I’m about to start a Parisian-inspired piece, so I’ve been googling a lot of cherry blossoms.
Pinned from elleamberley.co.uk
It’s not helping my Spring-longing very much…
I think it’s time to step out of The Hovel and do some embroidery in the sunshine!
I’ll just get these frames painted in, they’re a suitably Parisian shade of cream, croyez-vous?
For almost the first time in a fortnight I am home alone.
No one is drilling, sanding, sawing or traipsing about.
The whole house is a mixture of Things That Are Mine and Things That Don’t Feel Like Mine Yet. (With the possible exception of the tile spacers.)
Until then, there are still jars of jam amongst the train tracks in the front room and I’m not entirely sure where the rest of the tea towels are, but we’re making progress.
Just a quick update on my plan chest project.
I know I said I wasn’t going to mess about with it, but the more I got to tightening joints and replacing drawer pulls the more it became obvious that the whole thing needed a bit of work.
In fact, there are sections of woodwork that are almost entirely made of wood putty, but you can’t quite tell (unless you’ve a good eye for fingerprints).
I painted it Bone China Blue (because we had heaps of it left and it makes me ineffably happy).
I have a few shelves still to put up and possibly a bookcase to find but I’m really starting to feel at home in my wee Hovel.
As you may remember, Google Reader departed this Earth 1 July, 2013, so like a teenager whose first proto-relationship has ended when someone leaves home, I set out to find a replacement.
At the time I was unaware that this search would take me seven months and quite a bit of tears and swearing.
Because my love life has always been rather straightforward, I thought you’d like to hear the trials and tribulations of my feed reader dating adventures instead.
Feedly – First up was the one everyone said was made for me. Feedly is attractively presented (if a little more trendy than I might ordinarily go for), has great hair and even seemed to get on with my collection of blogs.
Soon, however, it became apparent that there might be some communication issues. Feedly expected me to memorise an obtuse collection of swipes, wipes and keyboard shortcuts in order to see everything in my reader. If I got things wrong, there would be a huffy ‘Are you sure?’ and then a slightly over-dramatic removal of all the unread posts. Sometimes these posts would reappear months later, but you just never knew.
I stayed longer than I should, I can see that now, but I really thought we could make it work.
Digg – Rather rugged in an ordinarily attractive sort of a way. Seemed friendly enough, tried to be interested in the things I was interested in, but lost interest about halfway through.
Insisted, rather oddly, that every date should start with a bunch of people I’d never heard of coming along and telling me about their lives, even if I specifically requested that I’d just like it to be about the two of us.
Newsvibe – Achingly hip and minimalist, perhaps with a touch of the Northern Quarter? The sort who would carry around a selection of gadgets with no visible means of operation and let you borrow them just to be able to point out how they ought to be used.
On the whole we got on well, but everything had to be just a little too elegant and complicated. For instance, in one astonishingly infuriating quirk the scroll button can only be revealed while the mouse is not hovering over the space soon to occupied by the scroll bar. A bit like Whack-a-Mole crossed with trying to get into a club so hip it doesn’t yet exist. It was never going to last.
Finally, and out of desperation, I tried the dreadfully named Bloglovin. To be honest, this one feels less like a date and more like saying ‘To Hell with romance, let’s just stay home and watch films and eat embarrassing amounts of popcorn.’
I’m not expected to be cool enough to understand symbols or swipes (the buttons have proper words on them), if I want to see some posts but I’m not feeling social enough to see them all, that’s ok. I can even let Bloglovin (…shudder) tell my mates about my new blog posts via Twitter.
Now that I’ve found a feed reader that I can just be friends with I have plenty more headspace for getting on with the important things of life, like worrying whether I’m supporting my local greengrocer and the Farmer’s Market equally, or composing stinging diatribes against whatever foolishness comes out of people in government on Radio 4.
If it all goes wrong, I promise I’ll tell you all about it while snivelling into a tub of chocolate ice cream.
This post is brought to you by my tax return…so it’s about chocolate.
This is my tippy top extra favourite working at home elevensies, but only when the Lovely Young Man is at work because it has [peanut butter*] in it and he and [peanut butter**] are not friends.
I thought I’d got the recipe from the Interwebz somewhere, but apparently (surprise, surprise) I made it up by combining other recipes.
Photo by Health Inspirations
Click on the photo for a link to a version with dates, cashews, raisins, cocoa and vanilla.
I’d like to pretend that mine look gorgeous like the ones in the photo but I tend to eat them half-formed out of a bowl with a spoon (and a guilty expression on my face).
Squish dates to paste with the back of a spoon, add cocoa and peanut butter and goodgie about until they are satisfactorily mixed. Add enough oats to make it the texture of your choice. If you’re feeling fancy, roll them into balls, otherwise consume with coffee for super-charged productivity until lunchtime. If it’s Monday, add chocolate pieces.
I make no claims as to the health benefits or otherwise of these things, especially as I’m pretty sure the serving size is miniscule, but it’s got to be better than a Hostess cupcake.
*whispered
**shh! see above
Those of you who are avid readers may remember that I made Dragon a costume from one of his favourite books.
He received a lovely illustration from Holly Swain, who drew the pictures.
But it has taken me rather a long time to get everything organised…until now. So here are the two, ready for their close-up!
I’m really very pleased that he’s got a whole wall full of original art, you can’t start moulding their taste too young.
From left to right are Dragon’s bris certificate (very limited edition!), my embroidery of his Hebrew name, two prints from Penelope and Pip, and our own Sergeant Rockhard. Then at the bottom, Lucinda, Amos, Bunny and Little Lamb.
That reminds me, I did some drawings of Little Lamb and Bunny that I keep meaning to do something with. What do you think?
Inspired by Emma at The Gift Shed, I thought I’d show you around my new workroom.
It’s a box room off the living room which we started to call The Hovel* when we were students. It was my sewing room for a while, but it was always a little chaotic.
I had a ruthless clear out of sewing supplies before we moved back up, knowing full well that moving from almost a whole floor (attic and cellar in consecutive terraced houses) to a space about 5 foot by 6 foot (with a 10 foot ceiling) was going to be a challenge.
I’m currently planning a waist-height cutting table (you may notice that I do all my work standing up, once a Pilates teacher, always a Pilates teacher) and there will definitely be shelves in my future! In the meantime there is a gently ebbing tideline of flotsam and jetsam that I haven’t found a home for.
One of the joys of this flat is trying to determine the original uses for various rooms. Perhaps this was a cloakroom or wardrobe?
All links to inspiration workspaces and cut price, reclaimed or aspirational furnishings are more than welcome! I keep track of them on a Pinterest board called Workroom Delights, so please help me fill it. After taking these photos (at half past two in the afternoon) I’m starting to seriously consider a daylight bulb!
*I think it was called this because other, less enlightened landlords than the Lovely Young Man would offer box rooms as bedrooms.
I’ve been wrestling with technology and now I’m happy to report that no longer do you have to trudge to my door to receive your bi-weekly envelope of Misericordia musings. Instead, you can complete the ludicrously simple form below and each melodious missive will meander to your inbox whether you like it or not.*
You can even choose to receive a nudge in the ribs six times a year at important gift-giving seasons, in time to get your loved ones entirely unique hand embroidered lovelyness.
*That’s just for my parents, the rest of you are more than welcome to unsubscribe if it all gets too much.
I spend a lot of time in my other job trying to encourage people to listen to their bodies and be guided by the frankly astounding levels of engineering and design which have gone into the system that allows them to move, reason and sit on the sofa watching YouTube videos of cats falling off windowsills.
Sometimes this applies to me as well. We officially moved into our new old flat on Friday, Dragon woke us up on Sunday morning by being sick (by the way, what maternal instinct compels me to put out my hand at that point?) and the rest of the week was punctuated by frantic unpacking to allow the removals company to take their boxes back, frantic reshuffling to allow the broadband people to connect us to the outside world and the emotionally fraught task of trying to decide on categories to organise the CD rack by (do we need Folk Rock and Indie Folk? Yes).
By Wednesday evening it was pretty obvious that I was about to crash and on Thursday I managed to out-sleep the cat.
Hopefully things are getting on to a more even keel, but there’s still a lot of this going on.
Everyone feeling a little Monday? Me to…
Here, let me help.
That’s better.
It’s been a bit hectic around here, first my computer (Vesper Holly) decided to have an out of body experience (now sorted out by the ever-calm Lovely Young Man and the fact that my whole life is in the Clouds).
Next the aforementioned LYM casually suggested that we might as well get the kitchen redone now, since we were having to spend lots of money on half-heartedly patching the kitchen floor.
Hang on, I need another cat picture.
Ok.
We’re off to go speak to the kitchen-y folk, my Pinterest is full of other people’s gorgeous kitchens and I really, really just want to move into the flat before I decide to run away to join a circus for some peace and quiet. Please provide words of comfort and stories of happy kitchen sagas (or top tips) below.
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