Chutney Dreams

I have a dream.

I have several dreams actually.

Chutney dreams.

I can't remember where I read about chutney dreams, and an intensive (five minute) google search has brought up lots of recipes of varying attractiveness, and a weird site allegedly telling you what it means if you dream about chutney (I didn't click), but nothing about the chutney dreams I remember.

But you know the ones anyway.  The dreams that sit on the shelf, gathering dust.  The ones you take out every now and then, look at and think "I should do something with that", before putting back and reaching for something more sensible and practical.

The dreams where you make vats of delicious chutney (or macarons, or fascinators) at your kitchen table, which is then, quite by chance, tasted by someone fabulously influential, and featured in the Sunday Times Style magazine (among other national media) and before you know it you're the chutney queen of the Scottish Borders, supervising a team of happy employees, making fabulous preserves from fairly traded, locally sourced ingredients in a socially meritorious way, which are shipped (obviously we wouldn't air freight anything) around the world, resulting in you becoming a household name, multi-millionairess, beacon of the community, and all round good egg.

Then you wake up.

Or, perhaps, you're awake already.

I have these dreams.  This blog is one of them, if the truth be told.   I'm still waiting for the book deal.

The millinery was a dream too.  And so were the t-shirts.

And the pudding restaurant (still think that's a genius idea). And the soft play centre (we got as far as a back of the envelope business plan on that one before realising that it wouldn't actually make us any money).  And the wine shop and café (that one's for when we win the lottery and don't mind that it wouldn't actually make us any money.  We've identified the premises and are enjoying researching the stock).  And the macarons, which you may notice are my current fantasy of choice (still rather proud of my Hallowe'en ones). 

 

I think it's the creativity that appeals: the idea of crafting something, of a life spent lovingly making beautiful things rather than shoving bits of paper around in between heating up fish fingers and tidying bedrooms, and of being recognised for it.    The ability to use the bits of my brain that aren't exercised by children, husbands or the Inland Revenue.

So I dream.  As I potter, and bake, and stitch, I dream.  It's a creative outlet in itself. 

But for the moment they remain just dreams.  However real they may look in the pictures.  They're just dreams.

The Gallery - Still Life with Hat

Tara set us "Still Life" as the subject for The Gallery this week, and it's probably the hardest thing she's set.  I wanted to take fruit, or flowers, or a skull, or a flayed ox.  But I lack the props, the camera and the talent.

So I thought I'd give you one of my hats.  This one, to be precise.  Surrounded by the detritus of a millinery workshop. 

It's still. It's my new life.  It fits...

But it still felt wrong.  So I resorted to Google.  And found this:

And if Van Gogh can put a hat in a picture, so can I.  So, ladies and gentlemen. I give you:

Still Life with Hat and Horrid Worktop (2010)

Oh, and the hat? I  made that one too.



Still Life with Yellow Hat (1885) by Vincent Van Gogh.  Picture from vangoghgallery.com.  Thank you.

Confection

Don't you think the word "fascinator" is silly?  I do.  I prefer "confection".  I once heard someone refer to the little bit of nonsense perched on top of someone's head as a "confection" and I have adopted it as my own.

So here, for your millinery viewing pleasure, is the confection I made on Tuesday for my sister to wear at a wedding today.  I hope she's enjoying herself:

 

The butterfly (which I got from John Lewis and is made by VV Rouleaux) is actually detachable so we can put other (maybe different coloured) stuff on in due course, so here's what the actual structure (ie the bit I made!) looks like:

Oh, and the idea is that she's going to wear it on the back of her head, so it will sit around the base of her hair, where she's put it up (she has these amazing blonde ringlets so I'm hoping it will look just stunning).

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And by popular request (Pants with Names, that's you) , here is a picture of the back of my sister's head.  If a picture of the back of one's head can be said to be not very flattering, this one is.... so don't judge her on that. But admire the confection.  Please!

A week of hats.

I have not been entirely wasting my time this week.

Here is a small gallery of my creations (some not entirely finished...):

And, for completeness' sake, here are the other two I made on the first course but didn't finish at the time:

The boater-y one:

and the tarantula-ry one (bit of an experiment. Not sure it works...better on the head than the table though)

Comments (and orders in due course!) welcome.

I vant to be alone. Or do I?

I am alone. 

Shall I say that again?

I am alone in my house.  There is no one else here.  Just me.    And an awful lot of tidying and sorting out.

I honestly can't remember the last time I was actually alone.  It was certainly pre-A and S, which means it's over sixteen months since I sat in my house, on my own, with no-one else in it.

I have been looking forward to this moment, to this week, for a while now.  I finished work on Friday (new-look blog, new-look description of me and what I do, possibly even new-look name if I can think of one coming up just as soon as I can cast off my luddite tendencies and make it work), and I am enrolled in Millinery 2 this week.  This means that this week my heroic mother is having my children ALL WEEK.

I have been so excited. In fact I've probably been downright unpleasant in my smugness at having a week all to myself and B.  And in fact, it'll feel more like all to myself, because not only has he heroically taken them to my mother's (leaving me to tidy up and start the pre-move de-cluttering, ahem) but he'll be at work, so at the beginning and end of the day, my time will really be my own.

So, as I say, I have really been looking forward to it.

And then, this morning, I realised something.  I've got to spend a whole week without my children.  And I don't want them to go. Even when L was being hideous this morning, there was a part of me thinking "but I don't want you to go".
 
But then the odd thing. Did I make the most of the day we had together? Did I spend lovely quality time with my beautiful, much-adored children? Did we reaffirm our familial bond and love for each other? 

We did not.

I was just the same as I always am.  Concentrating on the washing up, the tidying, the getting dressed, the packing.  Are they eating enough? Not enough? At the right time? Are they playing nicely? Who snatched what? Who needs to say sorry? Do this. Don't do that. 

Come and give me a cuddle.

Why do I do this? Why can I know, and feel, one thing, and yet do and say another? How can I simultaneously long for this week to come, and yearn for it to be over?

Forget the battle between working and non-working mums (in which number, lest I forget, I must now count myself).  I think my biggest battle will remain between my all-consuming love for my children, and my just as demanding selfish needs.

The finished product!

Second post in ten minutes. Because I just had to post this:

A delightedandflattered of awards

I've been very flattered recently to have been awarded not one, but three, awards!  Go me!  I've been sitting on a couple of them for a while, so sorry, but anyway:

RebaMc and Young Mummy awarded me the Sunshine award.  Here it is:

I'm supposed to forward it on to twelve people, but I'm so late in doing this one I think pretty much everyone has had it.  And if you haven't, consider it yours.... In recognition of the fact that yes, for the last ten minutes, the sun has actually been shining!

And then yesterday (or possibly the day before that, I've slightly lost track this week), Chic Mama awarded me the Kreativ Blogger award

 

This one I haven't seen before, and so I'm going to do what I'm supposed to, which is:

  1. Copy the award to my blog

  2. Insert a link to the person who nominated me

  3. Tell you seven things about myself that I haven't told you before

  4. Nominate seven other bloggers for the award

  5. Link to their blogs

  6. Tell the nominees about their award

So:  Seven things you don't know about me - with a creative theme:

1. I might have stopped selling the t-shirts through the shop (note to self, must change the bit on my blog about that) but I'm still up for orders if anyone wants one.

2. I've added another string to my bow: baby towels.  Here's the one I made for my lovely friend E's beautiful new daughter (no prizes for guessing her name)

3. I've signed up for Millinery 2! (Very excited about that)

4. The first thing I ever made was a skirt in blue Liberty fabric in sewing at school. It was horrid.

5. My favourite thing I've ever made is a cheongsam for me out of fabric that my brother bought back for me from China.  I'm too fat for it these days, but here's a (not very good, sorry) close up of the fabric. 

Isn't it gorgeous?  It's lined in cream too, so when I walk you get a flash of cream silk lining. 

6.  Not creative - but no-one apart from me and B knows that I once wore it with no knickers on...

7.  I've got a pile of mending sitting in my sewing box I just can't be arsed to get round to...

And here are some crafty bloggers to whom I pass on this award:. 

Haptree and me  

Fourteensandateabag

Jude at ArtfulAdventures

Mum's Survival Guide 

RedTedArt

Mummy Mad at the MadHouse

and last but not least, Fanciful Alice

They're all members of the British Mummy Bloggers Craft Market.  About which I will be blogging again soon...

Millinery - week 4

It's a hat! It's not sewn together yet, mind, but it's definitely a hat.




And it now has a wired brim and a lovely (half-finished) petersham edge.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone (and the bus - quite excited by that but not sure it will work... Here's hoping)

And in fact it didn't - it "posted but not published" and I'm now publishing from home.  Can anyone more technologically savvy than me tell me how to publish from the bus....?

Lots of loose ends (featuring the Book at Blogtime)

There are all sorts of things I've been meaning to blog about recently but somehow time/children/sleep/having a million people looking round our house because the people who were supposed to be buying it can't sell their flat and so we've had to put it back on the market have got in the way.  So here goes...

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L's new favourite song?

There once was a deadly duckling.

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I finished reading Grow up Cupid by June Oldham. (Sadly no image available, even on June Oldham's own website) I'd like to say it  made me laugh out loud, but that would be a lie.  In fact it made me snort unattractively.  Lots.  I picked it up because I was told it was an antidote to the Twilight series, and it certainly lived up to its billing.  Mog is cynical, witty and doesn't believe in men.  Very not Bella Swan, and highly amusing.  Although of course it all comes right in the end.  Mog is, among other things (studying for her A-levels, setting up a creche at her college, carrying on a vendetta against her former headmaster), writing a Mills and Boon style novel, and her thoughts are interspersed with her own commentary written in that inimitable style.  As someone who read A LOT of Mills and Boon while incarcerated at boarding school (no creche there.  No headmaster either), I loved this.   In fact I'm feeling rather inspired.  Watch this space for a post in the style of Mills and Boon...

Now on to Conspirators by Michael Andre Bernstein. Finding it quite hard going so far...

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Further update on the ongoing "another baby" question:

I met a woman in the supermarket today whose sister had three children and went for a fourth.  And got triplets.

I'm not telling B.

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Ages ago the lovely Muddy no Sugar tagged me for a meme (read her interview with her daughters if you want a fantastic laugh too). I've been rubbish about doing it, but here it is, ten things that make me happy:

1. My girls giggling at each other.  It's happening more and more these days and it's just magic.
2. Being alone in my house with nothing to do, a good book and a box of chocolates (doesn't happen often)
3. Falling asleep every night while being cuddled (in a totally non-too-much-information sort of way) by B
4. My millinery course.
5. Losing those extra pounds.  I'm working on this one!
6. Coming home after a day at work and finding that B has tidied up/washed up/done the ironing/put a load of laundry on.
7. Sunshine.  Wasn't it a beautiful day today?  Didn't it just lift your soul?
8. New shoes.
9. Georgette Heyer.
10. Watching A & S, naked, crawling to the bath.  Makes me smile just thinking about those bottoms.

I need to tag some people, but I'm so behind the times on this one that I imagine everyone's already done it. If you haven't, and want to be tagged, let me know!

And the really lovely thing about this meme? It made me realise that there are so much more than ten things that make me happy.  I'm so lucky, I really am.

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And finally.


I had my first, well, I'm so new to this one that I don't know what the proper name for it is... but anyway, for the first time someone got in touch and asked me if I wanted to review some stuff for my blog.


And I'm not sure how I feel about this.  Clearly free moisturiser would be nice, if not essential, but I'm really not sure I want to go down the reviewing products route.  Lots of the blogs I love do it, and lots of those I love don't.  I can't presume that those who don't aren't offered the products, so I must assume that they choose not to take up the offers.  If that's right, I'm wondering why not.


So what do we think? Is there an etiquette on this sort of thing?  Should I do it? Would you think more or less of me if I did/didn't?  Do let me know. I'm genuinely interested.

Millinery - week 3

The brim!

And the crown too, clearly, just because I needed somewhere to put it.  The deliberate mistake, for those of you of a millinery-bent, is that the pins in the bottom of the brim should be round the bottom of the block, not half way up, but it doesn't matter because the brim's actually going to be much narrower than where I've put the pins anyway.   And I'll know for next time.

It was much harder work this week though - have mashed my fingers with the pins - but apparently real milliners don't use hammers.  So now you know.

And the tricky bit to come: have to use my imagination and decide what I want to trim it with. Answers on a postcard.

Millinery - week 2 (and the Book at Blogtime)

 Week two of my millinery course yesterday and something to show for it!  Here is my hat...

It is a work in progress, as you can probably see, but that is, or will be, the crown.   It's blocked onto a hat block and the pins and elastic band are to hold it all in place so it takes the shape of the hat-to-be. It was so much fun doing it, and I'm really excited about next week already.

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Oh, and I finished The Host.  It took me two days, snatched into any spare second I had.  Which probably means I enjoyed it.  This one was borrowed from my friend E, who also lent me all the Twilight books.

I'd like to say that I found this trite, or unintellectual, or predictable or whatever one is supposed to say about books that are not supposed to have any "literary merit", but I devoured this rather as Ms Meyer's more famous hero would a passing mountain lion.  Clearly the plot is nonsense, and afterwards it all felt rather silly, but somehow, when you're reading it that doesn't matter.  I really cared about the characters and I totally bought into the whole world she created.   And yes, I cried.

That said, I've now moved on to "the best antidote to [Ms Meyer's] toxic guff" I could find (or be recommended). Lucy Mangan suggested Grow up Cupid by June Oldham in her Guardian column a couple of months ago, and L bought it for me for Christmas (it's out of print and I'd been hunting for it (in a rather desultory fashion) ever since).  And although I enjoyed Twilight too (although not the fourth one which is utter drivel) I'm find I'm now rather looking forward to a bit of healthy British cynicism...

Millinery - week 1

The good news? The course didn't have to be cancelled!

And it was week 1 last night.  I am now officially on a millinery course, and over the next nine weeks I will be making one felt hat and one straw hat.  So far, I've made a buckram hat band the same size as my head. I'd post a photo but I didn't take one, and you'd be pretty underwhelmed given that it looks like a circle of white card.

But I will blog with updates on my hats as they take shape.  And if anyone sees any awesome pictures of hats and headpieces which might inspire me, please do post them on here!

And the best bit?  I absolutely adored it.

Good day for a media star (with a sting in the tail).

I have, today, made my debut in the national press!

I (and this blog) get a mention (albeit brief) in an article by Gaby Hinsliff (about whom you may remember I raved a couple of months back) about the age-old, same-old, yadda yadda, yawn, but somehow can't stop thinking about it question of balancing work and kids.

Which is funny because it (or at least my buying of the magazine - available at all good newsagents, and less good: given that I bought it from one of those funny little shops in the tube) came at the end of one of the rare days when I've lurched from exasperation to joy and ended up feeling as though I have actually got the balance right. 

This morning was, as is often the case, faintly horrendous; nothing dramatic: S has a cold and is miserable, L didn't want red tights, ice skates more appropriate than going-to-work-must-still-look-like-a-professional-woman shoes (although I was very grateful for my zimmer frame/pushchair), tube full of sweary people cross with the weather and taking it out on each other.  Same old, same old.

Work was fine: nice to see everyone after Christmas, glow of generosity at giving them all the (obligatory) maple syrup candies, stuff to do but not too urgent, actually knew the answer to a technical question when asked.  Just another day at the office.

But the thing is, I was out, I was free, I could banter with my boss without having to interrupt myself to wipe a nose, or break up a fight, or find a missing sheep (or child).  I could have a cup of tea.  I could wander (aka shuffle, remember those shoes) out at lunch time and peruse the sandwich shelves of three different emporia before settling on a slightly unsatisfactory wrap, rather than wolfing down the leftovers from three different plastic plates.  I could just be me. Not someone's mum.  Me.

I had to leave early to get the girls so that the nursery staff could get home, and when I got to the nursery all three of them were in splendid moods (A and S's first day in separate rooms - huge success all round), and we had a lovely time shuffling back along the road home, singing. Literally.  The residents of West London know me as the local loony...

And I know that what made me happy today, and what, by extension made me a nice person to be around at work, and a good, happy, relaxed mum rather than the crotchety, short-tempered, no I haven't got time mum that I can also be (and am, more often than not, if the truth be told) is those six hours I spent without them.

Which is why they're important.  And that's why I realise that if this two day a week thing doesn't work (you'll notice there wasn't much actual work in my day (don't think my boss reads this fortunately)) and if we do find the perfect house in Middle-of-Nowhere, I do still need that Plan B. 

Which is why it's a bit of a b*gger to come home to an email saying that the millinery course might have to be cancelled.

Picture copyright Red Magazine, clearly.

Plan B - first attempt - millinery

I may, today, have taken my first teeny steps to an alternative way of life (sounds like I'm going to live up a tree, but you know what I mean).

I've signed up for a millinery course. Evenings, of course, and only one of them a week, so it'll probably take me about ten years finally to finish one hat, but if I like it and if I'm good at it, who knows what might happen...

And when I'm a milliner to the stars, remember you read it here first.

In the meanwhile, here's a picture of the only hat I've made so far.  The dress was navy and white if anyone's interested.