swings and no roundabouts

 We managed to find a small gap in the rain (rain, rain, rain) to visit the park this week.  It was just us, a squirrel and a pigeon, maybe because of the looming dark clouds.  Dulcie looks so grown up ever since she got a proper puffy jacket.

Whenever she goes on the swings, Dulcie adopts this hip-hop style slouch with her right arm under the bar.  She likes just watching what's going on and getting the occasional push to keep her moving.  Too cool for school.  Nuff said, end of.

call off the midlife crisis!

Thanks to my sister's canny research, I can stop worrying about being the same age as Lovejoy.  Ian McShane was born in 1942 and the first ever episode of Lovejoy was broadcast in 1986, making him at least 43 at the time.  Phew!  This means I've still got over a decade before I'm the same age Lovejoy really was at his very youngest.  I think I can handle that.  Sort of.  

Graham turned 43 this week.  Hmm, I feel a new nickname brewing.  Tee hee!

me and my girl

Here's a quick snap of Dulcie and I for posterity's sake, taken just after I got drenched in the rain.  I'm finding it hard to find the energy to be a very good mum at the moment (that's not to say I'm not a good mum, just maybe not quite the mum I would hope to be able to be) but I still just love having Dulcie around.  She is getting so funny and so stubborn, too.  (Wonder where she gets that from...)  As well as making various animal noises, she can say "Dad", "Mum", "cat", "dog" (sort of) and "twoo", which means owl.  She's still loving to dance and will sing, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," along to pretty much everything.  She knows the actions to lots of the songs we sing and will join in unprompted.  She's still not quite walking solo, but she can fairly get around, shuffling over to the nearest bit of furniture and pulling herself up to standing, usually followed by an excited squeal or a great big giggle.  She's getting to be pretty affectionate (sometimes) which I love.  I'm doing everything I can to turn her into a cuddly type.  She's still not any closer to sleeping in her own bed, but I guess that goes hand in hand with being a cuddly type!  All in all, Dulcie's just a great girl.  But, man oh man, is she hard work :)

the age of lovejoy

I passed a rather pleasant and relaxing weekend at work.  I was told to practise working on repeats, which means getting to watch some classic programmes like Lovejoy.  Mmm!  Nice, slow telly.  However, whille subtitling Lovejoy this weekend, something shocking happened.  The police wanted to question Lovejoy about a crime as he matched the assailant's description in every way... including being in his thirties!  Lovejoy?!  In his thirties?!  This cannot be!  I am in my thirties!  Am I really the same age as Lovejoy?  I think this will be the root of my first proper mid-life crisis.  Mind you, it probably doesn't help that my abiding image of Lovejoy is this clip from Reeves and Mortimer, which does emphasise his deep-set wrinkles rather...

clearance

adjust your set, a photo by dropstitch on Flickr.

In one of my recent clear-outs, I decided to part with a couple of these experimental test card girl embroideries.  I made these on my sewing machine about 2.5 years ago as a precursor to the more colourful and hand-stitched version now available in my shop here.  I never wanted to try to sell these early attempts, but I didn't want to throw them out either.  I also didn't want to try to give them away on my blog for fear nobody would want them and I'd be left red-faced!  So a couple of weeks ago I added them to one of my many bags of random items to take to the charity shop.  (I have been sending a lot of stuff to the charity shop over the last year, but that probably deserves a whole post of its own.  God, where do I come up with such thrilling blog topics?!  Sheesh!)  Anyway, since taking them to the charity shop I have been twinging with regret and a little bit of panic.  I know they'll have a tiny price tag on them (if they even make it as far as the shelf) and I feel like I'll be blushing and anxious every time I go into the shop, which is often, wondering if I'll see them and if they'll sit there unwanted for months on end.  I've been thinking about this so much that recently I made the decision that I would buy them back if I ever did see them on the charity shop's shelves.

That was until I read this post over on My Paper Crane.  Heidi had donated an unwanted hand-drawn plate to her local charity shop (or thrift store as she would call it!) in Pennsylvania.  After seeing it sitting on the shelf with a 25c price tag one time too many, she decided to buy the plate back and bin it... only to discover next time she went in that the plate was gone.  Unsure whether it had been purchased or thrown away, Heidi forgot all about it until she received an excited email from a lucky My Paper Crane fan who had found and purchased the plate (a Heidi Kenney original!) at a flea market in Ohio.  How it got to an Ohio flea market is anyone's guess, but how wonderful that it did!  

Now I've decided to let fate deal with my embroideries.  I think they have my labels on the back of them so maybe one day I'll hear from someone who found them somewhere.  Or maybe I'll randomly become famous and the embroideries will be marked up from 10p to £10,000 and make a fortune for the British Heart Foundation.  That would be good.  Or maybe they've already made their way into a skip...

fruity bowly

 Dulcie can't get enough of beans with toast and cream cheese.  Or bananas.

I can't get enough of oranges suddenly, which can be no bad thing.  I cut them up into exactly eight pieces, give one slice to Dulcie and sook the living daylights out of the other seven, quick stylee... leaving an unphotogenic scene like the one above!

I recently moved our fruit bowl from the worktop to the kitchen table and I think it is making us eat more fruit.  I've also started washing apples etc BEFORE they go in the bowl so they are ready to grab and eat without leaving the comfort of my chair.  All good little changes, I think.

We found our groovy vintage fruit bowl in a Swiss/French charity shop in October.  It turned out my sister had bought the very same bowl in another charity shop just a few weeks before.  It's a Guzzini, don't you know?  There's a much better picture of the same bowl here.  I wish I didn't have to rely on other people's photos to make my life look good...

classy doll

Just dropping by to say, did you see Dot's amazing outfit on last night's EastEnders?  Wow!  I don't think I'd seen her in this blouse before and I am coveting it badly.  Should anyone ever spot one in a charity shop (size 14-ish) please snap it up for me!

Did I just blog four times in 24 hours?  Oh yes, I did!  It is making my (blogging) life so much easier not to round corners on photos.  Had you even noticed?  Probably not.