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

Week seven: preemptive pizzas in the park*, AKA you can’t quarantine stupid

*not my pizza, or my park. I stayed home.

As I type, the nation is waiting for today’s Boris and Co Show, where he’ll be addressing the the people from 10 Downing Street. Rumours have been flooding the more binary media for the last few days that lockdown will start to be lifted, that the schools will be open from the beginning of June – and at the same time the headlines tell us that we have now outstripped Italy in the coronavirus death charts and that we are second only to America in the world. Police forces on social media in the sunshine yesterday were telling us that there were whole swathes of people pre-empting any lockdown announcements by eating pizza in the parks. Other countries who have started lifting the lockdown are experiencing second waves, which should stand as a warning to those considering lifting restrictions only seven weeks in rather than the 12 that were initially mentioned.

I think the terribly English VE Day anniversary celebrations (socially distanced scones at 4pm, anyone?) and the Churchillian vibe that Johnson seems to want to project have clouded a lot of thinking coming from Westminster. The devolved nations have been very clear that lockdown will stay in place for at least the next three weeks – and while Westminster is apparently keen that the nations should stay in step, this means they want everyone to fall in with them rather than considering that maybe – just maybe – the devolved nations have the right idea. Construction workers are actually expecting to start work tomorrow, at least according to the one I was chatting to in the queue at the Co-op this morning.

I’m angry, and I’m worried – as in America, the economy seems to be driving the need to raise lockdown rather than the safety of the nation. I am worried about getting back on the tube – and I was on the Central Line the day after 7/7, because I work in London and we don’t back down. But this time – of all the times – we can and should be backing down, because this little virus – this invisible mugger, or whatever Johnson called it – is even harder to spot than a suspicious person. I’m angry that the government are abdicating responsibility for this decision, claiming that ‘the public’ have had enough. I’m aware that my chosen social media is by its very nature an echo-chamber, but I have yet to see or hear anyone pushing for this to be over. Inevitably there are the conspiracy theorists shouting about ‘plandemics’ and plots for world trade domination, but even they seem quite keen to stay alive and well. As Nicola Sturgeon says, the best defence against this is our own front door. Yes, people are bored – but we are healthy and bored.

Apologies for the rant!

Normal service will now be resumed….

My Google maps timeline for April appeared in my inbox this week and, like an idiot, I went through it to see if I’d done anything exciting – I did! I went a whole 1.75 miles from my house to the local farm shop to try and get some flour (no chance) but apart from that I stayed within about a mile radius of home. I’m looking forward to May’s timeline, when I can reminisce about that time I went to Tesco.

The lych gate at St Andrew’s Church, North Weald (dates from 1898)

Those walks within a mile or so of home do allow me to take in some beautiful scenery – after last week’s musings on spring colours coming in waves I made a point of looking for flowers in different colours on my walks. One of those walks took me past the church and the flood meadow – circling anti-clockwise round the village rather than clockwise – and I also took Thing 2 with me one morning who enjoyed spotting blooms at ground level. She insisted on collecting a dandelion clock for everyone so we could all have a wish. I made use of the PictureThis and LeafSnap apps to identify flowers, and we also enjoyed using the BirdNet app to identify birdsong (song thrush, blackbird, mistle thrush, blue tit, Eurasian blackcap, whitethroat, chiff chaff and lapwings!)

This week’s blossoms – mostly not white, apart from the close-up cow parsley and the crab apple which smelled glorious in the sunshine. From the top: euphorbia, crab apple, red clover, red campion, bugle, cow parsley, cowslip, teasel, green alkanet, borage, horse chestnut, speedwell, bird’s foot trefoil (?), buttercup, poppy, stitchwort (?), hawthorn, an orange daisy thing, herb robert and honesty.

I’ve been quite stressed and anxious this week, which affected my concentration. The scrubs sets I was making took well over a week, as I took them very slowly and just did one step a day until my mind levelled out again. By Saturday my mojo (sewjo?) had returned and I whizzed through the scrubs trousers and also made Thing 2’s ‘Shaggy pants’, which she loves. I used New Look F6013 and she chose some fun printed cotton from Pound Fabrics. We decided on an elastic waistband rather than a drawstring, with a ribbon bow. The trousers only have two pattern pieces, and took about an hour and a half from opening the pattern packet to putting the trousers on for a photo so they were super simple. She loves them so much she has already requested a second pair… Thing 1 wants culottes (but with ‘flowy fabric, mum’) and my beloved has asked for some pyjama pants – so I’ve been back online this morning finding the right materials.

I’ve been superorganised today and made a list of all the things I want to sew in the next few weeks – then put the pattern, instructions and fabric for each into separate bags so I can grab and go. There’s a few in there that will stretch my skills a bit – a proper bra and pants, for example – and some quick wins.

I finished last week’s crochet socks, which felted a tiny bit in the washing machine so they are really soft – the pattern was the Magdalen sock by Vicki Brown, from Inside Crochet issue 101. I’m not sure she envisaged them in quite the same colourway, but I love them!

Magdalen socks – in Drops Nord, Regia sock (cuff) and Cygnet Wool Rich 4-ply (heel and toe)

I’ve now started a new pair of socks – this time the Vappu sock by Claire Montgomerie – and it’s a measure of just how away with the fairies I’ve been this week that it took three attempts to start the first one, and a lot of cursing, because I could NOT work out where the designer had got her stitch count…. and it turned out I was reading the pattern wrong. I’m using Stylecraft Head over Heels yarn in Sugarloaf for these. Watch this space!

(If you’re a crocheter and you haven’t had a go at making socks, I highly recommend it – this is a great book to start off with)

Thanks for sticking with me through this week’s rant! Let’s see what week 8 has in store for us all.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Evil Seed – Joanne Harris

The Making of Mr Hai’s Daughter: Becoming British – Yasmin Hai

All the Little Places – Sophie Shillito

Listening to:

The Grove of the Caesars – Lindsey Davis (Audible)

Week six: Mayday, Mayday

Is it wrong to feel like a trip to Tesco (on my own! on a bus!) is a bit of an adventure? That was my Friday afternoon, anyway. I queued for about half an hour to get in – it’s all very organised, with taped off areas in the car park, and marshals, and its equally organised inside now as well. The one way system is a good idea, but relies on people following it rather than parking their trolley at the top and running down the wrong way to ‘just get one thing’. I can’t help feeling that this defeats the object of the system…

Anyway, I put my time in the queue to good use – I expected to be waiting for a while so took my crochet project with me. Socks are not only mindful to make, but completely portable. When the marshal at the front of the line asked how long I’d been queuing, I don’t think ‘about an inch and a half’ was the answer he was expecting!

The Tesco trip was the first time I’d left the village since the last week of March, and it’s a whole new world out there – I had to call into Boots as well, where the staff are wearing full PPE behind the counters including plastic full-face visors. It was a stark reminder that the virus is still a very real threat, despite what seem to be very premature conversations in the media about raising lockdown. I hope that the government take a look outside the UK (that’s the polite version) at countries who have started to raise their lockdowns and are seeing infections rise again. I realise that on their current form this is unlikely, of course. Hopefully the GIANT shop I did will see us through the next month (apart from milk and essentials) so I don’t have to leave again. I also managed to score a 16-kilo sack of flour on Amazon and some overpriced yeast and cinnamon (why is there a cinnamon shortage??), so Thing 2 can maintain her baking habit.

Enough about my grocery shopping!

My ankle has improved enough to make walking enjoyable again (and also less of a hobble), so I’ve been out and about round the Common and the local woods this week in between rain showers. Is there a reason spring flowers come in different colour phases, do you think? At the moment white is the dominant shade, but earlier in the spring we have the yellow phase with the daffs and primroses and so on.

It’s been a slow sewing week – more crochet than usual, as I’d been asked to send a Frontline Hero bear off to Canada, and I also had an overwhelming urge to make some socks. This mean heading off to the shed to search out all the sock yarn in the stash before going online and indulging, and as it turned out I had quite a lot in various boxes. Some is big brand self-patterning yarn but there is also some lovely gradient sets that I’ve bought at yarn shows as well as some plains that I like to use for heels and cuffs. My original plan was to use up lots of scraps, but then I didn’t have a lot of scraps – so I used the tail end of a Regia yarn to do the cuffs, a plain for the heel and will see what happens with the toes!

The sock yarn stash….and an update on the queuing sock. Note the turned heel!

I have done some sewing, of course – a pair of shortie pyjamas for Thing 2 from some jersey , and I refashioned a pillowcase (from a duvet set that I’d bought to make a Marvel skirt) to make a pair of sleep shorts for Thing 1.

I love duvet sets as a source of fabric – if you buy a double, you’re looking at about 8 metres of fabric plus pillowcases, and there’s lots of fun geeky prints out there. I love my Marvel and Doctor Who skirts, and I also made the Walkaway dress with a Wonderwoman front and plain black back. Scraps can also be used to make secretly geeky pockets on work clothes – a very respectable Vogue V9075 in denim has secret Dalek pockets.

So following this trend – and once again inspired by GBSB – I bought a Julian Charles puffin bed set and plan to make a retro Butterick B6318 tea dress. I’m going to use the striped fabric to make the bodice and the puffin print to make the skirt. I’ve cut out the paper pattern but then the scrubs arrived…

This was my first delivery of ‘official’ scrubs with ready cut out fabric, and they’ve been occupying my time most mornings as in trying to make a pattern quick to sew they have also made them more complicated (two pieces of fabric have become five – how does that work?). These are for a hospital trust in East London and Essex, where one of my friends works, so it’s pretty important to me to make sure she and her colleagues are safe!

I’m now being nagged by Thing 2 to come and help her make dinner – she’s doing her chicken, mozzarella and pesto parcels which were a hit last time. So, I’ll leave this here and see you at the end of week seven!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

La’s Orchestra Saves The World – Alexander McCall Smith

The Tent, The Bucket and Me – Emma Kennedy

The Night Fire – Michael Connelly

This week’s soundtrack:

Mott the Hoople, Slade, The Airborne Toxic Event, The Sweet

Flip Back – Andrew Cartmel (Audible)

Things 2 and 3 were challenged by their teachers to get a photo of them reading in unusual places for Pyjamarama Day – here they are in our climbing tree!

Week five: school, sewing and sunshine

I’ve often described my working life as like a rollercoaster we get on every Monday and get flung off every Friday, exhilarated but exhausted – like Diego the sabre-tooth tiger in Ice Age after he comes down the ice slide. I’m upgrading that to the waltzers, I think – you think you’re moving fast and then someone comes and spins you in the opposite direction entirely. All you can do is hang on… that’s what Monday was like! A morning of catching up with a week’s worth of emails, followed by a frantic team meeting and then three hours of preparing to lock down for the next couple of months. Furlough means we are forbidden to do any work for the museum at all, so we had to make the most of Monday!

All this while trying to convince the Horde that it really was the start of term and it was time to get back to routine. (They all got dressed, so I counted the day as a win….) Anyway, I – along with most of the museum – am now furloughed for the next couple of months unless the situation changes rapidly (anything is possible these days) and the relief this news brought was huge. I have written before about the stress of trying to be’work me’ and ‘mum me’ at the same time, when it feels as if I am failing at both, so this means I can try and get one right at least.

Time to slow down and enjoy time at home – bluebells on a local lane

So, it’s back to SPAG and fractions (I’m sure there was more to maths than fractions!), story writing using some strange acronyms (DADWAVERS, anyone?) and Hitler’s Germany which is Thing 1’s history topic. We’ll stick to the format we were using before Easter, as that gives us time for creativity in the afternoon.

Doesn’t furlough mean more making time, too?

It does! It’s been a productive week, too, with a bit of upcycling, a bit of fixing, a bit of making and a bit of crochet.

In the mornings while I have been working with the children, I have been repairing the hexies in a lovely crochet blanket – I made it, and used the magic ring to start all the hexies but all of them have started to come undone. I used this very helpful tutorial to fix them, and will go back to the chain method to start these things in future.

Thing 1 requested a wrap skirt, as she had seen one on Instagram – rather than buy one, I knew I had a few wrap patterns. She chose New Look 6456 in style D, and I had some lovely polycotton with daisies and dots on. It was pretty straightforward to make up, and now I have a happy daughter.

One new item, one refashion modelled by Things 1 and 2

Thing 2 – who usually flatly refuses to wear hand-me-downs – will NOT give up on a stripy dress which my sister bought for Thing 1 when she was about 5. She’s been wearing it as a top with shorts for the last couple of years, but it’s finally got too small. So, she asked me to make her a crop top and mini skirt out of it to get another year’s wear – we cut round the waist seam, added elastic waistbands and she’s happy again! She’s now requested pyjama shorts, which she’s going to help me make, and ‘Shaggy pants’. Apparently she means wide trousers like Shaggy in Scooby Doo – so it was back to the pattern stash where she found another New Look pattern and a quick browse on Pound Fabrics where we found some pretty cotton.

The pyjama shorts request sprang from watching me whip up a pair from the remnants of the wrap skirt fabric. I used a pattern by The Makery, which was a freebie with Simply Sewing magazine a few years ago. I used elastic rather than the drawstring, for ease, and they are perfect with a vest for this hot spell. While searching the stash I rediscovered the Lapwing Trousers pattern by Simple Sew and once madam had rejected the ditsy blue flower fabric I offered her, I decided I’d make another pair for myself. There’s nothing like a pair of floaty cotton trousers for hot days. (Other things I have rediscovered this week: my hammock, Bloom Strawberry Gin and Fevertree Elderflower Tonic, and stargazing in search of satellites and meteors).

The table tennis table is still up in the garden and it’s so useful for laying out large patterns and quilt tops, even when Thing 3 decides to open a market stall at the other end.

Actually playing table tennis is rarely an option…

I sandwiched the red quilt top (the wadding was a bit of a patchwork too) and quilted it together, and its now awaiting binding. I’ve decided to use ready made bias binding on this one, and am waiting for it to arrive. The second image is the big make of the week – I volunteered to be a pattern tester for Alice and Co Patterns, who are extending their size range for the Intrepid Boiler Suit. I ran across Alice and Co when they did an updated versions of the Mary Quant Georgie and classic minidress to accompany the Quant exhibition at the V&A.

I love an all in one, and had just bought their Jump Up Suit pattern – I would probably not have tried the boiler suit if they hadn’t asked for testers. I’ve looked at boiler suits but never had the courage to buy one – this seemed like the perfect solution! I’d also just bought several metres of gorgeous lightweight pinstripe denim (Pound Fabrics again) and now I had an excuse to use it. Luckily they let me join the tester team…

The PDF pattern was really straightforward to put together (if I ever win the lottery, the first thing I am buying is an A0 printer and a garden studio to put it in), and the instructions were really clear and easy to follow – even the enclosed yoke, which I have only tried once before. It really was a case of trusting the pattern, and the resulting yoke looked great.

I’m a great one for taking sewing shortcuts, especially with zips and sleeves – I hate setting in sleeves – but as I was testing the pattern I thought I’d better do it properly! The process became quite mindful, as I had to think about what I was doing more carefully and pay attention to the finishing. The only step I skipped was finishing the raw edges before sewing, as I decided to overlock them as I went along. I even overlocked the zip tape to the seam allowance.

The back and breast pockets were cut against the grain so I could have the pinstripes at a contrasting angle, and the side pockets were perfectly (if accidentally) pattern matched. I decided to make a self-fabric tie belt to go through the waistband casing, rather than use a proper belt, and used fabric scraps to patch one together as I knew no one would see the seams!

The making process took me about six hours, plus time to stick together the PDF and cut out the fabric, and it was thoroughly enjoyable – and I LOVE the result. I made my beloved take a proper photo of me wearing it with my Lottas just so I could share it… it also shows off my new ultra-violet hair, or so it says on the box. I may make the legs a bit shorter, as here you can see I have had to fold them up four times, but I love the 80s girl group vibe. There’s also a free pattern hack on the website for a button front version, and I quite fancy a sleeveless one too, so will definitely be making this again.

You can’t have spent all week sewing, surely?

I mentioned earlier that Thing 3 had decided to open a stall on the table tennis table – there’s a touch of the Del Boy about this one! He sold bric-a-brac, and not to be outdone Thing 2 decided she also needed a stall. I had bought them some new acrylic paints, so her USP was painting rocks on request. I had some tiny pebbles that we’d sprayed white with primer, and she painted me a set of ladybirds for my shelves of frivolity in the shed. She also painted me – secretly – a puffin rock, as they are my favourite birds. Thing 3 helped his dad improve the water feature – here you can see him taking a well earned break!

Having been inspired by the Great British Sewing Bee, I painted some rocks to use as pattern weights – very useful when cutting outside! I usually use chunks of slate from the garden centre, but these pebbles have been hanging around for a while and now they’ll see more use.

I have even managed some gardening! Hard pruning some hydrangeas transplanted from the neighbours last year, which are showing signs of life, and weeding out the wild garlic from the beds by my shed. I was really pleased to see the campanula survived the winter, and also the bleeding heart we bought at the sad plant section last year and which I snapped the stems off when planting out – it’s got flowers on and I hope it will self-seed. My hollyhocks are shooting up again, and my chinese lanterns.

The hammock has seen some use, too – crocheting and listening to birds in the afternoons. The BirdNET app has been so useful – I now know what the goldcrests sound like, and the chiffchaffs. The red kites seem to have stuck around, and I see them wheeling over the houses quite often. Other garden visitors have included the fox, the badger and a tiny mouse.

The mouse – and can you see the squirrel?

Let’s see what week six brings us! Have a great week.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Plan for the Worst (Chronicles of St Mary’s) – Jodi Taylor

The Language of Spells and The Secrets of Ghosts – Sarah Painter

Soundtrack for the week:

John Mellencamp, Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Prine

Week four: busy doing nothing

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in lockdown (of a sort) for four weeks already…or that it’s the end of the Easter holidays so the Horde and I will be back to work tomorrow. My email inbox is already filling up with work for them to do, sent by their teachers, who are clearly superhuman.

People cavil about the amount of ‘holidays’ teachers get, but from my own days at the chalkface I know that the majority of those holidays are spent marking, planning for the next term, prepping their classrooms and (usually) being ill. All these teachers (who have just worked through their breaks) are as much in need of applause as the rest of the key workers. On that note, we did remember to join in the applause on Thursday at 8pm – I haven’t seen so many of my neighbours for weeks! The noise was amazing and a passing ambulance beeped as it went along the main road.

But what did you do all week?

I have had a very lazy week with the Horde! My sort of lazy, anyway…

I’ve been able to stay awake in the evenings long enough to do some crochet, and on Wednesday I sent off a Frontline Hero bear to a little girl whose Daddy has been in our local hospital with Covid-19 and who has been very brave. Several friends sent me links to this pattern on Facebook (definitely an improvement on some of the things I get sent!): it was really easy to follow, and the scrubs/bear colour can be adapted to suit either your stash or your local heroes. You can find the link in my week 2 post, or just search ‘Frontline Hero bear’. I chose this bluebell colour in Stylecraft Special DK as I happened to have some handy. I sent off four pairs of real-people scrubs in a very similar colour to a mental health trust in East London, too, which I hope arrived safely.

I discovered how mindful unmaking can be as well. My first pair of crochet socks – before I got the hang of tension – were beautiful but too tight for even Thing 1 to wear, let alone me and have languished in a box in the shed for several years now. They surfaced this week while I was trying to resist all the Easter sales emails from yarn companies by seeing what I already had in my stash, and I decided to unravel them so I could remake them to fit.

You need patience to unravel an item that’s been very tightly worked, freeing stitches and rewinding the yarn without it tangling. I spent an afternoon in a hammock in the sunny garden, listening to the new fountain burbling away (my beloved made me a fountain in the old bird bath!) and carefully unworking the socks. I now have two beautiful balls of Drops Fabel yarn, which is lovely to work with – I just need to decide what to make!

Spending time in the garden gave me the chance to watch a pair of red kites soaring overhead – new to the village this year – and a pair of goldcrests. These tiny birds live in the pine tree along with the nesting collared doves, several families of blue tits and even a bat or two.

The Horde got creative, too – they love working on canvases, and when they are bored with them we repaint them with white emulsion and reuse them. Thing 1 is hoping to do GCSE Art next year so is experimenting with perspective, Thing 2 likes white space and we gave Thing 3 a box of pastels to try as something different and he drew a giant Pikachu. Pokemon are enjoying a bit of a revival in our house at the moment. I really love the way Thing 1 has painted the clouds in her picture.

They spent a happy afternoon outside getting messy! Thing 3 also made a TV for the treehouse out of an Amazon box, and Thing 2 made a squirrel picnic table out of offcuts of wood after we had seen a social media post about them. The badger and the fox also appreciate the table, as it turns out.

There’s been a lot of baking too – bread rolls, dough balls, Melting Moments (Dad’s favourite), homemade pizzas and chocolate brownies. We made a foray to our local farm shop earlier in the week on a quest for flour – getting in the car and going somewhere felt quite adventurous.

New challenges

I decided that since the overlocker was out for making scrubs, I’d try some new patterns – my go-to working at home outfit is a tunic/tee dress and leggings, and while I am not quite ready to sew leggings I did have some lovely striped lightweight jersey that was calling me.

I searched the stash of sewing patterns and came up with ‘The Staple Tee’ which was a freebie with Simply Sewing magazine aaaaages ago. It could be made as a t-shirt or a dress, so I went with the longer version. The pattern had grown on sleeves, cuffs on the sleeves instead of a hem (I hate hemming sleeves) and a slightly curved hem. Super easy to make, especially with the overlocker. I think if I make it again I’ll grade the bodice down a size as it’s very wide, but I really like the elbow length sleeves.

I used the remnants of the stripey fabric to clone my favourite Hema skirt – tube skirts have been part of my wardrobe for years, for layering with leggings, and you can never have too many. I used brown paper to trace off the original skirt, added seam allowance and then whizzed it together with the overlocker in about half an hour (most of that was doing the waistband).

I wanted to try a raglan tee-shirt as well, which I’ve always been fond of but haven’t tried making before as the sleeves looked tricky. I found a pattern online by Greenstyle Creations, an indie pattern company I haven’t heard of before, and it also had an add-on pack for a cowl neck or a hood, as well as lots of sleeve options in the original pattern (to cuff or not to cuff?).

I went with the hoodie option, and 3/4 sleeves (no cuff), and used cotton elastane jersey in black and royal blue. Apart from when I did exactly what the instructions warned me about – stitched one of the hood sections on upside-down and had to unpick – and when I had to unpick all my topstitching on the hood (twice) when my tension went awry, the pattern was really easy to follow and the result looks great. The fit is perfect – a good length, which as a long-waisted person is often an issue, and the hood is wearable rather than cosmetic. I can see this becoming a staple make too, in lighter weight jerseys for layering.

I’ve cut out a wrap skirt for Thing 1 and some pyjama shorts for me, too, from a lovely polycotton fabric with dots and daisies on a black background – the fabric was from the stash. I have made the shorts before, last time by upcycling a duvet cover, but this time I’ll use elastic at the waist instead of a drawstring. The wrap skirt was a request – she saw one on a shopping site and I knew I had a pattern somewhere!

That was my week! I’ve been determined about not turning on my work phone or logging in to check emails, so there’s probably about a million waiting for me tomorrow morning but tomorrow – as Scarlett O’Hara said – is another day.

I’ll leave you with one of our more unusual garden visitors, who found himself in the new fountain the other day. He gave me an excuse to resurrect one of my favourite jokes….

And on that note I’ll leave you for another week – hope yours was as enjoyable as mine!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Crow Investigations (series of 3) – Sarah Painter

The Travelling Cat Chronicles – Hiro Arikawa (I cried)

Under the Paw: confessions of a cat man – Tom Cox

Week 3: not a fronted adverbial in sight!

The Horde have been on school holiday this week, and their Dad has been furloughed so this week has been a lot more relaxed – at least for them! I have still been working, but have been (mostly) able to do just one thing at once. I’m still focusing on the potential for makerspaces and project based learning, reading and thinking about what’s manageable and possible to test over the next couple of years.

There’s been a lot of meetings via MS Teams, and I am finding them more tiring than being in a room with all the same people. I mentioned this over on Twitter the other day, and some wise people shared their thoughts with me about the extra cognitive work your brain is having to do to remember you both are and aren’t in the same room as people. My sister shared this link with me, which was interesting. Both this one and another that our museum director shared liken what we are experiencing to trauma, and the stress of being in a situation out of our control. I think we are all also very aware that we don’t know how long this lockdown will go on for, and that there is so much uncertainty about what the ‘new normal’ might look like.

One Teams meeting was delightful, though – an end of week chat with two lovely colleagues over a virtual drink – there should be more of this, and it was good to have a conversation with other adults that didn’t come with an agenda…

Walk this way….

One of the ways I am managing my own mental health is to keep walking – on Tuesday I was so tired when I woke up that I didn’t start the day with a 6am ramble, and the impact on my mood was surprising.

Despite not being able to set my usual pace due to last weekend’s running injury, just that 45 minute walk has a calming effect across the whole day. It helps, of course, that we are in the countryside but even when working I try and get off the train a stop early and walk along the canal towpath to Victoria Park.

Slowing down to hobbling pace has also forced me to look around a bit more as I go! It was suggested the other day that this seems to be a bumper year for blackthorn (so we’ll be making sloe gin later!) and it’s true that the Common is white with blossom.

Thing 2 – an early riser like her mama – has joined me the last three days, and it’s been a time for her to ask big questions about the things that worry her, and for us to have some peaceful time together. She loves to spot animals, and was thrilled today to see a tiny mouse as we came back through the forest.

Holiday activities

The weather has continued to be most un-bank-holiday-ish, treating us to days of baking sunshine instead of the torrential downpours we usually associate with school holidays. My beloved has been working in the garden, planting all sorts of vegetables and pulling weeds out of the ground, and Thing 2 has been joining in. She has shown a lot of interest in germinating fruit seeds – actually googling how to do it properly rather than shoving them in some earth and hoping for the best which is my usual method. We have a set of little orange trees that are now about 6 inches high, and a few apples and a plum underway. Thing 3 helped make a rack to put seedlings in, having a go at sawing wood and helping screw things together. All the wood in the garage that my beloved kept in case it came in useful has – yes! – come in useful.

What’s Thing 1 been up to? She’s mostly been asleep, but she did let me cut her hair earlier this week – the thinking was that if I did a really bad job then lockdown means it has time to grow out. I can’t remember the last time she let me cut her fringe.

Once again there has been a lot of baking – the delight when I landed the last bag of flour in the Co-op was quite ridiculous. The highlight has been hot cross buns, of course, but we have also made rocky road cake, more flatbread and pancakes for breakfast.

My to-do list hasn’t seen much action, sadly, but I have cut out four sets of scrubs which will be going to a mental health trust in East London, and made up one of those sets.

Saturday was spent making ‘ear savers’ – the elasticated masks that medical staff wear hurt their ears as they are wearing them more often, so I whipped up some of these little gadgets and sent two dozen off to a friend who works in the maternity unit in our local hospital, for her to use and pass to her colleagues. They are super simple to make, and a good way to use up scraps. I won’t deny that an afternoon in the sunshine sewing buttons on was lovely, too…

I put a plea out on Facebook for anyone who had buttons to spare to share them with me so I could make more of these, and the response from both friends and people across the village was amazing. So many buttons – people were going through their button boxes and popping them through my letterbox all day!

I have booked this week off, and am looking forward to spending some relaxing time with my family, pottering about and making things. Hopefully you all have something nice planned for the bank holiday at home!

See you at the end of week (signing off just as another package of buttons have arrived….)

Kirsty x