The Philosophy of Lists

The view from here

2012-01-27T11:18:00.000Z

It is the time of year where I buy a bunch of daffodils every time I happen to be anywhere near a supermarket. These ones from Waitrose are glorious - a fluffy cloud of yellow sunshine on the mantelpiece for only £1.99.

I have come to realise that if I don't take photographs, I don't write blog posts. I've been cooking, knitting, writing, stitching, thinking and planning a great deal over the last few weeks, but not blogging about it. I've stayed around the house, and the house is dark, so I've not been taking photos. But in a way this suits January, which I love for its quietness, wintriness and sense of hibernation. I'm happy to have some daffs on the mantelpiece and a hot cup of coffee on my desk. I'll be out in the world again soon enough.

So from my desk, my kitchen, and my computer, this is what I've been doing lately.

Loving this panoramic photo, taken from London's newest skyscraper, The Shard: http://www.willpearson.co.uk/virtual-tour/shard-360-dusk/
Adoring this blog post from the awesome and talented Teen Granny. If my daughter ever knits a model of me, I will burst with pride.
Thinking of a great group of women I met twelve years ago this week. Some of them are amongst my very closest friends, and two of them have lovely blogs. I just wish I still lived close enough to Nina that I could pop round for a coffee and eat some of her cakes!
Cooking in my slow cooker (and not photographing the results).
On Tuesday I made lemon chicken: a whole chicken sat on a bed of chopped carrot, onion, fennel, rosemary and garlic, with a whole lemon chopped into chunks tucked underneath too. 150 ml of chicken stock poured over and left on low for about 6-7 hours. Then chicken removed and the meat pulled off the bone. We ate the veg, half the chicken and the lemony sauce with rice and peas. The other half of the chicken will become a pie.
Yesterday I made Indian potatoes: about 6 big potatoes, peeled and cut into large dice, along with an onion, a tin of tomatoes, a spoonful of curry paste, a spoonful of mango chutney and 100ml of vegetable stock. Cooked on low for about 5 hours, and then stirred in 100ml of double cream before serving with naan bread, cucumber and yogurt.
Putting all the postcards we've received this year into a tin, so that in December I can make one of these.
Loving these two new London food blogs - The Skint Foodie and The London Review of Sandwiches.

And in between, gazing at the daffodils again.

Winter knitting

2012-01-21T10:17:00.000Z

My knitting basket

This winter I've been steadily knitting. My basket comes everywhere with me and I knit in the school playground, at a 2 year old's birthday party, at friends' houses, on the tube, and in the evenings while I am watching all this fantastic winter tele that's on at the moment (Sherlock, Call The Midwife, Edwin Drood and Earthflight - what a great month it's been on the BBC).

My Victoriana shawl

Just before Christmas I finished my Victoriana Shawl, and I have worn it pretty much constantly ever since. I love it - the yarn is soft and thick, the shawl is stylish, and I can use the hairpin I wore at my wedding as a clasp.

Circus socks for C

Last week I finished some socks for C which had been hanging around in my knitting basket for a shocking eleven months. I don't honestly know why they took me so long - the yarn (a Regia 4 ply sock yarn called Circus) was lovely, the pattern was a straighforward one I'd knitted many times before. I guess I just wasn't in the mood for socks in 2011.

C loves them though. I knitted them with growing room, because his feet are practically expanding in front of my eyes at the moment. They also fit me, so when his feet are so big that the socks no longer fit (which won't be long), I can have them. Cunning heh?

Junior Toast for O

My winter knitting for O has been much speedier. It only took me a month to knit this pair of purple armwarmers for her. I used the very popular Toast pattern on Ravelry, and adjusted it to fit her slimmer, shorter arms. They fit her perfectly and she loves them. If you want to make Junior Toasts of your own, you can find all the details here.

And now that my knitting obligations to my children have been discharged, I am back on the shawls again. I am knitting myself a very simple lacy shawl using all the little balls of leftover sock yarn I have.

Sock yarn leftovers - to become a shawl

I don't know how big the shawl will end up. I'm just going to keep knitting until I've used up all my leftovers. The pattern is this one, and is as simple as the name suggests. I think simple is good with all this crazy multicoloured yarn.

Multicoloured sock yarn shawl

I am hoping to get it finished before camping season, as I think a warm, multicoloured lacy shawl around my shoulders as I sit by the campfire drinking mead, will be just the thing.

10 things

2012-01-18T11:40:00.000Z

I have a big bag of kumquats and no idea what to do with them. We tried eating them raw but they are horrid.
I don't like making or eating marmalade at the best of times, and I think making it with teeny, tiny kumquats might send me over the edge.
Check out this recipe. The writer de-piths and de-seeds the kumquats before turning them into marmalade. Once I'd seen how tiny the kumquats were, and how many of the little blighters there were in my bag, this task seemed truly epic and way beyond my levels of patience or enthusiasm.
A friend suggested turning them into a compote, with almonds, which sounded nice. And simpler.
But kumquat compote (try saying that quickly) sounds to me like marmalade in disguise.
Another friend suggested adding them to vodka.
But I don't really like vodka either.
The BBC Good Food website - my failsafe recipe search engine - has just three recipes involving kumquats. One of which uses a single kumquat as a garnish.
I was wondering if the hens would eat up the kumquats for me. But I suspect not.
Any other suggestions of what to do with them would be VERY gratefully received.

Friday afternoon

2012-01-13T21:03:00.000Z

It is the end of the week and my mind is full. Full. Of. Stuff. I feel a little spaced out as I walk to the tube station to pick up O from school.

Everywhere I walk I see patterns.

----------

The exercise and the cold sunshine did me good and cleared my mind. This weekend I shall mostly be reading Dombey & Son, in an effort to fill my mind with Something rather than just Stuff.

The ordinariness of January

2012-01-11T10:40:00.000Z

I love January for its ordinariness - its everyday qualities. After the excitement, busy pace and indulgence of December I relish the plainness of January.

The first daffs are in my glass vase above the fireplace, good meaty things are in the slow cooker, and I write and read as much as I can, immersing myself in imaginary worlds which contrast nicely with the ordinariness of life in January.

Yesterday morning I went to the British Museum to see the Grayson Perry exhibition, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. Visiting this exhibition is to enter into someone else's madly imaginary world. Perry has created an exhibition celebrating the life of unknown craftsmen through the ages. The exhibition has a great deal of Perry's work alongside objects from the British Museum's collection, arranged in themes to do with death and the afterlife such as pilgrimage, worship, magic and relics.

There was so much humour and thoughtfulness in the way the objects were selected and displayed. I wandered around with a big grin on my face, chuckling at the captions beside the items and the cartoon-like quality of the big, beautiful ceramic pots that Perry has made. Everybody else in the exhibition was smiling too. Have a look at the little 2 minute film on this page to hear from Perry himself about what he was aiming to do with the exhibition. It exceeded my expectations, which were very high to begin with.

His beautiful pastel-pink custom made motorbike, which is on display just outside the exhibition, is anything but ordinary. It dazzled the senses against the beautifully plain cream stone and clear glass of the rest of the museum's Great Court.

January - I love your ordinariness, and your calm. But just a little bit of colour and jazz is very welcome too.

Art ideas for older children

2012-01-06T18:29:00.000Z

Pastels and pencils

I have been thinking lately about inspirational art resources for older children - nearly-teens and teenagers. Both C (who is now 12) and O, (9) love art, but in very different ways. I want to find some more art books to inspire them and keep this love of drawing and painting going.

C's love of art is relatively recent - spurred on by taking some Warhammer painting lessons, and the more serious-minded approach to art, which suits him very much, at his new secondary school. His favourite thing to use are Caran D'Ache Aquarelle pencils. At the moment he mainly draws cartoons - usually inspired by Asterix or Calvin and Hobbes.

O's love of art has always been with her, and is much more eclectic. She constantly draws, paints, cuts and sticks - anything she can think of. She will use pastels, paints, pens, pencils, glue, ink...whatever she can get her hands on. Anything goes with her. After a summer of making magazines, at the moment she is making posters and experimenting with some lovely watercolour paints she got for Christmas.

We do have a number of books already, which are much used and loved. For years the Usborne Art Ideas range has kept O busy with ideas, but they are starting to seem a little young; she doesn't want to draw princesses or teddy bears any more. Some of the Usborne range is still going strong though. These 50 art ideas cards are excellent - the projects are all straightforward and well explained. O can do them by herself (very important for her), and the pictures are generally things she wants to draw; animal pictures feature heavily.

Usborne art cards - we love these

However, there isn't anything in the Usborne range for teenagers. I wish there was - the quality of their books is wonderful, and it feels as though my children have grown up with them.

Other books that still inspire and are used regularly are the Ed Emberley books, an excellent bubble writing book, and a few Klutz art books.

A recent, and absolutely excellent, addition to our shelves is the Kids Crafternoon - Papercraft book. O received it for Christmas, and got stuck in right away. She particularly loves that there is an envelope of full sized templates inside the front cover (something that I always love with sewing books too).

Kids Crafternoon - a wonderful book for older children

There are some good Manga books out there to inspire older children. A friend recommended this one, which her 10 year old daughter loves and has been making fantastic pictures with. This one looks very good too. I think I am going to get one and see which of my children (or both, maybe?) it appeals to. Do you have any manga books that you would recommend?

What other art books do your older children love? Are there any drawing or painting books that keep teenagers inspired? I am after ideas, so all recommendations are very welcome indeed!

O's desk - with pens and a mannequin in a brushed cotton outfit

Little wee things

2012-01-05T12:08:00.000Z

I am beginning the new year by sewing some very tiny little garments for a new baby who is due within the next month. My family are very excited about her impending arrival. I've already made this baby a cosy red kicking bag, and a flower fairy quilt, but I think she still needs more.

She now has some little bibs - made from my last remaining scraps of Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric, and a favourite Cath Kidston print.

I've been making bibs like this for years. The pattern comes from the first sewing book I ever bought: Bend the Rules Sewing by Amy Karol. The bibs are very satisfying to make because you can sew a whole batch of them easily in an evening, and they look so organised and useful stacked up together. They are backed with soft brushed cotton and have little snaps at the neck to get them on and off easily.

While I had the sewing machine out, I thought I'd use up another precious but tiny piece of leftover fabric by making a wee little skirt - desgined to fit a newborn baby in those very first few weeks. Because tiny, newborn babies really need pretty skirts. They do.

I had to rummage around the internet quite a bit to find waist and skirt length measurements for newborns. In the end two outrageously cute designs which people had put up on their blogs helped me out - this petal skirt, and this jersey ruffle skirt. I want to make both of these skirts too now, but I only had the very smallest bit of fabric to work with, so I made a simple ribbon-hem A-line skirt with an elastic waist.

It is hard to tell from the photo just how tiny and adorable this little elephant skirt really is. But the final skirt length is just 18cm - go and look at how small that is on a ruler!

Having been so impatient to meet this new baby for what feels like the longest time, I am now thinking she can stay where she is for a few more weeks so that her auntie can make her some more of these little skirts. I have just the right amount of red polka-dot cotton for a baby skirt, neatly folded at the side of my desk. I have a feeling she might also appreciate some cotton skirts in bright, cheerful Kaffe Fassett prints.

Where I was 2011

2011-12-31T18:43:00.001Z

2011 was an epic year for us, an astonishing year, a year of challenges and achievements.

In April I did something I never thought I would; I got engaged. In August, I did the other thing I never thought I would, and got married. Both things happened in one of my favourite places, the South-West of France.

I wondered whether to wear my favourite Birkenstocks on my wedding day...

...but in the end I wore pretty white ballet flats, and showed off my Birkenstock tan marks

On both trips down to France I went on a good number of long walks - often in extremely hot temperatures. There was a MASSIVE snake on one of my walks in April. Five French spring walks here: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. And a dawn walk à deux, a few days before we got married in August.

Walking through lush, spring grass in France in April

Orchids were everywhere when we were down in Tarn-et-Garonne in April

O ready for a walk, August

With O on St Cecile plage in Normandy, on our way home

I also did a great deal of walking with Miss Moss Stitch in the first half of the year as we walked the length of the Thames in central London, and visited a few markets too. You can find our first ten weekday walks, covering most of our river walks, here.

Treasure from the river

Estuary mud - at Silvertown in February

Self portrait at Bankside, on one of our river walks

Mudlarking again, on the Isle of Dogs

One of the biggest things that happened to our family this year was Graham's Ironman race, which he did in Nottingham in July. In many ways it was a bigger event than our wedding, because it took much more preparation! I was so incredibly proud of him when he finished, and came home a whole half-hour faster than he had hoped for.

I watched the marathon part of the race, lounging on G's quilt in the sunshine

Ironman training - muddy, bloody legs after a 3 hour run in Epping Forest in March

I was also very proud when C did his first ever triathlon, in July too. He put in so much effort; and like his father, he trained properly and consistently leading up to it. July was a month of snickers bars, bike grease and dirty trainers.

C's tired legs, after his triathlon

C's new trainers, and an award from Park Run

At other points during the year we camped with friends, I made G an autumn leaf quilt for his 40th birthday, C started secondary school, I went to Kew Gardens regularly with family and with friends, I baked pies, I did a great deal of knitting, I found a new friend and I made a great deal of jam.

Graham's 40th birthday quilt

First day at secondary school

Coming home from Kew - at Stratford station - May

In the school playground - June

C's big nearly-teenage feet, and cousin L's little baby feet

Knitting in the sunshine, while C sailed on Fairlop Water - June

Jam stash

It has been a very good year indeed. Sending you all my very best wishes for a good year to come in 2012.

~~~~~~~~~~

You can also see where I was in 2010, in 2009, in 2008 and in 2007. I have been blogging for nearly five years!

Wide winter skies

2011-12-28T16:15:00.000Z

The skies over Epping Forest this afternoon were beautiful.

O and I walked. C leaped over ditches and streams. G ran.

Delighted that his wife is making him pose for a photo when he is sweaty and mad because he has just run A Very Long Way

Everybody happy.

10 Christmas things

2011-12-26T16:38:00.000Z

The decorations and tree were all packed away this morning. I enjoy feeling Christmassy during Advent, but once it's over, it's over. The house feels so spacious and tidy without the tree! Every year it reminds me of this book - a favourite with C and O when they were little.
I have left the jugs of holly and ivy up on the mantelpiece. They feel wintry rather than Christmassy.

I like this week between Christmas and New Year very much indeed - there is a feeling of time being suspended; the pause button being on. Rules are relaxed and things are more free-form.
I made a wallet for my new Kindle. It is padded with quilt wadding, so that I can drop the Kindle into my satchel without fear of it being scratched or turning itself on.

I love the juxtaposition of grey, functional, electronic gadgets and bright fabric cases. My phone, my laptop, my camera and my iPod all live in padded sleeves like this.
There is good cooking to be done in this holiday week. At lunchtime we had a glorious Boxing Day soup of leek and potato with some of the leftover roast chicken from yesterday. I also used the leftover giblet stock and a slug of champagne that we somehow failed to finish yesterday. There is no other time during the year when I would put champagne in soup.
Tomorrow's cooking will focus on the leftover sausagemeat stuffing. I always make about twice what I think we will need so that we will have some spare. I think this year it will end up in a spicy tomato and pepper stew.
As well as my Kindle I also received some actual books for Christmas - River Cottage Veg Everyday is as wonderful as I hoped it would be. Once all the leftover chicken and stuffing is finished, I shall be turning my attention back to vegetable-based meals which is how we eat most of the time.
I love not getting up until the sun has risen - it feels incredibly decadent.
We're still eating (and baking) mince pies. Everyone in this house loves mince pies.

The ghosts of Christmas

2011-12-24T13:29:00.000Z

Yesterday, on a trip to spend time with my family in Oxford, I went back to the small village where I grew up. The children wanted to visit this place that they have heard of but never seen. I felt like it was a good time to reminisce. It is twelve years since I was last a visitor there, and twenty-one years since I last lived there.

It was unchanged, English, rural, muddy, quiet, pretty, remote, emotional and a little bleak. It took me approximately one minute and forty-five seconds to remember why I love living in London so much.

Today we are back home, the Christmas linen is on the table, the angel chimes are singing and I can hear someone playing Jingle Bells on her recorder. At 3pm this afternoon there is A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings on Radio 4, which I shall listen to while I make the mince pies.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is a much more comfortable companion than the Ghost of Christmas Past.

~~~~~~~~~~

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas wherever you are.

Colour

2011-12-18T15:40:00.000Z

Crows in the sky

Mid morning in Epping Forest, at Leytonstone

Even at this time of year - just a few days shy of the shortest day - and when even at 11am it doesn't feel as though the sun has quite risen yet, there is still plenty of colour around if you take a moment to look for it.

Vivid green broom

Yellow gorse

Golden grasses

Red berries

But the brightest colours in Epping Forest this morning were on O, who darted from tree to tree creating flashes of colour like an oversized parrot.

She decided to wear red tights under her little shorts and huge pink coat.

Her favourite pinky-purple hat which Granny knitted is really too small now, but she wears it anyway.

And her silver and green walking boots, worn with purple socks, set everything off nicely.

It smells like Christmas

2011-12-16T12:32:00.000Z

Last night I realised I had everything in the house to make one of these:

It is an orange and clove pomander. Pomanders originated in the middle ages; I first became enchanted with them when I was very young and read about them in the books by Cynthia Harnett. Pomanders are balls containing scented herbs and perfumes, which were carried around to ward off bad smells and diseases. They were originally made from filigree silver or gold, and hinged to allow you to open them up and put the perfumes inside. These seasonal versions using oranges and cloves have been around for years too. For me their smell is quintessentially Christmas.

To make them you need:

a nice, fat orange
a box of cloves
some ribbon
a cocktail stick (optional)

Tie the ribbon around the orange as if it were an old fashioned parcel: over the top, down to the bottom, cross over and back to the top to finish with a bow. Your orange will now have four sections, divided by ribbon.

Push the cloves into the orange as far as they will go, alongside the bits of ribbon. Let the wonderful smell wash over you. You can make life a little easier by piercing the orange's peel lightly with a cocktail stick before pushing the cloves into the holes. Once each section of the orange is outlined with cloves you can add some more to make designs on each section. I made our family's initials: G, N, C and O. Stripes look really good too.

If you put plenty of cloves in (you can of course stud the entire fruit with cloves and not bother making patterns at all) then your pomander should dry out slowly and keep for anything up to a few years.

Ours lives in the sitting room and is picked up and inhaled often. Pomanders look mighty fine hung from a Christmas tree too, although the options for sniffing them when they're hung on a tree are not so good.

The Victoriana shawl

2011-12-15T14:43:00.001Z

Another small shawl is on the knitting needles.

This time it's one which I have named the Victoriana shawl, from this Ravelry pattern. These shawls are the perfect sized knitting project for me; small and quick enough for me not to get bored, and practical and pretty enough to spur me on to finish them.

I can lose hours of my life at a time searching Ravelry for other small shawl (sometimes charmingly called shawlette) patterns. I also like these ones very much:

Someone else I know has a shawl obsession going on at the moment, although hers are crocheted and the patterns look much more fiendish than the ones I have chosen. It is the season for shawls, clearly.

Festive thoughts

2011-12-13T14:18:00.000Z

Festive cheer, overheard in the very long queue at the Hackney Post Office today:

"I just hope she was dead before they decided to cut her in half."
"The Government just want us to suffer. They robbed our money so they can buy Christmas presents for their own families."
"Life's tough."
"I wanna do something sooner or later, but you know, on my medication I am a bit unpredictable."
I've sent everybody Christmas cards telling them I'm not buying anyone any Christmas presents this year."
"I was on everything, man - smoking this and smoking that - I was just so stressed."
"There's not a lot of us left."
"I like making friends in queues. Better than real friends, y'know."
"This country's gone to the dogs. Everything's so hard, man."
"I'm not saying everything's bleak - don't get me wrong - but the world is just full of so much evil."
"See, this is what I like about Hackney, innit. Chatting to people in the Post Office queue always cheers me up."

Photo of Hackney Empire, just along the road from the Post Office, by Fin Fahey on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons license.

Winter blankets

2011-12-12T14:46:00.000Z

I want to share a really good project for December's Making Winter post. For the past few days I've been making two sorts of winter blanket - the blankets sit piled up on the arm of the sofa, waiting for someone to curl up under them for some TV watching, or colouring, or knitting, or drumming. In the summer they will come camping with us. We all have quilts, but the quilts tend to just live on our beds - these blankets are more portable.

In an ideal world I would live in a place which is home to a choice selection of charity shops which sell old 100% wool blankets for just a few pounds. The reality is that I live in a big city where the charity shops specialise in nasty poly-cotton duvet cases from 1988. No vintage or thrifted wool blankets round here sadly.

So I raided my airing cupboard for old baby blankets instead. I had two cotton aircell blankets bought for C over twelve years ago, and hardly used (I was a dedicated fan of Grobags when my children were babies). To turn these baby blankets into something suitable for winter warming I simply added bias trim to them. One in a selection of leftover pastel prints and the other in deep purpley pinks and dark blues.

It is extraordinary how the trim changes the whole appearance of the blankets. They are proving very popular.

The other blankets have been made from fleece. Ikea sells plain fleece throws in a few different colours for just £1.59 each. These throws are perfect for all kinds of sewing projects. I've used them several times as both wadding and backing for quilts, I've used them as backing fabric for babies' bibs, and I've made cushions from them. The simplest thing to do though, is to applique onto them. For C's and O's Christmas stockings I've made them each a quick and easy blanket, using the Ikea fleeces as a base.

For C, who loves dogs, I cut out the pictures from a piece of dog fabric I had been hoarding, and simply stitched around the dogs onto the fabric with my machine. For O, whose preferred colour of the moment is purple, I cut out long oval shapes from all my scraps of purple fabric and attached them as flower petals.

If you are lucky enough to have vintage 100% wool blankets in your airing cupboard or your local charity shop, then either of these methods would work very well with those. Neither type of blanket takes very long to make - the whole point of these is that they can be whipped up in a couple of hours, unlike a quilt which can take weeks, months, or even years to complete.

You don't want to hang around when people need to get cosy on the sofa as a matter of urgency.

It's all in the name

2011-12-08T10:59:00.000Z

I really enjoyed this article on The Guardian website last week, about namesakes in literature. I really love my name, Nancy, because it is a name everybody has heard of, but in Britain it is still quite unusual. I've never met another Nancy.

I have very clear ideas about what sort of person a Nancy is. A Nancy is feisty, strong, independent, feminist and slightly old fashioned. She doesn't take anybody else's nonsense, and she gets things done. I'm not sure that all these attributes apply to me, but they're certainly traits I aspire to.

Good Nancys:

Nancy Mitford - writer.
Nancy Astor - politician; first woman MP to take her seat in Parliament.
Nancy Blackett - Pirate, Terror of the Seas, and true heroine of the Swallows and Amazons books.
Nancy Sinatra - singer of excellent, strong songs. This one is my favourite - definitely a feisty, sassy, Nancy song.
Nancy Drew - multi-talented girl detective.

Rubbish Nancys:

Nancy Reagan - although clearly a powerful woman, ultimately too flaky to be a proper Nancy.
Nancy Dell'Olio - no; just no.
Nancy in Oliver Twist - an ambivalent Nancy: nurturing, but sappy as well. Gets herself murdered by Sikes. Could have been feisty, but wasn't really.

Last summer I visited the French city of Nancy, in the region of Lorraine near the German border. I stopped off for a day with the children on our way back from Switzerland, and I was delighted to discover that Nancy is an absolutely glorious city - elegant and chic; very worthy of the name. I would have been so disappointed if it had been a dreary, grotty sort of place.

Nancy in Nancy - beautiful roses and peonies in our hotel

How about you? Do you like your name? Do you approve of other people or places who share your name?

Inflation

2011-12-07T13:18:00.000Z

We live in times of high inflation.

The M&S bags of chocolate coins now contain £5 and £10 notes as well as coins.

~~~~~~~~~~

(Father Christmas ALWAYS buys his chocolate coins at M&S).

10 things

2011-12-05T10:37:00.000Z

The baby has some mittens to go with her kicking bag. Full details on Ravelry. I think this is a really lovely baby mitten pattern - very simple, and they end up a sweet tulip shape.

I took the children to Oxford Street on Saturday to do their Christmas shopping. We were fast, we were focused, and we were home for lunch with our sanity intact and our list ticked.
Only two weeks until the end of term for C and O - thank goodness. The autumn term always feels so long.
I am knitting myself another shawl. It is from this pattern, and I am using a discontinued organic 100% wool yarn from Rowan, which is deliciously soft and sumptuous. I am sad this is discontinued because otherwise it would have been my new favourite yarn. Full details on Ravelry again.

A new discovery is New House Textiles - my favourite thing from a whole load of favourite things is this excellent biscuit tea-towel.
Now he is no longer spending every waking moment training for the Ironman, G is enjoying rediscovering old hobbies. The snare drum is down from the loft, and he is tapping away on the practise pad too. I find listening to him drumming remarkably soothing. I think it's the repetition.

Off school for the public sector strikes last week, C spent the day making a sock monkey from a pair of O's old socks. The monkey has been named Advent.

I start to feel Christmassy once I have bought some Christmas tins of biscuits from M&S. I prefer the tins to the biscuits inside; but other people in the house seem to like the biscuits more than the tins, so that's all right.

I am reading Dombey and Son for the first time, and enjoying it very much. I do like a bit of Dickens. If I finish Dombey and Son before Christmas I shall re-read Dickens's Christmas stories, which is almost as Christmassy as an M&S biscuit tin.
The slow cooker continues to enhance our lives. A game casserole, pimped with chorizo and sweet potatoes, is cooking at the moment. It smells extraordinarily good.

A baby's cosy red bag

2011-11-29T20:12:00.000Z

Another reason that I loved the Handball at the weekend, was that it provided me with four uninterrupted hours of knitting. Despite very strict security procedures I successfully smuggled in my knitting (wooden needles don't get picked up by metal scanners, and dpns look just like pencils on the x-ray machines...), and I managed to finish off all but the last centimetre of this red baby kicking bag, while I was cheering on the Angolan team.

This one is destined for my sister's new baby - a little girl - who is due early in 2012. She will be a winter baby and will surely appreciate a little sleeping bag to snuggle up in.

I've knitted this pattern twice before. Here are two of my nephews modelling theirs.

Aren't they snuggly? This is such a great pattern - simple to knit, and practical to receive. It is a free pattern - you can download the details and see other people's versions of it here.

I do so love finishing knitting projects. Mainly because it gives me license to start something new. I have a second sock to finish for C before Christmas, but I think I should also have something else on the needles too.

Maybe some baby mittens to match this kicking bag? Maybe a new shawl for me? Maybe some armwarmers for O? Maybe all three!

Olympic Preparations

2011-11-28T19:17:00.000Z

Hugely spectacular lights at the Olympic Park

The buildings on the Olympic Park are all up. The landscaping of the Park is done. The grass is planted, the rivers are flowing freely and the paths have been laid. The 2012 Games are just 8 months away.

Zany path in the Olympic Park

What happens between now and then, as the finishing touches to the Park are put in place, is that the test events are held. Every Olympic venue and every sport must have a dress rehearsal to make sure that everything is working as it should. One of the biggest advantages to living in one of the five Host Boroughs is that we get discounted tickets and priority booking for many of these test events.

This weekend we went to see the finals of the London Handball Cup, which was held at the square, copper-clad Handball Arena in the Olympic Park. I knew absolutely nothing about Handball before this weekend, but it is a very easy game to learn and a very exciting and dramatic sport to watch. As we arrived at the arena we were given brochures which explained the sport and listed all the teams and the players.

We saw two matches: the bronze medal play off between Angola and China, and the Gold/Silver medal match between Austria and Poland. Even watching the teams warm up for an hour before each match was great - they leaped about, threw handballs to each other with mind-blowing accuracy and speed, sprinted up and down the court and did stretches that any gymnast would be proud of.

Angola and China warming up for their match

The Polish team practise their drills

Handball is very physical and fast, and there are a great many goals scored in each match. If I had any kind of hand-eye coordination whatsoever I would love to give it a go. The atmosphere in the arena was excellent - there was a very good commentator who made sure we all knew what was going on, and by the last few minutes of the gold medal match we were hoarse with screaming, and I leaped out of my seat when Austria scored a game-winning penalty with 4 seconds to go.

You can see some properly excellent photos of the earlier games in the tournament, which give an idea of how physical and fast it is, here. My compact 8 year old camera just isn't up to live sporting action.

In February we are going back to the Olympic Park to see the finals of the Track Cycling and Diving test events. Tickets for these events are now sold out, but you can find out more about the other test events coming up at the London Prepares Series website. I want to try and get tickets for the Synchronised Swimming and the Athletics when they are released. Tickets are currently on sale (and going fast) for the Swimming test event at the Aquatics Centre (details here).

We walked home through the Park at sunset, and the sense of expectation all around us was palpable. Just eight more months to go.

The Olympic Stadium at sunset

The Anish Kapoor spiral sculpture - one of my favourite structures in the Olympic Park

Magic seeds

2011-11-26T17:37:00.000Z

I bake a great deal of bread; several loaves a week for roughly the last ten years. But this week I added sunflower seeds to soda bread for the first time, and made a new and startling discovery.

The children and I got a massive shock when we broke open the just-baked loaf yesterday after school. We stared at the bread and then at each other.

"What HAPPENED??" asked O, horrified.

"Cool!" shouted C.

Rather than slather butter and jam on to it as we had planned we went rumamging on the internet. We learnt that if you add sunflower seeds to soda bread, they turn a deep and vivid shade of green because the acid in them reacts with the alkali in the bicarbonate of soda. The internet also claimed that they were still perfectly safe to eat, so with varying levels of apprehension we slathered butter and jam on, and tucked in anyway.

The internet was right - they are absolutely fine to eat. I was right too, in that sunflower seeds make soda bread even more delicious. I do find the shade of green (which has turned almost black in the day since I made the loaf) rather unnerving though. Today I went back to what I know and made a plain wholemeal tin loaf.

The school run

2011-11-25T00:28:00.001Z

If I do the school run by tube, it takes 20 minutes longer than if I do it by car.

The car has a powerful heater, blasting warm air in my face and on my feet. The tube has drafts from the doors which all open at every station.

On the tube, I listen to my music quietly on my headphones and I don't sing out loud at the top of my voice as I do in the car.

But if I go by tube I can admire some magnificent sunsets at this time of year. And O and I get to chat as we walk home from the station; if we are lucky we find some treasure too.

Sewing, knitting and Welsh Cakes - it's all good

2011-11-22T11:26:00.000Z

I've been so productive lately.

Sewing a quilt for a new baby:

Knitting socks AND a baby kicking bag:

Sewing secret presents for nephews:

...and neices:

Making (and eating) Welsh Cakes:

But then it all grinds to a halt as I get distracted by cobwebs and sunsets.

And a child is sick and off school on the two days I had set aside to sew his Christmas present. Time to make some more Welsh Cakes and drink a cup of tea I think.

Good things in the kitchen

2011-11-18T16:34:00.000Z

Good things have been happening in our kitchen lately. Good, sticky, smoky, golden-coloured, slow-cooked, autumnal things.

I find this time of year inspires me to cook more - my pottering-gently-around-the-kitchen-listening-to-Radio 4 approach to cooking suits stews, bread, roasts and cakes, which are what you want to eat at this time of year. The children have been getting in on the act too. C made the cheese and onion tear-and-share loaf you can see above. We gave him the book from the most recent series of Great British Bake Off for his birthday, and he loves it. So far we've had brandy snaps, hot chocolate fudge pudding and the bread from him.

All this sort of cooking tastes so good because it is made from a few simple ingredients, cooked slowly and with no stress on the part of the cook. The smells fill the house with warmth and love.

We ate C's bread with this barbecued bean stew, which is a fantastic recipe for feeding a family very cheaply in a way which still seems luxurious.

Barbecued bean stew

4 rashers smoked streaky bacon, snipped into pieces
1 onion, sliced into half moons
3 fat cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1 stick of celery, chopped
1 tin of chopped tomatoes, plus 1 tin of water
1 bay leaf
1 heaped tablespoon treacle or dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons cider or wine vinegar
1 tablespoon tomato ketchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tin of mixed beans in water

Slowly, gently, fry the onion, garlic, celery and bacon in a large casserole dish. There is no need to add oil, as the bacon will provide enough fat. Stir absently while listening to the radio. When the veg is softenend, but not coloured, add all the rest of the ingredients apart from the beans. Stir, put a lid on the pan and leave to bubble very gently on a low heat for about 30 minutes while you go off and do something more interesting. Tip in the tin of beans - no need to drain or rinse first - if you've bought them in water it's all good stuff. Simmer slowly for another 10 minutes with the lid off.

Serve with bread to mop up all the delicious, smoky, barbecue sauce.

I made these beans in my favourite orange shallow casserole dish from Le Creuset. This is mostly because I like how the orange dish looks with the orange-brown barbecued beans. But the beans would also work well if you made them in a slow cooker.

I am new to the world of slow cookers. I have my friend Nina to thank for my introduction to this way of cooking because the other week she tweeted about coming home from work to a chicken and cider casserole cooked in her slow cooker and said it was 'as if somebody else had cooked dinner'. That short sentence meant I just had to look into this more closely - how often have you come in at the end of the day and wished that for once someone else had cooked dinner? A very beguiling idea indeed!

I bought this model - a whopper with 6 litres capacity. The shallow amount you can see in the photo above was in fact a chorizo and sweet potato stew which fed five hungry people generously last night.

I am not a great fan of gadgets as I don't have much space in the kitchen, so anything I get is considered carefully and has to be used regularly to earn its place. But Nina was right, this slow cooker is a great addition to my kitchen.

I wondered how it would be different to sticking a casserole dish in a low oven for a few hours, which I've been doing for years. The big difference is that the slow cooker is safe to leave on overnight or when I go out, which makes it much more useful than an oven at a low temperature. It also uses far less electricity than an oven, so is more economical.

Spices and herbs have a more intense flavour cooked this way, so I ease back a little on those but otherwise just stick to my usual stew and casserole recipes. The only thing that has to be pre-cooked is mince, which clumps together if not fried in a pan first. Other than that I don't pre-cook anything, just chuck it all in and switch it on. This means it is simple enough to do first thing in the morning, before I even lay the table for breakfast.

Last weekend I roasted a whole chicken in it. I made a bed of vegetables: celery sticks, carrots, a quartered onion, six cloves of garlic, a handful of peppercorns and a bay leaf. I sat the chicken on top, poured in a glass of dry cider and 200ml of vegetable bouillon, and left it on for seven hours. I came back home to find a beautifully bronzed chicken and half a litre of the most amazingly intense flavoured stock I have ever made. The chicken and stock were used to make four separate and incredibly delicious meals during the week.

Tomorrow I have plans for a rabbit ragu. C and I watched Jamie's Great Britain last week and this recipe had both of us shouting excitedly at the tele. It looked so good, and we all like eating rabbit in this house. Normally a rabbit from the local butcher costs about £7, but the only one he had left today was an absolute whopper which cost me £14, and will probably make enough bolognese sauce to feed us all until Christmas. The rabbit and all the other ingredients will go into the slow cooker and we shall see what happens. I predict great things.

Misty interlude

2011-11-11T11:29:00.000Z

There has been little time for walking or baking this week.

But on the way home from dropping O at school this morning, I stopped at the very innermost bit of Epping Forest, just a mile from home, and got out of the car to chat to the geese and ducks for a couple of minutes.

The mist and shadowy landscape is so beautiful at the moment. It's still relatively mild. And the smell of rich, damp earth was intoxicating. If I could have bottled the smell I would.

I only stopped for five minutes, but that's all you need sometimes.

Amish baked oatmeal

2011-11-06T12:41:00.000Z

I can't remember where I first came across this idea, but it captivated me right away.

Baked oats and fruit - a sort of solid, fruity, spicy porridge. Eaten for breakfast, but with echoes of pudding. All the recipes I found for it are American, and most refer to it as Amish oatmeal. So the recipe has an old fashioned, healthy German-Swiss heritage to it, which really appeals to me.

Oats are mixed with eggs, milk, a little sugar and loads of fruit and then baked in a pie dish the oven. My final recipe below is an amalgamation of loads of different ones I found online. I reduced the sugar content to a fraction of the American versions, because I really don't like my food very sweet, and I upped the fruit content to compensate.

The whole family adore this, and what should feed about six people disappears between the four of us in about ten minutes flat. G, C and I like ours with natural yogurt on top and O likes hers plain. Yesterday both G and O had third helpings.

Amish baked oatmeal

Dry ingredients:

3 cups porridge oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon or mixed spice
1 cup chopped fruit or berries (I used blueberries)

Wet ingredients:

1 cup stewed fruit (I used apple)
1 cup milk
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
100g butter, melted or vegetable oil

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a big mixing bowl. Stir all the wet ingredients together in a large jug. Pour the wet into the dry and mix together until thoroughly combined. Pour into a large pie dish and bake in the centre of the oven at Gas 4 for 50 minutes to 1 hour. Check that it is done as you would for a cake: poke the middle with a cocktail stick and make sure that there is no wet mixture left.

This is so easy to make that you could mix it all up while you are half-asleep and then go back to bed with a cup of tea and the new copy of Mollie Makes while it cooks. For instance. The smell while it cooks will drive you crazy with desire, and eventually force you out of bed and downstairs so that you can eat great, greedy bowlfuls of it for breakfast, washed down with another cup of tea.

I mean really. What's not to like about winter when you've got this to get you going in the morning?

~~~~~~~~~~

This would be amazing with any combination of fruit. I've seen many different permutations online:

stewed rhubarb and chopped apple, with ground ginger in place of the cinnamon
stewed blueberries and chopped peaches
stewed apple and mixed frozen berries (no need to defrost them first)
stewed plums and chopped apples
stewed apple and chopped pears

You get the picture.

Seen on the Tube

2011-11-05T19:25:00.000Z

Hammersmith & City Line, Kings Cross to Mile End

Nine people listening to music on headphones.
A young woman doing card tricks with her paper train tickets.
Her boyfriend, wearing very white trainers, anxiously telling her to be careful with the tickets.
A jolly, portly man wearing a grey, hand-knitted tank top, offering sections of his Saturday newspaper to those sitting around him.
A woman with immaculately painted pink toenails, wearing hareem pants and white sandals.
A man with white hair and black gloves, distressed to find himself on the wrong train at Liverpool Street
A blushing young man, wearing a blue dog-tooth checked shirt, rummaging in his jacket pocket and then dropping a lip balm and a selection of multi-coloured foil-wrapped condoms all over the floor.
A middle-aged woman checking her hair, and pulling out a few white ones.

A girl who knows what she wants

2011-11-04T14:09:00.000Z

I loved MrsM's thoughtful post earlier this week, on the joie de vivre of her daughter. And of course I then started thinking of how delighted I would be if my own daughter ended up with such an awesome and sassy taste in shoes.

Usually quietly self-contained...but always, always, drawing, dancing or writing...O is a peaceful, gentle presence in our household. I took some photos of a few of the posters she has made for her bedroom walls and door recently.

And when I read all these posters*, I thought to myself that in ten years' time I bet she'll also be strutting her stuff in purple suede 4" heels. She might be quiet, but she's a young lady who seems to know her own mind.

*There are more of her posters, and notes about them all, on Flickr.

Winter and woollens

2011-11-02T08:13:00.000Z

I've used Silverpebble's and Thrifty Household's excellent Making Winter project to start something I've been meaning to do for a while: taking time out of my day, every day, to stand or sit outside for ten minutes and drink a cup of tea or coffee. I think even in the very depths of winter I would get enjoyment from wrapping up warmly, stepping out into the garden and watching what's going on around me as I sip a hot drink and think about what needs to be done with my day.

Today I looked at the lavender bush where I saw Mr Toad back in May. The lavender bush did pretty well this year but I realised that I still need to cut off the dead flower stalks.

I checked that the hens were happy under their new rain cover. They get a new one every winter, and I spend each spring and summer looking for perfectly clear shower curtains that I can use. Gill found this one for me in the Habitat closing down sale.

I marvelled at the amount of cherry leaves that had fallen in just one day since I last cleared them all up. I love how they look on the green grass, but if I leave them there, we will have no grass next summer...so every week or so I rake them up.

And I drank my cup of tea and rejoiced at my toasty warm shoulders and wrists. As well as Making Winter, there's something else that has caught my eye this month: Wovember. This is Kate Davies' and Felicity Ford's campaign and celebration of 100% wool. I was as appalled as Kate was to discover, when I read her blog last month, that an item of clothing that contains no wool whatsoever can still legally use the word wool or woollen in its description. Wovember has been set up as a way to highlight this issue, campaign to change it, and at the same time celebrate everything 100% wool.

My shawl is knitted from sock yarn, which is a wool blend of 75% wool and 25% polyamide. This enables socks and shawls and anything else knitted with it to be subjected to lots of use and regularly chucked in the washing machine. My armwarmers are 100% wool, from merino sheep, and I just love them to bits. They are incredibly warm, and perfect for pulling over my hands as I clutch my early morning cup of tea.

An autumn shawl

2011-10-28T21:38:00.002+01:00

I finished my baktus shawl earlier this week and haven't really taken it off since. I am working my way through all the cream, green and brown coloured clothes in my wardrobe, which look so delicious topped off with a little autumn-coloured shawl.

I love this pattern, I love this yarn, and I love the finished item. So darn satisfying when that happens.

The pattern is this one, for a little shawl or a big scarf, called a baktus. It was simplicity itself to make, and caused me no stress at all other than a frustration that I couldn't knit faster and get it done sooner.

The yarn I used is a 4 ply sock yarn called Superba Safari by Rico. I am addicted to sock yarns and would knit everything out of them if I could. I bought this one while I was in Switzerland last year, purely for its beautiful brown and green shades. You can also buy it online from quite a few UK yarn shops if you have a rummage.

I do love shawls, and they are one of the best reasons to enjoy this cool, blustery time of year. Most of the time I wrap myself up in a big, red and blue striped, Cath Kidston shawl, but sometimes I wear a pashmina - I have a pale blue one and a pale pink one. Now I've got the option of my autumn baktus as well, and that makes me very happy.

Other shawl love at the moment consists of:

this incredible, circular shawl that my mother has knitted for my sister's first baby, due early next year.
this little leaf-edged shawl
this bird print shawl from Cath Kidston
Suse's two most recent shawls - this one, and this one.
this very pretty foxglove-edged shawl

And I've finished my autumn shawl just at the right time. The cherry tree in the garden is dropping rich golden coloured leaves which match my new shawl, and I am off to Kew this weekend in search of even more autumn colour. Wearing the shawl, obviously.

Ten things

2011-10-21T18:57:00.000+01:00

I went to Southwark yesterday, and with half an hour to spare before my meeting I stood by the river and watched the world go by.

C turned twelve yesterday, and although he technically has another year to go, it feels like we have a teenager in the house now. I feel ill-equipped to mother a teenager. It reminds me of that moment twelve years and one day ago, when the midwives who had delivered him left about an hour after the birth, and I sat on my bed shouting silently after them "Don't go! I don't know anything about babies! I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!"
My Toast armwarmers featured on the Mollie Makes blog this morning, which was a lovely surprise. But just look at the gloves at the top of the post! I am going to make myself some more Toast and then embroider them - so lovely.
O turns nine tomorrow. The birthday cake she has asked for is Death by Chocolate with a chocolate buttercream filling and a chocolate ganache topping. With chocolate sprinkles.
The hens have started laying again - about bloody time as they've all been moulting, or broody, or both, since July. And just in time too, as the Death by Chocolate cake requires a whopping 5 eggs.
I am continuing to try new versions of old favourites. Today I made Sarah Raven's minestrone from her Garden Cookbook. It uses red cabbage and red wine in place of the usual white wine and savoy cabbage. I absolutely love how it tastes, but it looks a bit unnervingly purple.

I want to make this ploughman's loaf. The recipe is from Mary-Anne Boerman, who was one of the finalists on this year's Great British Bake Off. I love that programme, and am mourning its passing for another year.
I am greatly enjoying The Archers spin-off show on Radio 4 Extra - Ambridge Extra. I am so pleased the BBC decided to make a second series because I love hearing more of the younger characters, and revealing internal monologues that you don't get on the main show.
I am reading the new Ottobre children's pattern magazine, which dropped heavily onto the hall carpet yesterday. I knew just from the thud that there was something exciting in the post. I love the boys' blue shirt you can see in the fourth picture down, and O is excited that there is a pattern for a flannel-lined kimono dressing gown which will fit her. I am enjoying dithering over which new Anna Maria Horner flannel should be purchased.
I found this beautiful necklace via the wonderful website Bookshelf Porn. Don't be alarmed by the name - it is a website which posts daily photos of bookshelves you wish you owned. Go forth and rummage - you'll love it.

I heart pies

2011-10-19T12:40:00.001+01:00

I love pies with all my heart. Pies make me happy. There is no casserole or stew in the world that couldn't be improved with a lid of some sort. I love crumbles, cobblers and crunchy breadcrumb toppings to pies, but a proper pie has a pastry top. I think my love of pies might really be a love of pastry.

Most of the time I end up making two pies at once because I always make more pastry than I need for the main event. I find it easier to have plenty of pastry and deal with leftovers than work with a parsimonious amount of pastry.

This morning I made C the giant mince pie he requested for his twelfth birthday tomorrow. I used the orange-scented pastry that Nigella makes for mince pies in her Feast book - it has a very subtle orange flavour and is not too rich, but flakes beautifully. I added a peeled and diced bramley apple to the giant jar of mincemeat I had (leftover from last Christmas - mincemeat keeps wonderfully, tucked away at the back of a dark shelf). C loves apples, and a chopped apple stirred in made the mincemeat go further - you need a great deal of filling for a pie this big.

I decided not to go with a proper lid. When I make small ones at Christmas I always top them with a star, and I thought stars would look rather nice on a birthday pie too. I cut out the letters for C's name and added them to the stars to make it extra celebratory.

C's giant mince pie, for his 12th birthday

Because the stars on the top didn't use much pastry I had plenty left over. Often I turn small amounts of leftover pastry into jam tarts (for sweet pastry) or cheese straws (for savoury pastry) but there was enough left today for a whole other pie. I chopped up another couple of bramleys, tossed the pieces with brown sugar and allspice, and made an apple pie which we can have for tea tonight. The apple pie was topped with a hedgehog just because I have a sweet hedgehog cutter from Ikea that I like using.

Apple pie, with gratuitous hedgehog motif

So the birthday boy gets pie on birthday eve and pie on his birthday. He likes pie too.

~~~~~~~~~~

Pie notes

I always brush the top of my pies with milk, not beaten egg. This is because I can always think of better things to do with an egg than use it to glaze a pie (and have half a floury beaten egg left over - what a waste!). Milk ends up giving a very similar burnished result, although admitedly a slightly less shiny one.
Get a silicone pastry brush. For years I used a bristle one that looked lovely but left bristles over the tops of my pies. Not a good look.
Mostly I use shortcrust pastry for pies, and I make it in my mixer. I mix two parts strong white bread flour to one part fat (which is usually 50:50 butter and trex) then add liquid once the flour and fat look like breadcrumbs. Liquid is usually water, but can be milk or egg. For C's mince pie the liquid was orange juice.
Life's too short to get really het up over how neat a pie looks. If it is patched and slightly raggedy it will still taste great.
If I'm making pasties rather than pies or tarts I use rough-puff pastry. The best instructions I've found for rough-puff are in Hugh F-W's River Cottage Every Day book.
If you use metal pie and tart tins you never have to blind bake the pastry.
I am hoping that somebody who loves me might buy me this t-shirt for Christmas.
I currently have the Pieminister cookbook out of the library. It is a glorious book with pies arranged according to season. I've tried their curried chicken and squash pie recipe which was stunning.
This Hairy Bikers' Perfect Pies book was out last week and is also on my reserve list at the library. I have great hopes for it, as the pie recipes in their Mums Know Best books are already real favourites in our family.

Two pies for the birthday boy

A thank you cushion

2011-10-16T17:26:00.000+01:00

I haven't done much sewing reccently, and I've missed it. I spent a couple of hours this afternoon cutting and piecing this cushion, and marvelled at how calming the whole process of sewing is for me. I am very methodical when I sew, and I enjoy that. I could do with being more methodical and less flighty in other things I do.

The cushion is a thank you present for a friend who has helped me out with some childcare this autumn. Those sorts of friends really are the best, aren't they?

Autumn birthdays and autumn knitting

2011-10-13T11:45:00.002+01:00

Next week there are four birthdays in five days: son, daughter, brother and nephew. I am running between the Post Office and the sorting office. Birthday baking has begun.

Brownies and buns for a birthday

These are chocolate brownies and fairy cakes - fresh out of the oven and waiting for decoration. The house smells good.

C has asked for a giant mince pie for his birthday cake. He loves mince pies more than anything else, but I refuse to make them out of season - they are just too Christmassy to have at any other time of year. However, the birthday rules in our house state that the birthday person is allowed to have any cake they want. So I have agreed to make a giant mince pie because I think birthday rules should outrank seasonality rules.

The other thing I am busy with at the moment is clearing a backlog of knitting projects. I desperately want to wear this baktus scarf I started ages ago, with autumn in mind. Last night I stayed up late so that I could get to the turning point and start decreasing.

Turning point - yee-hah!

Half-way through the baktus scarf

Psychologically I am much keener to finish it now that I know I am over half-way though.
.

Then I need to turn my attention to this baby kicking bag for a new neice who is due in February (very exciting, as she comes after three nephews in a row - I only have one neice at the moment). I knittted kicking bags for my last two nephews (you can read the blog posts here and here) and they proved to be very useful and appreciated gifts. A kicking bag is such a practical item for a newborn baby.

Baby kicking bag for a new neice

With this red bag I have finished the cabled cuff and now just need to sit down and go round and round in stocking stitch for a few weeks. Time for some dedicated tv and film watching. Perhaps accompanied by a slice of birthday cake.

Local Leyton parks

2011-10-11T20:56:00.034+01:00

Walking through two of Leyton's parks this morning on my way to the library, it still felt more summery than autumnal. The temperature hit 21 degrees again at lunchtime and only the colour of the leaves on the ground told me that we really, truly are in the middle of autumn.

Sidmouth Park, Leyton

Coronation Gardens, Leyton

October rosebuds in Coronation Gardens, Leyton

Autumn leaves in Leyton

I put my sandals away a week or two ago, but I was too hot in these trainers today. Time to reapply the nail varnish I think.

Perspective

2011-10-09T13:10:00.000+01:00

I find it is much harder to maintain perspective on annoying days, tough days, delightful days and challenging days, now that I am not working. My working life got me out of the house, doing something different each day and seeing different things in the shops and the streets where I worked. Being at home all day, sewing, knitting, writing and spending time with the children, has been much more satisfying and fulfilling than work was for me, but it does leave me with a regrettable tendency to navel-gaze.

The best way to step back, get some perspective on those 'annoyances' that actually barely qualify to be termed 'minor inconveniences', is to spend a day with friends and leave the care of the home and children to your husband for the day.

I had such a good time with my friends that I didn't take any pictures of the Power of Making exhibition at the V&A (I was too busy freaking out about the cake designed to look like a naked newborn baby, and admiring the knitting needles the size of tent poles). Nor did I take any pictures while we were window-shopping in the Liberty haberdashery department.

We marched with purpose through Soho to Gordon's Wine Bar at Charing Cross and I didn't take any photos there either because I was too busy chatting to everybody, drinking a welcome glass or two of wine, and scoffing delicious cheese.

You might have thought I'd have managed to take some photos at the tapas bar on Goodge Street later that evening, but no. The patatas bravas needed to be eaten and we were having a wine-fuelled conversation about feminism and motherhood.

I came home barely able to remember the things that had made me so cross at the start of the day. And this morning, after a cup of tea which put back some of what all that wine took out, I found that G had not just spent the day doing all the household jobs I normally would have done, but he had also bought me flowers.

Flowers from G on my desk

Flowers from G on the mantelpiece

I need to get out more.

~~~~~~~~~~

With many thanks to Naomi, Sophie, Noni, Cath, Michelle and Liz for the laughs and for giving me back my perspective.

Old faithfuls

2011-10-06T23:01:00.001+01:00

I love trying new recipes, and I also love making old familiar recipes over and over again. But something I've been very bad at trying is new versions of old favourite dishes. It seems all wrong to go gallivanting around with new ideas when you've already got a recipe that is well loved, well tested and that you know by heart.

And yet...whisper it...maybe there could be something even better than that old faithful recipe you've been making forever.

So over the past month I have been RADICAL and DARING and tried out some new versions of old favourites.

I had an early success with flapjacks: out went the recipe my Mum gave me when I left home (sorry Ma!) and in came the Peyton & Byrne version. The Peyton & Byrne recipe has dried fruit in it, and a high butter to syrup ratio, making them less good for your arteries, but kinder on your teeth. O, who doesn't normally like flapjacks, loved these ones.

Then I decided to try a bigger challenge - meatloaf. The recipe I've been baking since I was a teenager is one that a neighbour passed on to my Mum in the late 1970s. My brother and I loved it as children, and my children now love it too. It has hidden vegetables in it, succulent tender meat, and makes the whole house smell amazing while it bakes. I felt very emotionally attached to my old recipe and thought that there was very little that could rival it. But that recipe calls for both beef and pork, so when I only had beef but had already told my children and their friends that they were having meatloaf for tea, I had to look for another recipe.

I went for the one in the second Hairy Bikers Mum Knows Best book. I didn't think anything was going to come up to the standard of my inherited recipe, but this new one was a revelation - quicker to make, much less fatty without the additional pork, and just as tasty. The four children demolished the lot and asked for more.

And then I decided to mess around with that most sacred of old favourite recipes: fairy cakes. I read somewhere a while back that if you swap half the quantity of flour for custard powder in your usual recipe then it makes for a more vanillary, creamy sponge without altering the texture. And today I tried it.

I made autumn buns to use up the last of the unrefined icing sugar I bought in a fit of worthiness a couple of months ago. Unrefined icing sugar is not a good idea. It makes a murky, caramel-coloured icing that does not mix well with food colouring. But the shade of icing is vaguely autumnal so I added some autumn sprinkles and rather liked the end result.

Autumn buns

And the addition of custard powder to the recipe was agreed by all to be A Very Good Thing. The buns were light and full of flavour. There aren't many of them left.

So what's next? Is nothing sacred? I still haven't found the nerve to mess around with my shortbread recipe, but perhaps I should.

Me and my car

2011-10-03T20:38:00.000+01:00

Driving in London holds little pleasure. The roads are congested, slow and full of roadworks, and you burn through expensive, polluting petrol sitting in traffic jams just to go a mile or two down the road. And at the same time, the much-maligned tube and bus networks are fantasically convenient. Bikes are now everywhere in London and bike stands to lock your bike to are springing up all over the place - including right outside my local knitting shop, which is costing me dearly.

I spend much of my life trying to avoid going out in the car.

Driving down the Mile End Road in East London, 2007

The more I walk around London, the more I enjoy walking, and it is slowly dawning on me that everything is closer together than the tube network would lead me to believe. I drive O the three and a half miles to school in the mornings, but pick her up by tube and on foot in the afternoons. I am counting down the days (years in reality) until she joins her brother at secondary school and I don't have to use the car every day.

C on the way to primary school, 2008. He has to walk to secondary school now, and moans constantly about it.

And yet...I really love driving and I love my car. Just as long as it's not in London. I relish long road trips, and the sense of adventure that comes with them. It dawned on me this weekend, as I was zooming up the M11 to spend the day with my sister, that this is largely due to the fact that I treat the car as my own personal karaoke machine.

Vivid yellow rapeseed fields in Cambridgeshire, seen from the M11

A long, straight autoroute somewhere in central France

In our family we have the rule that whoever is driving gets to choose the music. The children can listen to their iPods in the back if they don't like what we've got on. Which, yes, these days is pretty much all the time.

O tires of my singing, 2005

Yesterday I had the windows open (air-con off to preserve petrol) and I was singing at the top of my voice to Lady Antebellum and Caro Emerald. I was travelling alone, otherwise I would have sung at a more moderate volume. But I must sing. Good iPod playlists for the car are ones that have plenty of tunes and not too many high notes.

Conventional cars are not good for the environment. They are pointless and annoying in big cities, where public transport is almost always a much better option. They are beocming eye-wateringly expensive to maintain. But the convenience, and the sheer delight, of being able to take youself wherever you want to go the minute you decide you want to; and the exhilaration of singing with the windows open (or the top down if you are really lucky) as you bowl down an empty road, means that I am still a long way from falling out of love with my car.

C and O by the car, in a field somewhere in Wales, 2006

Waiting at a level crossing, in a mountain pass in Switzerland last year. I drove (and navigated) there and back by myself.

How about you? Do you have a car you love? Do you hate to drive? Do you have driving playlists on your iPod? Do you avoid long drives or drives in the dark, or do you dream of taking early retirement and taking a road trip across America for a few months in a motorhome? I'm saving up already.

Weekday market walk #3

2011-09-30T20:40:00.000+01:00

Neither Miss Moss Stitch nor I appreciate this unseasonable weather. It is beautiful light for taking photos, but far too hot for one of our long yomps.

The Women's Library at Aldgate

So we stayed local again this week and based our choice of markets and cafés around a trip to The Women's Library, which is part of London Metropolitan University. Today was the penultimate day to see this free exhibition by French installation artist Françoise Dupré. It was a small exhibition, but so lovely. Loads of colourful creations made from unusual fabrics such as plastic laundry bags, tights and citrus net bags. I wandered around promising myself I'd find time to do more sewing in the next week or two. It was rather inspiring.

Les Autres Mers at The Women's Library

Les Autres mers at The Women's Library

Creatures made from little girls' tights at Les Autres Mers

Tights and hoops at Les Autres Mers

Plastic laundry bag art at The Women's Library

Once we'd finished admiring the art, we headed for Spitalfields market, close by, but instead turned a corner and found ourselves in Petticoat Lane market, which I used to go to in my lunch hours when I worked nearby. I had completely forgotten about it. We didn't stop to look closely at every stall, but there was plenty to fill our senses, and loads of fantastic looking cafés to tempt us in for coffee. Petticoat Lane is a clothes and fashion market, set in streets full of fabric shops and dressmakers.

Petticoat Lane market

A tailor's in Petticoat Lane

Pavement art and my feet in Petticoat Lane

Shop window full of African print fabrics in Petticoat Lane

What's not to like? Although there were a few bits of weirdness too, including a (yellow painted) shop which sold real human hair. Really quite disturbing.

Gah!

We resisted the lure of Petticoat Lane's cafés and continued on towards Spitalfields market. This is a market I've been coming to ever since I first moved to East London fifteen years ago. In this time it has changed - become more gentrified and chic, and less battered, comfortable old East End. But...it is still lovely, and I still go every couple of months, on a Sunday morning, for a prowl around.

Christ Church, Spitalfields. Designed by Hawksmoor.

On a Friday morning, however, the market felt empty and quiet. There were some clothes stalls and cafés open, but not many people. We went to Leon for a very tasty drink and cake, and sat and gazed at these handsome but still surroundings.

Leon at Spitalfields

Quiet market halls at Spitalfields (with Gill running away from my camera!)

The London Fruit & Wool Exchange, next to Spitalfields market

Glass roof and steel beams at Spitalfields market

I think we will need to head back here on a Sunday to show you the market at its busy, bustling best. We headed slowly back down Commercial Road to Aldgate East station, and the tube home. The pavements pulsed with heat, and we squinted in the midday sun. It was hot out there today.

Commercial Road in the September heatwave

10 things

2011-09-28T14:14:00.000+01:00

The phrase "she'd lose her head if it wasn't screwed on" is a cliché, but it could have been written for O. She has managed to lose two school sweaters, one lunchbox, a piece of homework and two letters home since the start of term. I am beyond exasperated.
Since the beginning of this week, O now has to wear glasses. A second pair is on order because surely it's only a matter of time before she loses them?
I made tiffin. It is evil stuff. If it is in the house I must eat it. Simple.

Tiffin in the tin

My apple allergy seems to have disappeared. In the last week I have eaten three apples with no ill-effect. I haven't tried peaches or apricots yet, which give me a much stronger allergic reaction. I might go and sit in the car park of the local A&E and eat a peach, just to see.
One of the reasons I married G was for his calm spider-removing skills. He is busy at the moment because they are everywhere.
Sainsbury's now sells paper loaf tin liners, which is great news because that's even handier than popping down to the new branch of Lakeland which has opened just one tube stop away. I don't need to make Evil Tiffin any more, I shall make cherry loaf cakes instead.

Loaf tin liners

Both C and O have their birthdays next month. Also my brother and my nephew. I have not given this any thought at all, which is probably a mistake.
I am knitting, but not sewing much at the moment. I need to work out how I can find more time to sew, because I miss it and I want to start on a wedding quilt.
Two cats down our street are loving this scorching hot Indian Summer. They were blissed out on the pavement this morning, smiling at the sunshine.

Sunbathing cats, down our street this morning

I must never, ever cut my own fringe again. Lesson learned.

The University Parks and the teapot

2011-09-26T10:16:00.000+01:00

A weekend in Oxford, visiting family, resulted in us driving back down the M40 on Sunday evening with windfall apples, wrapped birthday presents, an enormous jar of fig jam and a new teapot in the boot of the car.

On Saturday afternoon G and I dropped the children off with their cousins for a couple of hours, and we headed for the University Parks, one of my favourite places in Oxford. This has been a good year for berries - the bushes and trees were absolutely laden with them. If you know of any hungry birds, tell them there's a feast on at the Parks.

We strolled around the Parks, admiring some very energetic games of tennis on the playing fields, and then we headed northwards, following the river back into the city. Along the river there were the most elegant swans, a few punts, and some beautiful trees.

Punting

The river Isis, in Oxford

Weeping willow by the University Parks

On the way back to pick up the children we walked through Wolfson College, and I had lawn envy. They don't have moulting chickens and drifts of fallen leaves on their lawn. They have croquet hoops and neat stripes from the mower.

Wolfson College's beautiful croquet lawn

And this morning I find myself back in London, looking at these photos to see if the berries really were that red, and to see if the parks really were that beautiful with autumn colour. They were. I've turned the windfalls into stewed apple, hidden the presents, made plans for the fig jam and made the first pot of tea in the new teapot.

It was a very good weekend.

The Oxford University Parks

My new teapot (with sweet little matching milk jug)

Weekday market walk #2

2011-09-23T15:19:00.000+01:00

Today's market walk was a return to somewhere we really loved when we did our river walks in the spring - Bermondsey and Southwark. We went inland a short way this time, to Bermondsey Antiques Market (sometimes also called Bermondsey Square Market).

The walk from London Bridge station to the market is full of visual treats - beautifully restored Victorian architecture, pretty cafes, a glass blowing factory, parks, pubs and shops. Bermondsey Street even has its own festival this weekend.

South Eastern Railway Offices at London Bridge

Sign for a WWII exhibition at London Bridge

A florist's in Bermondsey

A restored warehouse in Morocco Street in Bermondsey

The market looks very small, but there is plenty to see. Somehow Gill and I managed to spend two hours there. The stalls are packed densely into the market square, and each stall has thousands of treasures that must be inspected, discussed and admired.

We saw

silver soup ladles
miniature penknives with mother-of-pearl handles
beautiful Victorian thimbles
enamel earrings in the shape of sea shells
daguerrotypes
ostrich feather fans
hat pins
box brownie cameras
charms
tiny, weeny silver mustard spoons
embroidery on velvet
brooches
medals
police whistles
silver coffee pots

The stall holders were all so friendly, and happy to chat. I asked loads of questions and prowled around quite happily, trying on dozens of tiny antique thimbles in vain.

Bermondsey Antiques Market - small but full of treasure

Baskets and baskets of old silver and silver plate cutlery, mostly from Sheffield

Box brownies

After the market we headed for a local cafe in search of a cup of tea. Al's Cafe looked just the thing, and we had proper mugs of strong, milky tea and buttered toast to revive us.

Lots of menu options at Al's Cafe - Bermondsey Street

Delicious tea and toast at Al's Cafe

Walking back through Bermondsey to London Bridge, we suddenly caught sight of The Shard down one of the side streets - flashing bright reflected sunshine at everyone who walked past. You can see some photos of The Shard from when we last walked in Bermondsey, back in May - they've made good progress since then. I can't wait to see it finished; it will look spectacular in bright, autumn sunshine like today's.

The Shard - dazzling with reflected sunshine

Comfort amid the new and changing

2011-09-21T14:54:00.000+01:00

There is so much that is new happening in our family at the moment.

Blue skies over East London this week

C's new life at secondary school incorporates so many new experiences under just one heading. He is walking to and from school each day rather than being driven or travelling with me on the tube. He's doing several pieces of homework each night rather than just once a week. He's making new friends, managing his own money and learning completely new subjects for the very first time.

G is taking up new hobbies and resuming old ones, with the spare time he has now that he is no longer training for the ironman. His work hours have changed significantly, as has his daily commute across London.

I am starting new projects and using my time very differently to how I was a few months ago. O finds herself in a busy whirl of birthday parties, ballet lessons, opticians appointments and new after-school arrangements.

All of this, without exception, is good for us. I am excited and energised by the new possibilities opening up for me, C loves his new school, G and O are busy and happy. And yet...sometimes the newness and the bustle can still feel tiring and overwhelming, even though it's welcome and we're enjoying it. Sometimes we just want to curl up under a quilt, watch favourite, missed TV shows on iPlayer and eat pudding.

So I've stopped what I should be doing for the morning, and done some baking instead. This bread pudding recipe, from my friend Nina, is the most comforting thing imaginable. The children, G and I all rank it as one of our most favourite puddings ever. It tastes wonderfully spicy and citrussy and completely hits the spot when you need a bit of comfort food.

Stale bread, about to be transformed

Butter, sugar, spices and fruit

It is not a very beautiful pudding to look at, but just like your favourite pair of comfy slippers or your child's old, beloved bear-with-no-fur, it is not meant to be an object of great beauty. Its power lies in the fact that it can lift your soul and bring you comfort and reassurance when everything feels a little bit new and challenging.

Suds in the sink

We're having our bread pudding for tea tonight, and then tomorrow we'll all be be back out there, embracing the newness once again. That's the magic of this pudding.

September sunshine

2011-09-14T20:40:00.000+01:00

September is such a wonderful month in London. We are in autumn - my favourite season of the year. The clocks haven't moved, so the days are still long. The temperature is balmy and breezy - cool enough for cardigans but not yet cold enough for coats.

O finds conkers on the way to her ballet lesson

And the sunlight just seems so bright. It always seems that there is plenty of it in September too. We soak it all up, knowing that the dark and damp of the winter months is not too far away. September feels like a treat for the senses.

A cat, writhing on a hot patch of pavement, down the street

Shadow railings

Sunshine pouring through our front door

Shadow Nancy in the garden

Shadow Nancy doing the school run

Dazzling autumn sunshine

Gaming boys

2011-09-13T22:06:00.001+01:00

This weekend it became apparent that the sweet little baby in the picture below, dozing in his father's lap, can now whup his father at pretty much any computer game he chooses.

Gaming boys - November 1999

The baby is also incredulous that his father had so much hair and games consoles required wires in 1999. That's, like, so weird.

Weekday market walk #1

2011-09-09T22:29:00.000+01:00

The weekday walks are back - and this autumn we are planning our walks around markets.

Walthamstow Market - the longest in Europe

Today, at the end of what felt like a long week settling our nearly-twelve year olds into their new secondary schools, we walked to our most local market for a potter around. It is just about half an hour walk from my house to the end of Walthamstow Market and we set off at a brisk pace, chatting away about everything and nothing - setting the world to rights with every step.

Walthamstow Market runs down the middle of a long street of shops, so as well as all the market stalls there are shops to explore too. The whole market is gloriously eclectic - if you have a mind to, you can buy:

fruit and veg
toys
phones
prayer mats
matches and lighters
goat meat
saucepans
carpets
herbs
CDs
knicker elastic
jellied eels
chocolate
books
cake tins

I love it. I have been visiting some stalls and shops for years, and others come and go with each season.

The last of the summer's strawberries

Stall selling knicker elastic

Market caff

Gill buys fruit

Headscarf mannequins

After a good prowl around, and having acquired bags full of fabric, ribbon and fruit without really meaning to, we needed a nice sit down and a cup of tea. One of Walthamstow Market's best-loved destinations is L. Manze - a proper, old-fashioned, East End pie and mash shop selling jellied eels, pie, mash and liquor, and good strong cups of tea. You can find out more about East End pie and mash shops here.

Walking into Manze's is like stepping back in time - the tiles, lighting, benches and sawdust-strewn floor are all from another era - and very calming to an addled, modern mind.

L Manze - an East London institution

Beautiful lights and tiles in the pie shop

Coat stand and an aspidistra in a brass pot

Booths at Manze's

Beautiful, old tiles at Manze's

But the best thing? Piling your bags up next to you on one of their benches and settling down to a little china plate with one of their pies, and a cup of good, strong tea on the side. Just what a tired shopper needs.

Pie and tea at Manze's

Good habits

2011-09-07T21:48:00.000+01:00

August-September, rather than December-January, always seems to me like the end of one year and the start of the next. The summer has finished but the new academic year is beginning. One year's triathlon training and competing has ended for G, but there are now next year's races to enter, and a new training schedule to plan. Tired, dusty sandals are put away and leather boots are taken out and polished to a conker-brown shine. The summer glut of berries is stacked up on the shelf as jam, and I am dreaming of dishes made with lentils and rabbit and root vegetables.

I love this time of year. That new pencil case feeling leaves me full of energy and plans for the year ahead - and this month I am adopting another feature usually associated with the end of the calendar; that of new habits and firm resolutions to Do Better.

The NHS website tells me that I should be aiming to drink at least 1.2 litres of fluid daily, but despite starting the day well with a cup of tea, and then a cup or two of coffee an hour later, I often stop there and fall well short of this target on most days. When I was in France I bought three glass water bottles, for just two euros each, to remedy this. They now live on the bottom shelf of the fridge, chilling tap water for us all to drink.

My Mum and Dad had several of these glass bottles in their fridge in France, and they were responsible for me drinking much more water than I usually would at home. Properly chilled water is much more appealing than tap water, and more 'gluggable' somehow. The bottles look nice on the kitchen table at supper time too.

And I am hoping that my starting this new habit at a non-traditional time of year will means that it doesn't fall into the 78% of resolutions that are 'doomed to failure'. It's only the 7th September, but I'm doing pretty well so far.

10 things

2011-09-01T12:24:00.002+01:00

I have now been married for six days and I find I like being married very much.
We stopped off on our journey home from France at a small village called Camiers, in the Baie de Somme. We visited St Cécile Plage for some fresh air and exercise after spending all day in the car, and the family was divided along boy-girl lines about whether the sideways wind, whipping in from the Atlantic, was bracing and energising, or just plain miserable and cold.

It is knitting season again for me - I have picked up all those half-finished projects from earlier in the year and am looking forward to some quality autumn television to keep me company in the evenings while I knit.
C has been learning all about Spam from his favourite podcast, Stuff You Should Know. He has been listening to this podcast for a couple of years and has the most incredible and eclectic general knowledge as a result. The Spam episode really intruigued him and he has been begging me for weeks to buy him a tin and let him experiment. He made us Spam burgers for lunch on Tuesday and has declared he wants to work his way through the whole recipe section of the website. Despite this alarming development, I'd still really recommend the podcast for any curious young people you know.

To compensate for the arrival of Spam in the house, I have been roasting vegetables. Last night we had this roasted butternut squash on top of a cottage pie instead of the usual mashed potato. Very good.

I brought some lovely French notebooks and coloured pencils home with me. I really love this post from Joanne about how to pluck up the courage to use a pristine new notebook.
This is my new handcream of choice. My hands need annointing with a great deal of handcream in order not to become scaly, itchy paws. This one has a beatiful tube, smells lovely and does the job very well.
C starts secondary school next week. He is very excited and has learnt how to tie his tie. I am charging my camera ready to take loads of First Day Photos. I still love the ones I took of his first day at primary school so many years ago.
I have a great many baking plans for the next couple of weeks, to ease the transition back to school for C and O. My parents gave me these silicone madeleine moulds for my birthday so madeleines will be first on my list; I love their little shell shapes. Nigella Lawson has a recipe for rosewater scented madeleines in Domestic Goddess which sound wonderful.

Moss Stitch and I are itching to get back to our weekday walks. We are meeting up this week to Make Plans.

Le mariage

2011-08-27T18:12:00.000+01:00

It was a perfect day - and just what we wanted. Small, simple and French.

G and O, ready to go to the Mairie

Ready to leave for the Mairie - eyes very blue and very brown

My parents and C - taking photos before the wedding

The Mairie

I got a big hug from M Massat the Maire (photo courtesy of my Ma)

Self portrait of my dress - after the wedding

At lunch - surrounded by wine glasses, and with my and O's flowers

Thank you to everyone who left blog comments and tweets with good wishes - Graham and I were so very touched to read them, particularly because many of you feel like friends even though we have never met.

Outside the Mairie, after the wedding

We are headed back to the UK very soon, and once we are home I will be embarking on a wedding quilt. Just as soon as I stop twiddling with my ring which I am now wearing on my left hand, after nearly nine years of wearing it on my right hand - it feels very odd.

Just the two of us

2011-08-25T16:35:00.000+01:00

These last two weeks we have been surrounded by family. Some have been here in person and others have been spoken to on the phone or have sent emails, cards and incredibly thoughtful presents. But amongst all this love and kindness we've also wanted to be by ourselves sometimes - just the two of us. I suspect that all people getting married feel like this occasionally.

A couple of days ago G and I set our alarms for just before dawn and got up to go for a walk. That time of day is the only time it is cool enough to hike at the moment.

It was a stunning walk - one of the best we've done down here. And it was just what we needed to remind ourselves why we want to get married to each other, in this magical place.

Wedding preparations

2011-08-18T15:55:00.000+01:00

Although it is only one week and one day until our wedding, we are not thinking about it or preparing for it yet. There are far too many other important things going on.

There are cousins to play with.

There are fancy hairstyles to practise.

There are my brother and my sister and their families to laugh with and spend long, lazy evenings with.

There are French breakfasts to think of - what sort of jam should we have with our baguettes each morning? Which patisserie does the best, butteriest croissants?

There is swimming in the river to be done too.

But we are getting closer. My sister and her husband are on their way back home now, and my brother and his family leave for home this weekend. Next week, my parents-in-law arrive in France, and THEN we can start thinking about the wedding.

Pointless but pretty

2011-08-10T18:09:00.000+01:00

Washi tape is very pretty patterned Japanese sellotape, which comes on tiny rolls and sells for shocking amounts at all good stationery shops. Every time I see some, I want some, but can in no way justify frittering away family grocery money on something so pretty but essentially pointless.

So, inspired by this Pinterest pin of Ali's, I decided to make some instead. I had a Cath Kidston catalogue, and I had some double-sided sellotape, and I had a pair of scissors (paper scissors NOT fabric scissors - I get very twitchy about appropriate scissor use).

It could not be easier. Stick the tape onto the catalogue and trim. Then stack the lengths of tape into an old syrup tin and photograph. When you are ready to use your washi tape, just peel off the backing and stick on to whatever you like.

What are school holidays for if not for wasting time fiddling about with paper and sellotape? Coming soon...washi tape strips made from newspaper, or takeaway menus - I think that could look really cool.

A view with flowers

2011-08-09T21:02:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I was walking with a dear friend in a huge meadow full of wildflowers in Walthamstow, East London.

She pointed out the incredible view across to the City, and we squinted in the bright sunshine, laughing at the children who were only interested in lunch, not views of the city that they completely take for granted.

It has been nice today, amidst so much sadness on the news, to reflect on this moment, and be reminded of one of the many reasons why I still think East London is a great place to live.

Milk

2011-08-06T14:40:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, pottering around the garden, I was listening to my large back catalogue of podcasts. One of them was an episode of Radio 4's Food Programme, all about milk.

Now I really, really love milk and I'll always happily drink a glass of it - especially ice cold, on a hot day. I am of the generation that was given milk in little third-pint bottles every day at breaktime at school. It was disgusting - freezing enough in winter to give you a sinus headache after just one sip, and warm, creamy and sickly in the summer. The best bit about school milk was the satisfaction that came from stabbing the tight foil lid with a sharp straw.

School milk didn’t give me a life-long dislike for milk though. I always liked a glass of it at home, or a good glug of it on my cereal. I grew up in a small village and we had milk delivered from one of the farms in the village. The milk occasionally had little bits of straw floating in it, and I think it was largely responsible for giving me a very robust immune system.

I still have my milk delivered now I live in London. We get 3 pints of organic, semi-skimmed milk, four times a week. Though happily, it does not have little bits of straw floating in it. However, just like the milk of my childhood, the organic milk is still non-homogenised, which I love. This means we still have the cream on the top of the milk after a few days of it sitting in the fridge. I never have to think about whether we have enough milk in the house - it is always there. I love that convenience.

Very occasionally, if I can't sleep, I hear the electric purr of the milk float coming down our street at about 4am, and the milkman dashing up our path, swapping the empties for full bottles with barely a chink of glass, and dashing back to the van. In the twelve years we've lived here I've never seen our milkman. He is nocturnal and we communicate by notes left wedged between the bottles and the wall.

I craved milk so badly when I was pregnant for the first time. I would drink a pint at lunch and another when I got in from work. That baby, now my tall almost-twelve-year-old, will hopefully have strong healthy bones and teeth for life as a result!

Milk on its own is a foodstuff that divides people. G and C are milk lovers, like me (perhaps, for C, as a result of me drinking it constantly through his pregnancy?) but O is not a fan (now I think of it, I craved peanuts when I was pregnant with her - and she really loves peanuts, so perhaps there is a link there somewhere?). O does not like milk on her cereal or butter on her toast, but gets her dairy goodness in other ways. These are all the ways we use our 12 pints of milk each week:

porridge - both the children, and G, make their porridge with milk rather than water. It is more comforting this way, somehow. Porridge is eaten all year round here, even in the heat of the summer, and must be liberally sprinkled with chopped fruit and golden syrup.
yogurt - I make about 2 litres of natural yogurt each week (which accounts for roughly 4 of our 12 pints) using the fantastic electric yogurt maker from Lakeland. We love our yogurt - I stir it into curries, we have it with fruit for breakfast or with a sprinkle of brown sugar on top for pudding. There is always yogurt in the fridge. I use the last few spoonfuls of the previous batch to start the next one, and occasionally get a new starter in the form of a little pot of Yeo Valley.
in tea and coffee - it would probably scare me to learn how much we consume in this way.
as an ingredient in so many things I cook - bread, cake, pancakes, muffins, bolognese sauce, fish pie, macaroni cheese. I'm always reaching into the fridge for one of those cold, white bottles.

I also cook with a great deal of creme fraiche (I like the Yeo Valley half fat version), but I have never tried to make it. I didn't know you could until I read this post by Harmony and Rosie yesterday. Her creme fraiche looks amazing - I really want to have a go at making some myself.

How about you? Do you love milk? Could you happily live without it? What do you make with it?

We've come a long way from red satin

2011-08-03T11:33:00.000+01:00

Last night I finished the dress for O to wear to our wedding. It has been a long time coming.

O is a girl who dreams of weddings - she was so excited when we told her that we were getting married ("Finally!", she said) but the excitement wore off rapidly once she realised that our plans for the marriage ceremony were vastly more minimalist and laid back than hers.

For the past few days she has been illustrating her Dream Wedding, to show me how it should be done. At the moment it stretches to 5 sheets of A4 paper taped together, but I have no doubt it will end up even bigger. It is most definitely not a minimalist wedding.

The groom is unnamed, but frankly that doesn't matter. He has a very small role to play in all this. She has two of her friends, three of her cousins and her brother as attendants. C was very cross when she drew him wearing a red checked shirt, so she is still pondering what to put two of her boy cousins in. The friends and her girl cousin are dressed in long white dresses with gold necklines and gold hair accessories. All the family are there to watch, and all of the girls from her class at school too.

There will be a limousine to transport her from the wedding to the party afterwards. The wedding feast features all her favourite food - brownies, strawberries, blackberry pie and cinnamon rolls. Well, why not?

So you can imagine, with her deep enthusiasm for all things wedding-related, that when I asked her what she would like me to make for her to wear to our ceremony she had a detailed description, and illustration, all ready. It went something along the lines of 'what Pippa Middleton wore, but in red satin'.

That was never, ever going to happen, on so many levels, and it has taken weeks of delicate diplomacy to find something that both she and I were happy with. What she chose in the end surprised me. She wanted this simple camisole dress from my Japanese pattern book.

And even more surprisingly, she wanted me to make it with some pink cotton printed with roses (by Tilda), from my fabric shelves. This fabric is much more to my taste than hers, so I was surprised but delighted.

The dress is very simple and quick to make, but annoyingly came out far, far too big for her. This is odd because everything else I've made for her from the book, in the 140cm size, has fitted her beautifully. So I unpicked the side seams and re-sewed them at the top with a whopping 3.5cm seam allowance rather than the 1.5cm it should have been, grading out to the 1.5cm allowance about half way down. I also added a pleat into the front, to stop any gaping around the neckline.

As so often happens with ~~fudges~~ alterations to dress patterns, I have ended up liking the amended version a whole lot more than the original. My re-drafting of the side seams has given the dress much more of an A line shape, and the pleat at the front makes for a more interesting neckline.

Most importantly, however, it meets with O's approval, and the arguments about red satin have finally been put to rest.

Think local

2011-08-01T22:27:00.000+01:00

In today's world we are encouraged to stop and enjoy slow food - food that is produced with care and thought, using traditional methods. We are encouraged to buy from small local producers in order to reduce our food miles and support the local economy.

So it is with great excitement that I have discovered that I can do all these things by drinking Brodie's Beer - a magnificent selection of bitters and ales, brewed in a stable block behind a pub, by a brother and sister team, just 0.9 miles away from where we live.

The William IV pub, next to the brewery, sells over 16 Brodie's Beers on tap, for an unbelievable £1.99 a pint. You can buy bottles to take away too.

I like to do my bit.

Summertime

2011-07-29T10:10:00.000+01:00

For so long, it seems, I've been making Grand Plans about all the complicated, indulgent and time-consuming things I was going to do once the ironman was over and family life wasn't dominated by G's training schedules.

But it turns out that its not about Grand Plans at all. It's about the joy of going back to a more flexible, unstructured life with time to spare for the small things.

We sat in the garden together, early this morning before G went to work and while the children were still in bed, drinking coffee and listening to the chickens potter around. A formation of geese flew overhead, so low that we could hear the swoosh of air from their wings. I watched a caterpillar crawl up the lilac tree and we talked about books.

Race weekend

2011-07-26T17:55:00.002+01:00

The race weekend begins on Saturday when we drive up to the National Water Sports Centre in Nottingham with a car full of kit. The children are staying with their grandparents for the weekend, which means that the race bike doesn't have to suffer the indignity of travelling on a bike rack, it can sit on its very own blanket in the back of the car.

The gleamingly clean bike (in bits) on its special yellow blanket in the back of the car

The day before race day

There are three important things G has to do on the day before race day: registration, racking and race briefing.

Registration takes place in the main building at the National Water Sports Centre. Most people, including G, are wearing club sweatshirts. The lady at the registration desk knows G's swimming coach and makes a special fuss of him because he is the only competitor from his club, East London Triathletes.

At Registration

The nice registration lady gives G his race number, which he will wear on a belt around his waist all through the race. He is also given his timing chip which he will wear on a strap around his ankle all through the race. The timing chip records his finish time as well as his times for each separate discipline and at various other points around the course.

His race number, which he wears all through the race. It has his name too, so people can cheer him on!

Once registration is done, we go back to the car and G gets everything ready for racking. Racking means leaving the bike in the bike racks ready for the race the next day, and also leaving the bike kit (helmet, bike jacket, socks and special clippy bike shoes) in the Bike Transition.

Transition is where you switch from one discipline to the next. In Bike Transition you peel off your wetsuit (you will be wearing a tri-suit underneath), and swimming hat, put on your bike kit and load your pockets and your bike with snickers bars and water bottles. In Run Transition you take off your bike kit and put on your running kit (a new pair of socks and your running shoes - still wearing your tri-suit).

Getting ready for racking, G has to be very organised and concentrate to make sure he is leaving everything he needs in the correct place. Triathlons are complicated! Luckily G is a very organised person, so this bit is trouble free.

The back of our car, full of kit being prepared for racking.

We take the bike to the bike racks and G is pleased that the slot for his bike is easy to remember - at one end of the second row. He won't be dithering in Bike Transition looking for it amongst the hundreds of others.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of bicycle in the bike racks. Early in the afternoon - the racks filled up much more as the day went on.

He leaves a labelled bag with his bike kit in at the Bike Transition, and another labelled bag with his running kit in at the Run Transition.

Then G heads back into the main building for an hour long race briefing. He finds out important things like what time he has to be in the water ready to start the swim (5:50am) and what will be available at the feeding stations on the run course (bananas and water).

I stand on the balcony of the main building, admiring the view of the lake (usually used for rowing races) and wondering how far the swim actually is. When G comes out of his race briefing I ask him.

We leave the Water Sports Centre and drive into Nottingham to check in at our hotel and get everything ready for a very early start the next day.

Everything he needs for race day, laid out on the hotel floor the night before

Race day

We set our alarms for 3:30 am. G gets up and makes himself breakfast: muesli, wholemeal bagels with peanut butter, and fruit smoothies. I make a pot of coffee and put it in a flask for later. At 4:15 we leave the hotel and set off for the Water Sports Centre. We are there in plenty of time, and G goes to the bike racks to check that everything he needs is in the right places at Transition, and to pump up the tyres on his bike.

The sky was dark and the moon still up when we got to the Water Sports Centre at 4:45am

We go into the main building and while I sip my flask of coffee he inches his way into his wetsuit. Swimming wetsuits are made quite differently to surfing or diving wetsuits. They are eye-wateringly tight, and take a good ten minutes to put on. I watch everyone else wriggling into theirs, and rubbing vaseline around their wrists and ankles to stop any chafing. Seeing hundreds of men peel themselves into skin-tight wetsuits is a bit much at this time in the morning, actually. I sip some more coffee and avert my gaze. Wives are applying suncream to husbands' ears and necks, and I put some on G too.

We head down to the lake and I say goodbye to G before he heads into the competitors' area and lines up at the edge of the lake. I am suddenly utterly overwhelmed by the enormity of what he has to do, and burst into tears, but he is grinning his very widest grin and looks ready to take on the world.

And he's gone. Spectators outside the competitors' area at 5:40am, just after I said goodbye to G

The start of the race

The race is a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, followed by a 26.2 mile (marathon distance) run. He is hoping to do the whole race in twelve and a half hours.

I next see him early in the afternoon, about a quarter of the way into his run. I stand on the grassy bank with loads of other supporters and shriek madly when I see him running towards me. He is pleased to see me, is still beaming, and high fives me as he runs past. The next time I see him, about an hour and twenty minutes later he is still looking good, although the grin has faded a little. He has one more lap to go. I move closer to the finish line and start to get very excited and nervous. He is nearly home, and it looks like he is going to be much faster than he expected.

I finally see him coming into the home straight at 12 hours and 3 minutes - a full half hour faster than he expected. The grin is back and I shriek with excitement again and shout to the world how wonderful he is.

He did it!

I push my way through the crowds and press myself against the railings separating the spectators from the finished competitors. We have lots of sweaty kisses and he disappears into a marquee to collect his medal and eat some pasta.

Later still, he retrieves his bike, wetsuit and other kit and comes through to the spectators side wearing his new t-shirt, his medal...and that big grin!

His brother and sister were also there to support him and we all tell him how amazing he is and how very, very proud of him we are. Tears are shed (mostly by me) and dozens of photos are taken. It has been an amazing weekend, which we will all remember for the rest of our lives.

G, with his incredibly proud brother and sister

~~~~~~~~~~

The race, though, is just one day.

The training for this race has been a full year of complete dedication and focus on G's part (on top of seven previous years of competing in the usual shorter-distance triathlons), as well as sacrifice, compromise, thoughtfulness and determination. It is for these qualities that he gets my admiration and pride. He has truly been an inspiration to me. Nothing with value comes without hard work, and the race day is a celebration and illustration of all that hard work.

His and hers packing

2011-07-22T09:35:00.000+01:00

He is packing:

8 snickers bars
1 tub of vaseline
assorted lycra outfits

I am packing:

maps
walking boots
my knitting basket

Two different approaches to the Ironman race this weekend.

Strawberry notebooks

2011-07-21T20:53:00.000+01:00

These are for the children's teachers. Who doesn't love a nice notebook?

The notebooks are from Muji. They have thin card covers, and are crying out for decoration. They would look beautiful with pen and ink drawings on them, but I cannot draw so I put fabric on them instead.

I first came across the idea of decorating notebooks with fabric in the excellent Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. She uses a zigzag stitch to attach random shapes of scrap fabric to the smallest size of Moleskine cahiers. I made some like this to give as Christmas presents a few years ago.

I like the original ones, but this time I wanted a clearer design so I went for a simple, summery strawberry instead (strawberries being about the only thing I can successfully draw). I cut out the facric, held it steady with a few dabs of glue stick, and then sewed it with a plain running stitch.

They are very satisfying to make, and have a low effort-to-prettiness ratio, which is always good at the end of a school term.

There is just one more day to go for us. Just one more day. I cannot wait.

The Wedding Dress

2011-07-20T12:40:00.000+01:00

I finished hemming it and binding the waist seam this morning.

It may be the only wedding dress in the world with nice, deep pockets.

I'm pretty pleased with it.

The pattern is the Crepe Wrap Dress from Colette Patterns. It is categorised as a 'Beginner' pattern, which at times I thought was wrong, but now I've finished I think is pretty fair. There are no zips or buttons in this dress, which is primarily why I think it gets its classification. However, it is full of curved seams and darts, which I always find very fiddly, despite having done them many times before. I personally find putting in a zip much easier than sewing facing into curved armholes! I think the arms and neckline would be pretty challenging to someone brand new to sewing, but if you've made a few pieces of clothing before you wouldn't find any of it too tricky.

And all the swearing over getting the neckline to curve correctly is completely worth it. I think this is such a pretty pattern. It is hard to photograph nicely without a mannequin, or someone to model the dress, because it has a 1950s-style, flared, curvy shape to it, but you can see a little of what it will look like on, from these pictures. I think I may try and get hold of a 1950s petticoat to go underneath it on the day and flare it out a little more.

I've made it entirely with vintage fabrics that my Grandmother has given me. My Grandmother won't be at the wedding next month so I like the idea of her contributing via the fabrics she has given me. The main fabric is a vintage sheet which is machine embroidered with trailing pink flowers. I spent an entire afternoon working out how to place the pattern pieces for the bodice and one of the skirt panels on the sheet, so that when it was finished, the flowers would trail diagonally across the dress.

The sash is made from a piece of vintage yellow silk tafetta. It is the perfect fabric for a structural sash like this - stiff, thick and full of shape and texture. It feels almost papery when you sew with it. The sash fastens the dress and ties in a big bow at the back.

The last fabric I used was a length of yellow vintage ribbon to bind the inside waist seam. You can see the binding in the second photo, at the top of this post. Binding an inside seam is not something I would normally do, but I'm glad I bothered this time, as it makes the dress seem that little bit more special.

The Colette pattern was very clear to follow, and as I mentioned in this post, the booklet format is an absolutely genius idea. I would love to make more clothes from their patterns. I particularly love the Parfait dress and the Nutmeg underwear patterns.

My next sewing project though needs to be a wedding outfit for O, who has very clear ideas about what she would like.... I should have started negotiating with her a long time ago.

Exam day

2011-07-19T16:58:00.000+01:00

sunshine
rain
hairspray
bags
hairpins
leotards
tea for the examiners
teenage helpers
final trips to the toilet
nerves
giggles
parents waiting to collect
photos
flowers
giggles
smiles