The Autumn of Good Intentions

  Summer was delightful in many ways: camping, cooking, walking, seaside holidays and much more including the return to work and that's when everything stopped for a while as it always does.  Apart from babies.  They never stop and once you start one, well, the inevitable is...inevitable.  Let me stop you before you think I have had, am having, or am going to have a baby.  I am not but many other people are popping them out with increasing frequency.  As with my friend Sue.
Amidst all the chaos I had an intense 48 hours of calm.  Making things for babies is thoroughly enjoyable.  The items are so small that although sometimes a little fiddly there is a sense of gratification that arrives much sooner than when making an adult sized equivalent.  What is more you can choose the most expensive wool and the softest fabric knowing you will only need a small amount and that the indulgence is justified.  Babies look lovely in almost anything and can get away with wearing items that would look ridiculous or even suspicious in a size 10, however much one might want to wear similar.

The original idea was to appliqué some animals onto a blanket.  It was simple and not very time consuming.  However, anyone who likes making things may also have experienced the giddy pleasures of coming out of a creative desert and gorging on making.  It's like the first piece of chocolate after lent, or a bank holiday weekend when you think you can fit far too much into the extra 24 hours.  I overdid it.  Big time.

The appliquéd blanket became a brushed cotton backed coverlet which developed into a grassy scene, a few more animals and suddenly there was a tree with owls in it, and individual leaves cut out of different fabrics.
  

By this time there was fabric billowing out of boxes and bags, threads making their way along the carpet from room to room, offcuts and fluff stuck to everything, and the double bed was the hub of creativity.  Once I start something like this I work until I'm too tired to move and so in the early hours I  crawled into a sleeping bag on the single bed and fell ecstatically to sleep.

Evening two.  Having blagged my way through the day and telling my students they'd get their essays back in the next lesson (oops), I hurried back to the LWH and realised what a huge amount of work I'd created for myself.  This is always the case.  There have been very few journeys to parties, dinners, college and even school when I haven't been finishing something off albeit painting my nails, sewing on buttons, putting up a hem or writing a 3,000 word essay.
Consumption of tea was at an all time high and I worked solidly until the late hours of the early morning when it was finished.  No 'I'll just do this bit on the way' or 'It doesn't matter if I safety pin it.'  It had to be finished, perfect and as bright shiny new as the person it was made for; and to the best of my ability it was.
There are morals to this story which I know by heart but will probably never learn.  The obvious being don't leave everything til the last minute but despite my best intentions this has never worked. Don't overcomplicate things is also a good point. But perhaps the most important is not to leave it so long between making things.  It's a bit like crash dieting: everything else might seem better, clothes fit, jobs get done, students' essays get marked but bingeing on anything is not healthy.

Crikey, that is all true but sounds horrendously poncy. Here's the finished result and long live working to deadlines on adrenaline.

The finished article: animals from matching curtain fabric, brushed cotton backing from House of Fraser, everything else reclaimed or vintage.

    

In situ :-)

The Summer of Good Intentions: Part 2

'Hang on a minute' I suspect you're saying, 'We're now in January and you promised us more in August.  We'd given up on you and thought you may have come to a sticky end lying in a strawberry wine jam of your own making.'  What more can I say than life got in the way and other things seemed to be more pressing but what excitement and acts of derring do.  So what follows is an edited version of posts I half wrote and I hope you enjoy it but read fast.  There will be more.

It's been a while, and for that I apologise profusely.  Promises of daily updates have been broken, getting lots done has somehow not gone entirely to plan, the new me is still pretty much the old me but with many loose ends, islands of chaos/creativity, and more ideas than I can keep up with.  So, how did the Summer of Good Intentions go? Well...

Pockets of lovely weather this summer gave me great pleasure and an abundance of lovely food.  A fair few posts have been about food because I love it.  Finding it, buying it, growing it, looking at it, reading about it, making, eating, and contentedly digesting it.  It's also a great comforter and way of procrastinating.

I received a lot of home grown stuff from William and Julia at the Walled Garden, from which many meals were made along with chutney, jam, wine and so many other things.  I don't even like jam, I just enjoy making it.  My jam and wine cupboard is full to bursting.  If you know me and receive gifts on auspicious occasions, much of this will be coming your way.

Unfortunately last year, I didn't pay as much attention to my own garden.  As a result the potatoes you see below were the only ones I got from three grow bags!  Enough for two meals. Tossed in a cob nut pesto and served with flower salad - all from my garden and the canal side - they were delicious but it's hardly self sufficiency.

My parents, as usual, had grown enough to fill  greengrocers and one day in the middle of the holidays they gave me some beautiful artichokes.  

I love artichokes.  There's something almost prehistoric about their spiky, sculptural leaves.  These are flowers with survival instincts.  No man or beast will get to their heart easily and once consumed may not sit easily either. These were steamed and served with a herby vinaigrette, homemade bread and flowery salad.  It was delicious and messy and tasted like a tableful of summer.

The purple flower in the picture is one artichoke that flowered in my fridge when I was away for a bit.  How amazing is that?  Roll on next summer :-)