Pray silence for an announcement

The results are in.


We have a Champion Geek.


The points have been checked by an independent adjudicator:





They were then verified by an unbiased third party :


So here is the moment that you have all been waiting patiently for.....


.....in reverse order the Top Ten Geeks in blogland are as follows:


10. Marmadaisy - 94 points
9. Trashy - 110 points
8. Silverpebble - 137 points
7. Dottycookie - 150 points
6. Kitty - 152 points
5. Kristie - 166 points
4. Wonderwoman - 173
3. Lucy Locket (!) - 174 points
2. The Vicious Chicken - 193 points

..and now....

....a hearty round of applause for The Top Geek 2008......




..........with an outstanding 253 Geek Points.....


..........a geek with a very geeky family.............


.........a geek who blogged one of my favourite all time experiments......


......... a geek who got more excited about the Geek League than I did.......


.........drumroll please.........



The winner is.........


TINTOCKTAP !!!!!!!!


A suitably geeky prize will be winging it's way to you in the not too distant future (once I've decided what it will be!)


To all of you who took part...and those of you who stayed faithful to the blog despite not knowing what on earth was going on.......THANK YOU!!!



I've learned a great deal throughout this Geeky phase:

1. I'm maybe not as geeky as I thought
2. I'm not very good at organisation
3. I enjoy handing out points on a completely ad hoc basis - thus shirking any responsibility for setting up proper challenges with an appropriately weighted system of points
4. I need to think things out before opening my big mouth
5. I'm looking forward to doing some sewing


Phew!!



Things may get back to 'normal' round here.....



.......tomorrow I might show you my new feet - once I've had chance to play with them :)

xxxx

p.s. if you were waiting for this post yesterday, I'm sorry to have kept you waiting :-) Yesterday would have been my Mum's birthday and I decided I'd rather have a day off blogging.

Miscellaneous doings

As promised, we did some papermaking.

Using the leftover paper pulp from Thursday's school session, we took ourselves outside and got busy.


1. First prepare your pulp. Soak ripped up newspaper for at least 24 hours in a bucket of water, then blitz it with an electric hand blender (this will ruin your blender BTW!). 2. Take your papermaking frame (cobbled together from a couple of cheapo Ikea frames and some spare netting). 3. Dip the frame down into a bowl of paper pulp and give it a wiggle. 4. Lift out and remove spare pulp from around the frame. 5. Quickly tip the frame over onto a J-cloth on a tray. 6. Using a piece of board press down firmly on the frame to squeeze out the water. 7. Lay your paper out to dry .8. You will have far more paper pulp than you ever thought possible so strain the rest through a teatowel and squeeze out all the water 9. Make yourself some models with the rest - these should take about 15 years to dry!!



Now for some 'normal' stuff.

The Raiders' of the Box parcel arrived in Moogshouse this week - I was sooo excited!! The box is starting to look very well travelled :)

I did some choosing and spent ages agonising over what to take out and what to put in!

Trashy, I took the butter muslin! What was the question?

Postie also delivered this gorgeous Little Girl from Jodie. Isn't she lovely?

She's my next sewing project, once I've sent Michaela's blanket on it's way :)

Thank you so much Jodie - I love her and can't wait to see what she says!

Moving on to the weather now.

Did you imagine for a moment there that autumn had arrived?

Yup, me too!


Apparently not.

This weekend has been one of the sunniest and warmest this year.

To celebrate, we have all ventured out into the garden.


Some of us even managed a spot of sunbathing!



Now then folks. Y'know that sometimes even the best ideas have their issues?

Well here's a thing.....I don't like to think of myself as a quitter. I do tend to get very excited about things and get maybe a little too obsessed...and then burn out.

.....(embarrassed cough)......I've decided to draw the Geek League to a close sooner than initially planned. Mainly 'cos I want to get back to my normal bloggy wittering and maybe do some sewing rather than spend hours on the 'puter looking for geeky stuff. I'm also waaaay behind on reading all your lovely blogs.

Therefore, the League will conclude on 30th September rather than 31st October. Yippeee!!!

That way we can all get back to 'normal' and leave the geekery to others.........like him:


Note : I have not mentioned anything about the Geek League to Monster. I was therefore very surprised when he brought these toy glasses downstairs yesterday and commenced to wrap them with Sellotape.
I asked him what he was doing.
'Making myself some Geek glasses, Mum!'

Don't know where he gets it from!!!!

xxxx

My geeky effort for today

I love you guys! Did you know that?

I write a long wittery post and you Geektastic types pick up a tiny throw away comment and ....you're off!

Little did I appreciate the can of worms that would open when I mentioned the abundance of silver cars on the roads these days. I honestly thought I was the only one who'd noticed!

Seems I was wrong...which is why I think you're great...'cos you 'get it' :)

Anyhoo, apart from playing the 'find the natural resources globe game' and making recycled paper at a junior school's 'Green Day' today I have managed another deliciously geeky moment.

My good friend picked the beasties up from school for me today. When I went to fetch them we got to chatting about the fact that she's just started another module in her degree. She's studying creative writing and has had a novel brewing for some time.

To mark the start of the next stage she's purchased this lovely, and very weighty, tome. So, whilst the kiddlies played on the PS2, we had a lovely time drinking coffee and cooing over this brand new example of wordy goodness. I confess we may even have stroked a crisp new page or two. As she's heading up a new emotional literacy unit at school we also delved in to search for suitable names for her sparkly new facility. You just can't beat a good dictionary. Marvellous :)

Did you have a geeky moment today? Did you do/notice/read something that entertained the geek in you whilst the world passed by, oblivious to your geekery?

You can tell us...we'll understand....

xxx

p.s. whilst doing some geeky market research I found this. Maybe you know just the chap to wear it?

The League of Geeks

Votes have been cast.

The majority (37 'Yes pleases' to 4 'Wots') have voted in favour of The Geek League.

For those of you who may be unsure as to whether or not you qualify for Geekery, let me enlighten you further. (Please note, these thoughts are entirely personal, not intended to cause offence and have been amassed through years of experience as 'the odd one out'!)

If you find yourself getting overexcited/obsessed about/doing any of the following you may be slightly/totally Geeky:

-science-type stuff such as this, or this

-interesting things such as this, or this

-bad spelling/grammar/punctuation on shop signs, in newspapers, newsletters or magazines

-finding new recycling facilities for hitherto unrecyclable rubbish(might just be me who gets excited about this one!)

-having long and animated chats with friends about the thrill of growing your own veg, keeping chickens etc

-providing fascinating links on your blog to help illustrate just why you find something soooo interesting

-being in any way married to/related to/ good friends with, other geeky folk

Do you find yourself getting strange looks from eavesdroppers?

etc etc etc....get the picture?

After days of list-writing, number crunching and brain-storming I've decided to keep things simple (maybe I'm not as geeky as I thought!).

Geek Points will be awarded on a purely arbitrary and ad-hoc basis. If I read something on your blog that I consider Geekworthy, points will be awarded. If you leave a deliciously Geeky comment on my blog...or indeed any that I read..points will be awarded. If you email me to notify me of geeky doings, points will be awarded.

Any points that you have received so far will count towards your Geek League score. They are all noted down in my un-techy but very geeky notebook :)

If you are of a competitive bent you can earn more points by posting about experiments that you have done; techy computery and camera-type stuff; any geeky hobbies you may have ( I am the daughter of birdwatchers and the sister of a coin collector...and used to collect antique glass bottles!) ; noticing things that 'normal' people might not notice e.g. a buzzard flying overhead or the fact that there seem to be soooo many silver cars on the roads these days (is that just me that notices that?).

Hopefully you get the idea....sort of!

To give you lots of chance to earn your points The Geek League will run until 31st October (see how I did that great bit of Geeky linking?)

On 1st November the results will be checked and verified by an independent adjudicator. The lucky winner will be awarded the title 'Top Geek 2008' and will, in due course, receive a suitably geeky prize.

In the meantime, here's a little something exciting that I've been doing:

Tomorrow I'm paper-making with a class of 30 pupils and needed an extra paper-making frame. So what's a geeky girl to do?

- First take two cheapo Ikea photo frames (had them for years and never used them) and remove the glass and other bits.

- Find some scraps of netting amongst the bursting boxes of fabric stash in the loft and staple to one of the frames with a staple gun.

Like so....

If you're very lucky I will show you in my next post how to use this fabulous piece of equipment :)

Now for some more normal doings.

The postman left me something very very lovely indeed in my postbox this week.

Some very gorgeous fabrics from my lovely bloggy buddy WMK (who earned herself 30 Geek Points this week for having an in depth discussion about snakes with her entire family)!

I love them WMK - thank you very much!! (p.s. get well soon!)

I'll be getting my sewing head on soon to make the very most of these goodies :)



xxxxx



p.s. the judge's decision is final.

NEWSFLASH: sewing has happened!

Hard as it is to believe, some craftiness has returned to Moogsville.

Friday was my first proper day off, all to myself, for two months and to celebrate I cracked open the sewing machine!

Some sneaky peaks of something that went in the post on Saturday.

...and there's more...

The front piece for a little girl's cushion I've been asked to make. The order specified 'pink....very pink'.

What do you reckon? Pink enough?


I also received Michaela's St. Dunstan's blanket in the post. This is a 'round robin'-y blanket, whereby each knitter knits up a 50g ball's worth of knittage and then posts it on to the next knittist.

The two stripes before mine are so beautifully knitted and it took a lot of courage for me to start my contribution. So far so good though as I've done four whole rows....woohoo!


It's been so lovely, after the geeky madness of late, to get stuck into something slightly sane :)

I even made a start on clearing this:

Having caught the veg growing bug in a huge way, I am now planning on turning more of Moog's garden over to production. Which is why I'm aching so much today.

The majority of this has now gone. Fruit trees are to be trained up the wall (there's a seven foot concrete wall in there somewhere!) and another raised bed will be artfully constructed by Moogsdad. Eat your heart out Hugh :)

In other news.....

For those of you already signed up to the Geek League - fear not!

I love the fact that an obscure and quite bonkers gauntlet can be thrown down to you lovely bloggers and you can be relied upon to pick it up and run with it!

At the last count 38 votes had been cast. 34 'Yes please' votes and 4 'Wot's'!! Not a single 'No way' or 'Couldn't care less'. Marvellous :)

Looks like a League of Geekiness will commence very soon. I just need to iron out what on Earth it's going to entail as I'm not sure even I know what I'm on about!

I have a feeling it may be rather an informal affair, with points awarded on a somewhat ad hoc and arbitrary basis.....mainly 'cos my brain starts to hurt when I consider creating categories, actions and scores....but don't worry as I will be keeping score and there will be a Top Geek award in due course! (Plus I've been handing points out willy nilly for the past week and I dare not ask for them back!!)

....and now for the weather....

The recent improvement in weather conditions across much of the southern part of the UK can be solely attributed to the fact that I now have new winter boots.



So happy that I found boots to fit my 'well-built' legs :) Just love wearing boots and a skirt. Love love love it!

Now too hot to wear them. I love how predictable our weather is.

Buy sunscreen and it'll rain.

Buy new boots and there'll be a mini heatwave.

:)

Calling all geeks

There are times when something sparks the beginnings of an idea. Yesterday's geekage seems to have had this effect.

I have a proposition for you........bet it's ages since someone said that ;)

I feel the time may be right to launch a Geek League.

Vote now using my geekily prepared widget ------------------------>>>>>>

If the outcome of the vote is a big geeky YES then I'll do some equations and put together some suitably geeky actions and the points earned by doing them.

If you think I've finally lost the plot and would much rather I just shut up and did some sewing do please tell me......

The poll will be open until Monday night at 8pm...or later if no-one votes!!

If anyone knows how to do fancy schmancy geeky league tabley type html blog widgets please shout now......there's a hefty bonus 50 geek points in it for you

xxxx

edited to say: the Geek League will take place over a set time period, after which there will be a suitably geeky award for Top Geek .

You've got to be in it to win it :)