47 Water Meadow

I'll hazard a guess that if you're in the UK you've needed your brolly lately, and quite probably your galoshes. My goodness it's been wet! Luckily I've had little need to be out and about, but when the sun reappeared yesterday I took my camera for a walk and went down to the water meadows. Which is what they are just now, literally!

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This was going to be a knitting post, but that would have required knitting, and there would have been knitting if I hadn't spent most of the last three days cuddling a rather poorly whippet*. They're like small children, whippets, all they want to do when they're under the weather is snuggle. And snuggling a whippet is not remotely compatible with any activity that requires two hands. So instead, because I can type with just one hand, I've been doing what the Mr. has started referring to as my 'bloggying'. By which he means the tech stuff - there's a design revamp pending - and the time I spend networking.

I'm greedy, I want this blog to grow. I want more. More readers, more feedback, more interaction. I guess most bloggers do. But it honestly never crossed my mind, not at the beginning and not for a good while afterwards, that that would be true for me. 'Why would anyone want to read a word I write?' ... that thought is my default setting. But apparently people do, which is deeply humbling, hugely gratifying, and heart-stoppingly scary. And which means, if you'll forgive me a gushy moment, that I absolutely have to become the very best blogger I can be. You deserve no less, and I'm working on it.

Being a blogger who doesn't abandon you for nearly a week would be a good place to start of course, but sadly between sitting up with the sick dog - forty eight hours straight with no sleep! - and assorted other distractions - including another painful visit to the dentist as the saga of the dodgy jaw grinds, literally, on - I rather lost track of the time. And then there's been Fizzle! (Ooh, wouldn't that be a brilliant name for a whippet?!)

Fizzle is, or rather Fizzle will be, an exciting online learning platform for bloggers and internet entrepreneurs. It's the brainchild of Think Traffic's Corbett Barr and friends, and right now it's an alpha site. That means they've opened the doors of their unfinished 'house' to 150 'innovators', people they hope will ignore the sawdust on the floor and help them put the finishing touches to the place. And I'm blimmin' chuffed to be one of the 150. That should keep me out of mischief for a while! And contrary to expectation I'm not the only knitter there, although I do seem to be the only Brit among only a handful of Brits!

So, while we're not talking about knitting ... the knitso' post with the most comments ever, giveaways aside? The one about wallpaper! You're awesome people, you know that don't you? Thank you so very much for all your wonderful recommendations. If we'd been voting Hepworth and Whitby would have just been pipped to the post by Flight Navigation. But did you spot Tuesday's news? Spoonflower has introduced a wallpaper option! Now that could be fun ... if they weren't in the States!

Oh, and you asked about the oil painting? The artist was Austrian illustrator and genre painter Franz Xaver Simm (1853-1918), and I'm afraid that's all I know, sorry. I stumbled across it on Wikimedia Commons.

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*Don't worry too much about him, he's on the mend now. He has a condition known as SRM - steroid responsive meningitis - and when something's triggered a flare up - in this case a routine veterinary procedure - he needs some super strong meds and a lot of extra loving. And he's so very cute we're happy to oblige

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