Brief update, Manchester, Lent, Church, holiday, half term and work, letter from America, walk

My cat is ill. My grandpa is much better. And my friend is heading down to see her sort-of boyfriend to try and get pregnant again. Umm.

I went to Manchester yesterday with my friend, KT. He's hilarious and we joke a lot. I bought some more writing paper, which is pretty fun and useful since I was running out rapidly; and I bought a couple of bits from lush as well. We had a drink in Starbucks and just generally chatted and walked and window shopped in clothing stores. We stopped in at Primark - a store I have never bought anything from due to cheap material clothes and cheap labour they use - and it was strange to see how uninviting the men's clothing was in general. It was all so dull and muted and miserable looking on the whole. What happened to colour? Why are we suddenly dressing men in grey and brown and mustard - a colour which suits almost nobody, I might add.

But it was really fun in general, and pretty cheap for me as days out go since the only money I had to spend was £4.50 on a return train fare with my railcard. Bargain! Plus, as I walked to and from the station, I felt like I'd done some healthy exercise too. Definitely enough to make up for the toblerone we bought for the train journey home...

I'm giving up tea for Lent. I am an avid drinker of tea. I'm not absolutely sure how many cups I get through in a day, but there is rarely a moment when I am without one in my hand. That adds up to a fair bit of money I think. Not a massive amount, but a reasonable bit. So I thought I could give it up for Lent, and give the money that would usually be spent on cups of tea for 40 days to a charity. I don't know what charity yet; but I feel it makes giving it up actually meaningful, rather than just being something I've given up pointlessly for 40 days. I remember once when we were young we gave up our pocket money for Lent and saved it all up in a tin to give to a charity. I never knew if we actually did give it to a charity, or which charity it went to... This time, I have it planned out.

My mum's kindly offered to go and look at church services with me. I decided I want to go to church on Sundays, but I'm not sure where. So we're going to do the rounds of the local churches and see which one feels right. I'm quite drawn to one at Leigh Sports Village simply because the service is at half 4 in the afternoon, which means there's no danger of sleeping in. I know, I know, religion isn't meant to be about making things easy in this way - but I do think that with the distance it is to get there, it also makes transport easier. We'll see.

The parents are going on holiday this Sunday, leaving me at home alone for a week (yay)! I enjoy pretending to own my own house and live independently, even if it is just for a week.

I'm on half term from work this week, so I've been doing as much as possible already and I'm hoping to continue my week in this vein. Then next week I will be back to work. I still plan to do as much as possible. I saw that there was a mums and tots group on in Leigh on Tuesdays in the morning, so I was considering trying BB at that. It does cost 50p to attend, whereas Story-tots on Wednesdays and Playgroup on Thursdays are both free. But 50p isn't too bad, and I think BB might enjoy it. I'm always looking for something specific to do on each day simply to give something significant to it, and to break the day down into manageable bits. That's especially important now that BB doesn't have a nap anymore, as the afternoon can seem interminably long sometimes. But if we do something through the morning, then by the time we get home it's lunchtime, and then the games at home occupy us easily for a few hours. If we don't go out at all then the games at home have to occupy us for twice as many hours. And I feel trapped in the house - especially in this weather. I think all the groups we go to are good for BB, as when I first started working with her she was sued to having me all to herself and having undivided attention. At the groups she doesn't get that, which she is slowly getting used to. And she gets used to being in the company of other little people the same age as her, which can only be good to my mind.

I got a letter from America yesterday, which was brilliant! It's part of LetterMo, and so I'm going to write back to the lovely person who wrote to me. It was a very interesting letter, touching on sticky discussion topics, like religion and homosexuality, and healthy living. I'm going to enjoy writing back!

I'm going to stop now, as I need to get dressed for the day. I'm going for a walk with KT today. It's been so long since we saw each other - up until yesterday - so we're going to try and do a bit more from now on.

Oh - and my teeth should be finished and in my mouth by 23rd March, fingers crossed!

Love love xx

Busy, cardigan, ice cream, fancy dress, games, tribe, cloth pads, camping, mum

Busy busy busy since the last time we spoke, I think...! Let me see if I can't piece together the past few days in a way that makes sense...

Okay, so I have some photos for sharing from the recent projects I blogged about last. These include:

A lovely picture of my cardigan:

See how nicely it's gone together! I know there are still loose ends to be sorted and I haven't quite finished as I need to find the perfect buttons for it; but I've tried it on, and I feel amazing in it! The colour is wonderful, i think photos really don't do it justice. And with finishing I've found that I have quite a lot of yarn left over to play with and find something else to make. This does excite me.


I also have pictures of the two ice creams:

The strawberry buttermilk...

...And the vegan strawberry.

I think that they would be better if I had made them in an ice cream maker, which I don't have. Having said which, they've turned out fine, but a little hard. They taste brilliant. the vegan ice cream somehow tastes more like a sorbet, which is refreshing and lovely; and the strawberry buttermilk is really creamy ice cream. On the whole I would consider them to be a success, but in future I would go round to my grandparents and bribe a use of their ice cream maker from them.

So those are the crafty bits I've done. Since then I went to a fancy dress party, which was great fun! I might actually have a photo of that too... let me look...

Yep! My mum took one when we finished the costume:



The last touch to this was the painting of two rouged circles on the apples of my cheeks for a real fairytale look. It was a brilliant night, great company and some very funny games. We played flour mountain, a classic laugh; pass-the-parcel, which was oh so grownup; and a new game to me, of which I don't actually know the name. I'm gonna call it apples and satsumas. Basically, you took a pair of nylon tights and you shoved a satsuma into each toe. Then you tied the tights round your waist so the satsumas hung down in front of you, prompting many jokes about how low people's satsumas swung. Everyone lines up and puts an apple on the floor, then it's a race to see who can get their apple to the finish line first simply by whacking it with the satsumas. It's hilarious but soo difficult!

So that was a lovely night, and I slept at H's house afterwards to save confusion with the taxi and... well, just 'cause I wanted to, and that way we would be able to watch the next two episodes of Tribe, which I happened to know were major in terms of plottage!! The looks on her face were priceless, the shock and excitement crossing it were well worth the money spent on the box set.

Afterwards, I went home and finished the cloth pads completely. So now I have a pile of them just waiting to be given to new homes! Very exciting! I experimented a little with these ones; my mum's new sewing machine has lots of pretty embroidery stitches, so I added a line of one of those to each side of the flaps. It will require fine tuning in the future, but I'm very happy with the dainty little bit of pretty.

Having finished the cloth pads, I packed my bags for the following day. this pretty much leads into the camping... experience. But it's a long, long story, and deserves its own blog entry, which it will get most likely tomorrow. For now, let it suffice to say that it was not the biggest success with me. It has left me exhausted and in a bit of a low place right now. But I was just looking through the camera, and I found a beautiful picture I'd taken of my mum, so I'm going to put it up here as a lovely finish:

Isn't she gorgeous?!

So I'm gonna leave you now. this has been mainly about catching up on photos and B's eighteenth. Tomorrow you will see the account of camping. Be warned!

Love love xx