Ten things

• All the solo lunch suggestions from the comments on my last post were great.  I am much cheered to learn that I am not the only one who finds lunch at home a bit of a non-event.

• There are some snowdrops in the garden.  Just a few, but enough to make me smile when I squelch through the mud to get the eggs each morning.

• For pancake day I made a batch of little drop pancakes for breakfast.  But remember, just because they're really small, doesn't mean they don't fill you up!
• O has discovered she likes doing embroidery.  Like other parents who love to sew or knit, I have to back off and look nonchalent in order for her to remain enthusiastic. 

•  Tomorrow, C and G are going to hear Jason Bradbury, from the Gadget Show, talk about his Dot Robot books at the Southbank. C is immersed in the first book and loves it - highly recommended for any computer/tech minded pre-teens you know.
• O's quilt is well underway.  I have cut up the 184 four and a half inch squares needed for the sashing around the appliqueed blocks, and started sewing them together.  I wish I got on better with my rotary cutter, but I'm so cack-handed with it that it's quicker for me to use scissors and a plastic template.

• I'm re-reading My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, for about the four hundredth time.  I dug it out to give it to C to read, and ended up re-reading it myself.  Reading in bed last night I was laughing out loud so much that I woke G up.
• I bought some scarily expensive, but incredibly beautiful, ribbon yesterday.  I am going to re-trim the denim skirt I made at The Make Lounge eighteen months ago.
• This might make me want to make more skirts - I find that the more I sew, the more I want to sew, until my head is bursting with long lists of projects, fabrics, trim, patterns and ideas.  But this is not a bad thing.
• We went to down to Sussex to see friends yesterday.  They took us to the seaside at Birling Gap, and I was exhilarated; filling my lungs with huge breaths of cold sea air.  However, G does not like any weather that I describe as 'bracing' and the toddlers in our party were struggling to stand upright in the wind, so we ended up going for a wander through Seven Sisters Country Park instead, which brought a smile back to G's face.