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A List of Nonsense born of Industry

November 3, 2011 By 5 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 - 5 Comments

This week all we made were discoveries

May 27, 2011 By 7 Comments

You know I was talking about change? Well, it seems that has to wait a bit. Perhaps when we move onto plastering, and the mix up about the doors is sorted, and we’ve finally chosen the basin and the tiles. Maybe when it’s painted and tiled. Anyway, this week I’ve been encompassed by it, the building work up stairs, torn in two by having to go out for the sake of the boy, and having to stay in for the sake of answering everyone’s questions. When the child is in bed, and a measure of relief at having got through the day sneaks in, I turn my hand to the chores I can’t do during the day, make a meal, fold laundry, discuss taps.

Or I just sit on the sofa and feel overwhelmed for a bit and then go to bed.

Things I have discovered about myself this week:
  • Thinking of confrontation makes me feel a bit sick. I have to do it immediately, or I’ll stick my head in the sand and hope it goes away. Or I’ll wake up at 2.30am and think about it for 3 hours. My mother is the same about confrontation, which is probably why things with us are a bit out of kilter. But I have Mr J, and it has taken me a long time to understand, but I can name anything I am feeling to him and he will not run away. Then I will feel better, because naming a thing takes some of the fear out of it. I still made him talk to the builders though.
  • I can’t do two kinds of change at once. I want to change what I do with my mental space (which frustratingly at the moment is very little), but while my physical space is changing I just can’t, however willing I might be. I need a rock to stand on. I need a home.
  • I am definitely roundpegging/squareholing at the moment. It’s ok. Sometimes you take a while to catch up with yourself. I haven’t quite figured out what it means, or what I’m going to do about it (see above) but I do know which way I should be facing.
So maybe the upheaval is worth it, just to know these things, even if there is nothing to be done. I haven’t made anything except discoveries for ages, and perhaps that’s ok too. I am fallow, recovering, replenishing.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Diet & Butter, Life - 7 Comments

It’s all about the Peacocks

April 15, 2011 By 12 Comments
It’s an incredible thing, seeing a peacock for the first time. It’s a ridiculous creature when it comes down to it, more tail than bird, but if there was a more appropriate animal to demonstrate to a young child the spectacular lengths nature can go to, then I don’t know what it is.

Peacock!

The boy knows about birds. He loves to shout out when he spots an owl or a woodpecker in his picturebooks, and has somehow grasped the fact of bird and owl being the general and the specific. So if you’re at Kew Gardens and you hear that peculiar two tone call of the peacock, the only thing to do is head straight for it.

We’d gone there to meet Helen and her family. We hadn’t met up since I did the craft fair with her and Florence three months after Fitz came along, and in the last year Helen also had baby. Neither of us have been sewing a good deal since, and the suggestion of a get together to bemoan the fact while our families ran about was very welcome.

We laughed about the craft fair and my being there at all. The next time someone looks at me askance when I suggest doing something like that three months after giving birth I am going to pay attention. The idea that I wouldn’t do it seemed preposterous at the time but the further away I get from my previous life, the less important my previous preoccupations seem, and the more bonkers my being there seems.

Which brings me back to the peacock.

Peacock

I hunkered down next to Fitz, and made sure he had a good view of the bird. With their tail on the floor they are still extraordinary – such a vibrant blue, trailing their enormous feathers around like a ceremonial cloak. When the bird was sure he had a decent audience, he called out once, and with a shiver, shook and fanned out his tail. The boy frantically made the bird sign and said ‘bird’ and ‘peacock’ repeatedly, as if he could only process the spectacle by making sure we knew he was looking at it. I looked around at our little group. Helen’s children were taking pictures, and staring, and getting in for extreme closeups, while husbands took pictures and minded babies, and Helen and I marshalled our children, chivvying and protecting. The peacock, meanwhile, turned left to right and back again, making sure we could all get a good look at him.

For the rest of the week whenever we’ve talked about the peacock Fitz has been very emphatic about reminding us that it is a bird, and I get the impression this is because he is genuinely amazed by what he saw, as only someone so new to the world can be. And I think back to all of us crowding round, and how lovely it was to share such a simple, beautiful moment.

And even though moments such as these could be said to count as diet, since neither Helen nor I got any sewing done or had a moment of peace, I came away thinking that it had been a day entirely full of butter. Peacocks are where it’s at. Although the big compost heap got a pretty big thumbs up too…

 

Filed Under: Diet & Butter, Fitz, Life - 12 Comments

Odds and Ends

March 27, 2011 By 8 Comments

squares

So the clocks spin forward an hour catapulting us into proper spring with promise of summer not far behind. This week in London we had the most beautiful weather, and we’ve been out in it, pretty much constantly. It’s a bit of a shock to the system to go from winter’s snail’s pace to a hundred miles an hour zooming hither and thither, and the balance has definitely been weighed in favour of zooming.

Earlier in the week we spent most of our time at our local park, running after dogs and geese. On Friday, which turned out to be a scorcher*, we went to Battersea Children’s Zoo, which is fabulous – not only do they have animals, but the most incredible playground, with swings, sandpits and water contraptions, plus good picnic seating and a fire engine to climb on. Highly recommended if you’re in London with small people.

*you know, for March. It was 18 degrees. Maybe more. I took my cardigan off and caught the sun on my nose. That sort of scorcher.

Now I’m not one of nature’s runners, but the boy seems incapable of setting off at less than a good canter, so while my mum friends calmly watched their children walking from here to there, I was setting off at pace to catch the boy. It’s all hands in the air and shrieking with laughter, which is brilliant, but if I stop to chat there’s a good chance I’ll turn around and he’ll have disappeared off round a corner, or tripped and scraped his face. I’m not good with the bumps and scrapes, it turns out.

With all the running about, and all the fresh air, I’ve limited myself to a bit of crochet of an evening, using up some leftovers to make squares. I have no plans for them, other than to stick them in a bag, and one day when I have enough from all my odds and ends, I’ll put them together into a blanket. It’s how whole lives are made, isn’t it? A bit of this and a bit of that. It’ll be good to have a blanket that tells the same story.

Filed Under: Crochet, Diet & Butter, Life - 8 Comments

Diet & Butter: is the sink still shiny?

February 27, 2011 By 6 Comments

I said I was going to spend February living with the notion of diet and butter. This is the sort of grand thing I like to announce and throw myself at for a few days before sliding back into my usual ways. So, did I slide?

Well, no, mostly (shockingly and surprisingly). With a little bit of yes for good measure. Best of all and overall, I’m definitely happier than I was a month ago.

The actual shiny sink part is truly catching on. Before bed tonight I was feeling lethargic (mostly emotional stuff this week – ill people both old and young to think of) and the idea of emptying the dishwasher was just dull. But then Mr J came in to help, and we did it with a bit of banter, and a bit of laughter, and all the dishes were put away, the dishwasher restacked and everything left ship shape for the morning. And I knew it had to be done because it really really works.

A couple of weeks ago I was slipping back towards Eeyore on the spectrum of happiness, and I stopped doing the shiny sink thing. It was like jumping on a helter skelter: the less I cleaned up before bed, the worse I felt the next day, and the less I cleaned up… etc etc. You see where I was going. I started again with the sink, and a few days later was feeling brighter again. It’s not the only factor, because that would be crazy, wouldn’t it? Woman stops feeling miserable by doing more housework. No, that’s not the headline for me. Having friends to go out with and have a jolly good cry/laugh if you need one? Now that seems to help more, but it’s reassuring that I have practical things I can do for myself when I think it’s time for a kick in the pants.

I also managed to do some satisfying sewing, and now we have new cushions. Yes, in days of yore it wouldn’t have taken me two weeks or whatever, but it was lovely to go and sit down and do a little bit while Fitz napped, and doing it all in stages meant I screwed up less. Slowly slowly catchy monkey. I’ve got a little project for this next week too, which I’m looking forward to. It gets done, all of it, in time, and frankly, having come from the place where nothing was getting done at all, this is much better.

The one thing I didn’t really make much space for was writing. I suspect this might be more complicated for me than just clearing a spare hour, and to be kind to myself I might not push this one. Not just yet.

So here we are at March. What’s the D&B plan for this month? Well, carry on with the shiny sink, including the virtual shiny sink of planning & sorting out the next day’s activities. It’s starting to feel a little bit like habit, dare I say, so I want to throw something else into the mix. Find some room for exercise, though this doesn’t have to be every day. Let’s not go hurling our own self off a cliff or anything, but maybe if I persuade myself to do a little when it feels like diet, it may end up feeling a bit like butter. Also, since the last couple of weeks have been more butter on the food front, I want to concentrate on the diet side a bit more. I was eating fruit before. I felt better. Who knew?

You know, I thought when I grew up this living stuff would get easier. Turns out either it doesn’t, or I ain’t a grown up yet…

Filed Under: Diet & Butter, Life - 6 Comments
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