What to wear to the wedding?

Jam's best friend is called Ben. They've been best friends for some years having gone travelling together when they were footlose and fancy free. This year however Ben gets married to his girlfriend Gywan who is Korean. So guess where they are getting married? Yup Korea, and the best bit is that we are going! The flights are booked but there are two things I'm having problems with 1. sorting out accomodation and 2. finding a dress. The accomodation problem I think is nearly solved. First of all we got the area wrong (too far south so we had to go back into Seoul to get anywhere). The second was what kind of accomodation we wanted. In Korea the hotels are really expensive and the hostels full of what i would ter 'proper' harded travellers. As I am not a hardened traveller (and this is our first break away together) I wanted to stay somewhere a bit luxurious. It seems the answer to our accomodation problems lies in a sector of the hotel sector known as 'love hostels'. Korean families tend to stay living together till the children are quite old so these places are where the kids take their boyfriends/girlfriends and have all sorts of things like jacuzzi's in the room and heart shaped mattresses (cute or tacky you decide). To me that sounds like a crazy adventure!. The second issue is gonna take a bit longer to resolve. I've decided I want a butterfly dress. They are exotic and colourful and lets face it very beautiful. Inspired by the late (and great) Alexander McQueen who designed this beauty.

 

with of course matching shoes

 This would be fairly ideal (designed by Luly Yang) however it seems to be in a museum, so poss not an option...

 On the more realistic side of things I found this

Perfect I thought, nice shape & pretty. Then two things happened. I looked at the close up of the print and suddenly didn't like it so much. Nice from far away but for me its all in the detail.

and I saw this

Its made by Ted Baker and new it cost £200! I thought no way at about this point but then two things became clear. Firstly here is a close up of the print, I burn, I yearn, I pine...

Second you actually can't buy it anymore, so I guess I should try and get one second hand for less than the £200 I wouldn't have paid. Just under 70 days / 2 months to sort this one!

the one where I buy the oversize porcerlain cat...

This weekend I met up with the wonderful Alex to have a royally overdue catchup and explore the delights of Camden market. When I was a teenager Camden market was my go to place for all things cool (my uncle had a flat round the corner in the very posh Regents parks area and gave my mum a key to his place so we could pop in whenever we wanted) however since swapping the streets of London for the golden glow of Oxford I haven't been back. Would I be disappointed? Would Camden not be cool anymore? I needn't have worried, all was as it should be. Alex took me to a fantastic tea shop for lunch (a baguel and delicious chocolate cake) and then we headed to the market. One of the first things we saw was a 3ft high black poreclain cat in a shop stuffed full of 60's items. To say it was love at first sight would not be an understatement, but we had just started shopping. We asked the shopkeeper about it (as well as the prospect of getting it shipped to Oxford (they had a massive sign announcing they shipped worldwide). No she couldn't ship it had we felt how heavy it was? We felt, it was pretty heavy. Alex valiently offered to carry it for me, but we would have to go back for it later. I asked the lady if she would save it & that wasn't possible either so after wandering round London all afternoon (and visiting this very cool camera shop, I really want one of these) we returned, and to my joy it was still there. So guess where it is now? That's right, at home with me :-)

Group 2012 and a breadstick experiment

I've got a bit of a confession to make. I've been attending a writing class for the last two months. I didn't post about the first meet because it was all very new (and quite scary) and I wasn't sure I had the nerve to go back (I still don't really think of myself as a 'proper writer', which may be part of the problem). This time I had dutch courage (in the form of a single malt before I set out) so let me introduce you Group 2012.

Set up as a joint venture between Blackwells, the Oxford Editors and Hersilia Press the group aims to support its members by inviting published authors to give talks and advice and supporting work in progress by offering feedback and advice. The first session was a mixed meet and greet where the aims were put in place. The second meeting we had the quite wonderful James Attlee talking about his latest book Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight (and offering copies up for a very reasonable price, alas I didn't go via the cashpoint on the way but I will be buying a copy of Nocturne for my dad's birthday & a copy for myself if my bookcases can bear any extra strain). The talk itself was fascinating, James describing how he had followed stories and images of the moon through time and cultures ending up with a kind of distilled essence from which the book flowed.

We had the opportunity to quiz him after he had finished and I asked about his top tips for writing when you have a job as well (as he does, good man). He told me that you have to train your brain into the habit. He had written lots of stuff on the train to and from work in what would have usually been dead time & he now knew this was writing time so it was easy to stick to.

 Certainly food for thought as my rewrites don't seem to be going anywhere quickly at the moment. The rest of the meet was given over to socialising and attempting a critique with something already published as real critiques are due to be happening at the next meet (my friend Ali will also be talking about his newish book the man who rained, which I ranted about on here already) so lots to look forward to there. You can follow the progress of the group on their blog here (I believe there is an official post being written about the Feb meet at some point).
The second bit of this blog title refers to a connected but quite different part of the event. We had been told to bring a bottle and treats to share. I decided as I'm in a bit of a bread phase to take some homemade breadsticks. I made them in 3 flavours Parmesan, salt and chili. They turned out wonderfully (the Parmesan and salt being particularly good).

I then discovered (to my horror) that the meet was not on the Monday as I had it in my diary but on the Wed. Homemade breadsticks do not keep (and these indeed went v.mushy) and even the chickens refused to eat them, so I ended up taking these.

Honestly the best laid plans...

Chickens in snow

 The weather is definitely getting a bit milder, so it's hard to believe that merely two weeks ago there was snow on the ground and getting a day out of the office looked like a definite possibility. Sadly the snow day didn't happen but almost as heartwarming is the fact that my lovely rescued ex-bats had their first taste of snow. Unsuprisingly they loved it (they still get quite excited about rain as that's quite a new experience, it gets its own noise which is ohhhhhhh). So here they are looking beautiful in the snow (I'm going to send some of these to BHWT to see if they would like to use them in their calendar or in their magazine).

 

 

Aurora wanted to be picked up, she is such a softie.

Making underwear with Emma

 

 So yesterday was my day of underwear making with Emma Kidd from Emiliana Underwear. Jam and I had a nice lie in during the morning and then I hopped on a train to visit the Old School Club in Clapham Junction. Due to some silliness with the trains I arrived just in time, but what a course awaited me! Emma introduced herself to the class (6 of us in all) giving a brief overview of her experience (she has oodels and hearing her talk about foreign working conditions and her own ethics was really interesting) and showing us some of the fantastic knickers that have been made from her designs. 

 Next it was the classes turn to introduce themselves saying our name, why we were on the course and what the last thing we made was. There was a really nice mix of people in the class some who had never used a sewing machine before and some more experienced ladies as well. Emma came round to look at our fabric choices, I'd taken a few bits of stretch jersey from my stash plus a lacy black piece of fabric that I'd picked up from Mason's the day before. Emma asked if I had any preference on which I'd like to use as they were all suitable, I'd shown my selection to Jam on Monday and he had shown a preference for the black lacy one (surprising huh?) so I went with that one. There were three designs of knickers to choose from, a standard knicker shape, a hipster brief or a short. Emma mentioned that the short was slightly more work than the other two but having her experise on hand I decided to give it a go.

 Next it was the classes turn to introduce themselves saying our name, why we were on the course and what the last thing we made was. There was a really nice mix of people in the class some who had never used a sewing machine before and some more experienced ladies as well. Emma came round to look at our fabric choices, I'd taken a few bits of stretch jersey from my stash plus a lacy black piece of fabric that I'd picked up from Mason's the day before. Emma asked if I had any preference on which I'd like to use as they were all suitable, I'd shown my selection to Jam on Monday and he had shown a preference for the black lacy one (surprising huh?) so I went with that one. There were three designs of knickers to choose from, a standard knicker shape, a hipster brief or a short. Emma mentioned that the short was slightly more work than the other two but having her experise on hand I decided to give it a go. After choosing some contrasting elastic (I narrowed it down to fusha and teal but went for the teal as its Jam's favourite colour) we cut out our fabric and after a quick practice on the machines to check that they were stitching okay (and they were the right stitches) we started work on our own material. I had a quick centre seam to do before catching up with the rest of the class who had all started the tricky business of sewing the elastic to their fabric (straigh lines weren't too bad but around the legholes the sewing machine decided that my material was a bit too tasty to resist and ate it! (Resulting in me getting a bit aggrrhhh).

 Fortunately Emma was there to help me (and sewed a few of the problem sections for me, thank you Emma) and Inma from the old school club appeared with more tea and cake. Many hours later and my deskmates had finished theirs ad I had these crackers (loving held up by Emma - yes she is that wonderful, I have now independently verified this!). I had a really great time on the course, I'm definitely going to order some of the kits (and you can too from here) to give the other patterns a try (and maybe try the short in a more sewing friendly different material? Just to see if its any easier (although I'm thrilled with the result and hopefully on my own machine I'll find it slightly easier than with a machine I didn't know).  Emma was the most fantastic teacher, in the world ever (I was its fair to say a bit starstruck in her presence, what she is doing & the ethics and sentiment behind it are so awesome) I'm hoping I will be able to do another course with her at some point but until then I have my beautiful knickers to remind of a very special valentines day!

Homemade valentines

(Homemade red velvet cupcakes, the sprinkles say ME LOVE YOU with hearts at the end of the lines).You may remeber that last year I made these cute heart shaped tea bags for Jam. Just like the presents I made for our 1 year anniversary last week I was certain that for valentines this year I wanted to avoid the tat and make Jam his valentines gifts. His major present took a bit of work to pull together but I think it will be worth it. I bought a 600 photo classic black photo album from paperchase that you can slip photos in (rather than the ones you have to glue the photo to the pages in, which I'm not too keen on). We had loads of photos of us together doing stuff from our Awesome things to do list (stuff suggested by each of us that we would like to do with the other person, the stuff on it ranges from going ice skating together, to taking a hot air balloon ride to visiting the science museum and cooking monster cupcakes, to name but a few). I saved a selection to my memory stick and got them all printed out and then placed them in chronological order in the album (with plenty of space left to add new photo adventures).

 I added a further homemade touch by cutting letters out of handmade paper and sticking them on the front with my faithful copydex (there is a clear plactic layer that goes over the outside of the album which should help protect this quite delicate paper). Now its clear who the album belongs to and also what the contents are inside!

 The other two things that I made to go with it was a massage balm using the recipe here. Because Jam sits at a computer all day (and slouches) he gets pains in his back so I wanted to make something that I could use that I knew contained only 'nice' ingredients and hadn't been harmfully tested.

My final suprise of the trio were some homemade red velvet cupcakes which although not the really really red colour that I had envisaged didn't last that long at all (I had to almost push Jam out the house in order to get them made in the first place).

For my present I got  a bottle of my favourite malt whisky Talisker (it's brewed on the Isle of Skye which is lovely), some of my favourite perfume and an automatic door opener for the chickens (so I get my lie ins back!) I also got bought a fantastic underwear making course with the quite simply brilliant Emiliana Underwear. If you haven't visited their site you really should, they sell kits to make your own pants and reuse clothing material to do so making it ethical & green. The actual course is today and I'm sooo excited to be taking part (full write up in due course, must remeber to charge & take the camera). Happy Valentines everyone & remeber to treat yourselves as well as your loved ones this holiday!

Exhibit

Although Christmas was supposed to be a lovely break form work I found myself using the time to catch up on projects instead. I thought I'd be mostly knitting I seem to have crammed quite a few other crafts in as well. I went to Ikea with Trisha and ended up buying this fantastic little greenhouse, perfect for nurturing my little cacti till they are as fully grown and as big as these guys.

I did do some knitting, still working on a cozy pair of socks for Jam but I managed to get this scarf finishing for Claire

(the yarn is really pretty containing not only wool but sari ribbon as well in a contrasting blue/green shade). I'm hoping ths will help her feel better and take away the winter sniffles which she has been suffering.

I've been doing a few more cards as well with the orchids that I pressed a while ago. This one was a bit of an emergency one for Jam's sister Teagan (I thought I had 4 days to make it, turns out he got the date wrong so I only had a night).

I've been having a bit of a think about taking a stall at a local craft fair, selling my home bred plants and paper and material bits and bobs, but I don't know whether my stuff is good enough, it seems quite ordinary to me I suppose but I would like to see what ye general public think (so all feedback greatly appreciated!).

And last but not least is this little box, it started out as plain paper mache but I transformed it (using some inspiration from the rug in our living room and a selection of nail varnish) into a trinket box. The problem is now its all done I don't really want to sell it/gift it. Gonna have to get better at this if I'm ever going to have any stock!

Bread with Claire

Claire and I have been friends since about the age of 12, when we kind of fell in with each other (and never really fell out, despite the time she pushed me in the mud, but that's a different tale...). We were together all through high school, but then college came and we were seperated & uni followed and then our jobs and loves took us further apart still (me to the bright lights of London & Claire to Barry Island). Thankfully world balance has now been restored as Claire and her husband Simon have just moved to Guilford, a mere hour away from me! We decided to take full advantage of this geographical closeness and meet up for a break baking day and here are the results. First up we gave Claire's bread making machine a go, I think somewhere something went a little wrong as the resulting loaf was a bit too 'interesting' to photograph or eat (think large pile of soggy crumbs you are probably nearly there).

Our latter two efforts however worked out really well. We tried focaccia from Dan the bakers River Cottage handbook (I got this for Christmas and have to say it's brilliant, all the recipes look amazing, there is loads of other useful bready information and just like Delia so far all the recipes I've tried have worked (result!)). Our second batch was a bit of experimentation, Claire had been given a batch of tiger paste so we thought we'd make tiger bread rolls. S hockingly Dan the baker didn't have a recipe so we used this one, if anyone else tries it could you let me know how you get on? Ours turned out really wet meaning we had to add quite a bit more flour than was called for in the ingredients. Still the resulting rolls were really tasty. We are planning another meet up for a food day soon, the next subject of our experiments cupcakes and biscuits. Yum.