September, October, shortening days, interest in being indoors more – that’s the time for writing.

Except that’s not how it’s been of late. Mainly because of the lack of words.

Not speaking words, you understand. Speaking words we do a lot. Things like ‘eating, drinking and kind talking’, which are some kind of ingredients for how to get through mealtime without anyone coming to blows.

(That’s the theory, anyway. Junior and Mini are less sure about the reality, or maybe about how to get there.)

So, lots of speaking words. Writing words, not so many. Some in emails, fluffing about making notes (love a nice Evernote note), but not these kind of words.

I’m not really sure about the writing words at the moment either. They seem to be like fish that spend their time in deep, fairly murky waters.

Most of the time, you don’t know they’re there. You forget they’re there, to be honest.

Other people are hauling those deep-water words out for supper, and you, you shrug and say you’re fine with your sandwich.

(You’re a bit cross that you forgot about them. Or that you don’t catch sight of the river so much. Or that you seem to be without means for getting them out of the water.)

Anyway. The words are there, really, but you don’t have a lot to do with them.

Once in a while, you catch a glimpse of sunlight on the water, and…well, there might be ripples. Maybe one of those big-shot word-fish has come to the surface, looking for flies, or wanting a change of scenery.

Slightly more of the time, you don’t see the words. You kind of feel that they’re there.

There’s a kind of movement, and you sense that there might be some words. Some big catch, even.

Those words, the plump ones, they seem to be swimming a bit nearer. You can feel the current in the water shift as they approach.

What happens next is uncertain. They might retreat into the reeds. I’m not sure where they go. Maybe they are waiting for me to follow.

Maybe I need a Merlin-type figure nearby to turn me into a fish, like in The Sword in the Stone, then I can catch up. (That might get tricky to maintain. School pick up time and all that.)

Maybe the trick is just to lower myself into the water, to feel the current as those juicy words swim past. To sense which direction they’re going.

Maybe I can risk wading. I mean, I’ve not done any swimming for months as far as words go, but wading must be worth a try.

What happens next is uncertain. But I’d love to catch me some words. And if I’m lucky, maybe these fish are part of a bigger migration, coming upstream.

June is the wrong time of year for migrating fish, isn’t it? Still. Maybe I can sharpen a stick, and stand in the shallows, and watch.

Just in case.

The post Wrong time of year appeared first on Frydmania.

Four weeks into my imposed writing routine, evening outing plus tiredness sets in on a Thursday night…no post.

Rather than berating myself, let’s just pretend it’s still 4 February, and go for it. OK?

—

The half-yearly visit to the dentist is upon us. Oh, the varied and wondrous set of shiny instruments in the dentist’s room that we are not meant to touch…

Oh, the lure of the pink mouthwash which two out of three of the visitors are not yet invited to use…

But the main purpose for visiting the dentist is to pick the coolest sticker possible after having your teeth checked.

I make a point of telling the dentist that he has the coolest stickers in town.
(The second coolest are given out at Gymnipper classes for pre-schoolers, on a weekly basis.)

These opinions are based purely on positive reaction levels from the kids. Sadly I don’t generally get offered stickers on these visits, so my own opinion of them doesn’t get to count.

By the way, it’s best not to get distracted by hungry kids, and leave the dentist’s premises without your handbag. Is it?

Luckily it was a very quick to prep tea once we got home.

—

This last week also brought the genuine delight of the double playdate. I should probably call it a triple playdate, since it works perfectly for mum, older child and younger child.

Mum gets two adults to chat to. Older child gets to do more stop motion film making with friend of same age.

Younger child gets to run around with the two kids of the same age, resulting in some very interesting spy/fairy cross-over dressing up.

You know it’s a good playdate when you’re onto your third round of hot drinks for the grownups, there’s been no real fights to break up, and the kids are generally still getting on with it.

And sometimes? When kids say ‘it’s a real mess upstairs’, they really mean ‘there’s some large items I can’t quite reach to put away, but other than that it’s not too bad’.

That kind of tidy up I can deal with. And Mini is still playing with the Duplo zoo set up that the visiting mum came up with.

—

Another visit to Granny and Grandpa. We do some detailed calculations based on snowy/blowy weather reports; lie low one day and venture out the next.

There are three choices of soup, to cater to different palates, and Mini discovers what Scrabble tiles look like.

But before that, there’s the day at home, a weekend staple. It’s a funny but happy mix: extended pyjama time, read alouds to the kids over lunchtime, usually a film at some point.

(We’ve just finished Paddington book 3, in case you need to know.)

For me, the day also seems to include the hauling of one load of school uniform and the beginning of another washing load, to try to get things ready for the next week.

But there might be other bits and pieces that don’t seem to get a look in until the weekend. Sorting out school clothes for Junior. Making the next set of birthday cards. Chipping away at Mini’s homework tasks.

As long as I can farm out at least some of the food production onto Dan, I don’t mind too much.

—

Mini gets a longer writing task for homework. Cue requirement to fit that in after school each day as well as usual homework for Junior.

Cue epic grumping on the first day, doodling and somewhat more compliance on the second day, and so on.

(These are Mini’s responses, not mine. But maybe I should try doodling and moderate compliance as a maternal gesture, sometime.)

Junior ends up with a day off school when the current cough going round gets to be a bit too much. Extra sleep? Check. Time for a film to aid recuperation? Check.

I even manage a coffee in town with Mum, and a spot of shopping together. New electronic scales (previous balance ones died). A step up for my Monday baking sessions.

—

There are bus diversions because of roadworks. So in turn, there are new routes home, hoping I’ve taken the right turns through neighbouring streets.

There is practicing for a forthcoming school assembly (more next time).

There are crocuses coming up in the park. And one day, even that first hint of spring-like light.

The birds don’t care. They’ve been singing away for weeks. Even with the recent run of wintry weather, they’re still at it.

So am I, in a way, typing away. Hoping that there will be a spring for the words I am still waiting for.

Maybe the tips are starting to show.

In the meantime, I’m joining the birds with some singing, with some help from Elizabeth Mitchell. This one’s been going through my head all week.

The post Weekly snapshot: 4 Feb (almost) appeared first on Frydmania.

I feel a bit the same, writing. Some days, it seems a gale goes on before I can sit down and write, and I’m only really writing once a week.

But once I start to write, I feel safe.

I like the blogs where I feel safe when I arrive. I know what to expect, to a certain extent. I like to be surprised at times, too.

I mostly feel safe through the choice of the writer’s words, their topics, their take on life. They’ve shown up and done their work; I get to sit and enjoy it.

This way round, doing my own writing, I’m reminded of that choice to put things down, for others as well as for oneself. To be real. To be me.

Here’s another week. It’s me, it’s real, and I feel safe thinking it over, hands above the keys.

===

Over the weekend, Dan and I both get ill at the same time.

Head colds, not the worst things in the world, but it means we’re vying for spare hankies, and hot drinks, and trying to give each other a break while really just wanting to be in bed asleep.

Still. It is a good excuse to stay put, let the weekend unfold. On the Saturday night, there is a concerted Put the Kids to Bed, as we just can’t hold it together much longer.

But the reward is in the takeaway curry, which no doubt helps our colds too. Certainly our spirits.

By the end of the weekend, we’re doing better. We do a bit of perspective-setting: could have been worse. Easier over the weekend than on school pickups. No one was actually being sick, etc.

It helps that there’s been a birthday, and there’s marzipan in the house. (Actually, marzipan just helps. Full stop.)

===

Time for a craft order – or rather, the happy aftermath when the box arrives and you can look over everything. With luck, this will keep us going for a good while ahead.

The kids love their craft stuff. There is general oohing and aahing over thin pens and thick pens. New decopens, probably our favourite item, that can colour on pretty much anything: wood, china, glass and so on.

I get a pack of different colours of wool as part of the order, and try to do something about the noble art of darning. Having found a good post about it recently, I decide to have a go.

It helps that I rediscover a pair of wool slippers this week, ones that were worn and worn and then developed holes. I was sad, didn’t know what to do about it exactly, hung onto them in hope.

So now I get to benefit from putting them back into active use – but no one is exactly checking out the quality of my workmanship on them. Unless I put my feet up conspicuously.

I am wearing my slippers as I type. Fairly soon, I’ll try washing them, and see if the wool felts as promised, to fill up the holes a bit more.

===

I’m finding that sewing is helping in the evenings. Some of it is family mending-type stuff. Some of it is more of an experiment (like the darning).

But there is something about having something to do with my hands as part of winding down at the end of the day.

Colouring is taking a bit of a back seat, for now. It’s still something to do with my hands, true, but not as active, or something like that.

In the meantime, we are on to a new box set of a favoured TV series – one that doesn’t need me to keep my eyes on the screen all the time. Sewing is fitting in with it just fine.

===

Mini and I read The Paper Dolls this week. I am informed that we have had it out of the library before, but I’m pretty sure we haven’t.

In brief: mum makes girl a set of paper dolls. They get names, they have adventures, indoors and out.

There is a moment of high drama, which I won’t spoil, but by the end, the girl has become a mum herself, and is making a set of paper dolls for her daughter. Cue new adventures.

There’s that natural pause at the end, and you think: well, we’d better make some paper dolls, then.

With a bit of thinking, and a couple of goes, we created a couple of sets of paper dolls. One (round head shapes plus trousers) was criticised early on; the next set incorporated skirts and longer sections for hair.

The trousers set were given girl names, but soon became boys when it came to playing. The skirt set also got girl names (think Betsy, Getsy, Gretsy…etc), and soon the two sets were playing together.

Well, for at least a few minutes.

Mini was taken enough by the idea to want to make some more, later in the week. I demonstrated the arms bit so that they would stay linked up; Mini came up with much of the rest.

(And learned, fairly quickly, that drawing lines for high heels means that you can’t cut them out. Cut alternate footwear solutions.)

Whether or not Mini will go ahead and make sets of paper dolls, far into the future, I don’t know. But I do like planting a seed, and seeing what happens.

===

I am trying to do Paid Writing too – aka copywriting. I get some done this week, but it seems to take longer to get my brain in gear.

Once I’m underway, it’s all right, but it seems to take a surprising amount of procrastinatory cleaning to begin.

The house is benefitting from it, though.

Fiction writing still seems a long way off, for now. But I am in that January phase where I want to do new things. Even if it’s tiny things, like fixing a sock or a woollen slipper.

Maybe the words are more like migrating birds. Usually, they flock in around September, jostling, ready for some time indoors as the weather turns colder.

I’m not really sure where they are this year. But I keep turning up, once a week, to see if some of their friends are available. Maybe they’ll come and join them soon.

I hope so.

===

Rain upon rain. Cold winds too. It’s January, and I do understand why people find it so hard.

(It helps to have a January birthday, so there’s something to look forward to after Christmas. Even if your expectations for your birthday can include snow, torrential rain, or just greyness.)

We do what we can. One foot in front of the other. Keep the warm gloves ready for school pick up.

Mini continues in drawing mode. Junior has been set a Minecraft challenge by Dan, and both are delighted with the results.

I stick with some more baking for another week, generally enjoying the results. A little bit of a rhythm is building up.

And there’s generally about enough time left, at the end of it all, to restore the kitchen to relative normality. (Aka normal levels of food debris. You know the deal.)

It’s not all creativity. There is also the overdoing it that brings on colds; the ongoing issue of the sheer impossibility of eating breakfast and getting dressed, Mummy!

But alongside it, there seem to be fewer friendship issues for the kids at school. More of a sense of continuity.

The long autumn term is over and done; the pattern has been set, and actually a bit of routine is doing us all good.

====

I too am settling into coming here, once a week, putting down some words.

They are no great shakes, really. They are bits and bobs; the ongoing run of life with kids.

But writing about them allows me to pause. To feel the safety of it, for me, in the routine. Hopefully for the kids too.

Tonight, I can still hear my thoughts against the noise of the wind. And that will do for now.

The post Weekly snapshot: 28 January appeared first on Frydmania.

What to say of the last week?

—-

Peter Rabbit reigns supreme just now. Kind relatives bought Mini the whole set of Beatrix Potter books for Christmas, and we are working our way through them at bedtime.

It’s interesting to try books that I knew nothing of before. Ginger and Pickles run a rather strange shop, and go out of business fairly quickly.

We also have The Pie and the Patty Pan. Were I writing crime fiction, or something detective-y, this might be known as The Case of the Double Oven.

Suffice it to say, I am with the dog character on this: I would prefer not to eat mice pie, either.

Mrs Tittlemouse comes across as very OCD these days, but there are the wonderful characters of Babbity Bumble (the bee whose family has taken up lodging without asking), and the toad who sneezes when offered a plate of thistledown.

Reading more Beatrix Potter means we can also get out the audio CDs. Patricia Routledge and Michael Hordern are the readers, and you couldn’t want for more comforting voices.

Mini is very keen on The Tale of the Two Bad Mice. Maybe it’s the temptation to bash up the fake dinner, discovering that it was only plaster. Somewhat more overt violence for a children’s book.

For my part, I rather like the way that reading more in the series lets you meet certain characters again: the dolls of Bad Mice fame crop up again, visiting the shop which Ginger and Pickles own.

I have also introduced Mini to the Peter Rabbit series on CBeebies. This is generally going down well so far. Mini is less keen on the hectic guitar music for the series, and I have to agree – it’s a bit heavy, for such lovely pictures.

Whether or not we make it through the whole series remains to be seen. If so, I might finally finish Little Pig Robinson (started many years ago) for myself.

===

We have an early birthday celebration at my parents, which also allows for further Eating Up of Christmas food items. Two birds and all that.

To be honest, any offer of being fed that includes a) smoked salmon and b) me not cooking is generally to be seized. Swiftly.

Probably the main present of the day was the amazing views of snowy fields, as we drove out to the Borders. In one area, water had run off fields that slope above the road, forming brilliant icicles on the hedges.

Having driven through all this, the kids were fairly underwhelmed to see almost no snow on the ground outside my parents’ house.

Thankfully, Granny Ro was prepared to put boots on and go hunting for more snow with Mini. At least enough was found for a small snowball fight.

In fact, there was even some on the ground back at home, the following morning. The sledge, which gets more outings on grass on the back garden than anything else, did just fine on snow too, at a nearby park.

(It also worked well for dragging some snow back home after. I’m not sure if there was scientific enquiry, or just a thought to practise throwing snowballs at the fence. Probably more of the latter.)

—

The previously-mentioned joint project of building a hotel in Minecraft has gone a bit quiet. I’m not quite sure whether they’ve finished, or agreed to go back to individual game time.

In the meantime, Junior has decided to do a bit more work in Scratch, a visual programming tool which allows you to build little animations, and I’m sure much more.

Stop-motion is hanging in there as something to do when there’s ten whole minutes spare before heading off for school. And at other times too, if Daddy’s available for a bit more team effort.

I continue my own roles in this area: a) let them get on with it b) smile appreciatively when required c) leave Dan to figure out the rest when they get stuck.

—

Dan meanwhile has the opportunity to age by at least a decade. I’m trying out those patches for elbows, for when jumpers have holes in them.

So far, rather suspicious – and the stuff the patches are made out of smells a bit too. We’ll see how we get on. We can always remove the patches and go back to holes in elbows – it’s worked for us so far.

However, I am making some tentative attempts at darning – or at least, fixing a hole in one of Mini’s school jumpers with some embroidery thread.

It’s not quite the same colour. It’s not wool either. But knowing Mini’s abilities to expand holes in clothes, it’s a case of getting in quick now.

—

Buoyed by the success of last week’s apple cake, I did a bit more Solitary Baking this week. There were some gluten-free muffins, which I’d tried doing before and like.

I also had a go at making some granola, having found a new recipe with fewer nuts, but with the additions of ginger and cinnamon. So far, so rapidly disappearing.
I think that’s a good sign.

I think the kids are fairly happy at the prospect of me continuing this on a weekly basis, if they get cake for after school snacks. So am I really, if I get to eat some too. And there’s fruit or veg in too, so that has to count for something.

In the same session, I had a go at a kind of chicken pot pie. Chicken good, pastry bit not so much.

There was a reason why the recipe showed separate pie tins, and I’ve discovered it. There is actually such a thing as too much pastry after all.

—

Junior and I are doing a bit of language learning, to tie in with a series of books we’re reading. I’ve found that the textbook I used for it in the past is now online.

It seems that even this kind of practice is cool if you can drag and drop words into the right columns, and do other more interactive stuff.

And if you get them all right, on one exercise, you get a flock of butterflies covering your screen. Which, apparently, is an incentive as far as Junior’s concerned.

The real test is whether Junior can learn enough to teach a school friend, so they can both speak to each other without others knowing what they’re saying.

Nothing like spy requirements to put you under pressure to come up with the goods.

—

Meanwhile, day by cold (and by turns rainy) day, the light creeps back.

I know, from previous years, that by the end of the month, it’ll be light at five in the evening. It was almost properly light at eight this morning.

I walk round the park before pick up, and admire the allotments. The leeks stand proud like bundled ribbons. The other remaining veg appears to wear hairnets.

But despite the cold, the wet, the relative lack of promise on the ground, the birds are already singing more.

And on days when my hands are freezing, even despite warmer gloves, that’s a good thing.

The post Weekly snapshot: 21 January appeared first on Frydmania.

The kind of winter day that lifts you up; the kind that also has you doing the morning footwear calculation for the kids. Shoes or boots?

Boots (wellies) won out, which was just as well: there were some puddles with ice on. Would have been a shame not to examine them close up i.e. wade through the puddles.

There’s snow on the hills today. Closer to the coast, you don’t really see the chill of the day, though you can feel it on your neck; in your hands.

(Replacing leather gloves in the sales? Turns out that was a very good plan.)

===

A while back, I learned about the notion of kaizen: little tiny changes, day by day, that add up to significant change.

Evidently kaizen means ‘good change’, and is a big thing in management circles in Japan.

I may have done New Year’s Resolutions in the past, but these days, it’s too easy for them to become an addition to the ‘to do’ list.

And with two kids in school, bringing home new bits of paper, sporting new holes in school uniform etc, there’s no lack of things to put on the ‘to do’ list.

So back to kaizen. I don’t feel the need to go into a full continuous improvement mindset any more; I’m not doing corporate stuff any more.

But a tiny bit of change, here and there, bit by bit – yes, it does add up. And you can then pat yourself on the back a bit, and see how it’s gradually coming together.

That’s the idea, anyway.

===

Maybe it’s kaizen. Maybe it’s rediscovering my mojo in a couple of areas. Earlier in the week, I ended up doing some baking.

Not world-changing, true. Thing is, I used to do quite a lot of baking. I liked it. It was something I felt reasonably good at.

Then we moved Junior onto a gluten- and dairy-free diet, and the baking mojo packed up and left.

It shouldn’t have to, I know. But baking was something about ease; about the feel of putting ingredients together without too much thinking.

Wheat-flour cooking was (not surprisingly) where I learned to bake, as a child, watching my mum make yet another batch of rockbuns.

(Yet another only really refers to the speed at which said rockbuns were consumed. We were all for as many batches of rockbuns as we could get. Still are, really.)

As an adult, continuing to bake, you draw on some of that ease, that breeziness of feeling ‘I know how this works’.

Baking free-from shouldn’t have to be that different – it’s just it’s not based on the same ease there used to be.

Anyway. Big breakthrough. I tried an apple cake, one I used to make a fair amount, having had some baking apples passed on to us.

I decided to make it as the recipe stated, just with gluten-free flour and baking powder, and dairy-free marg.

TOTAL success. It is maybe a little softer than the original, but in all other aspects, it feels like the original. So much so that I had to put some of it in the freezer to stop us eating it all on the spot.

Anyway. A small change. One that felt like: I can do this again. Even dusted off some cookbooks. Let’s see if I can add a further reworked cake to the list.

===

A new year, a few new TV series. The Young Montalbano series returns. We shout ‘Dottore!’ and make the appropriate supplicating hand gestures.

Today there’s sun, yes, but it’s been a pretty wet grey start to the year. Opportunities to look at sun and sea in Sicily, even if just on the telly? Si, por favore.

===

Junior and Mini have decided to collaborate and build a hotel together in Minecraft. I am not quite sure of the genesis of this project, but they both seem very keen on it.

In the spirit of encouraging talking to each other, rather than shouting at each other (not all the time, but…), we’ve upped their gametime slot, so they can talk and build.

So far, there is cake in every room, a certain number of ladders to climb, and a few more surprises.

Overheard today:

J: What shall we use this time? Shall we try quartz? Look, this is polished quartz.

M: OK. Is that sheep fluff?

It is fair to say that Mini’s interest in Minecraft is so far mostly around the animals (and occasionally blowing them up), so appreciation of building materials is newer.

Rest assured I shall appraise you of the inner workings of the hotel, once complete.

===

On a different kaizen-type note, I’m doing some sewing. It’s kind of addictive, in a positive, peaceful-repetition sort of way.

This is a very housekeeping sort of sewing. I’ve been able to take up hems on school trousers before, sew on nametapes, and other bits and pieces.

Now I’ve worked out how to add some material onto the bottom of kids’ pyjama bottoms to make them longer (and hopefully, reduce the need to buy new ones).

Flushed with success, I’ve also sussed a couple of things about waistbands. For one, I unpicked the waistband on another pair of pyjama bottoms, made the elastic shorter, and sewed it back up again.

I’m guessing this should work on regular kids’ leggings too.

A couple of other pairs of leggings, passed on, had lost all their elastic and wouldn’t stay up. These ones had a proper trousers-style waistband that I didn’t think I could safely take apart.

So I made a new bit of waistband out of a strip of material, sewed it over the existing waistband, then added new elastic. That seemed to work, so I did the same on the other pair.

So far so good. Mini is enjoying picking the contrasting material from my stash;
I am enjoying figuring out how to make something work. Everyone’s happy.

===

We are in a brave new world of using timers.

Junior has suddenly discovered the ability to get dressed much faster (and without me shouting through the door). With the option of trying to ‘beat the clock’, suddenly getting dressed is much more interesting.

This is transforming my mornings on school days, and Junior is also finding that, with a bit of time left over, there’s a chance to do something fun before heading out the door.

Meanwhile, the world of stop-motion films continues. Dan sets up a plain background, and he, Junior and Mini try making some little films for themselves.

So far, my role appears to be to make approving noises. And to provide snacks once it’s all done.

I can do that.

===

We have had a happy few days of seeing friends this month.

Some of these friendships go back well over a decade. It’s wonderful to find that we still have things to say to each other. Conversations form; we remember bits of each others’ shorthand.

Encouraged, I get the diary out today, and set up one or two more meetups.

Kaizen for introverts: leave the house and meet people. Good people.

Even one at a time will do just fine.

The post Weekly snapshot: 14 Jan appeared first on Frydmania.

So starts another year. So maybe the writing can start again.

A couple of days back, Dan brought some photo albums down from the attic. He’d promised to show the kids some pictures from a particular trip; a few more albums made it downstairs with him.

Some of this was filling-in work: that’s Grandpa .. [who you didn’t get to meet], or Auntie..
That kind of thing.

Today I looked again at an album with a mix of pictures that Dan took and others that are mine. A varied selection: lots of places, lots of people, across a wide range of years.

We took a lot of photos as students, Dan and I. No iPhones, no Facebook, no Instagram, and still, lots of images, now corralled into an album. (Lots of albums, actually.)

If we wanted to share them, we posted off the film to Tripleprint and handed round lots of tiny photos – to parents wanting to find out what we were up to, to flatmates wanting to keep a shared memory.

Today, I look and try to remember the details: of group shots; of where a particular photo was taken. I peer in on the extra social details that emerge as I look back at a distance of more than a decade.

===

There’s a post on Facebook at the moment, a jokey one that sums up some of the quandry of the whole memory capturing thing.

The idea is that someone walks around, acting out all the tropes of Facebook: taking photos of everything, doing big thumbs up if they like something; running around telling everyone what they had for breakfast.

By the end of the story, people are looking to lock them up. You get the idea.

All these things we now expect to share, all this scrutiny of minutae. We surely don’t need all of it.

I don’t want to get into telling you what I eat for lunch, day by day, nor even taking photos of it. I figure you don’t need to know, and you are fully capable of making your own lunch decisions.

But still. A bit of capturing of the moment can be good. Because we don’t know when we’ll be looking back on it, and wondering what life was like then; trying to reconnect with the feeling of it.

I look at these old photos, and it feels good. Some we can share with the kids; parts of our lives-before-parenthood that they sometimes hear about.

Others, I may want to look at with Dan, and think back. Who was that person in the back row? Why did we go there? (How long did I get away with wearing that jumper? and so on.)

So in the interests of a future self, I’ve decided to go back to a few little snapshots. By blog. And if you want a riffle through, that’s fine too.

Who knows, 2016 may even be the year I finally get some photos on the blog.
(I realise I’ve been saying this for a long time. So don’t hold your breath.)

Enter the weekly snapshot.

===

The T-shirts turned into cushions make a comeback. I started on some of these a while back. Now it’s Mini’s turn to get a few.

The idea is that particularly favoured T-shirts don’t just get passed on; they find a permanent place at the end of the bed to prop up the soft toy collection, or maybe offer a few moments of snuggling.

In short: sew up the bottom of the T-shirt; unpick the arms and resew along the armhole; maybe cut off a bit of the neckline to make a flatter top.

I discover that you can pretty much get through a whole T-shirt, start to finish, in the time it takes to watch a feature film, plus a bit more. And it’s quite fun to let Mini come through for breakfast and find a new cushion on the sofa, waiting for attention.

===

We have passed the stage of Eating up Deli Items. (This happens between Christmas and New Year; use by dates on cheese and all that.)

We are now into the stage of Eating up Cake. And very pleasant it is too.

Having gone through a whole stollen before Christmas (ahem), thankfully we were given another stollen as a present. We’ve managed to eke this one out a bit more. (It’s all about marzipan, but the cake helps out.)

I’m sure there could be the potential for fresh ingredients, fresh ideas, that kind of thing.
But it remains to be said: there are Things to Eat Up First.

(And I know there’s plenty of soup in the freezer still, to balance things out a bit.)

===

On the same attic-roaming trip, I rediscover a few things, including a magnetic calendar.
Both kids are very taken with it.

(It needs talking Mini out of a grump, when I confirm that the calendar needs to live in the sitting room, and cannot just be annexed to one person’s bedroom.)

Now, of course, there is a new area of breakfast-time bickering to be had. Who will change the day of the week? Who will change the date? How many times a day can we update the weather picture?

We’ll see how long it lasts. Whether it needs an Official Parenting Decree: child A shall be tasked with moving the month ONLY. Child B must wait until xyz until moving their element on the calendar. And so on.

I am reminded, again: not too much change at once. At least, not in items that make up the daily landscape.

===

It’s back to school week, and we have to tackle the expectation that everyday is a film-watching day.

Junior and Mini have had lots of days at home over the holidays, which makes it very easy to fit in a film. If you cut out going to school, doing homework, wearing uniform (getting dressed, even), then you are pretty much down to:

• eating (several times, of course)
• playing (lots)
• watching a film.

You see their point. (There is obviously also space for a spot of sibling annoyance; a moment of disgust when asked to do something like putting away clothes. Everyone needs a little variety.)

Sadly, when you put the school-time things back in, you can’t quite fit in the film slot.

Unless you are a parent, trying to comfort yourself over the gradual reappearance of the alarm clock in your life. Then you put the kids to bed, engage in some sparring over what to watch, and settle in with a film.

It’s also a great excuse to avoid doing anything with the Christmas cards.

===

The main thing to tell you, of course, is that I have a new set of felt-tip pens for colouring.

And I’m not afraid to use them.

The post Weekly snapshot: 7 Jan appeared first on Frydmania.

I can’t wait.

—

I remember reading something by Monty Don, the gardener, a few years ago. He wrote about the difficulty of gardening in that October – December slot, the time of shortening days.

(There is the dreich-er kind of comment that can be made after June 21, that ‘the nights are turning in again’. I choose not to go there. Not in June, for goodness’ sake.)

Anyway, I’m with Monty on this one. I find the whole descent into the dark difficult, though that difficulty can vary year by year, depending on what I’m doing.

In this current season, it’s working better for me. Yes, I get the kids up most mornings, but it is light before they leave the house for school.

I get my hit of daylight mid afternoon, at school pickup – and potentially at other times of the day too, on bright days. I’m not tied to a computer monitor these days – I can stop to soak it in.

So all that helps. As does a quick belt round the park before school comes out. But still.
It’s dark out there, folks. I feel the need to hibernate more as the month goes on.

Some days I get a bit of extra sleep – and yet I still want more sleep, in December. That has been a clear message this month.

So what to do in the dark times – in the belly of the beast, as it were?

Feed yourself. Grow stronger on the inside.

—

I’m finding myself remembering old favourite blogs, picking them out again, catching up with what the authors have been doing.

All that colouring is taking a back seat at the moment to reading, and that’s fine.

It may be dark here, but on the other side of the world, it’s summer. I can read posts about what is growing in an Australian back garden, or about whale watching off the Southern Cape.

If I want some perspective, I can read blogs where the writers are into their four- or five-month-long snow on the ground time of year. North-Eastern US, Canada, Alaska, and so on.

To be honest, it’s not about the vicarious travelling (though that can help when the dark mornings bring on more than a hint of Groundhog day here). It’s about the words.

It’s no surprise that storytelling comes up as a way of dealing with the dark. We make sense of our feelings about this time of being kept inside.

Drawn into an interior space through cold and dark, we find our way back into the wider world through stories. Memories. Recipes. (And I’m enjoying how much those food writers can write well as well as eat well.)

—

For the first time in years, I’m borrowing more library books than the kids.

That’s partly about them both being in school – and me having some more time to read.

But I have put down the colouring pens for a bit in favour of stories. Particularly science fiction of various kinds.

Some of it lighter, some of it more philosophical. Much of it genuinely page-turnable.

I’ve pulled the actual cookbooks off the shelves too. Maybe it’s a need for stews, soups, foods that warm you up just by reading about them. (I’m not against cooking some of them either.)

—

I’ve never got around to trying out daylight lamps, to help with the growing dark. I guess I’ve sought out other means of adding some light.

And of course, there are those ceremonies of light that come at this time of the year: Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, and so on.

They remind us that light can follow dark; sometimes, that light is still there, even when the darkness is particularly overwhelming.

I went into this season hoping, in part, that my own words would come up for air again. That some of them might have ripened in the cellar; might even have transformed into something new.

Not quite yet. But then maybe there is a need for some of that dark. It gets our backs up against the wall.

It forces us to say what is necessary – and, also, what we long for to change.

And that, as my science fiction reading is showing me, is powerful stuff.

The post Into the dark appeared first on Frydmania.

Instead, I head back to doing some colouring, when the evening comes round and my time is (relatively) my own.

Because, at least for now, colouring is good. Colouring is peaceful. Colouring gives you something nice to look at the end.

And colouring is really the last thing I would have expected to find myself doing, even a year ago.

====

Somewhere near the start of this year, one night, I found myself out of sorts. I needed something to do with my hands.

Not cooking. Not typing. Not sewing. Just something that felt like…not work.

I found a few of my kids’ colour-in birthday cards that hadn’t been done. I half-inched a pot of felt tips out of a sleeping child’s room, and made a start.

It was…peaceful. I even sent a few of them, to other grownups who know me well enough that I can send them coloured-in birthday cards done by me.

===

I had a set of fine tipped felt pens, bought for a journalling thing that didn’t quite take off.
I had a couple of books of geometric colouring designs, bought for the kids’ craft stash.

At some point, I decided to combine the two. And the whole thing took off.

Much later, I started to see colouring books everywhere. In bookstores, bargain stores, in magazines sent by people who want you to buy their books.

There was all this mindfulness stuff mentioned in the blurb for the colouring books. And I’m pretty sure it’s there. If you want it to be.

But maybe for me, the six- or seven-year-old me that used to colour grids of squares and triangles and hexagons had made a reappearance.

===

I’m not great at drawing. I understand, yes, that I can be better, that practice is true for drawing as well as for writing, cooking, roller-skating, and many other key things in life.

But in the meantime, I can do colouring. In fact, I can imagine I’m in somewhere in North Africa, or maybe southern Spain, gradually putting together a mosaic floor.

That’s the kind of colouring I find myself doing the most. Sometimes there are flowers and leaves, and tendrils, and, you know, I put up with them too.

But what I like most is the geometric stuff. And what I like even more than just the colouring is the outlining, especially where you do a lot of it.

Then it starts to feel like you are not just involved in the shapes, but that you are somehow creating them. Straight line after straight line combine, and all of a sudden you have a twelve pointed star, that you would not have been able to manage otherwise.

===

What I also really like are those moments when you look up from what you are doing, or turn the paper a bit to do a fiddly bit.

And suddenly, you see a new element in the design that you hadn’t been able to see before. The squares that interlock between the triangles; the succession of new shapes marching off across the page.

There’s something that is both very small (line after line after line after LINE), and something that is very big: the way that space works; the way that shapes fit together.

That’s not the kind of thing I’ve been used to looking at so much. But I could get used to it.

I find that I do.

The post How I stopped writing and learned to love felt tips appeared first on Frydmania.

There are all these wise people out there telling us to seize those little gaps of time – for writing, for whatever hobby or interest really.

Ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there – it all adds up.

Some writing needs more thinking time than ten minutes. Some of that is the kind I’m hoping to produce more of.

But a blog post is meant to be short and sweet. (I confess I fail on the short aspect, some times.) So ten minutes really will do.

It works for things that are easy to pick up and put down. Like colouring, for example.

I’ve joined that growing movement of adults doing colouring for fun (never expected that, I have to say), and it is very calming.

You can colour and think – or colour and think of nothing – or just focus on getting the right colour to stay inside the right shape.

I’m still to work out more of what I genuinely can fit in for ten minutes of that kind, but with a laptop and home wifi, it isn’t really that hard to make writing one of those things.

It is a bit harder when your invalid is feeling well enough to start belting out songs at the top of their voice. Ones that are the child’s version of sung dialogue in opera. Not terribly conducive to concentrating.

But I remind myself that I used to work in an open-plan office, with lots of different conversations going on around me, and still managed to crank out emails and the like.

It can be done.

So yes, I do plan to seize the next free ten minutes, and more. Even if I all I write is for editing later.

Because it really can be done.

So: hard boiled egg or ham for lunch? Up to you. I’ll be back – maybe even sooner than I expect.

The post Seize the (ten) minutes appeared first on Frydmania.

It’s been another long break from blogging. Yes, it’s September. Yes, the nights are closing in (though I’m trying not to notice that too much).

Where to begin? Not sure so much where, but actually beginning, that is the trick. One I’ve been avoiding for a while.

Time has marched on, and suddenly there’s some extra space for me in the day. Yes, it’s already getting filled up (though hopefully not too much).

No, I haven’t finished all the painting yet – or all the things on my List to Do. But I got most of the fence done. That helps. Little by little.

———–

I met a friend this last week. We got in some chatting time. 40 is around the corner for her, and she is thinking about what she wants life to be like in the new decade.

40 has been and gone for me. I had my intentions too, and they were generally around writing. I did a big burst of it last year, and there hasn’t been much this year at all.

I found myself thinking about I’d wanted to do. What I still want to do, even if I tell myself I don’t really know what to write about at the moment.

(I don’t. But it’s OK. I’m working on that too.)

I could write a much longer post about why I haven’t written – and actually, it wouldn’t be that much fun to read. Or even to get out onto the screen, for me. So I’ll leave it between us that there have been reasons why.

So it’s back to writing warm up. Finger flex, arm stretch. We’ll focus on breathing, maybe, and what that looks like in writing.

(Paragraph breaks, mostly.)

I cast around for a title for this post, and found myself thinking of a children’s song:

“There was an old man called Michael Finnegan

He grew whiskers on his chin-egan

The wind came up and blew them in-again

Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again”

—————–

I think I will leave the beard growing to others.

But perhaps the wind will blow my words about a bit, inside and out, and help me find new life for them.

And new life for me, too, in setting them out to air.

The post Finnegan, begin again appeared first on Frydmania.

And for a time before that, there was one a day.

In the early days of the blog, heady with capturing the experiences of the year, there were several posts a day. (I was trying to offer an alternative to the Christmas roundrobin, putting stories on the blog instead.)

—

Just now…well, quite a while seems to go by without writing.

Some of that is spent waiting to identify what I want to write about. And waiting for a writing push, to be honest.

In previous years, September would come round, the writing seed would start to push its way back to the surface.

Shortening days – lengthening time spent writing.

—

Just now, my words are being used for more functional purposes.

Enquiring about what to cook – and then checking and checking again while Mini tries to identify whether to stay on target with a choice or not.

Directing foot traffic at off-for-school time. Helping gloves and their owners become reunited.

Identifying myself across a crowded playground. Trying to cut a middle way through ‘I did – no you didn’t’s.

Oftentimes, my words are in stiff competition with the other words in the ether.

Ones that may include cars and dolls. Minecraft and nativity songs. Stories from Newsround and the latest love-hate relationships at nursery.

—

That’s OK. That’s where it’s at. The quieter words, the ones I look for when there is stillness – they haven’t left. (I try to remind myself of that.)

I kind of hope that the quieter words are holing up somewhere. Getting organised. Planning, digging tunnels. Politicising, even.

Some day, I hope I will open the door, and out will come the marching band of quiet words, ready for a parade.

I don’t think they are hiding (though I do sometimes at the noise levels). I don’t think they are too put off at the crash of Duplo trucks or the whoosh of yet another paper aeroplane.

I like to think of them, sometimes, nestled against each other in the dark, like bottles in a cellar. Allowing dust to cover them (that one’s easy to achieve).

Maybe it only needs a torch, or even a lightswitch.

They’ll be there. Waiting.

If I’m lucky – maturing.

The post I can’t hear myself write appeared first on Frydmania.

It’s not as busy as October, which includes a school holiday. Nor yet as hectic as December, for obvious reasons.

There is activity around the corner, but you can hide from it in November, for the most part, if you want to.

There are still plenty of moments, though. Here are a few.

===

We’ve reached that point in the year when the leaves outside my window really shine.
There’s lots of rain, yes, but in the bright sky moments, the trees opposite are still in leaf.

It’s a brassy orange, really. Not a hair colour. Not as deep as many of the other leaves that are now just so much soggy underlay on the pavement.

Today, I set my timer, and sit with my cup of tea and look out at the leaves. The blue of the sky contrasts with the orange on the trees.

I remember a school art teacher telling us all about blue and orange working together, and me disbelieving him at the time. (I was eight, and not terribly artistic.)

I’m in agreement now. Add an occasional soar past from the pigeon formation team, and I’m really very happy.

===

We have our first go at packing up the trampoline for the winter. It feels like a big job.

We are all out in the garden together. The kids go up and down on bikes for the most part, and Dan and I try to work out what attaches to what on the trampoline, what might go inside which bag.

We neglect a set of potatoes in grow bags for over a year, but here they are, producing a little crop. I smile at the automatic gasp with each new discovery, whatever the size, as Junior and Mini go to it, a bag apiece.

It’s a scramble, really, dealing with short attention spans, and other garden jobs.
I try to farm out raking the leaves to Junior.

That lasts all of twenty seconds, but when I offer the large garden fork to make holes in the black bin bag (think: future leaf mould), there is much more excitement.

Mini is particularly serious on clearing the potato bag, going and going with a tiny trowel. Part way through, there is a request to sit down, and I manage to find a small kneeler in the shed.

Potato hunting continues, and I can fill one bag of leaves; prune the peony; help with some poles for the trampoline.

The sky is dry, not quite bright. We are in one of those brief respites.

Later, there’s popcorn, and a board game. I think that I should offer these kind of rewards to myself for extra labours, not just to help the kids through the task.

===

The evenings after teatime shift. We’re done with trampolining, scootering. It’s dark.

Instead, there is fighting over who gets to blow out the candle at the end of the meal – an extra token from me, to help us through these days when the curtains are drawn before we even sit down to eat.

Sometimes, we make it round the table all at the same time. The kids may be on supper, Dan still on tea, but we’re there, eating together, attempting to follow conversations round and round.

===

The days shorten. The effort to get up in the mornings is clear. Both kids are sleeping beyond the point I have to get up.

I try some gentler ways to help them wake, but in their own time.

Partly opening the curtains. Leaving a door open, so the sound of me wrestling the dishwasher can offer a little encouragement to stir. Putting on a low light in a nearby room.

There are hats now, and gloves, and scarves to add to the morning routine.

There are experiments with mittens on strings, and more emails to the bus company to see if a missing item has turned up. (It hasn’t.)

===

Welly socks are out in force. We have a welly routine now, and it is mostly going well.
As is jumping in puddles at any opportunity: coming home, going back for school pick up, on the way to sports class.

The bench in the school playground is often too wet to sit on. There’s more interest in coming straight home, not staying on and playing.

There still need to be snacks, though.

====

There are questions; new observations. Numbers on gear sticks. Emergency buttons on the inside of bus doors.

I sit through another round of Minecraft explanations. Nodding and smiling is surprisingly low energy, and I can quite often cook at the same time.

We enter a season of babies: ones arrived, ones on the way. Friends, acquaintances, all are material for fuelling the toy buggy at home, back and forth, back and forth.

Sometimes, the stories overlap: buses and babies. ‘Under-five please..thankyou.’

===

There are new books. Stories from British history: my new favourite read-aloud.

I get to dip back to the topics at other times; find atlases to identify Brittany, Cornwall, parts of Wales. I hunt out stories about King Arthur from the library; make promises about Irish folk tales.

There are old books made new. Mini and I go on the wondrous journey of discovering Timothy Pope, his telescope, and suspected sharks.

I even manage to pull out a book for myself now and then.

===

Music makes a return to the evenings. We need the boost; the argument smoothing.

Junior listens to Blues Brothers tracks, and recognises that there is comedy and music combined. Mini hears soundtracks from musicals, and immediately starts twirling.

We do a big weekend drive; the kind that feel like car trips from my childhood. We watch the colours of the cats eyes on the road on our way back in the dark; we pass the miles by singing along.

Evening by evening, Mini’s song repertoire grows a little more. By day, these are mostly overwhelmed by the new set of songs issuing from nursery. Nativity season is coming.

===

There are friends to see, and maybe cinema trips for the mums (whisper it).
There are Christmas plans, and the beginnings of lists.

Only the beginnings for now. Maybe there are still some more leaf piles to jump in.
They may be soggy, but there are wellies, and big boots, and thick socks to protect us.

Separately or together, we jump right in.

The post Moments: November 2014 appeared first on Frydmania.

Games seem bigger on the radar again. Junior is involved, but so is Mini. They have their different likes and dislikes.

Mini and I play different games quite a lot. It seems to work for us both.

I like the fact that games have start and end points; we know what the activity will be, how it will run. (These things don’t necessarily feature as simply in everyday family life.)

Mini likes the numbers; the together time. There is a fair amount of tolerance for losing; an interest in playing again, particularly when winning.

Bit by bit, we find some new games to play. We invent some variations on ones we already have.

Games are not just for the two of us. They seem to be something to invite other family members in on.

Adults and kids have different tolerances: for conversation, for gaps between meals, for the appropriate number of toys to dump in a room at a given time.

But they can came together over a game. A game can even (whisper it) allow someone else to do something, like nip off and hang up the washing. Or step into an empty room and breathe. Those kind of things.

So I’ll return to some games again. As a Senior Player, I get to direct as well as to take part.
I even get to stock the games box, and shake things up at times.

Ready for some more games? Eyes down.

The post Game on: revisiting games appeared first on Frydmania.

What do you write when you want to write, but what sits in front of you is not for public airing?

You could argue that hasn’t stopped lots of people – in fact, there’d be precious little reality TV without it.

But reality TV is planned for entertainment. Which can also mean embarrassment, hurt, humiliation, and so on.

Those who know me well will tell you that I have a very low embarrassment threshold for others.

I walk out of TV comedies when they are too mocking. I avoid some sitcoms because they are just too cringy, just too keen on milking it.

So I think about what I write – because others will read it. I can’t control what they think, I don’t plan to, but I equally don’t plan to set up others that I write about.

===

For a long time, I wrote about things, mostly. Places I’d been. Foods I was passionate about. Experiences. Moments.

Obviously those things didn’t happen completely in isolation – there were other people involved. I just wasn’t necessarily including them in what I wrote. All very first person.

Little by little, I have come to write more about others – particularly where they offer inspiration, a different perspective and so on.

Sometimes, that comes very easily. And sometimes, it leaves me with very little to write about, because what is in front of me is not what I want to go into a blog post.

===

I am still trying to figure this one out. There was a long period of time where I didn’t write on the blog at all, because what occupied me was not for open sharing.

After a bit, I found a way to come back. I set myself little challenges for writing. I picked different subjects; I tried to write regularly.

It was good. I enjoyed it. Some of you were kind enough to read the posts. I kept going.

Sometimes life turns again, and you find yourself in a season where you are asking yourself once more: what do I write when…?

===

I like a bit of chat about books, kids’ books especially, and I do that. Food is always a handy topic. You know the familiar suspects.

But sometimes, even for those, you need a clearer head to write. That’s harder right now.

I don’t have a fix for a clear head – other than books and TV for escape, and a certain determination to protect my free time.

But anyway. I don’t want to back off again; to find that lots of time has gone by without writing. It makes it harder to begin again.

And when writing is (often) a way of settling thoughts and feelings, I don’t want to lose that opportunity.

Even if I’m scrabbling for what to tell you.

===

I did make trifle. That counts, doesn’t it?

It was good, too.

The post What do you write when appeared first on Frydmania.

Another month is whizzing by, and I feel the need to pin a few pieces of it down.

Fresh moments seem as plentiful as leaves on the tree. You think they’ll stay just fine, but turn around and they’re caught up in the wind, crunched under car tyres and the like.

It’s not that the quality of the experience goes – it’s just that I lose sight of them with the next set of leaves in front of me.

Time for a spot of autumnal nature table.

===

We try a park-based playdate with a nursery friend. I smile at the two little things sitting there, essentially swapping the contents of their lunchboxes around, doing their very best sharing while also tearing through the calories.

It’s hard work, going to nursery.

We do a long overdue library trip. My back is sore. Mini is determined to use a toy buggy to take a friend along. I manage to find a working compromise, and the faithful friend rides on the top of some of the lighter books.

New foods join the table. Mini joins Junior in demanding porridge for supper. To add to the autumnal feel, there is even a sudden interest in mince and potatoes. I can only hope we might make it as far as stews when it really gets cold.

===

Sickness decides to stalk us, and hasn’t let up yet.

We try to keep cheerful in different ways. A new sticker book to raise the invalid’s spirits. A made-up outing to the supermarket to occupy the one that’s well.

The bug is a strange one – enough to knock any of us for six, yet a few hours later, you’re able to be bouncing about, waiting for an outing. (At least, Junior and Mini are.)

We make our way off on holiday in the midst of it all. There are two bathrooms; extra sets of sheets. This is all very helpful when you need to clean up after the next bout of nausea.

I find my own way to rise above it all, doing the supermarket run several times over to find a place that sells chicken pieces so I can make chicken soup for the invalids.

The sun on the sea is dazzling. The fields are full of birds chasing after the plough. There are a few moments of peace, even in the midst of the task at hand, and I breathe them in.

===

One of the cupboards at the cottage has a model Tracy Island. Junior is overcome with excitement, being the owner of a Thunderbirds box set.

Mini has other thoughts about what the swimming pool cover is actually for, but starts flying the models around just the same.

We make it to the beach a few times. The sand is particularly yellowy; more granular. Soon the bathtubs have a layer of sediment when we come back and wash off feet again.

I improve my skills of reversing over gravel in tight spaces. No one is allowed to sit in the car while I get it in and out of the drive. I try to avoid looking in the direction of the cottage; I am being vetted, just the same.

Meals keep changing depending on who is ill. We get through stacks and stacks of toast. Something safe for those delicate tummies. Somehow we still seem to bring back half the food I packed.

===

There are other moments to add, I’m sure of it. If I close my eyes for a while, I may be able to bring the leaves back again, before they become just another covering for the ground.

It is October, and my boots crunch over the leaves, as I walk another round of nursery and school and everyday.

The post Moments: October 2014 appeared first on Frydmania.

This time round, it’s probably looking like the reverse.

That’s OK. Blogs come and go, but they can also restart; have a hiatus while the writer is doing something else important, and many more variants.

I’m not doing daily writing discipline, this time round. Nor am I trying out a particular type of writing, or any of the other mini seasons I’ve done in the last year or two.

But I am here. Using words, thinking about them.

Not necessarily padding around writing posts in my head just now. To be truthful, more interested in Battenburg and box sets right now. (And it is the season of nights drawing in too.)

But I still want to bait the line with words every now and then; let them float out for a bit.

Sometimes they get a nibble from others, sometimes not. That’s become less important too, although it is nice to know when others like the bait.

===

I write because I continue to read what others write. I appreciate finding just the right set of ideas to carry me through. I write to give something back.

I write to clear my head. I write to capture a particular set of moments that would otherwise disappear entirely. I write to work through emotions, at times, to find a more constructive response to circumstances.

I write because it’s fun to tap away at the keys; to feel the rhythm of the letters combining, the pattern of sentences flowing. There is a music to words that I become more aware of, year by year.

I write to connect with others. All those other individuals, sitting at home, thinking their thoughts. (I’m betting a reasonable proportion of those are parents, duty bound to stay home, but still wanting to ‘chat’ somehow.)

Sure, the Internet is full of thoughts, and we don’t want to read them all. That’s fine. But we are allowed to think them, and to add our tuppence worth.

===

I write because it’s me. It doesn’t make me less me to be writing less regularly just now. But I write again to remind myself that this is one of the places where I feel most at home.

I write because there are natural and healthy limits to box sets and Battenburg, even when I’m tired and my mind and body tell me otherwise. Writing soothes a need for peace and quiet, for perspective – for escape, too – in a different way.

I write because I am an introvert, and sometimes I’m too tired to have the conversation for real, with people around.

(Or, equally, because I can get all the words out, in order, without interruptions, because Junior and Mini are in bed by the time the laptop comes out.)

I write because I become more and more convinced how much we need story; how much we rely on it. We can watch TV series, we can follow the sagas of stars in gossip mags (if we really want to), but all of it points back to story.

===

Story is you and me walking along together, when I write the words and you read them, at whatever time that is. Story is you and me trying to make sense of life – mine, yours, the other lives entwined with our own.

Story is putting one foot up on a stone, and resting on our stick, and saying, ‘hey, I’ve been thinking about this, and…’ It’s making our sign to help others avoid a wrong direction as they follow on their road.

Story is recognising that we are all putting one foot in front of another, day after day, looking to make sense of what is happening to us and around us.

Story is making light of our darknesses (when we’d rather have a streetlamp handy to chase them away). Story is pointing right back at the ones who tell it even better; who help us ponder in a different way.

Story is our tiny details and the big vistas when life drops away in front of us, and we can’t imagine even being allowed to be where we are right now. But we are.

===

Little and often is where I’d like to be. Little, and not that often, is where I actually am.

But I keep coming back to nibble on some words. To weave some more in my own story; to add some details where I’ve enjoyed another’s story.

And little by little, I hope to keep coming back.

The post Little, and not all that often appeared first on Frydmania.

All those things you love. All those things that you know something about. All those things that you think might even be helpful to them when they grow up.

Well. Some of that happens. Occasionally they even listen to you about something you’re keen to tell them about.

Just like any of us, kids develop specialist subjects, and they expect you to be expert in them.

Whether you are or not.

—

Mini is all about cars. Car identification: tick. Identifying old cars never previously seen: tick. Ability to continue to identify cars, at speed, even when tired or grumpy: tick.

I have been apprenticed to the school of digger appreciation in the past, so I have learned a little in this respect. Part of me rails against it; part of me is genuinely fascinated by the interest in something that would never have taken my fancy at that age.

So we talk about cars. Turns out I do know something about them now. Driving helps. As does looking at badges of Suzuki vs Seat close up, so we can tell the difference between them. (You’ll be off to check for yourself now.)

We start to introduce some car part terminology: hub caps, exhaust pipes, soft tops. Mini is entranced. I am quite proud of myself. This level of car knowledge I can deal with.

Mini will tell you as soon as a car has different hub caps to its overall make. It never occurred to me to look at hub caps, unless they happened to be particularly shiny and caught my eye, but now we look at hub caps.

We play variants on hand sandwich. Somethings we use hands, sometimes we just talk it through when walking along. There is still bread on the bottom, but then we get windscreens, horns, seatbelts.

Just the kind of things you want in a sandwich.

Mini wants to know ‘how cars go to the toilet’. So we talk about exhaust pipes getting rid of what cars don’t need. And, for good measure (and because we’ve noticed them too), we talk about radiator grilles, and what the car does if it gets too hot.

There is even a particular red Ford GT that we look out for, on our way to the sports centre.

—-

When kids love diggers, you learn to love them too. You spot them when the kids aren’t even there. You might even turn and remark to the person next to you when you’ve seen a particularly cool bit of equipment.

Until you realise that they are just another adult at the bus stop next to you. Then you go quiet.

Actually, I’ve managed not to do that part, just about. And by now, I have forgotten more of my digger knowledge.

Plus Junior has moved on to other things, and I need some working memory to talk about spies, and the MI5 and MI6 buildings, and how much of the spy equipment in books is likely to be possible.

—

Fortunately, there are also specialist subjects where you overlap. I am discovering that Mini knows a lot of the songs and rhymes that I do. And is keen to learn more.

I can remember telling Junior about the phrase ‘once upon a time’. There was this frisson: I am getting to tell my child about this really wonderful thing. The magic phrase that starts so many stories.

Now Mini is prepared to hear other magic. Like Morningtown Ride, or Golden Slumbers. And, equally, songs like Yellow Submarine, or She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain.

Every now and then, we’ll find another song we have in common. And hopefully sing it together.

(Sometimes I am told off for this. Including for singing along with a song on CD in the car. It’s obviously fine for Mini to sing along with it, though.)

—-

I’ve written before about those points of connection with a parent: where you share the thing they love.

There is a special status to those things. Even in memory, they have some kind of internal glow about them when you recall them.

I am very grateful that there are those points of connection for me with both Junior and Mini. And that Dan has his too.

And part of me can share a smaller glow when recalling things that are my children’s specialist subjects too.

Even when it’s diggers. Or hub caps.

The post Specialist subjects appeared first on Frydmania.

But it might be about not getting stuck when I don’t post for a while.

I like September. It’s often one of the best picture months on the calendar (have you noticed? Go and look at your own wall calendar and come back to me about it).

I like the sunshine without as much heat. I like the brambles (as referenced before, and once again, and so on).

I like the sense of purpose and routine – usually around going back to school – without the being completely worn out bit. That’ll come by the end of the autumn term, I know it.

One of my grannies had her birthday at the start of September. It was another reason to like it. And you should know that C. S. Lewis was a big fan of autumn – as I discovered when I read a biography of him some time back.

Here’s where we’re at this time round.

===

Sunshine. Day after day of it. Sure, the temperature goes up and down, you get the coat/jumper/length of sleeve bits wrong at different points.

Part of me is uneasy at the relative lack of rain (it is Scotland, after all). And part of me is very happy to send Junior and Mini back out to the trampoline after tea. Again. And again.

We experience that early September burst of summer. Year after year, back in my office days, I would set out around Scotland at this stage in the month, and enjoy sunshine all over the country. I smile at the prospect of it coming round again.

Sometimes, the sun and the light combine in magical ways. At the mid September long weekend, it’s nice enough to go down to the sea and paddle.

Mini has already dispensed with Crocs, trousers and sleeves pushed up as far as they will go. The swell of the Forth is coming in, and I watch a certain amount of wave jumping and sand scrabbling.

We retreat when a jellyfish is washed in (just in case), but in those few minutes, I breathe easier. And we take a little seaweed home to remember it by.

===

There is a trip to feed the ducks on the river by my parents. Suddenly, there is a benefit to the ongoing refusal to eat crusts.

The obligatory basket is brought out to put the crumbs in – and I learn that my mother used it as a little girl when she did the same thing. The binding around the handle is coming loose in one place, but other than that, it is the perfect size for a child’s hand to carry.

There are three adults to one child. The afternoon stretches before us. There is no rush. Plus there might well be pizza for tea.

===

We play and play and play at the park. At least, Mini does. I watch the process of increasing confidence; learning tricks from other children; coming back to the same elements day after day.

Small climbing wall. Scrambling net. Rope bridge (with added potential to swing it sideways, once you’ve built up the courage).

We discuss the possibility of making a list of all the new jumping and swinging skills. Maybe there’ll be enough for some kind of a reward. Mini thinks so. (I do too, to be honest).

We see a succession of junk model robots come home, courtesy of Junior Reader. In true inventor style, they have numbers for the new upgrades: Frank 1, Frank 2, and so on.

As I write, Frank 3 has come home today. He makes rude noises if you press his eyes. I am encouraged to do so.

===

I come to the end of reading Pippi Longstocking to Junior Reader. I am initially sad, then I remind myself that there are two more books still to have fun with.

I am not sure whether it sits in the category of books that are funnier to read to yourself than to read out loud. (The Hyman Kaplan books are also in that group, but those are a way off for Junior Reader.)

In the meantime, I discover a new Church Mice book, second hand. Junior Reader appreciates the dry humour, the word play, and all the little injokes in the drawings.

Mini discovers Meg, Mog and Owl. I have another opportunity to revisit my own childhood, reading and reading them over again.

We talk about which one we like the best – I still think Meg on the Moon is the greatest, with their tea of egg and chips floating around in zero gravity. (Sadly, I can’t show you the individual picture – but you can see the cartoon version online.)

===

There is one golden Saturday morning when Junior and Mini get up, eat breakfast and keep playing. No real squabbles. Dan and I look at each other, get our teas or coffees, and stay in bed as long as possible.

There is a discovery – and rediscovery – of Duplo. Larger and larger blasters are made. Longer and longer trains are put together, along with their various passengers. A clown figure pushes another clown figure in a Duplo pram.

There is a sighting of Yorkshire rhubarb in the supermarket. It’s not the early sprouting stuff, true, but it is also on offer. Rhubarb and brambles. I feel the need for a crumble, and maybe some custard to go with it.

===

There are plenty of other days and hours and minutes that are less moment-y. There are forgotten lunchboxes that come home smelling. There are abandoned socks and argued over food remains, pushed to the side of the plate.

There are attempts to use up food that don’t quite work out. Refusals to do X. Arguments over who gets to open the front door first in the morning.

Still, the light reminds me that we still live in the afterglow of summer. It is autumn, true, but of the pleasantest kind.

I choose to write about the brambles, and the light, and the swell of the sea on an afternoon that seems without end.

The post Moments: September 2014 appeared first on Frydmania.

It’s strange, just to be two of us. One parent, one child – and two grandparents to help pick up the slack.

Well, no. Two grandparents to do a myriad of kindnesses, including feeding, entertaining, some gentle disciplining, and lots more.

There are plenty of good things about being a foursome. Lots of learning from each other. But also squabbles, attempts to bridge age gaps, balancing everyone getting enough attention. All those kind of stretching things.

Mini and I go away, and I get to stick to one age group. One set of eating requirements. One level of concentration (or otherwise).

Dan and Junior, for their part, get to do the older kid stuff. Long rides on river boats. Flights, and a chance at an upgrade of seat. Picking sushi together. Staying up that bit later.

Grandparents in both locations were happy, getting more time with just one child – and getting their own grown up child back for a little while. (Parents like to be spoiled just as much as children.)

It is strange how the mind adjusts. Junior Reader came home, and I had to remember again: growing up. Yes, really that size, that leg length. A haircut that Dan arranged, not me. Only a few days away and I have to remember who this person is.

It went well for both teams, everyone came home happy. Tired too, but with lots of new stories to tell. New acquisitions. Opportunities to giggle, and have ‘I missed you’ hugs.

It won’t always be my choice, marching two by two. I’m glad there will be plenty of foursome times too. But maybe just occasionally, we can all benefit from a little divide and conquer.

If only the washing basket would divide itself into half the amount to catch up on. That really would set a seal on the experience.

The post Marching two by two appeared first on Frydmania.

Flaps are good.

There is a whole slew of lift the flap books out there. Mini has a particular fondness for Spot the dog, who has a good number of flap books to his credit, but there are many others besides that get the seal of approval.

For those mini readers who can’t yet read, may not be quite at spelling things out, but still want to interact with a book, flaps give the opportunity to do something while reading. And hopefully find some fun surprises too.

So here’s a little round-up of lift the flap books – and their cousins, those ‘pull the tab’ types. (I’ll explain more below.)

===

Where’s Spot? – Eric Hill

Much of the fun of lift the flap books is about finding things. It’s the book equivalent of Hide and Seek, or Peek a Boo.

In this book, Spot’s mum is looking for him at teatime, but she can’t find him.

As she searches round the house, she finds lots of places he isn’t – but a number of other animals are there instead. Hippos, snakes, penguins, they’re all here – as are the opportunities to give them voices as you read.

One of the things I like about this one is the false ending. The mummy dog thinks she’s found Spot, gets fooled again – and then gets a tip as to where he actually is.

Having found him, there’s still the drawing him back to why she was looking for him in the first place: there’s a meal to be eaten.

I like the ‘bounce’ of the illustrations for Spot. They are simple, but there is something in the quality of the illustrations that adds humour.

I also like the choices of animals: not just the hippo but also one of the little birds that hangs out with hippos. Not just one, but three penguins, all ready to tell you that you’ve not found him quite yet.

We’re equally fond of Spot Bakes a Cake. The child can relate to an adult’s birthday coming up, and wanting to be involved. Spot predictably gets a bit carried away with the mixing and the icing, but the result is still appreciated.

I like the author’s ear for understanding how children see themselves having achieved the whole – when actually a parent has been alongside them for much of the process.

So Spot’s dad congratulates him on the cake (complete with decorative dog bones), and Spot says:

‘Thanks Dad. Mum helped a bit.’

===

Rod Campbell is also well known for flap books. Dear Zoo is a classic – the kind where a child tries to choose a pet, but the various choices don’t quite suit.

(If you like that kind of storyline, I also highly recommend Lauren Child’s I Want a Pet, and Satoshi Kitamura’s A Boy Wants a Dinosaur – both for older readers than the flap book types, but both lots of fun.)

Rod Campbell’s visual style is quite similar to that of Eric Hill, so if your child likes one, they’ll probably like the other.

===

On the non-fiction side of things, Usborne has cornered the market with lift the flap books with a difference. These are large scale hardbacks, but on all kinds of different subjects, particularly history and science.

In this case, lifting the flap means finding out more: seeing inside the body, or a medieval castle, or the workings of a toaster. The range is called See Inside, and I can highly recommend them.

While there’s a focus on being informative, there’s also a good sense of humour too – a little gentle poking fun at the weirder aspects of life in the past (e.g. the inner workings of Roman bath houses), or of our bodies, and so on.

If you have readers who like spotting things, being able to spot the flap and find out more works well. See these as natural companions if your junior readers are of the Guiness Book of World Records persuasion.

===

Lift the flaps are fairly easy, and a good intro to those all-important paper-moving skills which allow you to turn the page.

But there are plenty of books which combine them with more complex mechanisms, including tabs to pull, wheels to move round, and so on.

So the final cheer goes to The Tickle Book, which has flaps, tabs, wheels, and generally all three, on every double spread.

Author Ian Whybrow is also the one behind Harry and the Dinosaurs books, while illustrator Axel Scheffer (of Gruffalo fame) leads a quirky touch to the drawings.

The elusive Ticklemonster (who can be coaxed out of hiding with the appropriate tab or flap) is a fairly wild looking being, complete with a feather duster for enhanced tickling. Ken Dodd would be proud.

===

The downside to flaps, tabs and the rest is the overall wear and tear.

It’s not so bad on board books, but even there the flaps can become permanently folded or – sometimes with library books – removed altogether by an over-enthusiastic hand.

So if your readers are more on the mini side of things, and your book is multi-tabbed, urge a little caution. Model how to use the various parts of the book carefully.

And if the worst has already come to the worst, most of these can still be moved about with a finger if the tab or wheel has ceased to function or has gone missing entirely.

===

We all like a few surprises. For your mini readers, surprises that are predictable –
the equivalent of telling a favoured joke again and again.

For your junior readers, genuine surprises and discoveries are in order – the kind that evoke at least a few wows, and maybe some giggles too.

The post Lit Kid: pulling strings and lifting flaps appeared first on Frydmania.

Sometimes they come out at bedtime, when the noise level has gone down, and there’s a slight chance that you can hear your own thoughts.

Sometimes there’s a phrase that resonated many years ago, has almost been forgotten – then saw its chance and jumped out of your mouth again.

===

Mini has a particular bedtime routine just now, which includes a song I make up as I go along. Sometimes I need a few rhymes to help it along.

The other night I was singing it and needed a rhyme for ‘legs’. Lo and behold, what should come to mind but ‘toothypegs’ – the kind of thing that no doubt my mother said to me when I was at a much more tender age.

Toothypegs brought on some giggles, and now it has become part of the bag of words and phrases that get repeated over and over – while playing, while walking along, while waiting for the bus.

Some time back, it was ‘in the wars’ – and you can read more about being in the wars in a previous post. (I still rather like ‘in the wars’. It makes a random bump and cry afterwards feel much more heroic.)

===

It seems to me that it is very difficult to parent afresh. You can try fancy new routines – or new books – or new ways of conveying suspicious ingredients into your little charges’ mouths.

Every now and then, though, the ghost of parental sayings past comes floating by.

At those points, you are generally beyond stringing a sentence together, let alone summoning enough patience for the latest ‘is – is not – IS – IS NOT’ contest.

And so a word makes its way from your childhood vocabulary into theirs. It’s quite sweet really, but a bit disconcerting when you had done perfectly well without saying it, or thinking about it, for over twenty years.

Maybe it’s the verbal equivalent of ‘phone a friend’ from TV quiz shows.

You’ve used up logic, you’ve uttered several of those ‘remove that toy crocodile from your brother’s armpit before I do X’ phrases that you never realised existed before.

Just as you scrape the bottom of the linguistic barrel, and think you might as well go back to grunts – the kids do, don’t they? – you get the little bit of help you need.

And it sums up all that it needs to – because it was part of forming your world when you grew up.

And now it becomes part of theirs too.

Toothypegs. There, you’re welcome. Just don’t forget to brush yours tonight.

The post Toothypegs appeared first on Frydmania.

Junior Reader could be relied on to spot rhymes. Sometimes to guess a rhyme before I’d read it. Or to fill in the gaps where I left a space.

Mini Reader is very suspicious of gaps. Where are the words, please? But give an opportunity to count in a book – just as in real life – and all is well.

I’m more a rhymes gal than a numbers person, but that’s OK. I wasn’t much of a diggers and dumpers person either, but I learned fast when Junior Reader required it.

So in honour of books with numbers in them, here’s a few you can count along with.

===

The Bear with Sticky Paws – Clara Vulliamy

“I don’t like this book!” Mini informs me. “We haven’t read it yet,” I say. “I don’t like it!”

I start reading anyway, and soon Mini discovers the numbers element – and requests an immediate rereading. (Always a good sign.)

First up, I need to tell you that this is a really beautiful book. Some readers with aspirations towards princessly activity will love it simply for the look.

The style of the drawings is lovely, and I can only dream of living in a place as nice. Think French mansion with its own patisserie to provide all the cakes in the book, and you are somewhere close.

There’s some nice rhythms to it too, with the ‘girl named Pearl’ getting cross at breakfast time, and going on to discover a partner in crime when a small white bear arrives at the door.

The bear is very hungry all the time – so Pearl has to keep feeding it. 7 pieces of pizza, 11 carrots, and 15 iced buns. And that’s just for lunch.

Each food item is lovingly drawn so you can count them all out – and of course decide which is your favourite bun / ice cream etc on that particular reading.

I won’t spoil the outcome of the story, but the counting rounds things off nicely at the end too. Do give this one a go.

===

I did my shout-out for The Very Hungry Caterpillar recently, so it’s just to remind you that there’s some decent counting in there too.

Each day, the caterpillar eats one more item – and by Saturday, there’s significant eating to be done, and counting to go with it.

===

There are many many books that include counting to 10. Some are more appealing than others – and let’s face it, if you are going for multiple rereads, you really want to have an appealing book for counting and recounting.

Here are a few more at various points of the spectrum:

One to Ten and Back Again – Nick Sharratt and Sue Heap

Many of us know Nick Sharratt’s distinctive drawings. They are all over books as varied as Jacqueline Wilson’s teen chapter books and pre-school books with Julia Donaldson of Gruffalo fame.

I have only come across this pairing more recently, and it’s a pretty good one. As both authors are illustrators, you get a mix of two visual styles on the same page, which adds more variety.

Sharratt’s signature pictures are black outlined, but Heap’s aren’t generally, so the impact is a little softer.

What I like most, though, is that the book doesn’t stop at 10 – it counts up and it counts back down again, as the title suggests.

This makes it a bit longer and adds a bit of positive challenge for your confident counter.

===

Who’s Hiding in Princess World? – Marks and Spencer books

Counting in books also brings you nicely to ‘spot the…’ books ie those ones where you have to find various items within a busy visual scene.

I mention this particular book because for every double page spread, it offers the chance to count a range of different items e.g. starting from 1 crystal ball to 2 ice sculptures, and so on, up to 10.

The plus point of this is that pretty much everyone can spot the 1 item, the 2 items and so on, so it builds confidence for those who find counting harder  – or equally those who find it harder to spot items if a scene is very detailed.

For the really keen counter, there are usually items to spot where you have to count up to 20. This is harder to keep count on the page, but can bring in maths strategies such as finding ways to group what you’ve counted, or to work your way across the page.

===

Anno’s Counting Book – Mitsumasa Anno

Anno books were popular in the 1970s, but it took until I was in my 30s to be introduced to them. Anno is a Japanese illustrator who creates exceptionally beautiful books which bear many rereads.

Anno became famous for depicting different countries and historical periods, but he also had his own take on pre-school activities like learning numbers and letters.

The counting book is very clever, because (like many of his books) there are no words, but on each scene, there are multiple pictures that encourage you to count.

On the 1 page, there is one of each item; on the 2 page, 2 of each item and so on, but all arranged much more as elements in a landscape.

The book goes up to 12, so it naturally ties in with visuals for 12 months of the year, showing how counting ties in to other maths notions such as progression of time.

I confess I haven’t yet tried this one with Mini Reader yet, but I have a feeling it ought to go down very well with my counter extraordinaire.

===

Any counting books you like? Or ones where you groan at a further rendition? There’s always space for more recommendations.

On that note, I feel I should add another item to my ‘books with holes‘ list, and remind you of this classic version of The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.

It’s a 1970s edition, and I was delighted to snap up my own copy in a charity shop one time. It’s not too hard to find elsewhere online, if you feel like adding to your own collection.

The post Lit Kid: books with counting appeared first on Frydmania.

Mini and Junior aren’t entirely reading off the same menu at the moment. That’s OK. Tea for three of us on in the background (an easy favourite); and now to time an egg for Mini.

Mini has decided that egg white is OK; egg yolk is ‘yuk!’. So I decide on a well-done boiled egg – not quite a hard-boiled one, but done enough to make the yolk easy to scoop out.

So what can you do in the time it takes to cook an egg? (Seven minutes in this case, in case you were asking.)

Turns out, quite a lot.

===

Open window to check for favourable noises from small people on the trampoline. (So far so good.)

Get today’s lunchbox items into the dishwasher; try and assemble some food for tomorrow.

Haul the laundry basket in and see if there’s enough for a full load of either colour.

Put away some washing that’s dry but has been hanging about on a chair for a day or so.

Put other items away in Junior’s school bag; check for any significant paperwork that might not have been mentioned to me.

Put a few other items in the hall ready for tomorrow.

Round up a few stray pairs of shoes in the hall.

Realise I am in close proximity to a bathroom, with no competition for it. Seize the opportunity…

…and the timer for the egg goes off, just as I’m reaching for the tap. So be it.

I realised, as I was going around doing the various things, I was also starting to compose a blog post in my head. So that ought to count as an extra.

===

The thing is, it’s hard to get those few moments when the natives are quiet/occupied.
The ones which mean you can get a run at those tasks that have been eluding you.
The moments that might mean you have less to do in the evening.

(If only you can decide what is you actually want to do in the evening, after bedtime, once you no longer have small people in front of you, demanding any number of things.)

I wrote up this list, not to berate others (or equally myself, on the days when eating anything after five o’clock feels like an achievement). Maybe to capture some of that crazy back and forth productivity of parenting.

The type where some days, you’ve feel like you’ve conquered the world AND cleaned the cooker in just a few minutes, because nobody needed a) a story b) the toilet c) your peacemaking skills or d) made any other simultaneous demands.

Much of the rest of the time, it’s a-d (at least) and more besides.

Still. The egg calculation worked. The washing went on. And no one fell over a pile of shoes when coming back indoors.

I’ll take that as a win.

The post In the time it takes to cook an egg appeared first on Frydmania.

But I am being reacquainted with certain categories of books, following in the wake of Mini Reader, who has some very definite ideas about what makes a good book.

One with holes in, for example.

===

We can agree on a particular one, certainly, which is the classic book with holes: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.

I’m sure I initially came across this in paperback – and you need to be a bit more careful poking your finger through the holes in paper. This works even better as a board book, though we have it in both versions.

The conceit, of course, is that the aforementioned caterpillar, being very hungry, needs to eat, and so there are little holes in the pages where he has supposedly chewed through them.

There is some gentle maths thrown in, where he gradually eats one more item over the course of each day of the week – plus you have the days of the week element too.

But there’s also the visual aspect: each day of the week has a food of a different colour, as you progress over strawberries, plums, and so on.

Saturday is the biggie, when the caterpillar has his blow out meal, and regrets it after.

(There may not be terribly many supermodels nibbling just one green leaf the day after breaking their diet, but surely ‘just salad’ is following in the steps of the caterpillar.)

Saturday is of course the day that sticks in my mind from reading it as a child. It is partly the greed factor of so many items of food, partly the attraction of all the different things.

I’m sure it also drew me in to notions of more cosmopolitan fare – its pickles and salami, for example – years before I sampled either.

Mini Reader doesn’t necessarily put a finger in the holes of the book. But the days of the week are flipped very fast, so that you have to read quickly to keep up with them.

And we’ve had some happy discussions about just what is going on in that cocoon to bring the caterpillar into being that amazing butterfly of the final pages.

===

Junior Reader and I are fans of Harry and the Dinosaurs: a small boy with a proud pudding bowl haircut, but also (importantly) a plastic bucket full of his special toy dinosaurs.

I’ve mentioned Harry before – particularly when his older sister Sam riles him – as a good example of recurring phrases. But Mini Reader has introduced me to another book with holes: a story where you see colours through a hole in the page.

Harry and the Dinosaurs Play Hide and Seek introduces colours and shapes, as does another in the series, Harry and the Dinosaurs have a Very Busy Day.

Harry is hunting for his dinosaurs – and thinks he sees a different shape, page by page. You then lift the flap to see a larger object, each with its own dinosaur on it.

The book is therefore an additional way to talk about form and colour – as well as a chance for your own mini reader to test your pronunciation of Apatosaurus and Scelidosaurus.

It’s lighter on words than the conventional Harry books – but if you are looking for quickies to add to the growing pile of bedtime stories (Mini’s book total at bedtime seems to be on the increase), it’s light and fun.

===

I’ll add in a slightly different book with holes: a fold-out book which then forms a series of dioramas. (Mini Reader rather likes it too, at least to look at.)

I have a copy of Thumbelina from my own childhood – and am very pleased to find
a picture of the same issue, so you can admire it too.

There are I think six scenes, with not so much text per page – just enough to take you through Thumbelina’s initial escape, and the other places she seeks to find a home.

The plus side of the book is that each double spread folds out, so you can see two or three layers into each page. But the big excitement is that the covers of the book have strings, so you can fasten the whole thing into a lantern shape.

I think the notion, for the publishers, was to create some kind of mobile (think decorative hanging device, for those gentle readers who might think just of phones). There is a little loop at the top too, so you can certainly hang up the whole book.

The downside of this is that the pictures are quite small and detailed, and at ceiling height, it would be harder to admire them.

And it is worth admiring them: they are reminiscent of a do-it-yourself cardboard theatre
(I had one of those too as a child), with lots of levels of scenery to look through.

===

I can’t leave without mentioning Peepo again – one that I referenced before, in relation to the way the text rocks you along.

Peepo allows you to see a tiny part of a scene – then you turn the page and see the whole scene.

It is partly the fun of imagining the whole before you see it all, and partly a play on the notion of the book: the peeper is a baby, exploring his home, the park, the back yard, and so on.

Peepo is a classic too – known in particular for its illustrations that conjure up a world of baths in front of the fire, coal cellars, children making their own toys, Dad in his ARP uniform, mum in curlers.

Even as an adult, we want to look through the hole in the book – back to the world we may only just remember, or (for me anyway) recognise through stories and films.

Whether we find out more with our eyes – or whether our mini reader explores with their fingers – a book with a hole is an invitation. The world we are about to find is engaging – and safe.

As long as we don’t eat too many lollipops on Saturdays.

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Every summer is different, I’ve found. One year, the kids need lots of structure – like going swimming every morning, so that you have something at the same time every day. (At least for a week.)

Another year, they need lots of rest: because school demands more of them, or it’s just been a really busy time.

Some years, they need lots of playdates outside the house, before they, you and the walls around you implode.

And sometimes, being with each other is enough. (Sometimes, even enough for you to grab another coffee and tentatively put your feet up for a bit.)

It’s also different every year because of you. What kind of a year you’ve had. What kind of a summer holidays you’ve steered everyone through.

Some years, it’s about keeping you afloat, through this five minutes, and the next, and the next.

===

Our dance is done for this summer. I can already feel the evening temperatures changing.

Soon we’ll be at that point where there are unexpected shrieks because the spiders have decided the same, and are coming indoors for the winter. (Usually early September, I find.)

When I was younger, I used to relish autumn the most. I don’t do so well in high temperatures, in general, and September is a great time for sunshine plus slightly cooler weather.

When you are at school, September happens to include other lovely things like choosing new pens and pencils for school, lining up the stickers for your pencil tin, maybe even finding the perfect bag to carry it all around in.

(That was me in my teens. I have moved on a little since then, but I still miss my favourite school bag, the one that I resewed so many times because it was the best, and I didn’t want to try to replace it.)

===

This year, September will be about brambling – because going for walks and coming home with free fruit seems like a good idea.

It will be about seeing lots of people at weekends. That’s the season we’re in at the moment.

It will be about finding new books at the library; working out how much homework we can actually get done while one swims and the other sort of works.

It will be about pushing the food boundaries a little more for one; protecting the sleep of another.

But mostly – and I am writing this to myself, to remind me – it will be about drawing breath. Because even though new pencil tins are lovely, drawing breath is what I need the most.

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(At least, you hope they are. Junior Reader has been back up already, but I left that to Dan to sort out.)

It seems to come down to three options: organisation, relaxation or sleep.

===

Organisation: we know this one. It’s called getting packed lunch boxes ready; doing the recycling. Trying to find the bits of the abandoned board game; corralling the (hopefully by now) dry washing and distributing it to its various homes.

It’s called any number of things that you couldn’t get done in the day – or were unable to finish – because of the stream of other items you needed to attend to.

These may or may not include sorting out arguments, reminding people where to put their school uniform once removed, dealing with food that didn’t last that well in the fridge after all, happily responding to sudden requests for a second rereading of a new favourite book, sorting out more arguments, and so on.

If you are a recovering perfectionist, or even just like to be able to move your feet across the sitting room floor of an evening, organisation is hard to escape.

Even if you do the bare minimum. Or kick some of it to one side. Or drape a towel over the things you can’t face looking at for a while.

===

Relaxation. That’s what we really want, isn’t it? A chance to stop; perchance, to chat with your other half.

There are all kinds of lovely books to read; things to make, perhaps; uplifting TV programmes that might be on catchup, that kind of thing.

There is also comfort TV, comfort eating, and comfort ignoring as much else as you can.

There are some evenings that are only about this category – because it’s been a really tough day, and I just can’t face any more have-tos. Or maybe even because it’s been a really good day, and hey, it’s a treat.

Relaxation is a an attractive land that is really not that far away, but I often forget to visit.
I am still stamping tickets in Organisation when the train has pulled out of the station.

===

Sleep. That’s probably the thing I really do need the most of. But I don’t necessarily do that.

This is because, despite all of the above, my body clock still runs on Evening Time, and I like to unwind a bit more when the house is a bit quieter.

Children tend to run on Morning Time. On occasion, they run on What Time Do You Call This? Whichever, it’s not a natural companion to Evening Time.

Last night, I fell asleep shortly after Official Bedtime, which messed with my own bedtime.

This was later joined by a) anxiety sleep (we all had to be out of the house in good time today) b) annoying dreams c) one child sounding like they were waking up an hour before they needed to d) losing the alarm inside the bedclothes e) someone else getting up earlier than normal.

Tonight, I really should vote sleep, and have done with it.

===

Tonight, instead, I’m on Writing Time. That, in a funny way, is organisation and relaxation together.

If it would only gain me an extra hour or two of sleep, I’d do so all the more.

The post Organisation, relaxation or sleep appeared first on Frydmania.

You’re already accustomed to putting them first in so many areas: when you sleep, when you wake, when you use the bathroom independently (if you’re lucky) comes back to them.

And that’s OK. So too is planning a certain amount of things based on them: what they enjoy, their attention span, and how high their wellies are for certain active pursuits.

Lately, I seem to have added another level of awareness (or maybe it’s subservience, I’ve still to decide).

The one when you don’t necessarily make your own lunch: you just eat the various leftovers, after they’ve decided what they will or won’t eat that particular day.

===

I already have a commitment to leftovers (you may remember), so that’s one thing. I like seeing what supermarkets have on offer, and coming up with meals around that (you may also remember).

In defence, I think it sits as equal parts hating to waste food – and equal parts gluttony.

It’s easier when it’s fruit or veg on special: that’s pretty much a no-brainer. Other items…well, it may depend. On how much I want to keep items out of supermarket bins. (Particularly if they include marzipan.)

Weekends do see us eating leftovers reasonably often. Whatever Dan didn’t use up at the office during the week, whatever is still in the bottom of the fridge.

I think of these as ‘eatie-uppies’: everyone ends up with something different, but it means that there’s not waste. (Although I am struggling to find new uses for leftover mango chutney after a takeaway, I must confess.)

===

Today’s leftovers, for your delectation (and mine too):

– a small box of leftover chicken and rice. (Junior Reader is eating more – but I am still trying to gauge the quantities right.)

– a quarter of a tuna sandwich from yesterday. (Someone else couldn’t quite manage the whole thing.)

– a Babybel cheese. Because in my current run of food research, they may say they eat them – and they certainly like playing with the outside waxy bit – but they don’t really eat them. So this was the last one.

– a slice of raisin bread. Last one in the packet, also a supermarket discount item. And someone’s tummy dictates no more dried fruit for a little while.

– Along the way, and possibly yesterday, I believe that a certain quantity of cold baked beans may have been consumed. Probably because they needed to be used up. (Also because I have a certain fondness for cold baked beans.)

– I failed on finding a use for a small amount of uncooked cauliflower (food waste bin), but succeeded in adding a spare carrot and a certain amount of yellow pepper into a rice salad. (That one was pretty good.)

===

Despite all of the above activity, the fridge has a small amount of a ground rice pudding in a pot. And some leftover icing from a baking project, where the lead baker really wanted the icing – then decided they didn’t actually like the taste.

There is also apple puree and pumpkin puree which have been taking up space in the bottom of the freezer – and might just make it into a smoothie over the weekend.

I really don’t know what to do with the icing though. Other than dunk biscuits into it. Which I really shouldn’t be writing about at this time of night.

The post A life through leftovers appeared first on Frydmania.

Counting the number of sweets in a packet; grapes in a box. How many sleeps til this, and how many seconds til that.

It seems only fair to respond with some numbers of my own. With the beginning of term just upon us, here is the summer in numbers.

===

One: outing on which we spontaneously bought ice cream cones. (But there have been plenty of ice lollies at other times.)

Two: different softplays visited. (Thank goodness for sunshine, and not needing to go there much.)

Three: sets of good (kid) friends seen – the ones where it’s always a treat to catch up, especially when we don’t live near each other.

Four: pots of playdough open at any one time. But No More Than That!

Five: the minimum number of minutes left when it’s time to leave the park. (Don’t even think of making it any fewer.)

Six: children on a bench. How many could we get to look at the camera at one time? (Maybe four.)

Seven: ways to come down the slide at the park. I’m sure it must be that many. I know I’ve been told to watch all of them.

Eight: the number of episodes on a Shaun the Sheep DVD. (Good to know. Shaun can cheer up anyone, even if their tea has arrived a bit late that night.)

Nine: sleeps until…well, anything really. Because counting sleeps is very important.

Ten: different outdoor places visited. Parks, beaches, botanical gardens. Several of them have been visited umpteen times, even in the rain. (Because there has been rain. But it certainly hasn’t stopped play.)

===

I count a few other things myself. The number of new foods tried. The number of days of new beginnings.

The number of freckles on a nose. The number of stories needed at bedtime before it’s time for sleep.

The number of times you can read the same book – and find different things to comment on.

The number of new soft toys acquired over the summer – and the limitless love that lies behind the people who gave them.

The post The summer in numbers appeared first on Frydmania.

Missing in action – is it a parent thing too? We are so often in a whirl of activity (I am currently, anyway), our bodies carrying out any number of tasks, our heads trying to keep up with multiple conversations and questions from small people around us.

In between times, there might be a few moments (or Moments) to be in, but, well, it’s hard to hear yourself think. Let alone to slow down and experience the moments too.

Luckily, for all the clamour, small people are great at enabling us to spot the moments too. Because they are in them, up to their armpits in the present moment, often yelling for us to stop and view it with them.

Sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter if the moment is mine – or theirs. It’s more often theirs. They are better at stopping. For now, I’ll claim the moments as mine too.

===

The focus and concentration of little people in pursuit of next door’s cat. Not directly running after it, just desperate to be next to it, stroke it, and so on. Occasionally, the cat gives up its sunbathing and complies.

The ‘on switch’ effect of an evening shower. I’m sure they should come with a health warning for parents – or at least a complementary pair of earmuffs for when the decibel level goes way up again.

The tip toe attempts to see into a pram, and catch sight of a baby next to us in a cafe.

The tail end of a playdate. Never mind parallel play, here are five children playing independently, having nothing to do with any of the others, but all focused on their own task.

Two minutes later, there is competition to be the first to complete their tidy up task. (We notice that the pre-schoolers are much better at it than the school kids.)

The delight of pedalling your bike down a slight incline: along the path, through the garden gate and onto the grass.

The exuberance brought on by the prospect of Weetabix. (Or indeed porridge.)

The appreciation of new shoes that allow for more stamping in puddles, squelching in mud, mucking about in sand and water, and so on. Truly, crocs are the summer equivalent of wellies – and self-draining too.

===

Sometimes, we manage to stop at the same time. We share our stories over meals, our memories of the day. We bring Daddy up to speed as to what has been going on.

And I try to bring to mind all the many moments, big and small. The brilliant eating. The trying of new things. The way that we let one bus go by, because we wanted to wait for a double decker one.

Teatime is a second chance to be present, even if I wasn’t fully the first time round. Marking the stories, celebrating the day. All present and correct.

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Early afternoon, while out, there were still shallow puddles to splash in. And the sun was coming out again.

We set out with cardigans; by the time we got to the park, mid afternoon, we ditched them to play in the sun at the park. (Again.)

By the evening, we were back to humidity, windows open. Washing hung up in the attic already dried within half a day.

Writing in the late evening, windows are still open. There is no particular need to close them either.

[post written earlier in the week – for those wondering which day I’m describing.]

===

All this is not at all remarkable in many places. But we are talking about Scotland here.

Especially east coast Scotland, where a day of sun is pretty much usually followed by a day of mist (or sea fog, otherwise known as haar). I have often thought of this as a fairly presybterian phenomenon – you’ve had your fun, now it’s back to low level gloom.

So what does one do with all this unaccustomed heat and sunshine? In fact, not just heat and sunshine, but the very same falling within (gasp) the school holiday period.

(It is not unknown for schools to break up at the end of June, and rain to begin pretty much the next day – if not that very afternoon.)

===

Here’s what we do. We eat ice lollies. Lots of them. We develop ways of eating them so that they start to have outlines: this one has a head, that one has a nose, and so on.

We look at living on salad vegetables and fruit (with maybe the odd chicken nugget for those in need). And other things that are easy to nibble.

We go to the park. And we go to the park. And once more, we set out for the park, remarking on just how warm it is mid afternoon. We make complicated calculations about how much sunscreen that might require for the kids.

We go swimming. And are delighted to find that the local council has made it free for school kids. (At least, at this pool, at this time of day. We make a mental note to phone and check just what the combination of details is, so we can do it (also) again and again.)

We break out those particular toys that only really see the light of day for a week of the year, normally. After a while, we just leave them out in the garden anyway.

We forget that there is really any need to wear shoes other than sandals. Or possibly more rugged sandals for going to the beach, climbing on rocks and so on.

===

Every now and then, we look up, as though there was something else to remember to do. Like pack raincoats, duck for cover, bring along an extra layer just in case. The conventional things that we expect to do at least fifty weeks of the year.

…

No, maybe not. Now, was there another ice lolly about the place? This kind of dream, we don’t need to wake up from just yet.

The post What to do when the sun sticks around appeared first on Frydmania.

Now we’re OK on this in a few different ways:

– Junior Reader doesn’t grow terribly fast (so far), so the T-shirt still has some life in it yet

– we’re pretty good about passing on clothes when they don’t fit any more, given that many of them are ‘new to us’ via helpful friends and family, or second-hand shops.

However. There comes a point when certain clothes reach treasured status.

And really, this one is a good one – nice red background (always a good start as far as Junior Reader is concerned), big applique design on the front that’s holding pretty well despite lots of use. (It’s a T Rex, in case you wanted to know.)

So Junior Reader came to me with a suggestion. Why not turn the T-shirt into a cushion cover? (Because, you know, we definitely need more cushions with dinosaurs on.)

===

Lots of people have clothes they don’t want to part with. Sometimes this is OK – fashion comes round again, etc. You may find out it looks great a few years from now. (If you have wardrobe space to wait this long.)

Sometimes, you only wear the clothes a few times a year, but it’s worth hanging on to them. (Quality wool coats; much of my ‘hot weather clothing’ collection.)

Sometimes, it’s time to think differently about the item. It’s part of the reason quilts and rag rugs work well. You get to hang on to some material that has sentimental attraction, but in a new form where it has a bit more use.

And why not add a T-shirt cushion to that category?

===

Junior Reader has clearly seen me fiddling with fabric enough to put the suggestion – and I like it. It is a nice T-shirt, plus it gives me a new project idea.

Junior Reader is now adding further complexity to the notion. ‘It needs a zip.’ Well, love, I can’t fit zips (as yet), but Granny R can. So maybe we’ll ask her, or…maybe I’ll bottle it, and we’ll use press studs instead, ‘cos I know I can sew those on OK.

A T-shirt is not so far off a cushion shape in the first place. And if I run out of pillow filler, I could go as far as buying a cushion pad for this one – which would then mean I might need to do a bit more conventional measuring to make sure the cover fits.

But beyond the cushion itself, there’ll be more leftover material. Fuel for the rag rug, I suspect.

Still, while the T-shirt still fits, this is more of a project to muse on for the future. We’ll keep you posted.

The post Making: new uses for treasured T-shirts appeared first on Frydmania.

Serious board game makers and players (and I hardly count myself among them, but I have learned this much) solve the problem with expansion sets.

That way, the game allows for more players. More moves. More rules. More complications too.

So here’s some more summer memories – expansion set style.

===

Indoor golf. It’s the way to go. It’s particularly the way to go when it feels safe, funny, good, day after day. As I write this, we’ve played it for three days straight, and I suspect we will do some more.

It works particularly well in a large hall with smooth floors. So well that we have to stop Junior Player from turning it more into something like hockey – or even lacrosse. (Not our paintwork, sweetie.)

===

Playdough. Making feasts. Particularly, making green spaghetti, cutting it up small, putting it in a pan, tipping it on to a plastic tray, and popping it in the pretend oven. For ten minutes.

(Everything is cooked for ten minutes. I checked with the head chef. Except, I think I got away with cooking pretend gingerbread men for twenty minutes, the other day. Mustn’t tell.)

We develop our own specialisms. Dan does well on fancy cakes and pies – particularly ones with an extra playdough cutout on top. Your age, your initial, whatever you fancy.

===

Cuddles the dog. He’s soft, he’s squishy, and he works well on a swing, or down a chute. Or sometimes dropped, head first, from a climbing frame.

(Lest you worry, gentle readers, Cuddles is a soft toy. All is well. Although his coat does pick up fluff at playgrounds quite effectively.)

On the day I am writing this, Cuddles gets his own bed. It’s a doll’s bed, but he doesn’t mind. In fact, we forget to bring him to the park this time – but we decide he is having a nap.

(He might equally be at the dog grooming parlour while we are out having fun on the swings.)

===

Tomato soup has become its own food group. It’s the cure for anything, really. Although, when an iPad is in the background, there are serious distractions. I know, because the
T-shirts have the stains to prove it.

It is also clear that, whatever is in Mummy’s snack box each day, however many varieties there are, they will all disappear. (But they may also get shared with friends at the park. Which is fine too.)

===

We are telling stories. Stories about us. Stories about what we did yesterday.

Stories about what we did ten minutes ago. We are building up a shared language. The subject matter circulates through the sunshine and the heat.

One day, I tell the story about how I put my watch through the washing machine by mistake.

The next day, the story is retold to me. But then I am given a replacement watch. It’s made out of a twig bent round my wrist, but it does the job just fine.

Because we are back at the park, and you don’t need too much precision when you are trying to keep playing for as long as you can.

===

Everything is of note in this new world. That Mummy wears the same earrings every day. That there are lots of taxis just now, and we can sit on the step and wait for the next one to come.

There are giggles. Misunderstandings. Hide and seek opportunities that were missed the first time and embraced the next. Discoveries that bath toys make interesting noises if you apply them to your tummy. Repeatedly.

We talk backwards about the drive being laid and forwards about significant birthdays next year. We learn new vocabulary for piggybacks and we discover that there are astrogators in the upper atmosphere, if only we look for them.

The summer is rich and full, and even the rain gives us something to talk about. Forwards and backwards, like the swing, going on up to the sky and back.

The post Summer ’14: expansion set appeared first on Frydmania.

Dan and his mum have liked Matisse for a long time. I’m newer on the scene, but had managed to see a few things in galleries, like The Snail at Tate Modern.

Junior Reader didn’t know about Matisse, but does know a thing or two about paper cutouts, having gone through an extensive phase of making paper snowflakes. So we thought it might just suit everyone.

When I was at the exhibition, I learned that Matisse had spent time in Hawaii, and that some of the local art had influenced the shapes that he later cut out of paper.

That rang a bell with the quilting book, and more recently, I looked it up. There is a Hawaiian style of quilting that is probably more accurately described as applique i.e. sewing smaller bits of cloth onto bigger bits of cloth in a decorative way.

The Hawaiian style is to have a high contrast between the cutout shape and the background. So you can imagine a white background, say, and a deep blue or deep red design on the front.

But when I looked at how it gets made, all I could think of was: snowflakes.

—

When you make the template for the cutout shape, you fold the paper into four. You then just take a quarter of the cutout, and pin that onto material which is folded into four.

Then you cut through all four levels of the material. The result is that when you open out the coloured material, you have your complete shape, all nice and symmetrical.

I fancy the idea of collaborating with Junior Reader on this one. One maker making the design, the other sewing it. I think that’s probably a win-win.

The trickier bit is the sewing that goes with it. From what I’ve read so far, you sew a line around the inside of the cutout shape – that holds it in place. You do it in a contrasting colour so it’s easy to spot (and remove later).

Then you do ‘slipstitch’, which I think is to use sewing to tuck the edges under so it looks neat. After that, you remove the traced line of stitching, and your applique is complete. Or something like that.

I don’t quite know what we’d do with the result – a cushion? A wallhanging? I might canvass Junior Reader for ideas. Given the relative enthusiasm for snowflakes, I can imagine that I would be offered several, at the very least.

I’m filing this one as ‘idea for some time later’, rather than an immediate one. But if I can find a deep enough blue (particularly a kind of Yves Klein blue, if I can), and a lovely enough snowflake shape, I rather fancy giving it a try.

I imagine you could also do the same in reverse – ie white snowflake on coloured background. It might not be so Hawaiian, but it might be more snowflakey.

And as Granny R has kindly made some nice red cushions (with leftovers from the red curtains she produced), we might just have the perfect base on which to balance a few snowflakes.

I’ll keep you posted on the weather forecast for this one.

The post Making: a new use for snowflakes appeared first on Frydmania.

There were a mixture of stalls. I liked some items; was less keen on others. But on one stall, there was a lady with strips of cloth, and a wooden implement which I can only really describe as a Bodger.

The woman had a loose-weave cloth, and she was using the bodger to poke strips of cloth through that backing. What she was doing was making a rag rug, something I had read about, but never actually seen done.

The woman had kits for sale, with the hessian backing, instructions, and a few pieces of coordinating material to start you off. The clincher, of course, was that the kit gave you your own bodger.

I was in.

—-

The thing with making rag rugs is that it immediately gives you a use for lots of tiny bits of fabric that might otherwise get chucked out.

These days, as the woman showed me, those bits of fabric can include fleece material, jeans, tartan, cotton, and pretty much anything else you care to cut into tiny pieces of fabric.

Once I got home, and looked at the instructions more, it seemed that the cutting of strips was to be greatly improved by the owning of a rotary cutter.

I did not then own one. So the kit stayed in its bag for pretty much a year. (I made an attempt at getting a rotary cutter at one point, only to find I had bought something else, and had to take it back.)

Fast forward to this summer. I have now acquired my rotary cutter. So all of a sudden, my new toy is not just for quilts/patchwork, but I can also get the rag rug kit underway.

—

While the rag rug kit was gathering dust, I did start to amass a pile of fabric to go with it. Then I had a big bout of spring cleaning and got rid of it. (I kind of regret that now, but only a bit.)

On the plus side, it might be the ideal use for lots of little strips of eco bag that I no longer want to use, but that could find a new purpose as a rag rug.

On the other side: what does one do with one’s rag rug? I have a feeling that it might turn into a teeny tiny rug for a teddy, in a similar way to the teeny tiny quilt.

The good thing about the rag rug work is that the pieces aren’t fixed in the same way as sewing. So if I try out some bits and don’t like the effect, I can always pull them out and start again.

I’m rather hoping that rag rugging – aka bodging – might be just the thing for doing while watching TV. Normally I don’t manage to make and watch TV at the same time, but I think this might just be the exception.

And then, if I like it, I can always buy more hessian, and bodge away a bit more.

===

Early results:

– fleece material is nice to use, fairly easy to put in and out

–  tartan material looks good but keeps fraying. Turns out I should have cut it on the bias. (I know the phrase – now I need to go off and work out what it means in practice. I think it means cutting cloth in a way that stops it fraying.)

– cotton eco bag material works very nicely. And those bits that had writing on – you only see a tiny bit of the writing for each ‘stitch’ of the rug, so it’s not distracting.

It’s more like those pictures of walls where an old advert was painted up there and is now flaking off in a reasonably charming way.

– folding the strips in half along the width makes for a neater ‘stitch’ but means that you get lots of flatter lines

– bodging can be done fairly easily while playing Settlers of Catan on holiday

– with practice, I can now bodge strips from the front of the cloth, which speeds things up.

===

So: will it use up scraps of material? Yes, just great. But I am now realising I will need a lot of scraps of material. (No wonder rag rugging was done by a whole family – you’d need to, just to create enough strips and get them into the backing.)

In consequence, it will Take Some Time to complete. But that’s OK. I suspect it could be a perfect project to pick up and put down when I need to.

The post Making: a rag rug appeared first on Frydmania.

What when they are ones that pick you? The DIY jobs that you really can’t put off any longer – the ones you also don’t know how to do?

===

Here’s how it goes. You agree that there is a task that must be done: taking out the old sealant round the bath and putting in new.

You don’t know how to do it – but one day, your local supermarket happens to do a deal on tools to scrape out the old stuff. So you pick those up, and a sealant tube, and hope that that will spur you on.

You invite your dad round – not to do the job, but to supervise, and show how to start it. He gets out the Trusty Penknife, starts things off. You learn how to keep going, without worrying that you are carving up things that you shouldn’t.

Your dad shows you a new and exciting sharp tool to add to the collection: a Stanley knife that you can use for DIY. It’s meant to be for getting paint off the edge of windows, but you discover you can degrime shower screens with it. Bonus.

Then you realise that you also need to regrout the tiles around the bath. You don’t know how to do that either.

But your dad tells you how to mix up grout, and you discover some left over from when friends did the job in the first place. So you add that to the list.

You begin to scrape out all the old grout around the bath. It makes a mess, it takes a long time, you work up a sweat. You start to learn that preparation in DIY really does take longer than the job itself.

You like the scraper tool, so you buy one. And a different sealant. And take the first back. And go back to the DIY place a few more times, now that you’re in the swing of things, to get radiator paint.

Because your dad has told you that you can seal the rust on the bathroom radiator that you’re embarrassed by, and the hall radiator would probably benefit from a lick of paint…and so on.

One time, you go to the DIY place twice in the same morning. The first time, because you’ve left your bank card in the wrong place. They smile and park your trolley somewhere helpful.

You discover that you have overcome another challenge, namely, driving a new route to the DIY place. And the supermarket nearby.

You touch up paintwork on the walls in the bathroom. And find yourself repainting the bathroom. With a very small brush, because there’s lots of fiddly bits. Good job it’s a small bathroom.

===

You enlist the help of your spouse. You seek out YouTube videos on how to do grouting and sealant. Or rather, he does, and you nod approvingly.

And go back to the DIY place, because now you need masking tape to do the sealant properly. And your spouse informs you that the local supermarket does not stock it. (But it does stock quick cook pasta. That helps. You’re tired by now.)

In the end, you chicken out, and let your better half do the actual grouting and sealant. He doesn’t seem to be as nervous.

You stand alongside and provide kitchen roll when asked for, and dig out one of those primary school style glue spreaders that happens to be the right size for pushing grout between tiles.

===

You discover that you don’t need to repaint the woodwork. What you really needed to do was to clean it properly in the first place.

You hunt around the attic for the sugar soap, and it does the trick. You are simultaneously pleased at the result and depressed that you let the grot hang around that long.

===

You have to remove part of a significant sticker collection around the window to repaint – and breathe a sigh of relief when you can do so safely and return them to their owner without ripping them.

You use one of those masks for painting the radiator. Because the DIY place doesn’t seem to stock radiator paint without significant fumes.

You feel halfway to a proper tradesman, but don’t understand why he doesn’t get headaches from the fumes if he’s doing this all the time.

===

You show up for school pick up in painting clothes. Three days running.

It’s only when you’ve finally finished the job that your child informs you that, one more day of painting clothes at pick up, and they might start to get embarrassed.

===

All of a sudden, you discover that you can redo a bathroom by doing the cheap bits that freshen it up. You feel very pleased with yourself.

But in the meantime, you eat a whole pork pie on your own, for lunch, because it turns out DIY can take it out of you. Even if you’re keeping as calm as you can.

The post Keep Calm and DIY appeared first on Frydmania.

Meanwhile, the bed has been joined by a desk – a very nice fit really. The desk is really a low table – for tea parties, for drawing, or whatever else seems the best use at the time.

There is now a gap between the top of the table and the top of the wood that forms the end of the bed. It’s only really about fifteen centimetres deep, but I don’t want it to get attention for the wrong reasons.

I am hoping that the table will get plenty of use – but I also want to avoid leaving wood in front of the draw-er that might a) get drawn on too b) stickered to death c) other possible notions I have not yet dreamt up.

The solution: making an end of bed tidy.

—

The notion of the tidy is that it sits on the table side of the end of the bed, covering up the space, yet making the table space more inviting (fingers crossed).

So what I’m aiming for is a long thin strip of fabric – an extended letterbox shape, if you will. Part of it will form the back of the tidy, and a lower bit will be sewn on the front, with stitches across it vertically to form pockets in the strip of fabric.

I haven’t quite worked out how the fabric attaches to the end of the bed – but I have found the perfect remnant of fabric for it.

—

When I was off hunting for the exciting rotary cutter, I had a little browse among the offcuts of fabric in the shop. Lots were curtain material, and not what I was after, but I did find a long strip of fabric with a series of small animal prints on it.

(Yes, we are talking cute fabric here. It’s a new departure for me.)

I eyeballed it for size, and thought it would work. At just over two pounds’ cost, it was worth a try.

Once I got it home, it turned out that it was an ideal shape for the end of the bed, hopefully making the sewing side very easy.

I also got an offcut of plain creamy fabric at the same time. I think it might be curtain lining, not sure, but it’s plain, and cheap, and it will work out just fine to go with the print.

So far, I’ve roughly cut off enough of the plain fabric to fit the print offcut. Fortunately enough, there’s a good chunk of the plain fabric left over too (so probably add on about 50p to the cost of fabric bought, which is still a bargain).

—

I have worked out that I want the fabric to match: one strip will form the back of the tidy, the other will form the bit that will then get divided into pockets.

The cream fabric will be sewed to back it. I hope it will add a bit of weight, and I think it might need some of that pillow inner to make the whole thing a bit sturdier, and able to hold a fistful of crayons per pocket, say.

I’m sure more confident makers might add contrast pockets, or embroidery, or all kinds of other things.

I don’t know if I’m feeling brave enough for that yet. I’m hoping that cute fabric will swing it for now, and maybe I can add some of the rest later, if I get better (or if it is requested).

Although this is being written about after other items, it will probably get finished first, because I have all the pieces for it. Plus I can take it on holiday to complete without Junior Reader suspecting (unlike the teeny tiny quilt).

I appreciate that, given the insistence that the fabric is cute, I may be required to provide photographic evidence.

I’ll see if I can run to that too.

The post Making: the end of bed tidy appeared first on Frydmania.

I decided at the start of the summer that I’d try and have a round-up of some of these.
I used to write a summer holiday diary as a child (or at least there are a couple of years’ worth). I don’t get that far now, but a few happy memories, that I can find time for.

So here are some of this summer’s moments so far. Like pressed flowers, preserved for that little bit longer.

Depending on how many moments stand out, there may be a few more of these posts.
I rather hope so.

===

A week of tennis lessons. Kids hard at it on the courts, mums and grannies and general hangers on at the side. One enterprising granny has a fold-up chair with her.

We agree that there will be lots of trips to the playground after tennis this week – because it’s a good one. Because it’s right next to the tennis courts. Because, well, it’s the summer, and playground time in dry weather is something to be seized with both hands.

There is a walk in the Botanic Gardens one day, a deux, with Junior Reader. We browse lots of interesting paths, hide under trees, seek out the tops of the waterfalls we can hear at a distance.

It’s sunny, and we have been out all morning and half the afternoon. By the time we bus home, we’re both tired, but happy.

===

There is the beginning of reading of the first Harry Potter book, out loud, to Junior Reader. Dan and I have read them all – indeed, we read them aloud to each other, right through to book 7. (Oh OK. I did read ahead a bit in book 7 – couldn’t not.)

Dan does the reading honours, but I beg rights to read one chapter, where Harry has to buy his things for school – including his wand.

It is back to the old magic – the reading magic of sharing a book you like, for the first time. Junior Reader knows a bit of the story, true, from a school friend who is a few books ahead. But we get to share it together, right from the start. It feels good.

===

There is a day where we are required to be on a Secret Mission. We bought a few little things to say well done to Junior Reader at the end of the school year. Junior Reader, not to be outdone, wants to buy something back for us.

We miss buses and we walk to different bus stops and have a few other distractions, but we finally secure some chocolate digestives. Because that’s what grownups like, as far as Junior Reader is concerned. (We concur.)

===

There is a trip to Perthshire to see a former school friend. It is one of those happy playdates where you abandon your child to their friend, their plans, and sit with the mum, tea and biscuits to hand, catching up.

They send us back with soft fruit – because it is the right place in Scotland for soft fruit. Especially raspberries.

The fruit disappears fast, as soft fruit always does, but I make sure to pass by the kitchen counter regularly, and inhale the scent of the raspberries a few times. And to eat them, very slowly.

===

There are a few more afternoon films than might normally happen, and a certain amount of parental napping during these. Because everyone needs some down time, even if they’re On Duty.

Right?

The post Summer moments 2014 appeared first on Frydmania.

So the seats would be manually flipped up to face the opposite direction – and the driver would change ends. And, of course, the passengers would need to disembark. All change, ladies and gentlemen, all change.

I don’t know quite who I am in this little snapshot of life at the moment – maybe everyone. The driver, the ticket collector flipping up the seats, the passengers.

We are well. We are just going through a lot of change right now. Good change, but big change. It is hard to write about because of various factors, not least the emotions being about three stops behind where the tram is at the moment.

Last time we had an all change moment, I wasn’t here at the helm of the blog. Sometimes there is just so much to do in the all change flurry that there are very few spare thoughts to channel towards a place of words.

It took time to write again – and time to decide what to write about. And I feel somewhat the same at the moment. It’s not just really coming to the end of the route and back again (which blows the tram image somewhat, but never mind).

There is a new route now. I don’t know what I’m going to see along the way.

I suspect I will still be as much in love with children’s books as I am now (maybe more so).
I hope I will still gain as much pleasure from smelling flowers and seeing our local pigeon formation team, and all those other moments that are out there.

I’m sure there will be more of the same. But there may be new things to see. And much of the time I’ll be getting to know the new route, working out where to stop, trying to keep the journey smooth.

I hope I will also be able to lift my head more at times. Be a passenger, an observer. Admire the view as I too pass through it.

Forgive the over-extended metaphor. Because much as I believe that words can fix most things, and explain others, sometimes it is harder to fit them to the task.

Sometimes, we are not even in the tram. We are out at the front, quarrying away at the route, smelting the rails to keep us moving. We are out there, chipping away, hoping that something will emerge out of the hard labour.

I don’t know where the words will be for the next stretch of the journey. I may be able to drive towards them, and I may have to use dynamite to find them if they are buried for a while.

===

So here’s what it comes to. This month, there’s a few posts lined up, ready to go. I may be able to add a few more, we’ll see.

July is going to be post-lite – which is fine. Because hopefully you’re off out there too, living your summer, enjoying your own moments. You’ll have plenty to be going on with.

I don’t want to have another big blog hiatus if I can manage it. But we’ll see how it all goes. And I’m sure by the autumn, there’ll be that natural pull towards writing again, and I’ll be able to say something about the view at that point.

===

I sit and write, just before the house stirs into action. I sit and write, because there is a moment now, and because there are some words within it.

And because I still need those words – I always will – to carry me along my route.

The post All change, ladies and gentlemen appeared first on Frydmania.

Dan and Junior Reader are Lego afficianados. To be honest, it’s building anything – it could be K’nex, or Duplo, or anything else that you stick together.

I admire the things they create – they have a much more instinctive understanding of making than I do. Plus they can both think in 3D, which is a challenge to me.

But the downside of these building sessions is that there are lots of tiny bits, spread out. And when it comes to tidying up, it takes a long time, there’s quite a lot of harumphing over the tidying up, and there’s invariably a few bits that are found later.

So how would it be if you used a blanket for the spreading things out stage – then pulled the corners to form a bag? Then (carefully) tip the Lego into its drawers, and you’re done.

The plus side to this plan, as I see it, is the chance to have a nice comfy surface under you as you sit and build.

The question mark is: do you make it as a quilt? And the even bigger question: should the quilt look like Lego itself?

—

So here’s where I’m at so far on the thinking about this.

I like the idea, and I think it would be very useful. And I have those sturdy handles all ready to use. (More than I need for one blanket. Maybe I’ll make a second scooping-up blanket for something else.)

Downside of a Lego-style quilt: potentially difficult to see the actual pieces on if it looks like Lego too (ie Lego-type colours, similar shaped blocks).

BUT if I did a Lego style quilt, and put a plain backing on it, then you could use the plain side to build on, so you could see the pieces.

And then you’d have the visual joke of the Lego side for other occasions where you might like to have something to snuggle (thinks: Sunday film afternoons?).

Big plus of this: we know the Lego colours already. We know they work together. There’s no pattern matching to do. And the pieces can be Lego shaped, which could be fun to plan.

I think if I do this, I’ll probably aim for using Duplo blocks for sizing, rather than actual Lego sizing, which would be too fiddly to work with.

(After discussion with Dan, that size is probably too small too. Think bigger.)

It might also be an excuse to cut out little bits of coloured paper, and move them around to find a pattern I like. Plus I do have that rotary cutter now, so I should be able to cut suitable sized blocks of fabric.

—

It’s at this point that I see the addiction of making. It’s not just about solving problems; it’s about thinking about the best way of doing so.

I know that if I do this, it’ll be a lot of work. And I do my sewing by hand, so that could mean it takes a while.

But at the same time, I am really enjoying the sewing. If the teeny tiny quilt gets finished OK, then I’ll have some more skills for doing the next stage.

Plus I’ve got a LOT of quilt-stuffing material from those old pillows. I might as well make use of it.

If I can, I’m going to use the fabric left over from the eco bags, where I think it fits sufficiently with Lego colours. I’ve got time to plan it; maybe to hunt for scraps of material that would work.

But in the meantime, I’ve found the perfect scrap of material for another project – and one I’m going to complete first, I think.

It’s an end of bed tidy thing, sewn, with pockets. More on that next time.

The post Making: the scooping up blanket appeared first on Frydmania.

Or maybe not. Sometimes, the dreams of easy get-togethers aren’t so easy – if you don’t think you’ll be invited in the first place.

We’ve all had moments of finding our own crowd – as well as moments on standing on the sidelines, wanting to join in, but being turned away.

So back to Dr Seuss, and the Sneeches that I referred to last time. Because the Sneeches come in two sorts: ones with stars on their bellies, and ones without. (At least, to begin with.)

Those stars. They show who belongs, and who doesn’t. But they can be changed. At a price.

Having grown up on relatively small amounts of Dr Seuss, ie The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (and nothing else), it was quite something to start discovering more of his writings.

And just how pertinent they still are, whether covering environment, persecution of difference, political opposition – or even just how cool it would be to invent your own extra month called Octember.

At the start of the weekend, I hope you’ll be included. I hope you’ll include others, if that doesn’t sound too moralising. And I hope you don’t get ripped off (as the Sneeches do), trying to get the signs that will help you fit in.

You may find you have more in common than you think.

===

Dr Seuss, The Sneeches

Then they yelled at the ones who had stars at the start,
"We're exactly like you! You can't tell us apart.
We're all just the same, now, you snooty old smarties!
And now we can go to your frankfurter parties."

You can read the rest of the story in full online, and there's also a cartoon version of the Sneeches.

The post Friday phrase: and now we can go to your frankfurter parties appeared first on Frydmania.

And you can bet that, come mid August, all those bright wee things will have sprouted extra inches of leg and new hairstyles and far more in-depth knowledge of whatever it is they’re keen on.

So maybe it’s time instead to take stock of where things are at now – because assuredly it will all be different when the new term comes round.

===

Like many other places, Edinburgh schools have been overtaken by loom bands. In some places, they are the reserve of girls; in others, boys are working away with the best of them to create whatever the latest plastic bangle look is coolest right now.

Mums chat in huddles, identifying the best deals and the new equipment to make the things on…and others just get fed up with lots of little coloured rubber bands everywhere.

Small D returns home with an aquarium. Think paper plate, blue-ish scene behind, clear film on the front to look like the glass. I rather like the two (actual) shells – and the carefully inscribed lines to show that they are falling down through the water.

Sports days are on and off and happen in the rain and sometimes even happen on good (bright, sunny) days.

There are end of term discos where everyone emerges dripping with sweat and clutching an ice lolly.

I think there may be the great ceremonial pile out off to the park on the last day of term, to play, eat a picnic lunch, play some more. Some of that gradual leave taking before parents batten down the hatches and engage the hard-won Long Holiday tactics.

There are coffees snatched, and parent conversations indulged in before the holidays begin, and an actually still heated beverage becomes but a happy dream.

There are calculations about rate of hair growth and the possibility of hot summer, and decisions to be made about summer haircuts.

There is the counting down of final packed lunches, and snacks, and school uniform washing loads. And there is the complicated deliberation about teacher presents/cards at the end of the school year.

===

Life becomes a little bit more complex at this stage of school – but not too much so yet. Not too knowing yet. Thankfully.

Boys and girls both engage with creating their own little worlds online (mainly through Minecraft).

There are Brownies activities, and judo competitions, and a hundred and one other ways to signal the end of scheduled time for a few weeks.

Playdates involve more requests for (computer) screen time – but messing about outdoors is still high on the list of entertainments.

Swings, and hide and seek, and monkey bars at the park. Even a hammock to try out at a friend’s house, if you’re lucky.

===

We have this stretch of several days of good weather. (For those used to one day sun, one day sea mist in Edinburgh, that’s unusual.) Prolonged grass cutting ensues. The new picnic bench is ready for action in the garden.

There is a scurry for sun dresses and skirts and lighter tops and sunscreen. Wearing shorts to the office (if there’s no visitors that day).

I hunt around the attic for those items that can actually come back out for use: inflatables. Games to play outdoors on the grass.

I work around the other items tucked away, those ones for rainy days and cold days and miserable days.

Not just now. Who knows how long the sun may last, but for now, we’ll live in hope of a little more summer to enjoy.

The post End of term report: June 2014 appeared first on Frydmania.

Supermarkets sold them to you; conferences pressed them on you (to hold all the paper that you then didn’t need anyway. Hmm.)

I started into eco bags a while back. They were quite often souvenirs of trips to Germany. I still have a couple which I love (and which have the frayed handles to prove it).

One is for a children’s book publisher, and has a very nice illustration of a cheery frog on a motorbike. The other has the Ampelmaenner (traffic light men) of East Berlin – you’ll see the ‘Go’ version as the little icon at the top of this webpage.

Eco bags are a nice idea, but they don’t really hold a lot of shopping. They’re fine if you’re off to the paper shop to collect your weekend newspaper, they’ll do a few bits and pieces, but not a great deal.

Cue my next use of them: for putting dirty washing in when on trips away from home. And when you’re home and doing the washing, stick the bag in as well, and it’s ready for next time.

But still. There were bags I liked, and ones I really didn’t care for any more. So I decided it was time to get the material back, use the blank bits (maybe more quilt activity?), keep the bag designs I did like, and ditch the rest.

And then I was able to justify getting a new sewing toy. The terribly sharp, terribly exciting rotary cutter.

—

You can use strong scissors to cut fabric, of course. You can even have pinking shears to make sure the edges don’t fray. (Though the main use of pinking shears, as I recall, was to reuse old Christmas cards and turn them into tags for next year.)

Once I’d read the quilting book a bit more, as well as a bit of looking at sewing sites, I realised that a rotary cutter could help things along nicely.

It basically looks much like a pizza cutter – but deadlier. (A pizza cutter doesn’t have a guard for the blade. This does.)

Lest it seem too dangerous for words, I have been practising cutting, carefully, on little scraps of fabric, to get the feel for the thing. Turns out it’s very nice to use – very smooth.

You do need to have one of those cutting mats to use them on – I think they call them self-healing mats.

The kind you can use for cutting out card designs with a Stanley knife. (We did some Christmas cards a few years ago, with lots of cutting, so we have the mat already.)

So the stitch ripper and the rotary cutter have been working together on taking apart these bags. A few are even coloured, and may make it into a different pile for a larger-scale quilt idea (if the first one works out).

I don’t quite know what I’ll do with the picture bits I’m saving yet. I don’t think they are quilting squares; most of them have words on as well, and I don’t want a quilt that’s too busy to look at.

They might be interesting cut into quarters and moved around a piece of fabric, as it were, so the effect is less immediate on the eye.

I do now have a lot of nice strong handles from the bags, though, which brings me to another idea: a scooping things up blanket.

(A blanket with handles, basically. I’ve seen things like this for sale online. Play on it, then pick it up by the handles at the end, and scoop up whatever’s inside, to make tidy up easier and quicker.)

I think the blanket might work for all kinds of small playthings – but I’m principally thinking the Lego collection. More on those plans another time.

Updated: the bits of fabric with words on turn out to be just fine in a rag rug. And more on that on a separate occasion.

Am I using up almost all the fabric? You betcha.

The post Making: reusing fabric appeared first on Frydmania.

And really, why not? For all of the famous restricted vocabulary, to help beginning readers, he also worked incredibly hard at making the stories effective.

Even when they seem unlikely choices.

Some time back now (lost in the mists of parenting time), Junior Reader was very fond of the story of The Pale Green Pants. (In case of any uncertainty, pants here means trousers, for anyone concerned about where the story was going.)

It runs a bit like a classic ghost story. Our hero is out in various places at night – and keeps coming across a ghostly pair of pale green pants ‘with nobody inside them’.

(I know that it’s a while ago, because Junior Reader would tend to say ‘no-der-ee’ instead of nobody.)

Understandably, the hero gets more and more scared by the pants, and tries various means to deal with them, including trying to convince himself that he isn’t really scared. (This is where today’s phrase comes from, which you can read below.)

In fact, when they do meet again, the outcome is not that scary – but I will leave you to read the story, and find out.

I think we all have these points where we are trying to be brave, and not quite succeeding. Part of us believes that positive thinking will win the day – and part of us recognises…not quite yet.

Whatever your day is like, whatever you are being brave about, take heart that others are not necessarily that brave either. (And, if you’re lucky, that what you are scared of may turn out to be less scary than you thought.)

===

Dr Seuss, What Was I Scared Of?

“I said, ‘I do not fear those pants

With nobody inside them.’

I said and said and said those words.

I said them. But I lied them.”

The story belongs in this compendium, The Sneeches and Other Stories. (Undoubtedly more on that another time.)

The post Friday phrase: I said them but I lied them appeared first on Frydmania.

Even further ago, I found myself teaching in Poland (second time around), again at a point where my hands needed something to do in the evenings.

(English teaching in the day meant that it was very hard to do anything words-related at night. So I ended up doing some sewing-type things instead.)

Fortunately, my teaching position came hot on the heels of an American family who had been there for three years before me. The mum seemed to have been into quilting, and left a box full of lots of odds and ends of fabric.

I made a few little bits of patchwork. The colour combinations were good. One became a kind of table runner for the low table in the room where I was staying that year.

Another made steps towards being the size of a cushion cover. It never got to those lofty heights, but it does now get more viewing time, as it were, by going over the top of a rocking chair.

I never wanted to fill the house with patchwork thises and thats. Part of me admires it, the colours, the shapes. Part of me also wants to avoid too much busyness on the eye.

But with some offcuts from my clothes-adjusting activities, I thought I might try to find a use for them. Cue: the teeny tiny quilt.

—

The point of this is that it’s a place to learn. It will probably end up the right size for a teddy or other soft toy, which is plenty big enough to work on, but not so crucial that I feel bad if it doesn’t work out.

I’ve kept the notion of the teddy quilt a secret from Junior Reader, but I hope that it will go down well, once I feel like it’s at a point where I can hand it over.

Part of the current attraction of the quilt is that it also gives me a chance to use up the inners of the pillows we recently parted with.

(I discovered that you can’t recycle them – they just go into landfill – but some online searching suggested things like using them for making soft toys or quilts.)

So far, we have simple squares. A bit of leftover red curtaining material (Granny R has been hard at work on new curtains for Junior Reader. Respect.). And the offcuts of those jeans I mentioned.

24 squares, and a colour way of red and grey. So far so good.

—

So I’ve learned to look at the useful book before beginning the project. (Turns out you shouldn’t create strips of 6 squares, but just do them in pairs. Back to the stitch ripper for a bit.)

I’ve just started combining the pairs into sets of 4. That took a bit of trial and error to work out how to match them so it looks (as best I can) like the seams actually line up.

Hopefully I’ll complete the 24 squares fairly soon. Then I need to think about what to put on the back, and how to tease out the pillow material so it forms the filling (or batting) of the quilt.

There is also adding some kind of binding around the outer edges to hold all the elements together. And after that, you get to do stitching through the different layers (the actual quilting), which I understand can be decorative if you want it to be.

—

So that’s all going fine. But then I discovered a set of fabric that was doing nothing, and decided to add to my material stash by cutting up: eco bags.

The post Making: a teeny tiny quilt appeared first on Frydmania.

But with Junior Reader somewhat more of a seasoned traveller than before, and a bit more aware of different countries (thank you, Olympics and Commonwealth Games), folk tales from around the world now have more impact.

And of course, at least in part, I read them aloud because I loved them myself. Less well travelled than Junior Reader at the equivalent age (although I’ve tried to make up for it since), I travelled by reading.

The bonus being, you can board the plane at any time. (And get off in time for tea. And reboard afterwards.)

===

I find it interesting the way that different countries attract us. Those attractions are different for different people, and that’s good too. (Junior Reader shows much more interest in Japan than I did, but then judo helps on that front.)

Sometimes, particular countries and their mindsets captivate us. We take them on, they become part of us.

I remember reading, in my teens, a biography of C. S. Lewis. Part of what resonated for me was discovering an unrealised similarity: that he too liked Autumn, and the North.

(By this I do not mean ‘anything above London’, as certain road signs would have it, but a much broader notion of northness – with quite a lot of focus on Nordic countries.)

You probably won’t be surprised at my liking a collection of Norwegian folk tales – nor various collections of Scots ones. But there are others that sneak up on you too.

I have a fondness for a particular collection of Indian folk stories – partly the lovely pictures accompanying them. As well as the anthropological discoveries that come in the reading (like the chewing of betel nut. In my case, just the learning, not the actual chewing.)

And although I am not best friends with spiders, by any means, I also feel friendly towards Anansi the Spider Man, the main character in Ghanaian folk stories. (Now there’s an anti-hero. Or is he really a hero after all? Discuss.)

So I’ll be fitting those in over the coming weeks. If I can find myself a decent collection of Brer Rabbit stories, I rather fancy including those too. (Brer Rabbit is another trickster character, with stories told in the Southern United States and also among Native Americans.)

Looking over those, I feel I should make an attempt to find some South American stories, just to spread out the readings over the different continents. Let me know if there’s any you think I should try.

In the meantime, I think I’ve got Junior Reader hooked on Askelad, hero of the Norwegian folk stories. More on him next time.

The post Lit Kid: folk tales from around the world appeared first on Frydmania.

Dan continues to put the new picnic bench together, and in a little bit of role reversal, Junior Reader reads to him as he fixes the pieces in place.

And what, may you ask, is suitable for the occasion? Why, the Cat in the Hat, who is always on hand when there is a new scheme to plot, or a new contraption to build.

To be truthful, I think the reading was The Cat in the Hat, rather than the Cat in the Hat Comes Back. But it is the latter that is in my head as I write – probably always and permanently in my head, I think.

I didn’t grow up with Dr Seuss, really. But my grandparents had The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, and I would read it when visiting them. So it came to have a particularly significant status in terms of treasured reads.

Dr Seuss mangles language beautifully for the sake of keeping a rhyme scheme – and we love it, because we know full well what it means, and it is so so memorable.

While I’m at it, I can also heartily recommend Adrian Edmondson’s audio versions of both books – plus Fox in Socks and Green Eggs and Ham. Good reading, and great sound effects to go with it.

So for today, I leave you with the Cat, having eaten his pink cake in the tub, surveying the evidence afterwards.

And the boy, in a little role reversal of his own, offers a variant on the immortal line that I’m sure many parents have uttered when seeing a stain of new and giant proportions.

Happy weekend!

—

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (Dr Seuss)

‘The water ran out and then I saw THE RING!
A ring in the tub! And, oh boy! What a thing!
A big long pink cat ring! It looked like pink ink!
And I said, “Will this ever come off? I don’t think!” ‘

[If you want to soak in the general goodness of the whole book, this link will let you read all the text – and see a few pictures too.

But please, go and buy your own copy too, if you haven’t got it. It really is that worth it.]

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My normal sewing levels are around attaching name tapes to clothes. Occasionally badges to judo outfits. Not much more.

I did learn to do backstitch (making a nice strong seam) in the teenage days of having a favourite schoolbag, which would intermittently fall apart under the weight of all the books.

Having finally found the perfect bag (large, green, canvas material, good straps), I was not going to let it go and have to begin the hunt again. So I think I must have kept it going a good three years in the end.

Which is good for schoolbags, all in all.

Over time, and with a bit of observation of my mother-in-law’s trouser hemming techniques, I have moved up to being able to take up trousers to a shorter height, should one’s junior reader require it.

(I have also on occasion managed to sew one trouser leg to another (temporarily, I didn’t leave it like that), but I’m better at spotting that in advance and saving all the unpicking.)

Although it has allowed me to buy a seam ripper, like the one I remember my mum having, which is a lot of fun to use.)

Having shown the level of my sewing credentials to date, down to the business of making.

—

No. 1: a pair of trousers belonging to Junior Reader. Having been taken up several times to begin with, once they were taken down, they had big bands of fold around the ankles.

They looked a bit like lines you’d find at successive high tides. So I asked if I could turn them into mid-length trousers, and was given the nod. (Phew.)

The trousers were cargo pants, and fortunately, had some detailing on them already which gave me a hint of where to cut. Then I hemmed them and: hey presto, new light-weight trousers.

Not yet tried out at the beach, but great for this ‘is it spring/isn’t it’ kind of weather.

These I have been able to see are a success, because they are getting worn a lot.

(We have also had the ‘how to take off your trousers carefully’ talk, after a certain amount of recent fixing and refixing of school trousers, and so far, cargo pants are doing just fine.)

—

No 2: a stage further up. Dan had a pair of jeans with rips on both knees. So I applied the same logic (and measured VERY carefully), and managed to create some cut-offs.

I think the point of proper cut-offs is that the hems are mean to be a bit raggy. But that doesn’t really build in your sewing skills, so I’ve gone for neat for now.

I think they may actually need taking up a bit more – they are a tiny bit Empire-builder for now. But hopefully we’ll get to see them in action (if that hot summer we’re promised comes round), and then we can fix on the hems for definite.

Updated: they’ve been worn all week on holiday. The length is good at the points when you sit with your knees bent. And really, they are just off, seeing holidaying action, so I think that’s a win.

—

No 3: same approach, different garment. Dan had a much loved long-sleeved shirt, with a hole at one elbow. No longer suitable for business meetings.

A spot more cutting, and cue: short sleeve shirt. This one I’m happy with for length of sleeve.

Somehow or other, there was also a hole near the lower seam. So I cut the lower seams and had a go at a rolled stitch, to make the hem very small.

The hems were a success, but it does make the shirt a bit boxy now. So I think we’ve settled that it’s one of those summer shirts that you don’t actually try to do up, but wear open over a T shirt or a vest.

—

Big plus point from 2 and 3: spare material. Just a bit, but nice enough to use for something else.

Which leads us to the next making update: a small attempt in the direction of quilting. (Fingers crossed.)

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Whether it’s the bedroom door sign – ‘Keep out! – the written refusal to comply with a parental request, or a kingly proclamation (on a scroll), I enjoy seeing them coming.

Variety is a good thing in children’s books, as elsewhere. And letter-writing as a way to tell stories can work well.

Here are three in our collection that do just that.

Click Clack Moo – Doreen Cronin, Betsy Lewin

This one is a bit of a classic. It’s not just about letter writing – or even letter typing – it’s an introduction to politics.

The animals in the farm are not entirely happy with their lot. So they start to spell it out for Farmer Brown by typing him notes about what they feel would improve things – say, electric blankets for the barn.

Farmer Brown tries to push back against the demands – and triggers a full-on election situation.

Look out for Duck, the go-between character in this story, who appears again in Vote for Duck!, a brilliant introduction to the US political voting system.

Both are great examples of children’s books that include much more ‘grown-up’ situations – explained with the lightness of touch that a really good children’s book can offer.

Love from Louisa – Simon Puttock, Jo Kiddie

This is an early introduction for your junior readers to the ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ style of letter. As with the real-life version, the joke is more clearly on the one doing the letter writing.

Louisa is a pig, also on a farm, and equally unhappy with the conditions there. Her solution is handwritten notes, torn from reporters’ notebooks, all signed off:

‘Sincerely, Disgruntled!’

Farmer Giles is prepared to act on the suggestions much more than Farmer Brown, but even he has had enough after a while – and turns the tables on Disgruntled by asking him/her to clear up the mess.

There’s another twist in the tale after that, but I’ll leave you to discover that one for yourself.

What I quite enjoy is that Louisa is clearly having more fun writing uppity letters than appreciating what Farmer Brown is doing. Whether or not she changes her tune in the end is left open, which also seems appropriate.

Wolves – Emily Gravett

Rabbit borrows a library book to find out about wolves, and discovers a bit more than he has bargained on…

This was Gravett’s first book, and a huge success, leading her to write various more, and illustrate on others. Her humour is sly and revealed gradually as the book unfolds.

Part of the delight of this book is the various internal writing devices – letters you can remove from the book, library book descriptions, and so on. There are also two endings, so you can choose which one you (or your audience) prefer.

As with my previous recommendation of a book with wolves as characters, you may well want to look this one over before sharing it with your junior readers.

However, for those who like a joke, and particularly slightly older readers who can identify the various types of writing at the end, and what they mean, this book is great fun, and may well spark some writing ideas for your own junior writers.

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We may even wonder if we’ve blown it  – and be looking for some reassurance.

Enter Debi Gliori’s No Matter What. A wonderful story for helping us realise that we will be loved, no matter what we do, it’s a message that adults need just as much as kids.

After all, can’t we all relate to this:

‘Small was feeling grim and dark.’

Adults would probably quite like to do as he does, showing his feelings through behaviour rather than words. Luckily for Small (and for us), Large sees something is up, and decides to find out what’s going on:

‘Small said, “I’m a grim and grumpy little Small and nobody loves me at all.”

“Oh Small,” said Large. “Grumpy or not, I’ll always love you no matter what.” ‘

Like many of us, Small wallows a bit longer in feeling sad, testing out just how much love he can get. But in the course of his questions, Small learns a lot more about just how big and strong love is.

Click on the link above to be able to see several pages within the book – and discover how Large will still love Small, no matter what he ‘turns into’ at times.

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It doesn’t seem to matter what the interest is – science experiments you can do at home, knitting patterns for tiny babies – there’s plenty to borrow from.

So I’m tentatively creating a new category here: making. Not because I think that what I’m trying to do is Pinterest-worthy (hardly, given that I’m still avoiding adding photos), but simply because That’s Where It’s At right now.

Making is probably not big news any more online – but there’s plenty more encouragement for what is effectively free-range creative endeavours. It might be putting together paper and cardboard, it might be making finger puppets, or all kinds of different things.

I’ve reached a point where my head is too full of chatter in the evenings. Sometimes, I drown it out with TV – that works fine, but it seems that my hands would like something to do as well.

So, little by little, I’ve been starting some making of my own. It’s not going to be a new and exciting invention, it’s not going to inspire other kids in the playground, but it’s going to be something that I made. By myself.

—

I do do making, of sorts. Cooking has been my big area of making, for a long time, but in a funny way, it doesn’t feel like making particularly.

In cooking, you have recipes to follow (or at least to use as a guide). There are techniques to learn; variants on how to use different ingredients.

I dare say the same could be applied to something like woodwork, but I have lacked the confidence to feel that I could then approach a new area of making, and extend my skills there.

So what I’m trying is a bit different for me – it’s in the following your nose kind of category of activity. I’m trying things out: no patterns, no how tos, no instruction booklets.

No one is telling me what to make but me. No one is devising the plans but me. That is partly faintly alarming and partly very releasing, because I can be on my own side. It’s about having fun in the activity, and hopefully it turning out OK.

—

The thing with making is that it encourages all kinds of useful skills. Learning through trial and error, thinking on your feet, improving techniques as you go along.

It’s a very arts/crafts way of thinking – much more what you can do with your hands than I’m used to. But that’s OK. I don’t want to write a thesis in the evenings; I want to relax, and maybe explore a little too.

I am worried about whether I’ll manage to be precise enough. I fear cutting into things and making mistakes, but maybe I’ll find a different idea as a result. (I hope so.)

—

So every now and then, I’ll share some making thing that I’m doing. I might even mention what Junior Reader is up to – there’s someone who loves making, and is not afraid to try new things. Maybe I can learn a thing or two.

I’m hoping that what I come up with will be a little bit eco, too, finding new purposes for things, spinning out the life of a garment. Stopping some fabric sitting doing nothing, and turning it into something useful.

If you’re really lucky, I might even take photos. Not for the how-to factor, but to prove to myself: I made something. I can do it.

And I can enjoy the process as well as the finished product.

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