Echoes of a Dream

Goodbye ........................

Well dear readers, I think the time has finally come to hang up my hat and to say goodbye to you all. Since we moved house back in February I've felt that this blog has just been dragging along without any sense of direction - which actually sounds a bit like my life really!

The children broke up from school on Friday and for the next seven weeks I want to spend some quality time with them. Amber is already 14 and it might be the last summer that she's around all the time. The boys, being 12 and 8, increasingly need me less but I want to make sure I do fun stuff with them too. Plus there's the epic return to America in August to plan.

I also need some time to think about where my life is going and what I want to put into it come September. I'm exploring ideas like adult education courses and I might try my hand at art and maybe brush up on my German. I'd also like to get out of the house and find a part time job. So there's lots to ponder and do this summer and quite honestly blogging is just a distraction these days.

It wasn't always thus of course, having this blog really did change my life and in the course of two years plus I have learned so much, tried many new things, stretched myself creatively, made some amazing friends and most importantly I've been part of this fantastic on-line community. Of course I will miss you all terribly but I'm sure you will understand that I have come to a crossroad in this 47th year of my life and I need to really think about which road I'm going to take.

So I bid you farewell and send my love to each and every one of you that has read my posts, left comments, sent emails, exchanged gifts and bought things from me.                       Thank you for being there ...........................

Cough, cough, splutter, splutter

I suppose it's inevitable that you're going to wake up on Monday morning after an action packed weekend and feel a bit depressed. Especially if it's bucketing with rain and you've woken up with a stinker of a cold (complete with headache).

Boy did I feel awful this morning. I came back from school at 9am the world was wet and grey and the house was dark and I had such an overwhelming feeling of lonliness and sadness I can't describe.

The weekend had been amazing. I spent most of Saturday cooking up food for the evening. I made devils on horseback (prune wrapped around with streaky bacon), sausage rolls and chocolate truffles amongst other things and then ferried Amber around to have her hair done and get last minute things. She looked amazing. I wish I could show you but I don't really like posting pics of the children. Just imagine her - tanned, 5'10", slim, hair up and in a gorgeous dress. Actually, why don't I just chop off her head and show you:

I was going to buy a new dress but with a cupboard full of Indian clothes it seemed a bit wasteful. In the end I wore this:

The ball was amazing. The children had all been practicing ballroom dancing and entertained us with that first. Cue hazy pic:

Then on came another band and the real dancing began. The children had great fun (without alcohol too) and we came home at midnight. 'Cept we didn't actually come into the house at midnight because my daughter wanted a heart to heart in the car about a boy who had asked her out (she wasn't sure about him but I think she actually did like him but wasn't admitting it). Tom who'd gone home earlier called on my mobile at 1am saying: "aren't you coming in?"

Next morning it was a fareful brunch for the class teacher with speeches and the most wonderful irreverent waldorf song sung by our bolshy fourteen year olds and back home for Wimbledon ofcourse. My feet barely touched the ground all weekend.

So you can see why one would wake up on Monday morning when there isn't a ray of sunshine in the sky, when your chest feels tight and your head feels like cotton wool. I just sat and cried. Sadly, I had to go to the supermarket because the fridge was empty, the fruitbowl was empty and so was the egg bowl and the bread crock. I berated myself for not going on Friday and tried to berate Tom for not going at the weekend even though he was just as busy. So in the end I dragged myself to Waitrose and put the self pity/sadness on hold and when I came back I'd forgotten all about it. Good old Waitrose!

Cooked up a lovely hot curry for later (recipe here):

and now I'm off for a soak in this:

Might just take a bar of Green and Black's with me ....................

Learning to say No

Do you ever find yourself saying Yes to something and then bitterly regretting it because the person who asked you to do the thing seems to think that you said Yes I will give up my whole life for this?

Well, I seem to have gotten myself inot a big mess this week as I suddenly realised that having said Yes I'll help with the food for the Class 8 ball I seem to be co-organiser. When and how did I let that happen?

I do realise that I have a problem saying No and I can tell you that I've learnt a huge lesson here. Say Yes and make it clear what you're committing to and say No to anything extra before it goes too far down the line.

So I've spent all morning trying to extracate myself from too much committment because quite frankly life is just so full in these last two weeks of term. We've had the midsummer fair, the Class 5 Olympics, Class 8 play, my sister's birthday last Saturday, the Class 8 ball on Saturday and their brunch on Sunday. I'm tired thinking about it all.

Anyway, I've managed to farm out a lot of the food to a Mum that does catering here which will leave some of us to make a few dips, crudites and other nibbles. Phew I can breath now.

I tell you I've learned something though!

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On another note a lot of people have asked me for the recipe for Cowboy Cookies so I thought I'd take the opportunity and post it here:

You will need:

• 1 cup sofened butter
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1 1/2 cups soft brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp baking soda (which I took to mean bicarb)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsps vanilla essence
• 2 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup dessicated coconut
• 12 oz chocolate chips (I usually use 8oz)

Cream the butter and sugars and then add the eggs and vanilla essence. Beat well. Mix in the remianing ingredients. Drop (dessert) spoon fulls of the mixture onto a greased baking tray and bake at 350F for about 15 minutes. The biscuits do spread and the mixture makes about 30+.

Happy Baking ..

Sale - part two

Oh, this clearing out and simplifying lark is so addictive. Almost as addictive as the hoarding itself - ha ha! 

Seriously though, it is nice to be able to see the bottom of some of my baskets and not to feel overwhelmed by all the contents that needed to be used. I can actually see myself using what is left. This week it's mostly the knitting baskets that were gone through and here's what I have for sale.

A long time ago I had visions of knitting myself this cardi from A Yorkshire Fable:

so I got the wool (Rowan Chunky Tweed) in red:

with a contrasting ball of slate grey/black:

and it sat there and sat there until this week that is. In all there are eleven balls (ten reds). It originally cost around £50. I can split it by the way.

Two years ago I knit the French Market Bag from Knitty for my sister in New Zealand and then rashly bought some of the same colour for myself. Needless to say I never got around to it. I have five skeins of this gorgeous wool:

It knits at around 18sts to 4ins and can be used for a child's jersey or a tank top. Cost £20 when I bought it. I also have a green skein if anyone does wants to knit the bag (pic a few posts back).

Last summer Amber decided she wanted to knit a jersey for herself but the interest didn't last long! She bought six skeins (or was it seven) of this lovely Colinette colourway:

I will need to unravel the bit she knit unless some poor soul wants to take it on. Cost around £25 new.

I also have some little balls of plant dyed wool left over. They make lovely pressies for children and the colours are divine:

I'm selling one ball for $4 each but will discount for more than two.

Also have two balls of plant dyed and handspun fibre (they're bigger than the above balls):

Selling for $6 each and there are three little skeins of the same for $4 each:

Found the following knitting books that I will never use again:

and

Apart from my hand dyed wool please feel free to make me an offer for the other stuff. I know I ought to say what I want but my brain's a bit tired this afternoon - sorry.

A Day Out in London

Ten years ago we moved out of London and I've barely been back since although I love the place. So on Monday I decided to go in for the day and visit my former place of work to stock up on Japanese food and ingredients.

When I worked at the Japan Centre it was very much a bookshop. I was assistant manager and book buyer and I loved my job. The staff were mainly young Japanese people and we all had a great relationship. Since I left about fifteen years ago the boss has diversified. Now the the Japan Centre consists of two buildings on Piccadilly (just near the tube and the big Waterstones). Shop one:

is now a food store selling Japanese ingredients, crockery, bread, snacks, lunches, tea and books in the basement. You can imagine that I went a bid mad in there:

I just had to have some onigiri (Japanese rice balls):

and as for inari zushi, my mouth was watering at the mere thought of them:

They are sort of tofu skins filled with rice and have a sweetish flavour.

I know Amber just loves anko (aduki bean paste) so I had to get a few of these:

which look like this inside - think this one had chestnuts inside too:

Next door (where the bookshop used to be) is now a restaurant. I haven't eaten there for months but I remember the quality to be excellent as well the prices. I think huge bowls of ramen (noodles) were about 7 or 8 pounds.

Both shops are well worth a visit if you are in London. You can have lunch in the restaurant or treat yourself to take away food and perhaps take it to nearby St James Church and eat in the courtyard:

I went inside afterwards and was treated to ten minutes of violin playing. He's the guy in black.

Better still St James Park which is quite close by:

I had such a lovely day pottering around on my own - no Oxford St or Convent Garden. Instead I ambled down Jermyn Street and  up past the beautiful windows of Fortnum's:

a quick peek inside:

and then it was time to head home and do the school run.

Oh I forgot to tell you what I saw before I got to the shops. This lot coming out of St James Palace:

so I joined the tourists and snapped away:

Rejuvenated by London but with sore feet, armed with tons of goodies I got the train home and couldn't get my head around that girl who used to do this everyday fifteen to twenty years ago. Was it really me? 

I decided that I need to do this more often.

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You really should pay Japan Centre a visit. The address is: 212-213 Piccadilly and they appear to have a website now (click here). The (Japanese) Manager assures me that if anyone wants to order Japanese craft books and magazines he will be only to happy to try and get from Japan (as long as they're not out of print).

Family life

It takes a lot for me to buy strawberries in the supermarket these days but I couldn't resist the smell of these as I busied myself on Friday morning doing the weekly shop:

Anyway, got home unpacked and then got out my little prize:

 

I put them on a plate with a few twists of black pepper and they were divine. Have you ever tried strawberries with a hint of black pepper? Of not, you're missing something. There's something about the pepper that brings out the real flavour of the fruit. You can also try them with balsamic vinegar but I prefer the pepper. Needless to say it didn't take me long to scoff the lot and I wished I'd bought more and not been so snooty.

Reminds me that I must find a fruit farm around here as it's June and raspberry jam making time. It's also elderflower cordial time too but I still have some bottles left over from last year so I'm going to pass on that.

Amber came back from her school trip last week and it was so nice to have her back. It had been so quiet without her. I think we missed her more than the boys did - after all it must be nice not to have your bossy, prone to bad tempers big sister around for a week. However they did make her a banner and we had a lovely cream tea to celebrate:

 

 

Talking of bad tempers Rohan seems to have changed overnight since turning twelve. He's been cheeky (more than usual that is), moody, restless and irritable. I think it's more to do with the fact that he's bored rather than his age. He's made a number of friends at school but none of them seem to socialise much outside. Things that interested him before seem to have lost their pull and in his boredom he's begging-nagging to go on Bebo (like Facebook). In Gloucestershire he was lucky to have a couple of friends down the lane and they would get together and go off and play. Other times he'd go up the lane to groom someone's horse or to muck out the stables. Then there was going off on his own for a bike ride. Well, none of those options are available here so we had a chat about it last night and thought of things we could set in place for him: asking one friend over a week; playing tennis with Dad after supper; going swimming and the like. This morning he decided to do some cooking and made Bunce's Doughnuts from Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes Book. He did the mixing and I did the frying:

Glad I got on top of this sooner than later - couldn't bear two grumpy children in the family. To be fair Amber isn't grumpy - she's just prone to volcanic outbursts now and again. She's happy at school, has a good circle of friends and plenty of places to hang out here. She has a play coming up and then a ball at the beginning of July. I think in the end she might just wear the dress that I bought her off eBay at Christmas although she's a bit worried about being overdressed. Most of her friends are wearing slightly smarter-than-usual summer dresses. Amber's one is taffeta and shimmers as she moves:

Just want to say thank you before I go to everyone who bought craft supplies from me. I found a heap of knitting wool that needs to go - Rowan, Colinette and some blue wool that I used to make the French Market bag on Knitty:

 

I'll be listing it all next week sometime. I have to say that it's lovely getting rid of stuff and paring down to the bare minimum.

Please help me get rid of this stuff

I'm going to weep. I really am. I spent nearly an hour on this post, pressed spellcheck and the damn computer got jammed. Meaning that I lost my whole post. Bloody Typepad - your days are numbered.

So please excuse the listing nature of this post. I can't bear to write up eveything again (I wrote about Rohan's birthday too) so's I'm just going to show you what I have for sale. Everything is reasonably priced as I just want to get rid of it all.

First off I have twenty bags of plant dyed fibre:

This is uncarded stuff that needs gentle teasing out in some cases and a bit of elbow grease in others. It's a mixture of Cotswold and Blue Faced Leicester both great for felting. I haven't graded the quality though I'll say that most of it is excellent:

Each bag weighs around 100g and is $15 plus postage (my uncarded bags that weighed 50g were $10). If you're interested please email me so's I can send you an invoice through paypal. (Also listed here on Etsy).

I also went through my felted jumpers and made piles that weigh around 350g (about 12oz) each:

I saw that someone was selling less for $20 on her blog so I'll be happy with $20 for each pile. There are eight in all:

and they're all different:

Great for making Betz White's cupcakes:

Again please email for a total cost with postage.

I found a pile of fabric that looks like crushed velvet (and is probably polyester) in gorgeous colours:

I also have quite a bit of dishcloth cotton for any UK readers:

Will put this up on eBay - click here.and here. (Sorry the variegated has sold already).

I have five skeins of lovely Blue Faced Leicester knitting wool too that knits up as aran weight (about 18st to 4 ins). It dyes really well:

 

I also found this fabric (a metre) which I think is a heavy duty Cath Kidston (might be Ottoman Rose):

and some plant dyes. I have Goldenrod:

brazilwood, annatto and safflower. The goldenrod is in a 500g bag but I can split it. The others are 100g each and will be $3 or £1.50 a bag.

Plant dyed silks are over on Etsy and the undyed silk squares are on eBay here. I'm sorry this post is long and I daren't do a spell check again so as they say, thanks for looking. Please feel free to make me any offers.

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PS Haven't been through the Kool Aid yet or the fabric or the ribbons! 

Clearing Out ....................

Firstly, thank you so much for all your warm wishes and sympathy about my fall in the garden. I really appreciated it and desperately needed some 'poor you's'. As the days went by the bruise came out more:

and although I have stopped aching all over my cheekbone is still a bit sore. I've never been one of those rush to the doctor sorts and I keep thinking even if something has cracked what can they do about it? I'm tempted to just go and get some bone-set, or symphitum as it's called homepathically and to take that. Oh, well I'll see how I am over the weekend (ought to find out where the local hospital is at any least).

So this week has seen me taking it easy on my pins and I've spent a lot of time reading. Managed to finish Jane Eye which I hadn't read for over twenty years and I started a very interesting biography about the Mitford family. It's called The Mitford Girls by Mary S Lovell. I got it for Amber really as she's been reading Love In A Cold Climate and a few other titles by Nancy Mitford.

By this morning though I was getting a bit restless and a sudden urge overcame me to go into the annexe and sort through my craft stuff with a view to getting rid of some of it. If I felt oppressed by my stuff when I was busy using it you can imagine how I feel now.

So I started off with the plant dyed fibre and dumped bags of it on the floor:

and then I took some cellophane bags, grabbed handfuls of different colours and stuffed 'em in. I now have about twenty bags all weighing around 100g of mostly cotswold fleece (with a bit of BFL thrown in).

I also went through my plant dyed silk squares:

I have some undyed silk squares too. Found a basket of lovely undyed blue faced leicester knitting wool, sock wool and lots of Kool Aid. Some oddments of plant dyed blanket too:

In the next few days I'm going to go through my felted jumpers and fabric. I'll also look out for anything that didn't sell at Christmas and put them up for sale (might do Etsy too if I have the energy).

So look in next week for my massive clearance. Everything must go. I feel liberated just saying the words.

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Tomorrow is Rohan's 12th birthday. Sadly, Amber is away on a school trip but my sister and her children are coming over for the day so that will make it nice and special. On Sunday he's going bowling with three friends and then for a cycle ride (after a sumptuous tea that he's requested).  Presents are bought, waiting to be wrapped tonight. Can't wait to see his face in the morning ...............................

Boo hoo hoo - poor me!

I was going to tell you about our lovely half term and about how we went to Boulogne for the day. About our lovely lunch and about all the lovely things we saw and especially a place called Wimereax that's on the coast road between Calais and Boulogne:

I was going to tell you about the fox that I caught sun bathing at the bottom of our garden:

but instead this is going to be a boo hoo hoo look what happened to me post. Because yesterday, whilst tidying the garden my foot caught in something and I went flying  ................ I put my hand out to break my fall .............. and my left knee crashed onto the concrete steps .............. then seconds later my face went splat on the same steps. I hit the left side of my face, my cheek bone and I cannot tell you how excruciating the pain was. I lay there muttering oh my God, oh my God. Managed to drag myself indoors (no one else was in). Poured rescue remedy over my knees, my face, down my throat and promptly burst into tears.

Phoned Tom - "Tom .... sob, sob, I've just fallen down in the garden, sob sob and it hurts". He came back with the boys (he was thirty minutes away) and we put arnica on everything. I spent the rest of the day on the sofa, fragile and shaken. It was horrid.

This morning my face looks like this:

and it's still sore as are both my knees. In fact, my hand hurts quite a lot and I feel like I've jarred my whole body. Think I might need to get some cranial tomorrow. See what I mean ...............poor me?

PS Boy do I wish I'd plucked my eyebrows now!

The market on .........

So, there we were with the heaving masses streaming out of Notting Hill tube station on a very warm Saturday. Once we got past the beautiful terraced houses (one of which George Orwell lived in):

the market proper started. The first section is mainly antiques - both shops and stalls:

and then you come to the food part which I must say is nothing like the stuff that was on offer twenty years ago when I used to visit. There were stalls selling these yummy things:

cauldons of steaming paella:

artisan bread, cakes, olives and many other things set up by enterprising people. There were also the usual fruit and veg stalls too with very good quality stuff actually.

On the way along Portobello Road we stopped at Graham and Green, Books for Cooks of course:

and The Travel Bookshop which is where Hugh Grant's character worked in the film Notting Hill.

Once you get past the food you enter the clothes section which is a mixture of, overpriced in my mind, vintage stuff and newer whacky stuff. Ofcourse, Amber had to fall in love with this dress didn't she:

In July they are having their Class 8 ball and she needs a dress. Sadly, this one was £200!

Three hours later we ended up at the top end of the market where it basically fizzles out but no mind because we were off to The Lisboa Cafe for some of their delicious pastries:

We bought two boxes of the most divinely decadent Portuguese Custard Tarts:

Words cannot describe these I'm afraid and I only wish Typepad had a taste facility so you could all have a peck. They are thick, creamy, sweet and the pastry is to die for. OMG I might have to go and eat one for a mid morning snack - excuse me won't you?

Hmm, that's better. Now where was I? Oh yes, the market. Actually that was it really. We still had a few hours to kill so we walked back down to the tube station and on the way I was tempted by these:

they're basically framed cigarrette cards:

and like so on the back:

I was tempted by so many of them. Oh dear, I feel an obsession coming on as I've already looked them up on eBay.