babies babies babies

Babies are on my mind rather a lot at the moment. The one my little sister HB is having in November; the future king born on Monday; the one I'd like to have.

This was on the pavement in the middle of Champ de Mars, near the Eiffel Tower. No other context, but I imagine it came from a pro-life demonstration. Just a snap, but I like the graphic simplicity of the drawing.

dog tired

It's been pretty hot (ok, very hot) lately and this is how I feel on hot days.

Fortunately I can flop on a bed, not hard paving and I don't have to get dragged around the city by my human. 

We took a lot of dog photos in Paris. There are lots of dogs who live there (I only saw one cat) and they all need walks. No-one cleans up after them though. :(

on the pavement

This isn't a recent image and it predates our acquisition of 2 Nikon DSLRs and a huge number of lenses, but it's one of my favourite pictures of Sophia.

This was last summer at the Jubilee street party in my parents' road. The road was blocked off and filled with tables and chairs, music and people dancing. There were chalks and lots of kids (and grown-ups too) making pictures on the road. Sophia was about 2 and a half. About old enough to enjoy the bouncy castle and tentatively join in with the games of the other little girls. They made a den under under one of the tables and sat it in doing drawing with felt tips.

Here Sophia is carefully watching what the other girls and doing and getting up the courage to go and join in.

I like the chalk drawing background and the way the adult in the picture is just a pair of legs. I also like the blues - the paper, her dress, the chalk and the way they contrast with her skin. The three-quarters profile means you can see her gorgeous long eyelashes and her watchful expression.

I think there's a little too much space to the right hand side. It would be good to be a little lower so the picture is in Sophia's space rather than from above. Would also be good to have a sense in the photo of what it is she's looking at.



I think the angle in this one is a little more dynamic, though again it's from above and there's no sense of what she's looking at. It's more colourful (the rainbow she's sitting on, echoed in the felt tips).  I'm not sure which I prefer.

Neither image is perfect, but I think for what' are basically snaps on a compact camera, they're OK. What do you think?

a new way of seeing

I haven't been blogging much, but I have been doing a lot of this.




This is how I see Rob most of the time when we're out and about. We spent 11 days in Paris last month and he spent most of his time with a camera permanently attached to his eye. (When he wasn't having intense debates with his friend Mathieu, that is). And I have a camera too.

I have hundred of images, all taken in the last year or so, so I'm going to attempt to reboot the blog by showing you some of them and telling you a little about how each one came to be.

BEDM - fail

I am giving up on blogging every day in May. I know, only day 6, that's a bit pathetic. But I'm tired and not organised enough. Sorry.

BEDM - Fit and Healthy

Fit and healthy is something I am really not. :(

Which is a cop-out of a post to write at 10.15pm. I will elaborate tomorrow.

This is a post for Rosalilium's Blog Every Day in May.

BEDM - Five Favourite Blogs

I'm out for the day at the zoo, but here are five of my faves:

Cakies: Rubyellen blogs about her life with four small daughters in California. She has much beautiful taste and style. I like the fact she's honest about her life, trying to present the not-so presentable bits as well as gorgeous interiors and crafts.

The Yarn Harlot: One of the best known knit bloggers. Stephanie is funny and wise about knitting and life.

Light and Momentary: I've been reading Jaime's blog since before it was this blog. I'm in awe of how she does life with 4 sons, 1 daughter, 1 husband and an academic career.

Domestic Sluttery: Good fun, lifestyle blogging. My daily dose of pretty things to want. I appreciate their regular round ups of fashion for tall and plus size girls.

It's my Life: I couldn't make a list of favourites without my lovely sister Debs. (My other sister Hannah has a blog, but I can't remember when she last wrote on it, and neither can she, I think. Blog again, HB!). Go there for cute pictures and stories about my nephew and niece. They're awesome!

What are your favourite blogs?

This is a post for Rosalilium's Blog Every Day in May.

BEDM - A day in the life

This is an atypical Friday for me. Normally I'm at work, but it's been a tiring week and I had some spare flexi hours, so I decided to take Friday off to relax and recuperate.

I meant to sleep in, but ended up waking around 9. We've got black out curtains in the bedroom, making it every dark. That means we don't wake up too early, but it does mean I can't see what the weather's like without getting out of bed. I guess that's not a huge hardship. :) Breakfast was muesli with milk, yogurt and banana and a cup of freshly made coffee. I either make coffee with my espresso machine or an Aeropress. The expresso machine isn't working properly at the moment - the control for the steam wand stopped working and it's waiting for a new one. That means the Aeropress gets more use as there doesn't seem much point firing up the machine if there's no frothy milk. :(

This morning there was a big pile of washing up to do. Rob's been doing most of the washing up lately, but we were both tired last night so it didn't get done. I listened to the end of Woman's Hour and the serial and washed up. We've just had a new oven put in. The old one was noisy and didn't work well. It was a fan oven, but didn't heat evenly and the noise! Now we have a shiny new Bosch oven. We split the cost with our landlords. The new oven recommends you turn it on for an hour at full power before using it for the first time, so I did. It's so quiet! It smells of new metal and chemicals.

Our landlord came round to fix a new doorstop for the front door. The old one is positioned such that it doesn't stop the door banging into the fuse box which is mounted on the wall above the doorstop. Bad planning by someone. The flat's full of things like that - little details that the builders and fitters didn't do as well as they could have done.Still, it's a roof and walls and it's home. I decided to bake a cake to christen the new oven. This chocolate cake recipe looked good. So I mixed and scraped and into the oven it goes. I've been making dough for dumplings. Rob's been asking for Chinese dumplings since we watched this video of Matt Granger making dumplings. I intended to buy some dumpling wrappers from one of the Chinese food shops on Mill Road, but googling around, it looks pretty easy to make your own, if fiddly. So, dumpling wrappers, 20 of them, are waiting on a plate in the fridge for me to fill them with pork mince.

While the cake's in the oven, I went to the Co-op for more eggs, veg to stir fry with the dumplings, bananas and a few other bits and pieces. It's beautifully sunny. I wore sandals for the first time this year. I loved the feeling of cycling in the sunshine. The Co-op's not busy and I'm soon back again. The cake isn't quite done. I put some knitted socks and winter accessories that need washing in a bowl of water and Eucalan to soak. I eat rolls from the Co-op with Boursin.

Now lunch is done, the cake is cooked, the wet and clean socks and things are hanging on an airer. I need to wash up again, fill the dumplings. Shall I make a batch of cupcakes? It seems I'm having a very domestic day. Though perhaps what I really need to do is nap. Back to finish this off later I think.

Edited at 2030: So, I finished off my dumplings. The first few looked terrible, but they got better. I washed up again. Rob came home, I cooked the dumplings, and served them with stir-fried vegetables. The verdict? Well done for making them, but the wrappers are too thick, the ratio of meat to wrapper is wrong. So, more work needed. Maybe I'll go hunting for pre-made dumping wrappers and try again.

We're watching Lost together in the evenings. Rob watched it when it was first broadcast, but I haven't seen it before. We're about 8 episodes into Season 2. No spoilers please! Our Lost watching was interrupted by spotting a small bird picking shoots off the curry plant in our window box. It looks pretty. (I identified it as a goldfinch with some help from the internets). It flew off, but a few minutes later, it came back. There followed a time of Rob sitting on the sofa with his camera, waiting for it to come back and pose nicely for him. It did return, but alas, the camera settings were wrong and the pictures he got look like "an 80s webcam" according to him. Oh well. Maybe it will come back again.

Since then, I've been pottering at processing photos and Rob's been watching Youtube videos about computer games, from the sounds coming from the other room. A fairly typical evening. In a bit, I think I'll have a bath and go to bed early. We're going to the Zoo tomorrow and I'd like to be awake to enjoy it.

This is a post for Rosalilium's Blog Every Day in May.

BEDM - Spring is here!

At last! It's felt like a long winter. I always struggle in the darkness and cold of winter, but this last one seemed worse than I remember. Lights helped. I have a Philips sunrise alarm clock which gradually lights up the room with a warm sunrise glow. I also have a small bright light box which I used ever morning at breakfast. These two things made a difference, more difference than I expected, in enabling me to get up each day and get going.

But in truth, there's nothing like the real warmth and light of spring sunshine. Mornings and evenings are lighter now and it lifts my mood enormously. I love watching the flowers and trees bursting into life. Now is the time of magnolia, cherry blossom, daffodils and tulips. Of course, with the blossom comes hayfever for me. I'm allergic to tree pollen, I think and sneeze from March to May. It could be worse. The itchy eyes and streaming nose are easily treated with Loratadine and they're gone by the summer.

Spring is a time of hope and I'm trying to be hopeful in a few things right now. It's not easy, but Spring reminds me to hope.

This is a post for Rosalilium's Blog Every Day in May.

BEDM - 5 lines

Five lines makes me think of a musical stave. I learned to read music at school, learning to play the recorder and the cello; the treble and the bass clef. Later, I had piano lessons and attempted to read and play both at once. It's hard. The left hand and the right moving independently, producing sounds to complement one another.

The dots and sticks are so familiar to me, I forget I had to learn them. I still use them, now to sing from, though my sight-singing isn't great. I suspect I mostly learn tunes by ear, but the music in front of me is a good reminder when I can't remember the tune properly.

I don't know where this is going. My writing muscles are long unused and my blogging skills are rusty. Still, that's the point of using 31 days of prompts. Getting back in the habit.

This is a post for Rosalilium's Blog Every Day in May.

*poof*

All right then. I have not blogged in ages, but I'd like to get back to it. Elizabeth of Rosalilium set up a Blog every day in May thingy and I signed up. So let's see how it goes.

dust bunnies

Oh dear! It's been a very long time, hasn't it. What has happened?

• I have a job. Since May I have been working 4 (short) days a week. I started on a 5 month contract and about a month ago it was made permanent.
• I am feeling a lot better. Having a job and a routine and a reason to get out of the house each day clearly helps me keep my ME under control. The first couple of months of working were very hard. I'd come home from work and sleep for an hour and I'd be exhausted at the end of the week. But over time, that got better. I've found a working pattern that suits me (4 5.5 hour days, day off on Wednesday, a flexi time system that makes dealing with the odd bad day much easier) and it's sustainable. This is pretty huge, really.
• I am not enjoying winter much. We're getting a couple of light boxes (an alarm clock and a portable light box) to see if that will help me.

Otherwise, life continues to plod on. It's ok. Not dramatic, not terrible, just life. Actually, thinking of the drama (especially health drama) of the last two years, that's a very good thing.

two tiny triumphs and a footnote which threatens to overwhelm them

Two small things which are probably totally obvious to most people, but which I have only just realised today and which made me happy on a stressful¹ day:

* If I use waterproof mascara (this astoundingly good value one in brown/black), I can wear it all day and not get black smudges under my eyes.

* If I place a plate over the top of the bowl when microwaving frozen sweetcorn, I don't get sweetcorn all over the microwave.

1: Our flat is currently somewhat chaotic due to our discovering mould in our (lovely, tres expensive) mattress a week ago. This has meant the disposal of the old mattress, the purchase of a new mattress, lots and lots of cleaning things with bleach (mostly carried out by Rob as I am deemed too high risk to be playing with noxious chemicals (too high risk because of my health I mean, not too high risk because I'm clumsy (although he might have had that in mind too))), the repainting of a wall (to be carried out tomorrow) and a new bedroom carpet (due Saturday). Hence currently half the contents of the bedroom are in the living room (to be joined by the other half before the carpet man comes) and we're sleeping on the sofa. This is all a little bit stressful, but at least we know when it will end. Although I still need to buy a new mattress protector and a blackout blind. (Love this one, very tempted by this one. Of course neither is currently in stock in the size we need. Any thoughts?)

lost things

A list of things I once owned, which I have lost or got rid of and wish I still owned.

* Eyelash curlers
* Purple false eyelashes
* A blue t-shirt with a fierce toothy fish on
* A pair of wide-legged dark red cords
* Several lipsticks, including white, dark burgundy red and clover pink.
* A pair of black leather gloves
* Life, a User's Manuel by George Perec
* Imagine: A Christian Vision for the Arts by Steve Turner
* Silver mascara

New year, new thinking

Hey there! I said I was going to blog more and then I went quiet. Oops.
Without further apology, here are my resolutions for 2012.

Read more
OK, so last year did contain a fair amount of reading (you can't do an English Literature MA without reading a few books) but most of it was study reading rather than fun reading. I seem to have got out of the habit of reading novels for fun. I want to get back into that.

Write more
I like writing. Sometimes I think I might be OK at it. But I rarely do much. Also, when I do, I tend to just write and call it done. I rarely go back and edit. I noticed while writing my dissertation that although to get something done initially, I just had to write something, ANYTHING! just to get some words on paper. But if I then went back and refined and rewrote and generally buffed and primped up my sentences, the finished result was much better. My blogging is usually of the just-get-something-written variety. Maybe if I thought more about what I wanted to say, the result might be more thoughtful, better expressed and more worth reading. If I really do want to find a job that involves writing on a daily basis, I'd better actually develop some writing skills. Which brings me to...

Find a job
I need something to do on a day-to-day basis. Our family finances would benefit from a little more income. I don't seem yet to have settled on a career. Maybe I never will. But it would be good to have some goals to aim at in work. I'd like a job I can actually get my teeth into, one that will stretch me some and get me learning new things or digging out old skills and polishing them up again. What that is, I'm not completely sure yet. But I'm looking, my CV's up to date, I'm checking the job pages and trying to work out how to network. Anyone want to employ me?

And finally...

Get healthier
I've been pretty sedentary in my habits since I got married. And that means I've got much heavier. I need to get back on my bike and get some healthier eating habits. My GP keeps telling me to go swimming (good for my back and general fitness) and I should probably start listening.

So, my 2012 goals. How do I make them happen? Got any tips? What are your 2012 resolutions?

Why I am a bad blogger

"Twitter - it only works if you reply."

I can't remember who said it, but it's true. I'm not very good at the replying bit. The same goes for blogging. It's better if you actually interact with the bloggers you read and leave comments. I'm not very good at that. It doesn't help that I do most of my blog reading via Google Reader these days. That means an extra click at least to get to a point where you can comment. On most of the blogs I read, I'm a lurker who never comments. I suspect this is bad blogging etiquette.

My problem is, I'm shy and I don't like networking. Twitter particularly is like one big public networking event. To get anything out of it beyond shouting your witticisms (or more likely, that weird dream you had and what you ate for lunch) into the aether, you need to reply to other people's tweets and start an interaction. I find it intimidating to reply to people I haven't actually met. Even the people I've been following for years via their blogs and now Twitter. I'm too shy to say hello.

Of course, I should know by now that good things can happen when you interact on the internet. That's how I met my husband, after all. My sister started a blog, partly on my recommendation and it changed her life. She lost weight. She went to the US for 3 months to stay with someone she'd never met. Crazy! She still spends time interacting with other bloggers and etsy-ites on forums. I think she reads fewer blogs than I do, but she interacts more.

So, what I am to do? Learn from my sister and my past good experiences. After all, Rob was a random internet stranger when he made that first comment. Now he's my husband. I'm so glad he commented and even more glad I replied. Who knows what other good things might happen if I say hello to people I read and follow more often?

hello there!

I'm not dead! I've just been a bit busy. In the last er, 6 months since I last posted I have been mostly finishing my MA dissertation. It's done and I handed it in a month ago. Now I'm unemployed and should have a little more time on my hands for blogging and generally being sociable online.

Things I could blog about:

We've been married over 18 months and I still haven't finished blogging through our wedding pics. Anyone still interested?

Pretty pictures from our holiday in March, Portmeirion in April and my birthday trip to Colchester Zoo (where I met this gorgeous giraffe).

Spending time at L'Abri at the beginning of October.

Church ups and downs.

Knitting.

Auntie-dom (soon to be doubled).

Life, moods and reading.

Any requests?

Compare and contrast

contrast, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Here we are on holiday in Cornwall last month. This was a particularly foggy day towards the beginning of the week, when I made Rob drive all the way from our cottage near Helston to Penzance (which was less exciting than I thought it would be) then to Land's End in the fog, and back again and then go on a (short) muddy walk to find an ancient village. He was not impressed. But I enjoyed myself.

More pictures from our holiday here .

underwater

fish please? a video by the pig wot flies on Flickr.

Last week we were on holiday in Cornwall, celebrating our first wedding anniversary. (yay!). I have lots of pretty pictures and a few videos to show you. Here's a taster.

zesty

Today's good things include this plate of fruit. I made St Clements cupcakes (from Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache) and these were the oranges and lemons I used. Shown after I zested them for the cake mixture and before I juiced them (actually I only used half a lemon and half an orange) for the juice.

The cupcakes are coming with me tonight when I go out to meet up with knitters and spinners and spend the evening being knitty and friendly.

There's roast lamb roasting in the oven, along with roast potatoes, butternut squash and carrots.

Rob's been working at home and it's been good. We've not got in each other's way, but it was good to have lunch together.

The living room is a little cleaner than it was this morning. I bleached the sink (which I should clearly do more often).

I saw an image I liked - the fruit on a plate - and I took some photos. I like doing this.