All sew together.

 

I am very excited and a tad tingly. Finally after all the procrastination, at the weekend I made something with my sewing machine. I actually made two pillowcases, they are a little bit crooked, a little bit wonky and needless to say that if Patrick from the Great British Sewing Bee looked inside he would not be impressed by my seams. I had a few anxious moments along the way, I can tell you. First I got a great wedge of fabric stuck in the thingy-ma-jig ( I mean the feed dogs) I thought I was going to have to tearfully phone John Lewis and explain that I had broken my wee sewing machine on its first proper outing!

After managing to remove the trapped fabric with much pulling, poking, cursing and praying to St Anthony,  I then had the shocking realisation that I had not sewn a completely straight seam so there was some gapage in the seams and then I sewed one bit on back to front, it was completely exhausting but sooo much fun. E had a little turn pressing down the pedal to make the machine go while I held the fabric but she kept ignoring me when I yelled STOP so she flounced off and played with her dads iPad. Mr S and O were out for a walk with the dog so I was delighted to show them all my afternoons work when they all came back from the muddy fields and the virtual woods.

Mr S attempted to settle down and watch the football but did look at little alarmed when I burst in to show him yet another mistake. I made the covers from some spare pieces of curtain material that we had left over from trimming our Ikea curtains. Mr S claims that he 'hates' these curtains but so far he has been a complete sport and not complained about the matching cushions now cluttering adorning the bed!

Thank the Goddess of common sense that I did not blithely start learning to sew with my gorgeous collection of vintage scarves. The pattern for the simple covers is available from this cute blog here. I must say while I was sewing I was transported back to first year in secondary school to domestic science, Mrs W and those loathed Bernina machines that I found nigh on impossible to thread. Why, oh why did I not listen to Mrs W at the time? Is it interesting that the two skills that I had the opportunity to learn at school-sewing and violin-the two lessons that I couldn't stand are now the very skills I really really want to be proficient at. Anyway, that is enough navel gazing for now.

So I pondering what to attempt as my next project when I happened to drop into the lovely Lazy Daisy Jones only to find that this lady who is a very talented and witty crafter is hosting a sew along. She is going to hold our hands while we attempt this easy (?) A-line skirt. Fantastic. Now I have to chose some fabric and try and source the pattern here in Ireland. I think I might try and look for a pattern for a similar skirt for a certain seven year old girly, she would love that. So that is why I have a new side button on the blog. Please share your thoughts on the project as it progresses and why not join in. The link should take you there. Lovely. Talk soon.xx
Oh, ps Sewing Bee is back tonight, I have been having severe withdrawals. I do so want Lynda to win and then adopt me and teach me all she knows...

Fifteen.

Dear Mr S,

Unaccustomed as I am to public declarations of affection I do think that celebrating fifteen happy years together is such a significant milestone that it should be marked in some way. So since I didn't get you a present, I would just like to say thank-you.

Thank-you for our two beautiful children and the patient thoughtful way that you parent them.
Thank-you for our cosy home and for spending too much time in vintage land.
For mending my bookcases and making sure our pictures are straight.

Thank-you for telling me you loved me in Camberwell in the rain.
Thank-you for getting me back to our first flat together that night when I drank too much blue aftershock and red wine.
Thank-you for staying up late with me and listening to my waffle.
For The Soprano's

Thank-you for your Arsenal addiction and for sorting out all our electronic devices.
Thank-you for never knowing where anything is and always remembering.
Thank-you for London, Amsterdam, Vietnam, Australia and La Sagrada Familia.
And for Galway, Glastonbury and Venice.
Thank-you for Paris, I know not yet but we will...

Consolidation Week

Last week on the Open University timetable was the Very Important Consolidation Week, a time for review and reflection on ones progress so far. What have I learned so far through this module? Actually it is all a bit of a weary blur so instead I  treated myself to a break from Solow, Ikenberry, Lenin, Gramsci et al.

Instead I consolidated myself with some slow time, time to ease oneself back into a frame of mind that is ready to take on the next 8000 words.
So we:
Walked and foraged,
in the beautiful tranquil Beaulieu Woods. Can you see all the wild garlic from my picture? Perhaps not but it was lush and bountiful so inspired by this article in Landscape magazine,

and gathered a handful and made a delicious chicken and wild garlic pie from the leftovers from our Sunday roast. Alas no pictures, we were far too hungry to wait but I am definitely going to try some more recipes with this fragrant and delicious little plant. (Of-course please act responsibly when gathering food from the country-side. Be certain that what you are picking is edible, you have permission to be on the land and that you leave nothing but a faint footprint.)

I have been crocheting and watching Shetland.
I am so glad that I began this project, it was inspired by this post by the lovely Kirsten and so soothing to work. I bought some gorgeous pure welsh wool from The Wool Croft in Abergavenny and it has been a revelation to use, so soft and fine, all my acrylics now feel too scratchy and scritchity. The Wool Croft is a gem of a shop nestling on the main street of the gorgeous market town of Abergavenny, I wish I had longer to linger and really appreciate all their sumptuous selection of yarn.

I was pointed to the excellent Ann Cleaves, Shetland series by Dovegreyreader via the equally enjoyable Lewis Man trilogy by Peter May which I devoured in a weekend, holding my kindle while I absentmindedly tackled various tasks completely transported to Shetland. The Jimmy Perez series, I am borrowing from our local library as they are returned. (For some reason in reverse order!) Is anyone watching the BBC adaptation of the Cleaves crime novels? They are very enjoyable, just the thing to settle down with by the fire and chill out with. The cinematography of the wild remote and ultimately mysterious island is beautiful but I am a little disappointed with the changes to the original texts.

Finally, planning and reading:
It has been so much fun planning our allotment planting, last Sunday we were there for hours, clearing, weeding and Mr S had so much fun digging, he snapped the fork! The kids picked out some bright flower bulbs from the garden centre, multi-coloured freesia for O and sunny yellow begonia's for S. In vain, I tried to steer them towards the chocolate and ruby dahlias which I have fallen in love with particularly after reading the completely marvellous 'Virginia Woolf's' Garden by Caroline Zoob.

This book is an absolute joy, a treasure for your favourite gardener or book-worm. It is a elegant combination of biography and garden design inspiration. Caroline Zoob's affectionate portrait of the Woolf's marriage and the construction of the garden is perfectly complemented by Caroline Arber's stunning contemporary photography, archive pictures and Zoob's delicate embroidered planting schemes. To sit in a quiet sunny room with a steaming cup of coffee and dip in and out of these pages has been one of the highlights of the week. I do wish you some great highlights of your own for the forth-coming week which takes us yet further into spring!

Wild Garlic and Chicken Pie
Caramelise some onions and garlic.
Add left-over free-range chicken from Sunday roast.
Add peas and chopped wild garlic.
Cover in Béchamel sauce.
Season to taste.
Pop into a piecrust made from shop bought frozen puff-pastry.
Cook until golden brown and bubbling.

Yellow Gorse, Green shoots, Black Dog

Today, I walked to a green mossy bridge and looked at the sky. All around the gorse has suddenly triumphantly burst into bloom, great swathes of golden flower line the hedgerows, spiky and exuberant. In our house it was known as 'the wins', on Easter Sunday we would carefully gather the canary petals and boil them with our Easter Monday eggs to transform their henny brown into a soft honeyed hue.

About this time last year I was coming back home on the train from Belfast, it was a beautiful day and I overheard two old country boys reminiscing about using 'wins' as a fire-lighter. Their accents sounded so familiar I think that word for gorse comes from County Tyrone perhaps travelling down with my Granda to County Antrim. That day was one full of vitality, I was particularly inspired by the colours that flashed by, the pale blue sky, the warm grey dry-stone walls and the yellow gorse and lots of creative ideas simmered gleefully.

This week is not so good, I think I am being followed by the black dog, although my experience is becoming more akin to being held under a black fog, my heart feels heavy and my lungs stifled. I feel fragile and weak although my temper is unfortunately neither of these. I have been asking myself questions that I would simply not ask another who was suffering from depression and anxiety. What do I have to be depressed about? Can't I see how lucky I am? I have so much to be thankful for and so much to look forward too. Why now? I simply don't have time for all this self-absorption.

My Grand-mother with whom I spent a lot of time with, lived her life (in my perception) in a state of constant anxiety. She was - I think - addicted to tranquillisers in her later years, 'give us one of those wee diazepams there' she would say and for a long time I did not connect the wee diazepam with it's more notorious nomenclature, Valium. She always had a steady supply and would regularly and quite innocently share them out with some of her neighbours. She was full of fear of the outside world and all of the dangerous things that could potentially happen to the unsuspecting traveller, she found it hard to cope calmly with something out of the ordinary and yet managed to reach the ripe old age of 93 with her twin armoury of prescription drugs and religion, her diazepams and her rosary beads.

Sometimes, in the midst of all the fretful worrying and over exaggeration she would have flashes of great intuition. She would 'see' things that were about to happen or perceive something about say another persons character that no one else would pick up on until much much later. The rational brain lives in tandem to the irrational mind, thank-fully. In 'The Concept of Anxiety' (which I have barely understood, let alone finished but continue to stumble over) Kierkegaard comfortingly supposes that anxiety can be regenerative rather than degenerative especially if the individual realises the possibility of freedom and of faith.

'Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom...and freedom looks down into its own possibility.'

There may be an intermission.

And Begin

The sun is shining.
The dog is sleeping.
The washing is billowing on the line.
The house is a little bit cleaner.
The coffee is steaming.
Time for the little red sewing machine to come out of her box.
We are going to watch The Great British Sewing Bee, I wish Patrick would have my 'jamas on!

Let the Right One In.

Did you know that there are around 2.4 billion internet users world wide. That Facebook has around 1.2 billion members? That there are approximately 31 million bloggers in the United States alone?

Chen Hongzhu

What do you use the internet and social media for?
Blogging?
Connecting?
Searching?
Wishing?
Revolution?

Why is it that a very private insular person wishes to document their life and interests in public? (that is me by the way, no sub-text here)  I would consider myself a people person albeit one with issues of trust. What a public place to be, the vast, mostly unregulated internet, celebrated and demonised in equal measure. A virtual tsunami of information, photographs, voices and opinions, generated without stymie day after day after day. There are apparently a billion new pages placed up on the web every day. That is a hell of a lot of communication.

My blog is a relatively new one, it feels so to me anyway. I really enjoy looking at the audience stats, especially the singular ones that pop up every now and again from places like India, Panama, Chile, Finland and Brunei. It was disconcerting however to discover that for a time, unknown URL's where appearing in the traffic sources as when clicked would access a pornographic site. A quick google search put my mind at rest though identifying them as referrer spam, not pleasant but easy to ignore, do not click on the sources.

The blogs I like to read are lovely thoughtful little insights into the personality and life of the blogger, mostly craft blogs, they are sweet and generous with their experiences and expertise. Occasionally, however someone will throw in a nasty or barbed comment into the usually cordial and sociable comments thread. This is one of the downsides of blogging, of social media and of real life, the quick snap judgment of another, ready to shoot down any perceived failing or vulnerability. So, the sharing of oneself is by definition the sharing of ones vulnerability, it is the seeking of trust and of validation but is it also an exercise in ego and narcissism?

The invitation to converse is one of the most enjoyable and necessary gestures of the human condition but it is difficult especially if like me you are a people person but one with issues around trust and openness. Satisfaction in the power of self-expression, the ability to construct and articulate one's own narrative, to shape, to frame, to include and indeed exclude. To build a creative space, wherein it is possible to crave out the interior voice, is possible and satisfactory but is it worth it? Are those bitter barbed little comments just the whine of a disgruntled unhappy individual or are they something more insidious, the rumble warning of the possibility of great harm?

New research published this week by Dublin City University has reiterated the worrying rise in so-called cyber-bullying, apparently 39% of girls and 30% of boys surveyed have witnessed someone being bullied in this manner and interestingly it is mostly girls who are victims/perpetrators of this abuse which often begins between friends. I remember how bitchy and horrible some of my class mates were at secondary school and I am really grateful that these powerful tools of communication were not available to some of those children at the time.

When my children were babies I often used a well-known parenting website and I was continually incredulous at the amount of women who would queue up to viciously lambast some unfortunate who would post a thread looking for opinions about their own personal life-choices, say some relationship advice or indulge in a whine about either leaving their kids to go out to work/being stuck with the kids all day. What is it about sitting anonymously behind a monitor that gives someone who is probably completely polite and measured in reality the power to write with such crass stark carelessness to a stranger? Yes, of-course there were plenty of lovely contributors who would offer to share their time and expertise with grace and generosity but it was those unsavoury encounters that lingered like a bad taste.

Facebook is a another interesting phenomenon, isn't it? Is it so ubiquitous that it is impossible to leave? Are you a person who has hundreds of friends on the site? I do like using Facebook, sometimes I probably hang around there too much. I do have connections there that are not real friends as such but those with whom it would be impolite not to be Facebook friends, thankfully these guys are grand and it is no great hassle seeing their occasional moans, whines and self-aggrandisement and they are a distinct minority in my community there. I hope I conduct myself there with the same care as I would do in reality.

However, I am beginning to wonder if the whole Facebook/social media experience which includes blogging is really some great inflated destination for the impulses of the Freudian ego, where it is socially acceptable to 'share' so much more of oneself, unguarded and undiluted. All those narcissistic selfies, improbably cute animal shares and instagram boyfriend/girlfriend shots, are they feeble attempts to reconcile the desire impulse of the id with a self- (re) constructed reality?  Buddha said that 'we are  all that our minds create' and sometimes I wish had the self-control to turn off, to detach from this constant hum of information, of activity and of possibility. Then I consider the possibilities, the potential and such modern phenomena like the role of social media in the Arab Spring and must ultimately conclude that the accelerating momentum of benefits infinitely transcend the dangers inherent within.

Waiting for the Man

Today is yet another stormy grey, wind-whipped day, high on my perch over the swollen Boyne I am nice and cosy, steaming mug of coffee, crackling fire and snoring damp dog at my feet. I am supposed to be considering the extent and success or otherwise of the American vision of a liberal world order but thanks to a quick browse around social media I am thinking about Valentine's day and how Mr S and I will celebrate our up and coming fifteenth year together. Thanks to a severe lack of cash due to some exciting future home improvements we will be most probably be spending Valentine's night curled up on the sofa with a bottle of Chilean red and House of Cards on Netflix.

O, I love this show, have you been watching it? Kevin Spacy is so good, the perfect characterisation of restrained ruthless evil. I can't wait, hopefully this season will be as delicious as the first. There has been such a empty space where The Bridge used to be. I miss Saga. We don't really watch much tv though Mr S and I but he has been obsessing lately about trying to install the best system for the least amount of cash and accessing these brilliant series through Netflix has been a considerable help in cutting down our previously horrendous cable bill. I love it when the guys from Sky/UPC/Eircom etc. door-step me now and I gleefully explain that they cannot possibly compete with Mr S's set up and it is all perfectly legal!

So Friday night, I have Mr S, Kevin Spacy, and our local fish-monger has scallops in at the moment but I have to admit our sitting room is greatly lacking in atmosphere. We really only use this room at night when the kids have gone to bed, mostly we all hang out in the bigger cosier dining room which has retained its fireplace. The fireplace in the sitting room was ripped out sometime probably in the 80's and replaced with one of those electrical fires, you now the ones with the fake coal. So of an evening we sit in there, with our boring radiator while the lovely fire smoulders away to ashes in the other room.

This summer the whole place is going to be rewired and plastered. Yay, safe electrics and extra sockets for lamps smooth walls and  goodbye to tatty old wallpaper and so we thought, while we are at it - why not replace the fire in the front room, genius! I found the most gorgeous dinky little one from a company in England and now of-course I want it installed yesterday. The problem is I have no patience, I am still waiting on our usual Handy-man to come back with a quote for installation. He was here at the weekend and promised to come back when he had costed the job, (leaving us with the warning that though he may not know the exact cost till he drills into the chimney breast ) and 'course hasn't been heard off since.

We are on different space and time continuums, Handy-man and me. You see, when I finally get around to call him, myself and Mr S have been stewing over our home improvements plans for an age, searching the wide universe that is the internet for the perfect addition, saving up our shiny pennies in the piggy bank, thinking of doing the job ourselves, ruefully admitting that we shouldn't so in our heads it is now urgent. Obsessed, I have the odd palpitation of worry that someone else will buy my fireplace. We look at our empty hearth with longing for the primordial glow! Look, don't you think the saddest thing about our sitting room hearth is that whoever ripped out the fireplace left the poor wee ruby tiles?

Incidentally but not wholly unrelated, Mr S thinks that our inherited wallpaper looks like breasts. Do you agree or do you think that gives us an insight into the mind of the modern male?

 

For any of you that are also thinking about real fires and home improvements, the wonderful Lazy Daisy Jones has a brilliant post on her own fireplace restoration this week. She can be found here:

http://lazydaisyjones.blogspot.ie/

Bye for now! xxx
Edit: My description of today's weather was somewhat lacking - there are hurricane force winds tearing over Ireland at the moment. Stay safe everyone. xxx