Spring...

Good news! After a rather wobbly, wilting start, my dizzies have new buds! I am a propogating genius!














It reminds me that the ground is waking up, and that the first signs of spring are here. It makes me irrationally happy, honestly, the sun has made me go a bit wappy! I have filled the house with flowers (from Dave!) and got out all my most floral bedding to celebrate!



























Listening too (perhaps slightly prematurely, but i cant help it): Frank Sinatra, Summer wind and longing for the summer!

Reluctant socialite

oh NO!

I have clearly not kept up to date with my weekly project! I have had a CRAZY week. Dave and I organised a last minute valentines thing on Friday night (ever the forward planners) where we blagged the last sitting at our favourite local restaurant, which was at 6pm. This meant rushing like crazy, doing make up on a packed train, and arriving out of breath, but it was lovely. Pah! who needs Valentines anyway! Our Liverpool friends arrived the next day which was great, we were out every night (and still at work in the day), at a comedy night, a musical, a gig and dinners too so had no time at all to do anything other than wish for sleep. We then had a pancake party on Friday, (which was great but messy...) then friends on Saturday morning, a roast at Dave's sisters and a surprise visit from my brother on Sunday night! AND we managed to spend time in between doing the garden! Impossible!

Maybe i'll cheat and say my weekly project is making the garden look beautiful!

Planting! Hurrah!

Between a pancake party and seeing friends throughput the weekend, we managed to spend today and yesterday in the garden, clearing our jungle borders. The ivy has been allowed to go awol in the garden.

Before: (and this doesnt really do it justice)



















7 hours of back breaking labour later...













Apart from the ivy, its mostly dead so surprisingly easy, and extremely satisfying to up root. We found a way of sort of rolling the ivy up like a rug which worked quite effectively.


I planted some butternut squash seeds from some of our lovely friends. Apparently one seed can give 4 big squashes! so we planted 6 and will weed out the weaklings (mwah ha ha).

























I had a go at propogating my bizzy lizzies too. I pulled them out of their teapot and teased them apart to make 3 smaller plants. This is on the advice of my favourite gardener- Alys Fowler. We got her book 'The Thrifty Gardener' from the same friends(again! Thanks guys!). Its great. My mister and I fight over it at bed time.

Im hoping that my dizzy lizzies (as i prefer to call them) survive their rude seperation, and thrive in their new homes on the windowsill!



























My body aches all over, and im not going to lie, if something doesn't grow, or my dizzies die i'll have a paddy. I know its ridiculous, but I want to be an instantly good gardener. If my propagating and seed sowing doesnt yield huge mounds of beautiful flowers, i fear i'll never garden again. No, Im not being dramatic.

Deptford love.

I have a long love affair with Deptford market. I have visited since my first week in London, where I fell head over heals, and bought a bin bag of vintage shoes for under a tenner (I know). It has furnished my entire flat and alot of my wardrobe with its treasures and is a lovely way to wile awy a Saturday morning (but watch your handbag!)

Last week I had a good Deptford day.

I visited my favourite butcher, WH Wellbeloved to by some beef stewing meat...













I found this cushion for 50p (lovely embroidery- and so spring-ie!)




I then found this amazing jug and bowl for a tenner...















And then some gorgeous floral fabric (2 old curtains and a flat sheet for £2)- all GREAT potential dress fabrics!



I was a very happy girl.

Tilleke Schwartz

Ive been in a bit of an embroidery obsession recently, which is why i chose to give Dave a home made embroidery.

I have always loved it. A few years ago i went to the knitting and stitching show conference called 'Twisted Thread'. It really was incredible, so inspiring. My favourite artist from the show was Tilleke Schwartz.











She has the most amazing imagery in her work. I want her book!- she just stitches what she sees, from recycling symbols and images of her cat to 18th century patterns. If only i had the patience and talent to create embroidery like this- its is so intricate!

When i was searching for Tilleke's website and the Twisted Thread conference, i found a site called 'Narrative Threads', which is really interesting. One of my favourite pieces of work is by Orly Cogan called “Green Haze”

















Maaaan! I have such a long way to go!

Reg Update

Recently, we accidentally neglected Reg (our veg), and it smarted quite badly. We forgot to give him a winter coat and he nearly died in the snow! Thankfully, My mister and I breathed a deep sigh of relief when we saw that he seems to be doing fine...





























The last of the snow cleared this week so now we are thinking about Spring and planning what we're going to do in the garden. We bought some bulbs and are going to have a go at propagating some seeds.















I cant WAIT to plant these out. We really want the borders to be full of flowers in time for summer ...

This week me and my mister were discussing how to deter the squirrels and foxes from digging the bulbs up, which is what happened last year. We seem to have a whole pack of foxes living in our garden, and they all look mainjy, diseased, and rabid if you ask me. (Theyre cocky too; even when you throw stuff at them from our 3rd floor wondows, they just stare back nonchalently). I suggested setting deadly traps but Dave persuaded me otherwise. (Not very good for my eco credentials.) Alarmingly Dave's solution was that we should wee on the garden instead. I laughed at first but he was serious. Very affective, apparently, and free. I innitially refused; i had visions of neighbours ringing the police for indecent exposure or of furtive trips to the garden in the middle of the night (the garden is very overlooked)! Dave's much less hysterical solution was weeing in our watering cans! Yikes!

Our plan is to try and get rid of the weeds whilst they are still dormant. We are going to pop a note through our neighbours door to invite them to join us in the garden over a few weekends in February. Hopefully they'll come flocking to the garden (and wont notice the odd smell about the flower borders)and we'll all have a nice bit of communal gardening and a few flasks of tea! The thought alone warms cockles of my heart!

Valentines.....

Me and the mister are not really that in to the whole Valentines thing. A day to celebrate love (and get some nice flowers) is great- but we kinda think we should do that everyday (Puke, sorry.) I actually think Pancake day is by far the best day in February, wins hands down, easy.

However... I did happen to to find the time to make him a little something, and it just happened to be valentines....What can I say I needed inspiration for my first weekly project!

I couldnt update through the week because he might have seen it and it was for him!

I was inspired by some embroidery tutorials id seen on Purl bee and Craftstylish and thought id give it a good go.

I was all fired up and ready to embroider when I glanced at this on our kitchen table. We recently acquired it from my misters aunt and it really is beautiful. This is his 8 year old great great great Grandma (or something). 8 years old! I have allot of catching up to do.















Mine looks a bit like a 'special school' project in comparison. But I kinda like it, and he liked it too, which is the important thing!

Here's how I did it (easy)















I sketched out the design in my sketch book, then drew it out with pencil onto the fabric.

Then just started stitching, using a thick black thread so no having to go over it twice or any of that malarky.













Half way there... It says "Love is having your side of the bed warmed by the hairdryer". (it really is nice!)




























I added some machine embroidered love hearts, and doodled on it with a biro. I then edged it with a mish mash of trims and ribbons i found in my ribbon box.


Its wonky, finished badly and the technique is far from there, but at least its a start!


In honour of St Vals, I am currently grooving too I Hate Hate, by Razzy Bailey. What a  tune.

Reg alternative...

Ok, bit of a sore subject, but as you have gathered, we have not harvested a mountain of vegatables from Reg the veg patch. Yes we have accepted it. And any budding life was probably just terminated by the incompetence of not giving Reg a winter coat!

So in the mean time we are using Abel and Cole to plug the gap. They are very good- they NEVER air freight which is important to us, they support local farmers which is even more important to us AND they use Fairtrade which is EVEN more important!!! Im not claiming to be all eco righeous or anything but they do make it easier to be a little greener.









We thought we had a delivery due this morning but it was snowing so we were not so sure. Dave went to check and to our surprise it was still there! As i was mid sentence about 'proper customer service' and 'The commitment of the organic sector' Dave told me that the box was not todays, but last mondays, and it had sat under our front stairs for 7 whole days.

Oops. Serves me right for being a traitor to Reg.

The veg survived very well actually, but i now have alot of surplus broccoli and celery.... so I am going to use a recipe from my friend Jacks Mum! Thanks Jacks Mum!

200g lean beef stewing meat
Tin chopped tomatoes
2 onions
flour
Propper chicken stock

then ANY veg!

So im going to add:
celery
Broccoli
Fennel
peppers
mushrooms.

Wow. I cant wait. The meat will satisfy my carnivorous man and all the veg will satisfy my herbivoure cravings, and we'll make a humongous batch and eat it for ages. YUM.

SNOW DAY!

Both the best and the worst things happened today. Firstly, the snow is so thick that we got a day off work. Yesssssss.

This is our garden, it looks so beautiful and kind of eerie too. We spent the first half of the day snuggling up inside our warm house, then finally ventured outside for a snowball fight with some of our other snowed in friends. The snow was so deep that it almost came over the tops of our wellies. Fun fun...

But in the furrore, I forgot about something really important.

MY POOR SALAD LEAVES!















Oh Reg.





















I should have known better.... The forecasters predicted 21 inches of snow, but i forgot to cover my salad leaves and give Reg a coat. I might have sent them to their death! How could i?!

Live little ones!

Dressing it up, a beginning

My neighbour invited me to her flat for a new sewing/dressmaking/arts and crafts club this week. How exciting! My primary goal is patience. I always get overexcited about completing something, (my hubs would say 'posessed'- 5 straight hours of sewing later) so I rush to finish, then fuck it up.

So I spent all of the session just measuring the dress. I nearly went bog eyed by the end.

Next, its cutting out the newspaper then the most exciting bit- CHOOSING MY FABRIC! Rolls and Rems here I come...

Looking back

I do WISH I had had the balls to start this blog earlier. I could have documented, in juicy detail, the agonies and the ecstasies of 6 months of unemployment. Blissful free time but continuous rejection, becoming an expert in the art of soup making but noticing in frustrating detail every speck of dirt and clump of dust on our laminate floors, but alas. As is often the way- unless my creativity is squeezed into a busy schedule or last minute or to a tight deadline, I simply wont do it. Now I think back to that free time and kick myself that instead of filling it with knitting and sewing, I filled it with ITV’s ‘Homes Under the Hammer’.

Maybe, however, my lack of balls saved you some very boring reading.

Bibliophilia!

Ever since I can remember ive had a thing for collections of stuff, from ordered bookshelves to piles of fabrics. Its because i'm a massive hoarder, but also because I love the idealism, the order, and the pragmatism of collecting. I wrote my dissertation on the subject, and still get ridiculously excited about lists and when I see things ordered together! I once went to an exhibition called ‘empty your pockets’ which was simply the content of peoples pockets laid out in an ordered way. It almost looks like criminal evidence in a murder case. (annoyingly i cant find any reference to it on the internet to show you). It might be a bit bonkers really, but I swoon over these images from Artist Simon Evans. I found them via my favourite blog, Katy Eliott.

For the same reasons I also LOVE mark Dion. He is one of my all time favourite artists, creator of my favourite exhibition at the Tate Modern. I love the way everything is so carefully organized from his archeological digs, fossils and bottletops alike. How can you not love these images?






























Maybe because its because the images bring attention to everyday stuff, and regardless of the fact that celebrating the everyday has just been so done to death, I cant help but love it. Georges Perec, one of my favourite writers does this brilliantly. He uses lists, and long descriptions to great effect in his work. Some of the best quotes:

"What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we go downstairs, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed in order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why?”

He also says stuff like

"Question your tea spoons" (Species of Spaces and Other Pieces), which I love!

I could go on and on. I love Robert Opie who has obsessively collected food boxes and wrappers since he was a kid. His collection is in the museum of advertising and brands. This is an image from an exhibition on sixtites sweet wrappers which I have yet to visit. I love this image.

















Hmmm i wonder what it is that makes me obsess about all these ordered images? Am i going mad?!


Currently listening too Smoke Rings by Les Paul and Mary Ford, which I LOVE.... but it DOESNT help with the whole trying to quite smoking thing....!

Tea Love.

I love tea and all its various relations. I have about a zillion varieties and a large collection of tea paraphernalia, which is growing all the time...
















My friend at work sent me this link to George Orwells essay about the perfect cup of tea. Brilliant!

"If you look up 'tea' in the first cookery book that comes to hand you
will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few
lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several ofthe most
important points.

This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays
of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New
Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject
of violent disputes.... "



My favourite house hold item of tea paraphernalia is this print from my sis in law.



One of my favourite fabric shops in the world ever is in Greenwich. It sells very expensive designer stuff- and it was here that i first saw the designers guild teacup fabric. I tried to find an image for you, but alas! Internet! You have let me down! I did find this though, which is almost as cute:















Hmmm i might go make a pot right now actually...

--Updated Feb--

I was once again musing on my Love of tea whilst visiting one of my favourite sites Etsy. I just typed 'tea' into the search found all of these beautiful things to buy! LOVE!




...from Blulima


...from tizzalicious
...from Shornsheep


...from punkincardcompany


...from annamadeit

Etsy ALWAYS inspires me to get crafty.I think my next project will be tea cosys- im sure they would be very easy- and would make lovely gifts....

Fairtrade vs Local

I regularly agonise over whether to buy fruit from my local (non organic/ non fairtrade) market or to buy Fairtrade (often from supermarkets). Its a real ethical conundrum, and i offer no clear solutions or ranty lectures. However I have found that Abel and Cole have a good balance. Unfortunately there has been some friction between the local vs Fairtrade food 'movements' which only further confuses consumers who are trying to do the right thing! But by buying a box from Abel and Cole I support local farmers, as well as buy Fairtrade produce. I came across this news story recently that gave me hope, and i hope its something the rest of the UK will do soon.

Basically The National Farmers’ Union Scotland (NFUS) and the Scottish Fair Trade Forum (SFTF) have come together to promote a new vision of Fairtrade which applies as much to Britsh farmers as it does to Ghanain farmers. Read more here


Whilst were on the Fairtrade issue...

I try to always use local businesses where possible, partly because its just a good thing to do and also because it makes me feel all fuzzy on the inside (im a bit obsessed by the idea of 'community'!) I will try to frequent non chain cafe's where possible, but obviously it doesnt always work out, especially when my 'need for speed' kicks in, and the only remedy is a furtive dash to the nearest Starbucks. (My shopping meltdowns are famous)

But i heard that soon all of their espresso coffee will be Fairtrade! :

"On 26th Nov 08

Starbucks UK and the Fairtrade Foundation have today announced details of the company’s industry-leading support for small-scale coffee farmers. This commitment means that 100% of the espresso coffee sold – both whole bean and espresso-based beverages – in Starbucks stores in the UK and Ireland become both Starbucks ™ Shared Planet™ and Fairtrade Certified by the end of 2009. Starbucks espresso-based coffees include its Cappuccino, Caffe Latte and other espresso-based beverages, this represents the vast majority of Starbucks beverages."

(see more on the Fairtrade Foundation website)

This means that Starbucks will become the largest purchaser of Fairtrade Certified coffee IN THE WORLD, doubling its global purchases to 40 million pounds (volume) in 2009!!!!This is such a positive move, and will have a huge impact on farmers!

Just goes to show that big multinational chains, as much as i hate them, have the capacity to make a HUGE difference to people and planet. I actually think they have a duty to make it easier for consumers to be healthy and green, and this move by starbucks is a good demonstration of the impact this sort of move could have.

Whilst i'll (mostly) stick to my local caf, millions of Starbucks addicted coffee drinkers will perhaps unknowingly do their bit for the planet every time they order their skinny latte's. More importantly, It also means i can feel slightly less guilty when my 'need for speed' shopping meltdowns occur. Hurrah!

Introducing our baby seedlings! The story so far...

On the 18th October a surprise seedling box arrived from our friends Simon and Laura. They knew we wanted to plant a vegy patch, but we were going to wait until spring. This one is a winter veg box- and it was HUGE! Literally enough to feed our whole STREET! After a frought naming battle, we eventually settled on 'Reg'.

It was like Christmas. My mister and I ran around our flat like over excited children, unpacking layer after layer of lovely little Regie babies!















I fell in love- look how cute they are!















We planted them out the same week- Grow offspring grow!















So we waited, and watched...















December Update.

Do you know the saying a watched pot never boils? Well November and December were kind of like that with Reg. Maybe it was just too cold. Maybe, when Spring comes, all of the unseen fertile activity underground (frisky Reg) will suddenly all at once produce a mountain of Reg-veg! And there'll be so much food we will have to force feed all of our friends!


It was a different story for our window boxes though. Maybe its because they are so much nearer to our windows (which piss heat out of them) They have totally thrived! They got so big that we were finally able to actually pick them and have a lovely bowl of salad! (Although my heart broke a teeny bit every time we snapped a stalk off). It was delicious though. I just hoped they would grow back.

House Love.

I have been obsessed with decorating and house-ie programs since I was about 9 years old. I place the blame squarely on my aunties shoulders; for squeeling trips to Ikea and Habitat and long conversations about appropriate paint affects and decorating themes for bathrooms (We decided on beach affect and I rag rolled my way through 2 whole walls).

Things you need to know about me:

1. I used to spend my spare time moving my bed room furniture around, and once tried to balance my bed on top of 2 chest of drawers to make bunk beds.
   
2. I spent hours planning the theme for my teenage bedroom and finally decided upon lime green and lilac, with some accent pieces of inflatable furniture.
3. When everyone else was preoccupied with bands and drugs and going out at uni, I was scouring markets for things to put in a house I was yonks away from owning.
4. I still LOVE Carol Smiley, and secretly wish we could be freinds.
5. I plan my week around wednesday night 'house night'- Escape to the Country, Relocation relocation and grand designs..... wow.
   

So you'll understand then, that thinking about my dream house is a serious pastime.

To begin with, I'll start with colour. No matter what, my house will be filled with colour. Here are some of my favourite rooms from my new favourite website Domino. Its an American website with the coolest houses on them, but no sooner had i discovered it, it is being closed down! So sad!