I found a Bee Gees greatest hits double album in a charity shop for the pricely sum of £2.50 a couple of days ago and I can’t stop playing it.
But this video? priceless.
The hair… the high waisted pants… the moves… they lyrics… “you can tell by the way I use my walk I’m a woman’s man not time to talk…
… and on that note… have a great weekend!
I literally stumbled upon this pattern whilst numbingly surfing Instagram when the school bus was late… how did I miss it before?
You can buy the paper version from the website (Tessuti) or you can download it for free which has the double benefit of being immediately available – if you have that itch to scratch – and … of being free… Admittedly the printing/cutting/putting the pattern together is a little bit of a palaver but this pattern hasn’t got that many pieces so it came together quickly.
You also have the options of making a tunic or a top… initially I had cut it as a tunic but I wasn’t feeling it and ended up cutting it well shorter than the top length too required. Call me a rebel.
I went for my usual size S, but to be honest it’s a very generous pattern and I could have get away with an XS.
It’s super comfortable and the fabric – a gorgeously soft cotton ikat from… maybe from Merchant and Mills a couple of years ago… maybe… – will soften and drape even more with time…
Gosh I’m slouching so bad… (maybe my dad has been right all along)
I’m super proud of the finishing in this top and for taking the (loooooong time) to thread the serger and get it going. It’s probably the best ‘made’ thing I’ve ever made, so I don’t care it’s a little big… it might come into his own in the summer.
If that ever comes.
Also check the matching of the pattern and send me a gold medal. I tots deserve it.
How gorgeous is this bag? I rather think they go fabulously together.
… now I’m going to make myself a lovely cup of tea… anyone?
… my obsession with macrame continues… I’ve ordered lots of coloured rope but in the meantime I need to make do with what I have… it’s quite incredible how much rope/cord it takes to do anything… metres and metres of the stuff.
Sunday afternoon, after a stupidly early morning hockey tournament and a consequently unavoidable nap, I made a hanging planter… which was raised eyeballs in the house and caused much head shaking but hey… why not?
(these are double square knots. I love them)
It’s quite a tall/long hanging planter… I wish they had put finished measure in the pattern because I might have shortened it a tad…
It’s really simple in its constructions and given I’ve just ordered two more hanging plants I can easily customise the design for the next ones…
also I need to practice my basic knots… quite hard to make a smooth knot when you have 16 pieces of cord to wrangle.
… happy Tuesday, keep out of the rain…
Today is traditionally celebrated as The Bard’s birthday… so… I’ll give you a favourite of mine…
Sonnet 18 (by William Shakespeare)
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Seasonally appropriate if not geographically…
The mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar.
After the disappointment of my last book I needed something to get me back onto the reading wagon… I’m really lagging behind and I’m not sure I’m going to make it to 48 at this snail pace. I’ve read 8 and there are 40 to go… I would have to average more than one book a week… oh dear. I’m in trouble.
My latest choice was a much better one, not perfect, not one of those books that leave you stare in the middle distance after you read the last page, lost in the story and the characters… not quite, but a very good nonetheless.
Plus it’s a very pretty book!
Where should I start… ok, it’s a gorgeous read because the language is absolutely wonderful: rich and sumptuous, never pedestrian but surprising and so delightfully accurate… The story takes place in 1785 and the London of the time is perfectly illustrated, as a matter of fact you can ‘see’ London, you can hear it, you can smell it too… the setting is beautifully vivid and real. There are merchants, and courtesans, brothels and docks, mermaids and servants and slaves… a huge variety of fascinating characters… Where it lacked slightly for me is in the story… it’s a bit jumpy from here to there… not sure Mrs Hancock is the main character and therefore deserves the title… and also I’m not sure I liked her at all for 3/4 of the book and then suddenly she ‘changes’… and she’s seems quite nice… but a different person. The mermaid too… is a bit ‘thin’… It almost needed to be thought through a little more in order to bring it all together better… there are lots of slightly disjointed parts which are wonderful but themselves but feel a little forced when put together. Having said all this I enjoyed it very much and it restored my faith in books so that’s good right?
Anyway, language 10/10, descriptions of the time/place 10/10, story and characters 7/10.
Worth reading? Absolutely.
Isn’t the weather glorious today? My mind is positively fizzing with joy… I’ve had to dive into my summer drawer for a short sleeve top and I’m wearing sandals… perhaps I might take my straw bag for a walk too later…
It seems to me that basket bags are absolutely everywhere at the moment, don’t you think? Round ones, square ones, big ones, small ones… bamboo, raffia, straw, wicker… endless variety and styles.
I really like them (I like all bags, if truth be told) and I’m kind of glad that I bought mine last year, the choice at the moment is overwhelming!
The boys have gone back to school today and the house is quite and waiting for me to regain some form of control… in the meantime I thought I would give you a snapshot of what’s on the high street (and not) if you’re interested in the current ‘it’ bag.
Let’s start with Anthropologie (ok not exactly high street… but such a wonderful collections of clothes and accessories all the time…)
(from top left, clockwise: Myskia straw bag £68.00, Goldilocks tote £108.00, Asa checked tote £88 and Palm Springs folder circle tote £68)
Zara has a huge choice:
(mini tote back with handles £39.99, raffia mnaudiere bag £29.99, round raffia bag (love this one) £29.99 and rigid handle tote £29.99)
or perhaps you’re after something slightly different… still from Zara:
(hexagonal cross body £25.99, mini wooden tote (so want this one) £29.99, black minaudière bag £29.99, wicker handbag £29.99)
Another retailer with cute bag is Mango:
(bamboo rucksack – love love love – £89.00, bamboo coffer bag £69.99, natural coffer bag £49.99 and bamboo fish bag £39.99 – such fun!)
My friend Flora sells fab bags too (as a matter of fact I got mine from her last year), you can find her website here
(bolo woven bag £45.00 and Pompom basket £40.00)
So much choice right? Which one is your favourite? Do you like bags? Do you use a bag at all? Small? Big? Are you one of those Mary Kondo people who empty their bags every night and empties of all receipts and raisins and elastic bands and all other stuff that mysteriously gathers at the bottom of any bag I ever use?
And I don’t even like raisins.
What can I say… if it ain’t broken…
I love this pattern, (the Esme tunic/top, from this book by Lotta Jansdotter)… it fits me without having to make any adjustments, I can make it into a top (I made two) and a tunic/dress… just brilliant, the instructions are easy to follow (although not as detailed and instructive as the ones in the Tova top/tunic by wiksten)
I’ve had this fabric for a couple of years, it’s linen (I think) and by the magic Nani Iro… one of my absolute favourite designer. Also, in the interest of information I made a size Small, I’m a uk size 10 (US 6).
So why do I like this pattern… well… the rounded neckline is very flattering
the shoulders are just right and I can move my arms easily without fear of ripping the seams (I have quite wide shoulders for my frame), and the chest darts are spot on, which is a relief because altering those it’s tricky for me
this time I just kept the length as it was on the pattern and I think it’s great if you want to wear the tunic with trousers (I’m 5’4″ or 164cm tall), but in the past I lengthened one and use it as a dress with thick tights. In the book there are instructions to make a long kaftan too, based on this pattern… very tempting…
isn’t this fabric glorious? I’ll spare you my face as I barking instructions to No 2 who was being a very unwilling photographer… not pretty…
obligatory awkward pose…
Every Morning (by Mary Oliver)
I read the papers,
I unfold them and examine them in the sunlight.
The way the red mortars, in photographs,
arc down into the neighborhoods
like stars, the way death
combs everything into a gray rubble before
the camera moves on. What
dark part of my soul
shivers: you don’t want to know more
about this. And then: you don’t know anything
unless you do. How the sleepers
wake and run to the cellars,
how the children scream, their tongues
trying to swim away–
how the morning itself appears
like a slow white rose
while the figures climb over the bubbled thresholds,
move among the smashed cars, the streets
where the clanging ambulances won’t
stop all day–death and death, messy death–
death as history, death as a habit–
how sometimes the camera pauses while a family
counts itself, and all of them are alive,
their mouths dry caves of wordlessness
in the smudged moons of their faces,
a craziness we have so far no name for–
all this I read in the papers,
in the sunlight,
I read with my cold, sharp eyes.
“Annihilation” Jeff VanderMeer
For a while I had completely lost my reading mojo. And I mean completely. I didn’t read one single line of any books when I was on holiday last week and that must have been a first for me since I was six and first learnt to read…
I blame this book. What the heck was that all about?
Sci-fi… I’m ok with that, I like a bit of science fiction on the side occasionally… a little bit of horror too (I went through a mad Stephen King phase in my late teens)… but this? It’s kind of psychedelic and I am not into that… it’s trippy and dreamy and strange… and I get it, probably totally original too… but geesh… give some narrative to follow please!
It’s very psychedelic as a matter fact. A sci-fi, horror, psychedelic book.
I just didn’t get it at all.
“Something happened” in what is now called area X, strange and at times horrible things happen to the expeditions that get sent in to investigate – the premises are intriguing, right? but then… a lot of words to describe ‘weird’ phenomenon and a story that doesn’t end, doesn’t make sense, characters that are not really developed or explained. It gets progressively weirder and weirder and whilst that kinds of draws you in because you really want to make sense of it all …. it doesn’t. Not to me.
A mess.
From reading some of the review on Goodreads it is clear this is a real ‘Marmite’ book and I have to say I definitively fall in the ‘no-way Jose’ camp. I’m open to a conversation if you’d like to explain it to me but it better be good.
I mean… I can see why some people hails it as great, I really do. It just wasn’t for me and completely fried my brain and I didn’t want to read anything anymore for ages.
Netflix has just released a movie from this book. Alex Garland (he wrote ‘The Beach’ about 20 years ago… gulp already?…) directed it and I have to say… although no Oscar contender, at least it makes more sense… It is also VERY different in many details… it has a beginning and a middle and an END. And I quite enjoyed it.
Alex Garland talks here about it:
This book is also the first in a trilogy all releasead in 2014 (could have been three parts of a fat book to be honest)… I went as far as reading the second one hoping for an explanation which didn’t come… in fact the story is told from a completely different point of view and character following the previous books events, which explains certains things.. but I get the feeling that ‘conveniently’ makes things up because otherwise the whole house of cards wouldn’t stand up.
I didn’t have the strength to read the third; if you do tell me how it ends.
Please.
while you're ahead... 