10 things

• Graham and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary.  We went camping again - and Olivia insisted on doing a photo shoot of us snuggling up on a bench together.  She took close to 400 photos, just by holding the button down on my phone camera and telling us to smile.  There was just one I liked.  We took an anniversary selfie instead, which I am much happier with.  Sorry, Olivia!

 

• The children and I went to Brick Lane, ate pakoras in the sunshine as we wandered around, and came home with a huge bag of bagels for the weekend.

 

• Cam likes his bagels with kippers for breakfast.  I like mine with avocado.

 

• I did my first parkrun in my new running club t-shirt this morning.  Rumours that I chose this club because I find the shade of blue on their shirt particularly pleasing, are entirely false.

• We have a new dishwasher.  It is so quiet, it purrs.
• Olivia sewed herself a top.  This is the first time she has done any dressmaking, and I was so impressed with the results.  She did everything herself, and all I did was explain some unfamiliar terms on the pattern.  The pattern is the Oliver + S Ice Cream Dress/Top, in the age 12 size.  It comes out quite short on her - she is a couple of months shy of turning 12, but is very tall.  She is keen to make another, and add a few centimetres onto the length.

 

• I did some dressmaking too, and made myself a new dress - another Lisette Portfolio dress.  It has a seagull ribbon trim on the hem, which I bought in Whitby, and contrast fabric inside the pockets.  It may be my most favourite dress I've ever made for myself - or it may just be that whatever I've made most recently is my favourite.

 

• I am keen to make more clothes while I am still on my long summer holiday.  Perhaps the Lisette Diplomat Dress, which I have the pattern for, but have not yet made.  Or maybe this Everyday Skirt?
• My sister and her two small girls came for a visit.  The littlest cousin was completely unfazed by the two big teenagers thrusting their cameras at her every time she smiled, did something cute, or moved.

 

• I made 22 raspberry madeleines yesterday afternoon.  There are only five left this afternoon.

    

Friendship circles

On Friday afternoon I sat in the pub with my new nursing friends, drinking wine, swapping stories and laughing.  Every single one of the female nurses had painted her nails to celebrate the end of our first placement.  There were almost all the colours of the rainbow around that table.

On Saturday I met up with some blogging friends, who have become real-life friends over the past few years.  These ladies make me laugh and nod my head in agreement at almost everything they say.  Blogging ladies aren't shy about taking photographs, so I came away with a camera full of pictures and a tummy full of cake and coffee.  I also had a wonderful present of some little spring knits from Julie.  The nest and eggs matched my dress, which made me ridiculously happy.

A circular handknitted nest and eggs, from Julie

On Saturday evening I went to Hackney to catch up with old friends in the pub. We chatted, and people-watched, and felt like we'd lived in East London a long time (we have).  Beards and poets in a pub by the Pembury Estate - goodness me, how times are changing.

Today I napped in the sunshine, chatted to Graham and the children and walked round to my sister-in-law's house with two loads of clothes to wash, because our washing machine is broken.  She made me a cup of tea, and I sat on her sofa, cuddled my baby niece and chatted to my little nephew while the school uniform was cleaned.

One of the very nicest things about being middle aged are these multiple circles of friends you acquire.  They evolve out of jobs, children, family, University, and an unusual obsession with handknitted socks.  But however you find them, friends really are the best thing.

A circle of socks - the blogging ladies show off their new socks (made for us by Kristina, who is amazing)

 

The ultimate circular birthday cake, made - and styled - by Mrs M

Inheritance :: photographs

Inheritance :: possession by transmission from past generations

Chambers Concise Dictionary

The essay has been submitted and my OU course has now finished.  I'm now reflecting on everything I learned and thinking particularly about photos.

I have a great many photos in albums - pictures from my childhood, from when I was at school and university, from when G and I had romantic holidays and drunken house-parties together, and then huge numbers of pictures from when the children were born.   But suddenly at the end of 2004, the photos stop.  If my future great-grandchildren were to look back at my collection of photos, they would speculate as to what what horrible catastrophe had suddenly decimated my family life.In January 2005 the photographic catastrophe was that I bought myself a digital camera and the records of my family life moved away from albums and onto hard drives, backed up CDs, Flickr and eventually this blog.  The pictures exist, but not in a physical form.

The children love looking through old photos.  Particularly the pictures of them as babies.  When C saw the first photos (via email) of his new baby cousin two weeks ago he exclaimed "He looks like me!  There's a photo of me looking just like that!" and went off to rummage through the photo albums (and he found the picture he was thinking of and indeed he looks just like his cousin in it).  O will sit on the floor and flick through the albums for just general amusement.  She likes to point out to G how much hair he used to have, and says to me things like 'didn't you look young!'.

On my family history course we learnt how photographs can help us gain a better understanding of our family history, and how to find out important information from them.  I find old photographs incredibly moving.  Photographs bring my ancestors alive in a way that census returns and birth certificates never can.

This is a photograph of my grandfather's uncle.  He was born in 1876 in Yorkshire, and died in America sometime in the late 1890s.  I have inherited a vague story about him, told by my grandfather, but I'm still trying to support the story with facts. This photograph is of him as a teenager and would have been taken just a year or two before he sailed for America.  Possibly as a memento for his family, soon before he left.

And below, is a photo of my great-great-grandparents, taken around the turn of the twentieth century, probably to mark their silver wedding.  I love this photo because they look like a calm and contented middle-aged couple and I can't get enough of their wonderful clothes.  My great-great-grandfather was a tailor, and I think he would have been wearing his smartest handmade suit for the occasion!  I have the same first and last name as my great-great-grandmother and this photograph just strengthens that connection I already feel with her.

Photographs online are a great historical resource and a good way to preserve and share fragile pictures, but I want my great-great-grandchildren to have something physical to look through too.  I wonder what they'll think of my different hairstyles and clothes throughout the years.  Just like O, will they remark on how young I look in the pre-children photos?

The basket in our sitting room, with some of my photo albums in it. C and O like to rummage.

So I ordered a fairly random selection of fifty of my photos from 2004, 2005 and 2006 and started a new album.  I'm going to add to the album bit by bit each month until we're completely up to date, and then there will be a proper inheritance for my great-great-grandchildren.  Perhaps one of them will even share my (and my great-great-grandmother's) name.

Time eaters

Here is my list of things that take far longer than you would expect:

• Cutting out fabric for sewing - why have I still not grasped that it takes three times as long to pin the pattern and cut and press the fabric as it does to sew everything together? I should really not be surprised about this by now.
• Teaching children how to blow their noses properly - how on earth can they bear to wander around sniffing or talking as though someone's poured cement into their heads? Bleurgh.
• Going from East London to West London - its the same city, so it seems all wrong that it takes over an hour and a half to get from one side to the other.
• Learning to dance - I've been trying to dance well for twenty five years now, and last summer I had a moment when I thought I might have cracked it...but it was just a moment.
• Persuading a hen to get back into her run, when she's quite happy digging holes under the laurel bush, thank you.
• Taking the perfect photo. This picture is, I think, the twentieth attempt at the acorn. But I love it!

Photography

A sentence on the Pea Soup blog yesterday really resonated with me. Suse was saying that how after two years of blogging she was starting to "look at things from a photographer's perspective". I think I might be just starting to do this a little too.

My favourite things to photograph:

• flowers
• trees
• blue sky
• food
• fabric
• shadows
• my home

The photography part of blogging is now one of the most enjoyable parts for me. I carry my camera everywhere and am getting less shy about whipping it out of my handbag and taking some photos when I see something funny, beautiful or interesting. I think I am also getting better at composing and taking photos. I have got to the stage now where I want to find out what all those strange settings on the camera's sub-menus are all about.


I am starting to learn some dos and don'ts about photography too:

• you can have too many photographs of geraniums after all
• light is very important
• don't bother getting children to pose for you - you get better pictures when they don't know they are being photographed.
• ask before you photograph a market stall or a shop display.
• there are resources online to make photography more fun and more creative.
  

My favourite online photography resources are:

• flickr - an online photo store where you can display and share your pictures.
• Moo - a print shop where you can make gorgeous stickers and cards from your photos. I have ordered a couple of sticker books from them and am completely in love with their products.
• Photobox - top quality photo printing and next day delivery. Awesome.
  

But the biggest lesson I have learnt from photographing everything I possibly could over the past six months is just how difficult it is to not nag people into looking at your pictures. I am now the online equivalent of one of those tedious people who foists photograph albums full of baby pictures and photos of their building works on you when you go round for dinner.

Here are some I took yesterday - feel free to go and admire yet more on flickr!