Back to it

These days I don't feel as bereft as I used to when the children go back to school in September.  The silence in the house is still deafening, and I miss their wild enthusiasms and crazy logic spinning through my day, but these days they really need to get stuck back into school by the time September comes around - and more importantly they want to get back to it too.  

Olivia has left primary school and is now at high school with Cam, which they are both very pleased about.  I am delighted too because the days of the school run have finally come to an end.  To celebrate, I have waved them off to school each morning this week still in my pyjamas - standing on the doorstep, with a cup of coffee in my hand, as I watch them walk up the road together.  Utter luxury.

In one more week I go back to work too.  I'm really looking forward to it.  I have just fourteen more weeks of placement, and then I will be qualified - so exciting.  Yesterday, my parents-in-law sent me these tiny little nurse figurines to mark the final stage of my training.  They are sitting by my desk, reminding me of everything that is still to come.

         

Exam food

The children both have exams this week.  Olivia has her Year 6 SATs - four consecutive mornings of maths and English exams - and Cam has his first two biology GCSE exams; his third exam is in a few weeks' time.  They're taking it all in their stride, but I know that they're tired and tense too.  This feels like the start of many, many years of exams-in-May as they each work their way through GCSEs, AS levels and A levels (and beyond).

Cam, flopped on the sofa after a day at school and two hours of revision

I expanded the family rule of "When someone has a birthday, they choose what the family has for supper", to "When someone has a birthday or does an exam, they choose what the family has for supper".  Tonight we had Olivia's choice of beefburgers (nice, juicy quarterpounder steak burgers from Waitrose), oven chips, and rather specifically "carrots cut like coins, not sticks".  Very nice.  I don't often cook burgers so this felt like the treat it was meant to be.  Much ketchup was applied.

Cam's choice, which we are having on Friday, is lasagna, garlic bread and sweetcorn.  I don't often make a lasagna as it feels like too much faff at the end of a long day, so again this will be a special treat.  I love how both their choices are simple, slightly retro and not at all the sort of thing I normally cook.

My contribution has been to make them orange-scented buns for after school - I think they definitely deserve a sweet treat this week. 

Do you have any exam rituals in your house?  Any pre- or post-exam food favourites? Personally I don't really care what I eat after an exam as long as I have a big breakfast involving oats and bananas for breakfast beforehand.

10 things

• I am in denial about the fact that Cam goes back to school tomorrow and Olivia on Thursday.  I don't want this summer holiday with them to end.  I'm used to hanging out with them; I miss them when they're at school.

Cam, volunteering at parkrun in Hackney last week

• However, at the same time I am VERY excited to find myself in September.  I love September, and I love the autumn - it is definitely my favourite time of year.
• My early morning runs in Epping Forest are heart-breakingly beautiful at the moment: mist, herons flying overhead, cobwebs covered with dew, the trees just on the turn from green to gold.  I find myself energised by both the run and the spectacular scenery.

Dawn in the forest

Epping Forest during a dawn run this morning

• I have a smartphone for the first time ever, and my eyes have been opened to the wonders of Instagram (where I am thelistwriter) and this Relaxing Sounds of Nature app. I play the nature sounds in the middle of the night when I am awake and reading my Kindle, while I am cooking breakfast if Radio 4 gets too argumentative, and while I am folding washing or paying bills.  It makes everything just much nicer.
• While I was setting up my phone I also reviewed all the podcasts I subscribe to.  I took off a few that I'd stopped listening to, and added on some new ones: Seven Ages of Science, 1913: The Year Before, UK Confidential and Inside the Ethics Committee.  If The Reunion was a podcast I'd have subscribed to that too, but it isn't so you have to remember to catch up on iPlayer.
• I've had such a long holiday from University, that I've started to forget that I'm actually a student nurse.  When the children go back to school, my studying resumes too.  I'm easing myself back in by spending the day with a friend at the newly refubished Royal College of Nursing library and heritage centre, just off Oxford Street.  There will be some studying and much catching up about our summer holidays.
• I need to squeeze in another blackberrying trip or two over the next few weeks.  The brambles in Epping Forest are still groaning with sweet fruit.
•  The lawnmower has broken, my beloved Kindle is misbehaving and may be broken and I have just handed over what feels like my entire income for September to Clarks, M&S school uniform department and the local optician.  This the other downside of the end of the school summer holidays - the children are each a shoe size and a half bigger than they were in the summer term, and at least two clothing sizes bigger.  I'm not even exaggerating - they are gowing like weeds at the moment.
• Graham went camping with his triathlon club at the weekend, and I realised that this has been the only camping trip by our family this summer.  How did I let that happen?
• I have another baby niece on the way, and am stalking Ravelry looking for inspiration.  She will be my seventh niece/nephew, and the excitement does not diminish in the slightest with each new arrival - who will she be? what will she look like?  So exciting to have another little person in the family.

Geraniums - instagrammed by Cam on my phone

 

The raspberry pi

Some of you will have heard of the raspberry pi, but many of you will not.  Ours recently arrived, and is already making its presence felt.

It is a tiny little computer, about the size of a credit card, that comes with no peripherals (such as keyboard, mouse, cables or monitor).  It doesn't even come with a case - it is just the green circuit board with various ports attached.  Because it is so small and basic it is very cheap - just £25 - and the idea is that pretty much any family will be able to buy one, and children (and adults, if they wish) can use it to learn how computers, and programming, really work.




Our raspberry pi - we bought a plastic case to protect ours, but the pi itself is just the green circuit board

The designers of the raspberry pi wanted to see a resurgence in programming skills in the UK, which they felt was something that had been lost over the last twenty years.  Children at school today are very familiar with IT, but more and more as users and consumers rather than as programmers or designers.  The IT syllabus focuses a great deal on being able to use Powerpoint or Excel and evaluate the design of web pages but not so much on how these tools came about. The raspberry pi hopes to rekindle people's understanding and enthusiasm for programming and help them understand how the computers that we now all take for granted, actually operate.

We bought a plastic case to protect our raspberry pi, and have been able to add things like a keyboard, cables and mouse from leftover bits of computer we had lying around at home.  For a screen, we use the TV or the Xbox monitor.



Cam, with the pi plugged into the TV



In the picture above you can see Cam with the pi on the floor in front of him, a keyboard plugged in to the pi and the pi itself plugged in to the TV.

You might look at this little green circuit board and think "where on earth would I start?", but that's okay - there is, of course, a wealth of information out there about how to get to know your raspberry pi and what you can do with it.  We bought two books to help us out - one a user guide to the pi and one on a simple programming language, Python.

The raspberry pi website has a quick-start guide, and there are a plethora of Twitter accounts and online forums to help you too.

Cam had learnt about the Scratch programming tool at school, and now uses it on the pi at home.  It's a fun and quick way to start that doesn't seem to techy for somebody new to programming, but actually requires you to think about things in the minute steps that programming requires.

I love the fact that the pi is all about learning and not about consuming.  At thirteen, Cam is already a 'gamer', and would spend his every waking moment on the Xbox if we let him (we don't).  But I don't mind his enthusiasm for computer games so much if there is a core of knowledge behind it, and he has an understanding of how games work and an ability to create his own if he wishes.

We all know knowledge is power, and the raspberry pi aims to give the knowledge of how computers really work back to anyone who wants it.

Notes on La Rentrée

The French have a useful word for this time of year: La Rentrée, which literally means 'the return'.  It encompases not just the start of the new school year for children, but also the return to regular routines and work for the adults after the long summer break.  The latest Marie Claire Idées, which arrived this week, is all about la rentrée and autumn.

Marie Claire Idées celebrates the start of autumn

Here, the return to school has gone smoothly - as much as it can with adjusted school hours for Cam because of the extra traffic caused by the Paralympics, Olivia's molar falling out on a packed tube train on the first day of term, a request for a one-piece swimming costume (named) for the following day, a broken pair of glasses and a missing calculator. 

Everybody needs some familiarity with so much newness and busyness going on, so I made beef and onion pie for tea on the first day of term, lemon buns on the second day, and it will be plum crumble tonight.

Pie in progress

 

Back to school buns

 

A sink full of free plums from the local park - destined to become a crumble

I needed that comfort as much as the children did.  As always, I felt bereft on the first day without them - the backpacks, PE bags and instruments disappeared from the hallway and the house felt too quiet and empty with no children in it.
 

Bags in the hallway on the second day of term. Only the green one is mine.

But we all find our rhythm soon enough.  The children were ready to go back and came home from their first day chattering enthusiastically about their freinds, their teachers, and the new things that are happening at school this term.  I found that it was rather pleasant to have some quiet time for studying, and have been pushing on with my own pre-course homework from the University.  I start in just over a week's time.

The school run

If I do the school run by tube, it takes 20 minutes longer than if I do it by car.

The car has a powerful heater, blasting warm air in my face and on my feet.  The tube has drafts from the doors which all open at every station.

On the tube, I listen to my music quietly on my headphones and I don't sing out loud at the top of my voice as I do in the car.

But if I go by tube I can admire some magnificent sunsets at this time of year.  And O and I get to chat as we walk home from the station; if we are lucky we find some treasure too.

Comfort amid the new and changing

There is so much that is new happening in our family at the moment.

Blue skies over East London this week

C's new life at secondary school incorporates so many new experiences under just one heading.  He is walking to and from school each day rather than being driven or travelling with me on the tube.  He's doing several pieces of homework each night rather than just once a week.  He's making new friends, managing his own money and learning completely new subjects for the very first time.

G is taking up new hobbies and resuming old ones, with the spare time he has now that he is no longer training for the ironman.  His work hours have changed significantly, as has his daily commute across London.

I am starting new projects and using my time very differently to how I was a few months ago.  O finds herself in a busy whirl of birthday parties, ballet lessons, opticians appointments and new after-school arrangements.

All of this, without exception, is good for us.  I am excited and energised by the new possibilities opening up for me, C loves his new school, G and O are busy and happy.  And yet...sometimes the newness and the bustle can still feel tiring and overwhelming, even though it's welcome and we're enjoying it.  Sometimes we just want to curl up under a quilt, watch favourite, missed TV shows on iPlayer and eat pudding.

So I've stopped what I should be doing for the morning, and done some baking instead.  This bread pudding recipe, from my friend Nina, is the most comforting thing imaginable.  The children, G and I all rank it as one of our most favourite puddings ever.  It tastes wonderfully spicy and citrussy and completely hits the spot when you need a bit of comfort food.

Stale bread, about to be transformed

Butter, sugar, spices and fruit

It is not a very beautiful pudding to look at, but just like your favourite pair of comfy slippers or your child's old, beloved bear-with-no-fur, it is not meant to be an object of great beauty.  Its power lies in the fact that it can lift your soul and bring you comfort and reassurance when everything feels a little bit new and challenging.

Suds in the sink

We're having our bread pudding for tea tonight, and then tomorrow we'll all be be back out there, embracing the newness once again.  That's the magic of this pudding.

Strawberry notebooks

These are for the children's teachers.  Who doesn't love a nice notebook? 

The notebooks are from Muji.  They have thin card covers, and are crying out for decoration.  They would look beautiful with pen and ink drawings on them, but I cannot draw so I put fabric on them instead.

I first came across the idea of decorating notebooks with fabric in the excellent Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson.  She uses a zigzag stitch to attach random shapes of scrap fabric to the smallest size of Moleskine cahiers.  I made some like this to give as Christmas presents a few years ago.

I like the original ones, but this time I wanted a clearer design so I went for a simple, summery strawberry instead (strawberries being about the only thing I can successfully draw).  I cut out the facric, held it steady with a few dabs of glue stick, and then sewed it with a plain running stitch.

They are very satisfying to make, and have a low effort-to-prettiness ratio, which is always good at the end of a school term.

There is just one more day to go for us.  Just one more day.  I cannot wait.

After school

I've not encouraged after school clubs and activities.  I like bringing the children home and pottering around with them chatting, drinking cups of tea and doing as little as possible.  Very often they're exhausted and overwhelmed by their day anyway, and crave solitude and a good book in their bedrooms.
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But there has always been one ballet lesson a week for O, and this term because there is an exam coming up, there are two ballet lessons each week.  On top of that C has decided he wants to do a term of sailing lessons which his school are offering one day a week.  I guess they're getting older and have got more energy for other things.
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Over Easter I thought about this coming term, and the three days of running around after school that I was going to have to do each week - and I was really quite gloomy about it.  Too much busyness is tiring and stressful.
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But now all this activity is underway I realise that it's not stressful at all.  It is, in fact, valuable extra knitting time.  How did I not realise this?
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And sitting in the evening sunshine watching C and his friends sail across the lake, while I finish some knitting isn't stressful or busy at all.  It's positively idyllic actually.

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I finally finished O's legwarmers yesterday, at the lake, and today at ballet I made big progress on a pair of socks I am making for C.  By the end of term I may even finish this beautiful, but oh-so-slow, moss stitch face cloth I am knitting.

Japanese school dress

Yesterday I made a dress version of the pretty Japanese top I wrote about here, in school uniform colours.  O's school allow either light blue or navy blue gingham for the summer dresses, so when I saw this two-tone gingham cotton at Shaukat for only £3.50 a metre I did actually shriek with excitement.  I think it's meant for men's shirts, but it is perfect for school uniform as well.

The dress version of this pattern is so simple in its design - I really love that.  Very un-fussy.  I used narrower bias tape for the neck this time, which I think works a little better.  It makes for a narrower bow.

Another change I made was to cut the front in one piece rather than two.  I then made a placket for the neck, which saved having to match up all the gingham squares down the front seam (which to be honest I probably wouldn't have had the patience to do anyway).

I hemmed the dress with ribbon, to give it a little more interest, and because I know O loves anything to be trimmed with ribbon.  In a very small way I also get a kick out of the little element of rebellious satisfation there is in making an item of uniform with a little touch of individuality to it.

She loves it, and pranced off down the road to school swishing her new dress and looking very pleased with herself.

The second school dress

Today I finished O's second school dress.  For this one I used the Oliver + S Ice Cream Dress pattern, which is from their new spring range and comes in sizes from 6 months to age 12.

This is the first time I've made an Oliver + S pattern, and I didn't like it as much as the Simplicity or Ottobre patterns I've used.

Oliver + S get much praise for creating patterns which give you 'professional looking' garments.  To me though, that professional finish comes at the cost of the whole pattern being far too fiddly and long winded.  One of the most onerous and bizarre suggestions was to sew a line of tacking (or basting) stitches whenever you folded a seam, to give you a neat guide line to fold your seam on.  I don't find folding a 1cm seam too difficult so I skipped this step whenever it was suggested.

The yoke was constructed in a very unintuitive way, and I had several sweary moments when I sewed pieces on the wrong way round or caught excess fabric up in a seam by mistake.

The bottom (dark blue) panel is made with a double thickness of fabric, and the way it is constructed means that the dress is not hemmed because there is no unfinished edge at the bottom.  The pattern designers may have thought that not hemming a dress makes life easier (and hemming is tedious, I agree) but it meant that I had no adjustability with the length, and the dress has come out about 3cm shorter than I wanted.

It is a sweet dress to look at, and is indeed finished very neatly and professionally, but I found the whole process far more fiddly than was necessary. 

My biggest issue, however, is that the finished dress is very wide and sack-like on O - you could fit two seven year olds inside!  I think the design would work much better on a stout toddler than on a slim, leggy older child.

The pattern also contains a blouse version of this dress, and I will probably make that for O, but I don't think I'll be making another of these dresses.  And I definitely would not make this pattern in gingham again - all those lines and squares to match up along the panels and the pockets did my head in - forgiving non-directional prints are the way to go with this one!

This took much longer to photograph than it did to make

With the dreary, rainy gloom we were left with after the snow melted, I desperately needed to inject some colour into my life.

I bought a metre of Kaffe Fassett fabric in my favourite pattern, but in a colourway I'd not had before - a crazy, mad red.  I used a pattern from Amy Butler's In Stitches which I have wanted to do since I first got the book - the sash with beaded fringe.  John Lewis couldn't provide me with a beaded fringe, but I had some giant ricrac at home, and I liked the way the curves of the ricrac echoed all the spots in the fabric, so I went with that instead of the beaded fringe.

It is an incredibly simple pattern, and so very quick to make up.  The whole thing - cutting pattern pieces, measuring and cutting fabric, attaching trim, sewing sash and slipstitching the gap - took a couple of hours.  After supper and before bed.

But my goodness it took a long time to photograph.  The next day there was no sun, and our house was very dark.  So where to take the picture?  The colours of the fabric are so vivid and luscious that I couldn't have them looking dull and washed out - that's not Kaffe's style at all.

I tried wearing it and taking photos in the bathroom mirror - but the mirror was too dirty.  I tried in front of the sitting room mirror but there was too much stuff in the way.  I tried hanging it in our bedroom window.  That was pretty good.

And the close ups came out well.

But the window frames kept getting in the way and the brown of them clashed with the scarf.  So I tried hanging it from our bedroom lampshade.

And that was okay, except for the clutter and the doorway in the background.  Taking all those photos meant that I was running late to pick up the children for school (I know - can you imagine the feebleness of that excuse? so sorry I'm late for the children, I was trying to photograph some Kaffe fabric in the best light possible) so I took the car rather than the tube and as I parked I saw that the bright red of the sash sash (worn as a scarf) against the slightly faded mauve of my old Boden coat was wonderful.  So I took another picture for good measure:

And then ran down the road and through the school gates, just in time.

Snippets

Life seems to be in snippets at the moment. Small things, quick things, different things, a great many things.

Snippets from the past week:

• The neighbours' grown-up son, who spent his redundancy money on a nine month trip around New Zealand, arrived back home this week. I looked out of my bedroom window at half past six on Thursday morning and saw a tall, tanned young man haul a backpack from the back of the taxi, pick his way through the puddles and smile to himself as he pushed open the gate to his parents' house.
• C is officially Very Important and Senior now he is in Year 5. He ran the book stall at the school's Christmas bazaar. When I picked him up, the deputy head said to me how very helpful and useful C had been, and gave him a big bunch of mistletoe as a reward. Ten year old boys are not that impressed by bunches of mistletoe, but I like it very much.
• A box of Moo cards arrived for me to make into gift tags and cards. I used photos of the holly bushes at Kew, which I took at half term.
• I am reading Ballet Shoes to O for a bedtime story at the moment. It is fanning the flames of her long standing obsession with dance. When I come downstairs after I have tucked her up in bed I can hear the gentle rhythmic thuds of her getting out of bed and pirouetting around the room for ten minutes before she goes back to bed (to read ballet books like these). She doesn't know I know she does this.
• There is a pile of almost finished, handmade Christmas presents on my desk. I like looking at this pile, but it needs to get bigger this week, and it needs more completely finished things and fewer nearly finished things.
• The car misbehaved for me once too often and we have bought a new one. The horror of spending so much money, at a time when I am not working, is mixed with great delight at having a beautiful, new car that doesn't break down on three lane roundabouts and which has an MP3 jack.
• G won a great big, shiny, silver cup at his triathlon club Christmas awards dinner last night. It looks rather wonderful on our mantelpiece.
• C made mince pies yesterday. A batch of teeny, tiny, bite sized ones, plus four big personalised ones. I always use the mince pie pastry recipe from Nigella's Feast as it tastes beautiful, using orange juice for the liquid; it flakes wonderfully and is very forgiving and easy to roll out. Perfect for child chefs.
  
  

Packing up and moving on

August into September is much more of a New Year for me than December into January. It is a time for the end of the long summer holidays and the beginning of a new academic year; I make new resolutions and turn over new leaves; we pack away the old and start unwrapping the new.

In the last week we've said goodbye to the summer holidays.


G finished six months of training and his first half-ironman race.


And I left work.



The children have started in new classes at school; C's comes with a whole new playground and extra responsibilities. O has a strict teacher.

We're beginning to find our way with an entirely new and unfamiliar family routine. I can pick up the children from school every day now, but we've said goodbye to the childminder who helped me look after C and O for the last five years. We all cried. C is still crying actually.

But also we're enjoying the late summer sunshine, and some of the plum jam I made for our breakfast toast through the winter.

I think it will be a good year.