sort of “chain” type emails that constantly arrive at work, but this one involved food and a recipe I though I really must try!  I wonder how many of these little cakes have been made as the email makes its way around the country!  I posted the result on facebook and have had requests for the recipe - so here goes….

4tbsp self-raising flour

4tbsp sugar

2tbsp cocoa

1 egg

3tbsp milk

3tbsp oil

Vanilla essence

4tbsp chocolate chips (optional)

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large coffee mug, then add the liquid ingredients and mix well.  Add the chocolate chips, mix again and put into the microwave (mine is 850W) for 3 minutes.  It will probably raise up out of the mug but hopefully not overflow!  Done - easy!  Leave to cool and tip out, or eat from mug!

I think it would probably be very good as a pudding eaten with chocolate sauce!

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Mar 25

Project 52 - Week 32

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Wow - only 20 weeks to go!

Photo from Brean:

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Mar 25

Brean there, done that…

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The second biggest event on the Plus calendar - held at Brean Leisure Park, near Weston-Super-Mare.  Basically a weekend of dancing, bands, parties etc - accommodation is in mobile homes, very plush too!

My official “Plus” report of Brean is on the KL Plus website (www.kingslynnplus.org.uk) so no need to do the “how great it was” etc. bit again, although it truly was great!  This is the place to put a more personal perspective on the event. 

Friday afternoon was good - I sort of lingered during booking in under the premise of helping out, not sure I contributed much to the booking in, but I always really enjoy the bit where I get to meet people that I haven’t seen for ages, and also in some cases put faces to names and real people to facebook profiles, and its a great time to sit and chat for a while before things get a bit more hectic.

I had offered to be head chef for the weekend for our van, so gave up on booking in to go cook chilli - the smell of the onions cooking seemed to attract people as they passed the caravan, and in the end we had a few more people join us for dinner than originally planned - there was plenty to go around and the company was great.  A quick change of clothes and a smudge of make-up (that was just me as I was in a van full of blokes!) and we were ready for the evening do.  Some time during the evening I realised that I had forgotten my fan (it was very hot in there and my fan has proved invaluable since I bought it for WASH!) so headed back to the van - in the process managing to lose my balance in my platform boots on an uneven pavement and land on my face on the ground again - ouch!!  Result - a twisted ankle, bits of gravel in my hand, and (oh no!!) slight damage to the boots.  I did try playing for the sympathy vote with the gravel and blood speckled hand - it only worked for a while though….!!

Saturday evening brought us a great band called “My Immortal” who are an Evanescence tribute band.  They were a bit shaky to start with (I gather they are a reasonably new band and were very nervous) but I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the two sets they did.  Before I knew they were appearing, I hadn’t previously seriously listended to Evanscence music, but think I’m now hooked!  I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing them again some time in the future.  Sunday’s band were “The Man from Funkle” who were probably one of the most versatile bands I have seen for a long time, and I am certain all the blokes fancied the female lead singer…

A showing of Kung Foo Panda on sunday afternoon didn’t quite go as smoothly as it could have done, with the result that we don’t actually know what happens at the end of the film!  Not to worry, I don’t think it was really my thing, but passed some time quite pleasantly anyway.  Before that a Tai Chi lesson - never done it before but rather enjoyed it - would love to do it again next year but don’t think I’ll be taking it up regularly.

The weekend was great - did I say that already?!!  The best bits for me apart from an excellent saturday night band were the times I got to chill out - read a book, cook for friends, watch a DVD, wander around the local town centre and drink hot chocolate in the cafe taking refuge on a very windy day!   The evening before Brean was very chilled out too - watching a film with a friend, drinking too much red wine, laughing lots, both falling asleep on the sofa under our respective duvets dragged from the bedrooms before the film even ended!   Meeting all my friends once again was great - I like my own company, I like to be individual, but sometimes I just need to feel I’m part of something bigger, and the community feeling you get at these events is what makes them so great.

Photos:

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Mar 18

Project 52 - Week 31

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Has to be the kite - highlight of the week was getting the middle sections finished.

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Mar 17

Project DS - Back on Track

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Another weekend dedicated to kite building actually went slightly more to plan than the previous one, now the new sewing machine has arrived.

Everything has been a bit trial and error, despite having a folder of instructions and a whole 83 (or so) pages of forum to peruse (whenever there are a few hours spare!!).  The double sided tape we have been using to attach pieces together before sewing has proven both to be indispensible, and a pain in the backside!   For holding the pieces together ready to sew without any worry of them moving against each other its great, particularly when we are now looking at three pieces of fabric at a time.  For actually sewing it has been a problem as the sticky stuff stays on the needle, then the machine starts missing stitches and I am having to constantly clean the needle with silcone spray to remove it.

Eventually, we managed to get all of the yellow pieces sewn together - that gives us the centres for both sides of the kite - next step is to start joining the other colours onto these bits, and this is where sewing three pieces comes into things.  Each yellow piece now needs both a pink and a black piece joined onto it.  The technique we finally came up with is a bit fiddly, but seems to work - it involves sewing the first line of stitches which hold the pieces together, then removing the tape (with difficulty) before sewing the second line which binds the raw edges back onto the kite making a double seam.  This way the needle doesn’t have to go through the sticky tape at all - problem solved!

Progress was good - having a break for a while now though as I will be off to Brean (a Plus holiday) next weekend.  There will be no doubt a lot of problems ahead to solve before we get this finished, and certainly a ton more sewing, but its now feeling like we’re actually getting somewhere!

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Mar 11

Project DS/Project 52 - Week 30

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Well the theory last weekend was to get a big chunk of work done on the Doublestar kite - all went well on Saturday when I got stuck into hemming, I now have only 23 pieces out of 140 left to hem,which means I managed to hem 37 pieces this time.  Sunday was set aside for assembly on the theory that assembly would need two people (twice the brain power to try and work out how to do it!), whereas hemming I can finish in the evening on my own.

Whilst doing the little bit of assembly we had already achieved, I had discovered the hard way that the sewing machine wasn’t keen on the double sided tape we had used to hold everything together until sewing time.   I seem to remember a bit of a metallic crunch and since then things haven’t quite been right with the machine - missed stitches, tangles etc.  I spent hours on Sunday fighting to get the thing to sew the bit we had finally worked out how to tape (should have written notes on what we did the first time!) - managing to sew three out of five pieces before giving up and asking for assistance to find out what was wrong with the machine. 

Thats where things took a turn for the worst and all work on the kite was temporarily halted.  A new sewing machine was ordered on the internet!

….and as if by magic - my new machine turned up today, we’ve been playing about with it tonight (although we are both a bit unsure about Stephen playing with it too much given what happened when he touched the last one!).  I think I have decided that the automatic needle threader gadget is probably slower than actually threading by hand, but otherwise its looking good, and work will resume shortly!

Project 52 photo - a broken sewing machine!

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Mar 11

Project 52 - Week 29

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Photo from the weekend at Shoreham - I was holding the camera right above Tom and couldn’t see the screen so was really impressed with this one!

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Mar 11

Shoreham

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Its been ages since I’ve been down to Shoreham to visit family (last time was Christmas) and as I don’t go down there as often as I’d like to, I jumped at the chance of combining a visit to the Smart garage in Guildford to finally get the promised cruise control fitted to the car with a stay at my brother’s place and a weekend of madness with two very energetic little boys and their parents!

The cruise control fitting left me wandering around Guildford for about 3 hours, killing time, in which I discovered, firstly, that a lot of the shops are well out of my price range, secondly that Starbucks make a very nice White Mocha coffee (yum!), thirdly, and unfortunately far too late, that Guildford has a branch of Oxfam dedicated to books/videos DVDs (great for killing time!), and lastly that I would be grateful of the cruise control after spending three hours walking around the town with a dodgy foot!  I got the call and returned to the garage, and was left sitting in the showroom while my car was collected from the workshop - ignore the phone they said, as if I would be tempted to answer it!  At least I got some time to start reading the book I bought from Oxfam, almost a disappointment when my car arrived back.  Car done, it was time to head down to Shoreham.

For once my timing was perfect, I arrived at Shoreham just in time for lunch, and my ego was plumped up just a bit when I heard two young boys shouting for Auntie Christine to come sit next to them - its nice to be in demand!

The rest of the weekend was hectic and quite noisy, being woken up in the morning with a rubber centipede dangling over your face is an interesting experience, but then I guess thats what you get for buying young boys rubber centipedes in the first place!  One of the best bits of the weekend was the weather on Saturday being good enough to go sit for quite some time on the breakwater rocks on Shoreham beach while the boys played, and soak up the piece and quiet of the beach at this time of year.  Very pretty it was too, although as I was taking photos almost directly into the sun and couldn’t view the screen very well it seems I took all the landscape photos a bit crooked!

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Mar 01

Creamy Egg Curry

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2tbsp sunflower oil

2 onions, thinly sliced

2 heaped tbsp curry paste/Tikka Massala

400g can chopped tomatoes

140g frozen peas

8 eggs

4tbsp greek yoghurt

rice and mango chutney, to serve

Heat oil in a pan then fry the onions over a low heat for 10 mins until golden.  Add the curry paste and sizzle for 2 mins, stirring.  Add the tomatoes and 200ml water, season to taste then bring to the boil.  Simmer for 10 mins until you have a rich sauce.

Meanwhile, boil the eggs for 8 mins, cool in cold water, then peel and halve.

Stir the peas and yoghurt into the curry and simmer for another 2-3 mins to heat through.

Serve with rice and mango chutney

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