A List of Nonsense born of Industry

November 3, 2011 By 4 Comments

(This post starts as one thing and ends up as something else. I’ve let it stand, as opposed to editing myself.)

I’ve been beavering away making some bibs for the Craft Fair in Dulwich on Saturday. I’m piggy-backing on my friend Jo’s jewellery stall as I did last year, so I imagine we’ll be being very badly behaved and tasting all the delicious cakes (I hope the cake lady is the same as last year – they were amazing, and she introduced me to the delights of edible glitter).

Thoughts that have occurred while I’ve been busy:
  • This room is no warmer than it was in the spring.
  • 4OD is great, because it has an archive of shows from forever, so I finally got the see the Devil’s Whore, and made myself a new hero in Edward Sexby.
  • I have a lot of fabric in my drawers that I’m probably not going to use and should have a de-stash.
  • I fiddled with the blog layout again, and wish I could find the colour green I used about four years ago, rather than the slightly odd green that looks fine on my mac, but not on my PC.
  • Signing up for nanowrimo is so so so optimistic, given that I’m three days behind already.
  • I don’t really know how to reconcile all the different parts of myself into a coherent whole at the moment.
Ever feel as if you’re floundering a bit? When I’m busy I always feel as if I ought to be attending to something else. There’s always the feeling that some parts of me are being done a disservice, by the effort of distilling them into one shape or another. Perhaps I’m trying too hard to be coherent, and the trick is to let things flow more, the way children will throw their entire being at a task and then seamlessly move onto something completely different.

I confess I’ve often thought of stopping writing here lately. My landscapes have changed since I started blogging in 2007, and I don’t know if this space suits me anymore. I keep fiddling with the blog’s layout too, because it’s just not comfortable, and each time I’m happy for about 36 hours. Perhaps I did everything the wrong way round, when it comes to writing, blogging, making, having a child. My instinct is to stop and start again, but where would that get me? At the beginning again. Where I love to be, happily master of none of the things I take up. I really fancy learning Norwegian, for example, which is really just part of a wider interest in norse myth, old english and the experience of North, and being Northern. But where does it fit in?

Elizabeth wrote of creative people who have a keen urge to pursue more than one discipline. Perhaps the nature of blogging means that I’m stopping myself from experiencing more pure joy in following my interests because of the tramlines I made for myself with the title, or the notion that I must write about everything here, and then stopping myself doing things or writing about them because of some odd idea that they aren’t suitable. I’m not good at compartmentalising. Maybe that’s it.

Perhaps the whole thing is best summed up with the trouble I have choosing a twitter name. In the dark history of the internet, you chose an avatar and a pseudonym, keeping your real identity a secret, since the internet was full of Wierdy Geeks. If I was just one thing, or had just one website, then it would be easier to settle on a name. I’ve flipped back and forward from one thing to another, causing confusion and delay, not least to my own sense of identity. This week I realised it would be much easier to tweet under my real name, since this is the only way that I can safely encompass every part of myself, and everyone is on the internet now anyway. But my name is taken. Where to now?

Should I end this post by making excuses for myself? Blame it on the darkness? Blame it on a lack of chocolate? No, my friends, I think not. No more excuses.

Filed Under: Diet & Butter, Life, Sewing - 4 Comments

November, November

November 1, 2011 By 6 Comments

*I did this face in about five minutes flat, having realised it was not half an hour to the child’s bedtime and we hadn’t carved a face. Halloween is not one of those things you can do the day after. I may have modelled it on my own dismayed face brought on by slack parenting.

*I have done my back in. This seems a cruel and unnecessary reminder of my advancing years. It was almost better but then I jumped off a stile because I was being chased by a horse (I say chased. I mean the horse was ambling after me slowly. But my friend mentioned the deer in Nara who bit my bum in search of biscuits and I panicked.) I am currently in love with the wee adhesive heat patches you can stick on, which seem to be the best thing for it, but I’m still doing everything v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y.

*I joined the ranks of people who can speak to their phone to Get Things Done. (Siri, the voice assistant on the iPhone 4s.) I thought it would be rubbish but it isn’t, and I can add things to a groceries list as I pootle around the kitchen, which means that when I do my online shopping I actually get the stuff we need. Big breakthrough.

*I started making a baby blanket from the yarn i got at Ally Pally, and I also did some sewing at my desk again. It felt good to have busy hands again.

*I also made welsh cakes at home for the first time ever. They were amazing, and I only tried them because it was a rainy day and they don’t require much in the way of dairy produce (online shopping failure yet again). Most of the ingredients are dry and will just be hanging around in your cupboard. You don’t need a griddle pan – a frying pan is just as good.

*I keep expecting Winter to arrive, but so far it hasn’t and we’ve been making the most of the fair weather while we can. There’ll be enough dark and bitter days in the coming months, and the clock change only hastens them in. The sun set at 4.45 today. We were still in the park, still had energy to burn. It makes less and less sense to me to have more light at 6am than at 5pm, but this might have a lot to do with my child now waking at 6.30 instead of 7.30.

*As if I didn’t have enough going on I set up a tumblr, purely for pictures from my iPhone and Instagram. I’m finding time passes so quickly now, and the business of toddlers makes it harder and harder to record things (witness this poor neglected blog), and often the only thing I have time for is a quick snap with the camera in my phone. But at least I have that.

*And apparently it’s November now. What the hell happened to this year?

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: , - 6 Comments

Forgotten pleasures

October 13, 2011 By 7 Comments

I went to the Knitting & Stitching Show last week, with my lovely friend Jo. I haven’t been since before I had the boy, what with being firstly a new mother of only 4 weeks, and then a mother who rightly decided that a pushchair with a one year old in those crowds would be hell. This year was fine, because he goes to his lovely childminder, and so I was free to skip all the way across the river, with a sandwich from Paul in my bag (Florence is right – the food is dreadful), and a willingness to open my purse if I liked what I saw.
I took my camera but I took no pictures. None at all. I think I was just happy to be out, looking at some great textile art, as well as some fine examples of what Jo calls “misplaced effort”- you know, those things that you think, ‘technically accomplished, yes, but really quite hideous and pointless’. Thankfully there weren’t many of those this year. We truly loved the knitted herons in particular, and I was buoyed to discover that the artist had got herself a dream job as a weaver after graduating. Just a wee reminder that there are people out there following their passions to the limit.

After a lunch that included two glasses of wine my purse well and truly spilled open and I bought some lovely things from Ray Stitch and Eternal Maker. It’s the first new fabric I’ve bought in an age. I bought with projects in mind for once, and probably not coincidentally, it’s the first time I’ve felt properly excited by sewing in forever. This might also have something to do with being able to see the sewing surface again. The new fabric also made me realise I need a little bit of a de-stash, so that’s another job to stick on the bottom of my list.

But for today, I’m just going to do some actual sewing. Yes, I know. I can’t believe it either.

(Apologies for slightly blurry photos – I would have redone them, but I’ve already cut the fabric. No, I can’t believe that either.)

Filed Under: I've been shopping, Sewing Tagged With: , , - 7 Comments

Let Them Make Cake

October 10, 2011 By 8 Comments

After a blustery morning in the park I decided it was just Too Much to ask of my hair to spend more hours being flung about in the wind, so instead we stayed in to make cakes. What else?

Little cupcakes, frosted with buttercream I showed Fitz the picture in the baking book and he immediately declared that he wanted cakes. This isn’t unusual. Lately he’s been known to suggest cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so I’m left in no doubt he really is my son (need I say he doesn’t get it? Well, he doesn’t. I am mean, and consume unhealthy treats after he’s gone to bed). However, he did understand me when I said we had to make them first (scone baking sessions paying dividends), possibly hatching his plan to cover himself in flour from head to foot that very second.

It ended up being the most interactive baking session we’ve had so far, with him enthusiastically tipping the butter and sugar in, giving the eggs a beat, and getting way too excited with the flour bag. Note to self: when you’ve finished with the flour, put the bag back in the cupboard. I confess it was me who got the food colouring out but he wouldn’t have it, and I had to settle for making pretty buttercream icing instead.

The buttercream was an afterthought, just to use up the already softened butter that was left over. It’s a simple recipe:
use 1/4 butter to icing (confectioner’s) sugar – I had 50g butter, and around 200g of sugar. Beat the butter in a bowl until creamy in colour and texture. Add the sugar and mix in well, using 2-3 tablespoons of milk to loosen the mixture – add these gradually, as needed. Flavour with vanilla, rose, orange, coffee…, and add a bit of food colouring if you fancy it a bit pretty.
Then I went overboard, and piped it on. I’ve never piped icing before in my life, but now I want to pipe everything. I’m really excited by the baking possibilities for winter days. By spring my ass is going to be Huge with a capital Hu.

And the cakes themselves? Delicious as well as pretty, and there are even some left over for tomorrow.

Filed Under: Baking, Fitz Tagged With: , , , - 8 Comments

Mini Book Review: Sewing For Boys

September 18, 2011 By 6 Comments

I’ve had Sewing For Boys on pre-order since I first heard about it earlier in the year, and having tried a Figgy’s pattern in the meantime, my anticipation was set to High.

Then I started getting emails from Amazon, about the release date being moved back, and then back a bit more, and then back even further, and then forward a little bit, until finally I got a despatch email.

You’d think after all of that I’d have been chomping at the bit to get started, wouldn’t you? And I am, but in a low key sort of way that has absolutely nothing to do with the book.

I love the book already, you see. It has longevity, since the patterns can be made for boys up to about 7 or 8, depending on the size of your boy. The patterns are practical, and cool, but not twee. It has small projects (t-shirt refashioning, t-shirts, simple trousers) and larger ones (jackets, smart trousers). The patterns are printed on high quality thick paper, and are stored in a neat envelope inside the front cover. It’s also internally spiral bound, so it will store nicely and then lie flat on your worktable.

I’ve already picked out these treasure pocket pants as the first project I’ll make, since we’re coming home with my pockets laden with conkers and acorns and stones. And leaves. Except he doesn’t call them that – he runs up and thrusts a bronze leaf into my hand, saying excitedly “another fire!” And they do look like little fires.

Anyway if I’m so thrilled to finally have the book in my possession, why am I not sewing already?

Do I need to say more? This is where I sew. This is now officially known as the Room of Doom, and this is actually after an hour of tidying up. It was much worse. The downside of having a loft conversion is that everything that used to be stored elsewhere has been swept down through the house on an invisible tidal wave, and ended up swilling about in the little room at the back of the house.

I’m displaced. I wander around in the evenings saying “I’m sure I used to do things”, but not having quite enough oomph to sort it all out. This week I bought a shredder. If shredding is as much fun as I think it will be I can’t see much in this room surviving.

Anyway, all that aside, if you have boys to sew for, I think you should get the book. It’s exactly what you’re looking for, and I do know how long you’ve been looking. Come back sometime in January when I’ve managed to get near the sewing machine and I’ll tell you how I get on with those pants.

Filed Under: book review, Making for Mothers, Sewing Tagged With: , , - 6 Comments
« Older Posts