147: what the heck was that?

That was week one of 2023, apparently, which has passed in a blur of meetings, taking care of poorly child and cat (who have the same thing, it turns out) and getting back into staying awake all day. Cat had to go and have a sleepover at the vet on Thursday, where he made friends with all the staff, but they wouldn’t take Thing One. Shame, really, as getting a vet appointment is considerably easier than getting to see a doctor.

Hopefully you all heeded last week’s excellent advice and have spent the first week of 2023 thinking of nice things to do with your year. I have booked in a massage and am looking forward to next weekend’s woolly workshop and show, and to an online V&A Academy course on Tuesday.

I am not sure I managed to get the hang of last week before it was all over, quite honestly. I did manage to get as far as November in the temperature galaxy, which serves me right for not keeping up with it since August, and have finished the Mk II TARDIS (slightly bigger on the outside, at least). I made the roof more domed and outlined the windows as well as the panes, but I think I prefer the smaller one which has now gone off to a new home with a Whovian colleague who had a birthday this week. Hope she likes it!

Having said I definitely wasn’t going to do a temperature stitch this year, I went back to Climbing Goat Designs to just have a look and ended up buying this one and, after this year, I will use a larger range of colours in case of extreme temperatures again. I have also ordered some printed space fabric to stitch it on, for a change, and I might brave the glow-in-the-dark thread for the stars. I am definitely not doing one next year though.

I also did some work: planning a new session for schools and thinking about what we’re missing from the handling collection. Suddenly the six/three/one month before opening to-do lists are NOW and not a future countdown. This sense of ‘ARGH’ wasn’t helped by this Time Out article on things to do in 2023 – we are number 13. It’s all starting to get a bit real… there’s such a lot that needs to happen before we open the doors, including getting all our kit back out of the various storage spaces and catalogued, working out how to store it all in my shiny new learning centre cupboards, convincing schools that even though we’re not doing historic toy sessions any more there’s still a good reason to come and visit, and at the same time as business as usual we’re also working on the first of our paid exhibitions which opens in October.

The session I was planning this week is based on Rachel Whiteread’s Place (Villlage) installation which was one of my favourite objects in the museum, and which is being redisplayed in the new space – the problem here is that trying to create a gallery based session before the gallery is installed is a bit tricksy as it all may change down the line. I really dislike dolls*, but this collection of dolls houses is atmospheric and magical, and provides excellent potential for literacy sessions. I can’t wait to see the new installation.

We’re also planning game design sessions, architecture, storytelling, and more – it’s all very exciting, but the marketing to teachers is keeping me awake at night!

*yes, it’s been suggested that I may be in the wrong job. I am also scared of masks.

This week I am bored with…

All things royal. Every time I turn on the TV or open Google there is some new ‘revelation’ from Prince Harry’s book which was allegedly leaked this week. Enough already. Siblings fight and there’s no law that says you have to like your sibling’s choice of partner. The trick is not to tell them and hope they work it out for themselves. Also, no one likes someone who constantly whinges that it’s not fair and everyone is horrid. Grow up.
‘Train cancellations’ on the Central Line. Which appears to be yet another excuse for constant delays.
Laundry. Where does it all come from?
Work. It is cutting into my nap time.

On that note, the washing machine has finished, so I will sign off!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Paper Magician/The Glass Magician/The Plastic Magician – Charlie N. Holmberg

Kill the Farm Boy – Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne

Gardens – Benedict Jacka

Thief of Time – Terry Pratchett (Audible)

Watching: Black Spot (Netflix)

125: ooh look, a butterfly

This week I am feeling uninspired, which is not like me at all. The Things are off on their school holidays, the weather is nice and – as my role is formal learning – there are no teachers out there to harass so in theory I have lots of time to catch up on the to-do list. In theory. In reality, as always in August, my head is relaxing on a beach with a good book instead of focusing on the GEM conference presentation I ought to be writing. My butterfly brain has been fluttering from item to item on my to-do list, and lots has been started but not much finished. The first 800 words of the presentation are tweaked to perfection though…

Luckily my sewing mojo has come back so I have at least accomplished something this week. Sometimes sorting out the shed throws a fabric to the top of the pile and reminds you that you had a plan for it. I had a lieu day to use up so took advantage of a rare meeting free day to indulge in some midweek stitchery.

The fabric in question is a lovely dark red cotton with daisy-ish flowers all over it. I love the By Hand London ‘Anna’ dress pattern, and have made a couple of versions previously: a maxi length in a yellow floral digital print viscose (lovely feel, horrible to work with) and a knee length version in a black polycotton where I’d experimented with extending the sleeves. You can make it in a range of lengths and there’s a couple of neckline options to choose from.

I wanted this one to be maxi length but with the longer sleeve so I could wear it for work, and I chose the V-neck option for a change. Rather than front darts for shaping, the dress has a couple of vertical pleats on the front, with darts on the back. The waistline sits high and the skirt is panelled so it’s a flattering flared shape rather than the current trend for tiered flounces. I extended the sleeves to just above the elbow into a flared shape to echo the shape of the skirt, and I was really happy with the outcome and wore it to work on Thursday. Apart from the zip insertion bit where I diverged, the instructions are really clear so if you’re looking for a beginner project with a good result I’d recommend this.

I also used a cotton voile to make a red square top using the Seamwork Bo pattern, a black shirt dress using the Seamwork Jo pattern (and another Bo to use up the double gauze!), added a Moomin iron-on to the bag I made last week, and in the evenings I finished the Travel by Tardis cross stitch from Country Magic Stitch and updated the Climbing Goat Designs temperature galaxy.

Other things making me happy this week:

Absolute Classic Rock not playing Peter Frampton at any point while I’ve been listening
My beloved’s birthday
Swim and a bacon sandwich this morning in the sunshine
Lovely afternoon with board games and friends yesterday
Lots of dog walks with Bella-dog, Loki the puppy, Dobby and Kreacher and their lovely owners
Paper Girls on Amazon Prime Video

Same time same place next week? This week I have three days out in Tower Hamlets with actual people and the blue blocks, a new cross stitch to do and I’m half way through the current crochet project.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon

A Change of Circumstance – Susan Hill

More Tales from the City – Armistead Maupin

55: You never forget your first Doctor

Regular readers of my ramblings have probably noticed that I am a happy little nerd (and proud of it). My kids are resigned to the fact that if I am left alone with the TV remote and my latest project they will come back to find me watching M*A*S*H, an eighties movie, Monty Python or – most likely – Doctor Who. Over the past eighteen months or so I have worked my way back through from Nine to Twelve, with a festive break to watch all the Christmas specials. Clara Oswald is still in situ as companion, so I have Bill Potts to go before Thirteen makes her appearance.

While I love the reboot, my first Doctor was Tom Baker – Four – who is still the longest serving incarnation of the Doctor (1974-1981). He is probably the most recognisable with that wonderful scarf and the mad hair. I must have been very young when I first started watching the series, as I was only 8 in 1981. My dad, as I’ve mentioned previously, is an enormous fan of sci-fi and fantasy, so I suspect the Doctor was regular viewing. He also watched Day of the Triffids (the theme tune was more terrifying than the show), Blake’s Seven, The Adventure Game, Now Get Out of That, The Great Egg Race, Quantum Leap and more, so at least I was brought up with a good all-round TV grounding.

The special effects – for the time – were pretty good and the aliens were often quite scary so the old ‘watching from behind a cushion’ trope has some basis in reality. The writers were excellent, and I enjoyed the Terrance Dicks books when I used to get them out of the library. It’s no real surprise that I love Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch as writers: they cut their teeth on Doctor Who.

Nine is my favourite of the rebooted Doctors, and his story arc with Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) broke my heart: he was so wonderfully mad and, I think, the most alien of the modern incarnations. The relationships with the companions have always been a huge part of the dynamic of the show. When Rose was replaced by Donna Noble – with Catherine Tate in the role – I stopped watching it quite so religiously: it was too soon after Tate’s own TV show where she played a series of very shouty characters for me to warm to her. However, on the rewatch, she was actually brilliant and the addition of the wonderful Bernard Cribbins as her dad was just genius. Clara Oswald is still too smug, but I rather liked the ‘fam’ that Thirteen collected and will be interested to see how John Bishop does in the new series.

I’d like to see more of Captain Jack Harkness – both back in the TARDIS and a return of Torchwood please. I even liked Miracle Day, though I don’t think anyone else did. I love the fact that Ianto had a shrine down in Cardiff Docks! As for villains….the Daleks and the Cybermen are the classics (it’s not Christmas without one or the other), but some of the Masters have been archvillains indeed. The insane John Simm and the sociopathic Michelle Gomez have been properly scary at times: the tricky Doctor/Master relationship has been drawn so well here that you have to have sympathy for them.

My fondness for the Time Lord has spilled over into my crafting habits: I made a Tardis gift for a Whovian friend when he and his husband moved house, and one of my favourite work skirts was made from a Doctor Who duvet cover. I have enough fabric scraps left from that to put secret nerdy pockets into a lot of outfits! The last cross stitch I designed was a TARDIS in a bottle which is on the to-do pile, and once I have finished the Hobbit Hole I am currently working on and another gift for a friend, I think it will be next on the list.

Who’s your favourite Doctor?

The rest of the week…

…has been quite peaceful, which has been a relief after March’s frenzied union activities. The weather has been chilly but mainly sunny, so on Tuesday morning I went for a long solo ramble through the fields. In typical April fashion, it snowed later in the day.

There have been a few swims – the water has been warmer than the air on most days, but it’s so good to be back in the water regularly. The coots are building their nests in the reeds, so soon we’ll be sharing the lake with the noisy chicks. I can’t wait!

I finished the first of the Tunisian socks and got started on the second, and have also sorted out all my sock patterns from the various boxes in the shed. I think they may be my favourite thing to crochet, you know. I can also now share the latest gift to be given this week – a 40th birthday gift for a colleague who loves video games. The pattern can be found here, and I used the same string art tutorial as last time to do the back.

I also sent this floral wreath one off along with the Suffragette sashes, all the way to Northern Ireland – Royal Mail at least still admit that NI is in the UK! If you look closely you can see the tiny initials of the house’s new inhabitants. The final piece is a hobbit hole, which you can find here.

This week’s cover image was taken on Easter Monday at St Andrew’s Churchyard, where we went to plant spring flowers on my beloved’s mother’s grave. You aren’t allowed to leave pots, artificial flowers or plastic anything on the graves but many of them have been planted with daffodils and other spring flowers. It’s one of the most beautiful churchyards I have seen, with higgledy-piggledy gravestones, a covering of primroses and violets, riddled with rabbit holes and surrounded by fields. The church itself dates from about 1330. There is a small Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery and memorial in the churchyard as well, with the village war memorial in front of the church.

Thing Two is nagging me to go on a bike ride, so I had better leave this here and do some parenting!

Same time, same place next week then?

Kirsty

What I’ve been reading:

The Silk House/The Botanist’s Daughter – Kayte Nunn

A Comedy of Terrors (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