Week seventeen: The Case of the Disappearing Nine Patch

I confess to being a little bit down as I write this, as – had it not been for some pandemic or other – I should be tapping away on my tablet, sitting in the garden of a farmhouse in sunny Pembrokeshire surrounded by my family, some of whom I haven’t seen for two years. Yesterday my mum and dad would have arrived from France, my far-away sister and brother-in-law and their children from Northern Ireland, my London sister from the other side of of the M25, and my beloved and I and the children from Essex. We’d be planning a day on the beach at Newport or Newgale, or a mooch around St David’s or Fishguard, making a stack of sandwiches and coffee and counting the windbreaks. At some point in the week we would have seen the extended Wales family of cousins and hopefully my beloved’s Welsh family as well. Instead, here I am in rainy Essex, suffering from mosquito bites after a bike ride on Friday (how do they bite through leggings? How?) and waiting for the kids to emerge from the tent demanding Sunday pancakes. I bear a strong resemblance to Tove Jansson’s Little My in temperament today.

Friday marked the end of the school year for Things 2 and 3, and for Thing 2 also her final year of primary school as she will join Thing 1 at secondary in September. The school organised a socially distanced leavers’ assembly on Friday morning, so they didn’t miss out on all the usual events: yearbooks, a chance to sign each other’s T-shirts (not while they were wearing them for a change!) and to see their friends. Thing 2 is not going to our local large secondary, and she won’t be in the same school as most of her little gang so it was quite a sad moment for her. I think the teachers have definitely earned their summer holiday this year (as they do every year, of course) but this year some won’t have had a break since February half term, and their heads are probably spinning with all the things they have had to adapt to – remote teaching and pastoral care, social bubbles, and much more. I have said this before but I really hope that people start recognising the amazing work teachers do not just this year but every year – and trust them to do what’s best for our kids rather than scapegoating them.

Thing 1 had a birthday last week – she was 14 – and despite a few wobbly moments of anxiety leading up to it I think she had fun. Two of her friends came over and they had a cake picnic in the park, frightening the local youngsters with their mad hair, and taking a lot of selfies. She had her undercut dyed pink on Friday – one of the good things about lockdown is that it’s allowed her to ‘experiment with her aesthetic’ (as she tells me) without the restrictions of school uniform requirements. It’s done wonders for her confidence, and I am loving the baby Goth look she’s developed – I have serious envy of her birthday-money shoes! My hands are still tinged with hot pink from the dye-fest – I did her older sister’s hair too, and forgot the gloves.

Baby goth – Hello Kitty Gothcore, I am told.

I was abandoned on Thursday by my walking buddy, who had a bad back. I went out solo and enjoyed the sunshine on a four mile ramble through the lanes and fields on one of my favourite routes past Dial House and North Weald Redoubt. The hedgerows and verges are now showing the fruits of the flowers from earlier in the season, and they’re alive with insects still – ladybirds and crickets, and so many butterflies (none of whom would stay still long enough to photograph).

There’s also a new set of wildflowers popping up – the bank of willowherb on the farm track is a luscious wall of pink, and the purple of thistles and vetch is lovely.

Even the nettles and thistles have their party frocks on

Back to the title – what’s that all about?

The Case of the Disappearing Nine Patch..

I’m a reader. A big reader. A REALLY big reader. One of the first things I did when I started uni both in Preston and in Aberystwyth and when I moved on to London and Essex later was to find and join the local library. I can sniff out a second hand bookshop or charity shop at a hundred paces. When I visit you, if you leave me alone in your living room I’ll be snooping your bookshelves. I am that person on your Zoom meeting who’s peering past you at the bookshelves. The joy of finding a fellow series fan is unbounded – meeting a fellow Pratchett fan in the wild, noticing a Rivers of London reader on the Tube, those who know the significance of the number 42. (The museum world is a good place to find these people, by the way). We be of one blood, you and I.

But the first series I really got into – I mean, really got into – was Nancy Drew way back in the early 80s. I read them all from the library, snapped them up on market stalls, bought them when they went on the discarded stock shelf. Classic Nancy – not the later series. One of my best sewing buddies was introduced to me first as ‘Ah, Alli likes Nancy Drew too – you two will get on really well’. (We do) I wondered what happened to them all when I left home and then a couple of years ago a younger cousin messaged me and asked if I wanted them back. Why yes, I said, the kids might like them.

Who was I kidding? *I* wanted them back. I wanted to read them all again. I wanted to immerse myself in the adventures of the titian-haired detective, her tomboyish friend George and Bess, the girly one. Cool coupes! Lawyer dad Carson! Ned Nickerson, the handsome boyfriend! Honestly, that girl could not go anywhere without falling over a clue, a secret, a mystery of some kind, which she would solve with her loyal girlfriends and her brilliant deductive skills. I never trip over mysteries – except the old ‘where did all the money go this month’ one that we all encounter once we hit adulthood.

So just as soon as I finish my current series, I am opening up that box of delights and taking a trip back to my childhood.

That sort of childhood passion doesn’t really go away, of course, and I still have a sneaky fondness for ‘girl detectives’ though they (and I) are much older now. I’m currently working my way through the wonderful V I Warshawski novels by Sara Paretsky. I first encountered VI at uni, where I was reading American Studies and Indemnity Only was one of the texts on a unit called ‘Images of the City in the American Mind’. VI is a tougher, more streetwise version of Nancy, who fights for the underdog against corporate America. The joy of Kindle is that I don’t have to wait for the library to reopen, of course, to catch up on the later ones.

VI opened up a world of grown up ‘girl’ detective novels – I won’t go into them all in detail but here’s some of my favourites:

Kinsey Millhone by Sue Grafton. I am heartbroken that the author died before ‘Z’ was published.
Stephanie Plum by Janet Evanovich. Brilliant cast of comic characters.
Ruth Galloway novels by Elly Griffiths (and an honourable mention for her Stephens and Mephisto books too)
Carlotta Carlyle by Linda Barnes. Tough Boston PI who drives a cab on the side.
Rev. Merrily Watkins by Phil Rickman. Set in Herefordshire, so makes visits home a bit spooky at times.
Kate Shugak novels by Dana Stabenow. Alaska! Moose! Bears!

Mentions also for Dr Temperance Brennan, Bubbles Yablonsky, Trixie Belden, Jimm Juree and Precious Ramotswe.

I don’t limit myself to girl detectives, of course, but my heart will always hold a sneaky place for these feisty, clever, quick-thinking females.

Their male counterparts will have to wait for another day, but will probably include Harry Bosch, Marcus Didius Falco, Brother Cadfael, Dave Robicheaux, John Rebus, Dr Siri Paiboun, Bryant and May, DI Thomas Lynley, and Richard Jury. Perhaps detectives and their sidekicks are a whole other topic…

If they come with a side-order of the supernatural, so much the better! I’d better come back to that one as well.

Where did that nine patch disappear to?

It hasn’t disappeared at all, really – it’s the name of the quilt block I ended up using this week. Its not one from the book I mentioned last week, or any of my quilt pattern books, but one that popped up on my daily digest from Bloglovin’.

I’d spent a couple of days trying to decide what to do with the blue charm packs I’d bought, and had pretty much decided to go with basic squares again. I discarded the brighter blue solids and some of the prints, as they didn’t quite fit, so I was left with teal, candy blue, buttermilk and buttercup for solids. I still wasn’t entirely happy with the basic layout so I didn’t start to stitch them together – and I’m glad I didn’t! So I grabbed some of the leftovers from the row layout and did a test block, then abandoned the rows entirely in favour of these nine-patches.

Since each row had been sorted for colour already, I started to build the nine-patches from the rows, making sure I had one of each solid colour in the block with five different print patches. I ended up with 20 blocks, which I trimmed to 12″ squares before stitching them together to make the final quilt top. Some of the patches had directional prints which limited which way up they could go (in my head, anyway).

I really like the way this has come together. It needs a border as it’s not quite wide enough, but I think I have enough neutral solids left to make one, and it’ll need to be backed and quilted before it’s finished. I’ll be backing it with a large curtain I picked up in a charity shop ages ago, so I won’t need to piece a backing.

This week I am going to finish the commission dolls, try open water swimming with friends, try some more drawing, and try not to feel too out of sorts about not being in Wales. At least school is over…

See you at end of week eighteen.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

V I Warshawski series (only 1 more to go!) – Sara Paretsky

Last Act in Palmyra – Falco series by Lindsey Davis

Learn to Draw: Buildings – David Cook

Week sixteen: the pinwheels of my mind

This week has been all about the patchwork! Regular visitors to my little corner of the web will remember that I had a birthday the other week and, as guilt free shopping is always good, I was given a couple of Amazon vouchers. I have a rule that birthday money should always be spent on presents for yourself, and not on anything practical like new washing machines or cat food: therefore, much of my crafty wish list found its way into my basket!

Throughout furlough I have been really enjoying patchwork – starting with the mini charm quilt and the Attic Window quilt that had been in the UFO pile for years, and then working through various charm packs and fat quarters that were lurking in the stash.

Like most people who sew, I end up with lots of remnants. Prior to lockdown, I used to take all my cotton/polycotton remnants to work where they would be used to dress the thousands of peg dolls children made every term, and in April I gave a lot of fabric to a woman in the village to make masks from as she wasn’t charging for them. Since then, the pile has been building up again.

One of the presents I bought myself was ‘Use scraps, sew blocks, make 100 quilts‘ by Stuart Hillard and it’s been a bit of a game changer. I had a couple of books of traditional quilt patterns already, as well as Quilting for Dummies, but as they are all in black and white I found it hard to get inspired by them. I always enjoy Stuart’s column in one of my sewing magazines, so this seemed like a good book to buy. As you can see, it’s already bristling with sticky notes! Every time I look through it something else catches my eye.

It’s a very practical book – suggestions for organising your scraps by cutting them to useful, regularly-used sizes before you chuck them in a box, or for cutting a strip off every fabric you buy and adding to your patch pile might seem obvious but as a newbie patcher I really hadn’t thought of that before. Having this sort of hoard also means that you see how colours and prints work together in a way you might not have expected.

The instructions for piecing together are very clear, and Stuart has simplified the cutting process for each block (I love his quick half-square triangle method!) to make them feel less daunting for newbies. The virtual quilt illustrations are really useful alongside the photos of the gorgeous finished quilts and make me feel as if I could actually make one of these artworks.

On Stuart’s advice I bought a 45mm rotary cutter and a proper transparent quilter’s ruler – I had a larger 65mm cutter that I don’t use much, probably as it’s blunt, and normal steel rulers, but the quilting rule has angles and centimetres. I wish it had inches as well, but there we are. I felt ready to put all these top organisational tips into action , so I wandered up to my shed and sorted out a pile of remnants to cut into nice tidy pieces. I did make a start, honest…I cut up some Japanese florals and Kokeshi prints into 6″ squares to go with a set of Totoro panels, and then I got distracted. Again.

I knew all those polyfiles would come in handy.

One of the pre-cut charm packs I discovered in the stash was a set of 4-inch squares with florals, ladybirds and butterflies – I think I bought it at a stitch show years ago as I find it hard to resist anything with ladybirds on! In the remnant pile I found some cream polycotton left over from making the Colette Sorbetto top, and it looked as if it would pair nicely with the charms. I ended up making half-square triangles and then spent several days playing with patterns.

How do you choose which patchwork design to use? I moved things around on my drawing board, and every time I chanced on another layout I loved it just as much. I ended up taking photos of every block and posting them on Facebook, and asked my friends what they thought at block and layout stages – quilting by committee! Some of the layouts used the prints randomly, others put them together, and I even tried putting two different blocks together to create something quite chaotic. Opinion was divided – some people liked the same pattern together, others preferred the mixture of patterns, but the clear winner was the pinwheel or windmill block (centre bottom).

I went with the majority vote and I am soooo pleased with the outcome. It worked well as a stashbuster, which just goes to show what a good investment the book was! As well as the cream print in the triangles I made the bias binding myself from the remnants of the backing fabric from the red quilt from a few weeks ago using this tutorial, and this quilt top is backed with a cot sheet that I had kept from when the kids were little. I used a double layer of batting, as it’s the 2oz one and I wanted a puffier effect, and I quilted in the ditch along the diagonal lines. It’s not a huge quilt, coming out at 33″ x 26″, but it’ll be a good baby gift.

There will be more patchwork in the future, I suspect! This week I am going to try and be good and finish chopping remnants into organised scraps, and possibly have a go at the Morgan jeans if the fabric arrives. I’m still working on the two commission dolls, which just need to be given hair and clothes, and yesterday I managed a whole round of my virus shawl while queuing for the Co-op and the post office.

Musings….

This week my annual pension statement arrived from my previous job and reminded me that I have another 20 years of work to go (on current reckoning, anyway – who knows what the next two decades have in store?) on the same day that my eldest, Thing 1, decided to go Goth on me. She is 14 this week and looks so grown up – it doesn’t seem that long since the ridiculously hot summer of 2006 when she arrived, and I wanted to take her back to the hospital as I really didn’t feel capable of being in charge of this little being. I’m told this is quite normal!

There’s still days when I’m not sure I’m ready for the responsibility, but it may be a little late to change my mind now. One of the wonderful things about furlough is that I have had time to spend with the three of them that – as a working parent – I wouldn’t otherwise have had. These months have been the longest time I have had away from work since my last maternity leave (in 2011!) and while I love my job and wouldn’t want to give up work, I do feel lucky to have had this chance to enjoy my children now they are a bit bigger. Maternity leave is great, but it’s also a lot of hard work with a tiny person and a lot of overwhelming emotions, especially if – as I found – post-natal depression comes into the mix. It’s a cliche but your babies don’t stay little for long!

I also ventured further from home this week than I have done since lockdown started – a whole five miles, in order to make my 21st blood donation over in Theydon Bois. It was all very well organised, with triage as you enter and no waiting around. The worst part was when my Kindle crashed about a minute into my donation – nothing to read!

I started giving blood in 2011 after my brother in law suffered a heart injury which left him in hospital for several months and with permanent impairments. My youngest child was still tiny and I couldn’t be with my sister as much as I’d have liked, so donating blood helped me feel a bit more useful. I love getting the texts that tell me where my blood has been issued to! Only 4% of people who are eligible to give blood actually do, so I try and encourage friends and colleagues to visit the vampires – it’s an hour out of your day a few times a year, and you get a drink and a biscuit afterwards. Orange Clubs, if you’re lucky – so go on, head to http://www.blood.co.uk and find out where you can donate.

This week’s cover photo is of a field between North Weald and Tawney Common, where the farmer has left a wide and beautiful border of wildflowers around the field. My phone camera doesn’t do it justice but the butterflies and bees were loving it!

Next week is the end of term: no more home learning till September, and hopefully we’ll be back to some form of normal by then, at least in terms of going back to school. Thing 2 is having a socially distanced leavers’ assembly this week in the school playground, so please wish us good weather!

See you on the other side of week 17…

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

‘Use scraps, sew blocks, make 100 quilts‘ by Stuart Hillard

V I Warshawski series – Sara Paretsky

Poseidon’s Gold (Falco series) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)

and if you want a couple of film recommendations, head on over to Amazon Prime Video and check out Adult Life Skills (with Jodie Whittaker – I wept) and The Great Unwashed.

Week fifteen: sourdough and split ends

I am not a natural chef. There are things I do well: banana bread, for example, a foolproof chocolate cake, and according to the Horde I make a very passable chilli. There are things I do very badly: scones and pastry, and Anzac biscuits. I quite literally cannot produce a consistent boiled egg, let alone an edible one. It’s not that long ago that Thing 3 responded to the smoke alarm by running off to his daddy shouting, ‘Dinner’s ready’. When my beloved installed an extractor over the cooker I tried telling the children that dinner couldn’t be burned, as the alarm hadn’t gone off: Thing 2 looked at me, looked at her admittedly charcoal-toned dinner and said, ‘You cheated, mummy, you turned the thing on.’ Thing 1, memorably, peered at the grill pan once while I was making fish fingers and said, ‘Haven’t you burned them yet, mummy?’ This, at the age of about four.

I used to envy those classmates who did Home Economics at school. Note for young people: this is now called Food Technology, and comes under the DT syllabus. Back in the olden days it was a whole separate subject.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes… my classmates that did Home Ec. They got to go off down to the art block at lunchtime to do arcane things like ‘feeding their Christmas cake’. I, on the other hand, got one out of ten for fruit salad (really, don’t ask). When I took my bread and butter pudding home – quite proudly, I will admit, as it wasn’t burned – and handed it to my mother she said, ‘how lovely, let’s put it in the freezer and we’ll have it another day,’ and it was never seen again. Luckily for my parents, we only did a half term of Home Ec every year.

My London sister, on the other hand, is a talented and brilliant person in the kitchen and whips up clever things. When lockdown began, she had recently been made redundant and she decided to try making a sourdough starter. Christened George, we had daily updates on his progress and she began to turn out beautiful loaves of bread. A whole new vocabulary comes with sourdough: words like levain, and discard, and bannetton (a proving basket, I think).

For my birthday. she arrived bearing a pack of N’duja* (the good stuff, I am told) and a jar containing a little bit of George. I have christened it Kevin. An email followed with instructions on what to do with Kevin to make him earn his keep, and photos illustrating the joy of sourdough.

Now, despite the fact that she’s my little sister and tormented me for many years by doing things like telling new boyfriends that I lived next door when they came to pick me up, singing selections from Annie through the letterbox at me, or locking herself in the bathroom with the notes from a lovelorn swain (that I had torn up) and reading them out very loudly, I do trust her when it comes to cooking.

So, on Monday I broke Kevin out of the little pot and began my first sourdough loaf. Kevin Junior (the levain) didn’t bubble properly or grow to twice his size, just produced a few halfhearted holes and he didn’t grow much on the first rise. The second rise was more successful, and apart from the fact that I didn’t brave the slash before baking and the ‘dark’ crust was more charcoal than expected, the loaf tasted delicious. I made bread!

The next day she remembered to tell me that I should be using hand-hot water to make the levain and to feed Kevin, so last night (I’m writing this bit on Thursday as I was inspired!) I started my second loaf. Warm water is definitely the way to go – Kevin Junior doubled in size, and the overnight rise was very successful. I was out walking at 6am this morning and started the second rise when I got back – he’s currently shaped and supported by tea towels in the conservatory. I’m hoping not to burn this one…..

Kevin Senior is in a Kilner jar (minus the seal) in the fridge – I am now a slave to the sourdough. Kevin’s bitch. Oh dear. (*the N’duja remains unopened. One thing at a time, people.)

From rise to crumb (and I braved the slash)

Update: yesterday I made sourdough pancakes from the discard (thumbs up from the Horde), and discovered that ham and Emmental sourdough toasties are the food of the gods. Next mission: pizza.

My other experiment this week was home made peshwari naan bread, British Indian Restaurant style – and it was AMAZING. The kids prefer peshwari to plain naan, and they don’t sell it in the little Co-op in the village. I used this recipe from The Curry Guy and though it took longer than I expected it was SO worth it. They tasted just like the ones from our local restaurant, and I could leave one plain for Thing 3 who doesn’t like sultanas. We’ll be making those again!

That was the week…

…that I also got completely fed up with my split ends. My hair is (or was) longer than it has been in about ten years. It’s the best part of six months since my last haircut, and my poor tresses have been treated to several home dye kits since then. I decided to take a leaf out of the kids’ book and watch a YouTube video on how to cut your own hair. My hair is pretty straightforward apart from being a bit unruly/wavy/curly: I have a heavy fringe as I’d still like to be Chrissie Hynde when I grow up (minus the veganism), and layers as that helps the curl behave. I watched this one by Liz Liz and this one by Marianellyy Diaz – much the same content, but the first one shows you how to layer round the face and the second how to take out the V-shape at the back. I think it was quite successful – I cut my fringe in carefully using the same technique. The colour is a very faded Schwarzkopf Live colour in Amethyst Chrome – supposed to be permanent but I find they fade quite quickly on my hair.

I got more practice in on the technique afterwards, as Thing 2 decided to cut her own fringe (luckily quite long, but a bit too wide) and I had to do a repair job to turn it into a layered cut for her as well. Thing 1 got an undercut, courtesy of her dad and his clippers, under her short bob (by me the other week). She now wants to have her whole head cropped, and to go to fashion school – she is equally excited by both things, and I have promised that this week I’ll start teaching her to sew (I knew she should have chosen Textiles at GCSE). She has been researching courses and summer schools already!

On the subject of sewing, I finished the green and yellow quilt that I laid out last week, as both the backing fabric and the binding arrived. I prewashed the backing fabric and I am very glad I did, as it lost lots of the lemon yellow dye. Putting it in with a light wash was a bad idea but – honestly – who doesn’t need lemon yellow pyjamas and running socks?

I had an idea that rather than quilting in the ditch between the squares, I’d use a button on every corner as I had some pretty wooden ones in the button tin, but when I tried it the effect wasn’t quite what I was hoping for so I snipped them off and went back to the machine (the Singer I wrote about last week). I was looking for a puffy effect, but because I was using 2oz wadding rather than the 4oz I used last time it didn’t work. I may try again with more wadding at some point! Fortunately I made the choice to change back after only eight buttons went on.

I have learned from the last two quilts, where the fabric bunched up during the quilting stage, to stitch my lines outwards from the middle and to make sure the fabric is flat as I sew. This time round I stitched outwards from the centre point to form a cross dividing the quilt into quarters, then worked through each quarter from the centre towards the edges. I did the horizontal lines first and then the vertical, and the bunching is much less in evidence. I also increased my stitch length slightly to accommodate the wadding, and that seems to have resolved the tension issue I experienced with the red quilt. The binding isn’t quite straight, but I think the sage green works well with the yellows and greens and picks up some of the florals nicely.

The next one will be blue – I have picked up a couple of charm packs from Amazon and some Kona solids in different blues from Ebay, and the plan is to make a larger one that might actually cover a bed! My bed, for preference…

No cross stitch update this week as I have been mainly crocheting. Late last year I was asked by a D&D playing friend to create a set of ‘voodoo’-style dolls of their RPG group – they were on a story arc in New Orleans, and he wanted some props. One of the group contacted me last week to ask if I could make dolls of him and his girlfriend, so they have been on the hook this week. I have been using the Weebee doll pattern by Laura Tegg on Ravelry (my user name is LadybirdK over there) as it’s super-simple, there’s some really cute outfits that can be adapted easily and – this is important! – there’s permission to sell the finished dolls. Here’s the first of the pair, awaiting hair and clothes. He liked the button eye aesthetic that the game dolls had, so we have stuck with that, and has requested that I make the doll look ‘witchy’. I love these commissions, they are such fun to make!

The rather dramatic header image this week was taken on my regular Sunday walk – this week we followed one of the Millennium walks through the flood meadow nature reserve to the local church and then back through the fields. The local farmers have planted a lot of borage this year, and the fields are the most heavenly blue colour that my phone camera completely fails to do justice to. A bit of Googling told us that borage is also known as starflower, is a source of Omega-6 fatty acid and is good in salads. It’s safe from pigeons and slugs, too.

The boxes in the second image are bee hives, and the field next to the flood meadow is covered in them – local honey must be on the way! There was a lot of industrious buzzing, I know that much.

So that was week 15! The pubs reopened yesterday (I didn’t go, but the noise last night suggests that some people made the most of it!). I made my monthly trip to Tesco on Tuesday and still can’t get any soy sauce but home baking goods are back on the shelves which made me happy.

See you on the other side of week 16!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

V I Warshawski novels (I’m up to #12 now – only 8 more to go!) – Sara Paretsky

The Iron Hand of Mars/Poseidon’s Gold (Falco series) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)

Week fourteen: new jeans and sewing machines

A thank you, first of all – to those of you both here on WordPress and elsewhere on social media (and even in real life!) who took the time to read last week’s piece, to share it more widely and to talk to me about it. It meant a lot to me to be able to open the conversation. Thank you!

This has been a learning week – my challenge was to make a pair of jeans for myself. I bought the Closet Case Patterns ‘Ginger’ skinny jeans some time ago and it’s been lurking in my files for aaaaages. I picked up some black stretch denim on EBay – quite lightweight, without too much stretch (2% lycra), and very reasonably priced considering the potential for disaster in the project. There’s a lot of techniques in a pair of jeans I haven’t tried before – not least the fly – so I knew this was going to be a steep curve!

Who knew, for example, how many different pieces there are in a pair of jeans? I know I didn’t have a clue until I cut them out on Monday…

I decided to make view B, which is the high waisted, skinny leg option – I have never bought high waisted jeans, but I also rarely wore bold print clothes until I started making them myself, so I figure I’ll wear these jeans! Before I cut the fabric I used the shortening guide on the leg piece to take out 10cm, which is the usual amount I have to take off all trousers. If I make them again I’ll reduce that to 8 or 9cm for a wider hem at the bottom, as they were only just long enough in the end, resting just below my ankle after hemming.

The pockets went together quite well, except the coin pocket ended up on the left instead of the right (since it’s a pocket I never use, I can’t see a problem with this and would have been just as happy to have left it out), and one of the pocket stays is inside out. I need to put a couple of tacking stitches into the pocket to hold the facings inside as they have a habit of popping out above the pockets themselves. I used remnants of the deep red backing fabric from my red quilt to make facings and pockets, so my favourite colour is on the inside.

The fly was another matter, and I’m really not sure where I went wrong. I followed the instructions as best I could – they really aren’t that clear, and while I frequently say ‘trust the pattern!’ I think next time I’ll be looking out for a sewalong or tutorial to help. My zip is exposed, and the fly shield doesn’t sit over it – but my top stitching is very neat for a change, which I suppose is something as top stitching is one of my bugbears (hence using navy for the jeans!).

The back of the jeans went together well – the yoke gives the waistline a nice shape, and the slight curve on the back pockets is flattering. The pattern gives some helpful suggestions for pocket placements, as – as they point out – every bottom is different. I’ve never been very fond of mine (too flat) so anything that gives the illusion of a curve is a plus!

The designers very sensibly suggest tacking the front and back together to check the fit through the leg before you stitch them permanently together, and I’m glad I did as I had to take in the legs by a couple of centimetres. I was still left with some extra width in the the thigh, so I’ll try and work out how to take that out next time (possibly by grading between the leg and waist sizes on the pattern).

Overall I’m happy with them, and will be making them again – and I’ve also treated myself to the Morgan boyfriend jeans pattern.

The top I’m wearing in the picture above is also a me-made – this time a rub-off from one of my favourite vests. I like the slight shaping on it, and the length. The stripy fabric is another EBay bargain – it was sold as 100% cotton, but I have my doubts. It’s not very stretchy and the stripes are printed rather than woven, but as a test piece it’s worked quite well. If you look closely you can see a seam down the centre front where I didn’t have enough length (I had a metre of fabric) to cut both front and back on the fold. It’s a very stable knit, so putting a seam down the front didn’t take it out of shape.

Here you can see the vest in progress – the rub off, the marked up pattern and my kit (Burda tracing paper, Frixion pens, a couple of Celtic paddlestones from the garden centre for weights, pins, a long steel ruler and paper scissors!) – and the final vest next to the original. Please note the Bee-worthy stripe matching on the vest which I managed on both sides and down the middle.

Thoughts on sewing machines…

Both the jeans and the vest were constructed using my Brother 2104D overlocker for seam finishing, and on a Singer Samba 2 (6211 model) which – looking at the instruction booklet – dates from 1984. My Aunty Jo, who had it from new and who passed it on to me a couple of years ago, has made notes in the back of the booklet detailing what she made and the savings on shop-bought clothes. These are dated around 1986, and I can see she made Liberty print blouses, cushion covers, and did alterations for her son and herself. She was also a painter, and has been in my mind a lot recently as she is in hospital after a fall. I wonder whether this was behind my decision to use the Samba to sew this week?

Sewing machines, it turns out, are like cats and tattoos – it’s almost impossible to stop at one. I am currently at 5, including my overlocker!

My first sewing machine was also a Singer, which I never got to grips with and which eventually expired past resurrection back when I still lived in London. My mum was given it for her 21st birthday in 1965 and she passed it to me as she thought her days of sewing were past and my crafty journey had just begun with my discovery of cross stitch. She was wrong, of course – my youngest sister is an historical interpreter working in schools, museums and heritage sites in Northern Ireland and the top of ROI, and mum has been sewing costumes for her (which reminds me, I have to make a suffragette sash for her!) as well as making curtains for their home in France.

My second sewing machine came much later, when my eldest daughter was very small – this time, it was given to me by my mother in law, as she no longer used it. Again, it was from the 1960s, as we found the original receipt in the case. It’s a Husqvarna Viking 19E, and it had been regularly serviced and much used. I learned to sew on this beauty, and when the drive belt perished a few years ago and couldn’t be replaced as the parts are no longer made I was very sad. I still have it, and have a search alert set up on EBay in the hope that a belt will come up second hand. I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. My mother in law died in late 2012, and this is one of the links I have to her – I was very lucky, as she and I got on well. She was a crocheter, and tried (and failed) to teach me which was one reason I was so determined to learn later.

When the Viking died I was in the middle of a project, so I bought a Brother LS14 – a basic model but it does the things I need it to do, and it’s been used recently to teach Thing 2 to sew. It’s a bit rattly, as it’s quite lightweight, but its reliable and great for a beginner. I started to sew more regularly, and to share what I was making on social media, and suddenly people saw me as somewhere to pass their old machines on to (I have learned to say no now, and to suggest alternative people who might be able to provide a loving home – but if I had the space I would rehome them ALL!). As well as the Singer Samba above, I also have a New Home machine – this one dates from the late 70s, I think, and belonged to a friend’s mum who no longer used it. It’s a good, solid machine and I think I’ll have to get it out soon.

Vintage machines are reliable, but they do need a bit of TLC at times – a bit of oiling, and a bit of a dust – and we are also lucky in this area to have the fabulous Rona sewing machine shop in Waltham Cross. They are helpful, knowledgeable and expert with all sorts of machines – highly recommended if yours needs a bit of a tune-up or if you’re looking for a new one.

My overlocker was a treat to myself – bought in a sale, and it’s been worth every penny.

In case you’re wondering, I have also learned to say no to more cats – three is enough! For the moment….

Level up!

I turned 47 on Friday. I haven’t worried about age since my 27th birthday, when I cried all day.

Why 27? Wayyyyy back in infant school, our teacher Mrs Price asked us for a mental maths exercise to work out how old we’d be in the year 2000. To six year old me, that seemed like a million years away and 27 sounded so OLD. That feeling stuck with me and when I finally hit 27 in the millennium year I had a bit of a meltdown…and no birthday since has ever had the same effect. Perhaps that was my equivalent of a midlife crisis (I hope not).

This year was a bit out of the ordinary, of course, as we’re still socially distancing. I have a large garden, and despite the forecast thunderstorms, my best friend and my London sister came to visit me armed with gin, cake and a sourdough starter which apparently I have to name. Suggestions welcome! It was a lovely gossipy day, sitting in the shade as the promised rain threatened but never appeared, and I felt very spoiled.

One thing about being a maker and a sharer of makes is that it’s rare that anyone gives me a handmade gift, so I was incredibly touched to receive a beautiful hand embroidered card from my colleagues at the museum, with personal messages and art inside. I miss them all very much and am looking forward to going back to work at some point…

Anyway, here is a happy Moominmamma (it was a Moomin themed birthday, as the crew all know my passion for these little hippo-esque trolls) embroidered by Katy:

Another colleague, Alan, used a photo of our Teddy-cat that I’d sent him captioned ‘draw me like one of your French girls’ – and did exactly that. I love it!

Teddy is currently stretched out on the chair in a very similar pose….

I’ll leave you with this week’s cross stitch update! I have always loved this painting – I had a book about it as a child called ‘Take a Good Look with Johnny Morris’ that delved into the people on the Island, and I’ve had a print of it on my bedroom wall for the last 29 years – I bought it at a poster sale in the Student Union in Freshers’ Week and it’s been with me ever since!

I’ll see you on the other side of week fifteen – have a great week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

V I Warshawski novels – Sara Paretsky

The Iron Hand of Mars – Lindsey Davis (Audible)

Week thirteen: in answer to a question

Yesterday a museum colleague and friend of mine asked on Facebook:

“What to think when people I know have not supported the movement of black lives matter. Maybe they don’t want the backlash from friends maybe they disagree. I dunno! Maybe those people could respond as to Why?”

It’s a good question, and my first response was ‘Maybe they are afraid of getting it wrong’, and after a bit more thinking “I think we’re going to get things wrong, but to recognise that is a starting point to work from: ok, I am wrong, but I’m open to being put right.” So, I may get the next few paragraphs wrong, but I hope they are a start.

From 2005 to 2017 I ran the schools programme at the Museum of London Docklands: I was there when the London Sugar and Slavery gallery was opened, and a couple of weeks ago I was really pleased to see the statue of Robert Milligan removed from the quayside outside. It’s worth noting that the statue doesn’t belong to the museum (no one is quite sure who it does belong to, but possibly British Waterways who are the landowners) but we drew attention to him as part of visits to the museum, particularly for secondary school groups, as he led the consortium that built the West India Docks. Those docks – and the museum building, No 1 Warehouse, which was originally one of nine warehouses stretching the better part of a mile – were built on the profits from the Transatlantic Slave Trade, to house the valuable products of that trade, and to ensure that the supply of those products into London was entirely controlled by a small minority of men who saw the way that public feeling was leaning and built a giant walled lock-up, which opened in 1802, to ensure their own pockets were lined long after the trade (if not slavery itself) was banned in 1807. Like a reformed smoker, the British then took it upon themselves to enforce the ban across the world, despite being the nation who industrialised the Transatlantic Slave Trade. London was the fourth largest slave trading port in the world – not one where enslaved Africans were bought and sold, but one from where ships departed on the first leg of the triangle and returned to after the third, supplying the capital with sugar, rum, indigo, and more.

It’s right that we should remember this horrific period in world history – to ensure that, like the Holocaust, it never happens again, but it needs to be taught in context – bear with me before you fly off the wall here. I’m coming at this from my position as a museum educator (and perpetual learner), as a migration educator, and as an adoptive Londoner.

Every September, my phone lines would light up with teachers from all over London and Essex (including from schools and boroughs with high levels of African and Caribbean pupils – Hackney, for example) who started their conversations with the same words: “It’s Black History Month in October, what have you got on slavery?” Because – obviously – Black History begins with John Hawkins in 1562 and ends in 1833 with the abolition of slavery in parts of the British Empire through the good works of William Wilberforce and co. These teachers would tell me that they were playing field songs and spirituals in assemblies and over the tannoy, how they’d reenacted a slave market and so on, or that they were looking at the abolition through the works of Clarkson, Wilberforce and friends. Right there, right there, you can see why Black children are disillusioned – when the only part of your history you’re taught is of violence and subjugation, and that your freedom came only through the work of white people, what else do you expect? And these requests were coming from teachers of Year 2 (6 and 7 year olds) upwards. The indoctrination started early, so we focused on stories of escape from enslavement (Ellen Craft) for KS2. There were no positive role models offered by these school schemes of work, no celebration of Black culture – only the history of enslavement.

So, we became part of the Understanding Slavery Initiative, with a number of other institutions around the UK, to explore how the Transatlantic Slave Trade could be taught with sensitivity and as part of a much wider history – from the pre-TAST Africa to the legacy of the trade. Sadly, this project was an early victim of the 2008 recession and lost funding, but you can find the website and resources here. With this is mind, we built a day aimed at Year 9 which had three parts – a drama which set the whole day in context by exploring the life of a grandfather who had migrated to London in the 1950s through his interactions with his teenage grandson; a sensitively-delivered handling session using replica objects (from beautiful Benin bronze plaques to sugarcane and manacles); and a responsive creative writing session using poems by the wonderful Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison as a starting point who was kind enough to give us permission to use her work. These are poems of resistance, of how African culture survived the Atlantic crossing (never the middle passage – that’s a white perspective) and sustained people through horrific experiences. The day was informed by work with the wonderful Jean Campbell, who gave us perspective. Students would also have time in the London Sugar and Slavery gallery, with resources designed to make them think and talk to each other rather than read labels and parrot information.

I developed a shorter session, called Slavery: London and beyond, which looked at London’s role in the trade and the legacy of that trade – including the Maroons, Toussaint L’Ouverture and the role enslaved Africans played in gaining their own freedom, as well as Windrush and how all these things related to children’s own lives in London today. And we offered these sessions all year – and they booked. And the next year people would phone to book again and say ‘Well, we want to come back but could you not mention rape/brutality/death please? It upset the children’. I can’t imagine that these same teachers phone the IWM for a Holocaust education session and ask them not to mention gas chambers. We’d make a note, and we’d carry on as normal. None of my amazing freelance educators were prepared to whitewash history to make it acceptable.

Things became worse after the publication of the 2014 history curriculum and its narrow framework. Although the examples given in italics were ‘non-statutory’, we knew that many teachers would take these as ‘official’ guidelines. Mary Seacole, admirable and determined as she was, is not the only Black person to have an impact on British history. She was also mixed-race, and her experience as a Black person in London was by no means typical.

I became involved with the London Curriculum project and put forward the idea of a unit on migration called World City – an expanded version of the London Home from Home session I developed for schools, exploring how London came to be the superdiverse city it is today through 2000 years of migration. As a result of this, I ended up working with the History Lessons steering group for the Runnymede Trust exploration into how migration was being taught, alongside such experts as David Olusoga. The Runnymede Trust are a wonderful race equality resource, by the way, with some excellent teaching materials.

I also had conversations with Tony T and Rebecca Goldstone of Sweet Patootee, who are doing brilliant work in uncovering and sharing stories of Black history. All these activities and the people I have met have fed into my thinking about Black Lives. They matter – oh, so much – and I believe passionately that if their stories were built into education (across the world, but starting here in the UK), as part of world history and citizenship then we would be moving towards more understanding in the generations coming up behind us. I want to see Black History Month abolished: it’s tokenism at its very worst. I want to see the legacy of the diaspora spread across the curriculum: rock and roll, blues, ska, fashion, food, art. I want ALL kids to see that Black history is our history too.

I am prepared to be told I am wrong: I want to open conversations, to understand people’s experiences. I want this to be more than a hashtag somewhere on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. I’m going to share this with my friend who started the conversation yesterday now: I hope she knows how much I do support the movement, even from a position where I can never truly understand. I am prepared to try, though.

And now for something completely different…

I finished the puffin dress, and I’m quite pleased with it – it’s been a while since I have made anything quite this smart, and several years since I have felt the need to fully line anything, so this was a good project for brushing up my skills. Regulars will recall that I made the bodice last week, using the burrito method to enclose most of the seams so this week was all about the skirt.

I started with the skirt lining, and I knew that I didn’t want to add too much bulk to the waistline by gathering it, but equally I didn’t want to lose fullness through the rest of the skirt so I pleated it. I bought these pens a couple of weeks ago and they have been worth every penny – I was able to mark pleats quickly, do some quick working out on the fabric and then the markings just disappeared when I ironed them. There was a LOT of pleating to be done – 20 inches on the skirt front alone had to be taken out, and then the pleats had to be stitched down to keep them flat. I also shortened the lining by 3 inches so it wouldn’t show. The lining is plain cream polycotton fabric.

I used the pocket template from the Sew Over It Tulip skirt to add inseam pockets to the skirt outer, gathered it and finally tacked the lining to the outer before stitching it to the bodice and overlocking the seams together. I found a cotton zip in a mixed lot I’d bought a few weeks ago from EBay which was the exact colour of the stripes (a happy coincidence as I didn’t have a white one!) and although it’s not as invisible as I’d like it to be I like the finished look. Finally, I sewed the centre back seams on the skirt and lining separately, and used a pink bias binding to finish the hem. You can see Lucy my dressmaking dummy modelling the finished dress below. She’s also wearing a fluffy petticoat as that’s how I’ll be wearing the dress – my beloved was at work so I didn’t get to model the dress myself for photos!

Flushed with my success from binding the skirt, I finally finished my red quilt from earlier in lockdown – a wider purple shop-bought binding this time. Perhaps making my own needs to be my next challenge. I have the equipment so there’s no excuse except laziness.

Red quilt and playing with layout for the next one.

Thing 2 has been busy this week too – she decided she’d like to make some drawstring pouches from the leftovers from her shaggy pants. She made the template herself and I helped her with the buttonholes for the ribbon. I really like them and might make some for myself! She’s also worked really hard on a painting to give to her dad for Father’s Day, focusing for hours on getting it perfect.

I felt productive on Thursday and made cinnamon buns (a success) and Anzac biscuits (er, not a success). Last time I made the recipe they fell apart into crumbs, this time they formed an amorphous lump which the family just hacked chunks off. Ah well.

That’s pretty much it from me – I’ve been doing a lot of cross stitching in the afternoons and finished the fourth panel of the Seraut pattern; I tried week 4 day 1 of the C25k and promptly injured my other ankle, and have had a lot of siestas! Thing 1 has been having a bit of a wobble – she was diagnosed with anxiety in primary school and occasionally it flares up. I have been so proud of her through this period, but this week she has really missed her friends. Last night she had a virtual sleepover with some of her cronies, using the HouseParty app, and she seems a bit better this morning.

I’ll leave you with some pics of the garden and some fluffy pollinators in action! See you at the end of week 14…

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

V I Warshawski novels – Sara Paretsky

Venus in Copper/The Iron Hand of Mars (Falco series) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)

Week twelve: Ready? Run!

Those of you who have poured yourselves into inappropriate lycra and staggered through the Couch to 5k programme will recognise ‘Ready? Run!’ as that moment when your ‘brisk warm-up walk’ turns into the thrice-weekly torture of discovering just how long three minutes can be. I did the programme way back in 2011, after Thing 3 arrived, and by 2015 I had run a half marathon. And then my knees went on strike so I focused on walking, but (here my secondary school PE mistresses and my long-suffering Brown Owl will probably die laughing) I actually missed running. This, from the person whose youngest sister’s name in the register was met by the comment ‘oh god, not another one’ from the aforementioned PE mistresses. Yes, I missed it. I missed hurling myself out of bed at ludicrous hours of the morning: in the week running along the Thames or the Regents Canal, and on weekends through the forests and fields here. I missed the half hour or more of solitude, listening to music and living in my own little world. I even missed running in the rain.

So, way back at the start of lockdown I decided I’d strap my knees up and start the C25K programme again – weeks 1 – 3 went well, and at the start of week 4 my knees were fine but my ankle was not. Stupidly, instead of stopping and walking I decided to try and run through it, and then spent the next month hobbling.

This week, I felt confident enough to try running again. I dropped back to week 2 to start with, but on my first day out I caught up (literally!) with a friend and his daughter and joined in with their week 3. I found it quite easy so skipped back up to week 3 for the rest of the week, and will pick up week 4 tomorrow. My 5-minute cool down walk takes me back through the flood meadow, which has really felt the benefit of the rain in recent weeks. and the grasses have shot up.

Trees are starting to fruit as well, and evidence of conkers and helicopters to come are peeking through the leaves.

Beautiful red ‘helicopters’ and tiny conkers

On alternate days I’ve been out walking with a friend, with 6am starts as she’s still working. We have been taking some different routes this week and today we discovered an almost buried ‘mushroom’ pillbox – North Weald Airfield, one of the key Battle of Britain airfields, is over the road so there’s a few about the village, but I hadn’t seen this one before. It looks in pretty good condition apart from being very overgrown, possibly as it can’t be accessed by the local kids. My beloved – who grew up here – tells me they used to play in it as children, as well as in old underground buildings on the airfield itself. There are rumours of tunnels that extend towards the old officers’ mess, now an emergency housing site.

The result of all this early morning exercise has been a lot of afternoon naps – I’m now referring to them as ‘siestas’ as that seems to legitimise them!

All this exercise has to do something towards burning off all the calories from home baking! This week has been a week for old favourites – oat and raisin cookies, which have to be made in double batches as they disappear so quickly; American-style pancakes to be eaten with garden strawberries and ice cream; and banana bread.

Pancakes and banana bread always get made on the same day, as once you’ve used 200ml of buttermilk in your pancakes there’s just enough left for this recipe. The pancakes are usually a Sunday treat, so I make two loaves of banana bread – one for home and one for work, as our traditional Monday morning all-staff meetings are always improved by cake.

I use this recipe by John Barrowman – but add either a bag of bashed-up Maltesers, or chocolate buttons/chips. The BEST thing is a bag of mini Rolos. A colleague once said, ‘what sort of deviant adds Maltesers to banana bread?’…. and then he tasted it. Trust me on this, dear readers. I felt quite sad that we had to eat both loaves ourselves this week, but we managed.

This week’s makes…

I mentioned last week that I had cut out the pieces for a Beachcomber dress and a Hot Coffee hoodie, both by MBJM, so they were my first makes.

I wanted to add the front pockets to the Beachcomber dress but didn’t want to do the colour blocked option as I couldn’t face matching stripes, so had to play around with the pattern pieces to see how they’d work and if the pockets would pull the dress out of shape. Luckily they didn’t. After the fact I realised I could have made the colour blocked style and just turned the side panels through 90 degrees as well as the pockets, which would have been easier!

The jersey-blend fabric was quite lightweight and my feed dogs kept trying to eat it unless I babied it through the start of seams, and the twin-needle topstitching would have Patrick and Esme in tears. I ended up overlocking the cuffs, hem and neckline as I just couldn’t face hemming them – but it’s wearable, super comfortable and it has pockets!

The Hot Coffee hoodie was much easier. I used loopback sweatshirting fabric which I picked up quite cheaply on EBay, with a black kangaroo pocket and a black bottom cuff. I chose the self-lined hood option, and added the ‘Thumbs Up’ cuff hack. I sized up as I like my hoodies loose, and I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out. There’s a dress-length option, patch pocket option, and you can either make a cowl neck, a hoodie or a plain round neck – and the pattern is unisex. The kids’ version is called the ‘Hot Chocolate’ so you can kit out the family.

There was even enough fabric left to make a pair of Four Seasons capri-length joggers as well (I won’t be wearing them together!).

Once these were out of the way I decided it was time to start on the Butterick B6318 dress. The pattern is part of their Retro range, from 1961, and I’ve had it in the stash forever. I bought a Julian Charles puffin bedset in their sale, and it’s quite thin fabric so I knew I’d have to line it. I chose to use the striped fabric for the bodice and contrast on the sash and the puffin fabric for the shirt and main sash pieces.

It’s a while since I have made anything that needed a full lining, and I wasn’t sure if I remembered how – but luckily my cousin was having trouble with a facing and sent me photos of her instructions so I used those! I forgot to put the sash pieces on before sewing up the sides, so they aren’t as tidy as they could be, but it’s looking good. The skirt pieces need a lot of gathering, so I will have to pleat the lining to avoid adding bulk, but this has been a good exercise in taking things slowly and making a piece in stages. My task for this week will be constructing the skirt, and I am going to add a bound hem as they look so neat. I have ordered a cerise bias binding, as there wasn’t quite enough fabric left to make my own (though the striped would have looked awesome!) so there will be more flashes of colour.

The cross stitch is also coming on well. I love seeing the shapes of the people emerge like ghosts as I fill in the background!

Garden wildlife

Last week’s baby blue tits and great tits have been joined by a baby blackbird who potters round the lawn for ages. The neighbours have sparrows’ nests in their eaves, so the feeders are pretty busy. And last night the cats were getting quite aerated about something they could see through the bars of the babygate, and it turned out to be a tiny mouse tempted by leftover garlic bread.

And that’s it from me for week twelve! I am off now to nurse my mosquito bites, gained yesterday through my leggings while on a bike ride with Thing 2, her best friend and her mum. Coffee in the park in Epping – it was almost like being normal again! Usually I don’t react badly to mozzy bites, but this year I have had the most horrendous reactions – right now my left wrist and right leg are swollen and painful, and not even Piriton is helping. Ouch!

See you on the flip side of Week 13!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

I finished Jilly Cooper!

Carlotta Carlyle novels – Linda Barnes (I blame early exposure to Nancy Drew for my fondness for girl detectives)

Lanterns and Lances – James Thurber

Audible: Shadows in Bronze/Venus in Copper – Lindsey Davis

Week eleven: mostly trousers

And we’re back at ‘school’ for the final stretch – I have chosen not to send Thing 2 (in year 6) back to school as I feel strongly that it’s too early to do so. The R number is still closer to 1 than 0, the hospitals are expecting a second spike after the half term heatwave (and presumably the mass gatherings in cities over the past few days, though I wholeheartedly support the right to protest against human rights abuses) and I don’t believe that keeping children in ‘bubbles’ is the best way for them to learn. Children – particularly the little ones – need the freedom to play, to explore, to self-select their learning materials, and to socialise with their friends.

(On the subject of the protests, I’d like to see drone footage of the gatherings – there was an interesting piece the other day which showed how the same scene could be manipulated using different lenses and angles to make the viewer think people were ignoring rules.)

I will say that ‘school’ hasn’t been entirely successful this week! We have managed something every day, but that’s all I can lay claim to. Thing 1 has been a bit more enthusiastic as we have had confirmation of her GCSE options, and she’s been allocated her first choices – child development, art, French and media studies – and she now gets to focus on these alongside her core subjects. I wish she’d chosen history, but then I also wish I’d done textiles instead of French – she can always self-discover later if it becomes an interest!

You haven’t mentioned trousers yet…

It hasn’t all been trousers, of course. Monday and Tuesday were all about finishing my Sewing Bee dress. This is a tea dress that my favourite Bee, Liz, made in Episode 1 of the current series and teamed with Doc Martens – the best way to wear a dress, unless it’s with fishnets, Converse and a fluffy petticoat! I’d love Liz to win, or failing that, Matt (who is just adorable), but I suspect Claire is going to swan off with the laurels this year.

The pattern is the Shelby dress by True Bias, which can also be made as a long romper (all-in-one), or short versions of each. I plan on making the long romper as well, in a slightly heavier fabric for winter. I chose the classic short sleeve option and chose to grow them on rather than setting them in as I hate setting in sleeves.

I used a cheap and cheerful polycotton fabric with a cherry print, that I have used before for a pair of Lapwing trousers so I know it washes well – the dress can function as a wearable toile to throw on over the summer, and I can make a ‘proper’ one for work. In terms of construction, apart from the sleeve shortcut, I followed the instructions and it was a straightforward make. My one frustration with the pattern is that none of the panel lengths matched the next one, so there was a lot of trimming before I could turn up the hem. I think I’ll be making more True Bias patterns in the future.

One day my beloved will take a photo of me looking tall and thin! Here I am in my Shelby dress, barefoot in the garden.

The rest of the week was all about the trousers, though, I promise.

First up was the New Look 6859 pyjama pattern for my beloved – this is only the second thing I have ever made for him (the first was a pair of Superhero boxers a couple of weeks ago). He actually requested pyjama bottoms in a sort of ‘well, if you’re making stuff anyway‘ kind of way. Again, these are in an anchor & lifebelt print polycotton which can be tumble dried and requires no ironing – from Pound Fabrics, I think. I hadn’t used this pattern before- they have pockets, and they were supposed to have a drawstring as well as elastic but I just left it with the elastic as my cotton tape was nowhere to be found.

Next, it was a second pair of ‘shaggy pants’ for Thing 2, in 100% cotton (from Pound a Metre, this time). Madam chose the fabric herself, and luckily it was just wide enough to be able to cut the fabric against the grain so the stripes ran horizontally. I was impressed that the stripes look so even across the trouser legs, and almost as well on the outer seams. It’s the same pattern as the last pair, but I decreased the seam allowance to 10mm rather than 15mm in the sides and back for a tiny bit more room for her bottom. (You’ll notice that I try and link to Jaycott’s when I share patterns – I’m not affiliated with them in any way but I do use them myself as they are very reliable and often have excellent sales!)

Finally, it was Thing 1’s ‘shaggy pants but a bit more flowy please mum’ – using Simplicity 1069, version A in crepe-de-Chine fabric. I was put off slippery fabrics a few years ago after trying to make a chiffon kimono when I was quite new to sewing, so I approached this particular challenge with some trepidation – particularly when I realised that the pattern had an invisible zip, pleats in the front AND darts in the back. I was pleased to discover that as long as I supported the fabric while sewing it was pretty easy to handle, and they came together easily. I don’t think I have ever put an invisible zip into anything before constructing the garment but it actually made it very easy, and this might be a hack I use again.

Thing 1 modelling her new trousers – note the DMs!

There’s been very little crochet but a lot of cross stitching – I finished the 4th panel and started on the 5th which is coming along well. Cross stitch was my ‘gateway’ craft and still my favourite to go back to, so having time in my days to focus on it is lovely. I suspect, however, that focusing much more on this is going to require new glasses…each panel has 5607 stitches in 37 colours, and there’s 18 stitches to the inch. It should – in the end – replace the print of this painting I’ve had on my bedroom walls since 1991 when I bought it in a poster sale at the Student Union in Freshers Week. It’s looking a bit faded now.

So, you’ve been indoors all week then!

The weather has changed for the worse, though we are getting intermittent sunshine, and yesterday’s walk was very badly timed! A neighbour and I took our girls out yesterday and found ourselves in the flood meadow just in time for the heavens to open with torrential rain, thunder and lightning – and finally hailstones. We both discovered our waterproofs weren’t doing their jobs…we were so wet that the only thing to do was laugh.

Other walks have been less damp – another walking friend and I have been out at 6am a couple of days this week. One morning we were lucky enough to see a pair of hares in a field, as we walked through to Tawney Common. There’s always a muntjac or two on that route, scampering into the woods, and we usually see some of the Ongar Great Park deer in the fields as well.

One day took us through the park farm as well, past Dial House – the kids call this the ‘witch’s cottage’. We spotted deadly nightshade on the railway bridge and some pretty white irises, as well as admiring the continuing progress of the poppies on the rubble heap.

The weather isn’t looking good for this week, either…

True! I’ve cut out the Hot Coffee hoodie and a Beachcomber dress, both by MBJM Patterns – some fun cat-print fabric for the hoodie and Breton stripes for the dress. I want to try and add pockets to the dress without using the colour blocked version, so we’ll see how that goes. The fabric is quite drapey so I’ll tack the panels on in case the extra layers pull the dress out of shape. I should really have made the colour block style but the thought of pattern matching stripes put me off!

So that’s my week! I’m off to make the sauce for tonight’s lasagne now – one of the few meals that everyone will eat!

How’s your week been?

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Silver Pigs/Shadows in Bronze – Lindsey Davis (Audible versions)

And I’m onto the last Jilly Cooper!

Week ten: lazy days

So here we are at the end of week ten, and we’ve survived half term. Actually, it’s been lovely: the weather continues to be glorious, and we have taken advantage of the slight easing of lockdown rules to go on a couple of socially distanced walks with a neighbour and her daughters. Her twin girls fall between Things 2 and 3, and in normal circumstances at this time of year the kids would be in and out of each others’ houses all day making up dance routines (or TikTok-ing, this year), splashing in the pools and bouncing on trampolines. It’s been lovely seeing them back together while we grown ups put the world to rights. The best fun was when we walked through the woods to a brilliant rope swing where we spent a good hour jumping off over a stream bed before following the meanders back to the path home.

Rope swings have been a bit of a feature of our exercise this week – we also visited one in Gernon Bushes, near Coopersale, which has been there for years and which someone has kindly fixed a seat to this year! The first time I went on it I faceplanted spectacularly as I forgot to let go….

This route took us through what’s known locally as the rhododendron path – it borders the Gaynes Park estate, and while they did a lot of clearance last year they have left this beautiful section on the way to the motorway bridge. The bushes are several metres high in places, and dense with flowers as you can see. We brought a cutting home at the children’s request to see if we can grow one for the garden.

As I type this morning I am recovering from my long walk of the week – solo today, and covering 8.5 miles. I was hoping for 10, but it was getting hot and I was getting hungry so I took the quick way home instead of retracing my steps! I picked up the Essex Way on the edge of the woods and then followed that to the outskirts of Ongar, past St Andrew’s at Greensted – the oldest wooden church in the world, and very pretty. I love this route as it follows the green lanes with very little road in this stretch. I hope to walk the whole of the Essex Way to celebrate my significant birthday in a couple of years – I have covered the stretch from Epping to Willingale while training for the Shine Marathon last year, and would love to do the rest over a few weekends.

The devil is in the detail…

This week’s making has been very small scale, unlike my walks! Apart from a bit of crochet in the queue for the chemist and the Co-op (the virus shawl has become my queuing project!) and whipping up a couple more pairs of MBJM Four Seasons shorts from some remnants of jersey and stretch denim, it’s all been about the cross stitch.

Thing 3 and I tried some cyanotype printing with some garden plants, with moderate success – we enjoyed watching the paper change colour and developing the prints in water. I think we need to find an acrylic sheet to hold the plants down flat while they develop so we don’t lose definition in the middle.

Thing 2 and I have been baking – this week we made soft pretzels, cinnamon rolls and Hummingbird Bakery chocolate cupcakes with coffee icing from the Cake Days book. All very unhealthy but so delicious. Baking is Thing 2’s happy activity – she does love to cook, and with 16kg of flour to get through it’s nice to have alternatives to bread. We used cinnamon sugar on the pretzels instead of salt, I recommend this as a great breakfast. I also insisted on raisins in my cinnamon rolls.

And here’s my cross stitch update – there’s still a few gaps in this section, but it’s almost finished. The cross stitching technique, with its capacity for detailed colour changes, really captures the pointillist style of Seurat’s painting – looks better from a distance!

Centre top panel of Sunday Afternoon on the Island

What’s growing this week?

The garden is lovely – the roses are heavenly, and while out walking the blasts of elderflower and honeysuckle are blissful. The garden is full of bees (especially when my beloved discovered a bumble bee nest under a raised bed) and they are loving the lupins, lavender, cotoneaster and the mass of foxgloves that have seeded this year. I spent some time yesterday cutting back periwinkle and mahonia to give my hollyhocks a chance for some sun, and cutting hawthorn shoots away from my physalis plants which have self-seeded beautifully so I should have a good show of ‘lanterns’ this year. Strawberries are ripening every day, and its so decadent to be able to pick and eat them warm from the sun – the raspberry canes are blossoming too, so with any luck we’ll get a good crop. Home grown lettuces have been the basis of this week’s salads, and I think we’ll have fresh peas with dinner tonight.

Honeysuckle in the garden winding round a dead buddleia tree

The hedgerows and fields are producing new flowers as well – I spotted my first bindweed of the year on my walk this morning, some beautiful escaped sweet peas, mallow and grass vetch.

One of the most lovely flowers this week has been the poppy – the Oriental one in the garden is still in bud, but the fields are splashed with red and this rubble pile at the local farm is covered with them. I love the way they almost glow in the early morning sun. You’ll also spot the farm cat and – not a flower – a fledgling magpie who let me take a photo of him before he flew off. Unlike the green woodpecker, who squawked indignantly at me and flew off across the field!

That’s it from me for the week – I’m posting early today so I can sit in the sunshine this afternoon! Term starts back tomorrow, much to the Horde’s disgust, although Thing 1 now only has to do GCSE subjects and Things 2 and 3 are on a four day week.

I’ll leave you with an image of a baby blue tit we found on the ground while out walking – no, I didn’t bring this baby home with me! Feeding a baby mouse with milk is one thing, but I draw the line at smooshing up worms. He was a noisy little chap, shouting away at us and demanding food – I made Thing 2 put him back as close to the nest as we could.

Hope your week was as good as mine! One of my favourite moments was a comment about last week’s post that said reading it was like taking a holiday in someone else’s life. Thanks Olivia! Olivia is one of the museum world’s treasures, with her wonderful stories, so this was high praise indeed.

See you at the end of week 11…

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Still on Jilly Cooper, sorry… the doings of Rupert Campbell-Black and co are much more interesting than the current omnishambles of real life.

Week nine: there was this mouse…

So here we are again – week nine, the end of the half term (anyone else feeling like they’ve run a marathon at this point?) and looking forward to a bank holiday and a week off. Yes, I *know* there’s another half term to survive after this one – and it’s the long one – but we’ve just heard from the primary school that Things 2 and 3 attend that children will only be doing four day weeks from this point on.

We had the ‘Year 7 transition meeting’ this week for Thing 2, via Zoom which was in some ways good as we didn’t have to travel to Ongar; but, equally, bad as then we didn’t get to have fish and chips for tea afterwards. It was good for the children to ‘meet’ some of the staff they’ll be seeing in September (crossing EVERYTHING here) but they didn’t get the chance to see the classrooms and to meet other children. One thing that continues to reassure me throughout this lockdown is the very real care the schools – secondary and primary – have for their communities. Mr O, who heads up the secondary school, talked directly to the children, answered questions both sent in advance and those sent during the meeting, and assured us that any catch-up English and Maths would be delivered as part of the wider curriculum and not at the expense of the creative subjects which made me happy. They have also managed to spin the second half of this term into a positive for Thing 1 in Year 9, seeing it as an opportunity to prepare for the start of the GCSE courses in September.

What was that about a mouse?

Well, I was out on my usual morning walk on Wednesday, taking nice pictures of flowers in the hedgerow, doing the whole “hullo clouds hullo sky hullo sun” thing and I happened to glance down and there was this tiny mouse sitting in the road near the verge. Next to him was his very very squashed mama mouse and an equally flat sibling. The teeny mouse’s eyes were still closed. He was a very small mouse. I gave myself a good talking to about nature red in tooth and claw, and food chains, and all that sort of thing, and I walked away….and then I saw the buzzard hovering over the common. Yes, dear reader, I took the mouse home with me (if his mama and sibling hadn’t been squashed I would have left him, I promise).

With much headshaking my beloved retrieved an old gerbil tank from the shed, and we googled how to look after baby wild mice – off I went to the pet shop for sawdust and kitten milk, and we made him comfortable. He wasn’t injured or worried, and took to curling up on my hand and feeding from a dropper quite well and by day 4 his eyes were beginning to open. The kids named him Noodle because of his tail, and while I was the only one daft enough to get up at 2.30am for the night feeds, Thing 2 took a lot of care of him in the daytime. Sadly, when I was feeding him this morning he had a convulsion of some sort and died, so he has been buried with much ceremony near at least one of my gerbils and several of my beloved’s childhood cats in the garden. Thing 2 is painting a headstone for him as I type. I am under strict instructions to keep my eyes peeled for any more lonely rodents… next time I’m going to pretend I didn’t see anything.

OK, back to the pretty flowers then!

The hedgerows are bursting into bloom at the moment – high level flowers rather than wildflowers in the verge. The scents of honeysuckle and elderflower in the mornings is quite heady, and the high hedges are constellations of wild roses and blackberry blooms.

The garden has also begun to flower like mad, with self-seeded foxgloves putting up spires all over the place (we’ve always had one a year, but this year there’s about 20 scattered about), last year’s lupins which didn’t do anything, more honeysuckle, strawberries, aquilegia, the gorgeous Gertrude Jekyll rose that my late mother-in-law planted and more. The bees are going mad, particularly for the lavender and the lupins. This afternoon we harvested the first bowl of strawberries, which we’ll have after dinner.

You’ve been enjoying the weather then…

Oh yes, definitely – this week has been glorious. I’ve been doing portable crafts – starting a new virus shawl in the sock yarn I retrieved from unmaking my first socks the other week, picking up my cross stitch and generally enjoying the sunshine. I love the virus shawl, it’s so relaxing – at least if you don’t completely forget an entire row on several rounds and have to unpick it. There’s many patterns and video tutorials available, including one by Bella Coco, but as a kinetic learner I found the written pattern linked above to be the most accessible for me. I’ve made several of these over the last few years and they’re a great way to showcase gradient or variegated yarn.

The cross stitch is an IMMENSE undertaking – Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte – which is my favourite painting ever, and it’s very detailed, Fifty colours…it’s going to take a while. It takes several weeks to do one page, and there’s 15 pages. I started in in February 2019 and worked solidly on it for a while but then got distracted, as I tend to do. If the weather holds I’ll be able to do lots in the garden.

I also used the MBJM Four Seasons pattern again to whip up a pair of shorts for me, and made up the last Centerfield top I cut out last week. I can never get the hood to cross over properly, and the neckline broke two needles on my overlocker, but it’s wearable.

On Friday we took the kids out for a bike ride again, this time along the ‘rhododendron path’ which goes through to Gernon Bushes, an Essex Wildlife Trust reserve that we can access without going along main roads. The Essex Way goes through it, and while the local landowners cleared a lot of the huge rhododendrons last year there’s still some beautiful ones left that tower over the footpath. It really is glorious at this time of year, and as an added bonus the path crosses the M11 via a footbridge so we always stop there for a break so the kids can wave to the lorries (oh, ok, so can the adults!).

Wishing you all a peaceful week ahead!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Jilly Cooper, all week. Pure escapism.

Week eight: ups and downs

What a strange week this one’s been – again. After last week’s lengthy rant about the possibility of lifting lockdown shortly before Johnson’s pre-recorded ‘address’, we’ve all been stuck in a weird confused limbo which hasn’t really been clarified by various press conferences and guidelines. We are staying safe at home still, as that seems the most sensible thing to do at the moment. And don’t even get me started on school reopenings…

All three children (and I) have had a wobble at some point this week. It’s been important for us all to recognise that this is not a normal time, and that it’s OK to be able to put our hands up and say ‘right, I am not coping today’ and to retire to the sofa. Thing 2 had a meltdown on Thursday when it became clear that the family holiday in Wales was going to have to be cancelled and we wouldn’t be seeing the cousins and the grandparents this summer, let alone the aunties and uncles. My parents live in France and my youngest sister in Northern Ireland, so getting everyone together every couple of years is something we all look forward to. Thing 1 is missing her friends and has lost motivation, and Thing 3 is not sleeping well and is having trouble focusing. He enjoys learning and the stimulation of the classroom, as well as being with his peers. Being stuck at home with his big sisters isn’t a lot of fun, he tells me.

My own meltdown was Tuesday. I couldn’t wake up, and spent the day feeling as if I was wading through treacle. I didn’t even pick up a crochet hook or a needle which, if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know is pretty unusual for me. I lay on the sofa, read a book, and napped through the afternoon before feeding the family things from the freezer for dinner. I’ve learned over the last twenty years or so of periodic depression that some days are bad days, and there’s often no rhyme or reason for it. I’m not in a period where the first thing I do when I wake up is do a mental check to see if I’m OK, thank heavens, but there’s still the odd downturn. I take Citalopram, like many other people like me, and that seems to keep me pretty level most of the time.

What about the rest of the week?

Luckily up days outnumbered down, and despite a few frosty mornings I’ve been able to get out walking every other day. I’ve been varying my route only slightly, by taking the odd different path, but mostly I’ve stuck to a wide semi-circle around the village which takes in fields, woods, a farm and – one day – the golf course. The pink flowers are coming into bloom now alongside the white and yellow, and one early morning I saw three hares. There are coot chicks on the ponds, and the sound of skylarks in one particular field on the stretch of Essex Way I cover is glorious.

Today we went on a bike ride round my usual route – all five of us! – and were lucky enough to run into friends. It was so good to have a conversation with other adults – albeit from a distance! The kids had enormous fun in the giant climbing oak on Friday too, when we dragged them out of their pits for a walk.

Things 2 and 3 – monkeys in a tree again

My sock fixation has continued, and I finished the pair that had me cursing last week because I wasn’t reading the pattern properly. They’re very pretty, and quite lacy – it’ll be a shame to put shoes over them!

Vappu socks – pattern by Claire Montgomerie in Inside Crochet #101, yarn Stylecraft Head over Heels in Sugarloaf

I’ve managed some sewing too. After last weekend’s organising of patterns and fabric, I was able to grab the kits I wanted and get straight on – apart from with the True Bias Shelby Dress, which I cut out and then discovered I didn’t have any interfacing! Annoying, as this was the one I really wanted to make!

Virtually everything else has been using jersey and other stretch fabrics, for which I bless my overlocker. The first thing was the Jump Up Suit by Alice and Co, which is yet another item in my collection of work appropriate pyjamas. I made this in a grey Ponte Roma fabric, and before cutting I took 6 inches off the legs (and another three when I hemmed it!) and lengthened the waist by a couple of centimetres which I then ended up taking out again. I CANNOT get the hang of blind hemming, so couldn’t do the pretty scalloped neckline, so after much swearing I ended up doing a rolled hem on the overlocker which still seems to work. I can see this being much worn…

I used scraps of jersey fabric to make the Watson bra by Cloth Habit – a toile, really, to practise new techniques and to check the fit. Apart from needing to pull in the elastic under the arms, it’s pretty much a perfect fit and the pattern instructions really do guide you through the process step by step. As I was working on smalls, I also whipped up a pair of Superhero Boxers by MBJM Patterns for my beloved, who was the only person in the house who didn’t have any handmade undies – he was sceptical but they fitted perfectly and he wants to know when the rest are coming…

Finally, I gave in and made some face coverings after the lovely Patrick Grant launched The Big Community Sew project – I used leftover fabric from my red quilt (which still isn’t bound) and from Thing 2’s shaggy pants, and some fat quarters from the stash. Luckily I also had some elastic, as that’s proving hard to source at the moment. I chose the McCalls face covering pattern as it looked pretty straighforward. I whipped up ten – not perfect but they’ll do the job.

I made another Greenstyle Centerfield top, using plain black jersey and a printed jersey I bought at the Knitting and Stitching Show a few years ago and have had in the stash. I bought it as I thought it had sheep on it, but it turns out to be alpacas so at least I’m on trend. This is a DREAM to sew and comes together in less than an hour’s sewing time. I chose the plain scoop neckline rather than a hood this time round, so it was superspeedy. And SO comfortable – particularly with the MBJM Patterns Four Seasons joggers that I used the rest of my black jersey on. I love MBJM patterns, they are so versatile – I made these in capri length with phone pockets, but you can also choose three other lengths, two waistbands, a faux drawstring and another pocket style.

Four Seasons Joggers and Centerfield Top

Finally, we have been lucky with the wildlife this week – I’ll leave you with our regular badger, and see you at the end of week nine.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

Jump! – Jilly Cooper

Home School – Charles Webb

Mrs Bradshaw’s Handbook – Terry Pratchett