Book review – American Wife

I haven’t really talked much about books on this blog so far, aside from crafty ones. The truth is that between working, parenting, crafting, and blogging I get very little time to read. It is a great source of frustration to me that I can’t crochet and read a the same time. I do love reading though, and have always got a stack of books on my bedside table.

I’m a massive advocate of the library for books. My first port of call after discovering a book title is the online library catalogue. Ordering books online in this county is completely free. If the library doesn’t have the book you require you can even put a request in for them to buy it.

Anyway, I decided to carve out a bit of reading time and picked up American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s a weighty book, which is great because I didn’t want it to end. The blurb tells us that the story is about a fictional First Lady of the United States, Alice Blackwell, nee Lindgren, but in actual fact very little of the book is set within that era. Most of the book is about Alice’s life leading up to that time, starting as a young teen, continuing into her 30s when she gets married, continuing through married life until her husband becomes President of The United States, or POTUS for those of us in the know. Or in fact just those of us who are obsessed with the TV show The West Wing.

Early in the book Alice is involved in tragedy that results in the death of another person at her hands. Sittenfeld demonstrates how the tragedy haunts Alice without unduly dwelling on it. We follow her early career as a librarian, devotedly sharing her love of books with young children. When she meets Charlie Blackwell her life is changed forever, both for better and worse. The charismatic Charlie enlivens the serious protagonist, and her unswerving devotion to him enables her to navigate their relationship through the difficult relationship with her in laws and Charlie’s battle with alcohol. When Alice marries Charlie she is initiated into a world of money, power and unspoken rules. Charlie’s apparent lack of ability to stick at a career and insular view of the world make him an unlikely candidate for President, but money and influence seem to be all that is required to secure the top job. Alice is unwillingly drafted into a world where her every move, past and present, is under scrutiny. She struggles to suppress her liberal views while residing in a Republican White House.

This is a book that focuses less on the big life events, skating over births, deaths, marriage and even elections, and instead trains a lens on contrasting ways of life, from small town to big house. It is grounded in the emotions of the protagonist. There is little sense of beginning, middle and end; rather several windows into a journey on which Alice strives for peace and equilibrium. There is a sense of lack of fulfilment on behalf of Alice, a life subsumed by her gregarious and charming husband. But the story is ultimately one of love and devotion, and not just from Alice. The reader finds themself satisfied that Charlie himself is in no doubt as to the qualities of his wife that render her his superior in many ways. “All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power” Alice’s thought is one of my favourite lines in the book. It represents how a wife’s love is unerring in the face of character flaws, but the regard of the public for their elected officials is fickle. While a wife not only remembers the early hedonistic days of a relationship, but uses the memories to ride out the difficult times, the general public have short memories, conveniently forgetting the early promise shown by their leaders, and that it was their vote that put them in power.

The book is actually a little concealed representation of the life of Laura Bush, wife of George “Dubya”. Given the numerous sex scenes described in the book it might be best to scrub that fact for your mind. The childhood accident, liberal views and antipathy towards publicity are all true of the real life First Lady. I haven’t read Laura Bush’s official memoir, but it is by all accounts pretty dull, and I can’t help think that with Sittenfeld’s astute emotional insight, American Wife might almost be a more true life reflection of life married to Dubya. The fictional Charlie Blackwell is certainly slightly more endearing than the true life figure.

Having finally carved out some time to read this book, I found it difficult to make time for anything else. I reluctantly conducted the bare minimum of parenting activities, feeling instinctively that the sight of me engrossed in a book was a far better life lesson than me pretending to be a shop keeper.

This book has been out a good three years already, what can I say? I’m a pioneer. I expect most of you have already read it. If you haven’t, you definitely should. It will almost certainly be in your local library. I can’t wait till I have time to read another book. Maybe next year!

50 shades of crochet

Well, just one for now. After 2 years of looking up at generic Ikea paper lamp shades I decided it was time for a bit of creativity. I’d seen a few examples of crochet lampshades online and decided to give it a go. I managed to find two bargainous lampshades for £3.50 at a charity shop.

I started by just crocheting a row of doubles around the bottom of the frame, which was pretty tricky.

Crocheting with the frame between my legs was pretty cumbersome.

It has taken quite a long time given that it’s not exactly a portable project.

The stitch is shell stitch. I didn’t follow any sort of pattern, I just crocheted until it felt a bit loose then decreased a few stitches. I found a couple of good videos to show how to increase and decrease the shell stitch.

I finished with a shell scallop around the bottom, which I fear makes it a bit twee (as if a crocheted lamp shade isn’t twee enough!). Twee isn’t really my style but it needed something to finish it off.

Finished!

In situ

I’m really pleased with it. I still have another frame so I need to decide what I want to do with that one. Of course, I will keep you posted!

Hob Nob or Jammie Dodger

The folks at Nice Sit Down and a Cup of Tea are even more biscuit geeks than I am!

Early readers of my blog might remember my Meditation on Tea post. Well, the one thing that can can make a cup of tea even better is a good biscuit.

I fancy myself as little bit of a biscuit connoisseur actually, and I think the British do biscuits rather well. Yes, America has given us the large, chewy cookie; Italy has given us the biscotti, which I don’t particularly like; but we Brits are the champions of the humble biscuit.

“What’s your favourite biscuit?” became a common question posed to the politicians who swarmed Mumsnet during the last general election. Gordon Brown’s seemingly innocent overlooking of the question might have lead to his undoing. It certainly lead to a new biscuit smiley on the site which has come to represent a passive-aggressive “no comment”. Last year, Sainsbury’s conducted a survey of people’s favourite biscuits. Inexplicably, the overall favourite was the dry and bland digestive. Readers of the Guardian apparently chose ginger and chocolate cookies as their biscuit of choice, and Sun readers like a pink wafer. While I am all for freedom of choice, I fear I may struggle to remain friend’s with someone who chooses a custard cream as their favourite biscuit.

What is my favourite you ask? Well, that’s rather a complex question. I love a good luxury biscuit, like a chocolate chip shortbread from the bakery. or our family favourite, Fox’s Shortcake Rounds. But they are more chocolate than biscuit, which perhaps defeats the object. Surely anyone would chose a lovely rich chocolatey fancy biscuit over anything else? Perhaps more revealing is the everyday biscuit barrel choice you make. In that case it would have to be a Bourbon Cream every single time. Admittedly they taste less of chocolate than you might imagine, and they, like most biscuits, can be quite dry (this was initially the point of biscuits, the word biscuit comes from the Latin words bis (twice) and coquere, coctus (to cook, cooked), and, hence, means “twice-cooked”) and therefore it is imperative that it should be dunked in a cup of tea. For even more biscuity trivia and reviews check out Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down. 

I may lose followers by revealing this questionable habit, but I couldn’t write a blog post on biscuits without giving you my ultimate biscuit tip. Make a cup of tea. Take a Twix (which for the purposes of this post I am considering a biscuit product, it’s that grey area along with the Kit Kat). Bite off each end of the Twix, then, ensuring your tea is not too hot, use the Twix to suck up the tea. Finally, carefully eat the remaining melted, soggy goodness, taking care not to drop it into your tea. This, my friends, is a Twix Fix. Your life will never be the same again.

Sadly for me, my years of eating biscuits with gay abandon have caught up with my waist line so I steer clear of the biscuit tin unless it is a very special occasion. Fortunately, biscuity appetites can be satisfied calorie free with these fantastic hand-printed biscuit cushions from Nikki McWilliams:

Nice biscuits are not the Nicest but I bet they’re Nice to sit on

I don’t care for a Tunnock’s Teacake myself, but I do love this cushion

Based in Dundee, there is a strong Tunnock’s focus to her product line, but she still pays homage to the humble bourbon.

Not for dunking but still delectible

My one year bloggiversary

Happy Birthday Banner from LollipopsAndPussycat at Etsy

So, I’ve just missed my one year bloggiversary. The 16th July 2011 was when, after much deliberation over the right name, I launched my WordPress blog. And on the 17th I made my first post. I’m a bit miffed I forgot and missed marking the actual day, but unsurprised. DH and I never remember our own wedding anniversary. It’s usually him that remembers, but not until about 2pm on the actual day. We are sadly quite unsentimental about it. But when we do remember we do try to take just a moment to appreciate what it means.

And what has my year of blogging meant to me? Well, firstly it has meant making friends (in the random Internet sense of course!) like Lynn at Salt&Caramel, Claire at In Again Out Again, Mum of All Trades and LittleMe at Pint Sized Rants and many more. And it has meant becoming close to friends I already had like Stitch This, and the irrepressible-can’t-understand-why-she-doesn’t-blog-herself Georgia, both of whom I have lured into a life of crime in the seedy underworld of Yarn Bombing.

I have kindled a new found creativity, challenging myself with the things that I make, incentivised by the opportunity to show off my work. I have also enjoyed the actual writing of my blog, picking a topic, researching, running the ideas through my head until they come together in a coherent form.

I have found a political voice, joining campaigns, trying to spread messages that I think are important and trying to change people’s attitudes to things like rape and young women’s sexual attitudes.

 

I have found and read hundreds of others blogs and been inspired by other peoples lives and experiences, including the perseverance in the face of illness and disfigurement from Ali at Sweetest Thing, Thoughts From The Kitchen Sink and More Than Jam and Jerusalem.

Then there’s the crafty folk, Jennifer’s Little World, Made by yours Truly, So Resourceful, Crochet Time, Skulls and Ponies and Shiny Pigeon among the many blogs that I read.

I have enjoyed the many comments that you have all posted, many of them have made my day and boosted my confidence.

One last shout out and that is to the Mumsnet Bloggers Network, who inspired me to start up my blog and have publicised and supported my blog. I’m also very grateful to the network members who made me feel like part of their community.

No, please don’t play the music! I haven’t finished my speech…

I just wanted to end by saying I have enjoyed every minute of blogging. I hope you have enjoyed reading it. I’m eternally amazed that so many people are interested in anything I have to say. Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting and thanks to those of you who write your own amazing blogs.

I’m Peppa Pig [oink], this is my brother George [oink], this is Mummy Pig [oink, pop, clink, pour, slurp, sigh]

After nearly crying in despair at the price of my Sainsbury’s online shop last month, I decided to venture to Asda. Now mostly I hate Asda as a shopping experience but our new one isn’t too bad. And, while I love internet shopping, the lure of the reduced section is enough to make me brave the horror of real life shopping with kids. And Asda’s reduced section is huge, even early in the day.

Seeing as Asda’s prices aren’t as eye watering as Sainsbury’s, I decided, as a break from the norm, to buy a Peppa Pig cake making set. Normally I never buy these things as the instructions are usually “add one egg, oil and water” and I realise I have basically just paid for flour and sugar (plus humectant, E646, and other yummy stabilisers) at 5 times the price. But I thought the Peppa Pig one might amuse the kids for about 10 minutes, and the lack of weighing and measuring required stops me having to be a complete control freak. Look, I know I’m supposed to be educating them, but really I just want them to be quiet for 10 minutes.

So yesterday afternoon we had Betty’s special friend round, let’s call him Arthur, on account of him being dressed as a knight yesterday. You know, King Arthur and his Knights? I’m sure there is some kind of story there… I digress. Now Arthur isn’t Betty’s special friend in the “I love you” sense, more in the “I want to be you” sense. Betty is very much a tomboy (urgh, hate that word), she wants to be a boy (in the “I want to be a fairy, I want to be a Fireman sense” so temporary, I think). First time she went to Arthur’s house she came back dressed top to toe in Arthur’s clothes. Each time she goes there we seem to amass more and more of Arthur’s wardrobe, until one day I’m sure Arthur’s mum is going to go into his bedroom and find Betty in his bed pretending to be him and Arthur locked away, tied up in the shed, banging on the door where no one can here him… That is a scary, but very real possibility.

So…yes, Peppa Pig cakes! Yes, the kids were delighted to do a bit of baking. The mix comes in a packet to which you add an egg and a few tablespoons of water, which creates a pale running mixture, not unlike wallpaper paste, from which according to the box we will get 12 cup cakes. Now, I don’t want to get into the debate of cup cakes vs fairy cakes, suffice to say, what we made were not cup cakes. This is a cupcake:

Cupcake made by RubyRan on Flickr

I wasn’t convinced that we would get 12 cakes of any description out of the mix. But with judicious use of a spatula and 2 tiny spoonfuls of slop per cake we managed to at least cover the bottom of each cake case (provided in the box).

Just enough mixture to fill 12 cases (ok, I took this photo before the kids had finished)…

…but barely enough left over to lick the bowl – do the producers not understand the point of cake making at ALL?

Into the oven for 12-15 minutes. Now my oven is usually pretty aggressive but even after the the full 15 minutes these cakes looked pretty anaemic, but they were done at least. But they weren’t exactly filled with cup cakey goodness.

Again, these are NOT cupcakes

Fortunately, the Lilliputian nature of these cakes meant they cooled pretty quickly, so the whining about whether or not they were ready to ice was minimal. The “muddy” puddle icing required just a couple of teaspoons of water. Now, I’m not sure how long it took the food photographers (or digital editors) to create the muddy puddle on the picture, but it took the kids just minutes to create the mini swamps on their cakes and add the fondant toppers printed with grainy images of Peppa of George (though George has never worn a yellow outfit – I know, I have watched EVERY EPISODE – but maybe the blue colouring is slightly more rabid attack-inducing than the yellow).

These are Arthur’s muddy swamp cakes

Now for the taste test. Iris refused to eat one, so I tried hers. It was vile. Super sweet with the extra tang of raising agents (that will be the Glucono Delta Lactone then). Betty ate three (well, not at once, but throughout the day). The two older kids enjoyed them at least. I warned DH off them, but to be honest he’s not at fussy as I am. He once proclaimed that he preferred Dolmio to my homemade sauce)…he only made that mistake once though).

So overall pros and cons?

Pro: Easy for the kids to make with minimal parental control freakery
Con: Taste pretty grim (although this could be seen as a pro if you are on a diet and don’t want to be tempted)

Con: Stingy on the mixture means you can barely eek out enough mixture to fill all the cases
Pro: You can let the kids eat 3 cakes and therefore have less hanging round the house going stale

Pro: Keeps the kids entertained for about half an hour in total. Makes you feel like a Good Parent for embarking on wholesome and interactive activities
Con: You have to make up a ridiculous lie as to why you don’t want to eat one of their lovely creations. I suggest “Eating your favourite cartoon character would make mummy sad”, or just take one and throw it in the bin when they are not looking.

So, looking on the side of the box there is an address where you can send your feedback to Victoria Foods who make this product. I think I will send them this review. There is also a competition to send them the picture of your cakes and possibly win a prize. Hmm, if I send them the pictures along with this review Betty is unlikely to win, right? Well, if the (unspecified) is anything like the crap that they keep putting on the Peppa Pig comics it would be no loss. You have to enter the competition by post anyway by the looks of it, so that’s going to happen. [NOTE: You can actually email the competition entry but it only says so in the small print bizarrely]

I should point out that I have not been paid or incentivised in any way for this review. I stupidly bought the thing with my own pennies (£1 at Asda). I’d like to say that I’d I’ve learned my lesson and won’t buy these hideous cake mixes again, knowing that I can whip up delicious cakes in the same time for half the price. But with a long wet summer looming and two bored kids, I can’t promise that I won’t be seduced by an easy way to keep them occupied for half an hour, and satiating their desire for all things character related at the same time. It’s cheaper than the Peppa Pig comic at least.

Which I will probably buy anyway.

I can get nearly an hour’s peace out of a comic.

The Kindness of Strangers

In the last month I have received via Mumsnet*: an offer of a free holiday home for a week, some dried lavender, Estée Lauder Night Repair serum (that was a MN giveaway). Some ebooks and resources to improve my writing, some yarn to make so more blanket squares, and volunteers to try out a pattern I designed. That is just in the last month. From complete strangers.

When the above Mumsnetter recently offered my family the chance to stay in her house abroad she said “Not sure what I will tell my husband, probably that you are from university” because who would believe that people who have never met in real life could feel the need to do such a thing? It is testament to the generosity of Mumsnetters over the years (and the things that I have done in return) that my own husband didn’t bat an eyelid when I told him that a person from Mumsnet who I knew only by user name had made such an offer.

But my love for Mumsnet is not just cupboard love. It’s about more than the material things I have received. It is about the advice and support I have received in spades.

When I have been up at 3 in the morning crying because breastfeeding was going so badly, Mumsnetters have been there. When I had a home birth, not only did Mumnetters give me loads of advice in making the decision in the lead up, they were there cheering me on and doing virtual knitting in support while I posted between contractions.

I’ve cyber stalked Mumnetters and found them at my workplace, at my knitting group, and conversely I have converted my friends to the Cult of Mumsnet. Some people are very coy about their affiliation with the site in real life, partly to preserve their anonymity, and possibly partly because of the bad press it often gets.

Some of the criticisms are deserved. Mumsnet has gone through periods of turmoil where certain groups of posters have ruled the virtual playground. But these criticisms are true for many online forums, and as with every forum it has evolved, and grown.

A lot of the bad press it gets stems from bitterness and jealously. Liz Jones takes a crack or two at it on occasion, but her dazzling wit and astute observations (sorry, it’s hard to convey sarcasm in the written word) continues to be outpaced by the shrewd and scintillating posters who chose to put their brains and words to good use on Mumsnet rather than waste it on the misogynistic heap of shite that is the Daily Mail.

During the last general election, the media hailed it as the Mumsnet election, and politicians and politicos flocked to the site to woo the votes of its posters. It was mostly media hype, but a nod to the rise to prominence of the female story in the slightly more egalitarian world of the Internet (unless you count the Guardian Forums). But in the same way that the media and government used Mumsnet as a symbol of all women, so too is Mumsnet used as a way to beat all women down. When journalists and comedians mock Mumsnet, what they are really mocking is women’s freedom of speech. Ho ho ho, let’s laugh at the women who think their lives are meaningful and who think they have something important to say. God forbid that mums engage in anything but tending to their children and husbands. It shows complete ignorance and, at the very least, lack of proper research. For you don’t have to look very far on Mumsnet to find women (some men, but it is mostly women) making a real difference in the world, whether it is advising another mum how she can continue to breastfeed her baby, making blankets for the recently bereaved, or taking part in numerous campaigns to bust rape myths, improve miscarriage care, and improve reproductive choices in third world countries.

On a personal note, I truly believe Mumsnet has made me a better parent, you know, apart from all the time I’ve spent neglecting them. If it wasn’t for Mumsnet I wouldn’t have stuck with breastfeeding, I wouldn’t have done Baby Led Weaning with my children, I wouldn’t have worn my second child in a sling for so many months. That’s not to say that those choices themselves make me a better parent, but knowing about these choices, finding that there is more out there than Gina Ford and naughty steps, has given me the confidence to make the right choices for me and my children. And that’s not to say that all Mumsnetters are the sling wearing, lentil-weaving type; far from it. There are many Mumsnetters who would rather poke themselves in the eye with a blunt pencil than wap their baps out to feed their children, or who would rather spend an evening at a Peter Andre autobiography book launch than even to discuss parenting online. There are even people on Mumsnet who don’t have children. And that’s the thing about Mumsnetters, they are so diverse that it is impossible to even try and levy any sort of criticism against them as a community.

If this post sounds familiar, it’s because I have written a paean to Mumsnet before, when I started contributing to the Mumsnet Woolly Hugs Blankets (if you are bored by my writing yet another sycophantic blog post, then tough, it’s my blog!) Once again I find myself with another couple of balls of yarn, donated by yet another stranger, to make squares for a blanket of someone I don’t know. But I don’t need to know her. I just know she has lost a child and needs support. God forbid it should ever happen to me, but I know that Mumsnet would be the place I would turn to in my time of need.

*Warning: do not confuse Mumsnet with Netmums. It’s like confusing Father Jack from “Father Ted” with the Pope. You know, if the Pope said “hun” a lot and used smileys.

The sun will not make you happier, no really, it won’t…

Oh look, it’s raining again. Look, I’m used to rain. I spent 5 years living in North Wales. I don’t let it confine me to the house. But what pisses me off the very most about our complete washout summer is the lack of ability to plan anything that requires it to, you know, not be raining.

We have already had to cancel a camping trip so far. Yes, we are fair weather campers, but really, there is nothing fun about being stuck in a tent, cold and damp with two children under 5. What sort of holiday is that. Not that I consider camping a holiday. Don’t get me wrong, I really like camping, but in order for something to be described as a holiday it has to meet certain criteria.

1) a phrase book should be required. This does not count.
2) there should be some sort of extreme weather, preferably sun, but snow is also acceptable.
3) there should be a body of water involved somehow, swimming pool, lake, ocean. Puddles do not count.
4) there must be a real bed to sleep in, not shared by either of my children.

So you see camping does not meet the criteria for a holiday, but it is a break at least. And the only one we can afford. But it is impossible to plan a trip for the summer.

Also most summer activities to keep children amused involve being outside, farm parks, theme parks, play parks. This is especially true for free or very cheap activities. As it is we will be spending most of the time at the library.

I love the seasons. The fresh crunch of autumn; cold but cosy winter; the feeling of rejuvenation that spring brings; and the welcome warmth and sunshine of summer, all the more coveted because of its scarcity. But it is times like this when I wish I lived in California, or somewhere else with eternal sunshine. There is something so cheering about the sun and blue skies. Even the drive to work is significantly improved by its morning rays, with the windows down and the Isley Brothers on the stereo.

But psychologists insist that people who live in sunny places are not happier than those who don’t. They call it the hedonic adaption, the theory that everyone has a set point of happiness, and while things like lottery wins, promotions, and sunnier climes might temporarily increase our happiness, pretty soon our happiness levels return to their state pre-change. As you life circumstances improve, so do your desires and expectations.

While I get the theory, I’m dubious of its veracity. I’m fairly certain that if you took away my money worries, I had a cleaner, and a glittering career, I would in actual fact be significantly happier. I’m sure people who have fled lives lived under the threat of domestic violence, brutal dictatorships or abject poverty, are in fact actually happier

And tell me that I would not be happier here

Yeah, I’d be totally fed up here after a while…

than here:

Behind the scenes of a yarn bombing

So, it’s about time I did a proper write up of Tuesday night’s yarn bombing. I’d been planning it for weeks, spending most evenings making bollard cosies and lamp post tags.

We have adopted the Montpellier Chapter as our den of iniquity. It’s a very “naice” place (originally chosen because it was the only place NOT showing the football). This was the second time we had been in there, crocheting away, the table strewn with wool. The waiter came in periodically, a faint look of bemusement on his face, but unfailingly polite. We finished up our creations there with a cup of tea. Actually Georgia was still sewing hers up as we were walking to our target!

Our initial target was a big public garden in the town. Wednesday was the start of the local music festival and all the festivals are based in this garden. Well, nearly all of them. We turned up at the gardens with nary a marquee or even a tent in sight. I quickly checked on my iPhone to see if I’d got the right dates. I had, but no mention of location. Stitch This suddenly had a brainwave that the music festival is usually held at the Town Hall. So we traipsed in the pouring rain to the Town Hall. “Are there even any bollards near the Town Hall?” I wailed, bollards being central to this yarn bomb. “There’d better be. I’ve just spent two chuffing hours on this train finishing this thing getting weird looks” replied Stitch This. Except she didn’t say “chuffing”.

Through an alley way and outside the Town Hall we found a bollard-tactic vista and got cracking straight away. It was getting late for us poor tired mothers of young children (sorry to ruin the mystique for you there).

It was lashing with rain, but it didn’t really matter. It just made things a bit awkward that we couldn’t put our bags down while we were sewing up. Instead we were manically running around, swapping scissors and yarn needles.

Most of the bollard cosies had been pre-sewn to make it easier to just slip them over but a couple still had to been sewn on as did the lamp post tags.

This was Stitch This’s first foray into yarn bombing and she was giddy with excitement. Her yarn bombs were a green sea creature closely resembling a head on a stick, and a magic wand with the words “Music is Magic” sewn on, and even some gold sparks! The wand was actually a mash up of some UFOs including a scarf of doom.

I ummed and ahhed over whether or not to add a tag. It seemed very self promoting and I thought it might ruin the air of mystery. However I put a lot of work into the project and it would be nice to have more visitors to my blog. In the end I did and I added a message saying that if people wanted to take the yarn bombs to please think about it and remember the yarn can be undone a recycled. I love yarn bombing, even if it has become less subversive and more ubiquitous. But the only slightly negative comment I have ever had was questioning the wastefulness of all that yarn, which was a good point. I have to hope that people who take the yarn bombs do so because they want them for decorative purposes, and if not hopefully my note will make them think twice.

All in all they made for a great sight. I haven’t actually seen them in broad daylight, but I have been updated by various Twitter observers that they are still in situ. The Cheltenham Town Hall staff were very pleased with them and have been tweeting about them and putting pictures on their Facebook page.

Picture from the Cheltenham Town Hall Face Book page

More from Cheltenham Town Hall Face Book page

My new posse and I have big plans for the next festival, and we are going to keep meeting at the Montpellier Chapter (you think if I mention them enough times they will give us a discount?) so watch this space…

Happy Fourth of July: Yarn bomb part 2

Happy Fourth of July everyone! Georgia decided to celebrate America’s independence from England by helping me yarn bomb. I taught her to crochet about a month ago and look what she made!

This is the first thing she’s ever crocheted! What a star (spangled banner)!

Town Hall Yarn Bomb

So, I’ve just got back from my yarn bombing. I’m wet. Very wet. And it’s late (well, it’s late for me!) so this is just a quick update. In the end my posse consisted of me, Georgia and Stitch This, and later Georgia’s friend who came to see what the fuss was about and was commandeered into taking photos, while the rest of us dashed about furiously threading with needles, cheating with garden wire, and stepping in puddles. All in all we deposited 16 yarn bombs, large and small. The above is just a sample, I will try and get some better photos before they all disappear.