yahoo, blogger comments and I found it, Tilly!

For a few days - maybe even weeks - my yahoo has been rejecting some comments on my blog - most of them my own. It sends me a "delivery status notification (failure)" e-mail telling me that "554 5.7.9 Message not accepted for policy reasons. "

There's a link in the e-mail which tries to explain what's happening but it didn't make much sense to me.

Here's a direct quote from that link:

"We recently changed our DMARC policy to proactively protect our users from increasing email spam that uses Yahoo users’ email addresses from other mail servers. This is an important step to secure our users’ email identities from being used by unauthorized senders. It also interferes with some long-standing uses of identities that are authorized by the user but not verifiable."

Basically what I *think* is happening is yahoo doesn't want me to e-mail people from anywhere other than yahoo. My blog comment which, because it sends an e-mail to the blogger whose blog I'm commenting on, is classifed as an e-mail and is not being sent from my yahoo mail so it's not allowed. Make sense to you? Me neither!

I googled it to see if there was anything I could do about it and none of the answers I read would work for blog comments. What I did notice is that it's not just happening on yahoo. It's also happening for aol e-mails as well. That explains why I don't get an e-mail when my friend Jo from Through the Keyhole leaves a comment on here. I don't suppose she's getting one from me either when I comment on her blog! In fact, I just checked and it looks like my comments aren't even being posted on her blog. Crumbs, Jo. I'm not ignoring you!! I'll sort that in a minute!

Editing in here to say that I just tried to comment on your blog again, Jo, but I got another failure notification e-mail saying that your aol isn't accepting the e-mail so you probably don't even know that I've commented.

From my google search, it's obvious I'm not the only one who's peeved about this but I don't suppose that will make a blind bit of difference. So, I just went into the comments part of my settings and changed my e-mail notification address to a non-yahoo one. We'll see if that helps!

And now, because I can't have a words-only post - it would just be wrong! - here are a couple of funny photos. The first one is of the blanket that normally sits behind me on the couch but, when we came back from our weekend away, it was down on the cushion.

Why was it down there? Well, because Tilly had hidden a doggy biscuit under it!

Silly Tilly! :oD

a fabulous parcel from Freda

On Saturday I got the best surprise in the post. It was a parcel from my blogging friend Freda otherwise known as The Empress of the Universe.

Let me give you some of the background to this story. Freda showed us on her blog in February, a piece of birdy fabric which was just too adorable. I made a comment on a later post that I was so happy to see that same birdy fabric in my local fabric shop BUT it cost £13.99 a metre - the equivalent of approx $21.47 a yard!!! I told Freda I wouldn't be buying any of that fabric any time soon.

Well, Freda e-mailed me telling me I had to send her my address and I wasn't to ask why. I did and I didn't - and anyone who knows me knows how hard that was not to ask her why!

So, on Saturday this parcel arrived and in it was a fat quarter of the same fabulous birdy fabric.

And another fat quarter of another fabulous birdy fabric.

Not only that but each of those had inside them a fabulous co-ordinating fat quarter.

There was also the most fabulous pouch made by Freda - I know she'd made it because I'd admired it on her blog.

But wait! There was another fat quarter inside the pouch!

Isn't it fabulous?

I love the inside of the pouch as well!

And then there was the note included in with all of those goodies.

It reads "for Anne - a friend whose work I admire, who makes me smile, and who has gotten me hooked on cute birdy fabric. Enjoy - Freda".

I've thanked Freda (profusely) already for all my goodies but I want to say it again here. Freda - you're the best! Thanks again and again. :o)

13 photos worth!

Well, finally, here's the post with some photos of our weekend away. I've tried to limit myself to only a few but there are still 13 of them. I know how looking at other people's holiday photos can be snoringly boring so feel free to ignore and move on. :oD

Okay, let's start with our room in our B&B - The Hill on the Wall. To say it was a fabulous place is an understatement.

A window seat!! I want one so much!

And this is the view from our room window. Couldn't you just sit and look at this view all year long? I could!

Next, here are some of the places we visited.

Carlisle Castle:

Carlisle Cathedral:

Lanercost Priory:

And Hadrian's Wall:

I don't know who this fool is - actually I do. He's my driver! :oD

Here's the loot I bought. You didn't think I wouldn't buy fabric when I was away, did you?? :oD

And there always have to be a funny photo - other than the one above of my driver! I'm not sure if this dog got up on the chair by himself or not but he was sitting on it quite happily waiting for his owner to come out of the barber's behind. (The man on the left was just another numpty like me taking a photo of a cute dog!)

The weather was glorious every day we were away. If only I could say the same today! It's bucketing rain right now with thunder forecast for through the night. Oh joy!

we're back!

We got home safely yesterday afternoon from our long weekend away. We had a wonderful time. The B&B we stayed in couldn't have been better and we genuinely had a restful, peaceful time. I will show some photos of what we did, what we saw and what I bought *grin* but not right now. Why? Well, my camera is upstairs in my sewing room and I'm just too blimmin' lazy to go and get it and then download all the photos and pick out a few and so on and so on.

So, instead of that, let me show you a photo which Debbie sent me. Joanna and Tilly went to Perth to visit Debbie and Jason and Molly on Sunday. They took the dogs for a walk and this photo was sent to us showing how calm and sedate the dogs were on their walk.

Yikes! Run, run for your life! :oD

an early Easter greeting

Douglas and I are going away for the weekend and, oh boy, I am sooooo looking forward to it. It's been quite a stressful year for me so far with mum going into hospital then into a rehab hospital and now (thankfully) being looked after in a care home. She gets the best of care and I am so happy that she's in there even if she's not always so happy about it. I suppose, after 85+ years of being independent, it must be hard to give that independence up - even if she knows she just can't look after herself any more.

Anyway, for the next 5 days, I am going to try and not think about all the ins and outs of everything that needs to be done about clearing and selling her house etc etc. I'm going to try really hard to be calm and peaceful and just chill. Whether or not I succeed remains to be seen but I'm going to give it a jolly good go!

So, let me wish you all a very early "Happy Easter" and I'll see you when I get back.

small things

The concert on Saturday evening was really good. It was fun to sing in and the audience were all very appreciative. I don't know how much money was raised for the RNLI but the raffle alone made £186. Not too shabby!

I didn't think I'd been doing much sewing recently but, when I looked in my camera, I found quite a few wee things I'd made.

This lips pouch (tutorial here) makes me smile every time I see it. It was a fairly easy make so I see myself making more of these.

Then I made this green boxy pencil case. (I can't find the link to the tutorial I used. If I find it, I'll edit it in.)

The ends were a bit of a pain in the neck to do.

I think it was because the pencil case itself is quite small. Maybe if it was slightly bigger, the ends might not be so fiddly. Maybe.

I then made a flat pencil case.

I just made this one up as I went along. Basically, instead of sewing the pencil case along all the edges (after putting in the zip), I only sewed it along the bottom - the edge opposite the zip. Then I folded the case, right sides together so that the seam I just sewed was right underneath the zip. Then I sewed the short edges. Easy peasy!

I like this one a lot and can see myself making more of these.

Then I made a lunch bag.

I combined sizes/instructions/ideas from a few tutorials which I'd found on Pinterest and, although I do like it, it could do with a few more tweeks to make it better still.

And finally Tilly. I was up on a set of steps the other day when Tilly decided she needed to see what I was doing. It's not a great photo because of the light but you get the idea. Silly Tilly! :oD

sea-coloured stuff to sing in

As you might know, I sing in a choir. We have a concert coming up this Saturday and last Thursday, at rehearsal, I asked our conductor what she wanted us to wear at the concert. We usually wear all black with either a scarf or a flower in various colours. Not this time. Oh no. Our conductor told us she wanted the ladies to wear a "sea-coloured top". She gave us the option of something blue, green, turquoise or white. As long as it was sea-coloured, it'd be fine.

I was trying really hard to think if I had anything that fit that description in my wardrobe. Sure, I have a blue top but it has elephants on it! Not very appropriate!

And, yes, I have a white blouse but it has pink pussycat buttons on it. Not very appropriate either!

So, what did I do? I made a new blouse of course! The best part about buying polycotton sheets when they're on sale is that I usually have something I can use to back a quilt or, in this case, make a sea-coloured blouse!

Not only did our conductor want the ladies in sea-coloured blouses but she also wanted the men to wear sea-coloured bow ties. Now, I don't know about where you live but there's a definite shortage of shops around these here parts which sell bow ties never mind sea-coloured bow ties. So, after I'd made my own blouse, I decided I'd make our men some bow ties. I've made bow ties for them before ...

... so I knew exactly what I was doing. Thankfully!

See, keeping scraps comes in handy yet again! :oD

Tilly and the bubbles

Joanna bought some bubbles on Sunday. This was Tilly's first experience with them.

She then realised they were coming from above so decided to jump for them!

Great fun! :oD

swapping rooms

There's not been a lot of sewing done over the last few days around these parts. The reason for this is that I decided to move my sewing room from the smallest bedroom into the much bigger spare bedroom. I had to wait for this move until Debbie and Jason moved all their stuff out and that happened last Friday and Saturday so on Sunday, Joanna and I made a start.

This is the empty room with only the double bed in it - and the spotty quilt still waiting to be finished.

The first thing we moved through was the table where the sewing machine and overlocker sit. Tilly was already bored with this game! :o)

Then we brought in the bookcase.

Then the cutting table on the right and the chest of drawers.

On Monday I emptied the Billy bookcases - this is them still in the wee room with the newly-shifted double bed.

This is some of the fabric from those Billy bookcases ...

... and here's the rest.

Douglas helped me move the bookcases through and then I got them loaded up again. Needless to say, they've already been rearranged and no longer look exactly like this!

This afternoon I nailed up my noticeboards ...

... and rulers.

I am so excited to have such a big sewing room. It's so tidy right now, I'm almost unwilling to do any sewing because it'll just get messy. I'm not worried about that feeling - I know it won't last long!

Now this scene made me laugh. It's my old Teddy and Dolly and Grace who were put on the wee room floor whilst all the moving was going on. I have no idea what they got up to but Teddy definitely looks like he had a great time! :oD