All change

It's all change for the New Year around here:

• I'm working. 
• The car only gets used once or twice a week, now that we no longer have a school run to do. 
• I'm earning money. 
• After a very late night out and a slow bus ride home, I awoke at 9:30am to find that Cam had unloaded the dishwasher, made a big pot of coffee and was frying bacon for breakfast sandwiches for everyone. 
• I no longer travel to work by tube.
• We are going to go to Switzerland for our summer holiday this year.
• I'm wearing bright blue scrubs at work, and a name badge that says 'Staff Nurse'.
• There is a hipster-run new bistro in our local neighbourhood.

I absolutely love this time of year: the crisp cold, the white skies, the sense of clarity and energy after the velvet-luxury, over-indulgent, laziness of Christmas.  It makes me want to run, to clean, to sing, and to organise.  Starting a new job fits perfectly with this vibe.  In the dark early mornings I warm myself up with one of the (many) hats I knit over Christmas and walk briskly up the hill to work, marvelling at how much I enjoy this new life I've chosen.  On my days off I make plans and lists: where to walk next, what I need to learn next for work, what I'm going to buy with my first month's salary (a new printer, most likely), what my sewing plans are for this year, and which bag I don't need to buy in the Cath Kidston sale.

There's still cake though.  There's always cake.

Lemon and blueberry syrup loaf

Messy desk - a snapshot

On my messy desk this morning:

• the milk bill
• a letter from Olivia's school about a summer picnic
• a free cup of coffee from Waitrose - thank you Waitrose
• three unopened magazines
• this week's Nursing Standard
• a leaflet about pelvic radiotherapy in men
• unexpected Amazon parcels, which I think may contain birthday presents
• a new cookbook
• a textbook on acute and critical care nursing
• my Kindle - I need to load it up with more things to read later; I've just finished this book, which was a good recommendation from my father
• keys and glasses
• fabric for another dress
• a freshly baked croissant in a paper bag (my breakfast, along with the coffee)

It is my day off today.  After I've tidied my desk I plan to sit in the garden and read the backlog of magazines and my new cookbook. 

10 things

• The running continues to improve - I like it more each time I go, and my 5K time is now down to 31 minutes and 4 seconds.  The sub-30 5K run is heading my way, I feel sure.  My brother-in-law asked me last night "what's changed for you with running?" and I had no insight for him beyond that I didn't used to enjoy it, but now I do.
• Our Race for Life is in Cambridge next weekend.  A massive thank you to all the blog readers who have contributed so generously to our Just Giving page - some of whom I haven't even met before.  I don't have an email address for everyone who has donated, so I haven't been able to thank everyone in person - have a public, and sincere Thank You here instead!  We shall, of course, report back here after the race with photos....
• We have both bought bright pink t-shirts to wear for the race, even though neither of us likes bright pink.  Olivia pointed out that if we didn't wear bright pink for the race we might feel like a couple of sparrows in a flock of flamingos.
• I just found out about the Walk for Women event happening across the UK this summer - I hope I'll be able to go along to at least one of the walks.  They are happening all over the UK to celebrate 100 years since 50,000 suffragists marched across the UK, ending at a rally at Hyde Park to raise awareness of their cause.
• When women get together, they can really make things happen!
• The most famous suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst believed she was born on 14th July - Bastille Day - although her birth certificate states that in fact she was born on the 15th.  Nobody has really got to the bottom of why this discrepancy came about.  My own Grandmother was definitely born on Bastille Day, however, and was given a French name by her parents as a result - she is 90 today.  Happy Birthday, Grandma!
• I have booked tickets to go and see the Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum, which has been extended until the end of September because it has been so madly popular.  If you want to go, book soon - there are only a few slots left for September.
• The other exhibition I am determined to go to this summer is The Laura Knight Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery.
• I have learnt more about my daughter's interests and plans since she set herself up with a Pinterest account, than any amount of chatting over supper, on runs or long car journeys has ever revealed.  She dreams of travelling to Poland and China and likes foxgloves, trilby hats and lavender.  Who knew?
• In the bustle and busyness of full time work, running, summer plans and end of term, I found myself with an unexpected half hour to myself one afternoon last week.  I was close to one of my favourite places in the whole of London - St Paul's churchyard - so I lay in the dappled shade, reading my kindle and reflecting on how even in the middle of a hot, crowded city like London, there are places of sanctuary and calm.

10 things

• The washing machine has been at the mender's for nearly two weeks now.  It comes home tomorrow.  I never appreciate a domestic appliance more than when it breaks down.
• My sister-in-law and Miss Moss Stitch will also be thankful that the machine is now fixed, as I have been borrowing their machines to keep on top of all the nursing and school uniforms that need to be kept clean.
•  The hens are all laying regularly now, and I am awash with eggs.  Pancakes, omelettes, scrambled eggs and baked eggs are all now regularly on the menu.
• I miss my nursing friends.  It's hard to see them when we're all working different shifts at different hospitals.
• Olivia made herself a cushion from the contents of my scrap basket.

• Although a tiny part of me is a little sad that she is now too old to want clothes I've made for her, a bigger part of me is delighted that she wants to sew things for herself instead.
• That's parenting all over isn't it.  The children grow up and move on but you haven't got the time or inclination to yearn for when they were younger, because their abilities and personalities flourish and grow too.  You are constantly getting to know this new, older child.
• I made a banana cake and chucked in a whole load of chocolate chips.  That was a very good impulse decision - who knew?
• I am yearning for sunshine.
• I listened to this and laughed so hard.  There are many pubs that I go to in East London which fit this description.  

Seen on the streets

Seen on the streets of Soho, in central London, on the first sunny Saturday afternoon of spring:

•  Hundreds of people, standing outside pubs, drinking wine and pints and turning their faces towards the sky, like sunflowers.
• Two little girls, pony-galloping up Carnaby Street doing a complicated hand-clapping game together.
• Three young dudes, zooming past on longboards.
• A pretty young lady, wrapped in a gold pashmina, photographing her boyfriend's pint of beer with the biggest Nikon camera I've ever seen.
• Three teenage girls, all wearing very high-heeled turquoise pumps, and with huge Primark bags hooked over their arms, teetering along the road singing Abba tunes together.
• Three German tourists, wondering how many millilitres were in a pint.  Nobody could tell them.
• Bubbles in my prosecco, as I enjoyed an afternoon out with some of my nursing friends.

 

Springtime in London

Nursing detritus

Removed from my uniform before I washed it this morning: 

• 1 pen eye torch
• 2 black biros
• 1 upside down watch
• 2 student epaulettes
• 1 name badge
• pot of lip balm
• tube of lavender handcream
• scissors
• Royal College of Nursing student essentials guide
• assorted hair grips
• 1 small notebook
• 2 rolls of surgical tape

 

 

10 things

• I'm very tired, with dark smudges of sleeplessness under my eyes.
• I went to Kew Gardens today, walked miles and made myself even more tired.  Then I took photos of myself against a wall of orchids.

   

• My desk is a mess, which is very un-Nancy-like.
• I made Graham an apple and almond crumble cake for his birthday today - it is very, very good.
•  My laptop died.  I bought a new laptop as soon as I could because I have essays looming.  I find it scary spending that much money in one go; I'd be rubbish at being really rich.
• All my iTunes playlists somehow got wiped when I moved iTunes over to my new laptop.  What I thought was a disaster has been rather liberating and I am enjoying wasting hours of my time putting together new playlists.
• I've nearly finished my placement at hospital, and once this essay is handed in I go back to University for a few months.  I've loved working on the wards but I am looking forward to getting back to the lecture theatres and seeing all my friends again.  I can also use it as a legitimate excuse to buy new stationery.
• Olivia's very long, dark, thick hair goes up in a bun for ballet twice a week.  I love her hair like this.  How many buns have I made in the last seven years she's been doing ballet?

 

• Cam is watching Big Bang Theory, via our Lovefilm subscription - he loves it.  I am getting sucked in, and love it too.
• I made a loaf of raisin bread today.  Just because.  I shall take a couple of buttered slices with me to work tomorrow. 

Domestic handover

One of my favourite parts of each shift I do at the hospital is the first and last 30 minutes, when we hand over responsibility for the patients to or from the next shift.  It goes something like this:

"In Bed 1 we have A, a lady admitted yesterday following a fall at home.  Her sodium levels are low, she has diabetes, and we need to monitor her fluid balance very carefully today.  She is restricted to 500mL fluid intake a day and someone needs to bleep the pharmacist because we're running low on the anticoagulants she has been prescribed.  The physio's coming to see her later because she's rather unsteady when she walks.

In Bed 2 we have B, a gentleman transferred from ITU yesterday following abdominal surgery.  He has very high blood pressure, and desaturated overnight.  The on-call Doctor came out at 2am and prescribed anti-hypertensive medication.  He is receiving IV antibiotics."

I love this part of the day because it is fascinating.  Each patient is a complex person with many needs and problems that need to be solved.  The handover sets the agenda for the day.  We find out who is deteriorating and what the plan is for them, who can go home today, who is going for an X-ray or an MRI scan, and who is due to come in.

There's still masses of terminology I am not sure of, but I'm picking it up steadily.  In a year or two's time, I'll be the one giving the handover.

Graham and I now have a similar sort of domestic handover when I'm about to embark on a couple of days of long shifts, or I'm about to have a couple of days off at home.  It goes something like this:

"We caught another mouse in the trap behind the cooker last night, but I haven't emptied the trap yet.  Olivia came home from school today with a note about a school trip next week; I've marked it on the calendar, and she'll need three quid spending money.  Cam's done his maths homework, but still has geography to do.  The chickens have eaten all those cabbage leaves and you owe me fifty quid because I had to put petrol in the car this evening."

"I made cinnamon buns, they're in the Union Jack tin on top of the fridge, and there are only three left"

I like this domestic handover as much as I do the nursing one.  It helps me concentrate on one role at a time - either I am at home and I know what is going on, or I am at work and someone else knows what's going on and I don't need to worry about it.  I am starting to realise that I can't (and shouldn't) be trying to do everything.  It's a wonderful thing to be able to hand the domestic sphere over to someone else for a couple of days, while I make sure I understand the difference between MRI, MRSA and MIBG.

(...and I do: MRI is magnetic resonance imaging - a 3D image inside the body; MRSA is methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus - an antibiotic resistant infection; and MIBG is metaiodobenzylguanidine - a radioactive chemical used to treat certain types of cancer)

10 things

There's so much fizzing about my head at the moment.

• Cam came back from yesterday's Closing Ceremony rehearsal covered in blue body paint.
• He has been rehearsing with some Very Famous People and is not remotely star-struck.  I am though.
• I have finished my first crochet project.  What started off as a blanket, morphed into a shawl, and then eventually ended up as a scarf - because I had become so bored with making Granny Squares.  I love the final article though.  Full details on Ravelry.

• Becoming a nurse means that I have to have a whole range of vaccinations.  Most of these vaccinations require blood tests first, to see what levels of antibodies I have for those particular diseases.
• This means that I have been stuck full of needles today, and have loads more to come over the next month.  I have a sore, bruised arm and am now very sympathetic towards patients who require endless blood tests and injections.
• I've made a rhubarb and orange cake today.  It smells very good indeed.
• I've downloaded the Isles of Wonder soundtrack, and it is much better than the grumpy review in The Guardian would have you believe.  It is quite wonderful in fact, and takes me back to the euphoria of the Opening Ceremony in an instant.
• I have been doing anatomy homework before I start University.  Did you know that the proper, anatomical name for your big toe is hallux?
• We're off to the Olympic Park again tomorrow - this time to see a whole morning of athletics.  Absolutely cannot wait.  We will be seeing Mo Farah in the 5,000 m heats.
• I never saw Downton Abbey when it was on the tele.  I have now got Series 1 from LoveFilm and can see what all the fuss was about.  The costumes and the hair are quite as wonderful as Maggie Smith.

Imposing order

When it feels as though life is starting to spiral out of control, and everything is choatic and stressful, I take pleasure in ordered things.

At Kew Gardens on Monday I saw order and patterns everywhere I went.

The other thing that I like at times like this, is having nice stationery and using it to write lists on.  After I'd cleared my head with a long walk and a long chat, around Kew, I came home and wrote absolutely everything I could think of on a list.

The daily 'to do' lists start with a collection of bossy verbs at the moment.  I must pay, wash, check, phone, collect, speak, email and change all kinds of things.  Writing them down, and crossing them off, takes away their power to overwhelm.  All I must do is work my way down the list each day.

There are also lists of things which are overwhelming in different ways, but which I must accept:

• lists of issues which cannot be resolved yet, and so I must not fret about,
• lists of good things coming up in the school holidays, which I should look forward to
• lists of things I might sew when I have some more time,
• lists of possible solutions to potential problems.

These too seem much more manageable when I write them down.  For these stress lists I have some new sticky notes, which cheer me up just looking at them.

I bought them in Paperchase, and I'm using them to impose order on my life.  The house is bristling with them at the moment.

In the fridge today

Sometimes the fridge has not much more in it than a couple of bottles of milk, a few more bottles of wine and a tired looking half-lemon.  But mostly it is a good place - full of possibilities and tasty tidbits.
 

This morning it has the following in it:

• beef mince (uncooked)
• smoked streaky bacon (uncooked)
• three quarters of a roast chicken
• one portion of stewed fruit (blueberries and plums)
• 1 litre homemade chicken stock
• a box of cherry tomatoes
• 2 large pots homemade natural yogurt - one full and one nearly finished
• 5 sticks of rhubarb
• 4 leeks
• a bowl of leftover curried potatoes and onions
• a box of leftover chicken curry and spicy rice, for Graham's lunch tomorrow
• a head of celery
• a box of mushrooms
• 6 peppers
• 2 heads of broccoli
• a box of rocket
• 100g homemade shortcrust pastry
• 8 carrots
• 1 packet of feta cheese
• half a goat's cheese
• butter - 2 boxes of lurpak spreadable, and 2 blocks of the real thing
• 2 blocks of mature cheddar cheese
• 4 pints of milk
• half a tired looking lemon
• no wine

I am menu planning today - rummaging through my favourite recipe books and being inspired.  There's going to be a big pan of chilli-con-carne made tomorrow, and a rhubarb crumble baked at some point over the weekend.  I'm still undecided about what to do with the chicken stock and roast chicken - there are too many tempting possibilities to choose from.

And I need to buy some wine.

The List of Pleasing Things

• Reading The Fine Colour of Rust by P.A. O'Reilly which introduced me to the concept of The List of Pleasing Things.  An excellent book by an Australian writer.  I want to read more from her.
• A day with my sister and her new baby.  My little niece is smiling and cooing.  She tells me she likes handknits best of all, which is a good thing really.
• Dithering over whether to have a chocolate croissant (made by C for Mothering Sunday) or a piece of chocolate crunch (made by O for Mothering Sunday) with my mid-morning coffee.  My veins mostly runneth with butter and chocolate this week.  Not wholly a bad thing.



C with one of his handmade chocolate croissants - as delicious as you might think

• Sunshine and daffodils. I'm still not tired of them.  Plus my most elderly and stately hen just started laying again to celebrate the new season.
• Catching sight of a new trophy on the mantelpiece.  Auntie Alison and Uncle Richard came over for a Just Dance dance-off at the weekend, and brought a trophy with them, which was eventually won by C and O.  There will be a re-match later in the spring, and the children are going to have to do some serious practise to retain the title.



Uncle Richard and O set a very high standard



Victorious children with their trophy

• Making contact with long-lost family members in America.  Hearing their amazing stories and marvelling at their openness and friendship.
• Listening to the properly excellent Sport and the British presented by Clare Balding on Radio 4 (available on podacast and on iPlayer).  Clare Balding is one of my favourite broadcasters; she has such a beautifully clear voice, and the series is fascinating.

It's all in the name

I really enjoyed this article on The Guardian website last week, about namesakes in literature.  I really love my name, Nancy, because it is a name everybody has heard of, but in Britain it is still quite unusual.  I've never met another Nancy.

I have very clear ideas about what sort of person a Nancy is.  A Nancy is feisty, strong, independent, feminist and slightly old fashioned.  She doesn't take anybody else's nonsense, and she gets things done.  I'm not sure that all these attributes apply to me, but they're certainly traits I aspire to.

Good Nancys:

• Nancy Mitford - writer.
• Nancy Astor - politician; first woman MP to take her seat in Parliament.
• Nancy Blackett - Pirate, Terror of the Seas, and true heroine of the Swallows and Amazons books.
• Nancy Sinatra - singer of excellent, strong songs.  This one is my favourite - definitely a feisty, sassy, Nancy song.
• Nancy Drew - multi-talented girl detective.

Rubbish Nancys:

• Nancy Reagan - although clearly a powerful woman, ultimately too flaky to be a proper Nancy.
• Nancy Dell'Olio - no; just no.
• Nancy in Oliver Twist - an ambivalent Nancy: nurturing, but sappy as well. Gets herself murdered by Sikes. Could have been feisty, but wasn't really.

Last summer I visited the French city of Nancy, in the region of Lorraine near the German border.  I stopped off for a day with the children on our way back from Switzerland, and I was delighted to discover that Nancy is an absolutely glorious city - elegant and chic; very worthy of the name.  I would have been so disappointed if it had been a dreary, grotty sort of place.

Nancy in Nancy - beautiful roses and peonies in our hotel

How about you?  Do you like your name?   Do you approve of other people or places who share your name?

10 things

• I have now been married for six days and I find I like being married very much.
• We stopped off on our journey home from France at a small village called Camiers, in the Baie de Somme.  We visited St Cécile Plage for some fresh air and exercise after spending all day in the car, and the family was divided along boy-girl lines about whether the sideways wind, whipping in from the Atlantic, was bracing and energising, or just plain miserable and cold.

• It is knitting season again for me - I have picked up all those half-finished projects from earlier in the year and am looking forward to some quality autumn television to keep me company in the evenings while I knit.
• C has been learning all about Spam from his favourite podcast, Stuff You Should Know.  He has been listening to this podcast for a couple of years and has the most incredible and eclectic general knowledge as a result.  The Spam episode really intruigued him and he has been begging me for weeks to buy him a tin and let him experiment.  He made us Spam burgers for lunch on Tuesday and has declared he wants to work his way through the whole recipe section of the website.  Despite this alarming development, I'd still really recommend the podcast for any curious young people you know.

• To compensate for the arrival of Spam in the house, I have been roasting vegetables.  Last night we had this roasted butternut squash on top of a cottage pie instead of the usual mashed potato.  Very good.

• I brought some lovely French notebooks and coloured pencils home with me.  I really love this post from Joanne about how to pluck up the courage to use a pristine new notebook.
• This is my new handcream of choice.  My hands need annointing with a great deal of handcream in order not to become scaly, itchy paws.  This one has a beatiful tube, smells lovely and does the job very well.
• C starts secondary school next week.  He is very excited and has learnt how to tie his tie.  I am charging my camera ready to take loads of First Day Photos.  I still love the ones I took of his first day at primary school so many years ago.
• I have a great many baking plans for the next couple of weeks, to ease the transition back to school for C and O.  My parents gave me these silicone madeleine moulds for my birthday so madeleines will be first on my list; I love their little shell shapes.  Nigella Lawson has a recipe for rosewater scented madeleines in Domestic Goddess which sound wonderful.

• Moss Stitch and I are itching to get back to our weekday walks.  We are meeting up this week to Make Plans.

The rhythm of the week ~ Monday

Monday mornings have a reassuring rhythm to them. 

After the lovely, laid-back relaxation of the weekend, with all of us at home, reading, watching tv, listening to music, chatting and cooking...on Monday mornings the house suddenly empties as the children go back to school and G goes back to work.  The binmen come, which always feels appropriate - emptying the rubbish from the almost empty house, so that we can start the week afresh and fill up the bins again. 

I dash around the house  - motivated by the emptiness and quietness - tidying up the remains of the weekend. 

Monday morning is when I do the gardening.  The lawn is mown, the pots watered, the hens cleaned out, and the patio swept.  If the sun is shining I hang out the washing.  There is always G's sports kit drying on the line on a Monday morning.  Today there was a school dress too, because she got paint on it before she even left for school - surely some kind of record?

When the garden is tidy I come back inside and make my lists for the week: 

• the menu plan
• trips to the High Street that need to be made (the Post Office, bank, greengrocers and library this week)
• paperwork that needs completing
• sewing and knitting plans

This week I have also made a list of Good Things To Do With Eggs.  I have 19 eggs this morning and the hens are laying 3 more every day.

This week we shall mostly be eating quiche, pancakes, chocolate cake and egg salad sandwiches.

Cookery book inspiration

This is my current cookery book inspiration.  From top to bottom:

• The River Cottage Bread Handbook by Daniel Stevens
• BBC Good Food magazine
• The Skinny French Kitchen by Harry Eastwood
• Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood
• Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros
• Kitchen by Nigella Lawson

I plan all the meals I am going to cook about a week ahead, and since 2005 I've been writing down my mealplans in notebooks rather than on scraps of paper.  I blogged briefly about them way back in 2007, here.  The collection of notebooks is now substantial, and already I love to look back and see which recipes are still putting in regular appearances, and which appeared for a few months and then fell out of favour.  Pasta pesto is still on the menu.

I love cookery books and have three big shelves on a bookcase filled with them.  Each week I get a new stack of books down from the shelves and rifle through them to get some fresh ideas of what I should write down in my meal plan notebook.  I also get a great many cookery books out of the library, and if I find I still want to make recipes from a library book when it is time to return it, I go and buy myself a copy.

Recent additions to my shelves via this route have been the brilliant River Cottage Bread Handbook and Harry Eastwood's Skinny French Kitchen. 
.
The bread handbook is exactly what you'd expect - a complete manual for everything you ever wanted to know about bread making, and crammed with fantastic recipes.  I now have two of the other River Cottage handbooks in this series reserved at the library.  I have a feeling they will all be awesome.

The Skinny French Kitchen is already one of my most favourite cookbooks, and I've made so many recipes from it in the ten days I've had it.  I really enjoyed Harry Eastwood's first book - Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache - and its quirky approach to cake baking, but the whimsical, sugary-sweet tone of the writing does get on my nerves a little after a while.  This second book just shines with genuine enthusiasm for her subject (classical French cookery) and is much less twee but just as clever.  The photography is outstanding, and worth the price of the book alone.  I'm fascinated to see what she does next.  Whatever it is, I'm sure I'll be buying a copy.

The Tessa Kiros book - Apples for Jam - is from the library, and although I've cooked a couple of great recipes from it, I don't like it enough to buy it.  I find that all the childhood memoirs in the margins distract me from the recipes and clutter up the page.  Its a whopping tome of a family cookbook, and I already have enough of those on my shelves.

Nigella's Kitchen and BBC Good Food are both old, faithful friends. I've been making spring rolls and tofu pancakes from this month's magazine, and the everyday brownies and the Korean keema from Kitchen.

How do you find inspiration for what to cook?  Do you write out meal plans?  Do cookery books languish, unread, on your bookshelves or do you regularly consult them for ideas?  Do new cookery books have to work hard to earn a spot on your already crowded shelves?

Desk mess

I am not so much bothered about clean, but I am bothered about tidy.  Mess makes me cross.  And when it's my mess, that's even worse - there is not even a compensating glow of righteousness to be had.

My desk early this morning reminded me of a party game from my childhood.  We called it Kim's Game. We were shown a tray with an extremely random selection of objects arranged on it, for one minute.  The tray was then covered with a cloth and we had to write down all the items we could remember.  I always liked this list-writing game.

morning desk

My desk this morning had:

• laptop
• pyjama trousers needing hemming
• sewing machine
• a bag with a secret surprise for my Mum in it
• tins full of cables and sewing machine feet
• pens
• a bottle of water
• lip balm
• handcream
• a seam ripper
• keys,
• part of an oyster shell I found on the foreshore
• a note from school about fundraising for Japan
• a crumpled tissue
• a sewing pattern in a brown envelope
• sunglasses
• my normal glasses
• orange post-it notes
• a book in a fabric cover
• a baking magazine
• medicine
• a camera cable
• a camera case
• a bristling pincushion

evening desk

By this evening, nothing had been put away, but I'd acquired Rose Prince's Kitchenella from the library and another bottle of water from somewhere.  I'd plugged in my camera and cable and plonked my green satchel on top of the baking magazine.  It does look like I'd managed to put the crumpled tissue in the bin though. 

Sometimes even small achievements must be celebrated.

Sewing loves and loathings

I had another late night last night, finishing a new top so that I could wear it today.  This time it was made from a very familiar and favourite pattern - the Heather Ross summer blouse from her book Weekend Sewing.  I've made this top for myself before: here, here and here.

One of the reasons I love this top so much is that it is trimmed around the neck, cuffs and hem with bias tape.  I love everything about bias tape - making it, sewing it on, and the way it looks on the finished item.

As I sewed I thought about my most favourite and most hated sewing jobs.

Things I love about sewing:

• bias tape
• choosing fabrics
• seam ripping
• beautiful sewing books
• hand quilting
• putting in zips
• lettuce hems
• sewing machine feet
• the sound of heavy, sharp shears cutting through fabric
• my sewing machine
• ric-rac
• good patterns

Things I loathe about sewing:

• pattern cutting
• wrestling tissue paper patterns back into envelopes
• velcro
• hemming (unless with bias tape)
• sewing on buttons
• picking endless bits of thread off my socks
• bobbin winding
• having to work in inches most of the time
• pinning jersey fabrics
• interfacing
• having to stand in odd places of the house and take 25 photographs of myself in a  mirror to get one shot I like.

I do like a nice plastic wallet

Since I finished the quilt last week I'm back on the knitting again, and remembering all the knitterly things that I love:

• slim dpns - they make me feel very clever and dextrous
• yarn - so tactile and squishy
• Ravelry - I can waste entire evenings rummaging around its pattern library
• portability - I tuck my knitting into my satchel and sneak in a couple of rows when I am on the tube, sitting in the playground or waiting at ballet.

This last point has been helped considerably by the purchase of one of these plastic zip-up wallets from Muji.

I have the A4 size, which is big enough to hold one or two small projects on dpns, some photocopied patterns, my tape measure and a little pair of scissors.  When it is zipped shut, I can tuck the wallet into my satchel and it is ready for whenever I have a spare 5 minutes.

I love the ghostliness of the wallet when it is shut

The wallet in my satchel - no more pulling out my umbrella and having a whole ball of precious Debbie Bliss cashmerino come too

I'm knitting things for the children.  When I asked O what she'd like she declared legwarmers would be just the thing.  I am knitting her a pair of these Easy Peasy Leg Warmers (pattern from The Witty Knitter blog).  The pattern is for a 10 to 12 year old girl, and uses thick worsted weight yarn.  So I am knitting it in much finer Debbie Bliss cashmerino to get a better fit on those skinny 8 year old legs my girl has.  It is a super easy pattern - and coming together gratifyingly quickly.  You can see more details on my Ravelry page for them here.

C wanted socks.  He is a (young) man after my own heart and likes nothing better than handknit socks.  I quite agree with him that they are one of the nicest things that can be knit.  For these I'm using the reliable, free, Kaffe Fassett sock knitting pattern that I picked up in John Lewis years ago. They yarn I am using is also by Regia - a deliciously bright primary coloured one called World Circus.  Again you can find more details on Ravelry.

I think I may be a little odd in being so motivated to knit because I have a nice plastic wallet to keep everything in...but perhaps not.  Muji must be onto something - everything in that shop just makes me feel like a small child again, wanting to spend ALL my pocket money on rubbers, glue, notebooks, pencils, folders, storage tins and felt-tips.  That small child is still in most of us I think judging by the crowds of middle aged people sighing over the plastic wallets and hex pens every time I go into the shop - just like me.

The List Writer's 25 favourite things to do in London

Inspired by all your lovely comments on my Wedneday walk along Regent's Canal this week, I have finally put together my list of 25 favourite things to do in London - something I have been meaning to compile for ages.

You can have a look, and download the list, from Google Docs.  There is a link directly to it on the right hand side of this blog, or you can click here.  I'd love to know if you do (or have done) any of the things I love so much - do you agree with my list?