Month: September 2015

Veronica Dearly unboxing

Posted on by Pam

Because it is nearly October, I thought I should put up the post about unboxing Veronica Dearly’s monthly stationary box, which has been as it says on the box, Fun!

I even have a badge that declares this same thing!

I love tissue paper – and look, I even took the above picture before I ripped the sticker to get in!

There’s a monthly volume for the ‘I love fun’ club, and it has suggestions, and bits in it!

And then the actual contents of the box!  There are 4 cards ( I do love the cards!)  and a pencil case in this box!
Now I just need to start giving the cards away for birthdays etc… 

D’oh nuts

Posted on by Pam

Last week I decided that I needed to put my baked doughnut kit from Lakeland to work!

I’ve not baked anything, or really cooked much at all in the last year, as I’ve been going to college 2 nights a week, working a full time job which needed a bit more of my time than full time, and trying to get ready for the next college class, oh yes, and do housework and cooking etc.

My other half did step up to the plate, but then he had family issues, and also a full time job, so one of my bits to do now that I am not working (yay!) is to tidy the house, and getting rid of all the bits that we’ve just held on to instead of getting rid of!
So far, I’ve only started on my desk and shelves, and I’ve done the baking bits in the kitchen (a lot of them had gone out of date, just to really underline how long it has been since I did any amount of baking!) but it’s immediately feeling better, and that there’s more room in our pretty crowded house (there’s only 2 of us, no pets, but we have a lot of stuff!).
But anyway, doughnuts!  I mostly made a mess, and wasn’t very good about reading all of the recipe properly, but what has turned out are very good not-doughnuts!  They have too much rise (I used self raising flour when I should have used plain flour with baking powder in it), and I filled the mould too full, but it’s made very nice… things!  I begged my other half to take some into work, which he has done, and reported back that they were well received, which is always good to hear (but then again, they seem to be a swarm of locusts there, that will eat anything, as will most people in offices!).

 I’ve just watched the video on the doughnut moulds on the Lakeland website, and realised I was meant to pipe the doughnut mixture into everything, but hey, what can you do other than learn to be better next time!  Still not sure on the whole piping it in though…!

I slopped my mixture in with a couple of spoons!

Yup, you can really see that here!!

In the oven – bake, my pretties!

Empty moulds, to prove that some of them should have had holes…

Butter cinnamon sugar yumminess!

 When I say I didn’t read the instructions, the above picture should be of two separate pots – one of melted butter, and the other of sugar with cinnamon mixed in. Instead, I put the sugar and cinnamon in the melted butter, and then dipped the doughnuts in that wonderful concoction.  I regret nothing!

Dipped and warm doughnuts

So it has been a success, but that feels a bit of a happy chance, rather than planned for!  As you can see, they all rose wonderfully, but none has the hole in the top (at least 3 of them have it in the bottom…!) So all in all, not perfect, and I’ll need to do them again, if only to be able to play with icing on the top, in the meantime, I have yummy things to munch!

Blllluueeeee!

Posted on by Pam

Recently I left my job, and whilst working my notice period, I realised a couple of things – one was that I didn’t have to get up in the mornings horribly early (but I still do) and the other was that I could have my hair whatever colour I pleased!

Turns out, the colour I wanted was blue! My inspiration was Kat from Rock n Roll Bride!

Who is very blue! I loove her hair – my other half tells me that I’m going through my rebellious phase, so I figure let’s run with that!
So I booked at appointment, and the countdown to leaving work was also the countdown to amazing (and scary) new hair!
Brighton Pavilion was right next to the hairdressers
I went to a hairdressers in Brighton, called Venus Hair Design, and the lovely Hannah warned me that I probably wouldn’t go light enough when my hair was bleached to go the same blue, and asked me if I still wanted to go ahead.  My answer was more or less ‘hell yes!’
And so began the bleaching….

I’ve now learnt that getting your hair bleached this much is pretty itchy!  I’m kinda sad that I didn’t get a Khalessi picture as I’ve been calling it – with the white blonde hair, and the dark eyebrows, but Hannah washed the bleach out, and then painted the blue on whilst I was in the sink, and I could have asked to take a picture, but I didn’t have my phone or glasses, so I’ll leave that for the next time I try for white blonde!
So we’re going to go from being bleached to after being blue’d and having that left for a while and then washed out!

Yup, I’m pretty pleased with the colour!

 And the back view…

Hannah was really excited to see it all dry (as was I, obviously!), and she was lovely enough to take a bunch of pictures of the back for me – the one above, and then all of the below of me with beautiful bluey green hair, all lovely and dry!

I’ve sent a bunch of pictures to people, and some of the reactions have made me laugh – mermaid hair has been the commonest, closely followed by ‘I really didn’t think it would look good, but it really does!’
So that might be the lesson of going blue – go for what you want, and the rest will catch up in their own time!
If you don’t know me, then you wouldn’t know this, but before recently, I haven’t really taken that many selfies… you are now about to be inundated with pictures to prove that isn’t the case anymore!


And that’s it, I promise!  I’m now fading from this to a lighter bluey green, but I’m still loving the colour, and going for a top up in October!

Crown and Glory unboxing

Posted on by Pam
Recently, I’ve discovered the wonders of pretty things to go in my hair, and Crown and Glory has been a part of that, especially when I discovered the wonder that is The Glitterati – a subscription from Crown and Glory that has a bunch of wonderful people in a private Facebook group, all of whom are lovely, and very supportive of each other (and a large amount, or maybe a very vocal amount, are unicorn lovers!)  You can come and join in the fun by signing up with the Glitterati, so you don’t have to feel too left out!
A very good delivery day

There are some parcels that you get, that mean you know it’s going to be good!  This sticker is a sign of goodness!

And don’t forget the glittery tape!

The Glitterati boxes always come very prettily packaged, with the label on top to show the theme of the month!

The boxes are guaranteed to be worth at least £50, which I think is very good value, especially when there are some items that will only go to Glitterati!  Here’s a picture of the magical moment of opening the box – look at all the pretty things!

This is a very typical reaction to opening the Glitterati box – I need to put everything in my hair, and post pictures!

And there’s a Lotta Rosie headband in burgundy

I took the chance to wear both of these before I left work, and before I dyed my hair blue – but that’s for another post!

Kirstie Allsop’s Handmade Fair

Posted on by Pam

On Saturday, my friend Vicky (who blogs over on Random Nerdery) and I went to the Handmade Fair, at Hampton Court Palace – we could see it in the distance at least!

As we were queueing in, there was a  performer with a ukulele and singing ‘Park Life’ by Blur – a good start to the day when you file in smiling!

The theme for the day was bunting….
Our first stop was the Mollie Mash-up with Jamie Chalmers aka Mr X-Stitch vs Lisa Comfort of Sew Over It – I hadn’t really known what was going to happen, but seeing that Mr X-Stitch was there was what sold it to me!

 I really need to start taking better photos – I’m afraid all of these were taken on my iphone! (5, not even a more up to date one!)

 Here we are – not the best picture (so shiny!) but definitely happy people!

This mash up was actually about turning a tote into something wearable, and both went for making aprons out of the tote bags.

I’m not going to subject you to all of the pictures, as they’re pretty ropey, but here’s a picture of the finished articles

Lisa won with her very impressive apron, but Vicky and I voted for Mr X-Stitch mostly because he made us laugh the most!

And then we were off to Sewing with Wire with Daisy May except there was a problem sourcing enough for all of us, and so we did finger knitting instead.

Before!

I’m afraid I wasn’t as excited by this as I’m sure I should have been – I can’t knit as it gives me RSI, and I’ve never been terribly interested in the idea of finger knitting.

Here’s my finger knitted bracelet
It was then that we realised that we had about 5 hours before our last class – we went with what we wanted to do, not our heads!
That meant we had ages for looking round the shops – hurrah!  I had already checked out where a couple of stands were that I wanted to go and visit!
First up was Hannah Bass Tapestries – I can’t remember where I found Hannah Bass originally, but I’ve loved her tapestries for a while – they are all maps of cities!
Look at the beautiful box!
When we got there, I was very excited to find that she actually had the London Underground tapestry with her – hurrah! It’s not been available on her website yet, but there it was, in person!

Look at how wonderfully it’s been packed up!

Next up, it was time to visit Floss and Mischief where I ended up buying the Turquoise Beetle – which is apparently one of their first patterns!
I promised Vicky that I would teach her to cross stitch, if she bought a small pattern, and she offered to teach me crochet, and so we were on a mission to find me a hook and wool, and Vicky a pattern that she actually wanted to stitch!
For Vicky, we found Bobo Stitch, who had a space rocket pattern, which fits in with her little boy’s bedroom.  And we found me a crochet hook and wool!
Cross stitch is a little easier to pick up than crochet, or at least I’ve found that the case!  Vicky did show me how to crochet, but as she is right handed, and I’m a lefty, it did make it a little difficult when she handed me some stitches to carry on – it all felt in the wrong place, which I think it technically was, and so I started again and had a play…. and then decided that I would have to spend some time with youtube when I got home!  Vicky made me a little sampler of some different stitches!  
My turn to teach cross stitch!  We were doing this on picnic tables, which we had to fight to find space on – there was oddly enough, nowhere set up for people to craft at, which felt very strange for such an event!  We managed, but we did have an audience who came and went, and watched with varying degrees of interest.  It was all part of the fun!
Vicky, learning to cross stitch

We still have over an hour and a half left, so it was time to go for a wander around the shops now that it had quietened down a little!

Crochet animals!

Crochet unicorn, just because!

 We wanted to go for a drink, and found chairs in the Deco Bar, which is gloriously 1920s!

 Vicky and I spent the day squabbling over whose turn it was to buy stuff, and at the Deco Bar, Vicky decided it was her turn, which was very lucky!  Vicky had taken her camera with her, and had been asked a couple of times why she was taking pictures, and when she explained that it was for her blog, one of the people she bumped into ( Kat Rayment of Laydey Katabella) who suggested going to the Press Tent, and learn how to take better instagram pictures!

A nerve racking couple of minutes later, we had downed our drinks, and were heading off to the Press Tent to get our lesson!

Louise from Bloved Blog and Sarah Hannam from Sarah Hannam photography gave us lots of tips, and then we had to take our own pictures!

What luck I had been wearing my Admit One brooch from Sugar & Vice!

We practically ran out of the Press Tent to make it to our last lesson for the day – needle felting!
Turns out, needle felting involves using something that looks like a punch with 5 needles on it, stabbed multiple times into felt and a bit of wool.
A beautiful picture, taken by Vicky of our felted flowers!

Once the class was done, that was the end of the day, and time to wend our weary ways home!  It was a fantastic day, and hopefully it’s the start of lots of them!  I’ve been too busy with college before this, but I’ve got my eye on the Knitting and Stitching show in October!

Passion

Posted on by Pam

This is another post from 2010 that I was working on… I’ve finished it slightly, but mostly it was written then!

I’ve spent this morning looking at blogs, doing chores, and thinking, oddly enough about passions.

What I mean by passion is something that I can’t live without, something that could almost be described as a need, except I view need as something that you have no control over – you *need* to breath, whereas I am passionate about reading, and other things, but I’ll come on to those.

Reading is one of those things that I was slow to warm up to. I struggled when I was at primary school, but I seem to have been making up for that struggle ever since. I am, as best can be described, a bookworm. I read anything and everything, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have an opinion on what I read.

Other things that I am passionate about would be my fiance, my friends and family, writing (note from present me – I’ve not done much of that the last couple of years, and this blog is my return to writing!), and history in general. These are the things that make me up, and I think that if you take one of them away, then I wouldn’t be me, or at least not as much!

But where does passion become obsession? It’s very easy to point at the craze of vampires, and to look at Twilight fans, and say that they are obsessed, but is that because of their age (the books are written for young adults), or is it just that vampires are a subject that has fascinated us for many years, and that we’re seeing how many people are fans because of the media and the internet? Look at Anne Rice, and now True Blood, the series based on the books by Charlaine Harris. Many people are reported to have flocked to New Orleans over the years, to see the setting, and to imagine the characters that Anne Rice made, walking down the streets.

It could be the case that these are just the books that are now available. When I was growing up, the books that I could find in my local library were Anne McCaffrey, and Diana Wynne-Jones if i was lucky, and I’m only in my late 20s (another note from present me – I am no longer in my late 20s….!). The books that young adults/ teenagers have access to now is amazing – there are so many fantasy and sci-fi books written for them specifically, which I think is fantastic, but is a very interesting comment on the way that authors have changed over the years. Is it that more fantasy and sci-fi authors are writing for young adults, or is it that publishers are publishing more of these? Either way, I look forward to introducing my niece and nephews to these books when they’re older.