blog - natalie fergie

travelling tastes

Natalie Fergie — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:50:59 +0000

One of the great joys of travelling is visiting supermarkets. Yes, proper produce markets are full of evocative smells and colours, but an ordinary supermarket tells you more about the everyday, the mundane, the ordinary.

I found this, not in the jam department as might have been expected, but in the cheese section. Now this is, in an odd sort of way, fairly logical, since Membrillo is a sort of Quince Cheese. It's like a cross between something with a very soft set like apple jelly, and a sort of think marmalade without the peel. As a confirmed consumer of marmalade and cheese at the same time (and other habits regarded as odd, like cheddar and fruit cake), this seems the best way to eat it.

Barceloneta - teeny tiny apartments

Natalie Fergie — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:31:30 +0000

Barceloneta is one of the four districts in the Ciutat Vella (old city) area of Barcelona. The district was purpose built for the residents of Ribera who were ousted from their properties to make way for the construction of the Ciutadella in the 18th century. The whole area was designed in one major development phase, so the streets are quite uniform with all the flats being more or less identical.
So, if you take our rented apartment as typical, the staircase is accessed by a door from the street. The staircase is steep and narrow, much less than a metre wide. I would guess about 80cm, with the step treads being about 25 cm deep. The treads are narrow enough that if you go upstairs everything it OK, because your weight in in the front of your foot, but going down the stairs is much more tricky because you need to step with your feet at an angle to make sure you get enough "foot" on each step.
The stair runs up the side of each building (on the inside) and two flats are on each landing. These are parallel so if you have street A and street B with the access stair on street A, half the flats overlook street A and half overlook street B.
The buildings are tall. Most are six storeys with no lifts.
Each flat has three windows along one side of the building, most are full length pairs of glass doors so there is plenty of light. The apartments were built as very basic housing. Some are divided into three rooms, bedroom, kitchen and living room, with a tiny shower room. The apartment we are renting is open plan, and is the standard 30 square metres. The only way to get a bigger apartment would be to buy the one next door on the same landing and do some wall bashing.
I quite like the equality in this. As you walk around the streets and look up, it's evident that all the apartments ARE the same size. Some have broader balconies, but really, that's it. It's very compact housing in which everyone has the same space.

This is the one we are staying in.
www.barcelonacatalunya.cat/view-each/baluard-3rd-mediterraneo.html

And these are the others in the same building - I am pretty sure the owner bought the whole building to convert and rent out.
www.artsapartments.com/

On the ground floor, some of the properties are apartments and some are commercial, i have seen hairdressers, an ironmonger, several dress shops, a vet, and quite a few tiny restaurants (one in particular on our street has a queue out of the door every night), if I lived in this city I would be hunting down a wee 30 square metre workshop where I could dye yarn, have a little shop and I would be a very happy girl. Add an apartment above and... Well you get the idea.

The Bromptons survived the flight apart from what seems to be a bit of bashment to the front brakes of Gavin's bike which is causing some squeakage. We went out on them yesterday and headed north, polishing off a fairly effortless 12.5km in what seemed like no time at all. Barcelona has a great "promenade" alongside the beach with bike lanes, runners lanes and reasonable surfacing to cycle on.
Tomorrow we plan to head south in the same way.

Gavin's blogpost on the bikes is here.
www.fegrig.com

Natalie

Flood!

Natalie Fergie — Tue, 07 May 2013 20:50:56 +0000

This (and more) is not what you want to discover the day before you go on holiday.

We woke up to the sound of running water, cascading through the light fittings, the door frame, and down the walls.

HOT water.

We have a combi boiler, so a burst pipe made the boiler think a shower was in need of hot water and it duly delivered.

Cue emergency total power off (the fuse box is in this room) with a wooden stick. .

Cue ladders up to the attic to turn off the supply to the boiler.

Cue rapid phone call to our lovely plumbers who were here within 40 minutes on a Public Holiday.

Cue phone call to our insurance company.

Unfortunately we can't do anything else because we are now away on holiday until the end of next week.

Oh well.

Natalie

A linen jacket

Natalie Fergie — Sun, 05 May 2013 13:13:38 +0000

I'm about to go on holiday, and I have a very limited wardrobe. This is partly because I hate, HATE going clothes shopping, and partly because I labour under the belief that in a few weeks I will be slim and anything I buy won't fit. Deluded, really.

So my first task was to make a jacket. This is New Look 6153.

It's a straightforward pattern, designed to be made with a lining (which of course I omitted, because I wanted to make life easier, silly girl).

The lapels aren't too bad, perhaps a bit of undercollar roll through, but they are even and sit well.

The undercollar is cut on the bias, and the collar itself leads into a rather pretty fine dart which is hidden when the collar is worn normally, but shows when it's worn standing up.

I did a mock flat felled seam on the shoulders and down the centre back, I find this sits better than a pressed forward and overlocked seam which on a soft linen fabric has a tendency to not lie flat.

This is the inside, The front facings are overlocked to reduce bulk since I wasn't lining it and didn't want to hem it down.

So, was it a success?

Well it's meant as the soft of jacket which will tolerate being shoved in the overhead locker of a plane without complaining too much and I think it will work for this.

What would I do differently?

The collar sections, both upper and lower, are interfaced, and I think one layer would have been enough. In fact I think the interfacing all round is too heavy for the crumpled look I wanted.

It doesn't hang completely flat at the hem at the front and again, I think this is a too-heavy-interfacing issue. Also possibly due to the fact that I used an iron-one when a sew-in would have given a softer look.

The pattern has cuffs on the sleeves which I omitted in favour of rolling them up in a more casual style, I suspect they were due to get the interfacing treatment as well so I'm happy with this decision, the sleeves are deliberately cut too long to accommodate the rolling up.

Right, on to the T shirts now!

Natalie

Adding to the stash

Natalie Fergie — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:59:26 +0000

The sewing bug has bitten me again.

I went out with a list which read "Jacket. Top. Shorts or trousers. Shirt (maybe)."

This is 100% linen fabric, 2.5m for £7 per metre. It's a lovely old terracotta colour, like a weathered flowerpot and it has an interesting texture beyond the plainweave. So this is going to be my summer jacket, no buttons, simple shape, rolled up sleeves.

And this is Quite A Lot of cotton.

6.5 metres to be precise.

I want to make lightweight summer trousers, and also a simple top - not necessarily to wear together. And also a shirt. I mentioned to Gavin a while ago that I could make him a shirt and he wasn't keen (mainly because he thinks I should sew for myself first). But then he was watching Ann Rowley make her linen shirt on GBSB and was really interested in the whole process, so I have decided to just go for it.

The trousers will take 2.2m and the shirt 2.5m which is 4.7m. I decided to round it up to 6m so that I could make a longish top and make best use of all the cloth by fitting the smaller facings etc into the gaps. It turned out that there was 6.5m on the roll, so I got the half metre for free.

It was £8.99/m but I am sure that trousers, a shirt, and a top (or maybe even a dress if I am canny when I cut) from £54 worth of fabric is a pretty good prospect.

So, the whole lot is now it the washing machine pre-shrinking ready for me to cut out on Wednesday.

I also saw this and immediately thought of my friend Jude. It's PVC coated tablecloth fabric.

Also available as curtain yardage.

What every campervan needs!

Natalie

Coconut cookies

Natalie Fergie — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:21:33 +0000

Ever since we became a gluten free household back in January, the number of cake and bread type blog posts here has diminished. You could be forgiven for thinking that I have abandoned the whole baking thing entirely.

Not so, my friends.

Gluten free baking is different that's for sure, but I'm starting to get a bit more confident. We even had beef steak pie with a proper pastry crust this week which was not bad at all, though I say it myself. Bread is still a bit challenging, but cakes are quite manageable.

Last night I made these coconut cookies. Not really a bun, and not a cake, but not snappy like a biscuit.

It's a standard Victoria sponge cake recipe. Gluten free baking seems to need butter rather than margarine, and more eggs than you would normally use. I would have added one egg to a wheat flour recipe before, but these took two eggs.

So the mixture is Glutafin White Mix (a blend of rice and potato flour), butter, sugar, baking powder, vanilla, eggs and milk. Whisk like crazy. And then add quite a lot of desiccated coconut. Enough to make the mixture really thick.

Then put teaspoon sized dollops on a baking sheet and baked in a hot oven for eight minutes. Gluten free flour baking seems to brown very quickly so you really have to keep an eye (or a timer) on progress.

Not bad.

Not bad at all.

Shall I put the kettle on?

Natalie

#52books 8

Natalie Fergie — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:03:30 +0000

It's funny isn't it, how some books are just not what you expect?

This is quite unusual for me, I'm a fairly monogamous reader who starts at the beginning and keeps going until the end without hesitation, deviation or full blown giving up.

The top book in this pile is Balancing Acts by Zoe Fishman, from the library. I picked it up at the same time as a Yoga DVD, so there's a bit of a theme going on here. This is her website, with reviews. It's not a heavy read, the characters are likeable (apart from one fairly major "surely she won't do that" theme) and I enjoyed it.

Moving down the pile is the one I am reading at the moment (review soon) which is making me cross.

Then there is the book which I expected to like. I follow the author on Twitter, and she's entertaining and thought provoking. It's VERY unlike me to not finish a book, I can only think of one other in the last five years, but this tale is severely testing my patience. There isn't anyone to LIKE in it! I've read half so I have made a fair investment, and I'll let you know if I continue.

And finally there is Bill. He writes books to savour and I'm quite happy dipping in and out of this one from time to time.

So although it looks as though I'm not reading anything much, I am. It's just that I'm not FINISHING many!

If you have a book to recommend please let me know in the comments. I have a new shiny library card and I'm itching to use it.

Natalie

My (Great) Grandmother

Natalie Fergie — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:22:23 +0000

This is the next installment from my Mum.

My grandmother

Granny was born in 1866, in Newcastle upon Tyne, or thereabouts. She was called Mary Ann, or Molly. I think her mother died when she was born. She had an elder sister, Elizabeth, called Lizzie. The two orphaned girls were separated and brought up by different family members, but remained close. Later they both went south and Granny married James Hopps, who was an engineer. He was 21 years older than her. He was born in Sedgefield, educated at a dame school for one penny a week and, I was told, began his career as an apprentice working on the Stockton and Darlington Railway. My aunt once found a bridge on the what had been the railway with “J. Hopps 1860’ carved into it. He then worked at Armstrong’s Gunmakers in Newcastle. In 1871 he walked to London, part of a group who were agitating to have the nine hour working day reduced. In the south he married the daughter of the Secretary to the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and became the workshop manager of the Royal Indian Engineering College, at Englefield Green, which today is part of Brunel University. But his wife died young, and in 1904 my grandmother became his second wife. It is said that she went out for a walk with James and said ‘when I come back I will be engaged’ and she was. I don’t know how she, too, came to live in the south, but as they both came from the north-east there was probably a family or friendly connection. But it was a happy marriage. In 1910 he was away from home working in South Wales..

He wrote:

My bonnie darling,

...believe me I will aways return your love and caresses fortyfold or more, if you will accept them, and we will not contemplate any other form which cannot be repaid by me in that way. What do you say, eh? Ma Cherie!

With regard to my staying longer as suggested in your letter I have given the matter consideration and have decided . . . NOT to prolong my stay. but will come home tomorrow by Fishguard Express leaving Cardiff at 9.15 a.m. and may arrive at Egham at 1 o’clock. I shall be glad to see your gentle sweet face again, I assure you. The longer I have you with me the stronger my love grows for you and the longing to have your company is all-powerful with me. The time has seemed long since I saw my wifie and little ones and I will not willingly make it any longer.. . . You may possibly think this rather the letter of a lover than a husband but consider it as coming from both. I have written what I feel, there! and you must take me as I am, love and all. . . .

The ship may sail next Thursday or Friday at the latest. The Bridegroom of a few days was drowned in full view of his wife at Lynmouth on Wednesday. How inexpressibly sad! How thankful we ought to feel that we still have each other so rich in love in our little home. Loving kisses for Nora and Jean and a thousand kind thoughts for my darling . . .

That’s what it was like before email! He was sixty-five then. But he died five years later; he went to a funeral, caught a chill, and died soon after, pneumonia I suppose. So Granny was a widow until she died in 1948. I remember her best when in the Lightwater house, she spent her time either cooking, gardening, or most often seated at the treadle sewing machine beside the dining table, putting sheets sides-to-middles, or making pinafores for me. She had long brown hair, which never went grey, and wore it in a bun. She brushed it every day with a Mason Pearson brush and during the three years before she died was never known to wash it. I don’t think she believed in too much washing. I used to sit drawing at Grandad’s desk using the long cylindrical ruler, and making long woollen ropes on a Knitting Nancy. I specially liked the Catalogue of the Army and Navy stores, which was kept in the cupboard. It was full of pictures of tents, and Granny had a great book called Mrs Leach’s Fancy Work Basket, (1894) which Natalie has now, full of patterns for pincushions and strange advertisements for mail order goods. “Ladies, you will look neat in one of our dresses! The John Noble Cheviot Serge 7/6!“ “Knockabout frocks for girls 1/6d” , “Sanitary towels, the greatest invention of the age, at the cost of washing only!” and even more exciting “Mother Siegel’s Curative Syrup” which apparently cured anything. I did ask her why there were so many patterns for pincushions, and she said darkly, it was because women had nothing better to do in those days. She certainly had plenty to do. We used to spend hours picking blackberries in the paddock, and she was never idle. We toasted crumpets at the fire. She did have a surprising sense of humour: I remember once bringing home from school a magazine called the ‘Girls Crystal’ of which I was very proud, (well, magazines were pretty well non-existent during the war) and was scandalised to come across Granny reading it and LAUGHING like a drain at the silly stories I rook so seriously. Her favourite dinner was poached salmon and parsley sauce, though I doubt it was available too often.

When I stayed at Granny’s house I usually shared her bed, which was very big with a brass bedhead and foot, and a deep feather mattress which had to be pushed and pummelled every morning. It was amazingly comfy. The eiderdown had lots of little pink flowers on it: I used to pretend to pick the flowers in the morning. I must have driven her mad.

I was thirteen when she died, and living in London, but I missed her. Children didn’t go to funerals much then. She left me some money in her will, I don’t remember how much, but it went into my first bank account.

I don’t think she enjoyed childbearing much. When she was old whenever it was reported that someone was pregnant she would say “Oh, the poor thing!” Of course she had her first child at 40 and her second at 44 which was pretty old then, and they were both born at home. My mother always said that she (the eldest) was kept covered in vaseline and bedded in a drawer. The photographs of the family show Granny and Grandad looking very old indeed. It’s amazing that she would have been 54 when women got the vote at age 28, in 1918. I have no idea if she ever voted. I expect she was too busy.

Thanks to my mum for this post.

Natalie

PS The first post in this series is here.

Trakke

Natalie Fergie — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:15:37 +0000

Today I went to Glasgow. I needed to pick up the Choconnasticks for the SSS parcels, but also I had a very exciting email to say that my new bag was ready.

It's made in Glasgow by a company called Trakke. All the materials are British, from the steel buckles to the waxed cotton cloth made by a family firm in Dundee.

Alec, the founder and designer, is a Glasgow College of Art graduate who is committed to keeping things as local as possible.

This is the Bairn. It's the smallest they make, not the kind of bag you can chuck everything into and then add a small kitchen sink as well, but nonetheless it's quite big enough for what I need to carry.

It doesn't come with the yellow wooden toggles as standard, but I thought they would be useful so they added them for me.

Inside is a zipped pocket. Not full width, but big enough for my passport, tickets, or other important stuff.

And as you can see it will carry a book, iPad Mini (the normal iPad fits too), and my chunky A5 Filofax which has big 30mm rings.

It is also big enough to take my camera (4/3 Panasonic GF1) which is fairly solid, not a pocket camera.

Alec generously gave me permission to take some photos while I was there., and Rowan and James (who made my bag) carried on working.

This is the one most people wanted to see!

For the sewing geeks...

All in all, a really interesting visit, and after lots of bag-chat and yarn chat (yes, I showed him ravelry), I decided to take my Trakke Bairn out for Hot Choconnastick and cake.

Natalie

Decluttering

Natalie Fergie — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 10:48:02 +0000

Don't mind me, I'm just going to rabbit on a bit about getting rid of stuff because I need to get it out of my head. It may not make much sense but sometimes I blog for myself and this is one of those days.

I am attempting to declutter the office/workroom/packingroom/storeroom. This is not easy. It's full of valuable stuff I want to keep.

Children's finger paintings.

Cards from Parents' Night saying "This is my work I hope you like it."

My wedding flowers.

Antique ink bottles dug up from a former "heap" at the back of an old house.

A million receipts.

Catalogues for dyes, fibres, yarns, stationery.

Paper for the printer.

Cartridge paper, oil pastel paper, rough surfaced NOT paper for watercolours.

Ink pens, fountain pens, felt pens - the free giveaway ballpoint pens can go.

Pencils in every colour, and watercolour, and in HB, 2B, 4B, 6B.

Charcoal, oil pastels, watercolours in tubes and pans. Brushes.

Dress fabric. Quilt fabric. Outdoor fleece fabric. Batting. Buttons.

Dayglo yellow reflective strips for attaching to kids' jackets.

Plastic toggles for fixing rucksack buckles, velcro, cord.

Thread in every colour (except the one I need).

Sketchbooks, notebooks, old work diaries which must be kept for legal reasons.

Useful articles.

Books. Books. Books.

And of course this is all stored on or in furniture which is great in itself, but was never actually planned for the use to which it is being put. A HUGE table, well over two metres long and a metre wide with three drawers, each drawer a completely useless 5 cm deep. The lip on the table is rounded so I can't clamp my skeinwinder to it and have to do this on ANOTHER table. A six foot tall IKEA bookcase bought for someone to put a stereo on which is therefore far too deep to use for much else, and anyway, it wobbles. A perfectly nice pine chest of drawers which is tall and chunky and just becomes a dumping ground for "things which might be useful" and is not in itself much use because the drawers stick and the drawer bottoms are made from tongue and groove which separates every time you open them. A sofabed which is neither decent sofa nor comfortable bed but which is being kept in case we need an emergency bed for a guest.

The problem is that for as long as I can remember I have recycled. I tend not to buy new things when the old one still works even if it's wildly unsuitable. I feel enormous guilt about replacing household things which could "do another turn". And I know all to well that I am lucky. I am really, really lucky to have this stuff when there are people who have very little and that stops me from having a real chuck-it-all-out-and-start-again session.

Yes I could freecycle, or sell, or just take it to the Council recycling centre but it's making the decision to do it which is hard. And when it all works (after a fashion), is it ethical to replace it?

This is (as they say) a third world problem. And in my heart I know I should stop mithering, realise that I am very fortunate and just tidy up and make do... BUT my head is telling me that it's my workspace, and it's not functioning efficiently, and that it's stopping ME from doing things so really, it's time to let go of this old furniture and buy stuff which will let me get on with a task rather than preventing me from doing it.

The saying goes "don't sweat the small stuff" but in this case, it's not the small stuff which I'm troubled by, it's these hulking great bits of furniture which are getting in the way of me moving forward. Why do I feel so guilty about getting rid of them? Perhaps it's the waste, but I think it's also because I didn't actually choose any of them but they have somehow all ended up in my space!

Natalie

Corsock

Natalie Fergie — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 20:16:02 +0000

This week has seen me driving for more miles than I remember doing behind the wheel for a very long time. Two trips to Aberdeenshire (and back) - and another one to do tomorrow - have made me appreciate how fortunate I am to work from home and not be "on the road" constantly. Today saw me driving westward to Dumfriesshire to collect a Rather Large Loom for a friend. So large in fact that the two main frame sections didn't fit in our quite big estate car and will need to be transported by a different means at a future date. If anyone has a Transit sized van travelling from Castle Douglas to Stonehaven in the near future, please get in touch!

The town and village names in the county are wonderful, and I passed signs for Crocketford, the Urr Valley and Ae (honestly) before coming across Corsock, which will forever be Cor!!! Sock in my mind. This old sign boasts the County name before the grand conglomerates of Strathclyde, Highland and Borders were imposed on the nation.

Kirkcudbrightshire. Now there is a name to be reckoned with. Not Kirk Cud Bright Shire, but Kir Coo Bree Shire. Like this. Just click "submit".

Natalie

Royal Mail

Natalie Fergie — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:14:25 +0000

From today, Royal Mail has changed the way it calculates parcel costs.

No longer are parcels simply weighed and posted, they are now measured as well.

A parcel which used to cost £2.70 First Class, will now cost £3.00 as long as it is under 8cm deep.

If a parcel is more than 8cm deep this pushes it up to the rather eye-watering £5.65 price band.

Obviously I don't want to put my prices up. The postage I was charging until yesterday was in three bands; £2.99 for the UK, £3.99 for EU and £4.99 for everywhere else. The extra 29p was for the bag, label, time, paper, printing etc.. If I charge actual postage then these costs end up being rolled into the yarn price and it means someone buying five skeins is paying for five bags which is hardly fair.

There are various options for me, one of which is to (mostly) stop using my Post Office and switch to an Online Business Account. There is no doubt that this would save a little, but it's a fair amount of extra work (and time, and the purchase of a label printer, and labels) for me. I would still drop the parcels off at the Post Office, as I do now, but the village PO would get nothing as payment. Not a penny. In fact, because the village PO is not a "Crown Office", Debi (the Postmistress) is not obliged to accept my parcels there at all and then I really would be up a gum tree (as they say).

I live in a village. We depend on the Post Office for all sorts of things. It's our local Sorting Office Drop Off point, saving a ten mile round trip for any parcels which arrive when we are not at home. It's also the drop off for Pharmacy prescriptions for the elderly - or indeed anyone who can't get to the Pharmacy, two miles away across a busy A road and with no pavements to walk on. Recently Debi has arranged that her card payment set up can also be used to withdraw cash just like a standard Hole-In-The-Wall ATM.

So I have taken an executive decision, and I will, from today send parcels out using the village Post Office, but I will send them Second Class rather than First Class.

Second Class postage is £2.60 (new price) and I've been using it to send the SSS parcels from the beginning. Most of them seem to arrive in 2-3 days, rather than the next day. My e-commerce system is very simple to operate, and it's also FREE. It won't allow me to offer First or Second as a choice. I would prefer to keep to this site than incur the considerable charges associated with a more complicated set up (which I would have to pass on in the cost of the yarn).

Over the next month I will keep a close eye on actual postage costs vs website costs, but as long as I don't end up subsidising the postage overall this seems like the best way to go. Shipping costs TO me have also risen dramatically. The shipping cost for the citric acid I use on a daily basis has jumped from £6 to £18 overnight. Dye shipping costs are likely to double because the powder comes in tubs which are very much fatter than 8cm. I hope this explains why the apparent 10p postage saving to me will be gobbled up by additional costs.

I will, for the next month at least, keep "shipping" which covers the whole process of getting a skein of yarn from me to you, wrapping, packaging, printing, and time, at the current price of £2.99. This will also hold true for overseas parcel pricing.

If, after reviewing it, I need to go back to First Class then I am afraid I'll need to increase the price of shipping, but I really don't want to and I believe this is the best way to avoid it.

Natalie

Fibre is good for you

Natalie Fergie — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:17:16 +0000

I have been experimenting with a new way of dyeing fibre.

Gone are the completely saturated bands of flat colour which lend themselves so well to fractal spinning. They have their place in the spinner's repertoire, but I wanted something rather more free, something less predictable, something which requires examination and thought.

In short, something WILD.

This is fibre which is not afraid of white space.

Fibre with panache.

Fibre which cries out to be spun by itself for the sheer joy and unpredictability of it.

Fibre which demands to be noticed.

Fibre which is equally happy used alone, teamed with a solid, or paired with a silk thread.

Test spinning on a new spindle is giving me all sorts of ideas.

It will be in the shop after the weekend in (roughly) 50g braids.

Natalie

PS - SSS for April closes on Sunday at midnight.

#52books Book 7

Natalie Fergie — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:00:06 +0000

A Post Office 50p book find.

Not an author I have come across before, but with a recommendation from Ian Rankin on the cover I thought it had promise.

It's not written in the conventional way for a crime novel. Normally you have Crime, Investigation accompanied by lots of clues, and then the Unveiling of the Murderer, at which point you feel rather pleased with yourself because you worked it all out. This is quite different.

Crime including revealing the identity of the Perpetrator. Quite factual. No reasoning.

The rest of the book untangles the whys and wherefores, the reasons why the investigation is sent in a particular direction, the backstory of all the characters, victim, police and murderer.

Denise Mina won Crime Novel of the Year in 2012 for The End Of The Wasp Season, and it's well deserved. I already have her latest book home from the library, and am rattling through the current, rather trashy novel as fast as possible so I can make a start on it.

Natalie

Time flies

Natalie Fergie — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:57:49 +0000

I don't know about you but it's been quite a month, here.

Grown up sons migrating around Scotland like geese, yarn parcels extraordinaire, the Royal Mail increasing postage cost challenge, researching a potential house reconfiguration which may give me a better workspace, more parcels, snow, a yarn festival, parcels again, selling a spinning wheel (and perhaps the other one as well).

I am puggled!

The blog has suffered because my head is so stuffed with THINGS WHICH NEED TO BE CONSIDERED, and there just isn't space for anything else.

I need a blog schedule.

So, tomorrow I will catch up with the next #52books review, and then on Wednesday there may be more from my Mum's life story. On Thursday I'll tell you about my trip to Glasgow at the weekend, and on Friday there will be knitting or spinning to report on.

Natalie

Edinburgh Yarn Festival

Natalie Fergie — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 17:50:11 +0000

It was amazing.

More than 1400 adults (and 200 children who may have been knitters too) attended the inaugural EYF on Saturday. It was busy from the minute the doors opened at 10:00 (first sale made at 10:06) until it ended at 17:00.

I sold more than three quarters of the yarn and thread I had with me and met many wonderful knitters and weavers.

This sold out pretty much straight away. Ice cream yarn in Very Berry.

There are a couple of skeins of Butterscotch and Pistachio left.

For those who like to knit with skinny yarn, how about these? Knitted on needles the size of, well, needles. Normal lens cap for scale.

And then there was a little Tatting.

Pretty.

Made by Katie from the CreatingMe blog. This is a pattern her Grandmother made many times, apparently. Clearly, it's in the genes this tatting lark.

Natalie

#52books Book Six

Natalie Fergie — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Book Six is Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.

What can I say?

It's a fast read.

It's very, very clever.

The process (which you can anticipate) never gets in the way of the characterisation.

Wonderful book.

If I hadn't plunged into the next tome right away, it would have demanded immediate re-reading.

Natali

Making Monday - making progress

Natalie Fergie — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:07:36 +0000

Somewhat to my astonishment, the 2AAT socks are still on the needles.

No frogging, no tinking, no under-the-breath cursing. This state of affairs is a matter for some celebration.

There is some yarn twistment which I can live with but haven't quite worked out the reason for.

I can either turn the cake over and over, which keeps one strand coming out of the top, or let the outside strand come off by lifting it - and I suspect the latter is the cause of the twistment. Funny the things you think about when row after row of peaceful, gently repetitive stocking stitch is appearing under your fingers.

Maybe I should just put the centre-pull cake (I always expect a little cake icon to appear after that word, can't imagine why that would be) into a Yarn Corset but I like being able to see which colours are coming next.

In the end I decided to do plain feet. I enjoy all the sock designs with patterned feet, the clever swirls and the way increases for the ankle are turned into nifty design-as-function features, but I tend not to walk around in my socks without wearing shoes or Birkenstocks as well, and prefer smooth foot-tops for comfort so these are plain.

Of course when I get to the leg things may be completely different and I'm up for suggestions for leg patterns which will suit the style of the colourway. I am not troubled at all by the fact that one sock seems brighter than the other. It's a design feature!

So that's my Making Monday post.

What have you been making this week?

Natalie

2AAT socks

Natalie Fergie — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 14:14:05 +0000

I have been wanting to try this for ages, and after some ravelry encouragement I decided to give it a go.

When I tried it before I used two balls of yarn - one for each sock - and it seemed to get in a dreadful tangle, so this time I'm following another Natalie's advice and knitting both socks from the same ball of yarn. This means that one end of the yarn (if you follow me) will be unwinding in reverse, so a normal space dyed variegated yarn will end up looking upside down on one of the socks.

To counteract this, I dyed a skein which won't do this.

I started with a base colour which reminds me of the inside of a nutmeg, sort of cool brown. And I added walnut, paprika and sweetcorn carefully, but randomly, onto the skein, using thick dye paste to intensify the colour spots.

The adventure begins!

Choose yarn!

Wind into centre pull ball.

Use Judy's Magic Cast On, 16 stitches per needle = 32 stitches.

Repeat, using the yarn end from the other end of the ball.

Knit first side of first toe.

Making sure you use the other yarn end, knit first side of second toe.

Knit second side of second toe, knit into the back of the stitch to untwist it.

Knit second side of first toe, into the back of the stitch again.

Keep going! I increase by kf&b in the first stitch rather than the second to make the toes lie flat.

I'm not troubled at all by the fact that they don't match, the only thing I have to worry about at the moment is that I need to turn the yarn cake over a couple of times between rows so that it untwists the working yarns.

Have you tried this?

Any tips?

Natalie

The House(s) I Grew Up In

Natalie Fergie — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:11:31 +0000

Natalie - For Christmas, we gave My Mum and Gavin's Dad a book each which Gavin has bought in America. The title was something like "Mom's (or Dad's) Life Story". It's divided into sections and each has a suggested topic to draw out those things we have all forgotten about our childhood, or indeed, our adult lives).

Here, my Mum describes the houses she lived in as a child. I love the throwaway lines about long division and netball.

The House(s) I Grew Up In

The first house I lived in was 21 West Combe Avenue, Raynes Park. We lived there till about 1939.

Natalie - The photo shows my Nana and my Grandfather (who, bizarrely seems to be wearing a morning coat!) outside the house. Look at all the windows flung open.

It was a semi detached house with fake tudor beams on the front. It was built by a firm called Crouch, so it was called a ‘Crouch House’. There was a sitting room with a bay window and a dining room behind it with french windows. Upstairs I suppose there were two large bedrooms, though I can’t recall much about them. I do remember the front one had a dressing table with a triple mirror in front of the window, which was the fashion at the time There were silver and tortoiseshell brushes on it. There was a bathroom, black and white tiled floor, and a small room which was my bedroom. I remember my window stuck out in a triangular oriole over the front door, and there was a big triangular windowsill which had my teddies on it. I think the windows were diamond-leaded, at any rate in the front of the house. My feeling is that the kitchen had green painted cupboards and a larder by the backdoor. There was a garage beside the house. I think the sitting room was green and brown and the dining room was cream, with turkey rugs in red and brown. The dining room had a big welsh dresser, an oak table and windsor chairs. The table was very high, being under five, I couldn’t see over the top. Once I spilt some ink on it, and I don’t think it ever came out. There were two leather armchairs, a big one and a little one and somewhere a glass-fronted bureau. I thought the garden was very big, though probably it wasn’t really. There was a big vegetable bed with potatoes and cabbage growing in it. My father dug the garden. Once he was putting lime on the bed, and I asked what it was for. He said it was to make the worms run, and first showed me a worm at one end of the bed, then took me to the other end where he dug up another. ‘There you are’, he said, ‘I told you they run fast!’ There was a swing at the bottom of the garden from Gamages. Everything came from Gamages then. Beyond the garden was a recreation ground. Nearby was Beverley Brook. Once when I was about two I wandered off and was found by Beverley Brook. My mother was frantic. I had three imaginary friends, called Dar, Ornynorny and Oolly. They lived in the cabbage patch.

I was often taken to visit friends who lived in a block of flats nearby, and to Bentalls in Kingston to shop, where there was an escalator. There was also the Sutton Seeds factory, outside which was a big goldfish pond and somewhere nearby a sort of big greenhouse, I suppose it was a florist. My father was a commercial traveller for a floor stain company called Solignum, but I don’t think he was very reliable.

I remember once my mother being very angry with him, shouting “and he signed it in GREEN INK!” It was many years later that she told me that ‘he’ was a bailiff, and what he signed was a possession order.

I started school when we were at Raynes Park, but it can’t have been for very long. I don’t remember anything about it except having to colour in a pattern in two colours, and not wanting to use red and yellow like everyone else.

At the beginning of the war everything changed. I remember the day war broke out: all the mothers went out and talked to each other over the garden gates, and were very serious. We moved from Raynes Park, and my father went to work at Fairoaks Aerodrome, in Surrey, as although he had been in the army in the First War “Captain H.O. Preston RA” he was not young or well enough for active service, so he had a desk job instead. I think my mother worked there too for a bit, but later she worked for a butcher, driving a delivery van.

We moved to 1 White Causeway, Chobham Road, Knaphill, Surrey. White Causeway was a collection of three small houses, and we lived in the end one which was a farmworker’s cottage which had been requisitioned by the Air Force. The second cottage was occupied by a family who were not really approved of by my mother, who thought they were a bit common. There was T and his elder brother B, his mother and grandfather. T’s mother was a dark gypsy-like lady. I don’t know if there was a Mr W. The third house was a bungalow and housed an elderly couple.

Natalie - My Mum painted this in watercolours when she was about nine years old.

Ours was a very simple cottage. There were four rooms on the ground floor, a larder under the stairs, and two upstairs with skylights.. There was no electricity or gas. We had a range in the kitchen, and there was a big copper to wash clothes though I don’t think we ever used it. I think my mother boiled a pudding in it once. There was a hand pump for water over the sink. I had baths in a big saucer bath which sat on the kitchen floor in front of the range. I We also had an tin oil stove with a flimsy oven which balanced on top of it. We used oil lamps and candles. Once my father rigged up an electric light using a car battery, which we thought was very exciting. There was no inside lavatory of course, we had an Elsan in a hut down the garden. Somebody came to empty it into the ditch from time to time. Newspapers on a string, of course. And spiders. But it didn’t smell, except of the damp whitewashed walls. In the cottage we had pots under the beds for use during the night. There was quite a long garden at the side. We had rabbits in a hutch which had an old wooden lavatory seat for a door. We also had three ducks, called Wilfred, Keppel and Betty. We used to move their run to different parts of the lawn, to save the grass. So we had eggs, which was a luxury. We preserved them in waterglass (whatever that is) in a bucket. Near the back door there was a Victoria Plum tree . Further up the garden there were apple trees, blackberry bushes and vegetable beds.

In my bedroom I had a Morrison shelter in which I slept. It took up most of the room. It was iron, painted blue, and had wired panels at the sides and foot. .

After we had been at the cottage for about two years, my father became very ill with the tuberculosis that probably started in the first war. He went to hospital and apart from one occasion when he waved to me from a window I never saw him again. I sort of knew he was dying but when my mother told me he was dead I was suddenly very upset. She told me when we were walking home from school one day. She kept telling me how Daddy would want me to be good and grow up well and happy, and I remember I said .‘why, is he dead then?’ which was pretty unkind of me. I think I wanted to get it over with. He was buried in the churchyard at Chobham, and they put a birdbath on the grave with two stone birds, and ‘DADDY’ chiselled on it.

After my father died we stayed at the cottage. I went to several different schools including a horrid private boarding school where they made you eat everything on your plate before you could have any pudding, including the fat. They also gave you a kind of porridge for breakfast made of pearl barley. I’ve hated pearl barley ever since. I only stayed there one term, because I got so thin. Later I went to Chobham village school, which had only two classes, juniors and seniors. (This was when the school leaving age was fourteen) I had my midday lunch with a Mrs Cox in the village. One day when times were hard she gave me just mashed potato and oxo gravy. I said “Is that all?” and she said “Yes, and just for that you can have two helpings!” I also went to a convent in Woking for a bit, which was all right except for Netball. Altogether I went to six different schools before I was eleven.

I usually walked home from school, I don’t know how far, it felt like a couple of miles. Because we were quite close to Bagshot Heath there were a lot of tank manouvres. I was terrified of tanks and used to hide in the ditch if I heard one coming.

T took me mushrooming in the fields at the back, and we cooked them on the range in his kitchen. One day he asked me (we were both about seven) if I knew where babies came from? I said I didn’t so he said mysteriously “Boys and girls bums touch” a bit of sex education I instantly rejected.

At the end of the war we had to leave the cottage, which made me very sad. I suppose it was derequisitioned. I went to stay with my Grandmother and Auntie Jean in Lightwater. I had spent several school summer holidays there. I had extra arithmetic lessons in somebody’s house nearby. One day the tutor asked me what I thought of the budget. I was nonplussed. We were going to move to London and I had to have extra help to enable me to get into a good school there. I was no good at maths, because when I was at the Cottage I had mumps and missed long division. It took me thirty years to catch up.

What I think of as Granny’s house really belonged to Auntie Jean and Uncle Jon. It was quite large, had four bedrooms and three big rooms downstairs and a kitchen and scullery. There was a big entrance hall with a staircase which went round three sides, with a landing all round. Granny had the back sitting room overlooking the garden. It was a very Victorian room and had a lot of heavy furniture in it. The big square table had a chenille cloth. I still have the large glass fronted cabinet which sat on top of another even larger cupboard. They were rumoured to have been made by my grandfather . In those days the glass one contained books, including the complete works of Scott and Dickens and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I read anything I could find. Once I was halfway through ‘The promise; by Pearl Buck, and auntie Jean said it was unsuitable for me (I was 8) and took it away. So I read ‘Ivanhoe’ and ‘The Talisman’ and Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Alan Poe, which was much more frightening. There, or at the Cottage I had a set of Children’s Encyclopedias, which became very important to me. In the front sitting room. Uncle Jon played the organ, when he was home on leave from the Air Force, and there was a big wooden organ which took up a good deal of the space. In the kitchen there was a bell cabinet on the wall, for the servants who used to be there, though I can’t think where they stayed. There was a large garden and two gates, one labelled for tradesmen. At the bottom of the garden there was a collection of three outbuildings, two sheds and a old green summerhouse. Behind them was a gate into what we called the paddock, an area full of blackberry bushes. It must have been quite a superior property at one time. It doesn’t exist now, it was pulled down some time in the 1960s when the road was widened.

In 1946 we went to London. Somehow my mother had managed to get a flat in the top half of a house in Crouch End, 4 Fairfield Gardens. She was now working as a secretary in a company in the City which made nurses’ uniforms. I managed to get a place at the City of London School for Girls, (in spite of my arithmetic). It wasn’t easy to get anywhere to live in London at that time. The flat wasn’t self contained, so we shared the bathroom with Mr and Mrs A, the elderly owners, who lived downstairs. Mrs A used to get cross with her husband for cutting his corns in the bathroom. We had a kitchen-dining room, a sitting room and two bedrooms. The place was quite shabby but we got some painting and decorating done through the Government’s war-damage scheme. You had a choice of two or three wall papers, and cream paintwork. I remember the top bedroom had blue paper with pink apple blossom all over it. When windows had been broken, and many were, they were replaced with cheap frosted glass until it was changed some years later The bathroom had a huge geyser in it. Our kitchen was at the back and it was possible to get out of the window to sit on the leaded flat roof outside, where we also hung the washing. Electricity was primitive. We used to plug the iron into a light socket above the kitchen table. After a few years the As moved out and the house was sold to a lady who was a district nurse. She travelled about in a tiny three-wheeler. She lived downstairs with her family, and I don’t think she approved of me. She got a telephone (I expect she was a priority user) which was on a party line, and we were able to share it. Mountview 2952. It was kept on a shelf halfway up the stairs, so it wasn’t exactly private. and I used to get into trouble for taking too long on it. Gradually the flat became more comfortable, and the decorations were better. But of course there was no such thing as central heating and in winter sitting in front of the gas fire you roasted in front and froze behind. But we still had the oak table and the windsor chairs and the Welsh dresser. We bought a piano and my mother played it; she went to Morley College for evening classes. I had lessons too, but was never much good. I stayed in that flat until I grew up and left home.

I eagerly await the next installment. Come on Mum, get writing! - Natalie