STRIKE Nov30

Well today my colleagues are striking about changes that the current government want to make to our pensions. I am rather sad that I cannot join them on the picket line as I am at home looking after the moomoos, the pook whose school is closed due to the strike and a friends child as she had no childcare for today.

I have found when talking to friends and acquaintances that a large number of those working in the private sector have been mislead by the propaganda spread that the public sector is a world of milk and honey where workers are wrapped in cotton wool and therefore do not feel the pinch of the double dip. This has saddened me and it is simply not true. The public sector like the private sector are faced with redundancies, pay freezes, recruitment freezes and now problems with our pensions.

Also should we not be supporting each other when we are fighting for our rights rather than picking on each other due to feelings of jealousy?

Wandering through heath and parkland

I have had the most wonderful couple of days. The husband had a day off on Friday so we decided to head to Hampstead Heath whilst the pook was at school with the moomoos. The sky was blue to air was crisp and I forgot my camera. Well we can't have everything!

We set off on the overground which is my favourite way to travel in London, to Hampstead. Strolling up the heath in the direction of Kenwood house was wonderful. We strolled over the old viaduct bridge spanning the old brickworks. The trees still hold many of their leaves all wonderfully coloured in ambers and reds. After working up a bit of an appetite we walked back towards Hampstead Heath station and then on to the Garden Gate. A wonderful pub serving wonderful food. It has the most spectacular garden in the summer. With it being November we decided to sit inside on the chesterfield sofas by a toasty warm fire. I love love love a fire when it is cold outside.

As we had already decided that it was going to be a special lunch we went for the three course set menu at a very reasonable thirteen English pounds. I gorged myself on a starter of mushrooms with garlic and chili with a watercress salad, a main of GIANT hake fish fingers with chips and minty peas and tartare sauce yum yum yum! Dessert was a rather decadent beetroot and chocolate brownie. I think vegetables used in sweet dishes is genius! So sad that I have no pretty photos of our walk or lunch.

Friday evening was more fun. My brother and I went to the wonderful George and Dragon pub in Acton for a comedy night. How we laughed! For some unknown reason (maybe wine...) we decided to sit ourselves right at the front. This is not something I would usually recommend for a comedy night. The comics tend to pick on you and you can't get up to go for a wee. However last night it was the best seat in the house. Two of the comics were particularly funny; Tyson Boyce who was quite frankly a bit odd but very funny (does he put on that voice?) and Matthew Crosby. Overall a wonderful night and I am hoping they will repeat it again soon.

Today I was a bit more successful with the picture taking on our mammoth four hour walk in Richmond Park. There were trees and lakes and deer and herons. Even a woodpecker! We had the most wonderful time. Here are some photos I took along the way.

The terrace gardens just before the star and garter gate

The view as we walked from the station to the park

The pook hiding in one of the many hollow trees

Beautiful trees! I have been trying to put my tree identification talk to use.

The husband sporting his movember mo

A view down to the Thames

So a busy day full of fresh air and family fun. We all felt very tired when we arrived back at home. So I made a scrummy veggie tagine and some of my energy bites. They really pick you it.

Ingredients

500g raw cashews
200g raw sunflower seeds
200g dried mango
200g stoned dates
some sesame seeds

soak the cashews and dates in water for a hour then blend with the mango and sunflower seeds until well chopped and mixed. Roll into balls and coat with sesame seeds. Place on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for one hour at about 140 degrees. These make for a super healthy and tasty snack. Enjoy!

Blues skies, fluffy slipper and a bit of baking

I <3 November. I think it may well be one of my favourite months. All blue skies and crisp mornings. The trees have shed their last few leaves preparing for winter. I too am preparing for winter. I am baking fruit cake, crocheting blankets and making mincemeat for winter mince pies and spooning through porridge in the cold mornings.

For my mincemeat I use a recipe by Dan Lepard that you can find on his Guardian baking blog. This man is one of my baking heros. He mixes traditional recipes with scrummy strange ideas like macaroons filled with cream and marmalade. I follow his blog avidly pinching his ideas to experiment with in my kitchen.

Other cooking blogs that deserve a mention are the whisk kid and Sweetpolita both of which inspire my baking.

So the house is filled with the smell of fruit cake. I have spent this morning icing a Christmas cake whilst the moomoos naps. I have gone for the traditional marzipan and royal icing, placing tiny gold edible stars all over the top of the cake. This cake has a purpose. On the first of December we have a tradition that involves the first mulled wine of the Christmas season. We have friends and family round to ours in the evening. We will eat Christmas cake and drink delicious mulled wine.

As always I am behind on everything. I like to make handmade cards for christmas. So far this year I have not made a single one! I really need to get a bit of a wriggle on with this. To motivate myself a friend and I are planning to have a card making and wine evening. I am sure that the wine will help with the card making.

Another project that I have on the go is crocheting stars and baubles in red cotton which I am then stitching beautiful little gold star sequins. I am hoping to give a few of these away as gifts as well as making some for our own tree this year.

To finish here are a few photos which show how this wonderful November week has been going. Enjoy

Decorating cakes with stars

Pretty christmas lights

Jewel like spiderwebs adorning the burial grounds railings

Moomoos helping with my crochet

Foggy misting mornings making London looking all victorian peasoup like

Hours pass by in the blink of an eye...

See I only meant to be gone a moment whilst I settle to moomoos and then finished my last post. However a few seconds turned into five whole days. I don't know where the time goes really. I seem to spend a great deal of time chasing my own tail attempting to keep up with things I am supposed to do, things I want to do and things I feel I should do.

Over the last five days I have atleast had a few stolen moments to add a couple of rows to my rainbow granny stripe blanket. It is really coming along. When I do have a moment to work on it I find it grows at an extraordinary rate. The rhymic speed of the pattern pausing only to change the colour of my yarn every so often.

Can you see all the ends I will have to weave in. Not one of my favourite jobs. I have considered teaching the pook to do it and then bribing him with chocolate!

Here is a couple of the moomoos enjoying the rainbow blanket.

She seems to love the stripey rainbow fun. I have attempted to keep the stripes random changing from one colour to another without following a pattern. It is really hard not to fall into a pattern though.

Also this week I attended the last print making class. I will be very sorry not to be attending this class every week anymore. I have really enjoyed myself and the other people on the course have all been a pleasure to work with. This week I set to screen printing bags and tea towels of christmas gifts. Here are a couple of them.

I love the combination of the blue print on the orange bag. Sadly I only printed one in this colour combination so will not have one to keep.

I also experimented with printing the motif in repeat on a bag and working in different colours. It was all wonderful fun! Maybe I should sign up for another six week course in the new year.

Now on my list of things to do today I need to find two secret santa gifts, bake two christmas cakes and source some felt to make pretty christmas decorations. This months Mollie Makes came with loads of beautiful ideas for christmas which made me very excited. I will have a hundred and one different projects on the go over the next few weeks.

Booking a pre christmas dinner

Who would know it would be such a faff!

Every year we meet up with a few close friends for a pre Christmas lunch. There is food and booze and secret santa. It is all very good fun. Unfortunately it appears to have become my job to organise this lunch. I am not sure how this occurred but it did.

Usually I don't mind organising things however this is a faff! Firstly finding a date which suits all is a right PITA. Then there is the venue. A million emails later and much wrangling over deposits and numbers and time we have booked lunch at The Stag. This is a rather nice pub in Hampstead so we may tie in a stroll on the common post lunch to try and work off some of those calories.

I have not had much time for crafting fun this week as the Moomoos  has been ill. She is not a good patient.  In fact I hear her calling. I will have to finish this off when she has settled again.

Just a quickie

Castor and Pollux well ... Wonderful music, wonderful singing apart from the bass who was a bit weak. The staging though was dreadful. Dull dull dull!

Lists of lists of lists of lists

This week has been a week of lists and lists of those lists and so on. I always find November busy. There are birthdays to think about, Christmas to start organising and generally lots of things occurring.

Every year I try to make myself more organised. I am great at planning exactly what it is I need to do. Wonderful in fact at making list. However I am not so good at completing the tasks on a list.

On Wednesday I attended my wonderful print making class. Over the last five weeks I have learnt so much about print making from the wonderful Claire Palfreyman. I am rather sad that next week will be the last week of the course.

This week I continued with the bird linocut that I had started the week before. This linocut consists of four separate blocks which when registered correctly (not something that I am particularly good at!) will produce the complete image in any combination of colours that you want.

Here are the four blocks of lino

I found creating this project an enjoyable challenge and learnt a great deal about composing a more complicated image through it.

Here are some prints using some and all of the blocks in a range of colours.

As I had some time left at the end of class I decided I would have an attempt at a screen print using a simplified version of the bird design that I had used for my lino print project.

It has been so long since I have done an screen printing that I had forgotten how simple it can be and the impact you can create with even the simplest designs. I loved messing about with the colours although I do not think some of the shades of colour are lost in photographing the finished prints.

Here are some of my screen printing experiments

Next week I intend to come up with a design to print on some tea towels and bags for Christmas gifts. Also as next week is our last week I have talked myself into baking a scrummy carrot cake to take along for all of us to scoff.

Speaking of cake I have baked the two Christmas cakes that I soaked the fruit for at the beginning of this week. They are happily tucked up in a tin being feed brandy at regular intervals. I will ice them in a couple of weeks.

I am very much looking forward to this weekend which is full of fun things. Tonight I am off to see Caster and Pollux at the ENO with my little brother and Father. Very much looking forward to this.

On Saturday I am sitting for a portrait for Nadja Gabriela Plein. She is a local artist who is painting local people for a exhibition for next year. I volunteered thinking well I may never have another opportunity to have my portrait painted so why not?

We also have friends coming round on Saturday Evening for drinks and nibbles. It is far easier to entertain at home rather than go out when you have small ones.

Well I am off to make a start on one of my various lists. Hope you enjoy your weekends.

Holed up in a house that smells of christmas!

This weekend was magical fun. Bonfire night has always been a favourite celebration of mine. I think fireworks must be the best way to burn money. This year we went to the Ravenscourt Park display with friends. They have a a children's display and then a full on display later in the evening. There are also fairground rides other amusements.

Here are some photos -

The fireworks included lots of whizzing and banging!

The moomoos slept in her sling through all of it.

They had light sticks which flashed and twinkled. We got one for the pook and one for the moomoos.

The fireworks were followed by the most perfect supper of welsh rarebit. Yum yum yum

In between all the fireworks fun I didn't have much time for crochet but managed to add a couple of extra rows to my rainbow granny stripe blanket. I think I am about a third of the way through the blanket. Still a lot to do!

Today was spent mooching around the house as the moomoos has developed a cold. So I thought long and hard about what to do today. Cleaning or cake baking? The cake baking won and I have made a start on this years Christmas cake. Every November I make a HUGE Christmas cake and feed it brandy before icing it in late December.

The fruit was weighed and chopped before being soaked in brandy to sit for two days gathering flavour. That means the cake will be all set for baking on Wednesday. I make Christmas cakes for gifts so this will be the first of perhaps six cakes which I will make over the next two weeks.

This is how all winter weekends should be. I look forward to the coming weeks when there will be more christmassy fun to be had.

Weekend and don't I need it!

The weekend has arrived! I love the weekends as Mr B is at home and we usually have lots of fun activities planned. The weekend we will be baking Christmas cakes, watching fireworks at Ravenscourt Park and all matter of other fun things. Also on Saturday the pook as a musical aptitude test for the West London Free School which we are hoping he will attend next year. The school only recently opened and we are not altogether sure what the test will include. We are just trying to keep him nice and calm about it.

Today I had a wonderful outing with Culture Baby. In the first of there salons hosted by various people we were treated to a wonderfully intimate performance by Remus Azoitei performing Bach's famous 'Chaconne' from the Partita no.2 in D minor and George Enescu a short piece called "The Fiddler" from his Suite "Impressions d'enfance". It was wonderful being able to appreciate this wonderful performance so close up.

Afterwards we watched a short film by Shler B Murdochy called Hanars day out which was very thought provoking.

Altogether a wonderful experience. Tonight I am very sleepy after my busy day and plan to cuddle up with the children whilst having a glass of wine and adding a few more rows onto my rainbow granny stripe project.

Bumbling around Kew looking at the trees

Today I spent the afternoon with the moomoos bumbling around Kew Gardens. The gardens are one of my favourite places in the world. Today we were booked in for a tree identification walk. It was fantastic! Our guide Anne was a volunteer and guided us around oaks, London plane, ash, cedars, scots pine, liquid amber and many other fabulous trees.

We learnt how to identify each tree by its leaf, seed/fruit and bark. I can honestly say I have not done something so interesting in some time. Moomoos was very well behaved considering and spent most of the walk snoozing in her mei tai.

I took millions of photos. Here are but a few of them.

Liquid Amber

Common Oak

Not all conifers are evergreen. Never knew that before today.

Beautiful colours. Really pleased that it didn't rain.

Wonderful autumn colours across the lake.

This evening I am off to my print making course. Tonight we embark on our three week project. I have tried over the last two weeks to come up with a plan as to what I wanted to do. Needless to say I have not had much success with my planning. I will yet again be deciding on something at the last moment and hope for the best.