Heavens, such a shame that you don’t link to your amazing sounding courses. I’m sure there are literally thousands of people on this forum in desperate need of your skills and advice.

Quick and refreshing lap of Innerleithen.

By that I mean a complete slog in howling wind, sleet and low cloud.

Very pleased that we got back without incident. And quite amused to discover that my smug ‘Sealskins have revolutionised my life’ riding buddy’s Sealskins had actually filled with water so she looked like a case of severe oedema by the time we got in. Noone actually lost and fingers or toes but it felt like a close call.

Sorry it’s a bit late Bunnyhop, but we only lit the candles for actual Christmas Day and I’ve been in a food coma since then:

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tree-photo[/url] by BeateKubitz[/url], on Flickr[/img]

Cheers for the Buxton weather link! Sitting in my shop wondering how long my A board will last…

Wind is very noisy here in Todmorden. Our house is really sheltered and it’s rare you hear it.

Now wondering whether to set off to Buxton. What can possibly go wrong?

Working in my shop in Buxton. Helping lost souls buy the perfect gift. If anyone is in Buxton, drop in and say Hi.

For goodness sakes, don’t mention it. They might have forgotten and the world might be saved.

I wouldn’t look good in a dress, even a $1500 custom made one!

So I’d rather have the Enve rims, which are made in Utah, USA.

S’OK, it just made me laugh the last time I had a ‘How much? 8O’ comment from a chap on a ride. I’m sure his wife had similar thoughts about his bike bling.

But yes, there are British goods around and it’s good that people are thinking more about buying them now – the general story of development is that the production followed cheap wages but as countries developed, the difference in labour costs reduced and more production can be done in the UK/EU. However, in the meantime we’ve lost a lot of the manufacturing capacity and skills.

We source all our yarn in the UK (from British sheep) but whilst we’ve been around (nearly 10 years) we lost several spinners which has made my job harder. I visited a couple who working on the most amazingly antiquated machinery – I think that is where lack of investment really showed. Plus when one decided to retire at 80 odd, the value of the factory as building land far exceeded the value of the business. That was sad.

Anyway, don’t despair. Amazingly several lines of DfS sofas are made in Accrington (my business partner’s husband used to work there). We still do knitwear – not just my niche brand but excellent socks here & here! There’s quite a bit if you look around – we do a cap made out of fabric woven in Lancashire and stitched by a cap maker in Yorkshire. Sorry to ramble on, researching UK made stuff is one of the things I love doing.

I run a small designer knitwear company and do all the pricing.

We make stuff that is unusual and distinctive. It’s made with hand operated machines. We can change the designs quickly and alter patterns easily (if, for example, the black yarn needs a slightly different pattern to the blue) – to knit our designs with a fully automatic machine would require cutting edge five figure machines and then each design change would be expensive in programming time. To justify it we’d have to sell huge volumes, but our stuff is fairly niche so I can’t see an economic argument to scale up that far. Not to mention that I think by the time we cost in the price of investment we’d not be any cheaper.

Our prices match other designer labels (yes, we do do a dress that costs the same as an Enve rim but we also do simpler things) but I am often puzzled when I look at other similarly priced labels and find that they’re manufacturing in the far East. I don’t get what the justification is – if they’re charging that much surely they can afford to reduce environmental impact and pay minimum wage?

That depends on the Buxton-Manchester Picadilly train. Stopping at all stations in the 1970s.

Who knows?

I am not a labelling sort of a person, but sometimes they are useful for getting access to support. And also in explaining to people why what might seem obvious to them isn’t obvious to person in question. Having taken an autistic person to a&e it was v handy to be able to say to staff ‘she’s autistic and so she’s going to have problems with this. Can we do it like this?’.

From what I understand, the better the support as a child, the better the strategies and life skills you can develop for dealing with the rest of us in our messy, confusing & noisy universe.

I don’t think it’s possible to overhype Nelson Mandela’s achievement. I’ve had a Reduced Cynical Thoughts™
Day in his honour. It’s quite nice.

Tod. Or better still Walsden (where we are). More house for your money than Hebden. Trails out of the door. Nice pub.

Train to Manchester is 30 mins from the bottom of my road. With a bike to get you across Manchester you’d be in in well under an hour.

Pop round for a brew when you’re in.

Get well soon, nice to know that there are people who’ll look out for you :D (even though there also was a driver who didn’t :evil: )

To look in the mirror.

Apparently nice ladies don’t expect the proprietor of a posh clothes shop to be wearing mud freckles.

Also have pretended (mainly to myself) that Lake winter boots are the latest in thing.

It’s a sticker.

Terrahawk invited himself over to Todmorden. Does anyone else fancy it?

Cracking ride. Thanks!

It was very parky and I’m less surprised about HtS’s gears – the frost was getting sparklier and the ice thicker as the evening wore on not to mention the wind chill from the fantastic pace.

Threads. Superb. In a desolate and devastating way. If you haven’t seen it you have to watch it.

I only watched it in the last ten years. Kind of glad I didn’t watch it when they were giving out the ‘how to build a nuclear shelter’ leaflets. I already had an overactive imagination as a child and ‘Where the Wind Blows’ was bad enough.

The opposite. If you want amazing sushi book yourself round to dinner. It’s more the sticking to schedule thing, we’re neither of us very good at that. :D

We have a plan to get there… it involves there being no roadworks on the way back from Buxton and Chipps making the tea. Fingers crossed that this works out.

My business partner got married and we did it – church, meal for 50 people and party – for under £3k – basically by roping everyone in to help out. Luckily Nicola could make all the dresses, we have lots of practical friends and I have a nice barn so the costs were mainly materials and food. One of my favourite bits was a friend who brewed 120 bottles of elderflower wine as his wedding gift.

I wrote it up here.

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Weddingbarn[/url] by BeateKubitz[/url], on Flickr[/img]

Have to say that as the girls get to race in with the vets whilst Fred and Joe Bloggs are busy living out their ancient rivalry I have to get past both of them to be able to chase down the woman in front which can be a bit frustrating.

Although I am also trying to put Fred and Joe’s shenanigans between me and the girl behind so I guess it can cut both ways.

Ace news…

Only been riding for 3 years but love my dropper post. Dropped saddle means that the consequences for getting it wrong seem much less serious (mainly inelegant dismounts rather than being hurled off by high saddle) and a dropper post encourages you not to be lazy about dropping the post (or putting it up for climbing).

Anyway, drop seat more now, try more technical stuff, learn, ride more technical stuff, improve, ride more = happy.

Waiting for photos to upload to Dropbox.

AC joint rupture here… consultant said 2-3 month!!! I decided to ignore him and did 5 day mountain biking holiday in the pyranees after 3 weeks but have gone back to being ‘good’ for a bit more of the allotted – there’s only so far I will push my luck – how long can you go without crashing back on injured limb?

Like sleeping?

7.30am? Have you no respect for the Sunday morning lie in?

We have a credit card reader in the shop and have used the paper back up card reader at fairs – you have to call for authorisation though (but it’s automated so fine). Friends really rate the Paypal thing for occasional use – one payment for the reader is great compared to terminal rental.

cow mud

It’s that black churned up variety you get near byres and at the gates of cow fields.

Excellent :D

There are spies everywhere. You think you’re discussing the merits of soft versus hard wood with only a select group of a million or so other unique users to find that *someone* has passed on your naughty secrets to the media for publication.

Has anyone else had trouble with voicemails being deleted? :wink:

Just wanted to say thanks for the advice. I got back on my bike and did a local loop two weeks and six days after the accident.

It was just about ok. So I decided to take mountain bike on holiday. This was why I was sooo pissed off about the shoulder damage – we had booked a holiday in the Pyranees – (the Altitude Adventures Summit to the Sea trip). My plan b had been to take the road bike and just meet up with the group in the evenings. But then found myself unable to face not packing the mtb. Our fine host said ride until it hurts … amazingly, faced with technical trail my brain totally focussed on that rather than aches and pains. It was fabulous.

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IMG_6836[/url] by BeateKubitz[/url], on Flickr[/img]

Glad I checked out Singletrack… thanks again. :D

OK back to the stories. Much more fun.

A few years back my then partner ran a bookshop in a tiny building next to Shoreditch church. It was build out of the leftovers when the previous church was struck by lightening and was a gem of Georgian architecture. It was known as The Clerk’s House, number 118 1/2. It’s full of trendy fashion stuff now, but if you can get inside, go upstairs and look at the panelling (it’s there, under the emulsion). I was very fond of that space and ran a little gallery in it for a while.

Anyway, it had been empty for a while when G filled it up with books. And I wouldn’t describe it so much as haunted, as a bit tetchy. Every so often things would fly, sometimes books but mainly comics. I prefer rational explanations, so this was blamed on the heavy traffic which streamed past when Shoreditch High Street was six lanes wide, all thundering towards the City.

We were, however, quite perplexed as to how the shop managed to lock us out one night. It was early on in the tenancy and we spent ages trying to work out a sequence of events that would allow the keys in the mortice locks to be turned from the inside. The only way to get back was to unscrew them.

The most entertaining incident was when we installed a cd player and speakers in the upstairs room. A bit of Strauss for working late one night would simply not turn off. Well, we turned it off. It came back on. Off. On. Off. On. There’s a point (and this is where I’m with the people who don’t put their dodgy pelting bookcases under intense scrutiny) where you simply don’t want to have your rational, explicable world over-challenged. We were tired, it was chilly and late and we wanted to go home rather than poke at something which might be a hornet’s nest. So I looked at G and said, “Does it really matter? As long as it’s off by morning.” Which, of course, it was.

Musing on it, G noted that the house predated Strauss. Maybe it just wanted to hear the whole thing.

I believe that we’re human, we like to see patterns and tell stories and tell the ones that make the most sense – we’re also greater than the sum of our parts. I wouldn’t go as far as to say there’s definitely anything as prosaic as an afterlife. It just was a bit of an odd place.

Loved it but couldn’t do the last one due to three peaks sustained floaty collarbone in shoulder. Boo. I was second in points until then as well. Next year. :D

Jake.

I’ve got an old one that I love. That one is orange. It has discs. How can you not?
:D

Thanks! My glumness is lifting. I will get to the physio when I can to start on remedial exercises. Motivationtastic :D

I don’t think Mr Consultant had been on a bike (or done any other form of exercise) in his life and this really lowered my respect for his opinions. The A&E nurse, on the other hand, was really great and helpful. Wonder what the relative pay scales were…

Done

Tragic :(

Sympathies to family and friends.