Knock knock...

Who's there?

It's my friend Justine at the door, with a bowl of gloop...

... and some (well-used) instructions...

... for a sourdough cake called Herman.

I'm very excited about having Herman in our family, having been wanting to try a sourdough recipe for ages. The children were dubious at first, but have started to enjoy him now: they come downstairs in the morning and ask 'is Herman still alive?', and they enjoyed feeding him his first top-up of flour, milk and sugar. It's like having a very quiet and undemanding pet. He does smell a bit - somewhere between 'delicious' and 'odd' depending on your perspective - and needs less maintenance than the cat, but slightly more than the goldfish.

Someone once told me that pets are very important to children because they teach them about death - she was a child psychologist, and she recommended hamsters for their short life-span. 

Back to the cake - as I'm not sure where that last sentence was leading - we're now on day 6, Herman is bubbling away happily, and we're still planning to eat him at the end of the process.

Photos to follow...

Buttonhole bliss

The new sewing machine has made the whole process of creating buttonholes so easy that it almost feels like cheating.

No more press-on snaps.

No worrying that the machine might suddenly decide to eat my nice new creation.

Buttonhole bliss!

How much is that prom dress in the window?

I read somewhere that the secret of successful de-cluttering is to take as much pleasure ingiving a thing away as you would have had from keeping it (perhaps that should read 'hoarding it').

It was such a clever insight that I'd love to attribute it properly, but can't find my source now. I thought it was from this article by Oliver Burkeman. Maybe the original article was de-cluttered for the online version, and that particular gem got edited out.

Anyway, it rings true for me: I love it when I pass the children's clothes on to friends and neighbours, and get to see them in action again on even smaller people, and there's always a sense of satisfaction in finding just the right new home for retired treasures.

But, sometimes there isn't a new home to be found, and when I cleared out my wardrobe earlier this year, I just bundled the casualties into bags and took them to Oxfam. The space in the wardrobe was reward enough.

Or so I thought...

This week I walked past the Oxfam shop, and there was my little black dress in the window, all styled up with a feathery hat and sparkly necklace... This was one of the first 'proper' dresses I made for myself, and it went to a lot of black-tie dinners and dances, about 20 years ago when I had the figure and the lifestyle to suit it. Then it languished in the wardrobe for a long time, before I eventually de-cluttered it away. 

It was a thrill to see it again so unexpectedly. It looks ready for a few late nights and parties this winter - hope it has fun!

Tra la la la la...

A quick link to a very good idea... it starts on Friday, so there should still be lots of sewing time ahead.

Usually I put off sewing for Christmas until well into Advent, and then go shopping instead. Maybe this year will be different? 

A runcible wordle

For those with busy lives and little time to linger over details, here's the whole of      runcibledays (to date) encapsulated in a very lovely word cloud.

Do try it for yourself - click on the cloud and it will take you to the wordle site where you can make your own... you can play with different fonts and colours, reshuffle theclouds, even omit any words which don't appeal (though that feels a bit like cheating). 

Have fun!