239: mama bear mode engaged

This has been a fairly chaotic week, what with one thing and another, juggling family, work and finally a mercifully brief (as long as I don’t move too fast) bout of vertigo.

Thing 1, as I have mentioned before, is doing one of those new-fangled T-level things, in Education and Early Years. After a rough start at Harlow College doing a beauty course which she didn’t enjoy, she began the T-level course and got a A in her first year. A large part of the course is practical, spent on placement in an early years setting. Last year she was in a setting in Harlow, which meant the better part of 3 hours travel every day at the mercy of her inability to get up despite approximately a million alarms and an erratic bus service. This year, she got a placement in our local town, which you’d think would be a good thing – except it was the one school locally where I didn’t want her to go, as when she was a pupil there she was badly bullied. The school were unhelpful to say the least, telling me that she – as the victim – had to take some responsibility for being bullied. I have never come so close to thumping someone as an adult in my life – I was literally speechless, and anyone who knows me will be aware that that does not happen often.

Her anxiety stems from this experience, so I was worried that going back there would trigger a crisis. She felt that she would be OK, but the two reception teachers made it clear that they had no use for a student and weren’t allowing her to plan and deliver the activities her course required. She was also very distressed about their handling of a child with behavioural issues and children crying (these are four years olds who have been in school for a matter of weeks). I have long held that this particular school is not supportive of children with additional needs, and I still wish I’d removed Thing 1 before the end of primary. Things 2 and 3 changed school when Thing 1 went to secondary, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve made – if your child’s only complaint on their first day is that people tried to play with her and ‘they didn’t even introduce themselves!’ I think it’s a good sign.

Luckily her tutors were supportive, especially as Thing 1 had already raised the child with a behavioural issue as a safeguarding concern with them, and they have helped her to find a new placement with a lovely local school. She’s been talking over the last few months about going to university and has expressed an interest in working with children with SEND, which I think she would be great at (obviously I am biased, but) and I really don’t want her to have a negative experience before she’s had the chance to find out what she wants to do. (My own final teaching practice began with the teacher saying ‘You can’t be a teacher in a year, I don’t know why you’re bothering’… and it went downhill from there.) The relief I am feeling and the gratitude to the local head for making an exception and taking an additional student this year are enormous. I know she’s 18 and all that, but I am pretty sure there’s no age limit to the mama bear instinct.

Other things making me happy (or dizzy) this week

A visit to the Charles Dickens Museum on Wednesday – I took their learning person on a tour of the New River Head site (Dickens was a New River Company customer, it seems – even back then people were complaining about the water companies. Dickens paid for a bath-sized cistern but it was never full enough) and then we went for a return visit.
Later that evening the vertigo started – I probably shouldn’t have gone to work on Thursday but it was World Mental Health Day and I’d organised a team lunch and made banana and Malteser cake. The journey home was not fun, I can tell you that much. Luckily the cats kept me company all afternoon and Thing 2 looked after me.
An extremely slow walk around the Knitting and Stitching Show with Heather on our annual pilgrimage to Ally Pally – I didn’t buy anything at all, which is a first, and we remembered to take our packed lunches. We saw many Bees, including Luke who won this year’s GBSB, and I met some lovely textile illustrators. The Subversive Stitcher, who had an amazing exhibition of vintage tea towels in the foyer, was a favourite, and Harriet Riddell‘s amazing embroidered portraits and scenes. We liked Richard Box’s gorgeously tactile hares and flowers, too. The show had a couple of years when the big exhibitors didn’t attend but it seems to be back on form now – the graduate showcases and quilt exhibitions are always worth a look too.
Lots of making for today’s Apple Day at Copped Hall. Thing 2 is helping me out again, and we may have to be ‘those people’ in dryrobes as the temperature is looking autumnal.

You may detect a distinctly festive theme to the making, as I have just heard I have a stall at this year’s Epping Christmas Market, but there’s autumnal ones too…

And now I am off to enjoy the new series of The Cleaner, with lovely Greg Davies. Same time next week then!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Unruly – David Mitchell

Razor Girl – Carl Hiaasen

We Are All Made Of Glue/A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine – Marine Lewycka

Horses, Heifers and Hairy Pigs: The Life of a Yorkshire Vet – Julian Norton

21st Century Yokel – Tom Cox (Audible)

231: are you coming out to play?

Friday was the first day of our new community co-design project. You remember, the one that was giving me sleepless nights last week in case no one turned up or it rained all day or it was a total disaster, that sort of thing. I have form for this sort of thing – on one school trip all those years ago I managed to lose two children and a parent helper – so it’s not unreasonable to worry!

Luckily it all seemed to go very well – 18 people came along and we took 18 very similar people back to Islington so I am counting it as a win. The Panda coach turned up on time – one of the children was very excited, as they had apparently ALWAYS WANTED to go on a panda bus. I didn’t know Panda Buses were a thing, but there we are. A bonus point to me… Another child had never been on a coach before so the adventure started early for her! No one was sick and we had exactly the right amount of snacks for the day. Pom-bears were the most popular – Valentina, my colleague, hadn’t heard of them before, although my director says they go very well with red wine. We’re a cultured bunch, us.

The visit this week was to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where they have a children’s garden which explores in a very playful way all the things plants need to grow – sun, water, earth and air – in four zones. The idea of the project is to take local families to different playful green spaces (next week is Holland Park Adventure Playground) and then in the final week we’ll work with a play artist to construct models of play opportunities which will be shared with the architects and landscape designers to inspire our own new gardens. Each day is being live illustrated by illustrators, so we can see what families engage with most, and what captures their imagination. We also gave all the participants their own sketchbooks to record whatever they wanted, and one to a small girl who was fascinated by illustrator Grace Holliday’s sketching and was peering over her shoulder. We told her dad all about the Centre – no engagement is ever wasted!

Valentina and Grace met us at the entrance to the Gardens, having left me in charge of the bus journey, and we headed off to the Children’s Garden and Earth area where we found huge sandpits, slides like earthworms and wooden playhouses as well as logs and ropes to help people up a large mound. The younger children enjoyed the sand while the older ones (the group ranged from 5 – 16) enjoyed the sunshine. The second space was Water, where there were pumps and rivulets, with a paddling zone complete with stepping stones. Climbing structures were, again, more popular with all but the youngest children. The round structures you can see in the images above were in the Sun area next to Water, along with some huge eucalyptus trees and some very cheeky baby jackdaws. I loved the use of coloured perspex in the tunnel. Few people seemed to use this area, perhaps because it wasn’t obviously ‘playful’.

We liked the ‘rules of enjoyment’ scattered through the gardens as well as at the entrances – ‘Our trees are for hugging not climbing’; ‘Our plants are for smelling not picking or eating’ and others – offering alternatives to engagement rather than ‘don’ts’. There are clear paths to each area as well as stepping stone paths through flower beds to encourage exploration. They close the space for quiet sessions but the space overall didn’t feel as if it had been designed with accessibility in mind – there weren’t obvious alternatives to climbing frames or the paddling area for wheelchair users, for example, and I couldn’t find any information on the accessibility map on the website (which is also hard to read). I would have liked to have seen this information in a variety of easy to find formats on the website, particularly as we had at least two children with Austistic Spectrum diagnoses on the visit. Kew has a great facilitated community and access programme but for independent visits the information isn’t obviously available. I am happy to be corrected on this, of course, but this is the sort of information we know our visitors need to have.

We went to the Family Kitchen for lunch, where we provided children’s lunch boxes and pizzas for the grown ups. The toilets are sensibly located there too, and a playful handwashing station. Kew have also put a shop in there and an extremely expensive Hackney Gelato ice cream parlour, which I am quite sure a lot of parents could have done without, especially as entry to Kew isn’t cheap.

After lunch we went to the Air space, which was the most popular with our families – little trampolines sunk into the floor, rope swings, colourful windmills and a giant hammock, and lots of things (pollen, apparently) to jump from and on and over. Again, things to climb on were most popular – the Oak Circle, a huge oak tree ringed by a high level walkway, attracted all the children, while a bench ringing the tree provided some much needed seating and shade for us! Grace Holliday, our illustrator, captured so much movement and joy in this zone.

The usual herding of kittens through a final visit to the loos and retrieving them from the shop ensued, and then it was back on the bus to Islington through a lot of traffic which seemed to be Taylor Swift’s fault, at least according to the coach driver who had to battle back round to Harrow afterwards. I’m looking forward to the next adventure, and hopefully the families are too!

In other news…

Poor Lulu cat had to have a sleepover at the Royal Veterinary College this week, which meant a long car journey each way. She was at pains to tell us how unhappy she was about this, especially when speed bumps and potholes made their presence felt. We finally have a diagnosis though – she has not one but six bladder stones and an operation is needed to get rid of them as they aren’t the sort which can be zapped or dissolved. Thank heavens for insurance, which covered the £1548 cost of her stay. She now has bald patches on her legs, chest and belly and took a good 48 hours to forgive me.

Cat attempting to disappear

Thing 3 had his ingrown toenail operated on (and they did his other foot just in case). He was very brave and looked like a duck when he came home. No photos of this, though.

Things making me happy this week (aka ‘The Happy List’)

Thing 1 got an A in her first T-level exams – we are incredibly proud of her and her hard work after a rough year last year.
Thing 2 finally gave in and made me a lemon drizzle cake. It was excellent.
I put my quilt top together and stuck a lot of paper hexagons onto fabric hexagons, for which I have a cunning plan.
Making the Sew House Seven Wildwood dress. No photos, it needs to be on to look its best. I managed to get the skirt front backwards so it wraps the wrong way. Who knows how I did it, but there we are. It’s green.
Seeing the London Museum’s new logo make it into Private Eye‘s ‘Pseud’s Corner’ not once but twice….in the same issue. I love the Museum, having worked there for 12 years, but loathe the pigeon and ‘splat’
Three days off – some sewing, some sleeping, some KFC with Thing 1, some reading
The finale of The Umbrella Academy – such a good series, and great use of Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. It made me want to rewatch DC Titans though.

And that’s it from me for the week – I must go and throw pizzas at teenagers in the hope of pacifying them. Thing 2 has three friends over for a sleepover – ‘sleep’ being a very relative term.

Same time next week then 🙂

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Covent Garden Ladies – Hallie Rubenhold

Honeycomb – Joanne M. Harris (Audible)

1989 – Val McDermid

The Full English – Stuart Maconie

The Last Voice You Hear – Mick Herron

230: there’s a nap for that

I like sleep. I’m a big fan of it, quite frankly, and am willing to embrace it at the drop of an eyelid. Lockdown was brilliant, as I was on furlough, it was really hot and I could have siestas in my hammock whenever I wanted. Weekends almost always include a good nap or two. At night I like to read a bit (until the book falls out of my hands, usually) and then snuggle down with whichever cat happens to be on hot water bottle duty until the alarm goes off.

The hot water bottle on International Cat Day this week

One of the most annoying bits about menopause – which was saying something, given the rest of the symptoms – was the constant waking up at stupid o’clock and not being able to go back to sleep, but the patches seem to have sorted that out. Sleeping with earplugs has also helped enormously. My Beloved claims that earplugs aren’t helping him as he can still hear me snoring, but he can always get his own.

However, so far no one has made a patch that reduces wakefulness due to stress (the first of our National Lottery Heritage Fund community co-design projects starts this week, and what if no one turns up? I haven’t booked the transport yet! Is the bus big enough? What if it’s a total disaster? What if no one comes to the last day which is the really important one? What have I forgotten? What if too many turn up for the bus who didn’t RSVP? Argh! ).

There isn’t a patch to deal with having an 18 year old daughter on the loose in London with her friends, either. Thing 1 has embraced raving and has been off to South London (of all places!) a few times since her birthday. I am not sure why I am more concerned with her going to Vauxhall or Lambeth than when she goes to Camden, but there we are. We give her the lecture every week: no sex, no drugs, no sausage rolls (on the basis that rock’n’roll is in short supply at raves, but there might well be a hot dog seller or a 24 hour Greggs to hand). She’s quite sensible, we think, and we know she’s got a getting home plan and she’s with her friend from the village, but STILL. It’s my job.

At this point my mother is cackling away in her little village in Gaul and muttering about karma. I see you, mother. Don’t deny it.

Things making me happy this week

A couple of evening walks with Thing 2 through the fields and woods between our village and the next. There were deer, we startled a badger on his dusk patrol up near the fishing lake, gorgeous waterlilies.
I say walk – my Achilles has been playing up so more of a hobble. Still, I made it to week 5 on the C25k before it went. However, this evening it went ‘pop’ which Google assures me is not a good sign.
A day at the Peel/Three Corners Street Party – bubbles, dogs to make friends with (including a puppy who’d never seen bubbles before and kept trying to catch them), a DJ playing excellent tunes, lots of people interested in our project.
Saturday with my gazebo, touting my wares at a local church fundraiser. Sold a few bits and bobs, talked to lots of nice people and cut out a lot of paper hexagons for an English Paper Piecing project while sitting in a pretty graveyard. I love a graveyard, as you know.
Hydrangeas flowering nicely thanks to no intervention from me
The prospect of a few days off and a new dress pattern.
Apple cakes using my mum’s recipe, making use of the windfalls in the garden.
Early doors walk with Jill on Friday, putting the world to rights and plotting dastardly deeds.
Progress on the kantha-inspired bag which I keep forgetting to take photos of.
Unputdownable books.

And that’s it from me – next week I’ll try and remember to take photos, as I’m off with a load of families to Kew Gardens. If they turn up. And if the bus is big enough.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Still Life – Val McDermid

Joe Country/Down Cemetery Road – Mick Herron

The Diary of a Secret Tory MP – The Secret Tory MP

Honeycomb – Joanne M. Harris (Audible)

The Full English – Stuart Maconie

The Covent Garden Ladies – Hallie Rubenhold

Necropolis – Catharine Arnold

220: a commuter story

On Friday morning I discovered to my utter horror that I’d forgotten to charge my phone overnight and faced the prospect of a tube journey actually having to listen to other people at 6.45am. After only one cup of coffee this is an alarming prospect. There is always one person who feels the need to have a loud conversation on their mobile with someone they have presumably left mere moments earlier. There is also, inevitably, someone with an extremely irritating sniff or cough – sometimes both – who is not in possession of a tissue or, indeed, any manners. There are people who feel entitled to play their music on their phones without earphones, as if we would all benefit from their hideous musical choices. It’s never anything I would ever choose to listen to. I can only assume this is the planet-friendly 2024 version of driving around in a knackered Ford Fiesta with a dodgy exhaust and a massive speaker in the boot, as was de rigueur when I was a teenager. Tube etiquette frowns, for some reason, on throwing oneself across the aisle* and strangling people, and a deep loathing of horrible music is not considered a mitigating circumstance in the eyes of the law**. Being able to immerse myself in the sounds of my choice is really a public service.

As it turned out, Friday’s journey was worth the lack of earphones. There was a small person and his dad. Small person was full of questions and poor Dad was clearly regretting his life choices, probably because he hadn’t had enough coffee either. Peppa Pig Hide ‘n’ Seek on the ipad was not cutting it, and this was even before they got to the Natural History Museum on a rainy day in half term. Small boy was hopelessly excited at the prospect of REAL DINOSAURS and Dad was trying to check emails against a constant bombardment of ‘Is this our stop? Is this our stop? DAD, I found Pedro Pony! Is THIS our stop?? Suzy Sheep, Dad! How many more stops? Are we underground yet? When will we be underground?’ Poor Dad. After a while I took pity on Dad and helped count stations, and answered questions – What’s that on your finger? What are you making? Where are you going? My Things, these days, bring their own earphones on the tube and don’t ask me questions any more – in fact they prefer to pretend I am not with them until we get off the tube and they need the Oyster card.

My absolute favourite moment, however, was when he threw his arms round his dad, gave him a huge squeeze and shouted ‘DADDY! DADDY’ (plaintive ‘whaaaaattttt’ from Daddy)…. ‘I’VE NEVER HUGGED YOU ON A TRAIN BEFORE, DADDY!’ The gentle ping of stony little commuter hearts melting was practically audible.

*also, you’d lose your seat. It’s fierce on the Central in rush hour.

**Law, schmaw. The rest of the carriage would probably help me.

Other things making me happy this week

Finally visiting the Barbican Conservatory, for a celebration of their project with Headway East London, a brilliant charity for people with acquired brain injuries. It was like those pictures of concrete cities that have been taken over by the jungle. I liked it a lot
A really useful strategy meeting. Adding 70s & 80s rock stars, Prince and Harry Styles to my powerpoint entertained me, at least, and people got extra points for recognising Journey.
A partnership event with the Museum of the Order of St John and our lovely illustrator Grace Holliday exploring ‘Fabulous Ferns’.
Coffee with Amanda and her Thing 3 on Thursday morning
The new series of The Outlaws and a ludicrous new episode of Midsomer Murders

Today I am off to Copped Hall with all those crochet toadstools and cacti!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Sentry/Indigo Slam/L.A. Requiem – Robert Crais

Bridgerton 1-7 – Julia Quinn

The Lost Continent – Bill Bryson (Audible)

216: it’s 1973, almost dinner time…

…I’m ‘avin ‘oops.

This week, having worked our way through all 27 series of Silent Witness, we’ve been watching the brilliant Life on Mars which has just appeared on Netflix. For anyone who missed this gem the first time round, the premise was that Manchester copper Sam Tyler (John Simm) was hit by a car, went into a coma and woke up in 1973. He’s been ‘transferred’ from Hyde where policing is a little more progressive. He’s confronted with sexism, racism, Neanderthal attitudes, ‘old-school’ policing and a camel-coated, gun-toting DCI called Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) who zooms around in a Cortina and shouts a lot (I love him. So. Much.). He spends two series attempting to reform the Gene Genie, hearing voices from various bits of electrical equipment linking him back to his comatose life in the 1990s. There’s a love interest, a truly excellent soundtrack, great clothes and good storylines. I really liked the ending though my Beloved always picks holes in these things, being very bad at suspending his disbelief.

Things 1 and 2 have dropped in and out of the series with us, especially Thing 2 who gets quite engaged with these things – she got very involved with Silent Witness too. About halfway through one episode she said ‘I wish I’d been there for all the feminism stuff, I think it would have been really exciting, really important.’ I’ve been thinking about that quite a lot – I probably should have questioned her a bit more about what she sees as having changed in the last 50 years but I was too busy thinking about how much she’s changed in the last year or so.

Thing 2 was desperately shy as a small person – I had to go to all birthday parties with her and she’d rarely leave my side. I called her my limpet as she’d cling on to me with her arms and legs at all times, which at least left me hands-free. Strange relatives in the house would have her posting notes under the door informing us that she wasn’t coming in the room as she was too shy. It usually took several hours for her to get round to talking to them. Combined with her legendary (inherited – karma strikes hard) stubbornness, this could make things like getting her into school quite difficult. Speech therapy was a trial as she refused to speak to the therapist for the first several weeks. She was seven before I could go to a school assembly without her clambering across every row of people to get to me rather than take part – when she finally managed it I was so proud I cried. She still hates answering questions in class and for her English speaking assessments we have to arrange for her to do her presentation to the teacher and some of her friends rather than the whole class. She hates speaking to waiters which drives her Aunty Tan mad.

What she does have, however, is a fierce sense of what’s right and wrong, and this is when she speaks out – she stands up for her sister when she’s in trouble, she speaks up for friends in school. On one memorable occasion last year our next door neighbours were having a barney outside – my Beloved phoned the police, Thing 1 was monitoring the situation and Thing 2 flung open the front door, puffed herself up to twice her size like an angry cat and stormed out of the house shouting ‘WHAT THE F**K, B…?’ He was so surprised he stopped what he was doing and legged it before the police arrived. His wife brought flowers to Thing 2 the following day which flustered her completely. She was worried that I’d tell her off for swearing – on this occasion I let her off! See? Fierce. Far from telling her off, I’d like to get it printed on a commemorative t-shirt or mug for her. She might not say much but when she does it makes a difference.

Gene Hunt makes his return this evening as we start Ashes to Ashes – similar premise, except our time traveller is a woman heading back to 1981. Fire up the Quattro!

Other things making me happy this week

Coffees with lovely people: a fellow crocheter who’s currently working at the Museum of the Order of St John, with Amanda, and with my team.
Lunch with Panagiota, the friend I made a few weeks ago – we managed to find a date at last!
The prospect of a long weekend with a couple of swims
Two encounters with the Bella-dog, who is unfailingly pleased to see me and lets me know with boisterous enthusiasm
A visit from Timeshare Teenager 1 and No 1 Grandson this afternoon
A gorgeous sunny walk through the lanes today after several days of torrential downpours this week
The return of Disco Jesus to the church just down from our site

Sunshine and flowers!

Enjoy your Bank Holiday Monday!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Mrs England/The Foundling– Stacey Halls

A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson (Audible)

Necropolis – Catharine Arnold

Bubbles Unbound/Bubbles in Trouble/Bubbles Ablaze –Sarah Strohmeyer

(Cover image: https://contra.com/p/U6k3LMvr-are-spaghetti-hoops-vegan)

Week twenty-five: pink hair, don’t care

There are definitely days when I feel a lot of sympathy for my parents, who brought up three daughters and lived to tell the tale. We have all turned out to be fairly normal and well-adjusted adults, despite the usual teenage (OK, and adult) decisions that probably had mum and dad tearing their hair and added a few ‘natural lights’ (as my hairdresser says) to those hairs that remained.

Monday was one of those days. During lockdown Thing 1 has been ‘experimenting with her aesthetic’ (so she tells me) and has pretty much settled in as a punky Goth. Not a problem – the black hair, the eyeliner, the (fake) septum piercing, the Docs*, the ripped tights and fishnets are all things I can live with as they’re temporary and the look suits her. We’ve been at home for an extended period, after all, and rules have been relaxed in many ways to make the separation from their friends easier.

The one thing I have been firm about, however, is that any extreme hair changes would need to be cut off before going back to school – yes, their big sister could bleach the ends out and they could have any colour hair they wanted until September. Hot pink, punk purple, bright green, mermaid blue, whatever – but it had to go before school started. Thing 1 went for a short bob quite early on and her dad did an undercut for her which her big sister had bleached and dyed, but that could be hidden. Her school rules say ‘no extreme haircuts and any hair dye can only be in natural colours’. The black dye she was sporting was fine, in that case, and the bleached undercut could be cut in again which would remove the bleach. She had been complaining that her roots were showing, and I had said that we’d get some hair dye next time I was in the supermarket but apparently this wasn’t fast enough.

So, on Monday I went off to get Thing 2 from school as she hadn’t taken the bus by herself at this point – Thing 1 wasn’t back in till Tuesday. When we got back Thing 1 was wearing a headscarf and looking suspiciously innocent. She had dyed her roots and her scalp magenta**. I mean, really magenta. Definitely-not-a-natural-colour-by-any-stretch-of-the-imagination magenta.

Then I noticed the eyebrow slit.***

At which point I turned into my mother.

*Apart from the Docs, which are obviously a design classic and I wear them myself.

**I made her wash it out the following day – top tip here people: Head and Shoulders shampoo is great for removing excess hair dye. The roots are still pinkish but at least her head is a normal colour.

***There isn’t much I can do about the eyebrow except take a lot of photos and use them to embarrass her when she’s older.

Cake and cover ups

I mentioned last week that I was off to make an apple fudge cake to try and make a dent in the glut of apples from our little eating tree in the garden. I have no idea what variety they are but they are a pretty pinky-red and the flesh is pink-tinged too, but the texture is a bit woolly. Thing 1 and my beloved are not fans of fruit, Thing 2 and I prefer a crisp, tart apple and Thing 3 can’t be expected to eat them all himself so I have been using them to bake in place of cooking apples. We had a cooking apple tree until a few years ago, but sadly it fell victim to honey fungus and we had to take it down.

I’ve used this recipe before and while I find it a bit dry, its great with custard or some vanilla ice cream. It’s a Simon Rimmer one from Something for the Weekend, and its very simple to make. I used Thornton’s Dairy Fudge as it was all they had in the Co-op, but I expect you could jazz it up with a flavoured fudge – a Baileys one would be delicious!

On the rare chilly mornings up at Redricks Lake – and as we start thinking about how we’ll keep swimming through the winter – we have been eyeing up people’s Dryrobes and wincing at the price tag. I was pretty sure I could make something similar that would keep me warm and allow enough room to get in and out of a wetsuit, so I had a go this week at a trial version.

I started with a wearable blanket pattern in adult size – in this case, the free (and very easy to follow) Billie blanket by Do It Better Yourself Club, which comes in two lengths and can be lined or left unlined. I chose to make the lined version and used softshell fleece fabric for the outside, two large (bath sheet sized) microfibre towels for the body lining, and cotton jersey for the cuffs and hood lining.

Softshell fleece has a woven shower proof front and a microfleece backing fabric, which means its wind and water resistant as well as warm and breathable. It has a similar feel and handle to a scuba fabric, so it’s quite flexible and easy to sew. I used my overlocker for the whole construction, which made it super speedy, and only used my sewing machine to topstitch around the hood to hold it in place.

I first made the blanket as it says in the pattern, though I didn’t do a proper hem as a) I wasn’t convinced my sewing machine would like the four layers of fabric and b) I really couldn’t be bothered to measure it. I just sealed the outer and inner together with the overlocker. It was HUGE! This was the XL size as I wanted it to be roomy enough to change in – frankly, we could all have changed in there. At the same time.

Once I’d tried taking it on and off, I decided that it might be easier if it opened down the front, rather than having to take it on and off over my head, particularly in cold damp weather when you just want to wrap up in something warm.

So, I sliced it down the centre and overlocked those edges together too, which has made it much more manageable. I’ll use sticky velcro down the front for a quick seal and will also put some down the left front, so it can be wrapped more closely.

The microfibre towels had enough fabric to line the front and back, though the back is a bit of a box and cox job as I had to piece it together! It’s very cosy and weighty enough to be comforting, and I think it’ll be good for the winter. It probably took about 4 hours to make and the cost was considerably less than a proper Dryrobe. Can’t wait to test it out!

I’ve also been working on a different sort of cover up, using some Stylecraft Alpaca DK yarn in lovely autumn colours that I have been hoarding. I had started making a self-drafted long waistcoat with it, but wasn’t inspired by it and wasn’t sure I’d wear it, so I unravelled it last weekend and put the yarn back in the shed until the right pattern came along.

On Wednesday I beetled off to the shed and got the yarn back out again, as in this month’s Simply Crochet magazine the perfect pattern appeared. Well, not perfectly perfect as the recommended yarn was aran weight and mine was DK, but I made a tension square using a hook two sizes larger and it came up to the right size. I just hope I have enough yarn as Stylecraft have discontinued this line – it’ll be down the EBay rabbit hole if not!

Image and Pattern copyright Cassie Ward for Simply Crochet

The pattern is a Bishop-sleeved cardigan – they have used a pale pink as their main colour, but I’m using a lovely red with some toning colours for the sleeve stripes. Using two strands held together it’s working up quickly – I have almost finished the back now.

Hi ho, hi ho…

…it’s not off to work I go. It’s quite odd trying to get back into the swing of work and our major capital project while still being at home, although I must confess it’s been a lot easier this week with no children around to ‘help’! On Tuesday I attended whole Teams meetings with no one wandering behind me to see who I was talking to, typed complete sentences and wasn’t interrupted once with demands for food or mediation. I do feel as if my head may well start spinning on my neck and explode as there’s so much to take in, but by Thursday I was up to this month’s emails. Hurray!

That was my week then! The cover photo was taken at sunrise on Monday, looking towards Ongar from the top of the common. The image below is from the same walk – I loved the way the trees were framing the sun – and the wasp nest is from a fallen tree at Dial House. This was only part of it – it must have been hge!

Wasp (?) nest in a fallen tree at Dial House

See you at the other end of week 26!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

A Capitol Death (Flavia Albia series) – Lindsey Davis

Further Adventures of Carlotta Carlyle: Three Mystery Stories – Linda Barnes

Two for the Lions/One Virgin Too Many (Falco series) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)