Hello!

Inky fingers

Well, we are half way through the attic clearout.

We have found the clothes in which I brought the boys home from the hospital, when they were just days old. Were they ever so small, my lads with their newly beardy chins and their deep voices?

We have found knitting (of which more another time).

We have found children's books. Mrs Lollipop, The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark, The Jolly Postman.

We have found school reports and jotters and Mother's Day cards and paintings.

We have found wall-quilts of the patchwork variety. 

We have found Roxy Music vinyl singles.

And I am most excited that we have found my Parker 51 which I thought was lost. I have no Quink so I couldn't resist scissoring the ends off a couple of non-Quink blue cartridges and refilling it. Using it is like coming home... even if I have never filled it with blue ink in my puff. I'm strictly a Permanent Black girl.

n

  

Upgrading

As part of the preparation for moving the blog and installing it on the Yarn Yard domain, I have had to back up the photos. This is because typepad will let you move text to another platform but not the photographs, so they need to be moved manually.

So I have upgraded to flickr pro and begun the process of uploading it all.

If you add me as a contact, I think you get a message when I add photos, and of course you can add comments in a similar way to adding blog comments. I take many more photos than actually end up on the blog so please visit and have a browse. I'll be doing some every day for a wee while I think... I didn't realise I was quite so prolific in my snapping!

The Yarn Yard flickr account is here.

n

A delivery from Deutschland!

The notebooks have arrived!

They were delivered late this afternoon so I will post them out on Monday... assuming I don't decide to keep them all for myself of course.

This weekend we are clearing the attic in readiness for thicker, fatter insulation which is being installed next week. I have lived here for 18 years and I'm one of those people who keeps the boxes things come in. You know, computers (plural), sewing machines (plural), that sort of thing. So there may be a skips-worth (or two) heading to the dump on Monday.

Wish me luck.

What are you doing? I bet it's more interesting than clearing the attic.

n

 

Bet you never thought you'd see a post about fashion here!

Sometimes when we are travelling we find unexpected treasure, and this was true of our trip to Brussels.

Rootling about in one of the guide books I discovered a shop called "mais il est où le soleil?" Now, I am not much of a shopper in the clothes department but the description intrigued me. A collection of 170 designs in five colour families. Each garment is thin, I didn't see anything heavier than 4 ply wool or lightweight velvet. The idea is that you choose a selection of garments and layer them in any way you choose. The clothes were arranged in colour blocks rather than by size or type, all the deep olive greens together, leading into anthracite, doodle, gold, brocade, ochre and so on. Skirts with frills beside long draped overgowns beside soft ruched knits beside silky trousers. 

It was a real thrill to feel all the textures and admire the pleats and ruffles and assymetric hems.

I didn't buy anything. You can see the website here (and ten minute catwalk show), worth watching all the way through.

It reminded me of an unstructured Nitya - Click on Collections, turn the sound on, and then navigate with the big arrows... and admire the age range of the models too.

After I had drunk in the colour we headed across the city to visit the artists equivalent of a sweetie shop... I'll tell you all about it tomorrow, if you've looked at Ousolieil and Nitya you'll have been here for a while already!

n

 

Love it, or Hate it?

If you go to Regent Street in London at the moment, you will find a pop-up shop selling one of my favourite things. 

 

The best tasting Christmas "tree".

 

The best value snack. Where else would you find a cup of tea and some toast (with or without Marmite) for two quid?
 

 

Wallpaper for the true fan.

I'm not sure this really is wallpaper, but if it isn't it ought to be and Marmite Inc. are seriously missing a trick.

So, do you Love It, or do you Hate It?

n
 
 

Oh - to be two years old!

We went to the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy today... And one little girl, aged about two or probably less, did what everyong else really wanted to do. She spied this huge slow moving four metre high, two metre wide, eight metre long lump of red wax shaped like a train... and she also spotted a two year old sized gap in the adult legs in front of her.
And she ran with arms outstretched in front, palms forward, determined to get to it. When she succeeded, and her hands were flat against the soft surface, she then decided this thing might be fun to try and climb and she put one toddler shoed foot on the soft edge and... at that point she was scooped up by Mum and prevented from running all over the place and leaving small red oily footprints everywhere.

Somehow, I'm not sure the artist would have minded such a display of spontaneous delight in his work.

n

PS I have decided that I will keep a diary for my 100 day project, not the public consumption blogging one, but an old fashioned pen and paper journal. I have made notes for today as the "hardware" I need is at home.