weekend, birthday presents, writing, dentist, rant

So! Last time we spoke I was up in Newcastle visiting the wife! In fact, it was my birthday! Well, it was a lovely day! So to recap on the rest of the time I spent with H... we broke into the new season of Tribe pretty quick and got through some of it, which was awesome. I have a picture of it:

 

How ace! She gave me a really lovely card, too:

And I loved that. She was like, 'I felt really weird buying a card that said "wife" on it in the shop, I think they all thought I was a bit strange. I could have pretended  I was buying it for my dad...' And she gave me a new nickname of Bow-chicka-wow-wow Beth! So I had a really lovely birthday with her and it was all I could have hoped for. And then on Monday she had a lecture in the morning, so I stayed in and did some writing and finished Anne Frank's diary. I really enjoyed reading it, but it was hard to feel an emotional connection to the horrific events described because it read like a work of fiction. then we went and had lunch at costa in town and went for a good old walk all round Newcastle city centre. The only thing it seemed we could cross off our list of things to do was watching a film, so we took a leisurely stroll back to the uni. We stopped in a park on the way and messed around on the playground and swung on the swings and chatted while it was sunny. Then we went back and watched Shawshank Redemption, which is an amazing film and I love it! And then we ate and had to head to the train station for me to go. I hate leaving, it makes me so miserable. I know it's not forever, I know she's still there and still a friend and coming down in a coupla weeks. But I still feel wretched having to walk away from her!

Dad picked me up from Piccadilly station and we got home at about 11.30 Monday evening, and I opened my presents with mum on the parents' bed. I got lots of lovely things! I got:

Delicious days by Nicole Stitch, Fire by Kristin cashore and 1984 by George Orwell

 These wonderful books from the grandparents! All books that I wanted, so I was very happy and I now have lots of new reading material which I'm itching to get into!

And I got:

 This wonderful sew-it-yourself doll from my parents! It comes with a pattern for a dress, too! And they bought me some stuffing for it so I should have 'most everything I need for it! So I'm itching to get started on that, too, but it's having to wait whilst i do my sister's belated birthday present. And:

These beautiful letter writing papers were from my sister! I love them very much, and I know they'll come in handy! I've already used quite a bit in writing letters to lots of different people today. I truly enjoy writing letters, it's a most enjoyable experience. I also enjoy receiving letters! I spent a little time today rearranging my desk so that it could be used properly for writing letters.

Aside from writing letters I've started a diary for myself. It's all very well writing on here, and I enjoy it. But I don't always want to write about everything happening in my life, or every emotion I've felt during the day, so the diary sort of allows me to do that part in private. It's very important to me, as important as this blog in fact!

I also had the dentist first thing this morning. Nothing major, just a checkup with regards to my next surgery which he reckons will be about halfway through November. He has reassured me that I shouldn't react tot his one like I did to the others since it's less invasive and less intense. But it's sort of near to the end now, so I'm quite excited about it in some ways! A year after all the problems started I think I'll have the problems solved again. It was last Christmas - Boxing Day, in fact - that everything really became troublesome. And with a bit of luck, come this Boxing Day, I'll have some new permanent teeth!

One last thing for tonight. It really frustrates me every time a sweetcorn advert pops up, because they claim tat it's one of your five a day. Sweetcorn is not a vegetable!! It's a cereal crop, and therefore it cannot be one of your five fruit and veg per day. And now baked beans have started saying the same thing!! Now I get that beans are a pulse and therefore a form of fruit/vegetable. But really? Baked beans? One of your five a day? I think I would be unwilling to count them considering their sugar content.

That's all for now!

Love love xx

Newcastle, birthdays, Tribe, tomorrow

So here I am, in delightfully sunny grey Newcastle! Sorry, did I write sunny? It hasn't really stopped raining all the time I've been here! But that's okay, it's given me a chance to use my new brolly a lot, and I've been enjoying that! It's fun because I can see the raindrop and ducky pattern from the inside, which makes walking far more entertaining! I've also been enjoying my new coat and gloves; my hand are wonderfully toasty and I feel a thrill every time I wear the coat.

It's also my birthday today. I'm not really big on birthdays, because I feel that when I get excited I then end up being disappointed because not many people remember my birthday. If I just don't make a fuss then they don't feel bad when they realise they forgot it, and I don't have to listen to, 'why didn't you tell me it was your birthday!' three weeks later which naturally makes me feel guilty that they forgot, and that's kinda screwy. So yeah, birthdays: not really my thing, just a day with lots of false expectations and some misery because I know that if I feel that expectation and excitement then I'll be miserable when it doesn't happen!

It's lovely to be up in Newcastle with H for my birthday, though. She cheers me up and understands my feelings towards my birthday and yet at the same time she can be excited for me which is amusing. She gave me an awesome card, which I promise I will put up a picture of when I get home. She also gave me season four of Tribe!!! Oh my goodness, I'm so excited about that! It is ridiculous, it really is, but we love it, and I love that she knows me well enough to get me something with such personal meaning. So we're going to start watching a bit of that tonight, which should be fun.

And tomorrow we're going to try and cross something off the list of things to do. We're not sure what yet, but something will be crossed off by the time I go home, I'm determined!

That's all for now, a shorter post than my usual essays; we have to go out and pick up some snacks!

Love love xx

Packing, Manchester, Curious

I'm about to go and pack ready to head up and visit H on Saturday. I know, I never shut up about it! I'm just so excited to go and see her, I've missed her majorly. So far on my list of things to pack, aside from the obvious, are a pair of her shoes, some vege mince, and Tribe. I know, she actually managed to find someone else who likes The Tribe without getting lots of weird looks! So yeah, packing needs doing.

I went to Manchester today to pick up the tickets for Saturday from Piccadilly Station. It was quite an adventure on the whole! I also did some shopping whilst there: I bought a brolly:

The ducky handle!

Isn't it cute! I just couldn't resist! I needed a new brolly anyway, but I was just going to get a plain black one when I saw this treasure! I also bought some gloves:

Purple knitted ones

dark blue suede ones

I feel a great need for gloves at the moment, they are my thing just now that I want lots of. I bought a coupla books - Anne Frank's Diary, which seems to be on offer just now with some kind of 60th anniversary to do with it...? And Stephen fry's autobiography, which I thought would be really interesting to read. I figured it would give me some really interesting books to read on the train. I like new books for train journeys! And I bought some earrings, because it's been years since I bought any and my everyday ones are rather worn now.

There were a few curious moments today which made me wonder.  One of these was on the train heading into Manchester. There was a guy sat across from me, and he wanted to purchase his ticket from the ticket man. But his card wasn't reading in the machine. I offered to pay for it for him, but he said he would sort it out at the station. Then he said, 'Thanks. I really appreciate you offering to pay, it's incredibly thoughtful.' I didn't really think it was! It was a cheap ticket, so it wasn't costing me much, and if I were in his position I wouldn't know what to do, and I'd hope that somebody would be kind enough to offer to pay for me! When did it become something that just 'wasn't done'? It's the sort of thing to pass along. Strangers aren't all evil, and you're m,ore likely to find strangers than people you know when you're most in need of some help. So lets stop being so distant and isolated from the other strangers out there, and offer to lend a hand sometimes! It's what you would want if you were in need.

Another thing that made me think was when I was buying the books from a well-known book and stationary store. As I got to the tills, there was just one cashier on, and she looked tired and weary and glum. There wasn't a spark about her. I placed the books down, and asked her how long she had left. She looked at the clock on her screen and looked up and said, 'oh only about half an hour now'. Already she seemed brighter, and when I said, 'that's not too bad then, is it!' with a smile on my face, she smiled back. I just wondered, when did we stop treating cashiers and people working in shops like people? When did they become brainless automatons? A smile and a friendly word, a small show of kindness that takes no effort can make a big difference to somebody's day! I think it's important to remember that we're all human, and we all have ups and downs, and try to treat people thus, regardless of how they're crossing your life.

Just a thought, you know. I don't know why these little gestures should be unusual, it's not as though either costs you much, and if you were in the receiver's place you would gain so much from it! that's all for now.

Love love xx

Quilt, childminding, rant

So I promised I would go into a few more details on making that awesome mammoth quilt for H, and I will, right now!


So it was born from my determination to create something for the wife to take to uni that involved lots of photos of some of the loveliest times we'd spent together. This felt particularly important to me, because she often creates beautiful memory books or collages of photos for people which have huge sentimental value, and I felt it was about time she had one. Also, I wanted to give her a present that really meant something. I already had the few little bits for her - clear nail polish; a book containing the word 'akimbo'; a tin full of carrot cupcakes (the recipe for which will be posted on here at some point); and some new socks. But all these bits, whilst having meaning, weren't really a big deal. And I wanted something lasting that she could keep with photos of us from some of the happiest moments. I'm such a sentimental flannel, aren't I? I wanted it to be different to the things she always did for people, though, because it wasn't about just copying her thoughtfulness, it was about showing her how much I cared. And, since I had such a big pile of sewing to do yet, it made sense to plonk a huge project at the top of the pile and give myself just four weeks in which to do it!

At first I thought I would have to order fabric printed with the pictures on it, since I had tried printing onto fabric and found that whilst it worked fine, it washed straight out. But when I looked at the cost of ordering the fabric to be done for me, it was ridiculous. To get different photos it looked like it was going to cost me 40p per cm, and I wanted pictures of different sizes, some as big as 6 inches square.

One of the 6 inch squares

Then I found this product that lot of blogs seemed to refer to when printing pictures onto fabric at home, Bubble Jet Set. So I order some and gave it a go, following the instructions on the bottle and advice from various blogs and websites that had experimented with it. It basically involved soaking your fabric in the Bubble Jet Set, allowing it to dry and then ironing it onto freezer paper and feeding it through a inkjet printer. Once you'd done that it needed hand washing to set the inks completely, and you had your pictures. I was actually really impressed with how it came out; it was just like fabric to the touch, soft, pliable, and the pictures looked really good, especially for something done at home.

I experimented with colours in the pictures to make sure they looked their best once they went onto fabric. This involved doing sheets with tiny versions of the pictures on to ensure they would look their best when I printed them in full size. I'd already done all of my setting squares and made the rest of the squares as far as I could without the pictures, which was just as well, because the process of getting the pictures onto fabric took quite a while. I did a few at a time to get it done faster, but it was the most time consuming part of it. I was very aware that I had a deadline, although i finished it about 10 days in advance of the deadline, which was brilliant.

I tried to vary the sizes of the photos and the way they looked to keep it interesting!

 I made the back from 3 colours: the brown of the setting squares, the cream for the background, and one of the teal shades. I then used teal thread and created a label for the back at my mum's suggestion. It simply said whom it was for and the date that it was made.I think it worked out pretty well, even if it was a little wonky in places!

  I then quilted it all together, and created a binding for the edge from some of the fabrics I'd used in the main part of the quilt, randomly mixed up. I did a decorative wave to sew the binding into place, because it's a safer option than trying to do invisible stitching with a machine. I chose the wave because I'd already used it in quilting on the border of the quilt, as well as some little hearts down the sides. And with that, it was done!

It meant a lot to me to do it myself for her, and put the work in. my mum kindly offered to help out, because it was a lot to do in four weeks, and we were both aware that I hadn't made any quilts before at all (!) but I told her that I wanted to do as much of it myself as possible. It was my work that had to go into, my love. And I achieved what I wanted to: I made a quilt that I felt was incredibly meaningful, at least to me, and every stitch that went into it was done by me, every part of it was done by me, right down to sandwiching the layers together and the ironing of every seam, even all the hand washing of the photo fabric! It truly was a labour of love.

The colour of the water after every hand wash

So that is the epic saga secret of my first quilt!

Other news I have is of the childminding I did. I enjoyed it immensely, and I managed fine the second week on my own, although i missed H a bit during nap time, when in the first week we had joked around and read aloud from books and just generally frolicked in our usual way. But the lovely couple I was childminding for really surprised me. I was aware that I was childminding for them because they had recently got a new childminder but she was on holiday almost straight away, which was when I was filling in. but the lovely couple said that the children had been so happy with me looking after them, and that the couple had been so pleased with the arrangement that they would like me to continue childminding for them for the rest of the academic year!! How about that! I naturally said 'YES!!!' and so they have just given the new childminder four week's notice, which means that in four weeks I start a new wonderful job looking after two beautiful children!! I can't wait, although it probably means that I'll have to leave my current job at Currys. But I don't mind, because the childminding will be more enjoyable, more fulfilling, and more valuable to me come next September! So yeah! Though I never expected it, I'm absolutely overjoyed at how that's panning out so far!

My last point today is a bit of a rant. I was out shopping with my dad this evening, just for groceries, you know, and he loaded the shopping into the car and I took the trolley back. The trolley bank was a bit messy, with trolleys not slotted into each other and taking up a lot of space, so I naturally sorted them and tidied them and slotted our trolley in and left it looking neat. About ten seconds after I'd done so, we were pulling out of our spot and a lady nearby took her trolley to the bank, seemed to be pushing it neatly into place, then left it unpushed in. What on earth!! She made it messy again all for the sake of saving two steps forward!! I do not understand! I had literally just tidied it up, it would have been no extra effort to put her trolley in neatly, but no, she was too lazy to take the two steps it would have taken to put her trolley in neatly! How rude! If there's one thing I cannot stand it's people who do not put their trolleys back where they belong neatly. It is unbelievably rude to just abandon your trolley, be that right where you parked int he middle of the car park, or at an angle in the trolley bank. It just shows laziness and ignorance and a lack of courtesy for anyone else. It's actually selfish in my mind. I had just made the effort, right in front of her, to sort the trolleys out and line them up again, and she had just made my work completely pointless. An adult woman, mark you, because adults are generally the ones doing the shopping that requires a trolley. How can they expect children to have good behaviour when they don't themselves? And how dare they complain about young people's behaviour when their own is so bad! It actually makes me really angry, because it is plain and simple rude. And because it's a rudeness and a laziness over something tiny! It takes almost no extra effort to do the right thing in this, and yet people still don't. It just really irks me is all!

That's all for tonight!

Love love xx

Oh my goodness, followup, summer, bike, baking, childminding, sore eye, leaving, BIG SECRET

Oh my goodness! It truly has been a while, hasn't it?! I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry. I've neglected this space all summer, and now I have so much to write! I'm not sure how I'll get through it all...!

So last time I posted it was very shortly after my last surgery, which went pretty well. I did get very swollen indeed, right up to my eyeballs which unfortunately left me not really eating and struggling to read a little. But since the pain only tends to last a few days after surgery, I wasn't actually hurting, just uncomfortable, and I was back in work about a week after the surgery, albeit with no teeth in and green patches all over my face from the bruising which suddenly popped back up as the swelling went down! I have a few pictures...

Me shortly after surgery on the same day...

...A coupla days later...

...And another coupla days after that, with the swelling going down and the bruising coming up...

But all in all I was pretty okay. I went back after a fortnight to have the stitches removed, but as it turned out a few untied themselves and came out before the appointment, and when I was there the dentist simply said that they were designed to untie and dissolve and he wasn't going to remove any of them right now. So that all fixed itself and my stitches steadily undid themselves, with a little help in some cases, because they'd become uncomfortable and were hurting me.

So that's all fine, and aside from that I've had a delightful final summer with the friends. I've spent lots of time with the wife mainly, partly because she's so close, but also partly because I care about her more than the rest really in some ways. I have been for coffee with C, however, which was nice, and we discussed lots of lotsness, and so I think neither of us is sure yet if we'll stay in touch anymore, but it's a bit more hopeful than it was before when both he and I sort of said that right now we didn't even know each other anymore. And I've been for Chinese with the group, and a couple of pub trips, which have all been nice. My mood hasn't been great really, and I'm not sure why, but I can't manage a whole night somehow without sort of feeling like I'd quite like to go home and be left alone about halfway through. However, H has dealt with me, making me feel better again and putting up with it a lot! So it has still been pretty nice.

I've had my bike fixed this morning by my wonderful dad - the back brake seemed to permanently be on, and it made cycling very hard work indeed. And so we sorted that out yesterday only to find that on the front wheel the inner tube had a tear along the edge of the pump bit so we had to buy a new inner this morning. But now it's all fixed and ridable and the tyres are both pumped up and it's good to go, so I'll be cycling to work later!

I've also been baking, as per usual. I made some carrot cupcakes for the wife to take up to uni with her, since she hates carrots but likes carrot cake. I thought cupcakes would be easy to share and use to make friends. I'm planning to make some more for home this afternoon, and some banana bread too because we have about 3 black bananas and I've been meaning to make it for about a week!

I've had a few days of childminding last week, and 3 more this week coming with 2 gorgeous little girls of 2 and 5. It's very fun and not taxing at all, although the 2 year old has had a cold, so that's been showing in the nappies...! But I don't mind really, it's all part of it! I'm quite looking forward to it next week, although part of me feels it won't be as fun, because last week I was doing it with the wife, and now of course she's gone to uni so I'll be doing it alone. It's okay, it'll still be fun, but I don't know what I'll do in the hour-and-a-half nap the 2 year old takes, since H and I read together last week.

I have an owiee, by the way. I've been quite clumsy recently, having walked into a shelf in work and given myself a 3 inch bruise round my thigh, and having acquired a blister on one knuckle and cuts on another finger from sewing! Now I have a sore eye. I think it's just an eyelash infection thingy really but it's very sore at the moment. I've boiled it a couple of times, sort of. By that I mean that I've paid special attention to it with a hot flannel whilst washing my face. I blame the amount of crying I've been doing recently as the cause of it. The 2 events must be connected!! I cried at my boos yesterday, which unnerved him I think. It was ,mostly bad timing on his part because I was emotional anyway, but he tried to tell me off for doing something when actually it was his fault that I'd had to do it, a fact I clearly explained to him before bursting into tears. It was just a bad choice of day really, choosing to tell me off the same day H was leaving for uni!

It's hard right now, everyone's leaving for uni. H left yesterday, which was perhaps the most emotional for me, D's leaving today, most people left last week or the week before even. I've cried everyday for about 4 days over the wife leaving. I know it's silly and ridiculous, but I'm just gonna miss that girl so damn much, and it's the knowledge that she isn't just 10 minutes away up the road that really gets me. There hasn't been a week gone by for about a year when we haven't seen each other. I love her dearly, as dearly as one can love a friend, and part of me's busy feeling sorry for me because I don't have access to her in ym life just like anymore, and another part of me's really worried about her up in Newcastle on her own and feels really sorry that I'm not up there with her to look after her. I got her lots of little bits and bobs to help her up there, and to try to help me deal with the fact of her leaving. But I'm not sure how much it actually helped me. We did have a cheerful goodbye, no tears the night before while she was in the house. I'm jsut a big ball of emotion really, soppy and wet to the last little flannel corner. I bought her some clear diamond nail varnish to help her with growing her nails, somehing she's been doing for a coupla months maybe. I also gave her a book I've had for years and years, since I was in primary school. It's The Snow Spider Trilogy by Jenny Nimmo. I gave her that book with a page folded under which had the word 'akimbo' on it. This may not make sense to most people, but she didn't think it was a real word, so I thought that constant reminder that it was a real word might remind of who's always right in her life! ;) And I bought her some new socks because most of hers are worn through. I even took the pairs apart and mixed them up because I don't know anyone who has so many odd socks as her!! When I gave them to her, she lifted one of her feet for me to inspect and tell her if the sock on it was worn or not, and it was. Quick as a flash I yanked it off her foot and ran away with it and a pair of scissors, her in hot pursuit... and, well, that sock won't keep anyone's toes warm anymore!!

I also gave her one other present. A big present. A great big, huge, secret present which she never knew was happening. It's partly why a couple of times recently I've been about to post on here, then I haven't because there's been this big secret which I wanted to talk about but didn't dare. Almost nobody knew about it, I was so desperate that nobody would find out and lead to her knowing about it. Both our mums knew, but that's about it aside from a few members of my family. I made her a great huge giant patchwork quilt - but wait! that's not the best thing about it! I found a way of printing photos onto fabric using an inkjet printer, and so I made some of the patches pictures of her, and pictures of the both of us, and that sort of thing! It was amazing:

The finished quilt...

... And the centre square...

I wrapped it up and left it for her in the spare room. When she unwrapped it first I left it with the label up so she could read it. Then she suddenly went, 'Is this... a... quilt?' And we pulled it out completely and the screaming started! It was a complete surprise to her and as far as I could tell she loved it! It was amazing to see her face as she looked at it, and knowing that it really was a complete surprise and that nobody had been able to let it slip to her was incredible, because that moment of discovery was utterly worth it. Her face and reaction made all the time and the cost totally worth it. I'll go into the making of it in more detail in another post, maybe tomorrow, or the day after. I'm not sure, but soon!

That's all for now, you can tell I left the best news for last! I'm gonna miss that girl like crazy, but hopefully I've given her a leaving gift to look after for years and to make things easier at her end when she's feeling lonely. That's what I'd like to think, anyhow! Her gift to me was pretty incredible too: she gave me a ring she'd had since she was little, on a chain to wear as a necklace with the undertsanding that I would look after for her while she was at uni, and that she'd be collecting it in 3 years or so. This may not seem like much, but it comes as the proof that she won't forget me while she's at uni, because she'll have to remember me to come back for this at some point! And that promise, and the understanding of what the ring means to her means a lot to me.

Love love xx

ps. I did very well in my exams indeed, and I'm incredibly happy with my results :)

Owiee, onesie

So I had my next surgery this morning at the dentist. It hurts rather a lot. Basically he's screwed the titanium rods of the implants into my jaw, and done a bone augmentation, which means he put in some new bone in a granulated form to replace the bone I've lost as much as possible. My face is very swollen, from my upper lip up to my eyes, and from my nose outwards across my cheeks. I saw some black bruising there earlier, but I've swelled more since then, and so that seems to have vanished into my face somewhere. I can't eat properly, or rather, at all. I've had some yoghurt since the op. I'm quite hungry. I'm on a soft-food diet for 3 weeks or something, and I have another appointment next week to remove my sutures. This sucks. The best thing I can say is the painkillers really work. And of course that a 3-week soft-food diet means that H and I will have more to celebrate in London when we go to see Wicked, as it'll be the first time I'm allowed real food again!

The most positive thing I can mention is that I finished my onesie yesterday, and it's very cute! I have pictures!

In production

The finished garment in all its tiny glory!

Four snaps across the bottom

And four decorative buttons at the top

This is, of course, a prototype, and I'm looking to use the feedback from this to develop a full pattern and sizing type thingy. I am rather looking forward to it, and I've already learnt loads from doing it, like to make sure the binding for the openings is cut the right way in the fabric so it stretches properly. I'm just waiting for the neighbours to come back from holiday so I can ask them to take a look at it and give me feedback. They will be particularly helpful, since they've not long had a new baby.

I'm going to stop now and go lie down again. Sitting up or standing for too long makes my face hurt and my gums bleed.

Love love xx

Quilt fabric, onesies, butternut squash soup, bread making, grandma oat-cake, cycling, pact, success board, dentist, cat

So! Have I been busy or what recently folks! So much to tell! Okay, so not so much to tell, but some lovely photos of what I've been up to.

So I have some lovely photos of fabric for you, like this:




and this:



These are the fabrics I've been choosing for the quilt I'm going to make. I know, there are a lot of dark fabrics in there, but I have a plan, or an idea, at least, in my head of what i want. I'm intending to pair all the blues and greens with the pale cream in the top picture - it's very difficult to get a photo of it, so no justice has been done in that one - and then use the cream as a base for setting squares, and possibly for the back as well, although I'm still working my head round kinks of what I want to do with the back of it. But yeah. By using cream and then bright blues and greens, I'm hoping to get a really lovely quilt that goes with my room and looks bright and fresh at the same time.

I also have this fabric, which I'm planning to try to turn into baby onesies. I believe i mentioned in my last post that I was considering doing this, and setting up an online shop. Well, I'm taking a tentative step further forward, and I'm going to try making a couple of onesies. I've looked at various patterns online, and in magazines, and I'm going to try some mish-mashes of them and see what I prefer, and what parents of babies think, like next door. I think getting feedback from them will be really helpful, since they have a new baby girl who's a few months old and so perfect for what I'm looking at right now.



These are the fabrics I have for playing with right now, as well as the remnants of the jungle animals I made sleep bags out of before. They are both white, and you can see, one of them is brighter, with pink and purple bows on, and the other is more subtle, with pale flowers on. I know they're both a bit girly, but for now that's okay, since these will be experiments. Plus, the animals I have is gender neutral, so that's okay!

I think another thing I mentioned in my last post was an interest in making butternut squash soup. Well, I did! I even took the liberty of photographing my efforts at different stages of cooking:

Coating the vegetables in oil and cooking them through a bit...

... Stock added, and left to simmer for a while...

... Finished soup!

For the record, it was yummy. And the parents enjoyed it, too. There wasn't as much flavour as I'd hoped for, but it was still delicious. And, when I had another bowl the next day, I added a sprinkle of mild chili powder to it before heating it up, and there was all the flavour I'd been missing! Definitely a recipe to keep hold of, I think. Plus, the knowledge that I can make soup is very reassuring. It's not something I've done before, but I would definitely do it again!

I made bread the other day. Nothing special, just standard bread, white loaf. I kind of wanted to make wholemeal, but we didn't have the flour for it. Something to put on the shopping list (as well as more sun dried tomatoes!) Our bread maker is not the best. I think it as a relatively cheap one that my parents bought, and that was a long time ago, at least eight years. We recently replaced the pan in it, because the old one was warped... but the new one was as much of a problem, because it left huge deposits of flour in the corners of the tin. To combat this, we'd been scraping the corners out ten minutes into mixing. I, however, forget to do this on this particular occasion... I was quietly hopeful, however, when I saw how beautiful the dough looked in the tin, all smooth, not too wet, not too dry...

See? I almost didn't want to tip it, out, it looked so perfect! But needs must, and I tipped it out to reveal a clean tin inside! So the frustration of forgetting to tend to the corners, for nothing! Of course, I was in love with this gorgeous dough - maybe it was just the right day for bread making? - and when I kneaded it in a bit, it looked pretty in a whole new way. SO I took another photo of it:



All twisted and pretty, you know? And then of course I sectioned it off and turned it into a loaf and some rolls. Still pretty. Just not as pretty as pre-cooking:




The other bit of baking I did was with my dad. Or rather, he did the baking with me. I was merely there to supervise, offer advice and so on. We made grandma oat-cake, which is a family thing. When we used to go and visit grandma, my dad's mum, she always had a huge store of these heavenly, delicious cakey slices of gooey sweetness that we called grandma oat-cakes. They're basically just shortcrust pastry with a layer of jam and then a layer of flapjack on top, nothing special. But they're ever so slightly oily, and sticky, and moist and sweet and the brown sugar adds a darkness that mixes perfectly with homemade raspberry jam...



This stuff is like the manna of heaven, it really is. And okay, so we haven't quite got the recipe down yet, it was a little too sticky and I think there weren't enough oats in the flapjack. But each bite is like a tasty memory of fishing those slices out of the drawer at grandma's. The flavour is absolutely huge, the flapjack and jam crashing against each other in an awesome balance of sweet, heavy, sticky versus sharp, tangy. And the pastry adds a crunch to the gooey inside. Plus some structure, of course. You wouldn't wanna try to eat it without the pastry to hold the rest. But yeah. Not something you want too much of all at once, because it is very strong in flavour, and rather sticky in the throat. But it's soo good with it!

So that was Tuesday, all baking and yumminess. Yesterday H cycled round to mine. It's not a really long way, about twenty minutes cycling. But she burst through the door when she arrived, 'I... am... never... cycling... again!!' Panting for breath, grabbing a glass and filling it with water, she showed me the bike. This is not your bog standard push bike, easy to ride, fun to cycle. This is a bike built for the road. Skinny little tyres, upwardly curved handlebars, a speedometer!! I tried to ride it: I couldn't. It tips your body downward so all your weight is on your hands, and the brakes are really awkward to try and find when cycling. But H explained, 'it was the only bike we had that was whole. Most of the others are missing a wheel.' Well of course, that explains it. After all, who doesn't keep bikes once they have only one wheel and are less useful than unicycles?

The point of this story though, is that H dropped by, where we watched some more Tribe (yay!) and did lots of chatting, and caught each other up in the brief space of time before she's off on holiday again. And we made a pact. Backstory needed here: H and I are going o London in August to watch Wicked. This was originally meant to be a group trip for about five of us, but since the others never provided me with money to book the trip, H and I got to the stage where we just went, sack it off let's go just the two of us. Other bit of backstory is that I have a horrible stress habit to do with my OCD tendencies, where I scratch my arms and dig my nail into my skin. I do this because I see lots of little flaws on my skin, you know, the little tiny dots where the hairs come out of your arms. And in scratching and digging my nails in, I do a lot of damage to my arms and make the problem worse. Vicious cycle, people. Not something where just stopping is easy, because the holes for the hairs will always be there, and I'll always be aware of them. But having this awful habit stresses me out too, because aside from it making the problem worse, it makes my arms look disgusting and makes me uncomfortable about baring them. So I made a pact with H. I do my best to stop scratching my arms, and if I can keep it to a minimum until we go to London, she will let me wax her legs. She doesn't like having her legs waxed, because she had it done once before and it hurt. I have mine waxed because it's less hassle than shaving, and by the third time it doesn't really hurt anymore. So that's the deal. If my arms get a chance to heal, her legs get a break from the razor. And, to help motivate myself, like a geek I've made myself a 'success' chart where I can count down to London, and check off each day of no scratching at the same time. And it gave me a chance to experiment and make little samples of lots of techniques for card-making:



See? I have favourite squares, I do. But I love it all. It was really fun to make. It also counts me down to next Wednesday when I'm having my next bit of surgery with the dentist. It's one of the big ones, he's placing the rods in my jaw and giving me a granulated bone graft. So yeah! It's craft central here, for the rest of today I'm going to clean the kitchen floor and get making a onesie. And I'm gonna leave you with a cute picture of my cat, because I think I don't take enough photos of her, and she'll be dead before I realise how much she means to me.




Isn't she just beautiful? Posing for the camera there, too!

Love love xx