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Making underwear with Emma

2012-02-15T13:59:00.000-08:00

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. 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

2012-02-14T14:08:00.000-08:00

(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

2012-02-11T05:50:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-06T11:26:00.000-08:00

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.

It's all been happening!

2012-01-29T13:43:00.000-08:00

There has been all sorts going on in this my already quite full life these last few weeks (hence the lack of blogging, sorry but most of these seem to have required pen and paper rather than internet) so it seems only fitting to recap...

Last Thursday the fabulous and very talented Jayne from over at a Novice Novelist came by train (the 4.50 from Paddington no less) and we hotfooted it down to Oxford Blackwells where author extraordinaire/the crabbit old bat Nicola Morgan was giving a talk on how to get published/write your pitch for your novel (there is a lot more of that kind of advice on her blog here). Jayne writes up the whole thing fabulously here and all I can add is that the workshop was incredibly informative, Nicola was lovely and we managed to drag her out for a drink afterwards (photographic proof of us muchly enjoying the Grande cafe, when in Oxford etc).

I had the Friday off as I wanted to take Jayne to the station & the plan after that was to write but I mostly just sat down to enjoy my friend Ali's second book The Man who Rained, its really good, so good in fact that I'm trying to ration the chapters else I'll speed read it which is glorified skimming and I'm enjoying this book too much to miss any detail (plus look how pretty that and his first novel look on the speculative fiction part of my new bookshelf, indeed!).

Tuesday evening saw me head back to Blackwells (if I'm there enough maybe they will let me move into poets corner?) for the launch of group 2012 the new writing group. The aim is to help with your writing. Having got two novels in first draft (written in the undergraduate years, obviously, when I had time and was doing my creative writing minor) I'm finding it really hard to find the motivation/time to re-write/improve them so the plan was to find some support and some other writers to share my thoughts/time with. I managed to meet some lovely people (quote of the evening: "It's really exciting, like we are the new Inklings. You can be Tolkien" me "Why do I have to be the weird one with elves...", and there was more wine, most excellent) and the next meeting is in a month (by which time I have pledged I will have revisited at least one chapter, gulp). I also managed to find out the dates for this years Oxford Literary Festival at which the author of my favourite novel of all time (An Equal Music - Vikram Seth) will be speaking alongside the literary greats and um Alex James (who is talking about cheese). I'm so excited I may have to take an afternoon off to go and sit in the same room (although they say you should never meet your idols).

Last night was spent at Wood school, trying to finish something I've been working on for a while (I can't really post it on here as I know the person its for is a reader of this blog, ahh the problems) but here is a sneaky peak.

This morning was freezing and my bus didn't turn up (booo) so I was in a pretty cold and bad mood by the time I got to work (after being rescued by one of our lovely neighbours), that was until I found out one of my close work friends James (indeed we used to be desk spouses, until I cruelly moved upstairs) keeps a blog on Dr Who (I'm a massive Who fan & the site is brilliant) and indeed had taken the time to create a pretty epic Sherlock/Dr Who script which you can find here, I also got sent this piece of genius, music students take note!

This year I will be mostly listening to....

2012-01-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

Well it may have only just started but 2012 is already looking like a great year for folk music. These are some of the very exciting albums I will be listening to this year
Jim Moray - Skulk

It's accoustic, it has a fox on the cover, what's not to love??? The Moray returns with a fantastic album of new material, all of which is available for your listening pleasure here but please buy the cd or pre order the (hopefully it's happening vinyl because its that good and to quote loreal he's worth it (oh extra fox footage for your pleasure can be found here, I'm talking about Sorrell obviously...)

Mawkin - Crow

Not to mistaken with the Ralfe band tune of the same name, the Delarre double are back with the additon of Nick (Cookie Monster) Cook and a guy hitting stuff for an entirely new album. If its as good as the single Skymningspolskan / Betsy Likens (which you can listen to here) it should be a scorcher (oh and if you missed any of their previous output its all on the website for a tiny fee too, so hook yourself up!)

Seth Lakeman - Tales from the Barrel House

After the disappointment and lack of tunes of offerings like Hearts and Minds (I would have thrown cabbage but its best not to waste good food) Mr Lakemen returns to his roots (yey) and heads off recording down an disused copper mine to record Tales and it certainly seems like he's mining the tunes again (collective groan) it isn't as good as Kitty Jay but a definite step back in the right direction.

Moss, Moore, Rutter - Moss, Moore, Rutter

Okay technically not released this year but they won the young folk award last year and now being back in the spotlight thanks to Jack Rutters unlikely appearance on ITV's Take Me Out (???). I think I might have heard most of this album thanks to the delights of free musicy listening places but its very very good so this year there will be a concerted effort to find the cd and play it many many times, I recommend you do the same.

Message to Bears - Folding Leaves

Sadly Jerome (who writes all the music for this collection of musicians) has now moved back to Bristol, which means less local gigs for us Oxfordonians. Awesomely however there is a new album of tunes (after getting funding sorted via this site). I've got their last release Departures ad having seen them live quite a few times can confirm that yes they are brilliant, fantastic music to chill out to or watch snow fall, make sure you grab a copy.

And now a couple that are hopefully on the way
Bad Anna - Debut

Uiscedwr split up, I'm devastated, Bad Anna form, I am slightly pacified. Described on their page here as new kind of folk music for our generation, if its got Anna Esslemont playing fiddle it will def be worth a listen

Writings on the Wall - suggestions for a title welcome!

The idea has been mooted that we attempt a recording, we were going to try a six track until we realised we probably have quite a bit more material than that... Anyway after we play the fringe event in April we should be locking ourselves away and trying to record something. In the meantime however for more informative updates you can like us on Facebook here.

New Year 2012

2012-01-01T12:26:00.000-08:00

With Bellowhead uncharacteristicaly not at the Royal Festival Hall we thought we would spend our New Year in Oxfordshire, celbrating with our usual shuffle out onto the grass with the neighbours for sparkly wine and rockets at midnight. These carefully laid plans were however shattered when Jam got invited to his friend Sam's party in Newbury (Sam & Jam went travelling together after college to worldly places lik Japan, this however is Sam in his natural habitat).

We arranged a chicken sitter and soon were having sock off's with the best of them.

(that's me on the right in the stars), as well as inpromptu sock showings we played trivial persuit (and lost) and ate and drank many nice things as well as me getting the chance to get to know some of Jam's friends a bit better. (This is Sam & his girlfriend Beccy counting down the moments)

After all that fun there was nothing for it but to go home and sleep for quite a long time. Happy New Year to all the readers of this little corner of the internet, I hope this year makes all your dreams come true.

The arrival of our new chickens

2011-12-29T12:47:00.000-08:00

After what seemed like weeks of anticipation we set off to collect our new chickens from the British Hen Welfare Trust on the 28th December. Our pick up time was 3.45 so we knew we probably wouldn't get to see much of the girls that night but could look forward to getting to know them over the remainder of the Christmas holidays. We turned up at the collection point and after picking up another bag of food (as the shops wouldn't be open) and some bedding we made our way into the collection shed. We had put down to have 5 new girls, and as our eyes adjusted to the shed we got our first glimpse of them as the volunteers brought them out and put them into our carriers. First impressions were that they didn't look too bad but there were two who were in a bit of a state, one with just the quills of her feathers remaining on her wings and a smaller girl who seemed to have lost most of her body and tail feathers with just the white downy under feathers showing. The journey home took about half an hour and then we lifted them into their new (or as one of my friends refers to it their forever) home. This photo was taken wth the hen who made the biggest impression, Bellatrix, top hen as far as she was concerned she had a good go at pecking my jacket and Jam's finger when he tried to move the ramp for her the next day. She was also definitely the noisyest when we were getting the back door open. After spending the following day outside talking & generally watching them names were quickly decided, I stuck with a Harry Potter theme for all but one, so let me introduce you to them.

Bellatrix/big bird (also the chicken I'm holding in the top picture)- Bellatrix takes no nonsense from anyone and as well as being one of the biggest is also definitely the most noisy. Upon hearing the back door unlocked in the morning she starts chatting to be let out immediately, also if you say hello to the girls its usually Bellatrix who will answer for all of them.

Completely different is Ginny, the baldest girl we have, Ginny is a meek little thing but already great improvements have been seen in her comb and plumage plus she was the first one of the girls to find a worm and successfully deal with it, clever little Ginny, she is usually second out of the coop after Bellatrix (because they have both worked out they get mealworms in the morning) and makes soft coos if she hears you outside the coop.

Next up we have Aurora, named after the goddess of the dawn as when she spreads her wings it looks like a golden sun, her damage wasn't as bad as Ginny as she at least had some tail feathers but her wing feathers have very much been reduced to quills. Despite this she is quite cheeky and spends most of her time trying to work out ways to test the coop defences or 'helping' me when I go into the coop.

Mineva - very similar in looks to Bellatrix but not as noisy, can usually be found near Trelawney after having a bit of a disagreement with Bellatrix on the first day. Mineva is really handsome & we've seen great improvements in her comb as well as her initial shyness.

And finally last but my no means least Trelawney, Trelawney worried me a little at first as she didn't seem to want to come out of the coop and was snicking (its sneezing but apprently chickens can't quite sneeze the same way as humans). I phoned the vet and he said it was likely a cold and dispatched instructions that we were to keep her fed and warm & keep a good eye on her. Having done so the snicking seems to have stopped but she still likes to be in the hen house if given the choice. So there they are my little brood, we are getting 2-3 eggs a day but my main concern is that the girls get back to their beautiful selves as soon as possible. At the moment they get mealworms in the morning and corn at night, I can't wait for the days to get longer so I can see them properly when I get up and spend some time with them after work. Some of our first external visitors were my friend Fi and her son Alex. Alex wasn't too sure of the chickens (recognising their dinosaur roots maybe?) but was prepared to be convinced when we told him there might be an egg in the nest box). As luck would have it there was so Alex took it home for his tea and here is Alex complete with chicken cusion holding his egg carefully!

This year in pictures

2011-12-22T05:03:00.000-08:00

So things I was aiming to do this year were roughly as follows:
1. Go on a date with a least one nice chap (having had my heart broken yet again late last year this was definitely top of my list to regain faith in men-kind). January came and I met this chap:

This quickly followed:

:-)

2. Having spent last year playing with the frankly Awesome Stanger Things Happen at Sea (and then disbanding the band due to the sheer distances between its members)

the search was on for a new band. This started off with a chance encounter with Sreeves (and a good deal of discussion over pints about the kind of thing we wanted to do) followed by our debute gig in April.

After the gig we decided a larger sound was called for, I'd invited my friend Emily (who I'd met through voluntering) to our 1st annual carol jaunt, we'd kept in touch and as soon as I heard she also played the cello Chris & I invited her and former Stranger member Kevin to become our fellow minstrels. The quartet was complete and we've now played a couple of gigs together with more I hope to follow in the New Year!

Some of my intentions weren't as sucessful: update and redesign the blog being only partly achieved (my friend Lea very kindly did some editing on my current template but I think a blog redesign may be called for in the new year). Also there are quite a few blog posts still missing as my hard drive died a coupe of months ago leaving me with many posts sans pictures. All this should be fixed come the new year so I guess I'm carrying this one over.

4. To start doing more of the things I love. This one was definitely achieved, 2011 if nothing else was the year that this was created:

I also taught violin/viola at a kids ceilidh workshop at Towersey again, stage managed the Bulverton Marquee at Sidmouth (one of the largest stages I've ever worked on, there were a few hairy moments I can tell you), went on holiday to Turkey (first foreign holiday for quite a few years, while there I relaxed, read and appreciated the local wine), started attending woodschool/attempting the carving of many hours and kept in touch/spent more time in the same room as my friends.
5. Start writing more tunes/finish the novels: because of the band I've found it quite easy this year to write music, more difficult was finding time to do the serious editing thats needed on both novels (part of the problem is I think that I'm not sure what I'd do with them if I did finish them, not sure I have the stomach for agents rejections...). So although this is being carried over I'm going to first set myself the mini goal of getting a poem or another piece of writing published (this excludes work where I edit a magazine and this blog). I'm hoping a the moment to publish with the wonderful Goblin Fruit but we shall see.

What about you guys any plans/goals for next year?

Barmaids mince pies

2011-12-19T04:43:00.000-08:00

A true (but not often known) fact about me is that I used to work as a barmaid in Soho London. The streets of Soho have a bit of a reputation for *blushing* other things and while there was a lot of that about there was also the pub I used to work in, the (sadly not there any more) Moon & sixpence. I only worked there for a couple of months but during that time I learnt a lot. Working behind a bar also gave me the inspiration to add booze to my mincemeat when making mince pies. So without any further ado I present you with the receipe for Barmaids Mince pies!

You will need
150g/5oz butter (cut into pieces)
225g/8oz plain flour
50g/2oz ground almonds (don't be tempted to skip these they absolutely make the pastry)
25g/1oz caster sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon of water
225g/8oz mincemeat
booze of your choice I've used sherry/brandy and rum sucessfuly in the past
a non stick 12 bun tin
*Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas mark 6. Rub the butter into the flour. Add the almonds, sugar, egg yolk & water and mix to form a firm dough.
*Knead briefly on a floured surface, then wrap and chill for 30 mins. Roll out thinkly and stamp out 12 rounds (about 7.5 cm/3 inch, I use a mug for this).
*Open your jar of mincemeat and pour a tabkespoon of your chosen booze in, mix thoroughly and put the lid back on till you need it.
*Once your pastry has rested use it to line the 12 bun tins. Spoon in the mincemeat and use the remaining pastry to cut into seasonal shapes such as holly or Christmas trees to place on top of the mincemeat (you can cheat and use cutters if you are pressed for time).
*Bake for 20 mins until golden brown and enjoy.

Many many cakes

2011-12-15T11:46:00.000-08:00

We had a birthday to celebrate this week as well as Christmas calories to consume, Jam turned 28 (or as he prefers to think about it 18 &10) so I made him a chocolate birthday cake filled with chocolate chips and complete with chocolate icing. The night of his actual birthday we went out for a meal at his local restaurant so no cake was required but the cake got eaten later that week

Yet again I had problems with my icing lettering but it did work out okay in the end. My cake skills however pale into comparison next to our neighbour (and former landlady) Trisha. Trish has made 2 wedding cakes this year and with time and icing on her hands got to work on this lot. This was the cake she made for her family

Whereas these three were all presents.

I got to choose one and it had to be this guy, the snowman (how cute is he!)

Just to put it into perspective here is an undecorated one.

What a lady!

Wood school Christmas meal

2011-12-11T01:15:00.000-08:00

As regular readers to this blog will know since January last year I've been attending wood school on a Thursday night.The class runs from 7pm till 9pm and everyone has their own projects to be getting on with and works pretty seperately unless one of the tutors has something to show us or its break/parish notice time. Brian (seen above with the silly glasses on) is one of the tutors and my favourite, mostly because he is so patient and has never been discouraging about my quite ambitious project plans

We were all rather worried earlier this year when he suffered a minor stroke and was out of action for a few weeks. Wood school wasn't really the same but thankfully a few months later he is back to his fabulous self. We all trooped along to a local pub (in the rain) and enjoyed some fine eating and some local carol singers. As a bonus I also got a Christmas card from Brian, I've been carving this William De Morgan design (he designed tiles for William Morris) in three layers in a rather large piece of wood since I started. I first saw the design when I was 12 at the Walthamstow William Morris museum & it must have made a big impression as now many years later I still remebered it. Brian has the rule that you can carve whatever you like, but it has to be something that you love, as that way you are more likely to finish it. He told me I was taking on a lot when I first started his namesake (Brian the lion) it is a big job but with three seperate layers (all of which will be rounded to be convex once I've finished) to the relief carving it was never going to be a walk in the park. He pushed this point home in his Christmas card, it read 'sorry that you haven't finished your first carving yet, maybe next year or the year after, or the year after that...'. I will get there, I have to I've already put my nae down for a large chunk of cherry wood which will be ready in a couple of years time!

Give a hen a happy Christmas

2011-12-06T11:42:00.001-08:00

As Christmas approaches my focus tends to shift from the high streets filled with flashing lights and mostly festive tat to the world at large. Being a pagan I don't celebrate Christmas as such but I do celebrate Yule, as the dark wanes and we look forward to the light. I try and bring that same philosophy into my Christmas activities. Last year I completed the santa run (you run, but dressed as the guy in red) to raise funds for Helen and Douglas hopice (a local Oxfordshire hospice dedicated to supporting children and their families) and went caroling in aid of the NSPCC. OXFAM also have a fantasic range of gifts so I try and tick off as many Christmas presents there as I can. This year there is also another very specific plea which I'll be taking part in. The British hen welfare trust are a fantastic charity who try and counter the effects of mass production and unethical purchasing. They take on older battery hens who are past what is seen as their 'useful' life and rehome them. The birds are often in terrible condition with most of their plumage missing and unsure of how to be chickens, having been kept in cages all of their lives. Within a couple of weeks however they can be transformed growing back plumage, laying eggs and regaining trust in humans.

This Christmas however the criteria for what is a useful bird has been changed somewhat, because of new EU regulations famers will be forced to redo all of their cages. Unfortunately this means that all birds will be got rid of. The email that I received stated the facts
As we are approaching the end of the year and the new laws are coming in for the enriched
cages, all those hens that are currently in the old style cages must beout of the cages by the end of the year, therefore, sadly this will mean that there a lot of hens going to slaughter by 31st December 2011. BHWTare doing our best to rehome as many of these hens as we can and we need your help, if any of you have the room for more hens and are able tokeep them separated from you existing hens for a few weeks to give the
hens chance to regain strength. Can you give a ex-battery hen the best Christmas ever on 28/12/2011?

I was lucky enough to be given two hens for my birthday a couple of years ago but with so many birds needing help we've bought a bigger run and look forward to receiving our new arrivals after Christmas. I believe you should choose you battles and that only by working together can we make a difference. It is really tempting to watch the news and despair of the world but there are some wonderful people out there and by taking part in these small acts of kindness you can make such a difference. If you've got some space or are looking for some hens please get in touch with the British Hen Welfare Trust via their website http://www.bhwt.org.uk/

Gig in Garsington

2011-11-08T01:57:00.000-08:00

This has just dropped into my inbox, the official poster for the gig that Writing on the Wall (otherwise known as the fabulous band what I am in) are playing in about a week and a half. Also on the bill is Robin Bennett's new country band the Grassy Hillbillies ('locals' may recognise the name as Robin and his brother Joe are responsible for running local fab festival Truck, Robin was also described by one of my friends as the batman of cool, so there you go!). The other bands we haven't encountered yet but I can give a small sneak preview of the finale (well the song at least) here it is sung by folk legend John Coppins . Be lovely to see some of you there!

Halloween/Samhein eve

2011-10-31T12:11:00.000-07:00

There were plans, big plans to host a party of our own this year (you can find details of last years halloween party here), the universe it seems had other plans, arranging my next exam for Wednesday and a friends wedding this weekend. So Jam, the witchcat and I had our own small celebration of sorts (I'll be doing my own samhein ritual as usual tonight as well). There was of course a pumpkin, skillfully carved by Jam who expects me to believe he has never done this before (?!?), there was cake, bought in from the local shop and arranged artfully on my new cobwebby cake stand, a haunted house bought by a neighbour who knows exactly how much I love this time of year and dancing. I was also persuaded to don my fancy dress outfit of choice for some lovely new photos of me and my favourite/only familar. What a cutie pie. Happy Samhein!

Blowzabella & tune writing

2011-10-28T05:07:00.000-07:00

Jam and I attended a Blowzabella gig tonight, as usual there was much dancing and the music was great. As well as getting the chance to have a really good dance I also managed to pick up a copy of the tune book I haven't got and get it signed (be still my beating heart, this will take pride of place on my music stand!).

I've since found out there is to be a Blowzabella day next year in April, with dancing and playing workshops and also a competition for original compositions. The winner gets their tune recorded by the band!!! I think I may have to get scribbling (its really special to have my stuff played by Writings but by my favourite folk band that would really be something!). I have a feeling the standard of entries will be quite high, here is Andy Cutting (box player for the band) playing a composition by their hurdy gurdy player (and possibly man with the best name ever) Gregory Joliever.

Duotone at the North Wall arts centre

2011-10-16T13:42:00.000-07:00

So this weekend Jam and I were lucky enough to go and see My friend Barney and his partner in musical crime James perform as their musical duo Duotone (blog here , myspace here). The gig was to promote the new album Ropes an was held at the North Wall Arts Centre in Oxford (great venue but I always forget how far away it is from the centre of Oxford, natually we ended up running to make it). Fantastically there were also a host of other very talented performers appearing with them, including Wod ,

aerial artist Nomi McLeod (blog here),

Colin Fletcher and Jane Griffith

and the whole evening was compared by master poet Alan Buckley (who also found time to read some of his own poetry despite having a horrid cold).

Stupidly I forgot my camera which is actually less bad than you'd imagine as I couldn't have used the flash anyway and phptographer Kate Raworth was there taking much better photos than I ever could (all images used here are copyright Kate Raworth you can check out the rest of the set here). It was a truely magical evening and I now have a copy of Ropes which as you can imagine is very very good and you can purchase here. Hurrah for local gigs and artists!

Grey October Day

2011-10-06T05:18:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post a photo of me has recently been used as a cover for a single. The single is called Grey October Day and is by Judy Dyble. More info on Judy and her beautiful music can be found here and you can pre order all 4 versions of the single (released on the 31st October, all versions of which are very very good) here. I was thrilled when Judy asked if she could use the image (taken at Lisa's wedding by the very talented Mel Cunningham, I was having a quiet moment and just daydreaming out of the window as usual) for the cover and it's even more special to see the finished thing!

All Hail Hailing Island

2011-09-17T21:44:00.000-07:00

So this weekend myself and his Jammyness headed to Hailing Island to see my auntie Yvonne. Auntie Yvone has always lived on hailing Island, but I haven't visited since I was little (my lasting memory of the place was that there was a cracking pet shop around the corner from Auntie Yvonnes house with a massive Python in it called Monty, you should be able to tell from this I was at an impressionable age :-). Anyway we headed back to visit and although the weather was a bit blustery (well I guess it was November) the place is just as lovely as I remeber it ( its like time has turned back, in the best possible way). Saturday we walked to the shore and explored the many antiques shop, eventually stumbling on a great little bakery (result) and on Sunday Auntie Yvonne took us for lunch at her local sailing club. It was lovely food and a beautiful view (mum and dad were also visiting as they had been looking after Auntie Yvonnes house, and dad was very keen to see the squadron of spitfires which were appearing at the goodwood revial festival, but alas the weather was too bad). We did however have a lovely weekend, here are some photos, mostly taken by Jam who stole the camera...

Mum, aunti Yvonne, Me & Jam

Squadron leader (Rtd) keeps his eyes peeled, sadly to no avail...

Boats in the harbour

Jam experimenting with photos through a telescope

The usual suspects...

Awww if you need to avert your eyes note the nautical curtains :-)

And then there were 4...

2011-09-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

So having mentioned the gig in Garsington it dawned on me that I had actually forgotten to mention that the number of musicians in Writings has actually doubled since our first gig in April. I was waiting till I had some decent practice shots or better than that some demos to post here but we've been so busy practicing there has been no time for photos. Plus recording has been postponed till after Christmas because of an interesting possible development of which alas I am not yet permitted to speak of... Anyway the two nw members are my friend Emily (who I met while building a newt house post here) and Kevin who I used to play alongside in Stranger things happen at sea. As is so often the case with these things the whole process of expanding the band happened quite organically with people we already knew who had simular ideas about the kind of music they wanted to create, but I think Emily and Kevin will also bring their own ideas and style to the table as well. This weekend was our final practice before the Garsington Gig (we are playing quite a bit of the material which received its debut in April but all of it has had to be rearranged to make the most of the expanded line up (my favourite bit has to be when Emily takes one of my tunes on the cello, it just sounds beautiful). After a hard (timed) practice we had a bit of a relax and as it was all lovely and autumnal outside it was decided an updated band photo was in order so left to right Kevin (violin), Emily (cello), Chris (melodian, piano, everything), me (viola/violin/vocals) all stood outside Chris' house in Garsington (the reason I'm beaming is that Julia Chris' most excellent wife had just plied us with tea and cake, yum!) This one was eventually ruled too dark so the official photo is here and will hopefully be used to promote the band in all future endevours!

Berg paper dress complete

2011-08-31T04:20:00.000-07:00

So here it is, what you've all been waiting for, the finished dress.

Next some of the detail

Noa came to pick the dress up after I had finished my violin teaching on the bank holiday Monday (there really is no rest for the wicked!) we took it off my dress form Margo and carfully transferred it into the back of Noas car, ready for its journey to Berg, where it will hopefully be modelled and used to promote their fantastic fashion library (as you can see below Jam has his own ideas of a suitable modeling for it...). After it had gone I decided a large glass of red wine was called for before I put the finishing touches to Emma's Jane Austen inspired frock.

Paper dress Inspiration & Making

2011-08-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

After looking at all the dresses that had been made previously I decided to change some elements while keeping some of the things that worked well and keeping the feel of the original dress that started all this off. Once I'd picked up the materials, my ideas on the design were also influenced by them. One of the first things to catch my eye was two books of Japanese translations. One was quite a minimalist font whereas the other used more bold characters. In each case however because of the chartacters the paper had a softer look. On comparison with some of the other books the paoer itself appeared also less white tending to wander into pinky/dusty tones. I thought this would be fantastic for the bodice but wasn't sure it would be strong enough on its own. Plus as the dress is intended to be worn what would the comfort be like? The soloution to this came from good old newspaper paper mache. Using a fabric offcuts of a silver gown I'd previously made pinned onto Margo (my dress form) as a base and marker of where the bodice should fit to it was possible to sculpt a paper mache base (this part took quite some time to complete as I had to experiment with different glue strengths as trying to get the news paper and fabric to bond was a bit tough). Once that had dried the japanese paper could be applied to the top and when this was complete I experiemented with other original details (like lacing at the back of the dress, a shoulder strap and oriental lillies made out of paper and beads) could be added. The skirt presented yet more challenges. First of all in regard to length (I had originally envisioned a to the floor skirt with a 1800 type shape (like a slim bell really) in monotone with a split down the back, so colour pages could come flooding out) having shown this idea to Berg we decided on a shorter length because it had to be worn and transported. Also the addition of the multicoloured flowers/shoulder detail on the bodice meant that for the gown to flow colour had to be injected into the skirt at regular intervals. The next challenge was movement; quite a few of the designs that I had seen seemed to favour a fixed/static skirt.

Anyone who has ever knocked a pile of paper over (I'm thinking most of you) would know that paper is anything but static, I wanted my dress to move, but the pages had to attach to each other somehow... it was only when I was out at a garden centre that the idea hit me. We were looking at some beautiful (and being fully grown, expensive) Koi Carp and in particular how their scales lock into each other, being fixed but allowing the fish to move freely. Could the idea of that be translated into my dress?

With the fish scales idea firmly planted in my mind I decided to start expeimenting with my skirt, making 'scales' of paper that were uniform, but different patterns and attaching only the top corner of these so that their movement would be retained. The story book dress on the previous post features sewn pages, after a trial of how that worked (it did until you applied some serious weight) and calculating how long it would take it I decided that a glue gun would probably provide a better solution. So after sourcing a variety of different books/colours and cutting all the pages to size, graduating them slightly as they went down the skirt I starting the constuction at the bottom. Within 20 squares/1 hour (which was about half a side) I had burned myself quite badly on a finger on my left hand (and this was supposed to be a special safer glue gun!). As I was teaching violin at a band workshop at Towersey music festival (for which fingers would be a distinct advantage), it was decided that no more glueing should take place in case I burnt myself again, so Jam being manly and heroic stepped into the breech, and for quite a few evenings we sat in my makeshift studio at the back of the house, me picking the squares and showing where they should go, Jam doing the glueing. Now it's nearly finished and I will unveil on Monday :-)

Researching paper dresses

2011-08-14T14:08:00.003-07:00

A few weeks ago I was browsing Twitter during a break at work when this dress caught my eyeIt had been posted on a tumblr site by someone who worked at Berg publishers and they had republished the link. Awesome I thought, the next thing I know they were asking if anyone would be willing to create such an item and before I knew what was happening I was volunteering (c'mon it is not everyday a awesome publisher offers up this kind of opportunity.
As ever when starting a new piece of design it's important to look at what has gone before, so here they are a selection of the paper dresses that have been made before, please do let me know what you think of them in the comments. This dress was made out of children's books, I completely love it, not only has it got an amazing shape but the materials have been used in a really ingenious way and you kind retain that sense of childlike wonder/what the material was before it became a dress. Fantastic! Below is the dress before it was put together, they laid out all the book covers and then stitched them together using sparkly nylon thread. Also the bodice was made out of the bindings of the books. There are loads more photos and information on this one on the designers site here. Definitely worth a look. Kind of following on in the fairytale stakes we have this dress here which I have nicknamed the big book dress. I like the way that the pages appear to have fallen at the bottom of the dress but I think that this maybe doesn't work as well as the previous dress (it was designed by a bridal designer whose blog post about the dress can be found her e. The next couple of dresses are for me more about different forms within the paper dress, the first one plays about with ideas of paper, nature, leaves and flowers whereas the next uses the texture of pleated newsprint text for its main feature. My favourite out of these experimental form dresses is this one which uses light paper to create air like waves in the main bodice of the dress. Fantastic and I love it ( I would completely wear this one out although I think it maybe looses something by not showing it's origins proudly. On the other end of the scale I found this dress (actually I think dress is probably the wrong word but its definitely intended to look like a dress). Anyway that's my round up of some dresses that have been created previously. Berg have very kindly offered me use of their fashion archive so at the moment I'm going through the materials and seeing what kind of designs appeal and will work with those materials. If all this dress chatter has made you hungry for more I found this great how to for a newspaper dress. Perfect for a fancy dress party I would have thought (unless of course it rains :-)

Hitting the snow

2011-08-14T01:47:00.001-07:00

Yesterday courtesy of my awesome boyfriend me and my snowboarding jacket (the humbug) hit the real (but purposefully generated) snow at Milton Keynes. I'd wanted to go snowboarding for ages, although I get cold really easily I've always loved snow and after attending the freeze festival (blog post here) and seeing some of the best snowboarders in the world fly (there really is no other way to describe it) I definitely wanted a go. I had a holiday booked but due to my house nearly falling down (hot water cylinder & fuse box I'm looking at you here) I hadn't been able to go. Jam's birthday present was a total surprise and when he told me what we were doing on Friday night I had a mixture of feelings going on. I was really excited to try it but I do tend to be one of those people who has to work at stuff to get good, so I was a bit worried I'd be holiding Jam up (as he has done it before). Turns out I needn't have worried, it was easy to get my balance on the board (all that teenage skating did have a purpose) and it was really natural to control the board. I had a jacket and trousers from the trip that didn't happen but all the hire for the bindings, board and instruction were included in the price of the lesson (including my awesome board, purple with a little cat freaking out on it, erm have we met?). Before I could really get nervous we were at the top of the slope. Instructor Nick showed us the basics of getting in and out of our bindings and explained how the snowboard works (you need to bend your knees to go anywhere and just keep your weight over the board) with that he asked us to try and get down the slope backwards (it's easier than going forwards apparently but obv you can't see where you are going). One of my major worries was that I wouldn't be strong enough to handle the board but I actually found by just relaxing the board went by itself (although I could do with a bit more leg muscle to turn the board over at the top of the slope). The feeling when you are moving though was really magical, I can see why people get hooked, Nick taught us how to refine our balance and also how to go left and right (you basically just look where you want to go, your body does the rest, which is why looking at the snow is bad). At the end of the session we were given our progress sheets and I'm pleased to say I passed level 1 9just like Jam) so we can now progress to beginners 2! Wooo! We were completely wiped after only an hour (its all the getting up the hill and in and out of bindings I think that does it the actual snowboarding was a breeze) so headed off for some tasty Mexican which definitely restored energy levels. I'm hoping Jam and I can work through the grades together and maybe I can hit foreign slopes with him some time? At the moment I'm still really buzzing from the whole experience, bring on level 2! (next challenge get as good as these girls

Another awesome video here:

birthday presents

2011-08-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

So today was my birthday and as well as being lucky enough to be taken to the Red House this is what else I received (lovely presents). This scarf was from my mum, you can't see it on the photo but the edges of the cotton are actually raw. I wore it to Red House but I think I'm going to have to be pretty careful with it ot
herwise it might just end up as a pile of cotton...

The lamp was from my surrogate mum Trisha, fantastic taste as usual.

he chest of drawers is from Jam's mum, to keep all my bits and pieces in, from his dad and Kate I got the book to accomapany the exhibition that we went to see a couple of weks ago The Cult of Beauty.

The birdhouses were from my friends Stacey and Maddie/Jonny. I was originally hoping to put them outside, but witchcat is going through a bit of a bird catching phase at the mo, so I bought these little birds to go in them instead and will hang them inside.

Last but by no means least my brother bought me this beautiful fossil box, perfect for keeping treasures in.

The Red House - a special birthday treat

2011-08-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

So as today was my birthday (happy birthday to me) myself and his Jammyness took the day off in order to explore a house that I have been dreaming of for a while. It was at universty that I first found myself drawn to the Pre Raphaelites, we looked at the literature of the movement for a week in Victorian Lit, but that was enough, I was hooked. Doing some internet reseach I stumbled across some fabric designs by William Morris, their natural forms and the beauty of the designs struck me immediately and after researching him his whole ethos really appealed to me, A dissertation about the Pre Raphaelites followed and its since become a bit of a life long obsession. So we went, and this is what we saw... So as today was my birthday (happy birthday to me) myself and his Jammyness took the day off in order to explore a house that I have been dreaming of for a while. It was at universty that I first found myself drawn to the Pre Raphaelites, we looked at the literature of the movement for a week in Victorian Lit, but that was enough, I was hooked. Doing some internet reseach I stumbled across some fabric designs by William Morris, their natural forms and the beauty of the designs struck me immediately and after researching him his whole ethos really appealed to me, A dissertation about the Pre Raphaelites followed and its since become a bit of a life long obsession. So we went, and this is what we saw...

A very Happy Birthday indeed :-)

Nuptual bunnies

2011-08-05T04:58:00.001-07:00

I can finally post photos of these as my friend Vikki's wedding is over and these were a complete surprise for her. I got approached by Vikki's mum with these two blank bunnies with the challenge to make them into a bride and groom. I chose who was who based on the ears, I thought the one with the ears closest together should be the boy (cause I could put his ears in a top hat) and the other with the ears apart was perfect for the bride. I had loads of material remenants left over from Lisa's wedding dress so used one of those for the bride bunnies dress. The boy bunny was dressed mostly in felt (which was great - so much less hemming). I'd done another small commission for the wedding (adding touches to the shoes for the bridesmaids) so I knew the colours were purple and silver hence the added splashes of colour. Hope she liked them :-)

Dyeing for the weekend

2011-07-26T04:18:00.000-07:00

Yes as you should be able to see in the above post I am now a darker brunette than I was before! The urge to reach for the dye bottle was brought on by the fact that I feel I've become a bit too sensible lately so what better way to shake it up than some festival hair? This weekend Jam an I went to Truck festival, just down the road in next but one village along Steveton (seasoned readers may remeber a previous excursion there with Dave which can be found here). We had a great time (this wasn't guarenteed as Jam had only been to one music festival before, what if he didn't like it???), there was sun, local beer and lots of lots of bands. The fantastic Bellowhead headlined the Friday night, and were as always brilliant, Roddy Wooble (who I later semi stalked as he was watching another band) and Rhosyn were on the Sat and on Sunday we danced like crazy people to the Go team! The truck monster was also about (mostly during the afternoon & evening because of the warmth) and the kids were really making a beeline for him, it was like the santa effect only times about a million! Every year I have the same arguement with myself about whether to go to Truck or to head down to the secret garden party (website here doesn't it look cool?) but I know I always have a great time at truck and it's really nice that it's a local festival and I see most of the people I know there. What about you readers? Heading off to any festivals this year?

a seamstressing interview

2011-07-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

I got interviewed by in house magazine Parklife for their interesting hobbies feature. Unfortunately since we redesigned Parklife to look prettier we have less room for photos so although I've reproduced the text here, I've also added quite a few more piccys (as well as the one of Lisa and myself on the morning of the wedding that accompanies the original). Enjoy!

I've been making clothes since I opted to take a textiles GCSE at school. My school specialised in the arts and our textiles teacher gave us quite a lot of freedom in what we chose to make and we also had the luxury of having state-of-the-art technology to hand (a sewing machine that can do embroidery from your doodles anyone?).
After leaving school I was quite tempted to take a creative arts course but my parents insisted on A-levels, so dressmaking became more of a a hobby with me spending quite a lot of time hunting out materials from our local fabric store and online and matching them with patterns to create items of clothing I wanted but couldn't find in the shops. This is probably the most exciting bit of the process - getting inspiration from various different garments and combining ideas.
The focus of my sewing efforts changed direction slightly a couple of years ago when I got my first 'serious' sewing machine and found myself getting more into formal dresses. I set myself the challenge of doing on a year and instead of just copying the patterns I also wanted to start altering them. The first dress I tried this on was a purple evening dress. This dress is actually made with upholstery fabric - I live in terror that one day what I'm wearing will match a chaise lounge or sofa, but the material was a reduced remnant and I just fell in love with it.
Friends started to notice my wardrobe expanding and the masses of material lying about my house and I got approached to do commissions, first mostly alterations (scary because you are messing with other people's work) and then later the most exciting commission of my life, making a wedding dress. I'd never done anything like it before. Design and construction of the actual dress was more like architecture/construction as there were many layers and you had to build the overall 'shape', and probably wasn't helped by the fact the corset top had to be hand-boned. I also didn't realise how much emotion would be involved in making the dress match the brides expectations -fortunate this was for one of my best friends, so she was really clear about what she did and didn't want.
I did survive the wedding dress and have recently done another wedding commission (this time making cravats and hankies for the groom and male members of the wedding party so they matched the bridesmaids) and have just taken on another commission for a Jane Austin dress to be completed this autumn. After that I suppose i should really address the large pile of remnants in my fabric stash...

a weekend of rest

2011-07-11T04:43:00.000-07:00

The last couple of

weekends have seen us lending some serious brawn to help with housebuilding and quite a bit of time travelling first to go and see some old friends from work, then we drove to visit Jam's grandparents in Cardiff (on what was possibly the hottest day of the year so far). Added to that fact that I've been receiving rather a lot of attention on the commissioning front of late (first with a new dress commission and now a possible wedding assignment) added to general life things have meant that life has been pretty hectic. So this weekend we decided to take some time out, I cancelled band practice and Jam and I abandoned all clocks and concentrated on having a nice time instead.

Friday we headed out for an indian with Jam's friends from work, it was delicious and even better was the fact I didn't have to cook :-) Saturday was mostly sleeping, before doing some much needed shopping and having a nice wander round one of the local garden centres (this one also has an antiques section where I managed to get some books for my dad's birthday, result). After Jam mowed the lawn (I hate doing it, so I weeded) and watching a couple of films it was an early night. Yesterday we had yet another lie in (yey) before heading off to a local 2nd hand furniture place to check out some bookcases I'd seen made out of old pews, sadly they had gone meaning that yes I should have bought them when I saw them. We had a lazy lunch on the (freshly mown, looking very smart) lawn and then went strawberry and raspberry picking at our local farm peachcroft. Jam turned out to be born to pick raspberries (I thought I would have to drag him away) and we got a fair few nice strawbs as well (although the strawberry patch at home seems to be going great guns at the moment) returning home with our hoard we left them on the side for any 'wildlife' to escape (and used to opportunity to go see our friends Fi, Nick and little Alex before returning home and yes you guessed it making more Jam (we did the raspberry the strawberries have been frozen to process at a later date). Today at work I feel great totally rested and with a happy glowy feeling inside. Result!

And then we helped build a house

2011-07-05T04:37:00.000-07:00

One of the guys that Jam works with and his partner are building their own house (and have been living in a caravan in the grounds for 5 years while the house gets finished). Usually the only people working 'on site' are Greg and Jo, so once a month a team of people go over to help them get stuff done and this weekend I was one of those people! Some of you may remeber my previous house building exploits here, but I wasn't the only one James used to work as a construction chap so between us we hoped we'd be some serious use. The house stands on a largish plot of land in the village of Yatt. Originally there was a stone cottage there which Greg and Jo had intended to refurbish, intended that is until the chartered surveyor and morgage company came round & it was decided that a rebuild would be needed. Plans were drawn up & finally approved and work started taking down the old cottage. The new 5 bedroom house was built using mostly environmentally friendly or neutral materials (Jo works as an eco project manager so knows about this stuff) and the outside skelton of the house was then clad in the old weathered stones (each of which had to be repointed before being put on). Our job was to help with some of the more difficult areas of insulation in the loft (which was being insulated with sheeps wool which had to be fluffed to 10% before being used) and then putting more plasterboard up and helping with the damproof course in the bathroom (because that is not at all important in a room which has water in it all the time...). Greg and Jo were really great with showing us what needed to be done and answering our questions and we were well fed and watered on their sweetcorn chowder and selection of cakes (all washed down with builders tea naturally). It was really great to see the progress we made in just one day and although we were both pretty exhausted at the end of the day it was great to know that the jobs we did have helped the house to get a little nearer to completion. Despite the piles of dust we were both covered in we had lots of fun, so much in fact we are already making plans to go back in a couple of months. If you want to find out more about the build you can visit Greg and Jo's blog here.

Meeting up with old friends

2011-07-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I hopped on a train and headed to Cheltenham spa to meet up with my friends Michelle and Ziggy. Ziggy left work a couple of years ago to get married and move to Bristol with her new husband (so she got married, moved and got a new job as well as gaining a husband, major change) and Michelle (whose house we visited) is just about to come back off maternity leave after giving birth to the beautiful Holly (her second child after the equally fabulous Jacob). I haven't seen both of them for ages and a meet up was overdue especially as I had been unable to get to Ziggy's wedding after my train was cancelled (train company, you know what I'm thinking!). I'd love to say it all went to plan but I was delayed by an hour on the way there and then further on the way back. but upon reaching cheltenham we all met up with the bonus of having Michelle's husband Jez to chat to and Holly and Jacob to coo over. We all had a great time, lots of tea and a good deal of catching up was enjoyed by all (it was that nice thing that despite the fact we hadn't seen each other for ages it felt like no time had passed). The next meet up is being planned at the moment and hopefully we won't have to wait as long for this one!

Jam making jam/one man and his pan

2011-06-27T12:06:00.000-07:00

So this weekend (on the non hot day) we gathered a whole load of the redcurrants that had been adorning the back fence picked them, destalked them and the added them to a giant jam pan to let the Jam make jam. If you've never made your own jam, you are missing a treat, not only does it taste much much better but its also really easy. You start with a whole lot of fruit and 1Kg of sugar, a pan big enough and a cooker (some advocate a sugar thermometer as well but if you understand the term 'rolling boil' I think you can probably do without). Heat the fruit and sugar stirring together till the sugar dissolves into the fruit and then add 200ml of water (some add more but I like my jam fruity and also this amount doesn't upset the set of the jam). When it's coming up to the boil take the lids of your jars and put them on a baking tray and into the over at about 150c for 20 mins. After 10 mins of rolling boil take a small spoonful and pour onto a cold plate. Within 2 mins or so you should get a skin/set on it a bit like jelly. If it is still liquid boil for a few more mins and then try again with a new plate. If it does make like jelly you are ready to pour into jars (being v. careful as the jars will still be v.hot). Once divided into jars leave to cool down completely before putting the lids on and voila, like the Jam you should have jam (ours is technically jelly I believe as we strained all impurities out so it was clear and gem like, cause it is for presents and hey it looks pretty, awwww).

Stuff I have been accumulating recently

2011-06-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

I'm on a bit of a mission to save money to buy a new violin, this mostly involves some very thrify but fun dates (ice skating and ice cream anyone? or ready steady cook from the larder/freezer (this could have turned into a 3 course banquet so well stocked are my supplies). As usual the fates are taking no notice of my money saving intentions and are putting beautiful things under my nose... This beautiful (and hopefully working) oil lamp was in our local Oxfam shop (I was in there donating my old three quarter size cello) . I've been looking for an oil lamp for ages, but all the ones I came across at antiques shops were a bit twee and or small, this one however is perfect. Behind it is a scarf that my violin teacher brought back from the Fjords (he and his wife went on a cruise, I stayed home and looked after their budgie Guy, who enjoys whistling and listening to classic FM (?!?). Jam bought me this lovely purple houseplant (it was purple, reminded me of you (awwww)) when taking the photo I tried to get witchcat to look at the camera but she remains her usual blurry self. In searching various antique stores for oil lamps we came across these very cool steampunk bracelets made from old watches. How awesome are they? I want them all and the lady who makes them is local. This could be VERY dangerous. Last but not least last weekend we were invited over to a friends for dinner, as well as taking the usual nice bottle of red I decided to make some of my barmaids rum truffles. I fogot how much I enjoyed making sweets so have ordered a new entirely sweetie based recipe book. Have you spotted any bargains lately? Any new favourite items acquired?

My Jammy lies over the ocean, my Jammy lies over the sea...

2011-06-16T04:31:00.000-07:00

So this morning at some un-godly hour Jam left for France for an entire week of being manly and chopping wood with his dad in the depths of the French countryside (Sacrebleu!). Unfortunately as it is the actual depths they do not get internet access (booo) which means I'm on reduced rations of one very expensive text per day. You would have thought being me I'd have a detailed plan of stuff to do to fill the time, but alas with the impending exam I seem to be doing a lot of staring at music theory books and trying to aviod most serious revision. All is not lost however as on Sunday I've arranged to go to one of the very special Oxford coffee concerts with a friend to see the Carducci String Quartet (plus by Sunday my exam will be over and it will be a mere 4 days till Jam gets back). What about you my lovelies? What are you up to this weekend?

Stessed out woman at desk

2011-06-13T04:32:00.000-07:00

Hello lovely readers, one of my friends has just sent me the above image and post caption with a very sweet email to ask how I'm doing. It's a good point, this weekend comes complete with the horror of my latest music theory resit, the latest rung on the ladder to becoming a fully qualified and certified music teacher (hurrah). I've been doing all I can, practicing past papers, having some intesive tuition and doing as much cramming as I can stand, but I'm still pretty worried. This exam is the one I have to pass before I can go any further, the nice 'take it as many times as you like, it doesn't really matter its an extra to your school/work exams' are over & I need to get this one before I can go any further. Eeek! I guess this is the problem when a hobby mutates slightly into a possible career (Thoughts?). Trying to not panic, get lots of sleep and not forget to eat as well as not neglecting any of the other areas of awesomeness in my life (generally in the region of Jam, the band or wood school). I've got to say I'm finding moderation quite hard at the moment. Do any of you have any tips in the week leading up to an exam? Anything that I should/shouldn't be doing? When was the last time you were stressed at a desk?

A list for summer

2011-06-10T05:19:00.000-07:00

Lovely Elsie over at a beautiful mess (here) has put together a list of things she will be doing this summer (here). I love lists at the best of times so what better time to write some goals and have something to aim for (whilst still allowing copious time for lounging in the sun and eating ice cream obviously :-). This summer I will:

*Finish decorating the hall – this has been going on for ages and probably should have been finished ages ago, however the project seemed to double in size when we started stripping the wall paper, it’s anaglypta and boy is it thick/still pretty stuck) that’s off now though so it’s sugar soap washing the walls & then painting in a nice neutral (all the better for hanging my many masks on...).

*Buy a new hen house for Alice & Bella plus increase the flock – Alice wasn’t very well a couple of weeks ago, and should she have gone to the great chicken coop in the sky (which thankfully she didn’t, she’s much better now yey) Bells woul have been all alone, so I’m keeping my eyes open to acquire two more vampire chickens/arucanas (and yes I do intend calling them Esme and Rosalie) and upgrading their chicken residence.

*Pass my theory exam – it’s a music theory one, but I need to pass it in order to move onto the next stage of my diploma, being held on the 18^th June if you lovely readers could keep your appendages crossed that would be awesome.

*Have friends round for dinner – since the invasion of the moths (I have been asking about and apparently lots of local houses have them because of the warmth/dampness, this makes me feel slightly better), the social side of casa Rosa seems to have adopted quarantine measures (only authorised personnel in or out) before the end of summer I plan to exterminate the little blighters and have many more local friends round for a bite.

*finish the garden – this is well underway (see this post ) and with the addition of the awesome vine that Jam bought me, plus the ton of rain we’ve been having recently things are growing right to plan. Just a few little areas to tidy (got very excited as my *new* I’ve always wanted one but but now have one, passion flower has just come into bloom).

Bohemian Wednesday here again

2011-06-08T05:17:00.000-07:00

Bohemian Wednesday is here again! (the weeks seem to be going very quickly at the moment, not sure if it’s because my exam is looming). Anyway after a strong start last week, I decided to try and work in more work staples to this week’s look while retaining the bohemian spirit, the result of this experiment can be seen below, mostly the outfit was based around purples due to my fantastic new purple patterned tights (got to love them right? M&S but not cheap so am making major efforts not to ladder them).

I should (but hopefully don’t) look hung-over in this pic as we had our first extended writing is on the wall rehearsal last night (unfortunately Emily and her cello didn’t make it as in a dramatic moment her bridge split in two!). One and half hours of practicing and then another two hours down the pub of mainly chin stroking/trying to work out a group of songs to start arranging and practicing. I think Kevin’s homemade book cover sheet sums it up the current spirit quite well, it says the Tentative and almost Certainly to be replaced with Something Better TUNE AND SONG BOOK (how well he knows Sreeves and I :-)

The other reason for a little bit of celebration was that both bands (Stranger things happen at sea and the duo arrangement of writings on the wall) now have ep’s out & I got my first bit of fanmail this morning! Which I was pretty pleased about (I know I’m one of those people who likes feedback on everything so getting such nice comments was lovely). What about you readers? How is your week going?

X in Ox

2011-06-06T04:21:00.000-07:00

I have been waiting patiently for the new x-men film to come out for a while. When I was little I was a HUGE fan of the cartoons (& while I will acknowledge the films aren't quite as good) they tap in to fond memories of childhood of drawing a lot of characters and hoping to develop some superpower as I grew up. I REALLY wanted to go and see the new x-men: First Class film as it features quite heavily the beautiful James McAvoy. What I wasn't aware of however was that it also features my home, my one, my true, my Oxford (UK). Thanks to the roaming Paparrazi of the Daily Mail whose images are 'borrowed' here (thanks guys) we can see exactly what went down. Here is the aforementioned lovely JM standing beneath the bearded heads of the sheldonian with perfectly haired female companions (I'm not bitter it's just my hair would never do that, especially not in the rain...). Thanks to the equally awesome bleeding cool we can also see what the sheldonian set actually looked like). Unfortunately only the first part of the film is set in Oxford (I think the large country house which later becomes the home for the gifted is also supposed to be somewhere in the Oxfordshire countryside, in the later films it's def stateside). The main Oxford scene (which is rather awesome) is set in a (sadly fictional) pub called the Eagle (did the set people get confused with the Eagle and child one wonders?) JM is trying out a genetic chat up line on his fellow Oxford Students. Here is the pub in another bleeding cool photo (it should be on the corner of New bridge street by the copy of the bridge of sighs, alas it hath been CGI'd or it would have definitely had another regular (having said that my favourite Oxford pub is just around the corner). The film itself was very enjoyable, one of the 'new' x-men/woman I found really really cool (although Rogue remains top of my affections in those stakes). Charles Xaivier and Magneto were both played superbly my JM and the awesomely named Michael Fassbender (who is rumoured to be the new bond and is quite easy on the eye). Definitely a great addition to the fantasy cannon and well worth a watch.

Bohemian Wednesday's

2011-06-01T04:43:00.000-07:00

I feel I can type the terrible truth out here, I mean we are amongst friends... For work I am a conservative dresser. There I've said it! I think there are probably a couple of reasons for this, 1. Temperature - I work in a modernish, glass fronted box with air conditioning. You would have though this made it easier right? But no, your brain goes 'sunshine, wear a dress' then when you have got to work in said dress you remeber about the air con and spend the day freezing. 2. Practicality - even though I now don't have to survive the outside elements and the bus (many strange children trying to kill each other) my choice of clothes still has to allow for me to do my quite hands on editing job with the minimal amount of fuss (for comparison here I cite my marketing colleagues who although they work in the same building/floor as me always look polished and would be ready at any moment to hop up onto the catwalk if Kate Moss was having a bad hair day (I think maybe this is helped by the fact they don't lie awake at night worrying about their authors, but this fact has yet to be proved)). 3. Dress code - we have visiting editors to the office quite a bit. The boys have to wear a shirt and tie at all times and no one is allowed to wear jeans. I always try to look smart as being a bit more senior tends to mean you could be dragged into a meeting about anything at any moment but this tends to also mean my clothes are mostly drawn from the black/grey end of the colour spectrum.

SO because work is not that fun at the mo and because our boss is out of the office on Wednesdays I have decided to declare the day Bohemian Wednesday. My rules to myself (and anyone else who wants to join in (ohh go on)) are the following. Wear something that you wouldn't normally wear whilst still being work appropriate, extra points will be awarded for accessories and primary/bright colours. My first outfit is above (one of my other sillier resolutions was to wear more scarves and more of my own jewerly, both done in this outfit so a good start). The bohemian element of this challenge is also reflected in something else that I've been working on but all should be revealed shortly in the meantime it would be awesome if you would join me in raiding your closets and bring a bit of boho to the mid week mix!

Down at the bottom of the garden

2011-05-14T04:21:00.000-07:00

As the weather has improved myself and the Jam have been spending some time at home, admiring the pair of red Kites that seem to live around our house and sorting out the garden. First it was the really tedious weeding/clearing bit (with Jam seemed to love but with which I will not bore you) then came the adding new stuff/exciting bit. So with a clearish garden we started....

My mum is a bit of a green fingered wonder and very kindly supplied us with 3 lots of Potatoes, charlotte, an unspellable one and my favourite (because of the name) International Kidney. All of those as you can see are doing very well indeed. She also gave us a butternut squash and thanks to the wonder of the Internet/Twitter myself and folk legend James Fagan have begun squash racing (neither of us have grown them before, I checked the progress of mine last night & it's not looking good :-).

We grew from seed 3 different types of bean, my dad's tried and tested runners (prizewinner they are called, he has grown them every year since we were little), bollotti beans and some french beans as well. All the Raspberry bushes have been cleared (and are spreading like wildfire) as have the redcurrants, blackcurrants and rhurbarb (although I caved in and bought more strawberries after outs got killed by the frost, these are residing quite happily next to the Fig). The 'Rose Grove' (my tiny collection of Olives from which one day I will make oil) is also still doing well.

Fruit and veg pretty much sorted (we planted some chard, beetroot and onions in a spot by the house, but they haven't come up, so let us never speak of it again) I then turned my quite short attention span to flowers. This beautiful clematis was a survivor from a couple of years ago so it got repotted and made centre of attention next to a 'rescued' (read half dead but cheap in a garden centre) *%£^&$£% and a hydranger that I got last year. The major new additon was a beautiful passion flower (I've always wanted one but they are expensive!) which my mum's cousin very kindly put some money towards it (I've started experimenting with pressed flower cards again and one of the first of the new set is a passion flower thank you card for Auntie Adrienne). We've also just had a new garden centre take over where a old rose breeder used to live. The new garden centre were selling off the dwarf roses really cheap (£3, they used to be loads more expensive than that) so I bought two of those too, one is white but without a label, the other purple/blue and called rhapsody in blue. The plan is coming together but like most things it will be a while before it's completely perfect...

May Day comes again

2011-05-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

Most excellently this year May Day was on a Sunday, so Jam and I got up really early and drove into Oxford (after last years shennanigans with my bike getting a puncture and me getting stuck in the rain half way home in full Morris kit, I think this driving plan may well be the way forward. Jam is not a native Oxfordian (hailing as he does from Newbury via Wales) so was not aware of the many awesome local traditions we have. Once we had listened to the choir sing the traditional Magdalane hymn we headed for local pub the chequers (famed for it's terrible fake heraldry, but awesome cooked breakfasts) waiting there for us with cup of tea in hand was my partner in musical crime Chris Sreeves. The good Sreeves had saved us a table so we sat down to refresh and revive ourselves before heading out once more into the fray. Once more the hurly burly band (featuring the right hon Andy Letcher amongst others) were on the steps of the sheldonian, the jack of the green was wondering about, and for the first time Cry Havoc (my morris side) were to be seen in town having landed a paying gig at the botanical gardens. By about 10am the lack of sleep was beginning to become apprent so we headed home for sleep. Another great may day had by all!

I will survive!

2011-04-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

Writing on the wall (the duo with Chris Sreeves and myself in it) survived our first public outing this weekend with a 20 min set at the form a folk band showcase concert. (More info on http://www.makingmusic-southeast.org.uk/events/?29-Form and more on my experience here Alice is thinking of doing it again this year, so def the person to speak to if you want to get involved!). We ended up playing a mix of material, starting off with an unaccompanied ballad (found by Chris but involving me singing on my own without accompanyment, scary!) and then in no particular order, a balcan dance tune, a French tune, some jazz and few tunes that I'd written (I'm trying to upload 'the dots' onto a sharing site at the mo, when I suceed this blog will be the first place I post the link) as well as some good old English folk and a fairly famous cover.

It was a lovely day weather wise on Sat so I was fairly convinced no one would come (and indeed Jam didn't make it due to a terrible case of tonsilitus, ouch!) but we were lucky enough to have Chris' wife Julia, my former housemate Maddie & her boyfriend Jonny, my current housemate Dave and Fi, Nick, Alex and Alex's grandparents. So quite a sizable crowd. Although I play a lot and teach I've never been that fond of playing in front of people, so this year I decided to tackle the fear! We had a bit of nerves practice by playing a practice gig last weekend (exactly the same set as this weekend) but in front of Julia and James. We then faced the fear even more fully by asking for honest feedback from our nearest and dearest. Julia realised how nervous I was and very sweetly brought this to the gig for me (she owns a small antiques business and apprently saw this and thought of me).

We had an ex BBC soundman manning the desk and the concert was being recorded so the live recording may one day see the light of day. Also the ep which I did with the band I formed on the course (Stranger Things Happen at Sea) is at final mixing at the moment and should be available soon. We got some lovely comments after the show, most seemed to be about my singing (I sing round the house all the time but I've never really done it in front of anyone, so a good time to face that fear as well). Chris recorded a few takes of me mid song in practice (just so I could hear what I sounded like) and then sent me the following of what my voice looks like, pretty isn't it?!?

Photos of my first foray into menswear

2011-04-12T04:35:00.000-07:00

My good friend & workee colleague t'other Vikki has just got the photos back from her wedding. So here rocking hankies and cravats made by yours truely are the boys. Looking very smart don't you think? I'm going to give myself a little break from the sewing now for a bit, have lots of knitting projects to get started with , my wood project is going great guns (more on that in another post when I've recharged my camera). I also have a few other ideas (mostly to do with resin) that I've been putting off for a while now. This weekend Jam and I sorted out most of the back garden and planted most of our veg seeds (we were finally thwarted by lack of compost, school boy error on my part that one) but the top of my to do list is to get well, still sneezing/getting cold sores (usually happens when I'm tired/stressed so am going to make a concerted effort to give this period of illness the heave ho, not least because it's the form a folk band showcase thing this weekend, eeeek! My dad has however already put his cravat order in for his birthday, July is a while away yes?

Alice!

2011-04-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to watch Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland for a while now, I completely meant to see it at the cinema but alas life got in the way... Also there is that strange thing that when you live in Oxford with the Alice glass window in Christchurch and the Alice shop you tend to find yourself quite involved with the whole tale. So although 95.99 percent of me wanted to see it (Tim Burton's films being quite wonderful) a tiny bit of me felt protective of the original/story charcters. This obstacle was however removed by Jam who rented the DVD for us to watch while house/cat sitting for his dad. Marvolous! The whole thing was a beautiful conjouring, the world, the characters and the costumes being completely Burton while still retaining their essence from the original tale. Personal favourites were as ever the cheshire cat with the ever present smile, the mad hatter (what's not to love), Helen Bonham-Carter was magnificent as the red queen (before watching it I was unsure about her being computer generated, but her character is so strong you don't notice it after a while, and she gets all the best lines ('nothing like a nice warm pig' fabulous)) and bizarrely for the first time Alice. In previous versions I've always found her slightly annoying but I really liked the character in this version (possibly the fact that she gets mucky and turns down suitors rather than remaining pristine, not too keen on the ending, but I suppose you can't have everything). The rest of it absolutely worth a watch, so good in fact I may have to buy the dvd. Another Burton classic (and if you still don't believe me here is the trailer to convince you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9POCgSRVvf0)!

Remeber you're a Woomble!

2011-03-28T04:31:00.000-07:00

So this weekend was Collette's birthday, in a bizarre twist of fate one of Colette's closest friends from university was one of my close friends from college (we had no idea of this before we met, and indeed only found out via facebook sometime after). Me and the mutual friend (Joey) had been planning to go and see folk/idlewild legend Roddy Woomble and his band at the Union Chapel in London (that was the closest gig to Oxford) and happily that weekend was also Collette's birthday, so she came too! We travelled down on the Sun morning (a bit later than planned due to the hour coming off) and met up with the rest of the Nottingham uni crowd Pip and Liz. We then went to meet Joey and another college friend Stu (who is now a Russian translator) at a pub near the venue. Unfortunately for us Brazil were playing Scotland at football so there were drunk scots all over the pavement, not so good. We sought sanctuary in the gig venue and what a place! The Union Chapel as it's name would suggest is indeed a church half the time and accoustic gig venue outside church hours (stained glass, pews and everything). Roddy Woomble (lead singer of Idlewild, my favourite band in the world) was as always magical playing most of his new solo record and some previous material but most of the audience seemed to reserve their biggest cheer for the accoustic version of Idlewild's 'You held the world in your arms' (and why not, awesome song).

After the gig we headed back to Liz & Pips to crash out on their sofa, not wanting to arrive back in Oxford exhausted we booked the Monday off so the morning was spent wandering round Camden market (ad buying a few pretty things) and then heading over to meet Joey at work for lunch in the American Embassy (we had to have our passports and go through security to get in and the building is surrounded by armed guards but even more scary has a giant American Eagle on the top, eeek!) Once inside it was really really like America (they have a shopette selling American goods and lots of famous American paintings/photographs on the walls), so we ate at the diner and smiled when the man serving us told us to have a nice day now. All too soon (but not before posing beside a radom elephant) it was time to return to Oxford, but what a weekend :-)

How wonderful is Wood?

2011-03-06T04:11:00.000-08:00

So this weekend I went on the long awaited whittling course, it was run by the Northmoor trust who are the charity who manage local beauty spot whittenham clumps (more info on both these things can be found here www.northmoortrust.co.uk) . I've wanted to have a go as whittling for ages (I have a very talented uncle who makes chairs, bending the wood by steam generated from his aga, picture of the chair he made for me included below, isn't he brilliant?!?). Can't say I have any hope of competing with Uncle Julian any time soon but the course was aimed at those starting out so I signed myself up. Well what a day! In the morning we went off up the clumps with a couple of rangers, they explained briefly about the different types of wood, what natural characteristics we should be looking for for each of the different things we could make (I chose to attempt a spoon and a spurtle, it being my ambition to bespurtle the entirity of this isle). Then we each selected a few bits of wood (they regularly coppice so there was quite a bit of seasoned wood on the forest floor, I chose cherry for the spoon (which gets redder with age) and Hazel for the spurtle. We also manageed to find a baby deer in one of the piles, which bounded off as soon as it saw us). Wood gathered it was back to base where our guides lit a fire and explained the basics of cutting safely (always away from you) and handed out tools (a knife and a spoon gouge, that was pretty much it!). I've got to admit it was pretty addictive, and it was lunchtime before we knew what was happening (unfortunately I lost concentration at one point and cut myself, oops, managed not to bleed over my wood though, which is the main thing). The afternoon passed in much the same way and before I knew what was happening it was time to go home. My cherry spoon was certainly taking shape but I just couldn't stop staring at the colour of the wood, beautiful. The trust very kindly said I could bring some more home to practice on so I now have a small pile of wood waiting for a rainy day in my porch. The other brilliant thing that happened was that a chap who teaches woodwork turned up just as we were leaving. Turns out he teaches woodwork in the evening at a local school, which is literally just round the corner from me. He has given he his details so I'll have to see if I can arrange a more perminant time to whittle! I should also mention the title of this post was nicked from the wonderful telling the bees, a live version of the song can be found here, I think the chap has a point, it is pretty amazing!

A severe case of finish-itus

2011-03-02T04:16:00.000-08:00

This week it's been head down, finishing some of the projects I started a while ago. First up it was the wedding commision from my friend at work. seven cravats with matching hankies for her main men (I got a bit behind with this as the day I'd set aside to finish the hankies we had a plumber round to fix the hot water, instead he turned off the heating and my fingers were too cold to sew!). Here is just one set. All weekend I was looking after top dog Holly, but on Sunday night after 'walkies' I managed to curl up in front of countryfile and finish Amelia's blanket. Now I find myself with nothing that pressing to finish, or so I thought until I looked at the pile beside my bed and found the scarf I started for my brother last Christmas. Lets hope the finish-itus lasts and I can get that off the needles too (I'm going down to visit my nanna at the weekend & Kip is coming, getting it finished for then however may be pushing it... :-) P.S due to some highly useful knitting time whilst watching Scotland get trounced at rugby I did manage to get Kip's scarf finished. Here he is wearing the finished thing :-)

Alex

2011-02-25T04:18:00.000-08:00

In life, well for me anyway, things tend to go in cycles, you do a lot of one activity/see a lot of someone and then you don't do that thing/see that person for a while but as soon as you do it/see them again you wonder how you ever coped without it/them. This is true of the relationship I have with my best friend from Uni Alex (who's quite frankly georgous wedding featured on this blog last year). Alex and I met on our first day of Uni when my mum (for the purposes of this story imagine Mrs Bennett from the TV adaptation of Pride & Predudice, in fact for the purpose of any story imagine that, it's pretty close) decided he was a suitable candidate for me to marry dragged me across the hallway, pushed me into Alex's room and closed the door.

This act could have scarred me for life but fortunately Alex is awesome and had already put some music posters up, so we got chatting about music and the rest (as they say) is history. We later gained our slot on the university radio station and for a few very surreal months we had fans who would cheer us around the univrsity campus. When graduation arrived we hobnobed with Ian McKellan (yes pretty good) and then went our seperate ways, me to London to live the music dream (where I ended up at HMV Oxford Circus) and Alex stayed on in Lancaster where he met his wife Victoria (yep my mum was disappointed in a that could have been you kind of way). After leaving Lancaster Alex returned to (my) homeland of Manchester and as of January this year is a resident of London. Do you know how close that is people? An hour on the train, just one hour! We've just been to Mogwai together which was brilliant despite a lack of tea and cake (I dunno how this happened, see previous post for Mogwai write up) and more adventures in London/Oxford are being planned. So awesome to have Alex & Vikki time once again!

Mogwai Magic

2011-02-24T01:58:00.000-08:00

So yesterday (Wednesday) we went to see Mogwai, I got into them when I was a teenager, finding their somewhat seminal album Come On Die Young in a bargain bin in action records (go support them online here). I dunno what it was about the album but it really struck a chord with me. Later on in my life it soundtracked many late night essay attempts at uni and then when I was working at HMV and was asked for my top records it featured again in the shape of a handwritten review in the small but perfectly formed alternative section. Despite buying and listening to a heck of a lot of Mogwai between then and now I'd never managed to catch them live, imagine my excitement then when they announced a date at one of Oxford's newest (and most exciting venues), the Regal. Alex was duely summoned from London and we stumbled to the Regal. What follows is a summary of the evening using light/dark photos (I could try and describe how amazing Mogwai were, how much they made use of the quiet loud dynamic (definitely check out their latest offering the catchily titled Hardcore Will Never Die but You Will) but I don't think I could do it justice (having said that my friend Jack has had a stab at a proper review here, if you're interested :-)

A stitch in time

2011-02-20T04:49:00.000-08:00

So (or should that be sew? :-) all I seem to be doing lately is sewing for various different people (all of whom are lovely so that's okay). The first project was a delayed valentines present for the boy. He is a bit of a tea fiend so what better than to give him some hand made heart shaped teabags? Why not have a go yourslf all you need is some loose tea, a bit of muslin, needle & thread and quite a bit of time/patience. Cut out lots of hearts from the muslin (cause it is so thin you can do a couple or more at a time), it's worth making a template for this bit as that gets them a bit more uniform & also then you can make sure you have enough room to put the tea in. Put two together and stitch round them till you get to the top part of the heart, fill with tea & then stitch up the gap. After that you can add an extra bit of thread to the top so the tea bag can be fished out. I made the box for mine too, but I'm sure you could put these in all sorts of containers and give them as presents. I don't think he has used them yet so I'm still not sure if my workmanship will stand up but the finished things were really pretty (and I think he liked them so that's good :-).

Second project is for my friend David (we met as undergraduates at Lancaster and then when I came for this job guess who was already working here?), he and his wife have just had a little girl (Amelia, photo below, we think she is gonna be a bit of a heartbreaker). so I decided to crochet her a blanket, nothing too fancy just double crochet all the way homemade and big enough to keep her warm/wrapped up from those summer chills. When I started we weren't sure whether she was going to be a boy or girl so I wanted to do purple, but there were no nice colours in that so I went blue instead but I'm sure she'll be able to carry it off.

Final project is my latest commission. After the sucess of Lisa's wedding dress I've been approached to do several more bits for weddings. This latest one is my first foray into menswear making the hankies and cravats for a friends wedding (so the men match the bridesmaids, aww matchy matchy). We (in this instance me and physicist/should have been a dressmaker, Malcolm) managed to figure out a pattern so now it's just the hard work of sewing the things. The material is lovely (green but in some lights yellow, some lights purple) but it does seem to be having a tendancy to shed everywhere. Also as usual Mabel is trying her best to convince me that she should be the one doing the making (she has always been facinated by my knitting/crocheting (she likes the wool and has the tendancy to try and pick it up in her mouth and run away with it, not so helpful when you are doing it, especially if you haven't noticed, she also used to have her own stash/nest under my bed. I had to raid it and take most balls back however as she has quite expensive tastes). She also thinks the sewing machine is magic, and just sits and watches (which is quite nice if it's 2am the garment has to be finished by 8am and your housemate has gone to bed with earplus in (yes it's happened before)). Hopefully we won't be in for a repeat experience on this one, I've been trying to stick to a schedule and have been allowing myself some breaks so I don't get tired and have to redo stuff. The other definite advantage is on this partiular commision although there is still no money (one day) we are swapping crafts, so I get a cross stich done for me in exchange for my labours (I have patience yes but not the amount needed for that :-)

Valentine and Jon Boden

2011-02-14T05:36:00.000-08:00

Today at work I got the most wonderful suprise, I was called down to the post room about 9.30 and there waiting for me was this beautiful red rose, a little box of pretty chocolates and a card too from this secret admirer. When I came down and Dean handed me the box I honestly thought he had emailed the wrong Vikki (it happens all the time) but after 3 mins of debate and Dean making me read the address label it turned out he had indeed got it right and I had to apologise. To my not so secret admirer than you it was beautiful but you shouldn't have (I will get revengae at some pont :-).

Valentines evening I had made plans for a couple of months ago, Jon Boden and his remnant kings were playing a gig in Keble (one of the Oxford colleges) as Jon's father is bursar there. My hot date for the evening Janey unfortunately fell ill at the last moment so I went on my own (*sob*) I'm really glad I did however as it was a really brilliant gig. Jon has been doing a project called a folk song a day for some time now, it's exactly what it says on the tin, Jon will be posting a folk song a day for the whole of 1 year. The audience from last night's gig were invited to join him in a sing along at the end of the show (we even got a practice run during the show, you can't say farer than that). You can hear the result here http://www.afolksongaday.com/2011/02/14/cupids-garden/ plus there is a fabulous video of Jon performing my favourite of his songs (it's a cover of an old croony one, seemed apt for Valentine's) here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ-kdOQZPLU

Finally as well as Mr Boden there were two other major stars of the show for me, two edison phonographs, the pre cursor to the record player these play music captured on wax cylinders. Jon's current album (the one this album is promoting) is called songs from the floodplain. It's an album based on the idea that in the not too distant future humanity will be in crisis because the electricity/oil will run out. On the album this leads to people rediscovering and putting value back into folk traditions as well as digging out fabulous old technology. Throughtout the set last night the two phonographs played background music and sound shots (Jon has even named them Edith and Eric, awww). Out of pure curiosity I had a quick look if you could still get hold of them, you can but they are pretty rare. I think I might have lost my heart to this one however this is a edison red gem circa 1905. I think it would look lovely in my house sadly I don't seem to a spare £700 but I think we can all look at it and see how pretty it is!

Recording at last

2011-02-07T04:20:00.000-08:00

So yesterday at 9.30 in the morning (that's on a Sunday morning, suffering for your art or what?!?) the bad met up at the SAE insitute Littlemore to record the tunes that we'd been playing. Our band in general is a bit of a nighmare from a sound perspective, we have the flute and violins doing most of the melodic stuff and then the accordian/bass/drums giving it some bass (so very different sound needs). Originally the plan was to put us all in seperate rooms with headphones on, however we've only ever played in the same room as each other (and none of us apart from Loz our drummer have ever recorded before) so it was decided we would be recorded 'live' and Loz would be put in his own room (so the bleed from the drums didn't effect the recording of the rest of the instruments).

After the organised sessions finished there was a definite practice plan but due to illness/holidays etc we hadn''t practiced as a band since before Christmas, which wasn't ideal. The plan was to lay down three tracks all containing two tunes. We started with the one we were weakest on which I'm still not sure was the right way to do it as we got really demoralised because it wasn't going to plan. It took us 3 hours to get a take that we were anywhere near happy with. So this meant that we had limited time on the remaining 2 tunes but that they were both pretty much nailed on the second takes as we were a lot more familar with them (good that we didn't spend ages trying to get those perfect and then run out of time for the 3rd one). The actual recording experience was really fun (it's always nice to get the entire band together anyway) but what I felt a bit weird about was that one of my tunes was being recorded (something that I wrote in our living room is now going to be put on a cd, it exsists as a recording, weird huh?).

I was really nervous before the recording, but the sound engineers were really awesome & reassuring & moved the microphone out of my eyeline so I wouldn't be freaked out by it, it also really helped that the rest of the band were nervous too. We've been told the mastering will take about 2 weeks then we should get a copy. The next massive challenge is getting ready for a 20 min slot at Oxford Folk festival (we are on the second stage on the Sat afternoon, I'm actually on twice as I'll b perfoming with stranger things and then again as part of a duo). Listening back to the recordings in the control room I think we have a few consistency issues to address as a band (some of it was brilliant, other bits were a bit touch and go) but at least we know what we've got to work on...

Black Swan

2011-02-02T04:12:00.000-08:00

Went to see Black Swan last night, what can I say? Really brilliant film although definitely disturbing moments. I went to see it with my friend Maddie and another friend then asked me to see it with them, before watching it I thought I could probably go and see it twice but I think quite a bit of the impact may have been lost second time around. I also found it quite difficult not to shrink the film/apply the enirity of my 1st year theory & Criticism notes to it (Freud, the double and all that gang). Very beautifully shot though, Natalie Potman is stunning and I would thoroughly recommend it if you are a fan of the arty (whisper it slightly pretentious) film.

Burns baby burn

2011-01-26T04:48:00.000-08:00

This year I have to admit Burns night (or an excuse to pine for Scotland whilst drinking copious amounts of Whisky and listening to the staggeringly awful 'Pride of Scotland' (a double cd cause one disk just wasn't enough...)) crept up on me slightly. It was only last weekend that I realised it was on Tuesday and I hadn't yet made any plans. Last year we went all out with haggis, neeps & tatties, flags you name it. Sadly most of the haggis was left untouched so this year I decided to ditch the dinner element and try a different type of celebration. I was feeling literal at the weekend (and had just done a big prune of the trees in our garden) so I decided a bonfire (with hot toddies to warm those watching it) was in order. Proving that the best events are all down to the planning most of my friends already had plans (oops) but those that didn't (Lea and Rich) came round armed with beer, and our lovely neighbour Malc came to help me start the fire (I was a bit worried as it had been raining on and off all day). As the pics show we got it going okay in the end (by using most of the junk mail from the last month as firelighters) and had our own little scottish inferno. After the fire had gone out we headed back inside for some more warming whisky and tea and cake. I've still got quite a few tree clippings left so we might have another bonfire this weekend if I can find a few spare hours between practices.

A bit of reflection...

2011-01-25T04:07:00.000-08:00

I guess I owe a bit of an apology to this blog. My posting over the last couple of months has been, if anything, sporadic. It probably didn't help that my camera charger broke (hence no pictures) and that I came down with the fluyest of flus before Christmas but life is rarely perfect. I hope now that I've recharged both my camera and my creative batteries I will once again be haunting these parts a bit more regularly (best friend Fi and I had a bit if a chat re the whole blogging thing and I reached a few blog/life conclusions).

My blog will never be as pretty as some of those that exsist, it's a fact, I'm not going to beat myself up over it, I could make it like that but I haven't really got the time and I don't really think it's supposed to be all about appearance (especially at the expense of content). To have something pretty was not why I started this blog, it was meant to be more like a creative look what I did/found/a recording place whereas for other bloggers I can see appearance has a lot more significance (and that;s great, I love looking at pretty things why should cyberspace be any different?). I'd love for every post to look perfect but at the end of the day if my posts help to convey even a tiny bit of what I'm trying to communicate to just one person then the time it takes me just to do my own entries (they still take a while) will have been worth it.

With this in mind this year on this blog I'm going to try and be less militant with myself (you must post) and also share more of the things that inspire me as an artist (I still feel uncomfortable using that term, but it's the best I can come up with at the moment)/writer and musician as well and trying to record my own thoughts/capturing my own feelings and times.

So here they are my current loves/slight obsessions...

This bangle I completely adore (in fact I was so helpless in the face of it's gothic beauty I accidentally bought it (oops)) it's from this fantastic etsy seller www.etsy.com/shop/ParAmourDesign . My friend Lindsay correctly identified the Edgar Allen Poe subtext but I stumbled across it while I was doing some research for some resin projecs of my own (it's amazing/dangerous what you can do with a google image search...)

TV show - Being Human - A werewolf a ghost and a vampire in a houseshare in Bristol. Okay they are no longer technically in Bristol (side thought - having visisted for work I think I can see why everyone likes Bristol so much, it reminded me a lot of the homelands of Manchester, but that could be down to the fact it was raining thin rain when we visited). First episode of series 3 was aired on Sunday, it watched it with cautiom as I loved the first two series. I'm not going to give you a spoiler but I will say I thought it was as good as the previous series and as an individual episide I found it very very good indeed. You can watch it on i player here www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y3756 (*joy*).

And last but by no means least a combined audio/visual treat. One of my favourite local bands Message to Bears made this stunning music/video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn8mc-_kaOQ

(the song is called Mountains). I think I love everything about it/it just confirms their brilliantness. Directed John Owen - Slate7films.com. Featuring Susanna Herbert and Steve Dolton. Bear myspace www.myspace.com/messagetobears

Introducing Stranger things happen at Sea

2011-01-13T04:14:00.000-08:00

So here we are! A post about the fantastic band we managed to form on the making music supported 'form a folk band' course. The course took place over 6 weeks and people came from as far a field as Reading, Cambridge and Swindon. Although the main bulk of money was being provided by making music South East each individual had to contribute £60 towards the cost of hiring the SAE and recording. The SAE itself is a fantastic building in Littlemore (just outside Oxford). It was a mental hospital but has been bought by a music college and kitted out with all the latest recording equipment (plus a very beautiful piano, it was lovely, more info on the institute and their courses www.oxford.sae.edu/en-gb/home).

Each week our facilitator (and founder of Moreland Morris) Cat Kelly brought along a different folk tutor to help us with different aspects of our playing. The schedule looked like this 1st week Nick Cooke (in the photo, he is really sweet and told me the tune I wrote for the first week was excellent, I melted), week 2 Paul Satin (sadly I missed this as I was in Lismore), week 3 Pete flood (Benbe rhythm, scary), Week 4 - Will pound , week 5 - Jim Moray (regular readers of this blog will know I heart him, when put into the same room I was tempted to run away) week 6 - Maclaine Colston (who was (imhu) the best/most helpful of the lot, although I was a bit ill on this week so didn't play that much).

On the first week no one knew each other so we formed into groups with others we liked the look of. I managed to get lucky with an awesome flute player (Liz) and guitarist (Danny) (as well as my long suffering music friend Kevin who joined me on violin). A few weeks later we added to our merry mistrels with a melodian player (Aileen) and her son (Loz) who's a drummer (Loz's favourite band phrase "you've really got to give it some rice". LOVE IT!). The name came about as now the course is over (*sob* what am I going to do with my Sunday mornings now?) we are down to have some recording time (whih they needed a band name for, it was my suggestion and meant to reflect on the somewhat random way in which we came together) and possibly be entered into consideration for playing Oxford Folk festival (can you imagine??? How awesome would that be???) but I am trying not to count my chickens so I'll keep you posted...

Graffiti

2011-01-10T10:55:00.000-08:00

Here it is the hotly anticipated press shot of myself and Sreeves new musical project, a duo, called writing on the wall, we shall be playing English tunes (half of which were written by me, always interesting, bars sometimes have more of less beats than needed, key signatures become confused...). Chris chose the name (apprently it has Belshazzars feast links, he has yet to explain to me what these are), I chose the look (I'm calling it the pre raphalite gypsy, think raggle taggle but beautiful) and the blank wall was borrowed from Trish & Malc (we tried taking photos at home but there was some kind of chintz in every shot, such are the perils of this house... :-). Chris has also written a very good (but quite short & to the point) bit of blurb for us : WRITING ON THE WALL are Vikki Rose (fiddle/vocals) and Chris Sreeves (accordion/keyboards/percussion). Vikki on Chris: ” the much imitated but never outdone musical maverick…my partner in crime”. Chris on Vikki: “if you want a job done, get Vikki to make you do it yourself”. Expect the unexpected!

I find it hard to believe I have only known Chris 3 months, he seems to have got the measure of me quite well already (plus he bought me back a book when he went to stay in the Keates/Shelley house in Italy, I was very miffed I coudn't go to but presents always help soften the blow :-)

Gratuitous shots of witchcat

2011-01-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

Dave my housemate bought a camera in the January sales and short of a professional model guess who he's been testing it on???? Yes you guessed it the witchcat gets everywhere. The bottom shot was also taken on a cold day a week or so ago when Mabel was snuggling in the cover. All together now
Awwwwww who's a pretty girl?

Santa run & carolling

2010-12-12T04:47:00.000-08:00

So this weekend was the big one for me, after not much training at all (no really I went down with the flueyest of flu's when I was supposed to be practicing running, I wasnt even playing football, yes it was that bad). I did what any normal person would do on a Sunday morning, got up at 8am dressed myself as a santa and then joined housemate Dave and 1, 000 other crazy people running round the centre of Oxford dressed as Santa (I've got to say each and every single one of them had a slightly crazed look in their eye...). The course marshalls as you would expect were dressed as elves and the good people of Oxford had turned out in force to wish us well and cheer us on. Before the race started the DJ's from Jack FM put us through our paces with a quick warm up (it bore quite a strong resemblance to the YMCA but was needed, although the sun was out (thank goodness would have been miserable if it had been raining) it was still pretty cold). Quote of the morning had to be 'come on santas get your beards on, they aren't chest warmers you know' quite (I could see why quite a few people were taking theirs off, running in a beard, a fake one I must stress, is more difficult than you think!).

Team T and F (my work team who you can sponsor here http://myartexglobal.com/TeamPage.aspx?TSID=17888&Lang=en-CA) all made it round safely. I had agreed to meet Dave after the race and he was pressing me for what time I thought I would finish in (he wanted to get home). I said I thought I'd def be done in 45 mins (Dave did it in 12 mins last year and as I am significantly slower than him at seemingly everything I thought I'd err on the side of caution). I needent have worried however as I finished in the quite respectable time of 23 mins (imagine if I had done some training! Next year hopefully). We got back home and congratulated ourselves heartily (well Dave did, I grabbed a quick cup of tea then shot off to show all our neightbours my amazing outfit).

After a quick change (and because there really is no rest for the wicked) I grabbed by new on loan viola James and headed out for a spot of carol singing round Oxford. I was one of only three musicians the other two being Chris Sreeves (who I met on the folk course & who's idea it was) and one of my pupils Steph. We had six carols arranged by Chris and a run of pubs to visit (Chris had organised it the week before so we didn't have to waste time seeking permission or anything like that). Our 5 was made up with Emily (who works for BBOWT and who I first met whilst volunteering) and Ellie who had spotted our plea for singers and had come along not knowing any of us (that is the spirit) by the second pub (and thanks to a warming drink in the first) the gang had bonded nicely and I think it;s fair to say the performances got better as the evening went on (and more pubs were visited/more alcohol was consumed. Steph has a photo somewhere (taken on her phone) but I fear that may not do the evening justice. We visited 7 pubs during out evening and raised £103 for the NSPCC, special thanks must go to my merry/mad minstrels and also all the pubs we were lucky enough to visit (special mention must go to the Bear who provided us with drinks on the house for entertaining their patrons). Next year we plan to build on our sucess but with a bigger party or carollers/carols, different charity and more pubs!

Halloween with T and Alice

2010-11-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

This year for halloween I got invited to my friends Alice & T's halloween party with a difference. Instead of the usual slightly lame fake gore they had picked the theme of woodland animals, the invitations were issued by Alice who as well as being a sucessful publishing type (working for one of our competitors no less :-) is a fantastic graphic designer (all the pictures on the walls of their house attest to this and should you need more proof Alice is responsible for the design of the Oxford Folk Festival). I spent quite a while working out what I could go as until a friend of ours got given a brace of phesants. Bagging myself a fair share of feathers I though girl phesant was clearly the way to go. Here is me in my costume, but I think you'll agree I was very much outdone by the other guests (especially Alice and her twin sister Mary whose handcrafted masks were nothing short of amazing... ). Here's what went down, extra attention must be paid to the themed food which was AMAZING!

The finished outfit, I should point out the masking tape was holding on more feathers until T''s dog despatched those for me :-)

T and Alice, our hostesses with the most

Frog man, I have no idea who this man is but hey I liked the hat...

the general malay

Janey in her owl costume

I'm not sure this chap got the invitation, or I'm looking in the wrong woodland...

Themed food

Hare and badger

Alice proves she has seen Donnie Darko...

Sisters, sisters there never were two such devoted sisters etc etc

A weekend with Holly

2010-10-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend Dave wanted to whisk me away to a national trust property (his membership runs out at the end of October so he's trying to see as much as he can in the time he's got left) sadly I had to decline as I had/have loads of theory revision to do (my exam is on the 3rd November, that is scarily close) and also I had agreed to look after our neighbours dog Holly while they went to check out wedding venues with their daughter (def not a doggy outing). Holly has featured quite heavily on this blog before but just in case you need a recap here she is (pretty much all the shots of her are like this, she doesn't hold still enough for you to take a photo, ever). Trish dropped her off Saturday morning, I had a few house chores to do so Holly amused herself by trying to find Mabel (I let her cause Mabel was out, Holly loves cats but is a bit scared of Mabel who sadly does not feel the same way about dogs). Saturday afternoon with it looking like it might rain any second we set off. There is a small nature reserve called the Abby Fishponds behind my friend Fi's house (random link the reserve is also maintained by BBOWT, or the newt people as I've taken to calling them) Holly and I made out way through there, across the small built up bit in the middle and onto the bigger reserve Radley lakes (these are actually disused quarries that have been turned over to make a reserve). Holly may look like a normal cocker spaniel but actually she is half water spaniel. I tend to forget this fact until I get her near water, she goes nuts! In fact on Saturday I didn't even know we were next to the stream until there was a large splash. Holly swam and swam and swam. The rain came and dampened our spiriits and our clothes a little but then when we got alongside the Thames the sky cleared and mthe sun broke through (just in time to dry holly off, although she had already shaken the worst of the water/flora and fauna off all over me! We returned home, Holly looking a state, me looking possibly slightly worse & spent the evening revising. I stayed over with Holly and slept really well (funny how a large warm furry thing helps) and then in the morning was awoken by Philip their cockrel. Having Holly for the weekend was great fun but I'd forgotten how much more involved dogs are & I was really tired by Sunday night (and kind of wanted to be on my own for a bit). I think Mabel can be safe in the knowledge there will not be the tiny patter of puppy feet any time soon.

Volunteering... the return

2010-09-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

With September once again truly upon us it was yet again time for my esteemed employers to release the workforce from the office for a day to complete tasks for this years chosen charities/strike a blow back for everything that is good in the world. This year there were three choices, repairing some steps for the local community, repairing walkways and fencing on a local nature reserve or building a hibernacula for the greater crested newts. Although I would have loved to have done all three a choice had to be made & blatantly I went for the newts. Our day started at 9am having completed our short walk from our office we arrived at the BBOWT Sutton Courtney education centre. The building itself is brilliant and if any of you are local I cannot encourage you enough to go and visit during one of their events (more info on the events here http://www.bbowt.org.uk/more_events26.asp) the building does all sorts of clever things like collect rainwater and is made from reclaimed materials. After a cup of tea (some things will never change) we were given a quick briefing on health and safety and Rod (who was the main ecological advisor for the project) explained a bit about the newts. The site we were working on was a new pond which had to be dug as the two older ponds on the site had been taken over by stickleback fish (they eat the newt larvae and so were now unsuitable habitat). Rod explained that if any of us were lucky enough to find a newt we should call him as they are a protected species (only licensed people like Rod can handle them) and also the reserve keeps records of their newts (interesting fact, if you turn a greater created newt over they have a yellow belly with black markings, these markings are unique to each individual (like fingerprints on humans) so by taking photographs it is easy for the team to monitor newt numbers). The volunteers from work were divided into 2 groups. The first was to clear a tree that was overshadowing the pond (this handily also provided the base materials for the hibernacula) the second was to bring earth from a spoil heap outside the grounds to cover the pond liner and finally cover the completed hibernacula (2nd interesting fact, although it’s called a hibernacula newts don’t actually hibernate, they just get a lot less active during the winter months, so this was to give them somewhere to get away from predators). The two groups got on with the task in hand and then swapped over half way through. By lunchtime the hibernacula was built and covered and so all that remained was to finish covering the pond liner and put in some natural plants round the edges and under the water. After lunch Rod took the opportunity to show us around the rest of the reserve. By this point the team had seen pictures of greater crested newts and learnt quite a bit about them but still hadn’t seen one. We were all pretty eager to see if we could spot one round the other ponds. Sadly we didn’t find one but Rod had a hunch about where one might be hiding. His insider knowledge paid off and here he is the true star of the show Chris Packham the newt (I got very very excited about this point). Rod weighted and photographed Chris’ belly and then dropped him into a bucket of the local pond water till we’d completely finished working. Excitement over it was then back to the spoil heap to finish the days work. By 4pm the job was done and as an official end to the day Rod placed Chris Packham the newt into his new hibernacula (affectionately known as newt towers by the builders). All in all an excellent day (although I was exhausted after it) and a very worthy cause. To find out more about BBOWT you can visit their website here http://www.bbowt.org.uk/

Lisa's wedding reception

2010-09-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

And so after the ceremony and the photo's outside in the sunshine (the weather worked out perfectly, thank goodness) we went into the barn to sit down to the wedding breakfast and let our hair down. Lisa has booked local celidh band the Gekoes and I'd offered to call for the wedding guests.

I'd dug out 10 or 12 dances although I think we only got through 8 or 10 (always nice to have some in hand and sometimes certain dances don't work that well, we were really lucky in the barn however as the space was perfect. Here are some of the guests getting their groove on...

By the end of the evening everyone was on the floor. It was a wonderful wedding congratulations Lisa & Crispin!

(All photos as in the previous post copyright Mel Cunningham)

Lisa wedding

2010-09-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

So after many hour of sewing (and I mean many) I give you the beautiful bride

Lisa is so beautiful I could have sent her down the aisle in a binbag but I think I managed to go one better than that. I would have loved to have done the bridesmaids dresses as well but practicalilties (like me being in full time employment) meant that wasn't an option. The dresses that Lisa chose were really lovely .

And so all dressed and ready we headed down the aisle

Dearly beloved...

Mr & Mrs

The dress in all its glory

This is Lisa's mum, she was close to tears all day, lovely lady

back of the dress all in order

The creative wedding team, I made the wedding dress and called the ceilidh and Mel took these amazing photos :-)

fitting the bodice

2010-08-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

The bodice is the last bit of the dress to be done, I made this tulle to check the fit, as I suspected the bodice needed extending a bit to fit over the skirt. This fit will probably alter again once the boning is in so I also factored in some 'wiggle room' . I wrote the piece numbers on just so I was sure which bits to alter and how much each side would need to be adjusted. I've got all the measurements and the revised patterns cut out now so I guess I should go and cut them out (scary).

Another year passes...

2010-08-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

So today it was my birthday! I took the day off work and treated myself to a long lie in (alas no bath as our hot water cylinder is still broken), followed by the classic posh breakfast scrambled eggs and smoked salmon brown toast and a little glass of prosecco (just a little one) before sorting through my cards (got this beautiful cat necklace from Nichi, a girl after my own catty heart). There wasn't however much time for dawdling I had to get dressed and into Oxford for the extended tour of the Bodleian Library (last year I did the short tour with Nichi which was brilliant but I've been wanting to do the extended one for a while, plus the library is just about to have a major refurbishment so I wanted to see it before all the work was done). The tour was brilliant and we got to see a lot of behind the scenes stuff which just convinced me that the Bodleian is just as wonderful as I suspected! After my tour I went round the second hand bookshops in Oxford (which was really nice as it was nice & quiet what with everyone else at work) I didn't find the book I was looking for however so I decided to spend my book money on tea and cake in the Ashmolean in their vaulted cafe. After that it was back home to open a few more bottles of prosecco and prepare for my friends coming round. I got some lovely presents, some fantastic lilly's (not just beautful but a fantastic smell as well). Sam bought me some girly films and more fizz (always dangerous), Dave bought me a book and red wine (there is a theme emerging here, can you spot it?). But I don;t think anyone will mind me admitting that my favourite present (by a country mile) are my two new cuddly additions. The girls are a present fro Trish & Malc, they are Arucanas, an American breed of chicken who lay blue eggs. Readers of this blog will know I've been after some chickens for ages, so my birthday presents are much appreciated. I have named them Alice and Bella after the vampires from Twilight as they are a very pale lavender/grey, definitely pale and interesting. What a lovely day!

dinner with Nicola

2010-07-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

Work has been manic of late with not much let up so this Friday my friend Nicola and I headed to Oxford for drinks and a bit of dinner.

The head of the river is very popular student hang out we walked from Nicola's flat all the way along the towpath till we reached it.

And then on to wagamammas :-)

Yum!

Chickens of doom

2010-06-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

yes it is that time of year again, our lovely ex-landlady (and now neightbour) Trish and her crazy physics husband Malc have headed off to sunnier climbs leaving me to look after the 'chickens of doom' for two weeks. This doesn't sound that horrific until you hear three facts 1. last time I looked after them I had to take one of them to the vets to be put down, I cried alot (despite the fact that she was not my pet), 2. They have a cockrel called Philip, Philip has been known to become upset if you spend too long 'looking at his birds' (you have to say that in an Eastenders accent, them's the rules). When I say upset what I mean is he will charge at you and try to attack your legs (yes this is why the other neighbours don't look after them, as you have to catch Philip of an evening and take him into the house, otherwise he wakes the neighbours, being a cockrel he's a pretty big bird...). 3. (This was the only thing I didn't know). Trish recently aquired some ex-battery hens, when 'the girls' arrived they were in a pretty bad state, they had virtually no feathers and they couldn't cluck properly anymore. Thanks to the loving care of Trish however their plumage is now growing back and they can make some sort of attempt at a cluck, however they still have flashbacks to their battery days... The first day I was looking after them was a Saturday, it had been a tough week so I set my alarm for 9, at 7.09 I got a phone call from Trish (aboard the ferry) apologising for waking me but the chickens must be let out now! I repeated, what now? Down the phone and she stated that yes, the girls have to be let out as soon as it is light otherwise they think they are back in the factory. So (because I am lovely/guilable) I got dressed and headed on round there and have been doing some version of this ever since (on work days it's kind of fine as I'm up at 6am anyway, on the weekends however I've just been putting a mac on over my nightie and shoving my wellies on then going back to bed afterwards. They are away for two weeks, something tells me it's gonna feel a good deal longer...

The Wonderful Wedding of Wood

2010-06-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

So last weekend my sheerly superb friend from uni Mr Alex Wood (yes you should know him by now he has appeared on this blog many, many times) got all grown up and MARRIED to his long term girlfriend Victoria. Nichy and I were in attendance and we had a great day after an early emergency ( I arrived at the wedding 2 hours early only to find that Nichy had given me the wrong station and was waiting for me in her car 40 miles away, oh dear), I think this slight crisis worked out worse for Nichy who had to get changed in her car in the car park of the wedding venue (I'm sorry sweetie) while I got to spend the time chatting with Wood and making myself look presentable... (It's getting away with stuff like this that convinces me my friends love me). The wedding itself took place in Hagley Hall in Worcester (http://www.hagleyhall.com/) and then we all trooped off to a nearby hotel (where we were staying) for the reception. The speeches were all excellent, I particularly enjoyed Alex's (which I got a mention in, how awesome is that?!?, he thanked me for excellent guidance (?!?) and for not hitting his father the first time I met him (his dad was really patronising and told me to 'go and put the kettle on, there's a good girl' accompanied with hand tap, grrrr )). Unfortunately one of our party fainted at about this point so we dragged him to our room and made him lie down. After the speeches came the dancing, we were really lucky to get put on a table with some awesome people so after a slow number with Alex (who looked loads and loads and loads taller than me cause I'd taken my heels off), and a jazzy one with Chris (who I used to work with at the sugarhouse, seen here mid waltz) the girls and I burnt that disco down (there shall be no photographic evidence of that here, however I have been informed that there is both photographic and video evidence in exsistance, heaven help us!). Our other friend from Uni Pete turned up with his wife (they are all at it!) Laura and we crashed out on the sofas and had a good catch up. Nichy and I were staying the night so we went back to our room pretty early (to drink tea and talk about boys :-). I got back pretty late on Sunday but I've got to say it was a completely awesome wedding/weekend & so great to catch up with all my uni friends and see Alex so happy.

Chelsea flower show - the latter part

2010-05-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

So after fully exploring the wonders of inside we moved outside to look at the show gardens. Almost immediately I was confronted by this sight. Yes dear readers it is ethnobiologist and herbal fox James Wong (he is the one in the black shirt for the uninitiated), reclining gracefully in his hut/thing in the middle of his Chelsea garden (I have to be truthful at this point and say I didn't really like the garden, it was pretty much all tree ferns and they have never really done much for me, I'm sure though the design was fabuous though despite the lack of flowers...). Anyway I made mum stand for a good 10 mins while I just looked longingly from behind the fence, then we went off to find other wonders. My favourite small garden (regular readers of this blog will probably be able to fathom why) was this one, planted with all bee friendly flowers (pay attention Monsieur Wong, flowers) and with this fab/but quite scary quote from Einstein which is pretty much what the book I've just finished reading (a world without bees) is all about. After we had done all the gardens we got down the the serious business of looking round the stalls. I had by this point already reserved by orchid but if money were no object I could have quite happily bough a few things like these (yes fake bits of castle to make it look like you have ruins in your garden. How cool are they? They did look quite realistic so I guess if at some point I have a couple of grand to spare but not the millions required for the castle I could just get this man to build me a replica (kind of defeats the point though doesn't it?). The other things I was really taken with were the garden ornaments, they had the most beautiful metal trees that were actually fountains, this weeping willow had water trickling all the way down over it's branches. It was really really pretty and there were loads of them all different types of tree, but the weeping willow was definitely my favourite until we found this. It's the ringing tree from the story of Hansel and Gretel (where it resides in the garden of the witch). It too had water that ran down and filled up the cups casing them to knock the bells and make ringing noises everytime they were full and tipped to empty. By this time it was quite late on in the day, we had sat out on the lawn in the rain with an umberella eating our lunch and looked round all the different parts. Soon it would be time for the bell to be rung and the mad scramble of people trying to buy the plants you couldn't put reseves on would start. We were just walking back to pick up my Orchid (walking pas the garden of Wong) and I happened to check to see if he was still there. There was alas no sign of James or any of the others in the garden and that dear readers is because he was stood by the pathway fishing leaves out. It was at this point I made a noise simular to Mabel when she can see somethng she wants but can't get to and before I knew what was going on we were beside him, mum asking knowledgeable questions about tree ferns supplied by me (knew that environmental science A level would come in handy at some point) as a prologue to this (I'm aware I look delerious in the photo, I was, the only words I managed were "I think you are awesome", to be fair however that was an improvement on aggrrhhhhhh so shouldn't be too harsh). What a fantastic day the TV hightlights (with copious amounts of Alan Tichmarsh) do not do it justice, I would very much recommend going & def go on the last day, watching the sell off (and then the trees and plants walk their way back to the tube) was great fun. Same time again next year? We'll see...

Chelsea flower show - the beginning

2010-05-29T11:04:00.000-07:00

My mum now she has retired, has started a list of all the things that she wanted to do when she was working but didn't have the time/money. Her Birthday is the 12 of May and I decided that instead of buying her the usual assortment of quite useful but lovely stuff (with which she would only clutter up the new 'retirement pad' I should take her to do one of the things on the list. Every year she bemoans the fact that she hasn't been to Chelsea flower show, so I got in there early and bought us both tickets to the final day. I've been having a really rough time in my personal life of late so mum like the awesome person she is came down early on the Thursday night and we went out to our local (and lovely) Lebanese. Friday she amused herself in Abingdon while some of us went to work (!) then on Sat it was up at the crack of dawn to make the first train to London (Waitrose breakfast on the train, glad she didn't spend that day off in vain). We got there pretty early but already the crowds were pretty dense, I had some vague idea of buying one of the show Orchids (Orchids being one of my favourite flowers, we also seem to have the perfect light for them on a window sill in my house, which helps maintain my enthusiasm a lot!). As soon as we were inside the marquee it was pretty much love at first sight with this lovely thing to the right (there were so many beautiful ones but most of them I knew there was no way I would be able to keep alive, they almost were not of this earth). So we put a reserve on one of these (it's what my Auntie Sylvia advised if we saw something we liked) and headed off to see the rest of the Marquee. My mum had been to Hampton Court when she was at university and was looking for piles of sweet peas and tall blooms to replicate what she had seen there, I think we managed that in the marquee alone without looking at all the small gardens outside and the bigger show gardens (more on these two in the next post for now I leave you with me and mum making the most of a patch of sunshine (we asked a random passer by to take a photo explaining that it was mum's Birthday treat and I think the responsibility of being a 'photographer' got to him slightly. He arranged us in from of one of the show gardens and was saying things like "to the camera girls" and in this one he made me kiss my mum, to which she replied steady on. It was all great fun, now onto the next post some of the stranger things that we found at the flower show plus a VIP guest.

Punting, but not with boats

2010-05-13T13:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posting of late, I've had this horrible worse than a cold, not as bad as flu but it's really annoying thing hanging around for about the last month (this is not helped by the fact that my 'new desk' - which isn't that new anymore is near a boss with a 'high natural temperature' hence he likes to air condition us to death on a daily basis. I'm naturally cold so am freeziing all the time, grrrr/brrrrr). Anyway Dave da housemate and I managed to get ourselves passes for the punt which is where all the good local bands play all the good local venues, but in a festival type manner all at the same time. (the chap in the photo above is Nicola's lovely boyfriend Eric, shocking as it is I've never actually been punting so he's standing for me, thanks Eric. What a guy;-). Tim and another friend also called Dave decided to join ua so we needed a plan. Somehow I was put in charge of picking the bands and venues (the responsibilty) so in the end I went for: The Anydays (never seen them before but I liked the name, 7.30-8.45 - The Purple Turtle; Message to bears (my exciting band of the night have wanted to see them for ages, although it's one guy who writes all the music he has put together a band to play gigs, like a folk Mogwai, see now you are interested no? Can be found online here http://www.myspace.com/messagetobears) 8.15-9.00 - the Wheatsheaf; Telling the bees (local and castle established favourites), 9.15-10.15 - Malmason (inside Oxford Castle; Scholars (another band I've been trying to catch for a while they sound a but like Interpol, can also be found online here ) - 10.30-11.30 the cellar. I have to point out that we were only supposed to see the first bit of Scholars as I had already dosed myself up the maximum level of blackcurranty lemsipness and was feeling pretty worn out from my two days of teaching. Scholars were however SOOooooo good that we had to stay till the end of their set and will be heading off to see them again very soon, cause we like a lot. I think best band of the night would be a fight between the aforementioned scholars and message to bears but message to bears would edge it by a whisker. Today I'm not feeling too bad seeing as by the time we made i home it was nearly 1am. This is probably as someone pointed out adrenaline and I will pay for it later, nice...

May morning in Oxford

2010-05-02T10:15:00.001-07:00

So yesterday housemate Dave and myself got up at 4am and headed to Oxford (we cycled there in the pouring rain, which was as you can imagine delightful...). The rain however subsided and it was all worth it as I finally got to hear the Magdalen hymn, which despite going into Oxford on May day for the last 4 years as early as I could, I managed to miss. This year as we cycled in we were early enough to get the right side of the barriers and hear it. It was pretty special, the hymn itself has an erie quality and I think it's made all the more weird/special by the changing light. Unfortunately at this point I mislayed Dave the housemate but managed to bump into another friend (also called Dave and quite a few Morris folk). After we had heard the Magdalen hymn, a few other hymns and a short sermon type thing from the college rector (who thank goodness kept it short) we wandered off into the city to check out all the Morris men. My friend Andy (from awesome local band telling the bees) seemed to have put together some type of green man band and they were playing just outside the Sheldonian.
I also ran into Lizzie from my old rapper side Mabel Gubbins and me and t'other Dave headed to the Kings appendage to watch them dance and imbine our first pint of the morning. Dave had decided to keep a few May day traditions alive himself and had stayed up all the way through the previous night, so by the time I found him he was (understandably) flagging. He managed till 8am then went home to bed and I found my friend Nicola and her American boyfriend Eric, and we all went for tea at Blackwells (you can never get in the cafe there at lunchtime but we had our pick of the tables as it was horrendously early). An earl grey revived me enough to be able to cycle to Botley to dance with my original morris side Cry Havoc. I wasn't planning on going home so I was walking around in my morris whites all morning and was quite suprised by the number of people who found the need to tell me they loved me cause I was a Morris dancer (I think I've missed something here???). It was brilliant fun (Nicola has never seen me dance before and seemed really suprised that I was grinning broadly throughout). Sadly after the dancing was over I found out I had a flat tyre on Sven my bike (meaning the 6 mile cycle back to Abingdon would be hard, if not impossible). I managed to walk 2 miles but finally conceeded I needed help. I phoned housemate Dave but he was still in Oxford with his bike (and hence carless), I phoned my friend Trish who has a fairly big car but she was in Winchester shopping , she did however suggested I phone her husband Malcolm the physist. Malc is awesome, so I phoned him, the only car he had access to was the mini so it was all about logistics, could we get me and Sven the bike into the mini? The answer thank goodness was yes. I have to admit I didn't do much when I got back, it's been a week of fairly intense Morris practices and the back of my knees hurt quite a bit cause of the jumping. So myself and witchcat sat and watched the snooker and then caught up on our Dr Who and The Vampire Diaries. My sleep patterns definitely back to normal this morning as I somehow managed to steep in till midday! Lots of rain going on in the Oxford area however so I've been trying to get some writing done while witchcat continues her attempts to invade my desk. Happy 1st of May everyone, I hope this spring brings you joy.

A very strange sports award

2010-04-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hartleypool
Originally uploaded by victoriaros56

For the 2nd year in a row I see to have won our football award for best kit. My original idea was nicked from this article in the face (yes secretly I always wanted to be one of those icy blondes in the locker room. Failing that I would have settled for the Dorothy character from Gregory’s girl (yeah how cool was she? Say not more...) however sadly I looked like neither of these people. I started playing football on the mixed playground at school as quite a few of my friends were lads and we used to play with a tennis ball (gives you quick reactions, you don’t want to get hit on a fleshy part with that!). My football skills were then used at University when I played for the county girls team (coached by an angry Scotsman called Andy, his main goal was to get us to win something, the main goal of our captain (Lozza) was to organise as many social events as possible, hence we never really did that well). But both these events stood me in excellent stead for joining the mixed teams at work. The 2nd year I was involved I was a team captain and my team (the whirlwind tiger clan of doom) did pretty poorly, only being rescued by my next season in charge of Big Guns & Roses (who finished second) . This year however it was double glory Hartleypool united (the team I was on, I gave up the captaincy lark when I got promoted due to time constraints) came first (here we are smiling winningly around Captain Dan Hartley (middle, well we were supposed to be smiling winningly, dunno what I was doing) and below is a photo of my award and also the secret weapons that helped me win it, gonna have to think of a new twist on kit for next season, at the moment I’m thinking take the lead from Morris and go with bells...

Yes I will be your valentine

2010-02-15T05:04:00.000-08:00

I have to admit being a currently single girl the thought of Valentines day does not fill me with joy, however all that changed this year and a brilliant time was had. First of all on the 13th Feb (Saturday) OXFOLK was graced by the brilliant (and still startlingly young) What's up Folk. The band originated from the music department at John Mason's School (taught by my fantastic and very talented friend Rachel) and have since gone on to play such legendary venues as the Oxford Folk Festival and their school hall (currently being used by my new Morris side for practicing purposes, but that is an entirely different post). The turn out was the hightest number of dancers we've ever had at OXFOLK (I think the fact that Fi Lock was calling may have influenced this slightly, but not significantly). We also enjoyed the very colourful (and slightly scary) gog magog molly dancers from Cambridge during the interval.

Ceilidh over and done I spent the early part of Sunday recovering on sleep and then headed round to Fi's for valentine's cakes & scones. Auntie Sandy & Chris were already there and I finally managed to pass on their Christmas present (Auntie Sandy was ill over Christmas so we didn't see them). The early part of the afternoon was spent looking at campsites near to ottery st mary for beautiful days (which is the festival organised by the Levellers that we visit every year). Last year we set off really early but still found outselves nearly at the back of the Campervan field (not ideal for Fi & Nick with baby Alex and his buggy), so this year the decision has been taken to drive down the night before and camp close to the festival. The criteria for choosing the campsite was pretty basic, it needed to be near the festival and close proximity to a pub was required (I can't think why...). We managed to find one that satisfied both of these requirements so we are booked in (need to get my ticket bought ASAP). A celebratory scone with butter and jam was consumed by all present and then the final additions to our jolly valentines party arrived, the very lovely Dan and Bec and their latest addition Freya.

I've got to say I am absolutely in awe of Bec & Dan, they live on a canal boat (complete with cat) which is moored in croperdy. When Bec found out she was pregnant they didn't really consider moving into bricks and mortar just adapted the boat accordingly, which I think it just fab. I hadn't seen Freya since she was born but she is beautiful (def got her mum's eyes) I'd already got some material ready to make her a summer dress so now having checked her size with Bec will have to get on with making it. So here we all are, the happy party enjoying some valentines cupcakes made by the very lovely Fi. What a great weekend!

Doing something scary, a delayed NYD post

2010-02-11T00:47:00.000-08:00

Okay originally I had planned to do an update on my New Years Resolutions at New Years however then I arrived home to the nearly flood (as it shall henceforth be known) so plumbing took top priority (and has done ever since actually, although it now looks like our tank will be replaced in the not too distant future, thanks to our lovely neightbours, I'm still craving a bath like crazy though..). Anyway back to the resolutions. Last years were as follows
*to finish decorating the hall (didn't do it, this gets carried over to this year). Unfinished.
*To keep chickens at home (chicken run procured, now we are just waiting for the chicks). Half done.
*To date at least one nice guy. (It happened, he was lovely but unfortunately it didn't work out).
*To give more time to music (now teaching and working towards my diploma, I would say that def counts).
* to get something published outside of work (this happened pretty early on last year thanks to my lovely friend Elizabeth who is a commissioning editor).
But this year apart from finishing off the outstanding chicken and hall business (the latter could def take a while) and finishing the novel (an unfinished task from nanowriting in November) I have only set myself one objective. To do something 'scary' every week. This can be a 'properly scary thing', like standing up reciting poetry to a room full of people, or just something that you've wanted to do for a while but have never had the guts to. My last two weeks have been at the two opposite ends of the scary scale, last week I wasn't feeling too great so went into Oxford on Saturday for a mooch round the shops. I saw these beautiful earrings in a shop I've just discovered on the high, they were the kind that I've always really liked but have never worn for fear of being branded 'kooky' (I really, really hate that tag, something about it just bugs me on a very deep level). But then I thought why should I let what random people think stop me from wearing these earrings? Yes precisely, so I bought them and wore them for the first time yesterday and no one called me kooky. Result! Last weeks challange was different again, I had booked to attend an intensive violin course held in the town at Witney (more details here http://www.whitecottagewebsites.co.uk/homweekends/ ) originally I was due to go with my friend Kevin, but at the last minuite he had to work leaving me to go on my own (a scary scary prospect). The main reason I wanted to attend the workshops in the first place was that despite teaching I still hate playing in front of a crowd of people. Keeping the motto 'feel the fear, and do it anyway' firmly in my head I went and had a really great time. I learnt a lot of new tunes and ways of approaching music, learnt that it isn't as scary as I thought it would be playing in front of other people and musicians and made a nice lot of new friends as well as winning the best decorated cup competition for my entry. Plus I'm also signing up for an intensive course with the Scottish fiddle tutor up in the outer hebredies in May which I would never of heard of had I not been in that class. I urge you readers of this blog, do just one thing that scares you this week, you may be amazed at what you achieve and just how much fun it is.

Snow in Oxfordshire

2010-01-09T11:19:00.001-08:00

So this week the snow came to Oxfordshire (here is my beautiful residance in the snow, awwww). And my goodness it really did snow! I ventured out on Wednesday morning and it was up to my knees, my knees! So subsequently I didn't go into work on Wednesday (oh no) and we enjoyed an official snow day instead. I made the mos of it with a bit of a lie in, did a tiny bit of work from home & then Fi gave me a ring & asked if I wanted to go and play with her and Alex in the snow. Did I? Did I ever! So I donned wellies, a very unattractive but practical hat and headed on over to hers. Here is her & Alex in the snow.
The plan was always to build a snowman but Alex has never seen snow on this scale before so we weren't sure what he was going to make of it. In the end however it turned out that we needn't have worried. Alex was fine in the snow but was less keen on the 'building snowman plan'. So it ended up with one of us holding his hand (in case of slippages) and the other packing snow like crazy. After a bit of hard work we got ended up with the below deviant snowman (its a bottle of snoman's revenge that he is holding, completely Fi's idea).
After our messing about outside it was back indoors to get warm and inbibe a thimble full if sloe gin (to warm to the places that heating alone cannot reach). It would seem however the snowman reaked the ultimate revenge as it appears to have stolen one of Fi's Hohners!

Happy Birthday to Dave

2010-01-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

Here he is my long suffering housemate Dave turning 26 (thus making him the same age as me and preventing him from using the phrase 'old' in conjuction with me for 7 months, hurrah!)and blowing his candles out. I had made him a cake and was putting my finishing touches to the icing when he returned from his parents last night. He seemed genuinely confused when I told him he wasn't allowed in the kitchen but thankfully the mess created by making buttercream icing and spelling out Happy Birthday in hundreds and thousands (yes it did take quite some time) was soon cleared away. The next morning we awoke about the same time (I think he realised he wasn't going to get his present till evening if he didn't get up (he usually gets up about 9 while I'm out with the lark at 6am)). We had birthday cake for breakfast (he swears this is the first cake that has ever been made for him (I shall be calling his mother)) and seemed genuinely delighted with his zebra t-shirt a (a la Brett from flight ofthe conchords) and handmade card from me, and his many flavoured jellybeans from witchcat. Then it was off to work (I have never understood people who work through their birthdays, I always have the day off, but there you go). Then it was home for some more cake (double chocolate) happy birthday Dave!

New Years day and Keats house

2010-01-03T10:26:00.000-08:00

new year & keats house 044
Originally uploaded by victoriaros56

So after all of the excitement of the night before (not to mention the quite large quantities of alcohol) I had something cultural and restful planned for New Years Day. I was staying the night with my friends Zoe & Steve who live in Ealing. We all got up about 11 had a nice big fry up and then set off to Hampstead Heath (Steve decided he would rather kill zombies on his computer than come with us so it was just the girls. Our destination was the picture perfect Keats house (above). I stumbled across the website for this by accident while I was reading a costume blog, (it was mentioned because the costumes from the film Bright Star are currently being exhibited here). Anyway being quite a big Keats fan I made a mental note to see it at some point and then noticed that it was open New Year's day which was the perfect excuse. Zoe and I got a bit lost round the backstreets of Hampstead Health (this wasn't that bad however as it was only a minor detour and we ended up running (almost literally) into Noel Gallagher). House located we did the tour. There seems to be very little of the original house as Keats would have seen it left. When it was sold it was bought by an actress who ripped out the divides (it was originally two residences) and attached a ballroom, plus Keats didn't own any furniture so they can only guess how the house would have been furnished. My favourite room without a doubt was to be Keats study (they know it was his as there is a painting of him writing inside it). Upstairs we stumbled across the costumes from Bright Star (if you haven't seen it I would def recommend) as well as this dealth mask of the man himself (interesting but macabre was the joint verdict on this one). Once we had looked round the house and perused the gift shop (who must be congratulated on their scope, the John Keats colouring book anyone?) we ventured out into the gardens. Here's Zoe outside Keats study window and another one of her wistfully gazing out the window. As usual 'culture' gave us a heck of a thirst and the urgent need for cake. We managed to squeeze in a few of the heaths fine second had bookshops (suprisingly there aren't that many now left in Oxford, possibly a good thing) and then found a cafe and procured what was needed. A lovely excursion and proof that certain bits of London are lovely, you just need to know where to look.

Hootanany!!!

2010-01-02T08:15:00.000-08:00

Happy new year everyone! The above photo shows exactly what we were up to this NYE. Back to the castle favourites Bellowhead were given the chance to play at the Royal Festival Hall for New Year (as they are their band in residence no less) so they threw a massive nautically themed party and we all went. As usual fancy dress was entirely optional (I'm always suprised though by the number of people who don't dress up, mind you all we need is an excuse) so the girls donned corsets and the boys became sailors for the night. Bellowhead appeared throughout the night first to play nautically themed songs, then for a covers set (the highlights have to be Pete Flood doing ring of fire & Rachel MacShane doing blame it on the boogie, awesomeness) and then to play the classics (see photo of Auntie Sandy and I dancing the night away, photo by longtime folky mate JJ). Also appearing were the Eliza Carthy Abba Ceilidh band who were povding the tunes and moves for a truely 70's ceilidh, meanwhile the Belles of London City entertained the gentlemen upstairs (as did a scantily clad Camille O'Sullivan who joined JB for a rendition of fairytale of New York) and Jim Moray found time to DJ silently upstairs before joing bellowhead for all you pretty girls. The tunes flowed as did the ale and or gin and tonic. The fireworks at the end of the night and the fact that some of my avourite people were present all helped make this a very memorable night. 2010 if it;s as good as the beginning until the end we are in for a hell of a year!

How do you solve a problem like Mia?

2009-12-27T07:39:00.000-08:00

The above photo is what my brother (photo further down the page) wanted to give me for Christmas. She is a one and a bit year old Staffordshire bull terrier cross (we think she may be crossed with a collie but we aren't sure) that my brother and his girlfriend took in before Christmas. She was being abused by her current owners and was really underweight so they gave her a home. Unfortunately they already have two dogs and two cats (and Mia because she hasn;t had very much attention in the past) is quite a handful. We went round for Christmas dinner and Mia was overjoyed to see yet more new people and got super excited, I had a dog when I was younger and so was giving her quite a few hugs after dinner when we were watching Dr Who together. Just before we left my brother managed to get me on my own in the hallway. "She's really taken to you you know, would you take her?" My first thought was crumbs, big commitment. so I told him I'd think about it.

So here is the big dilemma do I take Mia or not? She is a really lovely dog, when we were there she learnt how to sit and I get the feeling that if all that energy was used up and she was given things to occupy her like walks and play and plenty of regular attention she would be a really great to have around. Having said that she is not the type of dog I would have necessarily chosen myself and having just got a promotion at work and signed up for several extra evening and weeken courses (in order to qualify to be a music teacher quicker) my hours are stretched as it is without morning and evening walks and the commitment it takes to look after a dog. What if it's fate? Says my heart. What if witchcat hates her? Says my head. It's a really tough one but I think in the end it's just not the right time for me to take on a dog, even one as special as Mia. I've given myself the rest of the afternoon to think about it. I''ll phone them tomorrow.

Result!

2009-12-22T05:36:00.000-08:00

So last night when the ground all around seemed to be deep and crisp and even (we are talking millimeters of snow, sadly for us pedestrians it had ice underneath it though...) I got a phone call from Robin. It appears I have passed dreaded exam, but yet again missed a merit (3 marks off, you would have thought they could have just given me a merit, what with it being Christmas & all...). Robin was delighted and is already planning my next exam date (sadly as I hadn't sourced an appropriate present for him & Margaret I agreed to a final lesson tonight...) but I think a rest/Christmas first is a plan indeed. Not that Christmas is going to a rest of course. I've got to maintain the current pace of practice as I've already agreed to go to strings at Witney again next year with my old fiddling mate Kevin (I'm currently searching for my chequebook to reserve my place properly) and I've got a theory course in Didcot which starts in February. There has also been some good news on the job front (it;s taken me quite some time but finally I have got the job I was after) so I have taken the liberty of booking a single cello lesson in the new year (it should be as hardcore as my violin & piano, cause I don't want to teach it, I tell myself) so plenty to look forward to.

As for the New Year itself, the mad folky lot and myself are going to revel with Bellowhead on the South Bank. In their wisdom the aforementioned folk stars decided to give the event a maritime theme, leaving me my Christmas 'rest' to get my costume sorted (I'm aiming for the red plum dress that Elizabeth Swan (pouty Keira) wears in the first pirates of the carribean film (need to look nautical but nice as certain lovely people will be in attendance)) but I've still got to source quite a bit of the material...And will any sewing (of straight lines) get done when I'm down in the west country with my parents after Christmas? Hmm we'll see...

Oxfolk on the 9th January is the next major event after that and we are all thrilled that the Simon Care trio will be joining us (that's 7.30 for 8, Kennington village hall, look at our lovely website, ooooohhh. http://www.oxfolk.org.uk/Home.html ) with our very own member of the committee (and international folk star) Cat Kelly calling and the irrepressible (believe me we have tried) outside capering crew providing the interval entertainment. But all that is next year, at the moment I still have one and a half days to go here at work before I can pack my presents, the witchcat and quite a few jumpers and head up to the frozen north where our kid (my littlest brother Andrew) will be cremating a turkey in the name of Christmas. And if that doesn't make you feel all warm & glowy inside frankly I don't know what will!

Morris Christmas party

2009-12-14T14:00:00.001-08:00

So the above was what I got up to last Wednesday. It was our morris Christmas party & everyone had to take an activity/game/something that everyone could join in with. We started off with a good old fashioned pass the parcel, followed by a very random quiz (my team definitely tried but came last, never mind). Then we had pin the something on rudolf and they bashed my pinata morris man (dressed in replica kit, it took me three days to make and I got up at 5.30 the day of the party to finish the painting job, major kudos must go to Dave who held it while I painted both sides with the skin colour when I realised I didn't have enough paint to mix more...). After the pinata we all had something to eat and then we picked out a script from the pile to determine our parts for Snow White. I got cast as prince charming (first time for everything) possibly would have more appropriate if I had swapped with Lumbawakk's very own charming prince Jamie who was cast as the fair Damsel, but it was really good fun. The extra challange (& the one I only remebered on the morning of the party) was the fancy dress. As you can see I went as witchcat. Job done.

The rest of the week was also pretty hectic, I had half of Friday off to sit my violin exam. It doesn't really seem to matter how many exams I sit I usually end up shaking like a leaf. This one was no exception but despite this it seemed to go okay. The sight reading wasn't as bad as I feared (but I'm now wondering if I actually had it right at all, you know that feeling when you walk out feeling really confident & then discover you've done really badly?). My sight singing seemed to go well, the quite posh late fourties examiner telling me "you have a lovely voice" & enquiring whether I sing. I replied with something like not if I can help it & he berated me saying, "well you should, you have a lovely voice". Hopefully this bodes well for a high score but we'll see, should get the results before Christmas. No matter what Robin is on the ABRSM's case! (side note Mabel actually hates Benji the violin the only way I could get her to stand next to him for my cat and fiddle shots was Whiskers kit bits, ahh the magic of photography...)

Festive weekends 1 & 2

2009-12-13T07:17:00.000-08:00

kerfuffle, morris Christmas part 015
Originally uploaded by victoriaros56

Going into December things always start to get a little hectic Christmas is approaching, printer deadlines at work and as is customery in years gone by on a weekend near the start of December we hold the Oxford folk festival carols at the castle, This years concert was on the 6th December held (as the name would suggest) at the most excellent Oxford castle (we call it a castle, it looks like a castle it is in fact an ex jail...) it's a chance for us all to get together, get freezing, and get well and truely into the Christmas spirit. Having helped organise this event for the past few years I've now got a good idea how cold it;s going to be before I leave the house. Wrapped up to the nines (and this year with my own latern) I made my way into Oxford. The service started at three o clock with the vale islanders (olden style dances done whilst in costume) and Mason's apron clog dancers taking it in turns to do dances (my side Cry Hvoc danced last year, diswasher salt had to be put down as otherwise we would have been literally dancing on ice!). At about 4pm we had a few carols from the rising voices choir and a group sing around lead by magpie lane's leading man Ian Giles. Then the laterns were lit and doled out and we accended the mound. The photo at the top is various mambers of the OFF committee and ye Oxfordshire public singing on top of said mound, I was on stewarding duty (and was following up at the back of the party) so missed the best of the light, but I think this photo has a certain something about it anyway.
The second event was the folk band Kerfuffle playing the Hollywell rooms. We had put on a carol concert for some local school choirs earlier on in the day with the Oxford waits also playing. Our headliners for the evening Kerfuffles were ably spported by the hardworking rising voices choir. Kerfuffle are all still quite a young band but have been playing together since they were twelve. The two standout members for me personally are Sam Sweeney (who also became a full member of Bellowhead last year) and Hannah James. Hannah is one of the best step dancers I have ever seen, Every time she dances her feet are just mesmerising, As well as being a very talented dancer she can also sing and play the accordian very well Indeed. Sam meanwhile learnt the bagpipes to get into Bellowhead, is a very accomplished violin player and suprises us all again tonight by picking up a concertina. Kerfuffle play a variety of tunes and songs (as well as stuff from ther latest album light up the dark, fittingly an album full of Christmas tunes) and the audience is also treated to a fair showing of Hannah's step dancing. As I'm involved in the organising of this event I unfortnately missed the first half on the concert, but the band more than made up for it during the second half. Sam said they had had a briliant time (he'd never played the Hollywell before so he was quite taken with the room and it;s acoustics) and now him & Hannah head off on tour as a duo, I definitely recommend catching them if you can. More details can be found here http://www.hannahandsam.co.uk/

So many things so little time

2009-11-18T04:11:00.000-08:00

This will probably only be a short post, but there is so much going on I thought I'd better pause & reflect before I do myself an injury. This week has been busy! I'm slowly upping my word count on the nano writing but major revisions need to be made to the starting plot if I'm to progress with the story in any resonable fashion. This is planned for the weekend (I get paid on Friday so should be able to afford cheese, crackers and wine to get me through some serious novel tackalage). I now actually have the will to finish it, which was badly waining at the start of this week. This was greatly helped by Andrea over at very useful and lovely blog A cat of imposible colour http://acatofimpossiblecolour.blogspot.com/ who reflected that sometimes you just need a break to step away, get a bit inspired again and then go back. Thank you Andrea much appreciated, I am ready to tackle the beast once again!

My cureall (not just for the novel but a horrid spiky sore throat) seems to have been the combined talents of Mawkin:Causley, who I saw at the Nettlebed folk club on Monday (the large amounts of tangerines may have helped as well but I want to believe it was the healing power of folk). The band were great, if you have not yet heard them and like to hear traditional songs with a hint of fun I'd def recommend them (I am slightly in love/awe with one of their number, but even if this was not the case they are very talented!) . Sticking with the music theme tonight it's violin. I have now got a date for my exam (11th Dec) which looms ever closer. Robin is def feeling the strain and is being quite harsh at the moment under the pretext that 'it's for my own good'. If I survive the lesson I will be spending the rest of this evening working on my dress for the work Christmas ball. I found the pattern ages ago but had quite a job finding material that was the right colour and drape (the pattern asks for velvet or stretch knit?!? For an evening dress? I think not) so I've replaced it with some dark blue satin. I guess the acid test to whether this will work will come when I start cutting, everything crossed till that and the first couple of long seams are done.

Next years diary is filling up fast and it's only November, my 'new' morris side Lumbawakk (don't worry I haven't abandoned Havoc, just gained another side as well, although it's border and rapper, rather than cotswold) have been invited to Sidmouth which I'm ashamed to admit I've never been too (I know slapped wrists, call yourself a folkie etc etc). & we have to book the campsite now for August! I made the point that I didn't know what I would be doing in August and our squire said "Well now you do, Sidmouth". That's on way of looking at it I suppose :-).

and then there was nano...

2009-11-10T04:24:00.000-08:00

This blog is causing me serious trouble & strife at the moment. Behind the scenes are a load of posts from the time I went missing a couple of months ago (it all started with Italy, I wrote the posts, I just didn't publish them because I had no pictures, now that I have the pictures it doesn't seem to want to let me post them). Technology you and I clash horns once again... might have to get Dave to take a look.

Anyway back into the present, the main worry at the moment is unusually not keeping this blog up to date it's the novel that I promised I'd write for Nanowrimo (more details here http://www.nanowrimo.org if you, havent got the faintest what I'm talking about). So far I have a grand total (that's unfortunately ALL the words added together) of 3,000, this isn't what I'd hoped (I've got a weekly target of 12,000, but looking back to my university writing days (undergraduate minor in creative writing) I always spent way more time doing the ground work and then zoomed to the finish, so I hoping it's redeemable). Had time to write last night but wasn't really in the mood so switched my laptop off and went to bed with hot water bottle. My task this lunchtime was to plot a 'what happens in which chapter' plan. I've decided against that however, as writing spontaniously was quite fun and gave me an extra character who I hadn't planned for, but who could end up being quite useful. So spontenaity seems at the moment a very good thing.

The other slight pronlem on my mind which may or may not be affecting my word count/creativity is my ongoing fight with my demons concerning anxiety of influence. As some of you may know my friend Ali published his book The Girl with the Glass Feet a while ago and is now working on his second novel at the moment (his website is here & very pretty http://www.alishaw.co.uk/). I read Glass Feet within a couple of days of getting it & it is just brilliant, Ali has this amazing talent of setting his scenes in such a wonderful way, his language is quite simpy magic (and it's a good looking book too, I heartily recommend it). But back to my point, its set in a similarly bleak northern landscape to mine and that worries me somewhat, not enough to consider seriously changing my setting but enough for me to feel Ali's prestigeously talented shadow standing over me as I write. I guess I just keep going? Any advice on tackling this one much appreciated.

Freezing up

2009-10-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

So yesterday we hit the Freeze festival in London for Lindsay's birthday. Kitty drove the car in to her aunts and then we caught the tube to battersea power station. It was pretty clear where the festival was being held, loads of surfy/ski types were spilling out of the pubs nearby and you could see the main jump from quite a distance (it's build so the kicker-thing you jump off - positions you right in the middle of the power stations chimneys, it truely is a spectacular setting. Lindsay is a pro skier and has taught in Geneva where she grew up so we thought this would be the perfect birthday present for her. Most of the skiing stuff was taking place as we arrived, there were two conests the jumping and also freestyle using various poles/jumps etc set up at the bottom of the main jump. It was pretty absorbing hence why there are no photos of that bit, but I did manage to get my camera out for the ski guys flattening out the snow ready for the snowboarders :-). The snowboarding session was one of the stages in the x games contest & the highest scorers went down to the heat to see who would get the most points going forward. Some of the jumps were epic and you almot forgot how high the jump was. After the snowboarding had finished we enjoyed a couple of desperadoes each (it's beer with Tequila, sounds horrible but is really nice) and grabbed some food before the evenings bands (Calvin Harris and the eagles of death metal) started before finally making our way home. What a great day!