We’re going on a Gnome Hunt

and, fortunately, we have help.

Forty gnomes have scattered themselves around the village and we need to find all of them.  There are puzzles to solve, too, so it’s a good job our team are good at that kind of thing.

Each gnome has been sponsored by a local organisation and has been given appropriate things to pose alongside.

We’ve not been going long before one of us needs a hanky.  Good job someone came prepared with her handbag!  (Thanks, Eleanor, I forgot to put one in my pocket before I left home)

Some of the gnomes are easy to spot, because they’re standing in the middle of a garden.

This one was showing off his (her?) fresh manicure.

We were keeping an eye on the dark clouds overhead as the rain threatened and thought this gnome had chosen his hiding place well.  Hmm…we spent a little longer in this spot than in others, tempted by all of that pink!

So far so good, the rain was holding off and there were lovely views across the valley.

So, I imagine this chap wouldn’t have much trouble renting out his holiday cottage!

Leaving the road behind, we took the path – we hoped James knew where he was going!

We could see the gnome…

but had to find a different way to get to it.

What a good job we did – otherwise, we’d have missed this one in the field next door.

Answers carefully recorded, we were thinking about that first puzzle.  Which pop group sang about gnomes?  Surely you know that, Mark?

The village pub sponsored this one, who has downed his beer in one and was hiding behind a tree.  Took a while to find him but our team have got eagle eyes.

Looking back over the village from this spot, we can see all the other gnome hunters out there.  We have competition!

No time to spare, then, and someone has spotted that there’s ice cream for sale in the next garden and Eleanor tells us she has brought her pocket money with her!

Walking around the village like this enables us to spot all kinds of details we’d overlooked till now.  These beautiful faces adorn a lovely old house, tucked away down a small lane.

We’re starting to get tired and the lanes are rather steep at this point.  But, so far, it’s all downhill and we oldies are the only ones to realise what this means…

We all love the gnome who came prepared for his spot by the stream, though and are giggling enough that we hardly notice the climb back uphill!  Oh, and that P is a clue for the group who sang about gnomes, by the way.

Got it!  Now we need to think of the singer who also sang about a gnome whose name has a V in it.

One of the last gnomes holding a clue is outside the old Red Lion pub – love the old sign, don’t you?

Just a couple more and a last sneaky look into another lovely garden. 

Done it!  All forty gnomes found, four puzzles solved (the name of a place where no gnomes can be found, one where gnomes were allowed in this year,  the names of both a pop group and a singer who sang about gnomes – I’m sure you guessed them all!)  We each won a gnome for our garden and some lucky ones won a keyring too.

Great fun – and believe it or not, the clouds parted and the sun shone too! 

Update on Sunday, June 23, 2013 at 10:10PM by Gill Thomas

OK, Mary, here goes:  IKEA has no gnomes whatsoever but this year, for the first time they were allowed into the Chelsea Flower Show.  Pink Floyd and David Bowie were the two pop-related answers!

Now, where were we?

We were playing with the Gocco printer when the screen went black.  As a result, I had to limit my efforts to some artwork already prepared and (over)used previously, but never mind, at least the little thing was out of the box and being used.  In taking the photograph too, I recognised what I love about printing: that repetition and being able to stand the prints one in front of the other and see the click-click-click of the design.

The neon strips were as a result of playing with the latest purchase, referred to here and which made a timely arrival on Monday afternoon, mid print, so to speak.

Hardly out of the box before they were filled with zingy colours and splodging, dripping and daubing their way across the paper.  Love them!

Elsewhere, I managed to print my fingernails slightly which didn’t bother me too much because I’m in two minds about the colour, which seemed like a good idea at the time!

And whilst one old computer sits forlornly on the floor of the studio, awaiting some fate yet to be decided, the other one is fired up and running.

Right now, I’m dreaming of the day when I can simply open a program and not have to tweak all the settings and options.  When I don’t have to enter a password because it has remembered it from last time and when all those seamless little processes we take for granted so easily, are seamless once again.  Maybe that will be tomorrow?  But I have yet to open itunes, or sync my phone…

There was a bonus in the form of a cleared cupboard, though, because whilst my hero worked on my PC, I had a bit of a clear out.  After all, no-one will ask me to produce the minutes of a meeting held in 2002 will they?  Or a credit card statement from November 2004?  I hope not!

Whilst we toiled in the relatively cool studio, the warmth of the sun brought out the first rose of the summer.

Peace has returned to this small corner and we have regained control of the machines!

It could have been (so very much) worse

For a while we’ve known my 5 year old PC was nearing the end of its useful life.  We even had a replacement computer standing by in its box under my desk, but actually taking that step to make the move proved a challenge.  We are good at finding reasons not to do something, especially when everything is still working ok and there isn’t an immediate crisis.

But you’ve guessed what happened next, haven’t you?

Whilst playing around with some digital photos on Monday, in the company of a like minded friend, the screen suddenly went black.  Oh heck…  My hero was away overnight and though I was able to restart and reassure myself everything was still there, it happened again shortly afterwards.  And then again.  And then finally, it wouldn’t restart at all.

Fortunately, my hero returned home the following day and was prepared for the long haul of reloading everything and setting it all up for me.  It’s no mean feat to manage all of those sign-ins, to find all the saved passwords and to remember just how many programs and systems I use regularly.  But it was a good opportunity to upgrade programs, to load Office 2013 and generally have a bit of a clear out.  So, in some ways (and the time spent sorting it all out notwithstanding) it could be seen as a Good Thing.  Thankfully, everything was backed up so I lost no data.

I’m now taking a deep breath and bracing myself to start the process of logging my photos.  It could take some time.

$38 seems a bargain

When we were in New York, I spotted these “bindu threads” in Eileen Fisher.  I rather liked the idea of them, of having the option to wind them around a wrist or wear them as a necklace as I might choose and thought they’d also look pretty wound in amongst the folds of a scarf.  But the colours in the store weren’t to my taste and the $38 price tag seemed a little steep.

Looking closely at them, I figured that they’d be pretty straightforward to create and imagined that I could whip one up in no time.  Good grief, I’d make several, in all colours….I’d make them by the dozen ;-)

After the dust had settled from that trip, I sat down one evening with a bunch of beads from my stash and gave it a go.  Hmm.  The beads I had were too big for the seam binding I was using and my idea of encasing them between two pieces of binding resulted in a really bulky and ugly result.

Some weeks on, then, and having bought some smaller beads, I gave it another try today.  Threading the beads first onto a strand of thread and then encasing them in the seam binding is a slow and very awkward process, involving long lengths of thread which tangle and beads which want to be anywhere but under my thumb.  Remembering the original as being pretty haphazard and not exactly 100% neat, I thought I might speed the process up a little by using my sewing machine to zig zag in between each bead, but once more, the results were far from how I’d imagined.

 

So, it looks like there is no alternative to simply taking the time to thread each bead individually and wind the thread by hand, sewing each one in place as I go.  The sample piece above took me around fifteen minutes and before I went on to begin “the real thing”, I thought I’d test how well it dyes. 

Actually, the end result is pretty good – somewhat better than the original I think – but $38 suddenly doesn’t seem like a bad price when I cost my time in as well!

The Proverbial

Headless chicken, that is.

I’d just prepared the chicken and placed it on the beer-can gizmo ready for the oven and was sitting listening to the Archers, when I caught sight of the thing and thought a photo was needed.

Silly, I know ;-)