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Quilt is done!

In Uncategorized on 10 June 2010 with no comments

Sci­ence fact: all of the best interi­ors pho­tos have indis­tinct piles of stuff in them in the background.

After what feels like a mil­lion years of hav­ing the many stages of quilt evol­u­tion lying around my liv­ing room, the quilt is finally done! As of this morn­ing it is bound, washed, and wait­ing to be used. It is wonky, it is ran­dom, and — if I may say so myself — it’s wonderful.

Dis­turb­ingly, given how much I was dread­ing it, I think my favour­ite part of the whole thing was hand­sew­ing the bind­ing. I star­ted last night, and fin­ished this morn­ing — a good few hours of work, but slightly addict­ive as you watch the quilt really form in front of you. Because we go away later today, my obsess­ive part kicked in once I’d star­ted and wanted it all fin­ished before I left and, cour­tesy of a lousy night’s sleep, it was.

What’s that? You want a wonky, badly framed bird’s eye view of the whole quilt top? Well, that’s lucky…

You can see in this photo the corner of the quilt not bound in yel­low, but by scraps of the top — there wasn’t quite enough yel­low to go round, and I was loathe to go out and buy more fab­ric, so impro­vised with what I had left. I actu­ally quite like it; it’s make­shift and unplanned, much like the rest of the quilt.

The toughest part for me was man­hand­ling the whole thing through the sew­ing machine dur­ing the quilt­ing pro­cess — it was sur­pris­ingly phys­ical work for me, though I’m a feeble weak­ling at the best of times. I was pretty anxious about mak­ing the bind­ing — after a failed attempt, I finally sat on Tues­day night and meas­ured out. Just hav­ing Al in the room while I did so helped me to keep it all in per­spect­ive -  I really hope all nervous quilters have help­ful live-in engin­eers to calm them down and show them how best to use a ruler.

For now though, I’m just excited with the fin­ished product and immod­estly impressed with myself for actu­ally fin­ish­ing a pro­ject! I have very much been taken with the quilt­ing bug, and want to get star­ted on my next pro­ject as soon as we’re home. Luck­ily, someone has been spend­ing all of her money on quilt­ing fab­rics for the last while, so there’s no end of options for Quilt II!

Embroidery bird

In Uncategorized on 3 June 2010 with no comments

Embroid­ery, it turns out, is a bit addict­ive. Some­thing both fun and cre­at­ive you can do whilst watch­ing the tele­visual cel­eb­ra­tion of bonker­ness, Euro­vi­sion? Yes please.

The idea of work­ing from a pat­tern seems a bit dull to me, not to men­tion ever-so-slightly scary, so I’m impro­vising with free­form, seat-of-your-pants stitch­ing. This bird is a reg­u­lar doodle of mine, roughly drawn onto some cot­ton with a fab­ric pen­cil and then even more roughly drawn in with thread and fab­ric scraps from EL Quilto (which is slowly get­ting there..!)

Once bird was done, I moved onto my next plan, which was a rain­cloud. Roughly inspired by a col­lo­graph I made at Edin­burgh Print­makers, this was going to be a happy rain­cloud, but I guess he (or I) just got a bit over­tired dur­ing the stitching.

For some reason, I only seem able to embroider at week­ends, but i’m hop­ing that might start to change as I draw some stronger divid­ing lines between work and play. I’ve grabbed a place at Edin­burgh Screen­works for June and July, with a view to extend­ing into forever, depend­ing on how it works out. It’s still an excit­ing nov­elty to set out for work in the, well, after­noon — we’ll see how long that lasts!

Hadley Freeman on Sex and the City

In Uncategorized on 24 May 2010 with no comments

Had­ley Free­man on Sex and the City:

The dif­fer­ence between how the women’s jobs are por­trayed in the TV show and the films is per­haps the best example of how low the lat­ter have sunk. In the show, we repeatedly see Mir­anda work­ing in her office as a part­ner in a law firm and, yes, the job is hard and time-consuming but she loves it and her suc­cess is a badge of pride. Ditto Sam­antha as a PR. Even Car­rie, who works as a news­pa­per colum­nist, a job I can per­son­ally assure you is not phys­ic­ally tax­ing, derives real sat­is­fac­tion from her work, to the point that her will­ing­ness to quit it for her Rus­sian boy­friend in the last series is an omin­ous sign. There is a whole epis­ode about the women’s dif­fi­culty in accept­ing Charlotte’s decision to quit her job when she mar­ries, and boy­friends who don’t take work ser­i­ously are seen as imma­ture freeloaders.

Cut to the films. In the first one, not only do we never see Mir­anda work­ing (because that’s obvi­ously less rel­ev­ant to women’s lives than watch­ing Car­rie have an orgasm over her new walk-in closet), but her job is the reason for Steve’s infi­del­ity, because he wasn’t get­ting enough atten­tion from his wife, who was work­ing to sup­port him. In the second film, guess what? She leaves the law firm! How could she res­ist after Steve sug­ges­ted she could “be at home [more] and help out around the house”? Sorry, I think I just burned my fin­gers while retriev­ing my bra from the fire.

Testing the embroidery waters

In Uncategorized on 22 May 2010 with no comments

Ran­dom notion of the week, and some­thing I’ve spent most of the week fight­ing against, is the urge to take up embroid­ery. For a start, I don’t like embroid­ery, and I really don’t want to spend any time dec­or­at­ing table­cloths with pic­tures of little blonde girls pick­ing tulips. Then I spent a night sew­ing bind­ing onto my tiny quilt, some­thing that was strangely enjoy­able. And then last week I found this blog, fea­tur­ing this and this and this, and for the first time in my life real­ised that my life wouldn’t be com­plete without an embroid­ery hoop and a huge array of bright, multi-coloured threads.

One trip to John Lewis later, and I’m the proud owner of a hoop. And abso­lutely noth­ing else.

Ahem.

How­ever, the true high­light of the day was a quick visit to Paper­chase, just as they were clos­ing for the night. I only man­aged a quick whizz round, but DO YOU SEE WHAT THIS IS?:

Food friends! Back in stock! How could you not act­ively fall in love with the little orange guy on the keyring loop?

Playing chicken

In Uncategorized on 28 March 2010 with no comments

My fence was not ideal. For a start it had holes through which the chick­ens could – and did – squeeze. I had the bright idea of tack­ing on chicken wire, but as I stood back to admire my handi­work, the chick­ens scrabbled up and over the top.

Fowl play: one man’s year keep­ing chickens

Making porridge more appealing

In Uncategorized on 13 March 2010 with no comments

From the Guard­ian, just what I needed to read at the end of a week without any sugar (well, almost):

Sugar, fat and salt make a food com­pel­ling. They stim­u­late neur­ons, cells that trig­ger the brain’s reward sys­tem and release dopam­ine, a chem­ical that motiv­ates our beha­viour and makes us want to eat more. Many of us have what’s called a “bliss point”, at which we get the greatest pleas­ure from sugar, fat or salt. Com­bined in the right way, they make a product indul­gent, high in “hedonic value”.

And yikes:

But it was think­ing cre­at­ively about how to attract more con­sumers that led Star­bucks to the Frap­puccino, the ven­ture cap­it­al­ist told me. Although its stores were crowded early in the day, by after­noon “they were so empty you could roll a bowl­ing ball through them”. The cre­ation of a rich, sweet and com­fort­ing milkshake-like con­coc­tion utterly trans­formed the busi­ness. A Star­bucks Straw­ber­ries & Crème Frap­puccino comes with whipped cream and 18 tea­spoons of sugar: all in all, this “drink” con­tains more cal­or­ies than a personal-size pep­p­er­oni pizza, and more sweet­ness than six scoops of ice-cream.

Com­ing up tomor­row: the chocol­ate chunk short­bread has crack in it.