That's bright!

I’d forgotten about this, and just found the photo again.

Spent a good 5 minutes a few weeks back in the dim light of the ladies toilets at Wahaca enjoying the fact that my coral mohair sweater clashed so wonderfully with the hot pink walls, then trying to take a photo of myself, in the dark, with my iphone…

I followed her up the stairs, jostled together as we got on the escalator. A student, I think. The blouse is old, an 80s charity shop find. I had one a bit like it, first time around. Her boots are worn at the heel. No shoe trees and neat stacks of boxes in her room; they’ll lie in a tangled mass under her desk when not in use. She was walking on the escalator as we reached the top, the bag swinging. Fake Chanel. The size and shape are right but the stitching is shoddy, and it bends at the top with the weight of her purse inside. It’ll be full of change, not notes.

We reached the barriers. She pulled out a blue Oystercard wallet but as she flipped it open I could see see that it was empty. Two people ahead, a man and a woman. She followed the man, skipping ahead one extra step as the barrier opened for him. She was so close, judged it so perfectly, that they walked through the gate together, her hands rising up defensively to touch his shoulders. He turned, surprised. She smiled. “I’m so sorry.” She was charming. She walked briskly through the crowd, handbag swinging.

There’s a great cafe next to the hairdresser so I popped in there to dry out a bit. It’s like stepping into an alternate universe from my suburban existence – all 60s furniture and 70s posters and *youth* and people actually sitting in coffee shops with laptops doing work. Who knew? I love it and immediately resolved to buy a flat in Hoxton.

I’m sure that true photography afficionados and lovers of cafes like the one mentioned above hate Hipstamatic, but I love it for the quick and atmospheric results you can get (with little knowledge or effort!) – this snap taken through the window is *just* what yesterday was like.

PS My hair looks way better now …

Last night, looking out of the kitchen window onto relentless rain, I wondered whether today I really would write a piece about turning towards the darkness again, even in the midst of summer. The world has seemed a dark place over the past week; the clouds oppressive, the news all bad.

Then today, the sun came out for what feels like the first time in two weeks.

The oriental poppies which have self seeded in the ruin of our front garden blaze away; the dog is longing to chase the blackbird in the back garden who spends all his day taunting the dog from the safety of the elder tree, where berries ripen ready for jam in a month or so. Daughter’s lettuce is growing wildly and the green shoots on her sweet peas are ready to burst open into flower.

We’re still at school every, the grass is wet underfoot still, but it feels a tiny bit like summer now.

I have three unfinished projects stashed in the cupboard: the aforementioned cardigan for Daughter (the one with the should-not-be-tricky double moss stitch); a gorgeous silky cotton vest top for me (but 2ply – what was I thinking!); and a snowflake pattern hot water bottle cover wanting sewing up.

I’ve been feeling utterly frazzled by work and home stuff and I think weirdly that stops me from making things, even though I know it would be good calming activity. So this afternoon instead of wasting time on the internet or reading yet more (expensive!) rubbishy magazines I pushed myself to get on with one of these projects.

I chose the cardigan because it offers the quickest progress. It’s a Rowan big wool design (a free download, no less!) but as my daughter is hard on her clothes and growing fast I’m knitting it up in a cheaper, harder-wearing acrylic yarn and it’s looking just fine. After an hour, and some pulling back of previous errors, I’m half way up the front already – good work, and the happy feeling of not having lost my craft mojo after all!

Even better, I’ve managed to unselfconsciously write a post without a point … quick … must hit ‘publish’ … before I change my mind!

In the space of a few weeks, I designed and made (with lots of internet research, and another kind mother cutting out fabric) four pairs of tweed plus fours for Toad of Toad Hall. I sourced 4 matching green bow ties and figured out a way to have them tied authentically without actually tying them every night of the show. I fixed a fake moleskin waistcoat into the front of a borrowed tweed jacket so that the poor kids wouldn’t die of heat exhaustion on stage. And when all that was done I put away my sewing machine in the cupboard and that’s where it’s stayed ever since.

In April I tried to do some knitting and pulled it all back (double moss stitch, big wool, really shouldn’t be so difficult.) So the knitting bag went in the cupboard on top of the sewing machine.

I think I sewed on a button two weeks ago, but that’s the extent of my contact with my workbox since March 26th.

It’s quite unusual for me to go so long without making something and it feels a bit strange. What have I been doing with my time? I feel busy, but with what? It’s not as if I’ve read a load of challenging novels, or dug the garden or written much either. I’ve been so busy and tired with work that I’ve been collapsing on the sofa each evening with a glass of wine in one hand and something delightful but unchallenging in the other.

Last week Daughter stepped on the front of her school dress as she was about to leave for school. It’s a traditional number, the school dress – shirt top, dropped waist, gathered skirt, so prone to fatal dress injury in so many ways. She only has two dresses and for a week I have repeatedly washed the good one in the evening and ironed in the morning while the dead dress sat on the piano stool, looking reproachful. What was stopping me fixing it? I have a machine. I have time every evening. This was crazy.

So the sewing machine had to come out of hibernation and pronto. As I threaded it up I had one of those golden moments of complete abstraction and meditative quiet – my hands moved on the thread and the machine and my mind raced back through every time I’d threaded a machine then stilled on this wonderful sense of my hands just knowing what to do, no thinking involved.

I laid the dress flat (3 seconds), pinned the ripped out seam (20 seconds), machined it up (40 seconds), snipped off the trailing threads and hung the dress up. In another minute, the machine was back in its case, cable wound, cupboard door shut. It was less than 5 minutes since I’d hauled the machine out, the dress was as good as new and I’d had a dose of meditative stillness into the bargain. The sun is out, the days are long, the summer holidays are fast approaching. The sewing machine and knitting bag are just calling out to me now, and I find myself looking at craft blogs instead of gloomy, argumentative discussion boards. Watch this space!

]]> http://createeveryday.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/mundane/feed/ 0 stayinghome school dress http://createeveryday.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/zero-staying-power/ http://createeveryday.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/zero-staying-power/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:17:05 +0000 Rachel http://createeveryday.wordpress.com/?p=50 ]]>

So I don’t do so well at this blog-writing lark. I love the idea. My core mission is sound. I do, indeed, ‘create every day’. I try to be mindful and notice the world around me. All good. When I come to write it all down though, there are stumbling blocks and acts of self-sabotage.

I haven’t got time.
I haven’t got time to do it right.
I don’t have anything to say.
Who would read this?
What if someone does read it?

I could go on …

I need to get over this. I’m supposed to be writing. I have thoughts whirling in my head the whole time; why not get some of them out there?

Here’s today’s story.

I wanted some flowers for the house. Things are a mess, so sweeping aside the junk on a surface and putting a vase of flowers there instead is always a good start and sets the mood for cleaning and tidying. I love our local florist, but quite often end up grabbing a bunch of special offer flowers from the supermarket then deconstructing it, adding greenery from the garden.

The supermarket was crazy, in a good way. Royal Wedding tomorrow, so it was packed with people buying beer and BBQ stuff, bunting, reduced price Easter eggs and paper plates. A woman and her mother, small children in tow, deliberated over Union Jack tea cosies and aprons. Everything was most un-supermarket-like. Folks were cheerful and good humoured, chatting in the (endless) queue. Anyway, the only flowers they had left were red, white and blue which is not quite my thing …

I stopped instead at the local florist on the way home only to discover that they had hardly any cut flowers either. What’s the deal? Have Kate Middleton’s florists hoovered up every bloom and blossom in England? What they did have left was striped tulips, gorgeous scented stocks (a bit sad looking, discounted) in a colour that did not in any way go with the tulips and anemones.

I shoved them in a strange plant pot that was left behind in the house in Canada when we moved in and which I’ve never used, but I realise now that it’s the perfect size for this kind of display. Shoved is the wrong word and disingenous. I spent a happy ten minutes arranging them in a pleasing fashion. I love doing this, always saying that I wish I were a florist. Husband points out that I wouldn’t hack the early mornings and cold hands but hey, a girl can dream! There’s something very calming about arranging greenery – like painting in 3D.

The colours are a bit crazy, but it shouts out “It’s Springtime! Vacuum under that sideboard!”

It’s 7.50am and I can hear a bird singing in the tree outside the window as the sun finally starts to emerge. Today it will be dark before 4pm, but tomorrow we’ll start on the path towards light and springtime. I read about the lunar eclipse that occurs today. This conjugation of events last happened at the winter solstice in 1638. What was this day like then? The land where my house stands was woods and fields. Did anyone look out as the sun rose and wonder about spring, and would they eat well in the coming year? Was the winter harsh, like this one, with snow lying on the ground for weeks, the sky every day a blanket of grey? I wonder did solstice slip past them too, focused on religious observance of Christmas instead in the stone chapel that still stands half a mile away?

I can’t not care about it, no matter how modern I should be. I hate the dark. Being able to wear woolly knits and cosy up with strong spirits and put up fairy lights in no way compensates for lack of sunlight. I know that tomorrow, even though it is only lighter for moments longer than today, my spirits will rise. Feeling the days lengthen is one of those moments where nature intrudes into urban life; those moments are there if you want to see them. The clear night sky when I step out of the back door with the dog late at night, the moon a sliver of bright white, even in the street lights. The fox that stops and stares midway across the road, ears sharp, every sense alert. I realise that the solstice is far more meaningful than New Year’s Day, which always seems to me to have a melancholy feel. It’s not an arbitrary choice of moment when our human calendar clicks over one day, one month, one year. It’s a date we can’t choose – the unchanging planets and sun form a pattern that is inescapable. I like Christmas and all the bustle and fun of a holiday, but privately, in my heart, and I think I’ll start my new year tomorrow instead.

Some of it is obvious, and sometimes a bit cutesy  for my liking, but there are a lot of good truths in there too, and some interesting facts and ideas. I suppose the key element is that the author wanted to be happier, decided that this was under her control, and did something about it. And by the end of the year, she did feel happier.

I’ve always felt that happy is a very strong word, and that contentment is the thing to aim for, but reading Rubin’s book has revised my thinking. In some ways, she is talking about the same thing. She writes about taking joy from small things and in doing the things that you love to do (which are not the same as the things someone else might love to do!), and that fits with my own feeling that the path to contentment is to enjoy the things you have, the world around you, and things you can create, for themselves. She certainly worked hard at it, but then the reward was great. I’ll mull over the book a bit longer and decide whether this is something for me. The structure of thinking out your ‘happiness project’ in advance appeals to the listmaking part of my brain, but I also know how easily I fall off the wagon of any new scheme or plan, and how that is always followed by a great deal of self reproach … maybe I should just take things as they come and try to put some of the ideas into practice without getting too rigid about it.

I started trying to do just that by doing nothing in the park for almost an hour yesterday afternoon. I’d taken some of Daughter’s friends for a picnic when school closed early, and Son and friends joined us later. We had a great, relaxed afternoon and the children required no input from me whatsoever. The invented games with bats and balls, ran wild, turned cartwheels, dragged a rug far away from our base under a tree for private chatter, five glossy, brushed heads huddled over school frocks, giggling. Eventually the other adults and younger children left and I was left on my own with Dog. Dog pulls on his lead and is Not To Be Trusted in polite company, so I couldn’t read the paper, or tidy up the picnic things, and once Dog and I had done a circuit of the field and practiced walking nicely (aided by quantities of salami), that left me with 45 minutes to spare. So I just sat.

I watched the people, other dogs, the girls playing, the boys just specks in the distance in the cricket nets. It was sunny and breezy, and the park was changing from daytime to evening. The mothers and little children were heading home; some willingly in pushchairs, tired out, others trailing along behind on foot, asking plaintively for one last ice cream, or a final turn on the swings. It was strange, watching those mothers of little ones heading home. Just a short while ago I was in their shoes, and for those mothers I knew that this was where their work began. In the park you can gossip with a friend or stranger, drink a coffee, drift away in your own thoughts while you push the baby on the swing. Once home, it’s juggling food and baby, teatime, bathtime, bedtime, come back downstairs, weary, clear up (again). By now, if you’re lucky, your husband is home and you can pour a glass of wine, and tidy up some more, and dish up a slightly inadequate Friday night meal  and lie on the sofa, pretending the washing up doesn’t exist. Too tired even to wonder whether Friday night was always like this. I was going home to a proper meal with all of us sitting at the same table, chat with the children, self sufficient bedtimes, a glass of wine, a good chat, a clever film. I wanted to run after the tired mothers and tell them, this too shall pass.

Back in the park, in the place of the mothers and toddlers came runners, dogs on their walks, couples strolling, young men playing basketball. These people were released, their workday done, obligations discharged, and I had a great sense, as I watched, of everyone doing just as they pleased. It struck me that my children had reached an age where I was able, too, to do just as I pleased. I could have left the dog at home. I could have left the children in the park! I had chosen to be there, and chosen to do nothing except watch and think, and I felt grateful for that hour of luxury.

Anyway, I re-read all my old posts last night and thought, you know, this wasn’t bad, this making and thinking and writing stuff. Maybe I should get back to it. I didn’t stop thinking and making after all, just writing.

I’ll be back with a new look and some new thoughts soon. And for various reasons, my real name on it this time…