Gillingham v. Colchester

Last Sunday I was at the Gillingham v. Colchester match and got a few shots of the game. The match report featuring some of the photos I took is HERE

Too bad we lost 4-1.

Today's Luck

I believe that everybody has a little luck, even on a terrible day. At the moment I have money worries and my car is broken with at least two problems. I did however manage to get a spider picture I like. I'm very fond of spiders and I'm always trying to get good photos of them sitting in their beautiful webs. The fragility and translucency of a spider's web makes them quite challenging to photograph though.

I've never understood arachnophobia and blame the bad press spiders get which just goes to show how powerful the media is. Once this fear is ingrained in people, they pass it on like a heriditary illness. Maybe it's time to start making films and creating drawings and paintings which show spiders in a more positive light.

Handmade Scarf for Iceland

 

I've been spending quite a few evenings and lunch hours in the park crocheting a scarf for my forthcoming trip to Iceland.

A few weeks ago I had a crochet lesson with a friend and following that I spent a few frustrated hours in front of Youtube with hooks and wool. As soon as I could do neat rows, I decided there was no point in crocheting endless rows which went nowhere so started my first project. I'm going to Iceland in 4 weeks so it seemed like an excellent opportunity to make my own scarf. I chose to make the scarf with colours that make me think of Iceland: blue for the sea and hot springs, grey for the rocks and lava and white for the glaciers and snow.

It took quite a few hours to do (the scarf is about 5 foot and comprised of over 2000 stitches) but I loved every minute and discovered lots of new music as I listened to the radio while working on it.

I've already started planning a new scarf for autumn which will be thinner and made with a lighter, softer yarn - so you can expect more scarves here!

Homemade Soap

I've been wanting to make my own soap for some time and my Aunt's birthday presented me with the perfect opportunity to try. It's very simple and there are endless combinations of scents, textures and colours to experiment with.

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We started with colourless, scentless soap which we melted down

After that it's just a case of deciding what sort of soap you want it to be! You have to work quite quickly as the soap starts to set almost immediately. We used red colouring to make pink soap and added a few drops of honeysuckle essential oil as a nod to summer. To make it a little special we added a few petals from my Dad's hydrangea plant. 
We used rectangular metal dishes to let the soap set, but you could use any shaped metal container, so long as the top is a little wider than the bottom (or you soap won't come out after it has set in the freezer!)



A present for a special Aunt

I need to troubleshoot to find out how to get rid of any air bubbles that surfaced and I also need to be more organised so I can work quickly to get the flowers in before the soap has set. I will definitely be making more soap though. Perhaps a creamy soap with sand or some kind of grain to make an exfoliating soap...

Wild Flowers Hunting Expedition

One of the very worst things about living in one of the most densely populated areas of the world is the lack of access to wild flowers and fields. Instead you have to go to the supermarket and pay to have fresh flowers in your home. I don't have much money at this minute so after work I explored my local neighbourhood to search for wild flowers, not expecting to find much outside of people's summer gardens. I was pleasantly surprised however.

Perhaps I crammed too many in the vase but I still think they look beautiful

Found by a rubbish collection area for residents, in a brick wall, on a grass verge and in a car park.

Ethereal at dusk

A few in a bowl with candles

Very pleased with the fruits of my hunt. They smell lovely too..

Homemade Cheesecake

My sister has always wanted to make a cheesecake. I've always wavered as it sounded like a lot of effort but since the hedgerows are full of ripe blackberries, I decided it was the perfect time to succumb to the cheesecake. We used the Mary Berry Recipe here which worked well.

First up, the base

There is a lot of cream cheese but the lemon helps cut through the richness. Also, the egg whites folded in at the end make for a surpringly light cheesecake for all the cream, butter and cheese. Even my mum, who is not a fan of diary products, had two slices!

My sister ventured in the rain to the local park to pick the blackberries (alas no wild strawberries though). Not surprisingly, nobody complained about tart blackberries.

The base edge is not perfect but it was addictively good nonetheless.

Welcome to Our Garden (A Tribute For My Dad)

My summer would be woefully  incomplete without the sounds of our resident gardener-my Dad. The rustles in the garden under my window, the hollow echo of the watering can being filled, snipping and snapping...
These montages are a tribute to my Dad, who always makes sure our garden looks beautiful, and indeed to all the gardeners out there who look after the plants and flowers for me, and others like me, who prefer reading to weeding...

(click on the photos to enlarge!)

In the summer the flowers come alive. Clockwise form top left-a voluptuous hydrangea, scented honeysuckle climbing the trellis by the bench, a rose bush planted in memory of my Mum's parents, a lovely fuschia...

It's not all pretty flowers. A Gothic Romanticism lurks in the darker corners of the garden-angels hide under bushes, a bench with a beautiful metalwork back sits under the honeysuckle, berries grow and a beaded candle holder from Turkey has found a new home in an English garden.












Surprises and humour abound too. Stone creatures, who may or may not come alive at night, sit contentedly in the flower beds and other corners. Gnomes smile cheerily all year round, come rain or shine. The ubiquitous green sets off the beautiful red leaves. A stone wishing well guarded by the tree and a clear blue sky in June.

Christmas Starts Early for a Slow Cross Stitcher

My first completed cross stitch. Hopefully I'll get neater as well as quicker. I made a few errors, not least, running out of the correct colour of yellow thread. Also I didn't secure my ends tightly enough at the beginning resulting in some unravelling. Who'd have thought that the threads would be so keen to escape through the holes?

The 12am bells herald my pay day so I'll bypass Smith's tomorrow and purchase graph paper to think about doing some of my own designs which would be a lot of fun and even more satisfying I think

I have another far more exciting cross stitch project lined up too but I'll reveal more later.

Hat Project

After successfully completing my first 'crochet round', I decided to jump in the deep end and bought some discounted chunky yarn and a 8mm hook to start crocheting my first hat.

The pattern is actually very easy-the difficulty so far has lain in the wool being rather fuzzy and thick so the stitches are very indistinct. As a beginner, it's very important that I can see my stitches. Still I saw no point in beating around the bush by crocheting dead end circles, so we'll see how my first project goes. If it all ends in tears, I can always unravel the hat (or whatever it has metamorphosed into) and start again...

Obiturary to My Favourite Shoes

These shoes have traversed the urban labyrinth of south-east England. They've kept me company on nightly strolls which lasted hours. Two weeks out of the box and they were on my feet as I boarded a plane for a 14 hour flight to Bangkok in January 2007.  They've stood on tropical Thai beaches and sheltered sand inside which took weeks to shake out, and allowed me to stand on a warm beach long after I returned home to England. They took me around the streets of Barcelona, following the footsteps of Miro, Picasso and Gaudi. Whatever I wore, these shoes had an uncanny knack for just matching. They visited the land of some of my ancestors with me when I stayed in Krakow for a few days. Across the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco and somberly walking the eerie cells of Alcatraz...the Rocket Dogs particularly liked San Francisco.

They skipped me over bridges in Venice and twirled with strange Italians to a cafe orchestra in St Mark's Square. They've seen the lofty mountains of Austria and tracked the Moors around beautiful Andalucia. They've pounded the streets of Central London during Christmas mania...and survived.

They've visited Enchanted Gardens, leaf-carpeted forests in the autumn and sat by my side in parks, briefly unused in the first glorious bloom of spring. They've danced atop the battlements of English castles and through beds of bluebells, to emerge pollen-covered and dirty. They've trodden the very same wooden boards walked by Anne Boleyn and a besotted Henry the Eighth and strolled around Los Angeles' star-filled streets. These shoes have lived.


"I think he put them in the wash because he thought they were dirty"
 "No, that's just the colour they are now. I've tried to wash them. They just look dirty, that's all."

Dirty with life, a million adventures and a love of walking.

Today, my four and half year old canvas Rocket Dogs finally fell apart.