Wednesday Window: Knit One, Purl One

Last Friday was a momentous day, because at approximately 9.30pm I finally finished a blanket I began knitting for my then unborn child about 6 years ago.

I realise many of you are probably rather competent knitters, and will not be particularly impressed by this specimen but for me it represents a massive achievement, and I am brimming over with pride and excitement about it. It not only proves to me that I can knit, but also that I can, given enough time, finish a project. I am one of those ideas-rich, time-poor crafters who have a guilt-ridden heap of unfinished fabric projects (including two quilts and a crocheted blanket), gathering dust upstairs. Maybe that's why I love making jewellery - it doesn't take long to create something beautiful!

This blanket lay ignored for a long time after Poppet was born; at that stage I was overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of parenting, and simply forgot about anything else. Then after a while I remembered it, and occasionally I would get it out guiltily, look up the instructions for moss stitch again, do a couple of rows, and give up again. From time to time people offered to finish it for me, or suggested I truncated it, but I resisted. I realised I wanted to finish it myself, and to do it as printed in the pattern. Last autumn I finally got going, determined to finish it by Christmas. It became what I did when my children slept, or when I found five minutes peace. I missed the Christmas deadline, and there are a few mistakes that I didn't notice, or didn't dare try to correct for fear of making them worse, and I will be forever grateful to the friend who patiently unpicked half a row of bungled stitches for me in the M&S café, and set me on track again, but it's finished. (And yes, I did indeed do a little victory dance round the kitchen to celebrate...)

My next project is a hat, so I can learn to decrease, then Poppet wants a sleeveless jumper; after that my husband (who is learning to knit himself - bet that surprises a few of his fellow commuters!) has challenged me to learn to cable... Watch this space (but not too eagerly!)

Wednesday Window: buying oneself flowers

Ordinarily of course one would wait for the love of one's life to appear on the doorstep clutching a beautiful bouquet of seasonal flowers (but not too ostentatious, or one might suspect a hidden apology...) But life isn't always like that, and anyway, why should having fresh flowers in the house be such a big deal?

My Dad once sent me a £10 note in a birthday card with strict instructions that I was to spend it on things like wine, chocolate or flowers, and absolutely not to fritter it away on tights or Tampax. I was very touched (you can tell - it was nearly 20 years ago, but I still have the card), and it struck a chord.

Buying oneself flowers is fun and frivolous, but it also sends a clear message that rather than waiting for someone else to treat you in the way you wish to be treated, you are doing it for yourself. It also means you can have exactly the flowers you want! On that birthday occasion I bought some stunning gladioli from the stall in Chiswick Park tube station. Today I spotted some of the first British daffodils on sale, and I'm a sucker for a cheerful little daffodil.

Happy Wednesday, and roll on spring!

Tissue Box TV

I can’t remember whose idea this was to start with, but it has worked better than we could have hoped, so I thought we’d share it with you.

Take one empty tissue box - the slim square kind worked for us, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Pull out the plastic film bit that holds the tissues in, so you have an open window with a frame, effectively. Poppet wanted to cover up the colour of the original box, but found that poster paint wouldn’t stick to the shiny surface, so we covered the box with strips of masking tape first, then painted the tape with white poster paint. Leave it to dry...

Meanwhile, draw and colour a suitable picture on a piece of plain white paper, making sure the paper is the same size as the box, but the picture itself will fit inside the “frame”. Relatively thin cheap paper works best for the fun part that comes later.

Carefully stick the paper onto the front of the box. Cut up an old egg box to make legs, which can be fixed on with sellotape. You can stop at this stage, and admire your new TV: 

Or you can carry on: buy (or if you have the right kind of garage/shed, rummage around and find) a simple electrical circuit with battery and bulb, like so:

Make a hole in the back of the tissue box large enough to poke the bulb through. Connect up the circuit, turn off the house lights, and settle down to watch the show.

Poppet was so entranced by this that she lay on the floor watching for nearly half an hour, periodically calling out, “Look, they made a TV program about us - come and see!” She then made a remote control, a mobile phone, and finally an iPad, so that she can “noodle” (it’s a family word...) while she is watching TV. Oh dear.

Have fun!

Wednesday Window: Sugru

Happy New Year! And welcome to my first Wednesday Window of 2013. For those of you new to this, it's something I started at the end of last year (see this post for more details); it's in its infancy so far, but hopefully this year it will get into its stride, so please stay with me! (And do send ideas for future Wednesday Windows if you come across something cool you think I'd like...)

Through today's window, we see this stuff:

I came across this peculiarly useful grown-up play-dough via a twitter link nearly a year ago, and I bought some that same day. According to their own spiel, “sugru is the exciting new self-setting rubber that can be formed by hand. It moulds like play-dough, bonds to almost anything and turns into a strong, flexible silicone rubber overnight.”

Take a look at the Sugru website, and the videos of customer fixes - it really is amazing stuff. It appeals on many levels: it's simple, easy, endlessly adaptable, comes in lots of pretty colours, and enables you not only to improve things you already use, but also to mend things you'd stopped using because they're broken, and that might otherwise be thrown away. They also have a rather cool Fixer's Manifesto:

(And no, this isn’t a sponsored post, more’s the pity.)

Christmas presents - too much?

As I was wrapping presents for my daughters' stockings last night, and trying not to waste any wrapping paper (because my mother taught me that), I wondered why I was bothering - I bought that paper to wrap those presents, so if there's none left over, that's ok. Isn't it? On the other hand, if I do manage to use it frugally and have some left over, I won't have to buy so much next time. I even made sure to buy at least one design that isn't Christmassy so it will do for birthdays too.

There is a trend now to return to the spirit of "Make Do and Mend" that characterised wartime frugality, but even this is a modern invention. There was surely a time, not very long ago, when make do and mend was the only way of carrying on for many many people. It was a way of life, not something you could choose. And this made me wonder about our modern obsessions with more, and where the line got blurred somehow between enjoying the plenty that now surrounds us, being generous towards our children, and just being downright greedy and profligate. When did we morph into the throwaway society that is so disgusting when one considers the deprivation many people still experience the world over? How did we breed the child so beautifully caricatured as Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter books? 

A little while ago I listened to a Radio 4 programme about Ian Fleming, and naturally much of the discussion was about James Bond. I was struck by how Bond’s character was described, and how it has come to be misinterpreted to some extent by modern generations in the simplistic judgement of him as someone who likes fast cars and faster women. In the radio programme he was described as a ‘bon viveur’, and as such quite typical of that generation who had lived through the Second World War, experiencing rationing, hunger, fear and the chaos of warfare. In that context, his love of good food and wine (more evident in the books than the films), as well as cars and women, can be more readily understood – this is a man who has lived without these things, and as such can appreciate them as the luxuries they are. He has also seen death, and wants to enjoy life while he has it. Most of us don’t live like that in modern Britain. The majority of us have plenty of food, new clothes when we grow out of the old ones, and clean water on tap, not to mention "all mod cons", gadgets galore, and a cupboard stuffed to bursting with shiny plastic toys for the children. We no longer think of these things as luxuries, but as essentials.

Here's an extract from "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura in the story is perhaps 4 or 5 years old, the other children are her cousins and are a little older. The book was written about the family's life in the late 19th century.

In the morning they all woke up almost at the same moment. They looked at their stockings, and something was in them. Santa Claus had been there. Alice and Ella and Laura in their red flannel nightgowns and Peter in his red flannel nightshirt, all ran shouting to see what he had brought. In each stocking there was a pair of bright red mittens and there was a long flat stick of red-and-white-striped, pepper-mint candy, all beautifully notched along each side. 

They were all so happy they could hardly speak at first. They just looked with shining eyes at those lovely Christmas presents. But Laura was happiest of all. Laura had a rag doll.

Before this, Laura used a corn cob wrapped in a piece of cloth as a doll, while her older sister had the only real doll in the house. It's the bit about the shining eyes that really gets me - how wonderful to see such unadulterated joy and delight in a gift, however small it might seem to us. I hope that, although my children's stockings have a little more than just a pair of gloves and a candy cane, they will still appreciate what they are given.

Wednesday Window: Herdy

One of my favourite blogs, A Crafty Chai, does a regular post called Tuesday Treat. She uses this to show us, her loyal readers, anything cool that she has come across recently, and I rather like it. So in the best traditions of creativity, I'm blatantly nicking the idea, but changing the title to make it seem like mine: I'll do it on Wednesdays not Tuesdays, and the window idea is a fond hark back to a certain children's TV programme.

So here's the first. As some of you know I love the Lake District with a passion that might seem unhealthy were the Lakes a person. It's not a crush any more, it's been going on far too long for that. And like any love-sick individual, I am keen to hold on to fragments of the admired in whatever form I can, to try to capture and hold on to that scent of fresh air and sheep-dung-covered grass, the views of rain-lashed dry-stone walls, fabulous rocks, skylines, mirror-like pools of peaty water and the rest. Of course, much of this I need to guard from prying eyes, and I'm certainly not telling you my favourite walks, or hidden corners, or the best places to eat soggy sandwiches in a howling gale (not today anyway), but this little gem I will share with you.

This clever little company, Herdy, with their creation of a cheeky little Herdwick sheep who graces their products, have found a perfect way to provide me with a little bit of Lakes-proximity-therapy every morning with my breakfast. I'm slowly building up my collection (two mugs so far), and I've just discovered they do T-shirts in a rather fetching pink. They also do very cool animations, one of which won Best Commercial at an international animation festival.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

As the parent of two small children, I am as familiar as I might wish with the nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, or as my younger one called it until recently, "winkle liddle dar". The simple tune, much more lovely when harmonised by the more musical parents at BabyGirl's north Oxford music group, is apparently an old French melody called "Ah! vous dirais-je, maman". It is the same tune as that traditionally used for "Baa baa black sheep" (also known as "bye bye beshoo") and the alphabet song - one of those little things I didn't notice until I became a parent.

Mozart also used it for a set of twelve variations, so it seems we're all in good company in re-using the notes, though there are times when I've heartily wished for something a little meatier, or perhaps more bluesy to keep my spirits up while keeping up with endless requests for these songs from my lovely little people. Anyone know any good alternatives? (This feels like it could be a good source of material for that "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" game where they have to sing one song to the tune of another - suggestions below, please! I digress. Back to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star...)

Last Monday, when it was mentioned on BBC Radio 4's Brain of Britain quiz, I discovered that the verse we sing is in fact merely the first verse of a much longer poem. Written by Jane Taylor, and called "The Star", it was originally published in 1806 in a collection of poems by Jane and her sister Ann, called Rhymes for the Nursery. It goes like this: 

    Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
     How I wonder what you are.
     Up above the world so high,
     Like a diamond in the sky.

     When the blazing sun is gone,
     When he nothing shines upon,
     Then you show your little light,
     Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

     Then the traveller in the dark,
     Thanks you for your tiny spark,
     He could not see which way to go,
     If you did not twinkle so.

     In the dark blue sky you keep,
     And often through my curtains peep,
     For you never shut your eye,
     'Till the sun is in the sky.

     As your bright and tiny spark,
     Lights the traveller in the dark.
     Though I know not what you are,
     Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

     Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
     How I wonder what you are.
     Up above the world so high,
     Like a diamond in the sky.

     Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
     How I wonder what you are.
     How I wonder what you are.

 

 

It's always interesting to find out something new about something you think you know so well, and although it's not the greatest poetry in the world, I like to think I will now appreciate it more next time I sing it.

 

I'm tagging this post as part of Sarah Miles' Monday Club, in the hope that maybe linking up with others will encourage me to write more often. You have been warned...