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 one: not all men, but it is all women

The title this week was suggested by London sister. We – like women I know across the world – have been saddened, angered, outraged by the murder of Sarah Everard, a 33 year old marketing executive who was kidnapped from the streets of South London last week. Her body was found this week in woodlands in Kent, and a serving Met officer has been arrested and charged with kidnap and murder.

Sarah Everard was walking home from a friend’s house at 9pm, a journey of 2.5 miles which should have taken her 50 minutes. She talked on the phone to her boyfriend for 15 minutes of those. She was not dressed provocatively – anything but, in fact. She walked well lit streets and was kidnapped from one of those streets by a man who worked for the people whose job it is to keep those streets safe. He may have had a female accomplice.

Twitter has had its usual share of ‘but why didn’t her boyfriend walk her home?’ ‘Why was she visiting a friend anyway, because of Covid?’ ‘Why didn’t she get a cab?’ ‘Why was she walking at night?’. Someone went on the news to reassure women that you’re very unlikely to get murdered by a stranger, while at the same time telling women to stay off the streets in that area. There’s been the usual ‘but it’s not all men’ backlash from – well – men.

No, men, you are absolutely right – it’s not all men. But – as many articles, tweets, etc have said this week – how do we tell which ones aren’t the threats? Because the scariest monsters are the ones that look just like us. Because we can’t tell which ones we need to be scared of, we carry our keys in our hands. We don’t wear headphones when we walk. We wear flat shoes in case we need to run. We walk well-lit streets even though its the longer way home and we’re tired. We check behind us in shop windows. We make sure we know where everybody else is in relation to us. And that’s the way we live. To be told we don’t need to be worried about being killed by strangers is – oddly – not terribly reassuring.

I have a friend who used to use the 26 bus, who was approached by a stranger on the 100 yard walk between the bus stop and her front door. He hailed her as a friend, loudly, because he had seen someone else get off that bus when she did and start to follow her, which he explained as he got close to her. He walked her home and left her at the doorstep: one of the good ones, unlike the one who was following her from the bus through deserted Hackney streets.

London sister runs, and she has been accosted while running, and followed by men in vans. That same sister and her friends were assaulted by one of their history teachers at school, who told them that if they told anyone their big brothers and sisters would fail their GCSEs as he was marking their coursework. The female deputy head, when I convinced my sister to tell, who suggested that perhaps these 12 and 13 year olds had ‘done something to encourage him’. This was a loathsome little man who stank of cigarette smoke and felt it was OK to pin small girls in the corner of a classroom: they had done nothing to encourage him. We chose wrong that day: we thought a female would be a sympathetic ear but we were wrong. That’s when we brought the parents in.

Irish sister drives, and she has been followed home through country lanes in Northern Ireland, by men in cars who were trying to get her to pull over. She used to use a train station one stop further from home when she was in college because it meant walking back through populated streets rather than quiet ones.

My first experience of violence towards women by men was from a classmate, who had attempted to prevent me walking off when I didn’t want to be groped. He left scars on my wrists from where he dug his nails in. I was 14, plain and not terribly confident but I was damn sure that that wasn’t what I wanted. He thought it was OK to hurt me for rejecting him.

At 17 I was walking down the main street in Monmouth in broad daylight when I sidestepped to avoid a man who sidestepped with me and grabbed my breasts. I was so shaken I didn’t do anything till I got home and told my mother, who phoned the police who came and took a statement.

At 20 I was doing temp catering jobs for Adecco, and they sent us to waitress at a formal dinner at a boys’ school, for masons and their sons. We were told to wear black skirts above the knee, white blouses and heels. One ‘respectable’ gentleman casually put his hand up my skirt as I served the soup. The male catering manager – the only man on the staff that night other than the cooks – was not sympathetic.

At 25 I was followed home in broad daylight from Brick Lane tube station to Hackney Road. A loitering man whom I had clocked watching me as I left the station doubled back and started to follow me. I phoned my boyfriend of the time and he met me at a flat out run, at which point the man following me turned and legged it. That same year my flatmate and I were coming out of Bethnal Green tube after a U2 concert and a drunk ran up to her, grabbed her breasts and shouted ‘wahey!’. She tripped him up on reflex, and his head hit the ground: she was worried that she would get into trouble if he was hurt.

At 30 I was rubbed against by a man on a tube – I turned around on that occasion and loudly asked the man to introduce himself as he clearly wished to get to know me better. He got off at the next stop. At 30 I had had enough, frankly. When one of the security team at work made inappropriate remarks I complained to HR.

And none of the above includes the daily microaggressions: the ‘smile, love, it might never happen’ from random men in the streets. Shopkeepers whose hands linger too long when they are giving you change. I’ve been called a whore, a bitch, a cow, and worse, for refusing men’s attentions. I worked behind bars for years, which apparently in some men’s minds means you are as available to the punters as a pint of Fosters. The wolf whistles from building sites which turn quickly to abuse if you don’t respond. The patting of a bottom on the way past. The opening of conversations on public transport and the abuse if you make it clear that you don’t want to talk to them.

I remember Marie Wilkes, who left her two children in the car on the M50, not far from where I lived in south Wales, while she went to get help for her broken down car. I remember Stephanie Slater, who went to show someone a house and was never seen again. There are so many more whose names appear on Crimewatch as unsolved cases: women killed by these ‘unlikely’ strangers. So forgive us if we aren’t reassured.

There is a live petition at the moment to make public sexual harassment illegal. There is an open consultation and call for evidence on violence against women and girls from the government which was reopened on 6 March. Please sign, please contribute. It’s 2021 and we should not be having the same conversations about reclaiming the night and reclaiming the streets. 80% of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported: because victims don’t want to relive the experience, because they believe police won’t believe them, because they have left it too long, because, because, because. That means 80% of sexual predators are being allowed to carry on with it, and women continue to live in constant awareness.

(This is not to say that men aren’t also victims of rape, of domestic abuse and violence, because I know they are. Statistically, however, they are less likely to be the victims of constant microaggressions and to have to actively change they way they live and behave on a daily basis as a result of this).

So be an ally, if you really want to help. Call out your friends when they make comments about women, and don’t dismiss the fears of women around you. Go out of your way to make women feel safer – hang back, cross the road, whatever it takes. Watch this. Teach your sons what to do and what not to do. Teach them that the word ‘banter’ is often bullying in disguise. Teach them the what the word ‘no’ means and to respect it.

Teach your daughters the word NO and to shout it whenever they feel uncomfortable, that their bodies are their own and that no one – no one – has the right to touch them, even if they are ‘just playing’. Teach them that they don’t have to submit to being kissed by relatives if they don’t want to be. Teach them that they have power over their own bodies and that no one has the right to take that away from them.

Cover image by Tanith Galer. Candle in the window as part of the vigil of light for Sarah Everard, 13/3/21

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 seven: it’s half term, give yourself a break!

We’ve made it! It’s half term – for the kids at least, though I have booked a day off on Thursday – and so we have a week off from daily Zoom lessons, Google classroom and the constant round of nagging about doing the work set. I cannot fault their schools, and am in awe of their teachers who are planning and delivering online work and feeding back on it, while also doing the same for the key worker children in school, managing pastoral care and also looking after their own families… but I am so glad it’s half term.

Not just for me, but for my mum (and dad) friends as well. We are working parents, without exception, and while we are expert jugglers and plate spinners – often holding at least two conversations while simultaneously sorting laundry, thinking about dinner, and praying for bedtime – there is a limit to the number of plates we can keep spinning before something drops. Right now, we are spinning all these parental plates and at the same time juggling the work oranges as well. I know that I am not the only one who feels like we aren’t giving enough time to either. It’s hard to help with maths when you’re in a Teams meeting, for a start. Children – especially young ones – don’t understand that there are other demands on your time and don’t respect the boundaries of an online meeting. Older children can be a help sometimes, but they have their own work to do and its not fair to put extra responsibility on them.

In ‘normal’ times we have our work heads and our home heads, and often we have a commute in between so we have a chance to swap them over, to decompress on the train home, to think about dinner before we are faced with actually having to cook it, to read a few chapters of a book or to listen to a podcast. You don’t realise how valuable that down time is until you don’t have it. Over the last couple of weeks I have been finishing work quite late (for me, anyway, as a committed morning person!), getting up from the dining table where I’ve been working, and starting on dinner straight away in response to the ‘what’s for dinner/when’s dinner/how long till’ conversations. By Thursday I’d completely lost the will to ~~live~~ cook and resorted to the chippy. My head was so overfull that I couldn’t contemplate dinner as well, let alone trying to cook something that everyone would eat. Dinner that night was just one too many plates to spin, so I gave up.

On Friday all three of mine were on a screen-free, mindfulness, wellbeing sort of day as decreed by their schools. An excellent idea, and the secondary school sent home ideas of things they could do (I really approved of the one that said ‘make your parent a hot drink’). I, on the other hand, did not have a screen free, mindful sort of day. I was trying to focus on what my museum learning might look like in three years time. It was too cold – with a wind chill of -8 – to send them outside for any length of time. I couldn’t stop to play board games or do jigsaws, or to go for a walk in the sunshine, so their wellbeing day didn’t do a lot for me.

So this week it’s half term and I still have work to do, and I am going to give myself a break. If they spend a whole day on Minecraft while talking their friends, I am not going to worry about it: they can’t go on playdates with them, so this is the contact they can have. If Thing 1 wants to stay in bed watching emotional teen movies till lunchtime, fine. We can all benefit from a bit of a break, whether its from parental plate spinning or algebra. And yes, there might even be takeaway one night.

Creative chaos

After last week’s ramble about wanting to learn to draw, I picked up my sketchbook and did a couple of Craftsy classes online – I started the ‘Urban Sketching in 15 minutes a day’ course, and then yesterday I tried a line drawing one about how to sketch a house. I really enjoyed them and am learning to embrace the imperfections, as one of the tutors was very keen to impress on me. Craftsy is a great source of courses at the moment, and I took advantage of an offer a couple of months back to get a year’s premium membership for about a fiver rather than $70.

In the year of the handmade gift I sent off a TARDIS cross stitch to a lovely Whovian friend – he and his husband have just bought their dream home, so I used a design by NERDpillo to make this one. I almost didn’t want to fill in all the blue as the black lines were so clean and sharp, but I did. I’m so pleased they like it!

It’s been proper brass monkeys weather this week – today is the first day in a week that the thermometer has gone above one degree. I was quite excited on Tuesday when I got to add a new colour to the Temperature Tree as it was so cold. You can also see a little toadstool in a hoop that I did purely to try out a string art backing technique, and an ombre string art heart card.

Finally, I chopped all my hair off on Friday morning – I tried the unicorn horn method that I used last time and it was still too long at the back, so I put it in pigtails and chopped both off at collarbone level. I love it, it’s curly and I can get a brush through it in seconds flat.

(I was also really, really chuffed to be told on Friday that my article for CPRE had received 2000 views.)

Happy Valentines Day

A shout out to another creative friend here – the very lovely Emma, whose Etsy shop provided my gifts to my beloved for my anniversary last weekend and Valentine’s Day today.

There’s been a sweet theme this year: he indulged my passion for liquorice, and as well as torpedoes I have been given several bags of Spogs. These are a standing joke between us: when we were first together I had a bag of liquorice allsorts, and I’d saved all the spogs for last as they were my favourites. I came home to find he’d eaten them all as he thought I didn’t like them.

So that’s week 47! Happy Valentines Day to you all, you gorgeous bunch. See you next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Grave Tattoo – Val McDermid

Inspector Hobbes and the Blood – Wilkie Martin

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 five: Pollyanna rides again

I was all set this week to write a thoroughly bad-tempered, miserable post, I really was. It’s been a long and frustrating week, after all. On Tuesday evening an article I’d written was pulled at the very last minute with no explanation or communication: by that point it had been through four editors, had been built on the web platform by another colleague, had had all the photos retaken, and was scheduled to go live. It was a piece I was proud of and had worked hard on, but with no feedback from the person who’d rejected it…what do you do? All writers (get me! a writer!) send work into the void, to a certain extent, but that void should not exist within your own workplace and certainly not your own department.

By Thursday I was so miserable about the amount of time I’d wasted on this piece – particularly as I’d sworn after the first experience back in October that I absolutely, definitely wasn’t going to do another one – that I’d decided I’d had enough of museum education and started looking on all the job sites for something else. (Dramatic, moi? Never!)

I had also had a conversation with one of our little team about the culture of toxic positivity that exists at the moment. Our reaction to everything that’s thrown at us is ‘yes, we can do that!’. I know we can do it because we are really, really good at what we do and we have an amazing project to showcase our talents, but right now thanks to Covid-19 we don’t have the breakout spaces to sit with our colleagues and share our fears and worries. We don’t have the space to think about failure and to work through potential pitfalls. Whether that space is a Friday lunch at the Japanese Canteen, pizza in The Florist, or a walk around the lake in Vicky Park, those moments with our work family are so important to our wellbeing. Sometimes we need to throw our toys out of the pram with people who understand the pressure we are under to deliver in a time of huge uncertainty, when the whole sector is in a state of recovery and restructure. Sometimes its having a safe space to say ‘well yes, of course we can do it, but we need x, y, and z to be able to do it properly’ without fear of being thought of as negative. I have so much faith in our project and the amazing things it will do, but sometimes our faith in ourselves wobbles.

Then yesterday I had my first session with a life coach. This was a contact from a friend who is training to be one herself, and she and her fellow trainees need people to practise on: I had never thought of this as something I needed to do, but why not help people out? It costs us nothing but time, they achieve their qualification and who knows, it might be interesting.

And oh, it was. I have done a coaching for management course so was aware of the process, but hadn’t really experienced it myself. When we had our introductory chat she asked me to think about something I wanted to work on – at that point I hadn’t just had a really miserable week, so didn’t have anything specific, but luckily my crisis of faith turned up at just the right time. We had an hour session, and it was so interesting to feel the way my energy rose when I was talking about what I love about museum education and why I do the job I do. We talked about some steps I could take to get some perspective on our project and to rebuild my confidence in my own skills, and by the end of the first session my sense of purpose and pleasure in my job was starting to be restored.

I ended the week feeling a lot more positive than I did at the start, and this post is considerably less grumpy than I’d planned.

The power of a puddle

Another thing that’s cheered me up has been a couple of good welly wanders with friends (only one at a time, of course). Yesterday, despite the miserable weather (promised snow, got copious rain) Miriam and I took her house-elves/hounds Dobby and Kreacher round the aptly-named flood meadow, then left them to warm up in the house while we carried on for another couple of miles down to Dial House and back. The rain mostly held off while we were out, and we had a good chat that didn’t include Minecraft at any point, which was definitely a plus!

Jill and I went out for our usual sunrise ramble this morning, making our way through the woods towards Tawney Common and round in a loop. We both slipped over on the ice – my hand and arm are really painful and I expect there will be a bruise on my nethers later, but when we’d finished laughing we carried on. The route we take faces due east, so we get the best of the sunrise over the fields.

Where we have had so much rain over the past few days and then a freeze overnight, the flooded fields had frozen around the plants and trees as well as in the footprints, leaving ice patterns. It was good to see from the hoofprints that even deer are prone to the odd slip and slide in the mud too!

Bushes frozen in a couple of feet of water

We were in very good spirits this morning, frightening the wildlife with our renditions of The Hippopotamus Song and The Gnu Song, not to mention A Windmill in Amsterdam and stamping on the ice in puddles. We are missing the swimming but we’re so lucky to live where we do: it’s not Yorkshire, and it’s not Wales, but it’s not bad, as we are wont to say when looking out over the Essex countryside.

Other stuff….

I haven’t got a lot to show this week as the main thing I have been working on will be a gift, but here’s the latest Temperature Tree (up to the 26th, I think – count the leaves!) to be going on with. My very colour deficient sister wants to know where the key is, but since she has difficulty distinguishing between shades of green and blue I’m not convinced a key will help!

I went to the optician’s this week for my annual eye test (only nine months overdue!). At forty I didn’t need any glasses at all, and was very smug at my glasses-wearing family. Then came the glasses for looking at the computer, which at my next eye test became my distance glasses and there was a new pair for the computer and close work. Now I need new distance glasses, my computer/close up ones are for middle distance and I require a third pair for reading and close-up work. This is just getting silly….

On Friday I took a day off as I had been asked to write a crafty piece for a charity’s website, which I was (and am!) really excited about: I love to write and to make things, so this was my dream project! Hopefully I’ll be able to share it next week, along with the citizen science project it will support.

A film I was interviewed for last year, about the importance of teddies and wellbeing, was finished and added to YouTube: I hate seeing myself on camera but I’m proud to be part of this. You can find out more about Workshy Films here. I have put the film at the bottom of the post, or you can watch it on YouTube.

It’s been a week of ups and downs, all in all, but today is the end of January which seems to have lasted about three times as long as usual, and this week contains not just Thing 3’s 10th birthday (how did that happen?) but my beloved and I’s 17th not-wedding anniversary and my niece’s 12th birthday. I have a box of deliciously gooey brownies from Ridiculously Rich by Alana which arrived as a surprise from London sister yesterday along with a new sourdough starter as I managed to kill Kevin (sorry Kevin), so snacks are sorted. I do love getting unexpected post!

I wish you all a good week, and I’ll see you at the end of week 46!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Nice Jumper – Tom Cox

Ring the Hill – Tom Cox

Educating Ruby – Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas

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