Category: week-end

Week-end: let’s try this again

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Textile artwork representing a map of the London area of Bloomsbury with quotations from notable women associated with the area
Artwork by Margaret Talbot at the Bridging the Gap exhibition at Babylon Arts

The good

Summer! It’s sunny, but it’s not too outrageously hot. I opened up the new Ffern perfume at about seven in the morning on the summer solstice. Gorgeous.

The mixed

OK, it’s a bit muggy.

The difficult and perplexing

A gallstone attack when I was out for a walk. Extremely painful and unpleasant. Had to retreat under a shady tree and be sick into a hedge in relative private. I am on the waiting list to have my gall bladder removed. I continue to wait.

What’s working

I’ve been playing around with bullet journalling, in its original iteration as a glorified to-do list, and not bothering trying to make it pretty. It’s actually working pretty well as a way to keep track of the sixteen different mixed metaphorical plates I have spinning.

Reading

I devoured She Who Became The Sun (Shelley Parker-Chan). It’s great. It’s a historical epic with a little magical realism, and is particularly inspiring to me at the moment in that the author simply decided to have fun (I am paraphrasing what she says in her acknowledgements here) and created an excellent book. I should note that it’s fairly bleak and occasionally very gory, and a few months ago I wouldn’t have been able to cope with it at all.

Elsewhere, I got through the long long nights with the whole of the Chalet School series (Elinor M. Brent-Dyer). I have gone back and begun again at the beginning (just finished Exile last night), but I also took a little side-step and tried out the Crater School series (Chaz Brenchley). Also a load of fun: it’s a pitch-perfect homage and is, you know, a boarding school story on Mars.

Then I picked up Cinderella Ate My Daughter (Peggy Orenstein), which takes a look at the consumer culture surrounding children, particularly girls. It was published in 2011, and I couldn’t help wondering how different it would look post-Frozen, and after Britney-gate. There’s also barely any mention of trans identities, which in 2024 seems an obvious angle to explore. I should probably be grateful.

Writing

Bits and pieces.

Making

A little smocked dress. I finished the front and then decided that the back also needed to be smocked, so I’m back in the tedious gathering stage.

Watching

The Great British Sewing Bee. I am behind on Doctor Who, but having been spoiled for the last couple of episodes I’m not sure that I’ll make the effort to catch up.

Looking at

Bridging the Gap, an exhibition by women textile artists, all members of EAST (East Anglian Stitch Textiles) at Babylon Arts. I was rather taken by a whimsical map of Bloomsbury embellished with quotations from notable women associated with the area, but my favourite pieces were probably Margaret Talbot‘s gorgeous landscapes.

Cooking

Beef pot roast in the Instant Pot. It’s not exactly the weather for it, but at least the pressure cooker minimises the cooking heat.

Eating

We went out to Wildwood for our anniversary; I had bruschetta, seafood linguine, and tiramisu.

Moving

A very, very gentle run-up (ha) to Couch to 5k, beginning with a lot more walking even than that routine recommends. So far, so good.

Noticing

Goldfinches!

In the garden

Complete chaos, but this evening I have managed to take the compost out, water the passion flower on the front fence, and pull up a few weeds.

Appreciating

Suddenly having a little more time to myself.

Acquisitions

Mostly clothes: four dresses from the Joanie sale, a sports bra, and ankle socks. Yesterday I took three books to the book swap cabinet at the top of the hill – and came home with two. Oh well.

Line of the week

From Cinderella Ate My Daughter:

While Zoe is cute, in a radioactive orange kind of way, her release fell short of expectations, the – ka-ching! – hope of creating a female Elmo. Even slapping a tutu on her did not help.

This coming week

What’s become the regular routine – and will be for a few weeks more – and then a very busy weekend.

That’s it for the moment. I’m hoping to keep this going, but no promises. I hope you’re all keeping well.

The enemy of the passable

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Detail of a child's frock in red fabric with a smocked front. The stitching is somewhat irregular.

This is not the finest garment I’ve ever sewn. It won’t be even when it’s finished. The pleats are too deep, the tension is irregular, the smocking goes closer to the left armhole than to the right, the bias binding is very slightly brighter than the main fabric, and the less said about my feather stitch, the better.

However, this was my first attempt at smocking, and once I got down to the Vandyke stitch and surface honeycomb on the bottom rows I was enjoying myself hugely. It’s also the first garment I’ve made for my daughter, and a trial run for a second little smocked dress. It doesn’t need to be perfect.

And it will be finished.

December Reflections 19: socks

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Knitting needles with a couple of rows of knitting in green yarn. Underneath is some turquoise knitting.

In progress. The book says boots, but really, if you’re not walking yet, there isn’t much difference. These have not got off to a good start: I got out of synch with the ribbing, then discovered I hadn’t cast on enough in the first place, so frogged the lot and started again. Consequently it hasn’t got very far. (The turquoise thing underneath is a cycling sweater which will, realistically, never get finished, so I should probably frog that too.)

I have already managed to finish a pair of bootees this year, slowly, slowly, little by little, row upon row. They came out smaller than I’d intended (I am usually too lazy to do a tension square, and particularly when it would work out about as big as the finished product) but a row of crochet round the edge sorted that out. You have to be prepared to improvise.

Leftover black pudding chilli

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Baked potato with a bean and vegetable sauce

I had a morcilla (Spanish black pudding) left over from a dish I cooked at the weekend, so I skinned it and bashed it around in a saucepan over a medium heat until it broke up. I added a chopped onion and let it fry in the fat a while, then added three tins:

  • Black beans
  • Chopped tomatoes with garlic
  • Carrots and petits pois

And some smoked paprika and some chilli flakes, and let it all simmer together while I crisped up a microwaved jacket potato in the oven.

That was yesterday. Today I added red wine and more chilli flakes, and served it with the end of a sour cream and chive dip. Even better.

Handiwork

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Mushroom shaped glass stopper caged in gold coloured wire with green and white beads

Here’s one of this year’s Christmas decorations. They’re a bit experimental: I picked up a box of decanterless stoppers in a charity shop and have been caging them in beaded wire crochet. The solid ones are going to be a bit heavy for trees, but should be just about okay hung close to the trunk. I’m going to hang a big bead from the bottom.

I’m finding that I’m not terribly interested in writing at the moment, and I’m very much enjoying making things in three dimensions instead. Having finished my fishpond skirt, I’ve moved on to these beaded things and am thinking too about picking up my knitting needles again, and finally getting around to trying out my new big darning loom, and I’d like to do some patchwork too… Meanwhile, writing… meh, as they used to say on the internet. I expect I’ll get caught up by it again sooner or later, but for the moment it seems to belong to another life.

Outsourcing

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Close-up of a vine leaf, mostly yellow-green but speckled with red towards the edges

The garden is running wild, and has been since the summer. It’s been on my conscience, too. It looks a little tidier now that the leaves are falling, but it’s also more obvious how much needs trimming back and cutting down now that it isn’t just a mass of green.

So today I had someone round to give me a quote for tidying it up and, as he put it, putting it to bed for the winter. I’d love to be able to do it myself, but it just isn’t going to happen. This is the next best option.