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.