and breathe...

I am T minus 2 days away from my mother's 50th birthday party in Brighton, and I am responsible for providing the cake. I am stressed about this on several levels......

My plan is to bake a chocolate sandwich with a layer of chocolate whipped cream between and on top, to place this on a cake board and garnish with fresh white and pink roses, with pink candied rose petals scattered on top. Fine. Except I also have to get it to Brighton intact and fresh, and that means surviving a 4 hour car-journey. The cake is for 20 people.

It'll be ok though, because I have an elaborate plan to transport everything separately- sponges, cream, flowers, and assemble at the restaurant. I'm trying not to think about it, mostly.

On the other hand I did manage to get Robert Opie's '1920's Scrapbook' on sale at work...

It's a fantastic collection of newspapers, adverts, and memorabilia, arranged into chapters such as 'hair and hats'. Excellent social history record, and very nice to open randomly and pore over. There is also a '1930's Scrapbook' which I'd love to get hold of...

Speaking of social history, top of my wishlist at the moment is this book by Shirley Hughes. It contains a painting for every other year from 1900 to 1950, and 2 pages of text and black and white drawings summarising the social, cultural, and political history of that year. Most of the paintings depict meals, and my favourite is the very first...the kitchen of the grand townhouse.

I just got my registration papers back from the OU, I am officially started on my history degree, an ambition of some 6 years standing....so excited!

Just as long as the cake turns out ok....

paper art

Here's a book to fall in love with....'Playing With Books'

It has a number of projects to turn beautiful books, pages and covers that will never be read into decorative and useful items, such as a clock, bag, or flowers. Then at the back features some serious artists practising the craft. The dress on the cover for instance, but also 'butterflies' and my favourite, a tiny but perfect age-of-sail ship cresting the wave created by the pages of a book.

Have a look at the website of Tracey Bush, I adore what she does, particularly the use of maps.

Another nice book is 'Things on Toast'. Yum, yum, yum.

There won't be any more children's books featured for a while because I am on the long-list reading panel for the Children's Book Prize run by my company, and I cannot divulge the titles.

I tried salt-dough today for the first time, no pictures yet because its in the oven, and I need to find some paints...

This July just gone

So I've missed a few mondays, how predictable! Life had been pretty hectic, but before I elaborate ::

monday 5th :: read this book.....'The Complete Borrowers'

monday 12th :: read this book...'Swallows and Amazons'
monday 19th :: read this book...'Kensuke's Kingdom'

monday 26th :: read this book...'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader'

All of these books are suitable for adults, seriously, if you read them as a child read them again, I promise you will get more out of them this time around. 'The Complete Borrowers' is wonderfully told, I almost attempted to make my own 'borrowers' house with walls lined with writing paper from the waste paper basket and stamps as portraits. 'Swallows and Amazons' is a very peaceful book, with a couple of high-excitement chapters, oh the sailing! 'Kensuke's Kingdom' is so original, so realistic, so unusual, so moving. 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' is a typical adventure, and has a fantastic opening line that indicates the humour in the book....
'There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.'

C.S Lewis

I also happened through sheer luck to win my workplace world cup sweepstake, and bought this...


Last weekend I went to the beautiful Brecon Beacons to do adventurous things with my Brownie Pack, like cata-canoeing (which is fun because you can't capsize the boat, on the otherhand that's no good if the instructor picks you up and throws you in the lake) and camping. It was exhausting, but not more tiring than house-hunting, which I'm delighted to say has come to an end!

I have a new sewing project....my home in fabric. I was inspired by the very talented Marmalade Rose, and her awesome machine-sewing project...

These are my own beginnings...

monday :: read this book

Charming, idyllic, funny, full of period detail, you can almost smell the air, hear the water. Beautiful, can't believe I haven't read it before.

monday :: read this book

There are so many books I have read recently that I want to recommend to everyone I know, i've decided to space them out a bit and have myself a regular monday feature :: read this book. I'm not one for book reviews....never know quite what to say, inarticulate and all that...but I'll only ever put a book up if I loved it so much I know I'll re-read it.

First on my 'you must try this book' list then ::

Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

Michael Morpurgo

I read lots of children's books because I work in the children's department of a bookstore. I've never read any Morpurgo before, and I loved this. I think he is better known for his animal stories, but this is a biography-style book with a hefty dose of sea-faring which made my heart leap. Lovely book, good writer, gorgeous mix of line drawings and photographic illustrations on the cover, and on each chapter heading.

project development

The wedding quilt (I'm going to call it a quilt rather than a blanket because it sounds nicer) is developing, I've found lots of inspiration and decided on my square size :: 8".

I've found some beautiful crochet square designs :: flower burst square, victorian dream square and cygnus square, which may not make it as they are a bit complex, and if i worked them in my aran weight yarn, would end up as larger squares than I intend. The last one measures 12" sq when finished.

I've also found some lovely motifs :: motif 46, motif 41 and motif 118 I particularly like.

It seems that a lot of crochet squares look radically different when they are done with added colour yarns or variegated yarns. Sometimes the colour brings out the detail wonderfully, like this one, which is actually a very simple design ::

Some crochet squares are beautiful but the design can disappear when worked in one colour only. So I need to be careful choosing my square designs. I also don't want it to be too 'busy'...I want to stick to a small number of different patterns. I don't want it to be a sampler-style blanket.

I think I might add some knitted lace squares, like this tulip square, and below it the simple vine square (thanks 'vogue ultimate knitting book'...I forgive you for being so ugly, as you are so useful). Neither of these have been blocked, by the way.

read this....

Thanks awfully for your nice comments on the wedding and my dress, very blush-making.

I'm planning a post this weekend about the wedding quilt (sounds nicer than blanket) which is coming along nicely, but had to pop in and tell you all about a delicious book called 'Good Evening, Mrs Craven'.

It's published by Persephone, and contains the wartime short stories of Mollie Panter-Downes, 21 in fact, who wrote 'A Letter from London' in "The New Yorker", between 1939 and 1944. Some are a little sad, some are quite funny, all are absolutely fascinating.