nomoredisco

May

May so far has been pretty good fun overall but it is too busy for me. I've been 'up north' twice - Cambridge and Norfolk being up north for people who live in the deepest South (Brighton) I've been to circus acts, burlesque, dance for the festival and the fringe and comedy nights, gigs, dinners with friends. Ruby's been poorly, we've collectively had very little sleep, I'm behind on life in general and I've been working more than usual.

There has been very little crafting going on.

In the next five days I've got Bookclub, the circus, the theatre, another drive up north, the Mind Body Spirit Festival and when I return to my base on Sunday I am STOPPING. At least for a few days, my head feels like it's going to pop. I am the adult equivalent of your typical overstimulated toddler, likely to have a tantrum any minute and it is all my own doing. It's all good BUT it's too much for little old me, I like to be home, I like to potter and I like to sleep. Properly.

Ever book yourself out wanting to enjoy life to it's fullest, be an active participant, SEE YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY, experience new things and then feel like you might just hit a wall?

Well it's like that. In spades.

Until next time X 

Itty Bitty Rabbit

A couple of months ago I blogged about making this rabbit which I was making for my other new nephew, Freddie who was born in March. We finally got to meet him this weekend and so it was time for a new scarf and a few stitches for his mouth...



 
The first half hour of double crochet to make the scarf wasn't doing it for me so I frogged the lot and did something narrower in single crochet in the end.


And here he is, just waiting to be dragged around by the ear by a little person. 

I had three whole hours crocheting last week on Friday, three whole hours between drop off and pick up where I finished this rabbit and almost finished the final granny a day blanket from 2012. Now that will be a very satisfying last stitch, I think that will happen sometime this week and I can move onto something new, alongside finishing off something already started!

 

Serendipity - Ryan Keen

 

I do find it hard to believe that I managed to watch the X factor all those years ago without the illuminating brilliance of a twitter feed to go alongside the auditions and live shows but I did, and even despite the lack of twitter (try it, VERY funny) I loved it. I feel slightly sad that I obviously wasted a fair amount of Saturday nights in watching these shows before I had children but you don't know what you got till its gone and all that and in fairness on reflection I really had hit the Saturday nights pretty hard in the past anyway (Blog title explanation right there) In 2006 I watched Leona Lewis deservedly win and then sometime in October last year I saw there were tickets at the Brighton Centre. I booked them, why not? - Gwyn wouldn't really be up for it I was fairly sure, pop is not really his thing, but he would come because he would have to. That's the way these things work isn't it? Once in, he'd enjoy it.

And then about a month a go we saw Ryan Keen at Komedia, that had been another random booking, I'd just been going through some listings and decided I quite liked one youtubed song (Orelia) so booked them. He actually turned out to be better than 'an alright night watching someone play the guitar,' which is what I was hoping for. He was great, the sort of great that you watch live and then sort of mourn the following morning and want to go again the next day. Gwyn, me and my friend Ju thought he was brilliant.

This was my favourite song from that gig:

 

So imagine how pleased I was to hear that he was supporting Leona for her tour! How lucky is that?! It wasn't the most obvious connection but it all worked out pretty well for me didn't it? So that's me at the top, yes I queued for a picture.... I'm making a new habit of this.... Gwyn can't understand it. Why a photo? I really can't tell you. Maybe in this case purely to have my daughter mistake him for her father, which she did this morning. Hahahahaha. In any case, this guys songs are making up part of the soundtrack for this part of my life and it was nice to say genuinely, 'good work, you were brilliant,' I like that, even if you do feel a bit of a dick when you do it. Isn't it weird that music artists put their work out there and you anchor an entire part of your life to it if you like it and play them all the time? Rather than a person or night, listening to Ryan's music will anchor me to a time. When I'm old and I whack on a bit of Back to the Ocean or Orelia, I'll be sitting in a garden in our terraced house in Brighton, we've just moved in and I'm drinking my green juice and watching the little people skip or cut paper, generally pretty happy with nothing of substance to worry about. Perhaps this memory will be punctuated with screams of 'don't do that....Stop!' or 'Let go of the skipping rope' but in much the same way that when I hear David Gray I'm in Sixth form and when I hear Jack Johnson I'm sitting on a beach in Thailand, Rumer reminds me of Sundays in my old house, Ed Sheeran's album was played on my way to visit my dad when he was sick and Bryan Adams Summer of '69 makes Gwyn and I smile at our memories of a particularly fun Dutch friend we met on our travels called Sander, when I listen to these songs I aim to be recalling this time, what I am up to right now. Obviously that is by no means an exhaustive list of my musical memory, all those notes, all those songs, all those times. These people, bands and producers contribute to the landscape of our lives. It's weird no? You're all 'hey! I like your music' and they have absolutely no idea who you are, what you do and that it's on when you make the dinner. 

I have to say, to watch perform, I enjoyed Komedia more, because there is obviously a different crowd, a different demographic and well, let's face it, smaller gigs are just generally better. Also it was at the Brighton Centre and despite having seen some pretty good acts like Bombay Bicycle Club and Basement Jaxx there, it doesn't really do it for me as a venue. Leona was also great to see! I mean she was the headline so I ought to mention her rather than to continue relentlessly gushing about Ryan Keen (I can't help it). When she sang footprints in the sand I was completely caught off guard and did actually cry. Yes, really, silently and surrreptitiously I wiped away a couple of tears, it was dedicated to anyone who has lost someone and that was it for me....tears. I have to say though my favourite part of her performance was when she announced she was going to sing 'Run' and a guy behind us yelped with excitement and sat back in his seat, his head in his hands, completely overcome with emotion saying 'YESSSS!!!! THIS IS THE ONE I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR'. I love watching people really excited, truly happy all because he was going to hear his favourite song. It's a lovely thing. All his friends crowded round him, a beautiful, perfect, happy moment.

And I got to repeat such a moment when I handed this flyer to Ju who had babysat, a nice squeal of delight at real love in writing from Ryan Keen. THANKYOU RYAN. I hope in some small part this makes up for the hour that my kids spent showing her every known item they possess and then having to clear up one that had wet themselves and settle them back to bed (ideal babysitting gig right mums??) It's certainly got to take the edge off surely?

His album is out this year. GET IT.

 

The Baby and the Blanket

I am having such a lovely weekend. Sleep deprived but nonetheless pretty lovely and it's still the weekend because it's Bank Holiday! YES! The sun is shining and I'm writing this in the garden with both children sitting in a sledge on the patio munching ice cream. Forget the frenzied screams of 'STOP WHINGING! I CAN'T BEAR TO LISTEN TO YOUR WHINGING' that emanated from my mouth about an hour ago. It's all good right now. I better enjoy it because I anticipate this may be momentary.


 
So, my sister had a baby last month, Baby Jack, and this weekend I got to meet him for the first time! Since having children I have switched into a complete baby lover, no longer generally ambivalent of procreation, I have more respect and awe to their more immediate proximity to whatever the energy is that underlies and binds us all, all that possibility and content. I find it a little difficult to explain but maybe you have some idea of what I mean.





 Did my ovaries flip out? A little, but a raspberry leaf cup of tea on the Sunday (made with the best of intent) grounded me right back into that final stage of pregnancy and discomfort enough for me to know I don't want to do it again any time soon!

 
And of course, I made him something, a little multicoloured afghan.



 

And as usual, no proper photos of the finished article, BUT pictures of it in use. Which is much better.

It was stitched with Patons smoothie (I know, AGAIN) and is nowhere near as gorgeous as the baby, but definitely one of my favourites.

Sun, sea, batman

The last few weeks have been filled with going to the beach in the sunshine...



 
...watching Ruby learn to skip. And then watching Ruby skip at every available opportunity. And arguing about her skipping in the kitchen or skipping when she isn't changed for school.


 
Ebaying and decluttering like a woman possessed. I have made over £135 in the last few weeks. Woo!

 

Putting flyers from club nights TEN YEARS ago into the recycling FINALLY. WTAF have I been doing moving these from place to place?



Drinking lots of green juice and ginger - more than my once a day, in an effort to combat the sorest throat. My bodys gift, telling me to slow down, go to sleep early and take care of myself. ALRIGHT BODY, I'M HEARING THAT LOUD AND CLEAR NOW THANKYOU.



And I've been hanging out with Batman. Alot.

But despite all the sorting, clearing, tidying and recycling, every day I pick up my crochet. Sometimes I only manage 10 minutes, but I'm happy with that. I'd like to do more of course but things are really busy at the minute, May is going to be an exciting and full month, but so long as I do some, then I'm always closer to completing a project and there's always a little creativity in every day.

 

5 - The Rainbow Cake

It is an age ago, Ruby's birthday but I have finally got around to blogging about THE CAKE.

I originally started baking the Martha Stewart version on the Thursday but despite measuring out the batter to the gram and going through all the hassle of dye-ing all the layers, it COMPLETELY BOMBED. There wasn't enough batter for each layer and the couple that I did bake turned out like 4-5mm pancakes. Oh it was a woeful baking situation. There was a lot of swearing. We'd been in the house for 5 days, the place was a mess. Nothing was flowing in the hub of the house. Cake angst. 

I got some help from a mum at school who referred me to Peonies and Pearls post on the rainbow cake. However, even then I made a big ol' mistake.

I got into baking big time when I had Ruby and fortunately enough got a kitchenaid for a Christmas Present. Oh, it's so shiny and blue and lovely but really none of that is relevant. The point is that I was using the mixing bowl to make the batter. Before I made the batter I measured the bowl feeling very smug at my attention to detail. After I made the batter I planned to take the mixing bowl weight off the weight of the mixing bowl with the batter in. Then I would divide this by 6 for 6 evenly measured lots of batter to dye.

Like a compete doughnut though I forgot this step, measured the mixing bowl with the batter in it and divided it by 6. So by 'cake' 6 I had run out of batter pretty much and had to make up a new batch. But, what happiness that I am such a clutzy baker because in the end the cake depths turned out EXACTLY right, about 1.5cm.... They too would have been like pancakes with an 9 inch tin if I had not made a mistake. MISTAKES ARE GOOD.

All in, these are the ingredients for the cake that I made: (9 inch tin)

600g butter, softened

600g caster sugar

12 eggs

600g self raising flour

3 teaspoons of vanilla extract

For the icing, again I followed the icing recipe on the blog but it made the icing look slightly yellow because of the butter which wasn't what I was after so my recommendation is 4/5 tubs of cream cheese mixed with icing sugar to taste. I also added a tsp of vanilla extract. 

For the icing colours I used sugarflair colours and purchased from partyanimalonline who have compiled a rainbow cake colour set for £11.90

This includes the colours: Christmas Red, Tangerine Apricot, Melon, party green, Ice Blue, Grape Violet. 

MY HOT TIPS FOR THE CAKE MAKING.

Be sure to add your food colour with cocktail sticks so you don't get it on your hands and make it super VIBRANT.

Use a good quality vanilla extract. Forget vanilla flavouring, something with ground up vanilla that you can see is what you are after.

To make the icing smooth do a crumb coating (see Peonies and Pearls) then after its time in the fridge use a palette knife dipped in hot boiled water to spread the icing, it'll create a smooth edge.

You know what? In all honesty, I don't even eat wheat any more (I haven't for a couple of years now) so I have ABSOLUTELY no idea how it tasted. However, people can politely decline cake, or have a bit and leave to one side but this was demolished, the whole thing gone and not a crumb left after a quarter of an hour. A roaring success you might say (ahem) And it really did elicit the most satisfactory wow from everyone when it was cut. Oh yes, after bloody ages in the kitchen you are looking to impress. I won't deny it.

In the end Ruby wasn't really all that taken with the cake, holding the gopping disney princess offering on her actual birthday in higher regard. That hurts, I won't lie, but then last year she said exactly the same thing about her pirate ship birthday cake. When I asked her to recount that birthday cake to others she just went into explicit detail about the shop bought Princess Belle Cake. I'm rather hoping that in years to come she'll come to appreciate the epic effort of the birthday cake make and realise just how the love I have for her has been reflected through THE EFFORT OF BIRTHDAY CAKE. This isn't obviously a benchmark for how much you love your child otherwise of course it would mean I don't love George very much as I haven't yet employed THE EFFORT OF BIRTHDAY CAKE into our relationship. George, be assured: this is your year.

Happy Birthday Rube XXX

Clutter clutter clutter

Oh my days I am surrounded by clutter. Clutter is just spewing from every box we unpack. Just like last time. Items that are not used, don't fit, are completely unneccessary, not wanted, not appreciated. Papers? Don't even get me started on that! Everything in the last few weeks has been thrown into the plastic box above and now the filing boxes that were stored above the wardrobe in our old room have resurfaced and there are more papers to sort through and file, or shred, or recycle. It's overwhelming! Why have I still got the kitchen installation booklets for the flat we lived in in London over 2 and a half years ago? Or the instructions for the shower room underfloor heating for a room that I have absolutely nothing to do with any longer? It's endless! I am uncovering all kinds of crap, all so distracting. I can't believe it's happened again, this age of consumerism and acquisition is a bit of a burden to me. Says she who went shopping on Thursday and settled more things into the space. 

We (read:I) am taking every single thing that comes out of a box and examining it's usefulness and beauty all over again. Nothing is safe. I'll admit I've been a bit slack in the children's room (ahem) in which their toys burst and poured from packed boxes uncontrollably without much thought. I managed to surreptitiously chuck some stuff but I could have done alot better. However clothes....clothes I am on top of a bit more. So I thought I'd ebay a bit, all the £'s could add up! Galvanised by Karen Kingston's book I know that if I clear, I will make some money. It happened last time and I've taken my eye off the prize, fuss free, clear and organised living where riches flow. We've just moved and our cash flow has halted to a near stand still and it's probably because of all the bloody clutter and disorganisation messing with the chi! Now I have mountains of stuff to list and an ebay account that won't work this weekend. Fingers crossed it's up and running this week. If not it's leaving one way or the other out the door next weekend. 

In other less clutter related, listen to how much clutter I have, I can't stop obsessing about the clutter news I have finished blankets. Truly, some crochet coming up on the blog soon.

R2D2

I'm a bit mired in the endless house moving admin at the moment. Between two phonecalls this morning I spent the best part of an hour and ten minutes of my life I will never get back just sorting out two things. That doesn't include my fury phonecalls this morning about my carpets. I still have no stair runner, fury doesn't solve anything at all.

But it is still a fairly amazing thing to be in our new place, uncovering our things and finding space for them or passing them on. One thing that's an absolute keeper though is our new little friend R2D2 which was a gift to George from his nana and grampy a couple of months ago. He is OBSESSED with Star Wars and I can imagine this little dude will travel with him from place to place for the rest of his life. It is completely heirloomworthy in my humble opinion.

They specially commissioned this from friend of theirs who has soldered and fashioned this piece of art out of a LADLE. Yup, R2's head is an upturned soup ladle, incredible huh? Want to commission your own, feel free to comment in the box below and I can link you up. 

Easter

Yes, they are upside down.

It is not deliberate.

Probably one of the reasons I have not been in this space for some time is because I was very busy with a certain little girls birthday party last weekend and I've also been unpacking endless boxes of things and rediscovering all my lovely bits and pieces (along with general shite, I don't only possess lovely stuff sadly). But, just as I have had trouble logging into amazon today and ebay yesterday, typepad too is displaying it's gremlins (or mine) by posting pictures upside down. I have now tried three times. I have sworn many times sitting at this desk in the last 24 hours. Bloody internets.

And please don't get me started on the fact the header doesn't go all the way across the blog. It is driving me crazy everytime I look at it. Woe Blog, I am very much over this technological scuppery - it's even making me coin nonsensical terminology. It's serious.

This makes posting anything sensible fairly impossible. Hope you had a good Easter, mine was fun and productive in equal measure, I will perhaps return when I get this typepad schizzle working for me again.

Peace X

All change!

We're in the new house! There are boxes EVERYWHERE. Moving day was just endless, there was so much to clear out of our rental. We definitely have more stuff than last time when we moved, bunk beds, another bed, a picnic table, toys, toys and more toys (and more crafty stuff and books admittedly) What took one van load last time took 2 and a bit this time. Between driving back and forth and supervising boxes and furniture going into the new place, picking up the children and cleaning the old house we were only done by about one in the morning. Typically our vacuum cleaner stopped working during the clean, I've forgotten to take the meter readings and we didn't eat properly on the day so were near delirium by the time everything was in and the keys were returned. 

Now we can't work out the heating and some of the radiators aren't connected anyway, we have no clue how to keep the hot water hot and we have new pans because we realised our old ones don't work on the new hob. I've also been without a washing machine now for 3 days. You can imagine that's not good either. I also have no idea where the majority of things are. I can find just one coat and one pair of shoes. I also DESPERATELY need to find where the cake tins are for Ruby's birthday cake. We are only slowly rediscovering our things. Having other people pack is BRILLIANT but the labelling is not detailed. At all. However, other than being pretty chilly in our lovely new house it's all good. George is definitely 'adjusting' to it all - he doesn't seem that settled and has asked a few times to go home now. Yesterday, at a birthday party he had a near breakdown but I'm sure he'll be much happier very soon. 

I've just sat down and written a fairly long list for tomorrow, it's Ruby's birthday this weekend and I have a party to arrange now. No rest for the wicked eh? For anyone else equally as busy busy or more so, I love this post by the Freedom experiment.