Silver Lining

Snowy Sunday

We woke up to three or four inches of snow, this morning.  Not that you'd know it, now...

So I made a snuggly for the nibling's pram.

I also built a hutch, into which the guinea pigs (Harry and Ron) are now safely installed.  Let's hope they're warmly installed, too...

 

Harry	Ron

If Klimt were a cubist

I woke up on Friday with an urge to sew.  Clothes, preferably.  Only, by the time I got down to the shed I couldn't be arsed to trace a pattern, mark a pattern, select some fabric, dye some fabric, all before I got to cut.  Cut, cut.  It's all about the cutting, you know.

So I chose a fabric I bought on ebay last year for no particular purpose.  It's loud and brash and I've never known what to do with it.  Cotton, with some lycra in (which has made keeping the edges under control interesting, at times...).  I grabbed it hungrily off the shelf and headed for the quilt shop.  Once there, I bemused the nice lady by selecting the loudest, leariest palette of fabrics we could find, and headed home again.

Simple squares were my aim.  Squares within squares, perhaps, to make it a bit more interesting.  So I began to cut my 2 1/2 " strips.  2  1/2" x 6 1/2", and 2 1/2" x 2 1/2".  I wanted a  nine patch of the feature fabric, and then the feature to figure in two squares of each of the other fabrics.  And then I would just mix up my complementary fabrics.  I did no design work, little preparation.  Just cut and stitch, cut and stitch.

It nearly came undone when I had enough squares (63, since you were wondering) and couldn't find a way of setting them that didn't give me a headache.  Eventually I settled on purples and pinks round the feature fabric, greens in the opposite diagonal corner, and yellows everywhere else.  It went together well, but needed a little je ne sais quoi.

A brief and unsuccessful hunt through the rack for some devore velvet I could swear I have somewhere led to a piece of silk velvet.  About 1m.  Undyed.  OK.  Rummage through the dye drawer.  Marine violet could be interesting.  So marine violet it was.  Prewash the fabric to clear out the preservative and dressing on it, then sling 3 tsp of dye into the drum of the machine, 4 tsp soda ash and 250g of salt.  Knock it all through the drum, bung the wet fabric in, and set it off at 60 deg.  Worked a treat and I had a lovely, lush, imperial purple piece of velvet at the end.

Emboldened, I decided to dye some cotton for the back.  Didn't bother to prewash this, though, and upped the quantities a bit (3m of fabric vs. 1m of fabric).  Put the fabric in dry.  Didn't knock the dye through the drum, either.  Result?  A slightly unevenly coloured length of teal cotton.  Very pleasing.  Not obviously uneven, like batik, but pleasing variations of shade across the piece.

Anyway, this quilt top has flown together - though poor DBO may disagree - and I'm about to start work on piecing the back - teal cotton with a chiffon strip, to pick up the sophisticated silk theme.  Oh, there's pictures down there in the quilt album, if you want to look!

By way of light relief, we went to Oxford last night to see Eels.  It was an incredibly good gig - the 'support' act was a film about Mark Everett's father who turns out to have been a groundbreaking quantum mechanic.  Surprisingly touching film, too, though DBO thought the science was a bit 'light'.  Odd, that.  I'd've thought quantum mechanics could easily be grasped by the average joe on the Oxford street!  Anyway, the set was incredibly good.  Stage dressed like a garage jamming session - rugs and random instruments lying about; and E and Chet on their own moving from piece to piece.  It's an incredibly good band with a hugely eclectic range of music.  They did the obvious (well, most of the obvious): Souljacker pts 1 and 2; Novocaine for the Soul; My Beloved Monster.  But not Susan's House or Mr E's Beautiful Blues.  Very moving version of It's A Motherfucker.  And a lovely version of the one whose name I can never remember - I'm Going To Stop Pretending??  But the show stealer was Flyswatter.  It's one of my favourite songs anyway, but they did a real WOW performance of it.  So now it's going round my head: Field mice, head lice, spiders in the kitchen...

Brilliant night.

Donkey day

I made myself a working from home deal today; if I started early, I could take a break mid-afternoon to do something I enjoy, and then come and finish off my work this evening.

So I worked from 7.30am - 3.30pm. 

Then I finished this:

After tea, I came back to the computer and finished the business plan I've been working on.  And now the children are on their way to bed, I will baste the quilt, ready to finish this weekend.

And in all that, I've been at home, with the kids, and able to be interrupted for random chats about hamsters and playstations. 

It's about perfect, for a working day.

Operation Shush

needs grown up hair.

So this morning, I'm at the hairdresser's, hair knotted in a dye-ball on top of my head, huddled under the heat-spider, waiting for my timer to ping.

ping-ping; ping-ping; ping-ping; ping-ping; PING-PING

My hairdresser comes stumbling from the back of the shop, eyes bleary-blurry with tears, and runs out of the shop.  I feel a sense of anxiety.

Eventually, a girl comes and turns off the heat-spider, and leads me to the torturous backwards basins, where I submit to a rinsing, shampooing and head massage.  And then back to my seat.  Where I sit.  And sit.  Eventually, another hairdresser comes and tells me that my hairdresser has had to go home, and nobody else has time to cut my hair this morning.  They are all fully booked.  I can borrow a hairdryer, if I like, and come back later in the week?

Operation Shush won't wait till later in the week, so I leave with my hair wet, and drive into Leamington, where I am able to persuade a new hairdresser to give me a last minute appointment.

When I get to work, my colleagues don't recognise me.  Result!

Everything's coming up lovely

In the aftermath of carnage, there is nothing like a spot of quiet gardening.  I must be getting old.

We had a surprise 18th birthday party for Moo last night.  30 teenagers and assorted adults.  It didn't result in the kind of carnage that comes from advertising on MySpace, but even so this morning there were bodies everywhere, more or less attached to youthfully sore heads, and several trips to the recycling centre.

So after a large pub lunch, I tied up the peas.  I also planted the remaining bedding plants, relying  on the much predicted rain to water them in for me.  The sweet peas are doing well, despite the best attempts of the mice, who DBO noticed have dug even more holes in the window boxes in the last few days.  The cat protection people tell me they have had a run of feral cats being delivered recently, so as soon as the adults have finished nursing their kittens, I will have a chief  gamekeeper on the premises!

Sissy came to the party, too.  She looks very well and we made some elastic loops to keep her jeans fitting for a bit longer.  We've selected lots of baby patterns, so I have much sewing goodness to keep me occupied for the next few weeks.

The clouds are scudding over the back garden.  I bet it doesn't rain at all, and I have to get the hosepipe out...

I have been working all fucking day, you lie there sleeping your life away

You know how Saturdays are like buses?  You do nothing with them for months on end, and then all of a sudden you have to cram all those wasted Saturdays' worth of activity into a single day, to make up for it?  This was a Saturday of extremes...

Some time ago, I promised myself a day of just me, the muttley and the sky.  That day was Saturday.  We got up early. Not quite an alpine start, but it was Saturday you know!  We were on the road by 8.30am, and crawling through the narrow streets of North Malvern by 9.30am.  I found a carpark. Not so much of a carpark, really, more of a layby; parked the car and consulted my OS map (landranger 190, if you're interested!) to pinpoint our rough location.  Needless to say, my layby wasn't exactly marked, but knowing I'd just passed a phone box and looking at the tumbling crags looming above my bonnet, I guessed that I was roughly in the vicinity of the school.  We got out of the car quickly, shouldered the backpack and set off.  I say set off; really I mean I cast around for the scent of a path for a good couple of minutes - should I take the one to the right of the layby, rising steeply and stonily up the side of the rockfall, or the one to the left of the layby which was broader, paved and passed through the last vestiges of civilisation.  I chose the path most travelled, and ogled through the windows of the pretty cottages.  Once on the hills, we strode out, roughly in the direction of St Ann's Well, taking the slightly lower, leeward paths and skirting round the pointy pinnacle of the first hill.  The sky was broad and clear, the sun was up and twinkling on the frost, and we could see the full length of the ridge stretching out ahead of us.  It was a spectacular, cold, fresh day and I gulped in air and watched the muttley dashing eagerly from scent to bracken patch.

Past Worcestershire Beacon, we joined the ridge path.  The views were spectacular and if I had any grasp of geography I'd tell you precisely how we gazed over the plains of Worcestershire and Warwickshire to our left, and towards the distant blue smudge of the hills of Wales to our right.  Since my geography is dreadful, I'm guessing that's what we saw...

Highlights of the day included chatting to various other dog owners along the way; watching a pair of buzzards wheeling on the thermals over British Camp; making it to British Camp; realising my uphill legs had fallen off about a third of the way back; the kestrel hovering spectacularly just over my head while Muttley and I sat on the path to watch her; isolation, solitude, fresh air and open sky.  The cold snapping at my fingers; frost crystallised on the grass at my feet.

By the time we regained Worcestershire Beacon (via the summit this time), my downhill legs had fallen off too, and I had merely the faintest grasp of our precise location.  Which worried the muttley who was, frankly, exhausted.  Electing to skirt round the hill rather than force my hamstrings up another sharp ascent, I realised we weren't on precisely the same path that brought us onto the hills and I didn't know precisely what path we *were* on.  I kept the news to myself, fearing for a savaging of the ankles if I broke the news to Muttley.  I adopted the policy of looking down the steep slope of the hill, and identifying roads I had driven along to get us here.  Eventually, we rounded the final bend in the path and there were houses stretching up the hill in front of us.  Not, unfortunately, the houses we had passed on our ascent from the carpark layby, but I hoped they would be very close neighbours of those houses.  I pulled the map from my backpack to check where we might be, and crossreferenced my position against the girls' boarding school I found myself standing outside.

"Are you lost?"  A man sitting on a bench behind me, enquired.

"Um, not *exactly*" I fudged.  "I'm parked on this road, not far from here."

"My car's just here; would you like a lift?" he solicited.

Ummm.  Let me think about this.  You're sitting on a bench outside a girls' boarding school.  Would I like a lift?  Clue: No.  Thank you. 

I turned left onto the road, and was almost immediately greeted by the slightly alarming sight of a Morris dancer in full regalia flying down the hill on a bicycle.  I raised an eyebrow, in an attempt at a quizzical, worldly wise manner.  200 yards further up the hill, Muttley and I had to stand back and let a horde of them pass, all be-belled and jangly and indulging in their lewd practices.  Thankfully, the car was just past them and I collapsed gratefully into its embrace and drained the last of my thermos of tea.  We had been walking for six hours, and the Muttley was exhausted.

After a hot bath and a swift Chinese, DBO and I ventured up to the Arts Centre, to see The Buzzcocks.  I have to confess, I've never been to a bona fide punk gig before, but the Buzzcocks seemed like a good place to start.  It was a very entertaining evening - but for none of the reasons I might have anticipated...   The gig was entirely seated, which was the first oddity.  The audience was made up largely of people my age and above, some of whom had brought their children (of Dan's age and below) which made for a slightly confusing (and confused) audience.  Some of us had attempted to revive our lost youth, and dressed for the occasion.  I was particularly impressed by the portly man with grey hair which was desperately thin on top.  Nonetheless he had bravely spiked what remained of it, and sprayed a large blue patch.  The effect was somewhat ruined by the sight of the blue paint sparkling on his scalp...  Despite the spikes, the colours, and the odd safety pin, this middle aged audience was altogether too clean living.  No-one was bolloxed, slurring or swaying, and there wasn't a glue sniffer in sight.  The band itself were slightly uncomfortable - they were old and fat and saggy of jawline. 

Tony Barber wore black tracksuit bottoms and a T-Shirt which looked suspiciously chainstore and not at all punk.  He was embarrassingly like watching your grandad dance at a wedding.  They raced through the first half of their set, following the John Peel 'wrong speed' method and shouting far too fast, obviously keen to grab their cheque and get the hell out of there.  The sound mix was appalling, which was probably the most appropriate part of the whole experience.  There was an interval - an interval!!  At a punk gig!!!!  All kinds of wrong!!!! - after which, some of the audience had the temerity to dance.  But it was so muted to begin with, that I watched a man balance a tray of beers through the gently swaying masses.  Eventually, a woman with pink and black striped hair and a jumper to match, began dancing at the front of the stage.  This mostly involved jumping and waving her arms around, and looked quite the most authentic display of the evening.  A young member of staff tried to usher her away from the stage front, which led to a gaggle of middle aged pogo-ers fronting up to staff young enough to be their children in a hideously surreal inversion of the generation struggle. 

Shortly after this, Steve Diggle announced that it was someone called Simon's 40th birthday, and that the band would like to wish him "Happy Fucking Birthday; have a piece of this, yer cunt!!" with which, they launched into Ever Fallen In Love (or whatever it's called) and we could all go home.  It was surreal, and tragic, and surreal again.  I'm awful glad I've done it now, and I shan't have to do it again...

A little while ago, a particularly cheerful reader posted a photo of herself in a pink wig*.  Which set the old wheels a-turning.  It's been a while since I had new hair. 

In the last 3 weeks I have written a book.  Again.  It's full of compiled statistics about the current academic year at our university.  It's just gone off to the printer, to be printed for the senior management committees. It will be on general release in mid-December.  It's about 400-odd pages long, and full of excel spreadsheets and fascinating insights into staff, students and research income.

To celebrate its successful submission to the printer, I have celebrated.  Unfortunately I have, as ever, forgotten the 'before' element... so here's an old 'before' from when I went blonde:

And here is the after:

The curl is my own; the colour (I hate to shock you) probably isn't.  You can't really see that it's very assymetrical.  Even though it wasn't done by Steve Strange, it's long on one side and short on t'other.  I quite like it, I have to say...

*I'm not deterred by the fact she titles it 'Reasons to Feel Foolish'; I'm sure she *wanted* you to go and see it, really!

Wir kinder von Bahnhof Zoo

Today was an excellent day for going to the zoo.  So that's what we mostly did.  Though I have to say my mental fog has closed in somewhat and so I didn't manage a whole day, and Phoenix and the kids were kind and let me wander and vague and go home early. 

New hair

Here they are, then - the new hair colours.  The curl is natural.  The colours (sorry to shock you) aren't.  Not one of them. 

Trainer Laces

Working left to right, on the first row, you have your laces threaded into the shoe, front and side view.  Nothing really remarkable except that when you get to the top of the eyelets at the top of the foot, you then make a loop through that eyelet that's too far back to be useful, leaving the ends of the laces *inside* the shoe.

Then put the shoe on, making sure the loops are biggish, and the laces will be inside the shoe, with your poor hungover ankle.

Take each lace across to the opposite loop, and thread it through, inside to out.  Although I'm holding both laces in one hand, that's cos I needed to hold the camera too.  Have a lace end in each hand.

Now, (on the second row) saw those lace ends back and forth - don't just pull them both at the same time - pull one then the other then the first then the other, until the loops have tightened.  You will feel the shoe pulled firm around the arch of your poor, hungover foot.

Tie your laces.

This is really clever because it holds the shoe very firm around the arch of your foot; it prevents your ankle from lifting out of the heel of the shoe, so eliminates friction there; and it totally prevents your foot sliding forward in the shoe, so when you're running downhill, your toe never meets the end of the shoe, thus preserving your toenails.

Honestly!  Simple, but pure genius...