224: channelling my inner Bilbo Baggins

It was my birthday on Wednesday and I had plans. Such plans! I wanted to go to The Manor at Hemingford Grey, where Lucy M. Boston wrote the Green Knowe stories and made beautiful quilts and planted her garden.

Once again my plans were foiled (foiled!) by circumstances beyond my control. So, I was pretty grumpy and feeling extremely hard-done-by and underappreciated when I got up on Wednesday morning. I went for a run, took the furry idiot to the vet again (she was pretty out of sorts too, and I have the scratches to prove it) and then decided I’d take myself off for a bit of pampering.

I started with a proper pedicure at the Nail Bar in Harlow, and while you always have to wait in there I had my sewing project with me so the whole thing was pretty relaxing. The pedicure chairs are also massage chairs so I even got a bit of a back rub, and came out with sparkly red toes and feeling much better. I got my eyebrows threaded (ow) and then went and had lunch with my book for company at Mui & Koko.

My mum always used to say that if I had tattoos I’d regret them when I was 50, and last year when I hit the half century I swore I’d have another tattoo. I knew exactly what I wanted, but I didn’t quite get around to it for a whole variety of reasons, so as I was in Harlow with a free afternoon I contacted a tattooist who’d been recommended by a few friends. It turned out he’d relocated his studio to Hertford, and wasn’t officially open till the following day, but he liked my idea and said he could fit me in that afternoon.

And so, like Bilbo Baggins, I went on an unexpected journey. I hopped on a bus to the train station, bought a return to Hertford and went on an adventure.

I’ve only been to Hertford once before, to see Rich Hall, and as I had some time before my appointment I had a good wander around the charity shops (many, but not as good as Bishops Stortford). I also visited the little museum, housed in a historic building on a pretty street and full of information about Hertford life and, apparently, the largest collection of toothbrushes in the world.

I liked the exhibit featuring all the things Victorian travellers brought back as donations, including a set of Samurai armour and some Japanese sandals, and I had a go at the low-tech ‘dress the Samurai warrior’ interactive. There were a few interventions like this throughout the museum, including an opportunity to design a postcard inspired by the embroidered WW1 postcards on display. There was a little shop for children to play in, and WAY too many scary old dolls for my liking, including a ventriloquist’s dummy.

And then it was tattoo time! The new Gumtoad studio is funky, with some futuristic masks on the wall (that not even I could be scared of), and the tattoo artist was lovely – very chatty and it turned out we’d both lived on Hackney Road at various times, and he’d lived in the village where we live now. It was a wide-ranging conversation covering all sorts of things, from children to urban exploring.

The tattoo took about 90 minutes, and was considerably less painful than the threading earlier in the day. I’d taken my picture with me and he suggested I’d get more detail if it was about 10% bigger. We tested out the best position on my shoulder, and once that was perfect we got on with it! I absolutely love it – it’s exactly as I imagined it, and having it done made my birthday. Thank you to my Beloved, whose birthday present paid for it…

For anyone who doesn’t recognise the character, it’s Snufkin from Tove Jansson‘s Moomin stories – this is him heading off to be alone for a while, as he does every winter while the Moomin family hibernate the cold away. He always comes back on the first day of spring though. I’ve loved the Moomins since I was a child and still reread the books on a regular basis. Snufkin is wise, independent and kind, and has an excellent hat, and this illustration has always spoken to me about choosing to follow the direction you want in life. Thing 2 is named after the author, which tells you something about my long-term love of these little Finnish trolls! Jansson also illustrated a Finnish version of The Hobbit, among other things.

And when I got home there was cake, thanks to Thing 2, and presents from sisters – a book on Boro and Sashiko stitching from Irish sister, and new adventure pants and Moomin biscuits from London sister.

Thanks also to Ma and Pa for the birthday Amazon voucher – guilt free craft and reading!

Other things making me happy this week:

The sunshine!
Finishing the black tote bag and marking out a new one with cat stencils from Mont Bleu Studio
Tea in the garden with neighbour Sue this afternoon
Finishing week 2 of couch to 5k
An afternoon sitting in the garden reading crafty books
Gorgeous peonies from my colleagues

Same time next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

A Sign of Her Own- Sarah Marsh

Neither Here Nor There/Down Under– Bill Bryson (Audible)

Taken – Robert Crais

Shadowstitch – Cari Thomas

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)

154: oh, darn

This week has been all about learning new skills, in the spirit of my New Year’s revolutions: an online course in pattern cutting on Sunday, with Monisola Omotoso of Pattern Cutting Deconstructed, and two in-person courses on Visible Mending with Hannah Porter of Restoration London. All of them were part of the V&A Academy offer.

Pattern cutting was a completely new skill for me, as usually I use ready made patterns from either the ‘Big Four’ pattern companies or smaller indie designers. I didn’t know what pattern cutting was or how it translated to the bits of paper I apply to fabric and cut out, so the theoretical aspects were interesting, and it also introduced me to a new fabric called aso oke, a hand woven West African material used to make gorgeous traditional wraps and robes.

Starting with a look at Moni’s own career working within the fashion industry and as a freelance cutter at companies like Alexander McQueen, the course took us through how draping in 3D translates to 2D paper patterns, how aso oke is being used on the catwalk today, before taking us through the process of creating a pattern for a top using our own measurements. Aso oke is woven in fairly narrow strips, so you work within the width of these, although the pattern could then be used with any fabric. It also comes ready hemmed, so you don’t have to finish your garment in the same way as you would a ‘by-the-metre’ fabric. I bought my fabric at Metro Textiles.

As the garment is symmetrical, you only create half a pattern which you then cut on the fold of the fabric. Moni took us through the process of pattern marking (darts, notches etc), and even managed to do a bit of on-screen sewing using the paper pattern which was apparently a first for the V&A Academy! I’d highly recommend one of these courses – short tasters, which at £15 for 90 minutes is very good value.

The second two courses – Visible Mending – were in person at the V&A yesterday, which meant I got out of the house and spent a lovely day being peacefully crafty. There were only 16 people on each course, so Hannah was able to give one-to-one help where necessary, and all materials were provided along with tea, coffee and biscuits. At £35 per course this is very reasonable.

The first 90-minute course was on Sashiko stitching. I had done this course online previously, and enjoyed the opportunity to learn how to do it in person with proper materials as opposed to those I scrounged out of the shed (it says something about me that I had all the things I needed in the shed, but let’s not go there). The course covered sashiko – beautiful Japanese traditional stitching patterns – alongside satin stitch patching and boro. Sashiko means ‘little stabs’, we were told, and refers to the running stitches used to create the designs. Satin stitch is a dense coverage stitch which is used to fix patches behind holes as well as for decorative embroidery, while boro means ‘ragged’ or ‘tattered’ and refers to layering fabric patches to add warmth and strength to garments as well as for repair. Old garments would traditionally be used to create the rags when they were beyond repair, giving them further useful life. You can see my attempts below!

The second Visible Mending course was on darning, which I haven’t tried before but which is a handy skill to have if you’re going to make your own socks. Again, we were taught three techniques over the session with varying degrees of success! Materials provided included various coloured yarn, knitted samples to practice on and a square of stockinette stitch fabric.

Swiss darning was first up – also known as ‘duplicate stitch’, it can be used to add surface details to knitted pieces as well as to mend and reinforce knitted fabrics. Once I’d got the hang of it it wasn’t too tricky, but my first attempts kept going off the straight line of base knit and off on tangents.

We also tried woven darns, creating a warp and weft from yarn to cover and reinforce the holes we’d cut in the perfectly good squares. Mine were messy but did the trick which I suppose is the point! The houndstooth darn with tassels was a proper dog’s dinner, and I don’t think I’m quite ready to wear my darns with pride, but at least I can fix my socks….

Other things making me happy this week:

Two days with the wonderful DT classes at Ursuline Academy, retesting our ‘Design Can’ sessions and the ‘If the Shoe Fits’ session
A day at St Andrew’s primary in North Weald, working with the asylum seeking families currently staying in the village – so much fun and creativity
Walking therapy with Miriam putting my head back together
The Ninja Foodi thing. It’s my new best friend.
Finishing my dragon scale socks (then realising a) they were two different sizes and b) neither of them fitted me so I have frogged both of them back to before the heel to redo them)

Now I have to go for a training walk! Same time next week…

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Small Favour/White Knight – Jim Butcher

The Fifth Elephant/Snuff – Terry Pratchett (Audible)