55: You never forget your first Doctor

Regular readers of my ramblings have probably noticed that I am a happy little nerd (and proud of it). My kids are resigned to the fact that if I am left alone with the TV remote and my latest project they will come back to find me watching M*A*S*H, an eighties movie, Monty Python or – most likely – Doctor Who. Over the past eighteen months or so I have worked my way back through from Nine to Twelve, with a festive break to watch all the Christmas specials. Clara Oswald is still in situ as companion, so I have Bill Potts to go before Thirteen makes her appearance.

While I love the reboot, my first Doctor was Tom Baker – Four – who is still the longest serving incarnation of the Doctor (1974-1981). He is probably the most recognisable with that wonderful scarf and the mad hair. I must have been very young when I first started watching the series, as I was only 8 in 1981. My dad, as I’ve mentioned previously, is an enormous fan of sci-fi and fantasy, so I suspect the Doctor was regular viewing. He also watched Day of the Triffids (the theme tune was more terrifying than the show), Blake’s Seven, The Adventure Game, Now Get Out of That, The Great Egg Race, Quantum Leap and more, so at least I was brought up with a good all-round TV grounding.

The special effects – for the time – were pretty good and the aliens were often quite scary so the old ‘watching from behind a cushion’ trope has some basis in reality. The writers were excellent, and I enjoyed the Terrance Dicks books when I used to get them out of the library. It’s no real surprise that I love Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch as writers: they cut their teeth on Doctor Who.

Nine is my favourite of the rebooted Doctors, and his story arc with Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) broke my heart: he was so wonderfully mad and, I think, the most alien of the modern incarnations. The relationships with the companions have always been a huge part of the dynamic of the show. When Rose was replaced by Donna Noble – with Catherine Tate in the role – I stopped watching it quite so religiously: it was too soon after Tate’s own TV show where she played a series of very shouty characters for me to warm to her. However, on the rewatch, she was actually brilliant and the addition of the wonderful Bernard Cribbins as her dad was just genius. Clara Oswald is still too smug, but I rather liked the ‘fam’ that Thirteen collected and will be interested to see how John Bishop does in the new series.

I’d like to see more of Captain Jack Harkness – both back in the TARDIS and a return of Torchwood please. I even liked Miracle Day, though I don’t think anyone else did. I love the fact that Ianto had a shrine down in Cardiff Docks! As for villains….the Daleks and the Cybermen are the classics (it’s not Christmas without one or the other), but some of the Masters have been archvillains indeed. The insane John Simm and the sociopathic Michelle Gomez have been properly scary at times: the tricky Doctor/Master relationship has been drawn so well here that you have to have sympathy for them.

My fondness for the Time Lord has spilled over into my crafting habits: I made a Tardis gift for a Whovian friend when he and his husband moved house, and one of my favourite work skirts was made from a Doctor Who duvet cover. I have enough fabric scraps left from that to put secret nerdy pockets into a lot of outfits! The last cross stitch I designed was a TARDIS in a bottle which is on the to-do pile, and once I have finished the Hobbit Hole I am currently working on and another gift for a friend, I think it will be next on the list.

Who’s your favourite Doctor?

The rest of the week…

…has been quite peaceful, which has been a relief after March’s frenzied union activities. The weather has been chilly but mainly sunny, so on Tuesday morning I went for a long solo ramble through the fields. In typical April fashion, it snowed later in the day.

There have been a few swims – the water has been warmer than the air on most days, but it’s so good to be back in the water regularly. The coots are building their nests in the reeds, so soon we’ll be sharing the lake with the noisy chicks. I can’t wait!

I finished the first of the Tunisian socks and got started on the second, and have also sorted out all my sock patterns from the various boxes in the shed. I think they may be my favourite thing to crochet, you know. I can also now share the latest gift to be given this week – a 40th birthday gift for a colleague who loves video games. The pattern can be found here, and I used the same string art tutorial as last time to do the back.

I also sent this floral wreath one off along with the Suffragette sashes, all the way to Northern Ireland – Royal Mail at least still admit that NI is in the UK! If you look closely you can see the tiny initials of the house’s new inhabitants. The final piece is a hobbit hole, which you can find here.

This week’s cover image was taken on Easter Monday at St Andrew’s Churchyard, where we went to plant spring flowers on my beloved’s mother’s grave. You aren’t allowed to leave pots, artificial flowers or plastic anything on the graves but many of them have been planted with daffodils and other spring flowers. It’s one of the most beautiful churchyards I have seen, with higgledy-piggledy gravestones, a covering of primroses and violets, riddled with rabbit holes and surrounded by fields. The church itself dates from about 1330. There is a small Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery and memorial in the churchyard as well, with the village war memorial in front of the church.

Thing Two is nagging me to go on a bike ride, so I had better leave this here and do some parenting!

Same time, same place next week then?

Kirsty

What I’ve been reading:

The Silk House/The Botanist’s Daughter – Kayte Nunn

A Comedy of Terrors (Flavia Albia) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)

53: I like big books and I cannot lie

And small books, and middle sized books. Audio books, graphic novels, comic books. Fiction and non-fiction, picture books and wordy books. I just like books. The house is full of them: the two things I have far too many of, according to my beloved and the kids, are books and shoes.

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Some shelves are more organised than others, of course: Terry Pratchett (although he has started to roam), Charles de Lint, Phil Rickman, poetry, the shelf(ves) of shame waiting to be read, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, my childhood favourites, crime novels by author, Penguin classics. Leave me alone in your living room and I’ll hit the bookshelves first and then your music collection. Leave me alone for longer than the time it takes you to make a cup of coffee (instant is fine, thanks) and I’ll start reading. A question I have heard more times than I can count is, ‘what a lot of books! Have you read them all?’ and the answer is always ‘no, and that means there’s something new to discover’. I keep books I love, and if I know I’m not likely to read them again I pass them on to friends or send them to the charity shops so someone else can discover them.

I grew up surrounded by books and was rarely told what I could or couldn’t read, which means my taste is eclectic, to say the least. I love discovering new authors: I have devoured Tom Cox’s books – even the ones about golf – this year, having picked up one of his cat books in Oxfam. Being able to order new books in advance on Kindle and have them appear as if by magic on publication day is like having many Christmases and birthdays every year. The only problem is that often you get two or even three books appearing on the same day, and then you have to decide which to read first. That happened last week, with Ben Aaronovitch’s new Rivers of London novella What Abigail Did That Summer and Tom Cox’s Notebook arriving at once. Both were very different but equally delicious. Kindle is also wonderful in that if you really love a book and know that one of your friends will like it too you can buy them a copy as well. I subscribe to BookBub, who send me an email every day with daily 99p books that you can filter to the genres you want.

I am not precious about my books. I bend the corners down on paperbacks, and use the slipcovers as bookmarks on hardbacks. Books are meant to be read, not idolised: sometimes they are both. I have some books that have been read so many times they are quite literally falling apart. I possess a lot of bookmarks but can never find them. I love finding fellow fans of series: there are a lot of Discworld fans in museums, I have found, and then you know you have a new reading enabler who you can swap new finds with.

I disappear into books. Once I’m in the story, the kids know that if they want me to hear anything they need to get my attention first, or they have no chance. A good book, for me, is one that makes you want to go and find everything else that author has ever written and read that too, even if its about golf. Some books blaze across your imagination, burning in images that stay with you long after you’ve put the book down. Some authors excel at short stories, others at full length novels. Some do both: Stephen King is one, and Joanne Harris is another.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

When I was a Key Stage 1 teacher I loved the moment when a child suddenly clicked with reading, and started to work their way through books for pleasure and not for phonics. Some children needed more help than others: one little boy wasn’t interested in the Oxford Reading Tree so I lent him my own book of children’s Arthurian legends because he was obsessed with King Arthur. He started reading them with his mum, and by the final story he was unstoppable and reading independently. I loved story time at the end of the day, and when I had the same class again in year 3 we read a chapter a day before home time. I read to the children nightly, in the same way that I was read to by my parents, and read many of the same books to them as I had as a child. I can’t bear to part with these childhood treasures, even now.

You can learn to do pretty much anything from books, too: over the years I have taught myself to crochet, to (sort of) knit, to sew, to quilt. When I was growing up my Dad’s household manual was the Reader’s Digest Repair Manual (I believe he still has it) and when anything broke he would refer to this bible. I was overjoyed to find a copy of the Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Sewing the other week, and then I tracked down the Guide to Needlework on Amazon. I may never need all these techniques – I can’t see myself doing bobbin lace or tatting, for example, but I’ll know exactly where to look if I decide I want to give them a try. A colleague asked me (as I carried my treasure off in triumph) how many sewing books I had. I don’t know, but I did organise them by craft a few weeks ago so at least I can find them when I need to!

I like to crochet or cross stitch and listen to audio books at the same time: that’s multitasking at its best. My book is the last thing I put down at night: sometimes I wake myself up when the book falls out of my hand. My commute is pure pleasure as long as I have a seat: a Central Line delay? No problem, there’s time for an extra chapter. If I have a rough morning at work, you can find me and my Kindle in KFC – the ultimate lunchtime cure-all.

So if you need me, I’ll be reading….

…and/or making stuff

This week I have handed over a handmade gift to a friend who’s just moved house, combining her family with her mother-in-law and taking on a renovation project. 3 adults, 2 kids and 3 hounds! I designed this one, using an alphabet from Lord Libidan and DMC Coloris thread. I’m working on two other gifts as well, which should be finished and sent off soon!

The Tunisian sock is coming on nicely, and is starting to look a bit more socky, which is reassuring! I like this stitch as it’s really easy to count the rows! The fabric has a more knitted look than normal crochet, so these will be stretchier, I hope.

This week’s cover photo is the museum fox sunning herself outside my office window – when we lifted the containers this week we discovered five cubs, which we think she’s found a new earth for. She’s so confident: the grounds are her territory, and since the building is closed she must feel very safe.

So that’s it from me for the week! Looking forward to the lake reopening tomorrow and getting back in the water and to seeing more than one friend at once as restrictions start to lift.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Cold Case/Flashpoint (Carlotta Carlyle) – Linda Barnes

London Particular (BBC Radio Drama) – Nick Perry (Audible)

What Abigail Did That Summer – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

Week fifty two: that was the year that was…

Week 52! A whole year since I sat down at this computer and started to keep a diary of what we all thought would be a 12 week lockdown, by which time the pesky virus would have been sent packing: my first post, introducing the gang, was on 20 March 2020.

Instead, the kids have been in school for less than a term, and we have all become proficient (ha!) at fractions and angles if not SPAG. I have had half a year on furlough,which was – quite honestly – wonderful. My work mates have seen more of my living room than I ever expected, without them even setting foot over the doorstep. My cats and kids have meeting-bombed me literally hundreds of times. I have walked miles and miles around the village and seen the seasons change in close up. We have all forgotten what people look like when they are standing up, but on the other hand I am reminded on a daily basis that even scattered all across London I am part of a brilliant team of people. My beloved has transformed the garden. I’ve swum in icy water – voluntarily! Face masks have become a fashion statement and I’m sure sales of eye make up have rocketed while lip gloss is in freefall. It’s definitely been an interesting year.

On the flip side: many of us haven’t seen family for a very long time. I missed Irish sister’s 40th birthday, my niece’s confirmation, my dad’s 80th birthday, our family holiday in Wales, long lunches and chatty dinners with my girlfriends, cocktails and culture afternoons with my best friend, live music, spontaneous trips out with the kids, days out with my sister, post-work ‘debriefs’, visiting schools and seeing visitors in the museum. Organising the school run has been a military operation – hats off to the poor headteachers who have to manage hundreds of children instead of three!

But we are safe, and the vaccine is being rolled out so maybe the end is in sight: my beloved is old (oh OK, over 50) so his vaccine notification came through this week. One sister has had hers, my parents have finally managed to book theirs in as well. We are doing rapid antigen tests twice a week as part of community testing: it’s not a lot of fun, but there we are.

I started the year with a to-do list of things I wanted to achieve – and that was even before they furloughed us in April. Here it is:

Purple jacket (a 1950s design that the sleeves wouldn’t work on, so I gave up in a huff and its been hanging from the curtain rail for about four years)
Crochet diploma
Say Something In Welsh course
Coast ripple blanket (Attic24 pattern)
Long waistcoat
Attic window quilt (that I cut out when I only had one child)
Mini quilt (er, ditto)
Seurat cross stitch – at least I only started this last year!
Couch to 5k (again)
Spring clean the shed, evicting the winter spiders…and being realistic about what I will actually use in my stash, then donating the rest

How much did I achieve?

The purple jacket was finished, and now I just need somewhere to wear it.
Crochet diploma is ongoing – I have done the first seven modules and then put it down to do some actual crocheting
SSIW: no, but I did finish the Duolingo Welsh course and am on a 515 day streak
The blanket adorns our bed and is huge and cosy
The long waistcoat got frogged and the yarn got turned into a bishop sleeved cardigan instead, which I love
The Attic Window quilt – and another one in the same design – are on Thing Two and Three’s beds, and there are several other quilts of various sizes
Finished! Wonky but cute. I will find somewhere to put it one day
Seurat cross stitch – on hold while I do lots of smaller stitches.
Couch to 5k. Got to week 4 (twice) and damaged my Achilles tendon both times. Still walking though
The shed was spring cleaned, the spiders were evicted, a lot of stash got given away….but I seem to have collected more so I’ll have to do the whole thing again this year.

I also made a lot of clothes, did a lot of smaller cross stitches and crochet projects, read an awful lot of books, did a couple of online drawing courses, and have tried to put myself out of my comfort zone sometimes. I have applied for a job share (didn’t get it), to be a school governor (runner up) and for a Arts Council grant (find out next month – third time lucky?).

I wrote a lot on this blog. Some people read it and they liked it, and then some more people read it, and some people agreed with me and shared their own experiences. There have been a couple of posts that have really struck a chord with people: this one on food poverty, this one on mental health and last week’s one on violence against women. Thank you to those who shared them and commented on them on FB and LinkedIn. It’s always good to know that I’m not shouting into the void!

I have really loved writing just for the joy of it and would like to do more, so I won’t be giving up quite yet: the process is a good way to mark the weeks, and to take a sideways look at life as a working mum, a butterfly crafter, and a human being just trying to get along in the 21st century. I just need to find a new way of titling each week: Year 2, Week 1, perhaps?

That was the week I made…

I felt last week that to finish with the usual crafty round up would be to diminish the post: it needed to stand alone as what I wanted to say was too important*. To knock the sharp edges off a stark statement with something cosy felt wrong, somehow, even though I’d done it before. I think I was just too bloody angry. I’m still angry, in fact, especially after a few conversations I have had this week.

(*That sounds remarkably pretentious, I know, but as I’ve said before – it’s my blog and I can do what I want!)

I finished the ‘Galaxy in a Bottle’ cross stitch and been working on a couple of smaller pieces as part of the year of handmade gifts – one of them I designed myself, the other is an Etsy pattern, but both are housewarming gifts that I’ll share at some point. The Tunisian sock is coming on slowly on my journeys to work: I had to frog about 6cm of the leg when I realised I should have turned it after the cuff so it folded the right way. The self-striping yarn is Paintbox Sock Yarn in the rainbow colourway.

I made a couple of ‘Votes for Women’ sashes for Irish sister’s living history interpretation company, using this very clear tutorial by Susannah French.

The nature photos this week are by Thing Two, who went for a walk with her friend yesterday in a local woodland reserve and ‘took some photos for your blog, mummy’. 64 of them…

So there we are! Normal service resumed. Let’s give ourselves a massive pat on the back and a celebratory schooner of sherry for surviving a mad year all round.

Same time, same place next week?

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Heart of the World/Steel Guitar/Snapshot (Carlotta Carlyle) – Linda Barnes

What Abigail Did Last Summer – Ben Aaronovitch

Notebook – Tom Cox

The Grove of the Caesars (Flavia Albia) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)

Week fifty: Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus

As a Welsh transplant to the wilds of Essex, St David’s Day for me is always a day of hiraeth – I love my little bit of Essex, I love London but for me ‘home’ is Wales and always will be.

…it means a deep sense of longing, a yearning for that which has past, a sense of homesickness tinged with grief or sorrow over the lost or departed. One attempt to describe hiraeth in English says that it is “a longing to be where your spirit lives.” This description makes some sense out of the combination of words that describe this feeling. The place where your spirit feels most at home may be a physical location that you can return to at any time, or it may be more nostalgic of a home, not attached to a place, but a time from the past that you can only return to by revisiting old memories. Maybe your spirits home could even be neither of the above, one from which you are not only separated by space
https://www.felinfach.com/blogs/blog/hiraeth

There’s a deep sense of homecoming as you cross the Severn – preferably via the ‘old’ bridge, which in Wales is a measure of how bad the weather is. You know it’s windy when they close the bridge to lorries and high sided vehicles, and really windy when they close it to everyone. This sketch is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at the experience, but it’s not far from the mark! Even the Things know that the Severn Bridge means we’re ‘nearly there’, although no words can describe Thing Three’s disappointment at not being able to see ‘the Whales’ when he was about three and London sister and I took them home for a weekend.

Once you’re over the bridge, of course, you have the big decision: ‘over the top’, which takes you down via Devauden and up over the ridge between the Usk and Wye Valleys, with a final sweep down the long hill through Llansoy and into Raglan, or down through the Wye Valley itself, through Tintern and Redbrook before you hit Monmouth over the Wye Bridge. The M48/M4/A449 route never enters the discussion: why would you take the motorways when you have the Usk and Wye to guide you home?

When I was a child in Cardiff, St David’s Day meant dressing up in Welsh costume and wearing a daffodil with its stem wrapped in damp kitchen roll and tinfoil. There would be an Eisteddfod – a Welsh festival where competitions are held in music, poetry, drama, and art – in the morning and then we’d have a half day. In Raglan we had the Eisteddfod but not the half day, which seemed a bit unfair!

Welsh lady costume in the 1970s. London sister is on the right in the second pic.

Now I’m a grown up and living in Essex I have to make do with buying myself daffodils, though last year my beloved planted loads of bulbs in the garden which are just coming out. We had leeks with our dinner too.

I waited till the weekend to make Welshcakes, as they are delicious but time-consuming. My sister bought me a little bakestone for my birthday a few years back, which means I can cook them properly – any heavy based frying pan will do, but it’s just not the same. My mum always made these cakes, with a last giant one at the end made of the scraps rolled out and that one was Dad’s. They are best sprinkled with sugar hot off the griddle: my beloved has been known to butter his but he’s a bit odd sometimes. I still use my mum’s recipe, which I am going to share here so you can make your own.

Welshcakes

8oz self-raising flour (or 8z plain flour with half a teaspoon of baking powder)
1/2 tsp mixed spice (I use more, I like ’em spicy – yesterday I used 1/2 tsp mixed spice and 1/2 tsp cinnamon)
2oz lard
2oz butter (I use Stork these days for baking)
3oz currants/mixed dried fruit (not glace cherries, you heathens.)
3oz caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
small amount of milk if needed

Rub in the the fat and flour. Add the dry ingredients and mix. Add the wet ingredients and mix into a dough. Form it into a large ball and knead it a bit but not too much. Stick it in the fridge for twenty minutes.

Roll out your dough – not too thin, you’re not making biscuits here. Cut out using whatever cutters you have handy. Preheat your bakestone/griddle/heavy based frying pan and melt some butter or add some oil. Cook gently – if you cook it too fast you’ll have a burned outside and a raw middle. Like pancakes, it’s trial and error here.

Put your cooked cakes on a wire rack and sprinkle sugar on them. Don’t forget to quality test them as you go. You’ll know you’ve done it right if they don’t have time to cool down.

For a Christmassy version I use cinnamon instead of the mixed spice, fresh orange peel and dried cranberries.

This week my beloved has been looking at houses in Wales, as he’s been watching Escape to the Country again. Although he’s Essex born and bred, his mum’s first husband was Welsh, his aunt also lives in Wales, and his cousins do too. I would LOVE to move back, but in this case I am being the voice of reason and saying things like ‘yes, but what would we do for a living?’ He says I can be a freelance consultant sort of person and every time he shows me a house he lets me pick a studio…. maybe it’ll happen!

Back to my ‘real’ life

This week my blog post on reimagining the handling collection at the Museum was published: this is the first in a two-parter, and my colleague has written part two on what’s happened to all the things we aren’t keeping. I trained up this week on how to update the collections management system, which means I have no excuse not to do the technical side of the project. Luckily there’s a batch option otherwise it’s going to take me years.

I’ve also had a lot of meetings: some have been in my role as a union rep, supporting colleagues who are impacted by the restructuring process in the museum. They have all impressed me with their passion for not only their roles but also for the conservation work of the museum. Working at one of the smaller sites means I don’t often have contact with other departments, so I’m gaining a much wider view of the museum’s work and also getting to meet (if only virtually) some people who really do espouse the values the museum wants from us: collaboration, generosity, integrity. A couple of them have even made me want to cheer during the meetings, which so far I have resisted.

Still not enough to stop the kids talking to me

I finished my socks during a meeting where I had a ‘watching brief’, and I’ve been working on the Galaxy in a Bottle – So. Many. Black. Stitches. It’s looking lovely and I like that you can still see the sparkly fabric through the stitching. I don’t think I’m going to be able to frame it in a hoop, sadly, but this may the time to experiment with framing on stretcher bars.

February is finished on the temperature tree – you can see how warm most of the month has been by all the green leaves. Winter chill seems to have returned with a vengeance though, so March might look very different.

Next up this week is the Tunisian crochet socks, as I have finally found the tension. They’ll be my commute project as I get to go to the office twice this week! The kids are also going back to school in what feels like a highly-organised operation by the teachers. I think they are looking forward to it, and I know I am.

Today I am going to start making this suffragette sash for the Ireland sister. I can’t remember the last time I did any fabric painting so this should be fun!

So that’s been my week! Cross your fingers that the return to school goes well, and I’ll see you same time, same place next week.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Hardware/The Big Dig/Deep Pockets (Carlotta Carlyle) – Linda Barnes

Week forty nine: is there anything else?

Before this week’s reflections on the art of successful parenting (those who know me, feel free to laugh) I’d like to say thank you to everyone who read, shared, and responded to last week’s ramble. More than 320 people have seen the post, which is HUGE for me. I’m glad I shared it, and didn’t delete the draft despite my doubts.

Normal service can resume….

Stroganoffgate and other stories

Once upon a time, I was a brand new mum and wanted to do everything right, which of course included weaning. I cooked stuff and pureed it: sweet potatoes, butternut squash, all mushed through a sieve with baby milk. I followed Annabel Karmel’s tips. I froze things in ice cube trays. I bought organic when I bought readymade food. I didn’t add salt to anything. It became yet another thing to beat myself up about: Thing One didn’t like the pureed veg. She liked – mostly – to eat the Radio Times. Her first birthday photos show her with a face covered in soil from one of the pots in the garden. She would wolf down Heinz baby cauliflower cheese one week, then decide I was trying to poison her the next.

So, with Thing Two I didn’t bother with the pureed veg and went straight to the jars, and she ate pretty much everything. She was an adventurous eater and her favourite food was always someone else’s – she is that child peering beadily at you in a restaurant, always wanting to try your food. She took to Chinese and Indian far quicker than the other two, and her favourite condiment is sweet chilli sauce which, she tells me, goes with everything. How times change: she has now decided she doesn’t like jacket potatoes or sausages, unless it’s a battered one from the chip shop.

By the time Thing Three turned up I’d had enough, and he pretty much ate what we did.

Because of my beloved’s shift pattern we’d got into a habit where I fed the kids early. We’d eat when he got home, which meant I was doing two different meals several nights a week: working full time as well meant this got quite wearing.

It was high time, I declared, that we all ate the same thing. I could cook it early and then the kids could have theirs and we could eat later! There would be no alternative meals,! My children would eat what was put in front of them or they would go hungry!

Thing Three. Spoons were a mystery to him.

Man (or woman) makes plans and god laughs, as some wise person once said.

I decided (wrongly, as it turned out) that this would be an excellent time to try some delicious new recipes, starting with a pork stroganoff. I left out the mustard, I made sure it wasn’t spicy, and I carefully picked the mushrooms out of the kids’ portions. It was delicious. You would have thought that I’d put a plate of live snails in front of them: Thing One went to bed rather than eat anything on her plate. Thing Two ate the rice but wouldn’t eat the stroganoff or any rice that had sauce on. Thing Three – once his sisters stopped making a fuss – ate the lot. I gave up on new recipes as it was just too stressful.

You’d think that over the years things would have got easier, and they’d try more things. To be fair, they are improving: this week we have had two new meals. These Indian koftas were a resounding success, and the sesame broccoli from this recipe was a revelation. They’ll definitely be on the rotation from now on, and I’ll be trying some more new things out on them too.

So, here are my top tips for feeding your kids of any age:

Invest in a couple of metres of wipe-clean tablecloth fabric to go under the high chair. It’s amazing how far a spoonful of peas can travel. Don’t even talk to me about rice.
Don’t beat yourself up if you haven’t got time to cook from scratch everyday. Fish fingers were invented for a reason. So were baby food jars.
Get one of those bibs that go on like a straitjacket. You’ll thank me when you’re not trying to get tomato based foods out of the elbows of the babygro. Get one for yourself too.
Mr Tumble Dryer is your friend during weaning and potty training.
Disguising food is fine. My mum grated liver in the mouli-grater for years and put it in the gravy. Last week I grated mushrooms into the spag bol and none of them noticed.
Lying is also fine: “No, Thing One, of course I took your bit out before I added the spices to the chilli.” My mum fed London sister boiled bacon while the rest of us had gammon, and ‘long-eared rodent stew’ was quite popular despite the fact that we had a pet rabbit.
Ignore the people who say their child eats everything. One day they won’t. Try not to snigger till they’re out of earshot.
Apparently it can take up to twenty tries to get a child to eat something new. Maybe spread those tastes out a bit and don’t try it all at once.
Bananas stain more than you think they would. Trust me.
‘Green eggs and ham’ is a great story but won’t help you convince your kids to eat anything.

Back on your heads, lads

This week I have been back in the office twice, and it’s been bliss: the tubes in haven’t been too busy and I have half the foot of the second sock done thanks to the commute. I’m still swatching for Tunisian crochet – the pattern calls for 3.5mm and so far I’ve tried 3.5, 4, 4.5 and 5mm hooks and they’ve all come up too small. 5.5mm is looking good though, so I live in hope.

I’m able at last to share the latest instalment in the year of handmade gifts: a cross stitch I designed and made for my line manager. The lockdown birthday culture at the museum is lovely! This is one of her frequent sayings, worked up in DMC variegated threads on 14 count black aida.

Yesterday my beloved and I sorted through his collection of Royal Mail stamp cards, which rather than get rid of we’re going to use – especially the Christmas ones. There are some lovely artworks here – my favourites are the springtime ones by Andy Goldsworthy. and the wintertime hare.

I couldn’t resist this one, either – any excuse for a Monty Python reference! I’m not even sorry….

Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite
held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine
providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your
king!
Dennis: Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’
swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power
derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic
ceremony!

So that’s been my week: cooking, crochet, cross stitch, commuting! This week’s cover image is the snow moon seen from North Weald Common early on Friday morning. Spring is on the way – the song thrushes are singing their little heads off, the doves are beating each other up on the lawn and the male blackbirds are running off their rivals.

Next week is week 50 – it seems pretty unbelievable that we’ve been in various phases of lockdown for almost a year! Hopefully the kids will be back at school next week (well, I’m hoping so at least!) and the ‘roadmap’ back to normal is realistic. Fingers crossed!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Inspector Hobbes and the Gold Diggers/Inspector Hobbes and the Bones – Wilkie Martin

A Capitol Death (Flavia Albia) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)

Week forty eight: but my mind is broken, not my leg

When I was 29 I thought I had my life in order: I was a home owner, I had a settled relationship and I had a job I loved.

Also when I was 29, I found myself single and looking for somewhere to live. It was after viewing yet another dingy bedsit (sorry, ‘studio flat’) in East London that I found myself on Mile End station, standing at the end of the platform where the wall went all the way to the edge and the driver wouldn’t have time to see me. I stood there for a long, long time, staring at the track, and eventually a kind person came and talked to me and put me on a train instead of under one. Without the kindness of that stranger I would, in all probability, not be here.

That moment should have been the one where I recognised I needed some help, but as I had always seen myself as a bit of a Tigger – when I hit the ground I bounced. I put it down to viewing dingy bedsits, decided to stay in Epping, and carried on. I found a flat and moved in. The day after I moved in, someone phoned to check in on me. I opened my mouth and started to cry, and couldn’t stop. Even then, I didn’t go and get help.

I decided I would be brave and grown up and do Christmas on my own, as it felt like an admission of failure to go home. It wasn’t until I met my best friend for lunch in London and she went straight home and phoned my mother that things started to move: my dad came and got me and took me home for Christmas. My mum found me sobbing over the sellotape, phoned the doctor I’d known for many years and marched me off to see her. I was diagnosed with depression. 2003 is known to me and my friends as ‘Kirsty’s lost year’: I made very questionable decisions, I cooked a lot but ate nothing, I drank far too much (not a good idea with anti-depressants), I slept little. My beloved Grandad Bill died that year, which is one of the few things I remember. I made some new friends, who took me under their collective wing and put up with the fact that I was so far away with the fairies that Tinkerbell was my next door neighbour. My best friend had a baby and made me godmother, despite me being so patently unsuitable for the job at the time. It was a year of feeling like a ghost in my own life

In late 2003 I started to pull myself back together: I got a second job, in a pub, which meant I wasn’t drinking or staying home alone. I moved to another flat and met the man who would become my beloved, and slowly I started to feel ‘normal’ again. I came off the antidepressants after a couple of false starts, and a couple of years later Thing One arrived. I was terrified: labour had been frightening, long and painful as she was lying on my sciatic nerve. An aggressive healthcare assistant kept telling me I was breastfeeding wrong: I was failing at parenting after less than a day! They took my baby away as she kept breathing too fast and brought her back several hours later without a lot of explanation. The expectation is that your baby will arrive, you will fall instantly in love and motherhood will kick in instinctively – but it doesn’t. It wasn’t too long before that I hadn’t been able to take care of myself, and now there was a baby?

I went back to work when she was five and a half months old, to find I had a new line manager who I barely knew (he was lovely, but that shouldn’t have happened while I was on mat leave: this was before ‘keeping in touch’ days). I worked full time and I was exhausted. I felt guilty for going back to work but we had to eat and pay rent, didn’t we? She had terrible colic, so evenings were horrendous and for six nights out of seven I was on my own with her till 8pm as my beloved was either working or with the older children at his mother’s. At a couple of months old she stopped putting on weight, which was another worry.

I was desperately afraid I’d hurt her, but I had no one to talk to about whether this feeling was normal or not (it wasn’t). I loved my baby so much that sometimes just looking at her made me cry, but I was terrified of what I might do because I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t tell anyone though, in case they thought there was something wrong with me and took her away.

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: It is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’
C.S. Lewis, author

There was a baby boom that year, so her nine month check was delayed. When it eventually came round the health visitor took one look at me, said we’d deal with the baby next time, and made a doctor’s appointment for me on the spot. I was diagnosed with post-natal depression, signed off work, and put back on the tablets – this time with some counselling support, which took the form of cognitive behaviour therapy and which helped me see that I wasn’t a total failure. My London sister became my lifeline, as she was close enough to help – my parents were settled in France by then. Luckily her work brought her to the east side of London regularly. I don’t know what I would have done without her appearing and doing the aunty thing.

When the PND kicked in with Thing 2 I recognised what was happening and marched myself off to the doctor as soon as I started feeling odd. With Thing 3, I took up exercise and tried to prevent the slide, which mostly worked as long as I kept running.

This time round, I have been on the anti-depressants since 2014: a friend was killed in an accident, and I was heartbroken. Grieving so far away from their family and our mutual friends was hard. I went to Cornwall to scatter their ashes, foolishly thinking that that would give me ‘closure’ and I’d be fine afterwards, and…I wasn’t.

I don’t see the tablets as a cure, but they give me the time and the headspace to be able to see a way through each day. There are bad days still, when I feel as if I am wading through treacle and the world is a long way away. They are becoming further and further apart, which is a blessing, and I have to say that having six months on furlough last year made a huge difference to my mental state. I keep walking, and I keep making things, and I have friends who also have varying forms of depression and anxiety. We support each other and stage the odd intervention when we see things aren’t right.

On Thursday I took Thing One to the Emotional Health and Wellbeing Service for an assessment. We have been there before, when her anxiety first started in primary school after being bullied. We self-referred last September and pressure on the service is so high that it took this long to be seen, but the keyworker she’s been assigned was wonderful, and will be putting a care plan in place for her. She told me before half term that she just wants to go back to school: the routine, her friends, clear expectations. It’s hard enough being a 14 year old girl without a global pandemic preventing you from seeing your friends.

It’s a shame that this service stops when they are in their early twenties. Getting help after that becomes much more difficult, only really kicking in after a crisis and then anti-psychotics seem to be the default setting rather than care. This service is so underfunded, and a lot of responsibility is devolved to the schools who are also not equipped to cope with the levels of mental health issues being seen in pre-teens and teenagers at the moment. I’m pleased that Thing One feels she can tell me anything, and I hope that all my children (both natural and the timeshare teenagers) feel the same. I hope that my adult friends can too.

I’m going to break out into cliche here: if your leg was broken no one would tell you to pull yourself together, and it’s past time we had the same attitude to your heart and your mind. I was lucky to have friends who saw through the fragile bravado and the manic socialising, but not everyone – especially in this time of isolation – has support like that.

Postscript…

I started writing this on Friday, while I was reflecting on Thing One’s visit to EHWS, and over the past couple of days I’ve thought several times about deleting it. Is it too much? Have I been too honest? Do my friends, family and colleagues need to know this about me? There are things here that I have never spoken aloud, for example. Then I re-read the last paragraph above and realised that to delete it would be to become guilty of hiding my own mental health issues, when the point of the post was to talk about depression and anxiety openly.

So, the post will stand and I will stand by it. This is me: not brave, because it should not take courage to speak when you’re ill, it should be normal.

The fun stuff

I finished my sock at last! Now to do the other one. I do love crocheting socks, and as I’ll be back in the office and on trains twice a week for a while these are a great portable project. In one of my magazines there was a supplement about Tunisian crochet and it had a sock pattern, so I’ll give that a go soon too.

There’s been a lot of cross stitch: here’s the temperature tree update, and I have been working on a Happy Sloth design of a galaxy in a bottle. I’ve also been frankenpatterning (combining two patterns to make a new one) as I wanted something particular but couldn’t find it. More on that later!

On Friday we had a family Zoom call: my lovely dad was 80 and we couldn’t be with him. Obviously as a teenager I was convinced both my parents were trying to ruin my life, but they were pretty cool really. Without my dad I wouldn’t still be able to say the formula for solving quadratic equations on demand or my times tables. I would have no clue about the need for balance and options in my life. I wouldn’t know how to annoy my kids by standing in front of the TV, and as I get older I appreciate his afternoon nap habit more and more – even at 47 he’s a role model! I blame my parents for my love of books, and Dad specifically for the science fiction and fantasy habit. Happy birthday Dad – I love you!

So that’s been my week! Normal service (well, as far as that goes) will resume next week.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Inspector Hobbes and the Blood/Inspector Hobbes and the Curse – Wilkie Martin

A Capitol Death (Flavia Albia) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)

Week forty six: can you lick the end of your nose?

While scrolling through my Facebook memories this morning a post popped up from 2015 which just said ‘Terrible urge to learn to crochet’. I remember waking up that day and my fingers were actually twitching with the need to learn something new, to create something tangible and practical. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t making other things – I was dressmaking by then, and cross stitch was always in the background, but I am the very definition of a life-long learner. Combine this with creativity and curiosity and what you get is – well – me.

Luckily, I had yarn from my knitting phase and crochet hooks from the last time I’d tried to learn from my beloved’s mother, so with the help of YouTube and my crafty library I was able to get on with it. Over the next few days Facebook will show me my early progress: wonky granny squares, double crochet which gains and loses stitches at the end of every row, and – finally – a recognisable square. Friends were free with helpful advice – the craft community usually is, probably as we love to see other people getting joy from the same things we do – and I quickly became hooked (if you’ll pardon the pun). Generally I have crochet with me at all times: emergency yarn under my desk at work, a sock or an amigurumi in progress on the commute, and a large home project like a blanket. It’s very calming to be able to sit, to make repetitive actions, and the tactile nature of yarn makes it a sensory process too. If you’re happy using basic yarns it can be a relatively cheap hobby, too, but it never stops there.

I have an urge now to learn something new. I want to learn to draw. Once (in 1985) I got a B- from Mrs Allan the art teacher for my observational pencil drawing of my mum’s avocado plant, but that has always remained the pinnacle of my artistic achievement.

I don’t want to draw portraits, though I wouldn’t mind being able to draw a recognisable cat. I want to draw flowers and trees, houses and streets, and to be able to feel confident enough to do this whenever and wherever I want. I love seeing urban sketching on Instagram by people like the Shoreditch Sketcher and MaltzCreative, and two of my cousins are producing gorgeous work (Colour Confusions and ElliesPad – check them out!). I love Michael Powell‘s quirky paintings. I want to be able to see an interesting doorway or a window, and to be able to whip out a sketchbook and render it on the page.

So that’s my next mission: learn to draw. I have books (so many books!) and I signed up to Craftsy a while ago when they had an offer. There’s a number of ‘learn to’ videos on there, and it’s ridiculous to say I don’t have the patience – what I need to develop is the discipline to practise.

Play for mental health

Making and creating are play activities for me. I have attended a couple of really interesting webinars over Zoom this week about the importance of play for children’s mental health, particularly during the current pandemic, and the challenges of ensuring that children have access to play opportunities at a time when government focus is on ‘lost’ learning.

There is a lack of understanding in the current ‘knowledge-based’ curriculum that play is learning: it helps people (not just children!) to build relationships, to solve problems, to take risks, to have autonomy over their actions, to self-regulate their emotions, to make decisions, to make sense of the world around them. It doesn’t have to be structured play or play with a specific, adult-generated learning outcome. Playing with children enables us as adults to recall our playful selves, to find moments of joy in watching children make discoveries, to remember our own childhood. Sometimes its really hard to do this when you’re an adult.

One of the presenters, Sheba Gittens (an activist/artivist in Pittsburgh) talked about the need to forget that anyone might be watching you and give in to moments of joy – face pulling, laughing for the sheer joy of it, moving your body. She suggested that perhaps children’s ability to do all these things without self-consciousness is actually our default state of being, and we become so weighted down with other people’s expectations of ‘proper’ behaviour that we lose those abilities. I’ve certainly never been encouraged to try and lick the end of my own nose in a meeting before, or to pull a lot of funny faces. I’m usually trying to stop myself rolling my eyes…

When I teach a session called ‘The Importance of Play’ to GCSE/A-level and undergrads I ask them to define play, to tell me when children stop ‘playing’ and what activities they do themselves that they think are playful. It’s quite disheartening (for me and their teachers!) to hear the narrow definitions they have for play, and that they think children stop playing when they start school and ‘start learning’. Once I can get them to think of play as an activity that they do because they enjoy it, they open their thinking a bit more: I have found, also, that by starting the session with a play activity they are far more inclined to come out of the shadow of their hoodies and share their ideas. The best sessions are the ones where people talk to you, and ask questions, and think – the number of teachers who have apologised for their students interacting with me amazes me. I’d much rather they talked to me than looked at me in silence.

Reach for the stars

The lovely people at CPRE invited me to create a craft activity to support their annual star count, which this year takes place between 6 and 14 February (that’s now!). The focus of the count is the number of stars that can be seen within the constellation of Orion, which reminded me of the chapter in one of my favourite children’s books where a baby barn owl meets an astronomer. Here‘s what I came up with – why not have a go at the Star Count and making your own Orion? For those of you doing home learning, it supports fine motor skills (threading and sewing), science (light pollution), art, and English.

That’s it from me this week – I have a giant blanket hoodie to make and some mending to do, so I probably ought to get on with it. See you at the end of week 47.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Ring the Hill – Tom Cox

Close Encounters of the Purred Kind – Tom Cox

The Night Hawks (Ruth Galloway) – Elly Griffiths

Spoils of the Dead (Liam Campbell) – Dana Stabenow

Tate: Sketch Club Urban Drawing – Phil Dean

Week forty four: I think I need a hobby

Last week my walking buddy Jill said ‘I think I need a hobby!’ I am probably the last person you should ever say that to, as you know, but I limited myself to just the one suggestion and that was to take up cross stitch. It’s pretty straightforward: if you can count and thread a needle (and there’s gadgets to help with that) you have the basic skills to take up cross stitch. OK, OK, I know cross stitch for me was a gateway craft which has led to all sorts of other things – up to and including a shed – but I’m assured by some other people that it is possible to have just the one hobby. No, really, it is. Stop laughing!

As I have mentioned before, my adventures in cross stitching started when I couldn’t find a Valentine card for a boyfriend back when I was 21, and it all got a bit out of hand after that. I spotted a design in a magazine and decided it couldn’t really be that hard, so I took myself off to B’s Hive in Monmouth (a much missed town feature as I discovered earlier this week when I posted an image on Facebook of a paper bag from the shop). I bought fabric, needles and floss with the help of one of their very knowledgeable staff, and became hooked pretty quickly. Those were the days before internet shopping – 1995, in fact – and these bricks and mortar shops were treasure troves of yarn, fabrics, beads and buttons. B’s Hive even had a tiny one-table cafe. The boyfriend didn’t last, but the hobby did.

A B’s Hive bag which held some navy 14-count aida. From the days before 01 and 6 figure phone numbers in Monmouth!

And now I have been stitching for 26 years, and have my own trove (well, shed) of fabrics, floss, beads, buttons, hoops, frames and all the other things a crafter accumulates over the years. You don’t really need all the bells and whistles, of course, but things mount up.

So here, for anyone who might be thinking of taking up cross stitching, is all you really need* to be getting on with it:

Something to stitch. This could be a kit, of which there are millions out there to choose from, or it could be a pattern. I’d suggest a kit to start with, as they come with the fabric and floss that you need, a needle, and sometimes a hoop that you can use as a display frame when you have finished using it to hold your WIP (work in progress). Black Sheep Wools or LoveCrafts are good sources of quality kits for beginners with good instructions. There are a lot of cheap kits on Amazon, of course, but many are from Chinese sellers and the instructions may not be as helpful as you’d like. You could also choose a chart to start from – either a paper chart from a shop or website, or from a magazine or book, or if you’re a nerd like me you’ll find designs from every fandom and for every level of ability on Etsy. If you choose to start with a chart, you’ll need to buy all the other bits to go with it, like….
Fabric. ‘Proper’ cross stitch fabric is a woven grid with holes in so you know where to put your needle to make each cross. I usually use aida, which comes in a range of colours and sizes. The ‘count’ of the fabric refers to the number of holes per inch – I like to work on 18 count aida but for a beginner I’d recommend a 14 count. This is the same fabric that many people encountered in school, with much larger holes – usually a 6 count binca for young children. You’ll also see evenweave, linen, jobelan and more – but the key thing is that they all have an even grid of holes. Aida fabrics are quite starchy, which helps keep your stitches nice and even. With the higher count fabric – 28 or 32, for example, you’ll usually work over two threads otherwise your design will be tiny.
Something to hold your work. Some people like hoops for all their projects, others prefer to work ‘in hand’. For small projects like cross stitched cards I like to use a hoop (they come in a range of sizes) that’s a bit bigger than the design I’m working on, as I find that moving the hoop around can crush the stitches. For larger projects I use the Elbesee easy clip frames which also come in a range of sizes. You don’t need them, but you can buy a seat stand or a floor stand to hold these, which keeps your hands free for stitching. There are lots of tutorials on YouTube on how to mount fabric in hoops and frames.
Needles. I use size 24 or size 26 which you can buy in packs from any needlework supplier, and these are usually the ones that come in kits. Gold plated needles are nice, but I find the plating comes off easily and then they catch the fabric. There are easy threading needles, ball point needles – all sorts of needles, but all you really need is the basic one.
Floss: Six stranded cotton, embroidery silks, threads. These are the colourful skeins of thread you see on carousels in the stitching shops – you may even have bought them to make friendship bracelets back in the day. The two main brands in the UK are Anchor and (my preferred brand) DMC although some places stock some beautiful hand dyed threads, and you can often pick up packs of unbranded floss in places like Poundland. Beware of the quality of these though – some of the cheap ones get knotty and fray easily and are really frustrating to work with. There are specialist threads too – metallics and rayons, but wait till you’ve conquered the basics as these can put a beginner off for life. Trust me on this! You cut your length of thread from the skein and peel off the number of strands you need for your design – two or three strands for 14 count, for example.
Sharp small scissors. Nail scissors will do, or embroidery scissors. Small scissors give you more control over how close to the fabric you cut your threads. Hide them from your family in case they use them to trim bacon or something. Bacon does not add to the finished design.
Something to store your threads in. You can buy special plastic or card bobbins, or stitchbows, but I use basic envelopes – the kind you buy in packs from all paper shops etc. I write the number of the floss on the top right hand corner, and when I am working on a project with lots of colours I draw the chart symbol on it too so I don’t have to keep referring to the key. When I am done with the project the envelopes get filed in numerical order in plastic storage boxes (again, nothing special – I think these were from The Range) and then I can easily see what numbers I have.
A cotton bag – this is where all those free tote bags from conferences come in useful. Keeping your project in one of these, or a pillowcase for larger projects, keeps it clean. Unless you have a cat, in which case tweezers will be your friend for removing the stray hairs you have just stitched in. I say embrace the cat hairs or you’ll drive yourself mad.
A highlighter pen for marking off the stitches you have already done on your chart. This is very useful, especially if you are doing blocks of a colour and you have to put your work down a lot. I’d also advise photocopying and enlarging your chart to make it easier to see – you can’t photocopy a chart to give someone else due to copyright, but you can make a copy for personal use. If you have an Android tablet there’s a new app called Pattern Keeper which is brilliant for keeping track of where you are on the chart, and allows you to highlight the colour you’re working on.
And lastly – this is a new entry to my top ten – magnifying specs. You know, the kind you can buy in the chemist for reading. I have only got the 1x strength but as my eyes get older along with the rest of me they have made stitching SO much easier.

*this is a very personal list, of course: everyone has their favourite gadgets and methods! You also need good lighting, a comfy chair, someone to make you copious amounts of tea on demand, and an ability to ignore the housework in favour of stitching. This last item comes magically the more you get addicted to your new hobby. You can thank me later though your family probably won’t.

As for the how to cross stitch, there are so many tutorials out there – pick up a cross stitch mag from the newsagent and you’ll find a how-to in the back of very issue, look on You Tube, buy a book, ask a stitchy friend for a crafty bee afternoon.

The year of the handmade gift

I have decided that this is the year of the handmade gift, so if you know me IRL you’ll most likely end up with something crafty this year. If you are one of the lucky recipients (and even if you don’t like it) know that if I have made you something it’s been chosen because I think you’ll like it, because I like you enough to spend my time making you something, and that a lot of thought and time has gone into it.

This week I have handed over two cross stitched things:

The off centre framed picture was a 40th birthday present for a friend – I saw the design on someone else’s timeline and immediately thought of Miriam (happy birthday Miriam!). She loves purple, so I found some mottled pale lavender coloured aida for the fabric. I handed it over yesterday with apologies for the wonky rush job framing as I thought her birthday was next month… the design is from an American mag called Just Cross Stitch (the Halloween 2020 special) and I bought it from Annie’s as a PDF.

The card was inspired by the news at the beginning of a team meeting that a colleague has had her contract extended, and by the note to herself that she had written to remind herself to keep us on track during the meeting. I occasionally describe her job – interpretation producer – as more akin to herding kittens as we do tend to head off after metaphorical balls of museum wool on a terrifyingly regular basis. Her note said ‘facilitate!’ so I immediately thought dalek. Lettering by me, Dalek-19 pattern by Highland Murr Blackwork.

My current project is a nice geeky one by Nerdpillo on Etsy, on 18 count cream aida.

Thing 2 has been enjoying tie-dying over lockdown so I challenged her to dye a piece of fabric for me for a watery design – this is what she came up with and I love it!

And finally here’s a blanket update and some French knitting with six pins!

Welly walks

We dragged all the children outside yesterday for a walk round the burial park in the village – it’s in local ancient woodland, part of the Gaynes Park estate, and it’s lovely. Thing Three was concerned about zombies, but as his father kindly pointed out, I’d had my morning coffee and would probably be OK till I got back.

The woods are filled with bird and bat boxes, and we spotted a mouse on a tree trunk, and the burials themselves are simple and marked with wooden memorials. There are dedicated benches and trees, and lovely carved wooden statues and figures like this hare below.

Thing Two stomped in puddles while One and Three complained that they were tired, their legs hurt, they didn’t like being outside…. I enjoyed it, despite.

In our own garden I discovered that we have some very early primroses, the skeletons of last summer’s physalis, and that fungus has colonised one of the trees.

This week’s cover photo shows the glorious sunrise over Tawney Common this morning: so beautiful that we kept stopping to take pictures as the light changed. You can see more of these on my Instagram feed as they have for some reason not pulled through into Google Photos yet.

And it’s finally snowing, so I am going to leave this here and go and watch the Horde playing outside.

Same time, same place next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Ordeal of the Haunted Room – Jodi Taylor

Nice Jumper – Tom Cox

Baking Bad – Kim M Watt

Urban Drawing (Tate Sketch Club) – Phil Dean

Week forty three: ooh-la-la

Usually this weekend, along with one of my crafty buddies, I would be heading to the Marriott Hotel in Waltham Abbey to visit the Waltham Abbey Wool Show. This is one of my favourite events of the year: it’s small but not too small, and there’s an excellent range of indie dyers on hand (like Gamercrafting, TravelKnitter and Rosie’s Moments and lots of others). The huge shows are great, but always too crowded and as they’re in places like Excel, Ally Pally and Olympia the catering concessions are overpriced and unimaginative. There’s always a good range of indies there, but they are often overwhelmed by the big stands. I am more likely to buy fabric at the big shows, but WAWS is all about the yarn. This year the show has gone on-line, but you don’t get the sensory experience so I will probably give it a miss.

We have a routine, my friend and I: we have a first wander round, to see what’s there and mentally pinpoint what we want to go back to, then on our second pass (when it’s often a bit quieter) we go back to stroke and squish the yarns, admire the beautiful things that other people have made, and treat ourselves to the things we really want. Heather loves the Dorset button stall and I – as I have mentioned before – am an absolute sucker for a sock yarn. I always come away with either a gradient set or a hand dyed skein with a bit of sparkle.

These are never destined for socks, however: I live in boots in the winter, who would see them? I’m more likely to make a scarf or a shawl. Another friend bought me a lovely book of shawl patterns a couple of years ago – coincidentally by Diana, who is one of the organisers of WAWS – and that’s been a source of several pretty scarves showing off these lovely yarns. This windowpane scarf from Ravelry has also been a favourite.

This week I have a new plan. I spent much of Monday writing and photographing a blog post for the V&A’s ‘Let’s Make Wednesdays’ series, which is a set of creative activities for children and families. My topic was ‘How it’s made’ as this will be a feature of the new Design gallery in the transformed Museum of Childhood. The idea is that we provide an activity that can be done with materials you can find at home. I tossed around the idea of making plarn (yarn from plastic bags) or upcycling t-shirts to make yarn and then to do some weaving, but then remembered that one of the objects I’d found while sorting the learning collection was a Knitting Nancy (french knitting doll, knitting noddy, spool knitting – so many names!) and this ended up being my starting point.

I knew we had a doll somewhere that I’d bought for the kids one Christmas, so I dug that out and then worked out how to make one using a toilet roll and lolly sticks. The Things very kindly helped me out by eating lots of ice lollies, bless them. I’m not going to go too far into into the detail, and I’ll link to the blog when it’s published, but the upshot was that I had a happy afternoon re-learning how to do French knitting. I don’t think I’d tried it since I was in primary school! I really enjoyed it, and the rhythm of the process was easy to do while I was in ‘receive mode’ during a very long online presentation.

I headed over to Pinterest to find some suggestions about what to do with French knitting braids, and one of the suggestions was simple braided jewellery. While in the shower this morning I remembered that at a previous WAWS I bought a gradient set in silvers and greys, with a bit of sparkle, and that this might be a good time to use it. They are a blend of merino, nylon and stellina, and are beautifully soft. So, I have dug these out from the shed, found my trusty yarn swift and winder, and will have a go at making a French knitting necklace.

I’ve also spent some time this week making some reusable face scrubbies. We stopped buying cotton wool pads some time ago and when I first got my overlocker I made a stack from baby muslins and fleece, but this was before Thing One became a goth and discovered the joys of black eyeliner. So. MUCH. Eyeliner. The little pads I made have reached the end of their useful lives after a couple of years so, using some recycled cotton yarn, I started crocheting some more this week. Incredibly simple: chain 22, dc (double crochet) in the second chain from the hook and then dc back along the chain; chain 1 and turn. Repeat till you have a rectangle as big as you’d like, fasten off and weave in ends. Ta-dah! I have added a contrast dc border just because I felt like it.

The temperature tree now has two weeks’ worth of leaves on it. You can see this week has been warmer – the day of the green leaf was 9 degrees! We’ve also had a lot of rain – the brooks are full, and this morning’s puddle walk was quite splashy. This week’s cover image was taken as the sun rose this morning, looking back towards Tawney Common as we were on the return leg. Yesterday we had a little bit of snow, which Thing 2 made the most of by building a tiny snowman in the back garden. I think it came up to her ankle….

That’s been my very woolly week! My facebook count tells me that yesterday was Day 300 since I started the lockdown counter – and this is week 43 of this blog. I am going to stop counting (but carry on writing) at the end of year one, I think.

Same time, same place next week then!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Educating Peter – Tom Cox

The Copper Heart (Crow Investigations) – Sarah Painter

Gobbelino London and a Complication of Unicorns (Gobbelino London, PI) – Kim M. Watt

Week forty: god bless us, every one.

And a slightly belated Merry Christmas to you all! Our lockdown Christmas was good, despite not being able to see family. As a child this was how our Christmas always was: we would do a round of the Cardiff family on the 23rd (my late grandma’s birthday) and then we’d know Christmas could start properly. On Christmas Eve, as we got older, we’d usually go out for a meal in the evening and to midnight mass at the local church. In the morning my Grandad Bill would arrive at a ridiculously early hour – before he went back to Cardiff for Mass – then we’d have stocking presents. Later, when everyone was dressed, we’d have family presents followed by Christmas dinner in the early afternoon, and turkey sandwiches in the evening.

Since meeting my beloved my Christmas has been a bit different – we would have his older girls for a few days every other year (alternating New Year in the other years), and we’d spend Christmas Day with his mother until she passed away in late 2012. One of the older girls now has her own son, and we had planned – until Tier 4 – to spend Boxing Day with them. We’d hoped to see the other one on Christmas Day, but she was isolating as her boyfriend’s mum had tested positive for Covid a few days earlier.

Usually we’d see my London sister and her husband between Christmas and New Year as well, but we had a family Zoom on Christmas Day instead – our parents, the Irish contingent, London sister and her husband, and us. It was lovely to see them, but it’s not the same as being together.

Back to Christmas Day! Thing 2 has always been a child who likes to know what’s happening: she finds it hard to jump into new things, and prefers to sit back and watch for a while before joining in. She likes to plan how things will work on Christmas Day, as she knows there’s elements of chaos, so we were woken up on schedule at 6am to watch them open their stockings. Wisely, they also brought coffee up with them!

I love watching the children open their presents. This year we bought Thing 3 a Nintendo Switch, which he hoped for and didn’t expect. Shortly after he opened it we had a brief snow flurry, and he was so completely overwhelmed he didn’t know what to do with himself. Thing 1 had shoes that she’d wanted to spend any Christmas money on, so she wasn’t expecting to have them on Christmas Day. I like to go off-list where I can, to surprise them a bit. Life’s no fun if you know what’s in all your parcels!

So we whiled away the day quietly: everyone ate Christmas dinner and far too many Quality Street, and in the evening I broke into the Christmas cake. I have been feeding it with rum and it’s quite delicious.

On Boxing Day I went for a very chilly socially distanced swim – 5.6 degrees. If someone had said to me last year that I’d be looking forward to jumping into a freezing lake I’d have laughed at them, but my swimming gang and I have had so much joy from this newfound passion this year. Some of my Christmas Amazon voucher has been spent on a wetsuit changing bag and a new tow float, in fact.

I have also had a few good muddy walks with various friends and their dogs this week, and some outdoor coffees on the way home which have provided some much needed adult conversations!. I was supposed to meet my permitted friend this morning for a wander, but there appears to be a typhoon – or Storm Bella – in progress outside so we have decided to regroup tomorrow instead.

Geek crafting

Over the past year I have made a series of dolls for a DM friend, one for each of his campaign characters. The last one was finished this week, as his wife’s Christmas gift, so I haven’t been able to share progress on it. This one had to have armour and wings: while I could find lots of wing patterns on Ravelry I had to go off-piste with the armour and make it up as I went along.

I have also started work on this sampler from FiddlesticksAU on Etsy: Tolkien fans will recognise the list of Hobbit mealtimes! I love the colours against the black aida fabric.

Less geeky but quite delicious was the stollen I mentioned last week – I have made two loaves so far as they disappear quite quickly!

And that’s been my week. It’s been a quiet one but I am happy to be safe and well with my little family.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Without the Moon – Cathi Unsworth

That Old Black Magic – Cathi Unsworth

Zero Waste Sewing – Elizabeth Haywood

The New Anchor Book of Blackwork Embroidery Stitches