Oh dear you couldn't make it up. Tonight was like a scene out of a comedy film. I had just dropped Alice and her boyfriend at St Johns Ambulance at 8pm and though I would nab a simple cache or two on the way back home. It should be quiet on a cold winter evening I thought. I drove along the seafront and saw some joggers, and thought it must be a jogging club. But then as I drove along there were more and more. Until I reached my destination at the end of a parking spot on the seafront where a tiny nano sized cache was hidden somewhere. Only to find about 50 or 60 joggers warming up and generally loitering around right in the spot I wanted to search.
I had to laugh, will try again later when I pick Alice up when hopefully they will have dispersed.
So on to the next one. It was just outside a church and was another nano cache (about the size of those little circular watch batteries). Only to find that the cache location was in a park with locked gates. It was dark and I was hesitant to peer through the gates after having just finished watching a programme about vampires. Talk about scare myself silly. So I decided to go home and get warm again. Will just have to try another time.
I have had a bit of a weekend of things going wrong whilst caching so this evening just polished it off. LOL
I thought I would lay my own little caches in a nearby country park. So off I go on a nice dry winter's day. I had prepared three tubs and 2 x 35mm canisters to place in trees and little nooks and crannies. I had left a trackable item in one of them and it was not until I got home that I realised that I had not noted which pot/location had the trackable. You are supposed to log these on the website, so I messed up there and that has caused a little bit of confusion as just two hours after the cache site went live online, someone had picked up the trackable already! Talk about eager. Then a few hours later I realised I had put the co-ordinates for a nearby car park instead of the actual cache site. DOH. I wont be laying a series again for a while. I think I will leave it to those more experienced. Oh you have to laugh.
Monday 25 January 2010
Sunday 17 January 2010
Ups and downs and muddy paths
It was a beautiful sunny morning when I woke up, clear blue skies. No work today, so that means only one thing. A nice walk in the countryside. I didn't want to take Millie with me because I knew I was going to be walking around a village first so I took her and Barney for a quick run over the park nearby. There is a cache there, a tiny one about the size of a fingernail, which I have been looking for on and off for six months. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=ede3c12f-57c8-44fa-81a4-8835f78ccfd8 I had yet another look today. Nope couldn't find it. I'm thinking it must be lost so take the dogs back home and head off to the village.
At the village there was a multi-cache. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=985c1ec1-634a-4d03-8f54-a0c752daed2c This means that you have to go to different locations to get the clues and work out what the co-ordinates for the actual cache are. I spent a nice hour or so wandering around, finding out interesting little facts about this quaint and very old village which is absolutely steeped in history. Including a market square where people used to be hung. One such chap was hung just for being a Protestant in 1555. Unfortunately the cache site was in a field, so I had to traipse through the mud, which I had hoped to avoid today. The cache was in a tree which was right on the edge of a ditch. With all the rain and snow we have had recently the ditch was waterlogged so I had to gingerly cross the ditch to get to the tree. Picked up the cache, a small tupperware pot full of little odds and ends and opened it up to write on the log. Just as I had all the contents out, along comes a man walking his dog. Caught in the act. God knows what he thought I was doing. You've got to laugh. But I do always seem to get caught red handed these days. I must look all around before actually getting the cache. Anyway go that so off I went to do another one. This was a straight forward cache with co-ords and a clue to where to search. So I parked the car up and walked along to the cache site which was near a fishing lake. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=afdc0319-070a-4676-b339-f3ce79ca9e49 Fortunately there wasn't anyone around but unfortunately I could not find it at all. The clue was to look under a log. There were loads of logs and I searched under them all twice. No luck. Oh well that will be a DNF (did not find) to log on the website when I get home.
Off to the next one. My knee was getting very swollen and painful by now so I though I would do a straight forward mulit-cache up the road in an another village.http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f901231b-eab1-43ea-b3df-e15fabb5d086 The clues were obtained from a war memorial and I had the co-ordinates to the cache quickly. This one was in the woods, down a muddy path. So much for avoiding the mud today! It was quite slippery and on a slope so that was fun going down then back up again. I found the cache site easily though it was in a part of the woods that was not visited often so there were no paths in some areas, just loads of brambles to trip me up. Well that was me for the day so I went home for a nice cup of tea and cheese on toast for lunch.
I got home and started to log my finds on the geocaching website when I found out that the one I had tried to find this morning, in the park, had been found today. I was so incensed that I had not been able to find it. I messaged the person who had found it, someone I met last week actually, and confirmed it was where I thought it was. So off I went again to look for it, this time I took Millie with me. This was at 4pm today. There were loads of people walking their dogs so it was difficult to hunt for the cache. I spent ages walking up and down and talking to dog owners whilst Millie had a wonderful time running around with other dogs. Eventually there was a lull and I finally had it in my hands after much searching. What a relief. It has been bugging me for so long, not having this one ticked off my list, especially as it the nearest one to where I live.
So then I finally went home for dinner. What a day of ups and downs.
At the village there was a multi-cache. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=985c1ec1-634a-4d03-8f54-a0c752daed2c This means that you have to go to different locations to get the clues and work out what the co-ordinates for the actual cache are. I spent a nice hour or so wandering around, finding out interesting little facts about this quaint and very old village which is absolutely steeped in history. Including a market square where people used to be hung. One such chap was hung just for being a Protestant in 1555. Unfortunately the cache site was in a field, so I had to traipse through the mud, which I had hoped to avoid today. The cache was in a tree which was right on the edge of a ditch. With all the rain and snow we have had recently the ditch was waterlogged so I had to gingerly cross the ditch to get to the tree. Picked up the cache, a small tupperware pot full of little odds and ends and opened it up to write on the log. Just as I had all the contents out, along comes a man walking his dog. Caught in the act. God knows what he thought I was doing. You've got to laugh. But I do always seem to get caught red handed these days. I must look all around before actually getting the cache. Anyway go that so off I went to do another one. This was a straight forward cache with co-ords and a clue to where to search. So I parked the car up and walked along to the cache site which was near a fishing lake. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=afdc0319-070a-4676-b339-f3ce79ca9e49 Fortunately there wasn't anyone around but unfortunately I could not find it at all. The clue was to look under a log. There were loads of logs and I searched under them all twice. No luck. Oh well that will be a DNF (did not find) to log on the website when I get home.
Off to the next one. My knee was getting very swollen and painful by now so I though I would do a straight forward mulit-cache up the road in an another village.http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f901231b-eab1-43ea-b3df-e15fabb5d086 The clues were obtained from a war memorial and I had the co-ordinates to the cache quickly. This one was in the woods, down a muddy path. So much for avoiding the mud today! It was quite slippery and on a slope so that was fun going down then back up again. I found the cache site easily though it was in a part of the woods that was not visited often so there were no paths in some areas, just loads of brambles to trip me up. Well that was me for the day so I went home for a nice cup of tea and cheese on toast for lunch.
I got home and started to log my finds on the geocaching website when I found out that the one I had tried to find this morning, in the park, had been found today. I was so incensed that I had not been able to find it. I messaged the person who had found it, someone I met last week actually, and confirmed it was where I thought it was. So off I went again to look for it, this time I took Millie with me. This was at 4pm today. There were loads of people walking their dogs so it was difficult to hunt for the cache. I spent ages walking up and down and talking to dog owners whilst Millie had a wonderful time running around with other dogs. Eventually there was a lull and I finally had it in my hands after much searching. What a relief. It has been bugging me for so long, not having this one ticked off my list, especially as it the nearest one to where I live.
So then I finally went home for dinner. What a day of ups and downs.
Wednesday 13 January 2010
Today
Today I had a rotten migraine, I haven't had one for months. Not sure what the trigger was but I had to go home from work, take some migraleve and go to sleep for a few hours. Felt better when I woke up, although still a little fragile around noise.
I am planning on going to a geocaching meet/event tonight. Hope my head holds out alright and it is not too noisy there! mmm, some hope. I am really looking forward to meeting other geocachers, especially those whose names crop up on the website. I have met some and it is always nice to meet people with the same interest. Andy is not interested at all in geocaching and moans and groans every time I want to stop off somewhere to find a cache. Hopefully I might be able to pick up a few caches tonight before the meeting starts at 8pm.
So from the last log it looks like I AM making another jeans quilt. Will have to gather some dark coloured jeans and some red material to make one to match Sarah's room. I enjoyed making the one that I have done already and am looking forward to making another one.
I am planning on going to a geocaching meet/event tonight. Hope my head holds out alright and it is not too noisy there! mmm, some hope. I am really looking forward to meeting other geocachers, especially those whose names crop up on the website. I have met some and it is always nice to meet people with the same interest. Andy is not interested at all in geocaching and moans and groans every time I want to stop off somewhere to find a cache. Hopefully I might be able to pick up a few caches tonight before the meeting starts at 8pm.
So from the last log it looks like I AM making another jeans quilt. Will have to gather some dark coloured jeans and some red material to make one to match Sarah's room. I enjoyed making the one that I have done already and am looking forward to making another one.
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Jeans Quilt
I decided to make a jeans quilt after having seen one that my mum had made. I liked the frayed edges and appliqued hearts. So I collected together some jeans, a pair Andy's old jeans and a pair of Sev's and someone from work donated three or four pairs that she was going to throw out. So these were all painstakingly cut into 5 1/2 squares. I cut out about 130 squares. I think I will probably only need 120, but there may be the odd one or two that doesn't work for whatever reason.
Step two meant cutting out 33 hearts from some cotton material that I had bought. One with flowers on and one with strawberries on. The strawberries look very realistic. You could almost reach out and pick one. So these were cut out and appliqued on using a zigzag stitch on the sewing machine.
Then I randomly sewed the squares with hearts and the squares without hearts into strips of eight squares each. This made 15 strips of eight squares. I have laid them across the backs of the dining room chairs here.
Then all of those 15 strips were sewn together to make the final top of the quilt. I was very pleased with the result. To make the edges frayed I snipped at them all, giving myself a blister in the process. Then put the quilt in the washing machine with a tennis ball. Don't ask I don't know why but apparently this helps with the intended fraying. Mine didn't come out as frayed as I would have liked, so I may need to pick and snip at it a bit more.
Then I sewed on to the back a nice warm fleecy material in bright red. It really sets of the blue jeans material and matches nicely with the hearts. So here is the finished quilt. It didn't take too long to make at all and I am very pleased with it. I might just think about making sarah a quuilt like this but with green hearts, or even stars. Then again if I could put sheep on the squares that would look really cool, but I don't know how to make sheep shapes to applique on - could be tricky.
Step two meant cutting out 33 hearts from some cotton material that I had bought. One with flowers on and one with strawberries on. The strawberries look very realistic. You could almost reach out and pick one. So these were cut out and appliqued on using a zigzag stitch on the sewing machine.
Then I randomly sewed the squares with hearts and the squares without hearts into strips of eight squares each. This made 15 strips of eight squares. I have laid them across the backs of the dining room chairs here.
Then all of those 15 strips were sewn together to make the final top of the quilt. I was very pleased with the result. To make the edges frayed I snipped at them all, giving myself a blister in the process. Then put the quilt in the washing machine with a tennis ball. Don't ask I don't know why but apparently this helps with the intended fraying. Mine didn't come out as frayed as I would have liked, so I may need to pick and snip at it a bit more.
Then I sewed on to the back a nice warm fleecy material in bright red. It really sets of the blue jeans material and matches nicely with the hearts. So here is the finished quilt. It didn't take too long to make at all and I am very pleased with it. I might just think about making sarah a quuilt like this but with green hearts, or even stars. Then again if I could put sheep on the squares that would look really cool, but I don't know how to make sheep shapes to applique on - could be tricky.Sunday 10 January 2010
My first FTF
WOOHOOO, I got my first First to Find (FTF) yesterday. The cache had been enabled on 6 Jan and I had driven past it on my way to work four times. When I saw yesterday that it had still not been logged on the website I though i woudl go for it and see if I could nab my first ever FTF. The snow was still on the ground, so the site was not as green as on the map! The main roads were okay to drive on but the road alongside the cache site was pretty snowy but Andy was okay driving on it. After a quick search I found it easily nestled at the bottom of a tree.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=756dcac2-cc74-463a-aaaf-c505c53713c1
As we were close to a country park near where I work we thought we would continue on and take Millie for a run. When we drove up the country road towards the country park car park, there were loads of cars parked along the road. I thought "What on earth?" Then I cottoned on. Everyone had come from near and far to go sledging down the hills. We parked up and had a little walk. Millie loved the snow. Andy did a video of Millie rolling in the snow. When he gets it loaded up I will load it up here for you to see. She is so funny in the snow. There were loads of people sledging down the hill using almost anything that would slide. It was really great fun to watch.
We were so excited about going sledging ourselves we called the kids and told them to get something to use and make a flask of tea. We drove home and picked them up, made sure everyone was well wrapped up as it was very cold out on the hills. We took them back to the country park and we all had a great time going sledging down the hills and watching others doing the same. Even I went down twice. It was really exhilerating. Unfortunately I spilled the tea so we only got one cup! Then it started snowing quite heavily so we called it a day and went back home before it got too tricky to drive home.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=756dcac2-cc74-463a-aaaf-c505c53713c1
As we were close to a country park near where I work we thought we would continue on and take Millie for a run. When we drove up the country road towards the country park car park, there were loads of cars parked along the road. I thought "What on earth?" Then I cottoned on. Everyone had come from near and far to go sledging down the hills. We parked up and had a little walk. Millie loved the snow. Andy did a video of Millie rolling in the snow. When he gets it loaded up I will load it up here for you to see. She is so funny in the snow. There were loads of people sledging down the hill using almost anything that would slide. It was really great fun to watch.
We were so excited about going sledging ourselves we called the kids and told them to get something to use and make a flask of tea. We drove home and picked them up, made sure everyone was well wrapped up as it was very cold out on the hills. We took them back to the country park and we all had a great time going sledging down the hills and watching others doing the same. Even I went down twice. It was really exhilerating. Unfortunately I spilled the tea so we only got one cup! Then it started snowing quite heavily so we called it a day and went back home before it got too tricky to drive home.
Saturday 2 January 2010
Beautiful day for a walk
I went for a lovely walk this morning along the river bank. It was very cold, about 1C, but there was little or no wind and it was nice and sunny. I took Millie with me and we were out and about for about three hours. It was really lovely. At first it was peaceful with hardly anyone around, but nearing lunch time a few more walkers were around. The sun was rising over the sea. It was a very nice walk indeed.
Of course I looked for a few caches along the way and was successful in all but two which were very tricky. One was in a thorny bush on the slope of the bank so I found it difficult to balance and look through the base of the thorny bush. Maybe another time. I think I need to work on my training of Millie to go in for difficult finds! LOL. I will upload a photo of her enjoying the walk tomorrow.
Tomorrow is chores day. Enough of fun, frolicks and holidays and going for long walks. The decorations are coming down and I have quite a list of things to do to get everything up to scratch. Back to normal on Monday.
Of course I looked for a few caches along the way and was successful in all but two which were very tricky. One was in a thorny bush on the slope of the bank so I found it difficult to balance and look through the base of the thorny bush. Maybe another time. I think I need to work on my training of Millie to go in for difficult finds! LOL. I will upload a photo of her enjoying the walk tomorrow.
Tomorrow is chores day. Enough of fun, frolicks and holidays and going for long walks. The decorations are coming down and I have quite a list of things to do to get everything up to scratch. Back to normal on Monday.
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