Life in ruins…

When I studied archaeology I learnt a certain way of looking at monuments – a way of looking that helped me to make sense of all the grassy lumps, bumps and bits of wall. It was a way of looking that focused on the history of a site above all else.

Now I see with different eyes. As well as considering the history of the site, I like to appreciate it’s place in the here and now. What struck me most about a recent visit to a nearby castle, was the abundance of wildlife that flourished there…….

…plants sprouted from the walls…

…the moat teemed with wildlife and vegetation….

…moss inched across stonework…

…fruits began to swell…

…pigeons roosted in doorways and on ledges….

…there was even a castle cat!

Although I completely understand the need for conservation, I feel that monuments can be tidied up a bit too much sometimes. Finely manicured lawns and a proliferation of information boards are all well and good but surely an important element of a castle’s history is it’s decay – and a big part of it’s romance is it’s ruined state…

…or perhaps I’ve just been reading too much Bronte recently…

better

Thank you all for your kind thoughts and words. Thankfully it was nothing too awful and I’m pleased  to report that I’m feeling much more chipper now! There are a few posts on the way too… so stay tuned!

poorly

Sorry I haven’t been responding to comments or visiting other blogs over the past few days – I’ve been quite poorly and have spent a lot of time in bed. Hope to be back in the swing of things very soon.

Birthday Bash

My little girl was 2 last week and, once I’d overcome my disbelief (has it really been two whole years?), it was time for a family celebration.

Mum made a wonderful cake…..

and ‘helped’ me make a wonderful present for the birthday girl (helped as in ‘did 99.9% of the work’)…

which proved popular with daughter and daddy alike!

We continued the age-old family tradition of frog racing….

but, as with all good parties, things soon deteriorated into nudity and silly behaviour…

… and a great time was had by all!

Just back…

from a great holiday. Normal service will resume shortly…….

Dawdle Days

Judging by the amount of groups, events and activities organized for them, children these days seem to require an awful lot of entertaining! Take the small town where we live for instance – if we wanted, my daughter could go along to an organized event every day of the week: toddler groups, soft play, baby gym sessions, storytimes and rhymetimes – to name just a few!

As it is, we go to two toddler groups and one music class a week plus the occasional trip to the soft play centre. Now, please don’t mistake me, I think toddler groups, soft play centers and the like have a lot to offer – they’re a great place for toddlers to fine tune skills such as balance and co-ordination, use up some excess energy and interact with other children. They’re also great for mums as they offer opportunities to socialize and usually provide one of the (all too) rare occasions in the week when you get a cuppa made for you!

However, I don’t think that they should be the be all and end all: it’s important for children to have a bit of variety, a bit of randomness and a chance to entertain themselves. I guess I worry that, if kids are continually entertained – either by tv, organised play or all-singing all-dancing electronic toys, then how will they learn to use their imaginations and be creative? If they’re continually cosseted in risk-free ‘safe’ environments, how will they learn to assess risk? If we constantly organize and ‘manage’ their play, how will they learn self-reliance and spontaneity? If they’re always indoors, how will they learn to appreciate the natural world?

Personally, I choose to leave my daughter to her own devices from time to time in order that she at least gets chance to make her own entertainment. It doesn’t always work – if she’s tired and grumpy, she’ll refuse to play on her own and will soon be tugging at my legs. But more often than not, she’s quite content to play alone and I’m pleased to say that she’s quite an imaginative little thing. She’s particularly fond of playing with her ragdolls and will sing to them, pretend to feed and dress them, make them dance with each other or give them a ride on her rocking horse. I can’t resist sneakily peeking in on her sometimes as it’s just so heartwarming to see! 

As well as time to herself, I like us to have ‘dawdle days’ once or twice a week – days where we have nothing planned and can just go with the flow – no groups to attend, people to see or classes to go to. We can simply spend hours making daisy chains, painting pictures, baking biscuits, exploring the river banks or generally just mooching about.

This morning was a good example of one of our dawdle days. It was wonderfully laid back and completely unplanned. I needed a few bits and pieces from the market so on the way back we stopped at the park for an hour. Baby Small had brought one of her dolls with her and after she’d played on the swings and slide, she insisted that dolly did too.

When we got home I fancied a spot of baking so checked to see what we could make with the limited ingredients I had to hand (remember this was unplanned baking!) and opted for snickerdoodles. Can you guess which ones mummy made and which baby made?

Sometimes the best days really are those that are completely unplanned! Oh and if you’ve never tried snickerdoodles, do give them a try! You’re in for a treat…. 

 

xxx

The hands remember…..

Apologies for the lack of posting – baby small has been poorly and in need of lots of cuddles and attention. She’s on the mend now though and getting back to her usual busy self which has given me a bit of time to make this….

It’s my first plied handspun and I’m ridiculously proud of it. It was all spun and plied on my drop spindle. I spun two singles – one of rather lovely hand dyed corriedale wool and one of less lovely commercially dyed merino – then wound them into balls on my nostepinne. I placed the balls in bowls in an attempt to stop them for rolling around too much – a rather vain attempt as it turned out (will try upside down flower pots next time) – then plied them using the drop spindle again. 

The yarn isn’t perfect – its a bit ‘thick and thin’ in places – but if I wanted perfectly uniform yarn I guess I could just go and buy some mill spun stuff! In my opinion, part of the beauty of handspun is its more rustic quality and the fact that whatever you make with it will be truly unique.

Someone more eloquent than myself has described learning to spin as less like learning something new, more like remembering something old. This really struck a chord with me as when I started spinning it just seemed so right. My hands wanted to be doing it and now, if I go for too long without spinning, they start to twitch impatiently. It’s as if they’re telling me “this is what we were made to do”. Perhaps is stems from some strange, deep-rooted, mystical, past-lives type memory thing (!) or perhaps its just that I’ve found something I truly love to do. Who knows! 

It’s very different from my love of crochet. The pleasure I get from crochet is more to do with the finished object or the ability to experiment and design, but with spinning, it’s the process I love. I love watching the twist run up the drafted fibres in a smooth fluid motion that seems almost magical to me. I love how the fibres slip easily and gratifyingly against each other as I draft. I love how the spindle just keeps going round and round and round long after you’d think it would have run out of spin. It all seems so simple but oh so clever.  I apologise for all this gushing – I guess I’m pretty besotted! I know its early days yet but I’m starting to feel I’ve finally found my vocation and that’s rather a nice way to feel.

Back to practicalities. I’m not quite sure what I plan to do with the handspun. Part of me thinks it would be nice to save up all my early handspun for a big project and make something truly fabulous but then there’s the other part of me that appreciates instant gratification. When I get chance, I plan on crocheting up some swatches in various stitches using the handspun to see how it looks. I guess I’ll just see what ideas the swatches inspire….

A seriously simple salmon dish and some thoughts on the visual nature of cooking….

I have quite a small budget with which to feed the three of us so we usually eat quite frugally. However, when it’s time for the monthly Farmers Market, I usually can’t resist all the wonderful produce on offer and splash out on a foodie treat for us. This month I was tempted by some beautiful hand-reared, RSPCA approved salmon from the fishmonger’s stall.  

Cooking is something that can stimulate all the senses and I particularly like the visual aspect of cooking. One of my favourite dishes to cook in summer, for instance, is ratatouille as I love the jumble of bright, contrasting colours in the pan – glossy red tomatoes, dark green courgettes and sunshine yellow peppers. I never see cooking as a chore – in fact, I find it quite a mediative process. I like to take time to admire the beauty of the fresh ingredients and to reflect upon nature’s bounty.  This salmon provided a perfect opportunity for such reflection. It was such a visual treat with its shimmering silver skin and vivid orange flesh. Beautiful! 

I always think that good quality food needs very little doing to it so I cooked the salmon quite simply, baking it in foil with a little welsh butter and some herbs. Here’s the recipe:

Salmon baked in Foil

Serves 2

• 2 portion sized salmon fillets 
• herbs (I like to use dill or rosemary)
• butter
• seasoning
• 2 large pieces of kitchen foil

Preheat oven to 180 / Gas Mark 4. Grease each piece of foil with a little butter. Place the salmon on top. Sprinkle with your choice of herbs, fresh or dry, then dot with butter. Bring the two side edges of the foil together and scrunch up to seal then curl up the end edges to make the parcel. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. I like to serve it with a green vegetable (sauteed curly kale in this instance) and either fluffy basmati rice or new potatoes.

Yum!

Past Lives

When I worked in Archives, I was fascinated by the glimpses I caught of past lives. Every single document represented a moment in someone’s life – be it a letter, diary, photograph, accounts or inventory. The repository where I worked held a few documents of national importance. However, most of the documents were of a more mundane, everyday nature – yet it was these that interested me the most as they offered real insight into the ways people had lived their lives in the past. A particular favourite of mine was a set of household accounts from the victorian period. They began when the author was a young girl – as training, I imagine, for future account keeping. In the earliest accounts the expenditures listed are items such as ribbons, new gloves and things of a frivolous nature. As the author grew older and inherited the estate, the nature of the accounts changed and, instead of ribbons and gloves, servants wages, firewood, renovations and donations to charity are listed. The books span almost an entire lifetime and offer a fascinating glimpse into a young girl’s journey into adulthood.

At times I found myself deeply moved by the documents I discovered. One such item was the diary of a Victorian girl. It’s time span was relatively short – the entries covering the period of just a few months when the girl was staying in the country with relatives. They describe balls and dances in dazzling detail, record outings in the countryside and hint at a blossoming romance – but then the diary ends abruptly. A few pages after the last entry, however, is a touching and enigmatic postscript, evidently written many years later. In it the author wonders at how carefree her life once was and laments how she is now ‘worn down by care’. She sees this as retribution for the hurt she once caused another but doesn’t elaborate on what she did or to whom. It is a tantalizing, moving entry, which the author probably never intended for anyone to read. Yet, across the centuries, I read her words and found myself moved to tears.

As you can probably tell, I’m pretty passionate about archives. Part of my job was to promote their use, so it’s hardly surprising really. However, it was never my intention to work in Archives. My degrees are in Archaeology and I had always thought I’d end up doing that – working with Archives was something I just fell into really. I think that’s why I was struck so forcibly by the power of archives. They offered an immediacy to the past that I’d not encountered before. They made the past seem more accessible and relevant and, most importantly for me, they presented a past that was about people, not just events, trends and cultural shifts.

If you’d like to find out more about archives, then the best place is your local Record Office. However, if you’d prefer to take a look online, then I’d recommend you take a look at the National Archives site as they have online exhibitions, learning resources and helpful research guides – oh, and my personal favourites, the ducking stool game.

In case anyone was wondering, the photographs are of a memorial in Brecon Cathedral, Wales. I played around with the images a little to get a grainy effect.

Finally….

…some snow! This is the first snow we’ve had here this winter and I’m ridiculously excited about it. What is it about snow that fills us with such childish delight? For me it conjures up memories of days off school spent playing in the snow, building snowmen and sledging down the pea field on old carpet tiles. Oh to be 10 years old again!

Back to the present – the baby was a little uncertain about the white stuff at first but she was soon stomping about in it. I didn’t let her stay out too long though as she’s quite poorly at the moment (hence the snotty nose in the pic – poor thing) and I thought getting cold and wet probably wouldn’t improve matters!