223: this week I am mostly…

…complaining about the weather. I had planned to start this blog with ‘well, it’s taken a while, but summer seems to be finally here’. And then it rained again, quite emphatically, this morning – before my run (week 1, day 3 – it’s a start) and then again while I was at the library. And then again after my lunch. Ah well. I won’t start with that then.

….saying its too warm. It’s Saturday evening and I have just retreated to the extension away from Things 1 & 2’s new YouTube playlist. It’s way too warm in the front room, and the aircon thingy is out here which is another good reason to escape. I mean, Justin Bieber? One Dimension? Ugh.

…fed up of cooking. I envy friends whose children eat everything they put in front of them, from cockles and olives to proper home cooked meals. Mine are better than they were, but you can guarantee that at least twice a week one of them won’t like whatever I’m planning to cook. These days they are big enough for me to say ‘well, make yourself something else then’. However, after a long day at work and rush hour on the baking-fires-of-hell Central Line, I have very little tolerance for put-upon teenage faces.

.. wondering WHY, if all the food I provide is ‘horrible’ or ‘just ingredients’, where does it all go? And why is it my fault when we run out? Also, if you don’t like mild cheese, don’t bloody eat it. Go and buy your own cheese and leave the mild in the salad drawer where I hid it from you.

….bemused by the sheer quantities of clothes they manage to wear, given that five days a week they’re in school uniform. I know for a fact I cleared the laundry baskets on Monday and Wednesday, so how were there another four full loads today? And my washing machine is a 9kg capacity so four loads is a LOT of laundry. Are there people in my house I don’t know about? Would *they* eat my cooking? And then I get to iron things that belong to me (I refuse to do anyone else’s.)

…not psychic. I cannot see into the fridge/coffee jar/cupboard from 18 miles away in London. Therefore I do not KNOW you have finished the milk/coffee/bread unless you tell me. Perhaps using the mobile device you’re attached to. Try the messaging function.

….not listening to messages. Do not send me a voice note to tell me about the lack of milk/cheese/coffee/biscuits. I will not listen to it. Voice mail is the work of the devil, and calling it a ‘voice note’ is not fooling anyone. Text me. Stop being lazy. Or, better still, go to the Co-op and buy the damn milk/cheese/crisps/chocolate yourself.

…feeling much better for having got that lot off my chest, thank you.

Things making me happy this week

A fun day hanging out at the Little Angel Theatre Street Party last Sunday – giant bubbles, beautiful magpie puppets, free cake. Yay! Our next event is the Cally Festival on 7 July, another big street party.
Coming home after to find Thing 2 making a quiche for dinner so all I had to do was throw salad on plates. She will eat most things – she’d made the quiche earlier in the week for Food Tech and wanted me to try it. I am all for this.
An ‘everybody in’ day at work that we spent at Roots and Shoots in Kennington – the sun was burning me at 9am so I sensibly chose the indoor option of helping put up a display for an event in the evening. Lovely to spend time away from screens and desks with such a great bunch of people. Spent some time watching a newt in the pond and met a cat.
An enormously fun commute home on Friday playing peekaboo with a very giggly toddler. He was wide awake but his Dad definitely looked like he needed a nap.
Lots and lots of sashiko stitching – definitely addicted. The skirt is finished, the bag is well underway, the pouch is all done and a panel that a lovely colleague brought me back from Japan last year is done too. I am using threads that came from a friend’s late mother’s stash, which feels right for a craft that’s all about making things last.

This week it’s my birthday and I have booked a day off – the world is my oyster. Or at least it will be once I’ve taken the cat to the vet.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Suspect/The Promise/A Dangerous Man – Robert Crais

Neither Here Nor There – Bill Bryson (Audible)

Shadowstitch – Cari Thomas

Slow Horses – Mick Herron (a most excellent recommendation from a colleague)

222: a nettle-strewn hellscape, you say?

Last Sunday afternoon London sister Tan and I went for our first long walk for aaaaages – well, since the ludicrously long one we did last July. She’s been running a lot (marathons and half marathons) while I have been doing weekend wanders and hoping that at some point the rain will stop long enough for the footpaths to dry out.

Despite her belief that Essex is a fly-blown wasteland, Tan trekked over to my ‘ends’ and we did the Moreton and the Matchings circular walk that I’d tried a couple of times last year. It takes in a few pretty churches and villages, and – as it turned out – a LOT of nettles that haven’t been cut back. These were head height in places, with added brambles, and some farmers haven’t cut the crossfield paths so many detours were taken. I spent some time on Monday morning reporting all this to the council, who may or may not get round to looking at it in an estimated nine weeks or so. Add the detours to my legendary (lack of) sense of direction, and the 17k walk came in at just under 20k.

You can just see the top of my head – this was a waymarked footpath!

We stopped for a snack break (Mini Cheddars, Snickers and coffee) on the green at Matching, next to the very pretty medieval marriage feast house and the church, facing an oak tree that was planted for Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1887. The friendly vicar came along and very helpfully told us that they had a toilet, which made us happy. We saw kestrels, heard a lot of pheasants, snuck up on a few bunnies and a muntjac, and apart from the extremely hardcore nettles it was a good ramble. We finished with a look inside the 13th century St Mary the Virgin church in Moreton, where we’d parked the car, and then she refused to take my directions on the way home and insisted on using the satnav. Honestly!

Still, Tan’s opinion of Essex has changed – it’s now a nettle-strewn hellscape. Which is nice.

So how’s that skirt coming along?

Very well, thank you for asking! Having definitely said last week that I wasn’t going to do any boro patching as it would be too cottagecore for words, I remembered that not only did I have some Japanese prints in the stash, I had a boro inspiration pack from Japan Crafts that some lovely Secret Santa gave me a couple of years ago when the Young V&A theme was ‘blue’ so clearly DESTINY was saying DO A PATCH.

Also, the skirt doesn’t have pockets, and I NEED pockets, so I made a boro patch as a pocket. I used some of the indigo fabrics, some scraps from the V&A sample sale, and a square of cotton as a base, and lined it to make a patch pocket. That was my portable project on the tube this week, and it was clearly performance crafting as people kept watching me. As well as the running sashiko stitch, I also used some of the fabric features to embellish with lazy daisy stitch and outlining hexagons. I enjoyed it so much that I looked for other things to boro – starting with some of the zillion cotton tote bags I have collected over the years, probably! This will also encourage me to use some of the embroidery threads people keep giving me…

I gave up on all my marking tools and just used washable poster paint to mark out the final bits of stitching I wanted to do on the skirt, which was lovely and messy and a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon after a morning of ironing. While waiting for the front of the skirt to dry, I marked up a fabric pouch that I bought in a Hobbycraft sale with the Seigaiha (wave) stencil, and then used Bondaweb and more fabric scraps to create a boro panel on a tote bag. The yellow marking pencil worked on this, so I used the Sakura (cherry blossom) and Fondou (weight) stencils for a panel as well. That should keep me busy! Also, guess what everyone is getting for Christmas?

Things making me happy this week

Cat insurance. Lulu isn’t well and the vet quoted me £600. Once I’d stopped freaking out they helped me put the claim in so that they would be paid directly. Now we just need to get the meds down her.
Inter-library loans, and new colleagues who recommend books to me. The two may be connected.
Lots of strawberries and raspberries from the garden
Coffee with Brian on Thursday morning and a colleague who is leaving asking if they can join my early morning coffee roster. This is clearly now A Thing.
Cinnamon Bun flavoured Pretzel Flipz.

Today I am off to hang out with illustrator Skye Baker at the Little Angel Theatre community street party in Islington, where we’ll be illustrating houses.

Next week I may even have finished the skirt – the problem is always knowing when to stop with these things….

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Demolition Angel/The Forgotten Man/The Watchman/The Promise – Robert Crais

Shadowstitch – Cari Thomas

Neither Here Nor There – Bill Bryson (Audible)

221: you know they sell those, don’t you?

A few weeks ago, as you may remember (it’s fine if you don’t. Really.) A & I visited a cemetery in South London and took in a charity shop while we were there. I bought a couple of linen skirts, one in navy and one in black. This week I have been bombarded by adverts from a clothing company who sell Japanese-inspired printed dresses and skirts and sashiko-style prints featured heavily. I did a sashiko mending course last year at the V&A, so – as all crafty types have a bad habit of doing – I decided to make my own version using the navy skirt.

I have the templates, I have the threads and needles, and in theory I have a whole variety of marking tools for use on fabric. Chalk pencils, marking pencils, air-erasable chako pens, heat-erasable markers, dressmakers’ carbon paper, fabric pens…I have them all and none of them did the job, The chalk pencil snapped. The marking pencil only made tiny marks with the stencil but was good with a ruler. The chako pen disappeared within seconds. The heat-erasable marker didn’t work on the fabric. The fabric pens don’t show up. The carbon paper tears. Something that should be straightforward has turned out to be rather frustrating. The only thing I’ve found that does work with the stencils is a Derwent white blender, which washes off me and the stencil so I really hope it washes out of the fabric too….I probably should have checked…

Anyway, I have done a row of sakura blossoms and the next row will be waves, I think, though I might use some of the patterns from this book if I can find a way of marking them! I may also try some boro patches, but don’t want to lean too far over into folksy/cottage core. At least I don’t think so – my mind just recalled some Japanese cotton prints I have in the stash. Oh dear.

You’re supposed to use a running stitch but in some of the curves I found it easier to take individual stitches. You can definitely see where I started, and in which direction I travelled. Once you’re actually sewing its quite a fast craft, but the marking may defeat me!

Other things making me happy this week:

Visiting RIBA to talk about potential for working together, and getting a tour of the building – I have serious architecture and learning room envy.
And as I was in the area, I messaged my lovely ex-director and for once she was working at home. We had a walk in the sunshine round Regent’s Park and I found one of Quentin Blake’s Enormous Crocodiles in the wild.
Early morning coffee this week with Amanda at EL&N in St Pancras. St Pancras always makes me want to hop on the Eurostar and head off into the wilds. Sadly neither of us had our passports and we both had morning meetings. Ah well.
Finishing the crocheted Christmas cactus. This one was a lot of trial and error and the flowers need a bit of work.
Running into another friend at the station – you know that friend who gives the best hugs? That one!
A great kick-off meeting for a community project with The Parent House in Islington.

And now I am off to investigate the shed to see if I can lay hands on that quilting fabric…

Kirsty

What I’ve been reading:

L.A. Requiem/Chasing Darkness/The Last Detective/The First Rule/Demolition Angel – Robert Crais

Shadowstitch – Cari Thomas

The Lost Continent– Bill Bryson (Audible)

186: unprecedented restraint

Yesterday was our crafty annual pilgrimage to the wilds of North London for the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace (‘our’ meaning Heather and I, partners in crafty crime). This year we’d decided to book a workshop, and found one on free-motion embroidery led by Molly Brown. This was something neither of us had tried before, and of the available workshops it was also the one we thought we probably couldn’t teach ourselves.

Molly took us quickly through the workings of the Janome Atelier machines we’d be working with, and then explained the process she used for making the tree embroideries. We started by tracing our trees onto pelmet Vlieseline, then delving into piles of organza scraps to create our background. We enclosed these in net and stitched around to hold them all in place (in my case, I managed to stitch the instruction sheet in as well), and then flipped the piece over to embroider the basic tree shapes.

Once the trunks were stitched we turned our trees up the right way and used the thread to ‘scribble’ in the branches, fill in the trunks and add any details we wanted. I added some smaller plants on the ground, and the ninety minute session finished far too quickly. It’s a technique I’d like to try again and I know I can drop the feed dogs on one of my machines, I just need to remember which…

The rest of the show was busy – I don’t usually go on Saturdays, for this very reason, and the usual crunch spots like Black Sheep Wools were packed with people rummaging through bargain bags. Anywhere there was a wandering Bee was also busy, of course! In a moment of sensibleness we’d taken packed lunches – food is reliably overpriced and disappointing – so we picnicked overlooking the ice rink before tackling the second hall.

One of the highlights of the Autumn Show is the exhibition section: graduate showcases, quilting winners, textile galleries and more. Many of this year’s shows appealed to my inner magpie, with mixed media pieces blooming with shiny things and found objects.

The final exhibition was The Duster Project by Vanessa Marr, which you can read about here. This is a collaborative project, which explores contemporary perspectives on the everyday lives of women.

Heather and I were very restrained, coming home with only a sewing pattern each and a few bits and bobs. This was mainly because neither of us have finished the kits we bought last year, and in my case also because earlier in the week I’d used the Obby voucher that was my leaving gift from Young V&A. I now have a jesmonite casting kit and a felted pebbles kit inspired by Kettle’s Yard.

Other things making me happy this week

Early morning coffee with Amanda
Ice cream and a wander round Roath Park
Getting up to date on the temperature supernova
Breakfast and speedview session at New City College
The Undertones supported by The Rezillos – so good!
Series 5 of Ghosts

Today is Apple Day at Copped Hall, so it’s family outing time again…same time next week?

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

This Is The Night They Come For You – Robert Goddard

The Dictionary of Lost Words – Pip Williams

Written in Dead Wax – Andrew Cartmel (Audible)

An Utterly Impartial History of Britain – John O’Farrell

The E. Nesbit Megapack – E.Nesbit

174: a day trip to Cambridge

A week post-Race to the Stones and my feet are almost back to normal size, although luckily I haven’t had to test this by putting anything like shoes on! The only day I’ve left the village was Thursday, when we went on a work team outing to Cambridge where the University Library is showing our exhibition Raymond Briggs: A Retrospective until late August.

Cambridge isn’t somewhere I have spent a great deal of time – I went to a humanist naming ceremony there once, and while Timeshare Teenager 1 was at Anglia Ruskin we popped up to see her, but other than a two-hour delay on a train back from somewhere where we got to sit in the station that’s been it. My very efficient Public Programmes Producer Jo organised the day, finding out about trains and buses, which was much appreciated by myself and the other member of the team Valentina.

Jo knows about things like group save tickets, and so we met at Kings Cross to catch the train and grab breakfast from Leon. Miraculously the trains were well-behaved all day (unlike the tube on the way home). Cambridge University Library is an impressive 1930s building which reminded us all of a power station – which makes sense now that I have discovered the architect, Giles Gilbert Scott, also worked on Battersea Power Station (and the red telephone box, which is cool).

The gallery is tucked away to the side of the main library entrance; quite a small space but the exhibition is full of sketches, roughs and proofs from some of Briggs’s best known-works like The Snowman and Father Christmas as well as from his longer graphic novels like When The Wind Blows and Ethel and Ernest. My sister’s favourite, Fungus the Bogeyman, also featured – I’d forgotten all the wonderful words in this one, and how endearing Fungus was.

We liked the simple sketch/make trails, especially playing with scale and getting messy with the giant’s footprint. We were amazed at the different illustration styles Briggs used over the years, and at the neatness of his typography for Fungus’s pages. The scrawled notes like ‘no full frontal nudity for Father Christmas’ made us laugh. When The Wind Blows brought back memories of the 80s and the very real fear of nuclear war, and The Tin-pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman was a stark look at the Falklands War.

If you’re in the area do go and see it – free entry and you also get to marvel at the University Library.

After leaving the library we walked through the grounds of one of the colleges, watching people punting and a fashion shoot with preppy clothes on the banks of the Cam, and made our way to Kettle’s Yard where we were planning to have lunch and a look at the Palestinian embroidery exhibition. The pavement on the way was scattered with bronze flowers, which Google informed us was the Cambridge Core and Flower Trail, inspired by a medieval coin hoard found by Anglian Water workers.

Lunch was a salad with hummus and falafel, with a lemon and ginger lemonade, while Jo and Valentina had huge vegetarian wraps. Jo tried the sticky toffee cake too, while I resisted the delicious-looking date flapjack.

Material Power

Our slot to visit the house was at 2pm, so we visited the Material Power exhibition first. The show covers both historic and modern dress, and the role of embroidery as a social signifier and a form of protest and resistance. As a cross-stitcher and very basic embroiderer, the amount of work and detail in the gorgeous garments left me speechless (I know!), especially the inside out garment where the back of the work was spectacularly neat. The image of the ’embroidered woman’ in the PLO material was striking. Upstairs was more modern clothing, and we were struck by the foregrounding of Palestinian women’s voices by simply having their video playing out loud, while the curator had to be listened to on headphones. Valentina has Palestinian ancestry, so the exhibition held personal meaning for her.

The piece that moved me most was the one above, Aya Haidar’s Safe Space series: a set of six hoop embroideries documenting her mother’s memories of growing up on Lebanon in the Civil War (1975-1990), and the steps people took to stay safe from everyday violence. Saucepan helmets and bullet proof vests, sleeping under beds, piling furniture to protect from flying glass, captured in a ‘domestic’ craft.

Finally we popped up to look at the ‘reflection and response’ space which turned out to be a corner in a corridor. The rest of the exhibition was so well done that I was a bit disappointed by this, though space is obviously an issue. There was a lot to reflect on and this felt like an afterthought.

To the house!

I’d heard of Kettle’s Yard as someone on my MA course was a volunteer there, but didn’t know much about it so had no idea what to expect. I was completely enchanted from the moment we walked in.

The website says, ‘Kettle’s Yard is the University of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery. Kettle’s Yard is a beautiful House with a remarkable collection of modern art.’ This does not do it justice. You can take a virtual tour here, but if you’re in Cambridge – perhaps to see the Raymond Briggs Retrospective! – go and visit. It’s magical in the same way that Dennis Severs’s House is: out of time, and with the sense that someone has just left the rooms. Apparently Helen and Jim Ede welcomed visitors and fed them tea and toast, and this spirit of home remains.

When your timeslot arrives you are escorted to the house where you ring a bellpull and are greeted by an incredibly knowledgeable person who clearly loves their role. You can sit in any of the chairs but you can’t touch any of the exhibits, which was frustrating for someone likes me who loves a pebble and a found object.

This being me, I gravitated to the packed bookshelves in Helen Ede’s room where I found such old friends as Lucy M. Boston’s Green Knowe stories (set in Huntingdon) and Sellars & Yeatman’s 1066 and All That. I wanted to find a chair and read for a while. The whole house exerts a sense of calm that I usually get from being at the seaside. Many of the paintings that called to me were seascapes, particularly Seascape with Two Boats by Winifred Nicholson where my eye was caught by the small child exploring the rocks and the Alfred Wallis Five Ships, Mount Bay which reminded me of Aberaeron.

*Seascape with Two Boats –* Winifred Nicholson

I also liked Cornelia Parker’s Verso series – photographs of the reverse of button cards from a museum collection, which highlight the work of the seamstresses who had to mount these buttons.

You can read more about Jim Ede and Kettle’s Yard here and here. If I go missing, you’ll find me tucked in a corner of his house with one of Helen’s books.

Next week will be a crafty update as I have been busy with crochet creatures, cross stitch and a make and share for the new issue of Tauko magazine. Here’s a teaser…

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Overboard– Sara Paretsky

The Ward Witch – Sarah Painter

Moon Over Soho/Whispers Underground – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies – Heather Fawcett

Desert Star – Michael Connelly

Ye Gods! – Tom Holt

The Good, The Bad and The History – Jodi Taylor

81: it’s showtime!

It’s been mentioned before that I’m a bit of a butterfly when it comes to making and crafting: I usually have several projects on the go that can be picked up and put down, taken on tubes, worked on as a way to help me focus in meetings or at D&D games, focused on while the TV happens in the background, that sort of things. These are alongside the ones that need more attention – things with sewing machines or full coverage cross stitches, for example.

So, imagine my delight yesterday when my crafty buddy H and I visited the Autumn Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace – the first live craft event we’ve been to since the Waltham Abbey Wool Show in January 2020, before all those lockdowns. I’ve always liked the autumn one better than the spring one (at Olympia) for the exhibitions of quilts and students’ work. The venue is also pretty amazing, with glorious views over London. ‘Ally Pally’, as it’s known, is one of those Victorian ‘people’s palaces’ which have so much history attached to them: the BBC broadcast from there, it was used as an internment camp during the First World War, there’s an ice rink and a beautiful park.

We started with a plan to work our way around the outside stalls, which took us through (among other things) the Embroiderers’ Guild Members’ Challenge exhibition ‘Exquisite Containers‘. We spent a long time talking to the Guild member watching over the exhibition, admiring her mother’s stunning or nue book covers: after working for many years and bringing up her family, she vowed after retirement that she’d dedicate her time to her craft and did just that for the next 25 years or so. We talked about the loss of creativity in the school curriculum – she had written a stern letter to Gavin Williamson lambasting him about the destruction of the creative subjects.

‘I do believe we are muted’ – Philippa Moggridge

*Free Range Egg Custard Tart* – Maria Thomas

H is a DT teacher which gives us an excellent excuse to talk to people about techniques, and I was keeping my eyes open for makers who were working with up/recycled materials. Maria Thomas’s work ‘Relative’ explored her place in the world as a mother, daughter, aunt, niece etc through mixed media pieces like the Free Range Egg Custard Tart jacket pictured here. These pieces were inspired by the housecoats her mother put on after work to do housework and cooking, to protect her ‘good’ clothes. I loved the way books, vintage packaging and text were blended into the patchwork and quilting. I’d really like to work with her.

Onome Otite‘s textile collages filled us with joy – so much colour and movement in her pieces inspired by Cirque du Soleil, using bright ankara and batik fabrics. There were several stalls selling African wax print fabrics, and when I find the right pattern I have all their cards. Lovely bright reds and yellows called to me, but I resisted.

After the exhibitions we hit the stalls – usually H is a good influence on me, taking lots of pictures of projects we’d like to do rather than buying the kits. Yesterday we were terrible influences on each other, though at least her ‘this will be a Christmas present!’ buying was a good excuse. There are so many lovely kits and fabrics to buy, and you can squish and squash them all you like, and have chats with the stallholders. We got hopelessly overexcited when we saw Matt, Peter, Mark and Raf from the Sewing Bee, especially when Matt and Peter stopped for a photo op with us. I came home with an English Paper Piecing jewellery set, some Foundation Piecing patterns, space invaders jersey fabric (new pants coming up!), some sewing patterns from an indie maker, a lot of business cards, haberdashery bits and bobs and gadgets, a sari silk skirt in my favourite reds, and a Christmas decoration kit which I can only put down to end of day panic buying. We had a go at marbling fabric, admired woodblock printing and mini screen print kits, got carried away by puffins, hares and highland cows, lusted after high-tech sewing machines and storage furniture. I left with a lot of ideas for things I really want to make. Now to find the time….preferably before the next show!

It won’t be this week, for sure: this week I am trialling my new school session in Thing 3’s primary school, and updating a talk about play for a local FE college. My hallway is full of boxes of strange resources like model chickens and miniature blue blocks (as seen in this week’s cover photo), scraps of fabric and laminate insulation. I’m also working on the next birthday present, and playing around with a small crochet bag design.

I’d better go off and do something useful….

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Tales from Moominvalley/Finn Family Moomintroll/Comet in Moominland – Tove Jansson (Audible)

Trader/Someplace to Be Flying/Dreams Underfoot – Charles de Lint