get me my goddamn grammy!

I bet you can't look this cool with a crayon in your mouth.

Seriously, no shame...

been sewing

I've overcome my fear of sewing with stretch fabric and have discovered a new addiction in the process!  I made these sweet baby leggings and matching hats for my friend's new daughter.  After two weeks in limbo (and me thinking they were lost somewhere between here and Denmark - waaaaah!) they have finally reached their intended recipient.  Dulcie wants the far-left pair made in her size, so that's the next challenge.  Then perhaps hot pants for myself?!  Look out, world...

I'm very excited The Great British Sewing Bee is back on our screens, though I've yet to catch up with the first episode.  I very nearly applied this year (in a why-the-heck-not moment) but was away during filming dates, so didn't.  Hopefully they do another series after this and I can attach a photo of me in my hot pants baby hats and leggings to my application.

Should you be interested, I used a couple of free patterns to make these.  Leggings here and hats here.  And sewing with stretchy fabric wasn't nearly as scary/tricky as I thought, so you should give it a go if you're tempted.

taking stock

 

Making : a crocheted mermaid-tail blanket for Dulcie (very slo-o-o-owly)
Cooking : lots of new things, mostly healthy
Drinking : alcohol, even though I'm trying to be on the wagon (but currently a cup of tea!)
Reading: The Inheritance Of Loss (I realised part of the way through that I'd read it before, but most of it still seems new to me.  I'm not usually a re-reader and it's depressing to realise how little of a book can stay in my mind, especially when it's so good.)
Wanting: to get my healthy-living mojo back
Looking: at Pinterest and caravan sites for a potential summer holiday with my best friend (and our children)
Playing: make-believe games (haven't played Bananagrams in weeks! Shocker!)
Deciding: to take it eeeeeeeasy today
Wishing: for world peace (no, really)
Enjoying: having no to-do list in mind
Waiting: for my DIY hula hoop supplies to arrive in the post!
Liking: Dulcie's new and improved attitude to bedtime
Wondering: what to write for a lot of these
Loving: time alone
Pondering: who to vote for in the Scottish elections
Considering: freezing a hideous wart off my foot after this
Buying: sweets for a "midnight feast" with Dulcie later on
Watching: MasterChef and Creme de la Creme while crocheting
Hoping: that the slugs won't eat my peas that have made the transition to outdoor living
Marvelling: at my vastly improved culinary skills/repertoire
Cringing: at my inability to stop eating crap
Needing: a shower
Questioning: my personal hygiene...
Smelling: bad [I joke]
Wearing: bright pink nailvarnish for a change
Following: my favourite pinner
Noticing: the abundance of fringes and top-knots on ladies' heads
Knowing: I need to be good - exercise, eat well and save money
Thinking: about what it means to be female
Admiring: Cate Le Bon's music
Sorting: my bundle of go-to recipes into a folder I bought for this purpose around 7 years ago!
Getting: better at coping with misery in public places
Bookmarking: recipes I want to try and...plumbing supplies! (but they're hula hoop supplies to me)
Coveting: other people's lives (as usual) and that cactus light, which sold long before I discovered it
Disliking: the wider world and the arsehole minority :(
Opening: the door for the cats
Giggling: over the ballsack v ballsac conversation at work yesterday
Feeling: somewhere in between up and down, also lazy
Snacking: more than I should be
Helping: Dulcie to make a skirt for herself...hopefully soon
Hearing: a clock ticking - peace and quiet!

Thanks for the taking-stock list, Pip!

let's all go to the circus

Image from Fireside Book of Favorite American Songs, illustrated by Aurelius Battaglia and found via this blog.

For weeks I've been meaning to blog about an amazing episode of Storyville that I watched, called The Golden Age Of Circus.  It's over an hour of old footage from various sideshows and circuses with no commentary, rather a musical soundtrack that the clips have been edited to dance along to.  There are so many beautiful sights in it and plenty of mouth-hanging-open-with-horror sights too, really amazing to see.  I think it's available on iPlayer for another seven days if you fancy watching.  I'm planning to rewatch if I can - no better way to spend an hour, I reckon.

Talking of circuses, Graham's mum took us all to see the Moscow State Circus a few weeks back and it was so good.  Being the clumsy oaf that I am, I find it fascinating to watch acrobatic types flinging themselves around with ease.  When a very elegant tightrope-walking lady got hoisted to to the highest point of the big top on an invisible wire, Dulcie actually turned to me and said, "Mum, I never knew you got people who could fly!"  Ahh, the wonder of youth :)

revenge is...sweet?

 Last night Dulcie had a "boys' night in" with my dad, so it was date night for Graham and I.  (No, that's not us pictured!)  We went out for dinner and used the final tickets from our last-year's GFT cinecard to see The Revenant.  Oh, my, it was so good! As you've probably heard, not exactly relaxing viewing, but I would highly recommend it.

The GFT has a seat-dedication scheme as one of its fundraising methods and it's always fun to read them.  I'd never noticed before the one that the lady above was sitting in.

It gave me a good giggle.

Phwoargh :)

work in progress

Not LOVING this guy yet, but I think I know what I need to do to make me love him.  Unfortunately it involves a colour of wool I don't have, but I was going to have to break my no-buying vow to make my cactus anyway.

In other news...

Boo hiss :(

home for hogmanay #5

 (I definitely don't look this cool in the pool, but who, other than Don Draper, ever does?!)

Lengths swum this week: 60
Target total this week: 425

Total lengths swum: 406 (19 behind target)

I've fallen behind target for the first time, but not by much and I haven't been feeling so good this week.  (Kidneys again?  Who knows, but I've got a blood test soon, so I guess we'll find out then.)  Strangely, swimming today made me feel much better than lying on the couch all day yesterday did, not that I didn't enjoy reading a book and watching two films, with a blanket, a hot water bottle and two cats!  So, swimming... I think I can claw back those missing lengths (and hopefully a few more for good measure) over the coming week.  No worries, cobber!

It was so nice to be able to google Don Draper images without fear of a self-inflicted spoiler, as Graham and I finally got to the end of the last-ever series of Mad Men last week.  So sad it's over, but I did love it.  I won't spoil any surprises for any of you, but I will share this picture of Don Draper's Double Denim (it's a thing, I swear!) which you can enjoy without fear of any major plot lines being blown.

Hummanah, hummanah!  The other weekend, I heard Katie Puckrik on 6 Music talking about the time Jon Hamm used the phrase "raging erection" in a television interview and it made steam come out of her ears.  I can quite understand and wish I'd seen it, though even hearing about it second-hand was enough to reduce me to a quivering, giggling wreck and I think I texted/whatsapped pretty much, er, everyone to share the news.  Yes, it's news! Don Draper + "raging erection" = news!  I'm going to miss Mad Men so much.  Could it be too soon to rewatch?  Probably.

wedding preparations

 (I've been laughing about this video since I first saw it at the turn of the century...)

Phew! I've gone admin crazy today, making appointments with every business in Glasgow, from beauticians to cheesemongers.  I think things are starting to come together?  12 days to go...

One thing I am struggling with (maybe someone reading this can help me?) is ideas for gluten-free, preferably veggie, easy-to-make canapes.  Any ideas?

Right, off to make some colour-coded lists :)

switch off your tv set and do something less boring instead

Dulcie and I took the bus to Edinburgh last week in order to find this house.  Do you recognise it?  It's Great Aunt Lizzie's house from CBeebies' Teacup Travels, a very old-fashioned show about ancient history.  I mistakenly thought I'd seen this house not too far from us in Glasgow and foolishly mentioned it to Dulcie before googling and finding out it was in another city entirely.  Well, Edinburgh is not that far really and is full of friends I've been meaning to catch up with, so we hopped on the bus and set off, meeting my friend Lorna once we got there.

We knew the house was somewhere in Princes Street Gardens, but where?  After a few hours' wandering, we had found some ice cream, an amazing play park, plenty of sticks and insects, a bench dedicated to Hugh MacDiarmid, a giant boulder from Norway...but no house.  Eventually we gave up and set off for home, only to stumble across the house right beside the gate we'd entered the park by!  Thank goodness, after all that, that Dulcie was actually suitably impressed and it wouldn't have been half as much fun if we hadn't had to search for it.  We squeezed in a quick cuppa (with Dulcie inexplicably stripping off in the middle of the cafe) before jumping back on the bus to Glasgow.

So a totally random daytrip, but very enjoyable nonetheless.  It's nice that Dulcie's getting to an age where she wants to go on these mini adventures.

swim sunday #20

Lengths swum this week: 70
Target total this week: 957

Total lengths swum: 946 (11 behind target)

I'd need to swim 91 lengths this week to meet next week's target.

Swi-i-i-i-im in the end! :)

live fast, die young...

NOW CAN YOU TELL WHAT IT IS?!

I'm over halfway through and I haven't been sitting doing this all day.  Just call me Speedy Beady!  (And excuse the awful photo again - I snapped it on my phone in the pre-bed half light, hardly ideal beading conditions!)

Jesus, what am I doing with my life?!  This is one of those projects that makes me think that thought repeatedly.  I mean, really, why am I doing this?  Who knows?  Though I often think that about reading (because when you die your brain and everything in it will be lost*) and I still carry on doing it.  But I'm starting to really enjoy fiddling with beads and skinny needles and thread.  And now that the beaded area is getting bigger, it's reminding me of the time my sister and I went along to the Antiques Roadshow with my granny and she had a beaded Virgin Mary which turned out to be worth quite a lot of money.  Then she left it at a petrol station on the way home.  Somehow, it got returned to her at a later date, though I can't for the life of me remember how...  

I'm thinking of embarking on some crazy ambitious bead project once this one's done.  Probably not the Virgin Mary, but something equally ostentatious, naturally!  I'll make sure all my beads are the right size first, though.  All these are meant to be the same size, but the white ones are massive and the black ones are tiny.  Well, really it's not even a mm of a difference, but it definitely has an effect on the uniformity/density, as I'd feared it would.  The row with almost all green beads (about 2/3 of the way down) is how it should look and would look if my other colours were as reliably consistent.  I guess the real test will be when I take it off the loom.  Hopefully it doesn't collapse or go irredeemably wobbly in the black sections.

I think I'll finish this before the week's out.  Watch this space!

* It's morbid thoughts like these that have pushed me into this sort of occupational therapy, my own equivalent of basket weaving.  It really helps.  It's probably unhealthy distraction/denial, but in a way it's kind of close to mindfulness, which is the psychology buzzword of the moment.  I'm a natural at this crap, obviously - pointless crafts and self-prescribed pop psychology...

what we did on our easter "holiday"

 This Easter was rather low-key as I was working the whole weekend.  Graham and Dulcie went to visit Graham's parents on the Sunday, and squeezed in a trip to Erskine beach while they were there.

 Dulcie had a great time, as you can see, and so did Graham.  We're still finding sand in Dulcie's boots, even now.

 Meanwhile, I spent my Easter weekend with...

..this lady!  It's Aughra from The Dark Crystal.  I spent a fair proportion of Easter weekend subtitling this film.  Let me tell you, there are worse ways to earn a living!  The Dark Crystal was the first film I ever saw at the cinema (when I was probably about Dulcie's age) and whenever the film is mentioned, my mum always casts up the fact that, when Aughra first appeared on screen, I said, "Mum, that lady looks like you!"  Oh, my poor mother...  I think it was probably the hair.  Head hair, not facial hair.  Ha!

 I wasn't entirely un-Easterish, though.  Dulcie and I drove through to visit my mum and dad on Good Friday and they'd prepared an egg hunt in the garden, complete with a book of clues and everything.

 Dulcie had a great time.  And plenty of chocolate.

And I'm sorry, but how ridiculously cute and cutely ridiculous is that hat?!  Dulcie found it in a charity shop and it didn't take much persuasion for me to part with my 75p!  She's not always in a hat-wearing mood, but I like to make the most of it when she is :)

discovery of the week

 Thomas Cromwell = Flop

Mind = blown

rendezvous-ing without me!

 

I'm at work today and Graham just texted to say he and Dulcie had watched Belleville Rendezvous and that Dulcie loved it.  How jealous am I?  Very jealous!  Hopefully it will join 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book in the list of films she'd gladly watch twice a day if we let her.  It's been too long since I saw this fabulous film.

hand making

I started off today being all productive, finishing off the handmade gift I posted about yesterday and decorating our fireplace (bauble mania!) while I waited for the charity shop to come and remove our old fridge freezer.  Then I lost all energy and motivation and lay on the couch watching a film (Paul - it was pretty bad) and deleting old programmes from our YouView Box.  It was then that I stumbled across last year's Great British Sewing Bee Christmas Special and decided to watch it. (It doesn't look like they're having one this year.  Boo hiss!)  Before I knew it, I found my hands busy wrapping a polystyrene ring in wool as I watched the lovely festive sewing.  I wasn't following any sort of plan really, but am quite liking the tropical look of this wreath so far and enjoyed the relatively mindless repetitiveness of the task.  And the pretty colours :) I'm hoping for some more downtime next week so that I can get out my glue gun and attach some origamied Quality Street wrappers that I've been saving for just such an opportunity since my family folded them in a weird group effort two Chistmases ago.  I'm not sure I'll be able to make the wreath look good, but I'm looking forward to playing with my glue gun nonetheless.

I've really been liking making more stuff lately.  I know it's been made possible by my being off work, home alone without a toddler demanding my attention, but I'm hoping I can sustain it to some degree once I'm back at work.  I think I'm going to make crafting my new year's resolution, maybe another craftathon like the one I attempted in 2011, but probably on a smaller scale.  I know there are more important things I should resolve to tackle (health and home) but I'm sure I'll do those anyway, so I think I'll use my official resolution on something more fun and more likely to slip under the radar otherwise, namely making.  I don't know yet exactly what form Craftathon 2015 will take, but I'm sure I'll have it figured out by the end of the month.  I already have one new-to-me craft lined up.  It's exciting!

doesn't everyone love toast?

I'm very excited that the new series of Toast Of London starts tonight!  I'm looking forward to weekly instalments of giggling.  Ray bloody Purchase...  So good :)

It's on Channel 4 tonight (Monday) at 10.35pm.

watch with mother

I don't think Dulcie was even born by the time I started looking forward to the day when we'd be able to watch films together and, at last, those days are here!  A few weeks ago, while Graham was at work, Dulcie and I made an impromptu visit to the Saturday-morning child-friendly screening at our local cinema and saw Boxtrolls.  Dulcie and I go to the cinema quite often to see episodes of her favourite TV shows, but I wasn't sure how she'd cope with a full-length film.  Turns out it was a breeze - Dulcie was wide eyed with amazement for almost the whole time.  Being familiar with the cinema seats and screen didn't detract from the excitement for her at all and she was definitely drawn in by the sweeping cinematic scale of it.  I had to break out the snacks for the last 20 minutes or so, but her interest was definitely held throughout.  I really enjoyed Boxtrolls too - a great story and beautiful stop-motion animation with plenty of chuckles, something for everyone!

We've also been making the most of our vomiting days to watch some films at home - every cloud etc.  Gnomeo And Juliet was new to both of us and was OK, but way too much Elton John for my taste and I'm not sure Dulcie would have lasted the entire film if she hadn't been too ill to move!  101 Dalmatians was a major hit though.  I've always loved that film and I was pretty confident Dulcie would like it too since she already enjoys some of the music from it and is very interested in Cruella De Vil as a character.  She ended up loving it so much that she watched it twice in one day.  I see multiple viewings in our future and I'm perfectly happy about that :)

Not a film, but our local cinema recently showed Bagpuss at Toddler Time, to my huge excitement.  I bloomin' love Bagpuss and couldn't wait to share it with Dulcie.  I think she loved it just as much as I ever did.  She's still only seen two episodes, but has been talking about Bagpuss for weeks to anyone who cares to listen.  I think her granny is planning on getting her a Bagpuss DVD for her birthday.  Yippee!

There are lots of films I'm still looking forward to sharing (or should I say films I'm glad to have an excuse to watch again and again?!) but most of them will have to wait until she's a wee bit older, I think.  I'm talking Labyrinth, people!  Oh, yeah!  Hopefully there will be lots of films on in the run-up to Christmas that Dulcie would enjoy that we can record and watch at our leisure.  Children's Christmas films - I can hardly wait!

Have you got any recommendations of films a toddler and her mum might enjoy?  Preferably ones without pretty girls who want to marry into money.

there's got to be more to life than committing suicide*

Like I said yesterday, we didn't see much sport during the Commonwealth Games, but we did make it along to one of the accompanying "festival" events - an outdoor screening of That Sinking Feeling in Kelvingrove Park.



It was great to see the film again in this setting since parts of it are filmed in Kelvingrove Park, and the park was just a pretty amazing setting in its own right too.  The trees behind the screen were so massive, the weather was glorious and seagulls were wheeling across the sky.  There was also a bar on site, so we enjoyed a pint from a local brewery along with the American hard gums we had smuggled past security.  (Security is a whole other story...  I feel a maudlin heart haiku brewing!  Ha!)

The bandstand has just recently been refurbished and looks great. It's lovely to see it back in use. After the film, there was a band on too. Fun, fun times.  Hooray for baby-sitters!

 

* Please don't stage an intervention - this is one of the rather amusing lines from the film!

embroidered animation

If your ears can handle the racket (when did I turn into such an old lady?) there's a piece of embroidered animation, a music video, on Channel 4 tonight at twenty past midnight.  I'll be in bed, naturally, but I'm going to record it so I can watch it later.  Seriously, three and a half minutes of EMBROIDERED animation.  Can you even imagine the amount of work involved?!  It actually looks like a world made from heavy metal fans' patches, recently removed from their denim jackets.  There's more info about the people behind it and how they achieved this feat here.

muppets

My sister introduced (or reintroduced?) me to this old clip from the Muppets recently.  I showed it to Dulcie yesterday and her face was an absolute picture - totally entranced throughout and bursting into a hearty chuckle every time one of the tubes got booted off stage.  I bet you can't watch it without smiling :)

And here's a wee extra - a papercut stop-motion film created by Jim Henson in his early twenties.  I came across this via somebody's blog recently, but I can't remember whose, so apologies if it was yours and you would have liked credit for your excellent recommendation.  I did appreciate it.

PS If you (or your toddler) want to be further entertained, Dulcie also seemed to appreciate this one and this one.  And this one, obviously.  Apparently Animal (when doing the "Mama" bit of Bohemian Rhapsody) is "just like" my dad.  Interesting to get this insight into how Dulcie views her grandfather!