Letters from Wetville

I never seem to read anything in sequence for book group anymore.  Wrong book for the wrong meeting, or I have to go home because I was falling asleep because I spent three hundred hours of my life filling in forms for the government to satisfy itself that I am doing my job (generally ensuring that I don't have time to do my job) or some other thing. So here is my record.  Not even all about books.  After the wonderful America is not the Heart by Elaine Castillo, I read Nora Ephron's Heartburn , (originally published c.1983 and recently reissued by Virago Classics, for the first time. After reading almost everything I could find about Elaine Castillo after finishing her novel, this is what stuck in my mind: What is striking about “America Is Not the Heart” is how it’s unapologetically Filipino, peppered with expressions in Ilocano, Pangasinan, and Tagalog and nuances like wearing tsinelas, calling everyone Ate, faith healing -- with no italics, no footnotes, n...

"Your word for love is survival .  Everything else is a story that isn't about you." Today is about the novel America is not the Heart .  This book is really good, and it has made me think a lot.  I've even staved off reading my next book (Nora Ephron's Heartburn ) so that I can think about America is not the Heart some more.  I hadn't finished it in time for book group, and no one else wants to talk to me about it (yet), so this morning I decided I could articulate my thoughts on my little, old, mostly neglected blog.  At least the thoughts could take solid form instead of swirling in my head. I found a review for  America is not the Heart when I was looking on the Guardian for something new to read.  It's a great place for new inspiration for me - it's where I found Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent , Tobias Hill's What was Promised and Selina Todd's The People .  The New York Times review  for America is not the Heart was similar...

This is the fabric and pattern Brighid and I chose in Christchurch a few weeks ago, while the boys soughed it out at a kung fu tournament.  It's black velvet, and really beautiful fabric.  The pattern is McCalls 6915, and while it is easy to put together, the actual pattern is ridiculous.  I had read that the pattern comes up large on Pattern Review, but the reality was quite stark.  The top is loose enough to be made in a woven (the pattern specifies moderate stretch) and the skirt is unhemmed and falls above her knees.  I favour loose dresses on Brighid, but this is just bad pattern making I think.  It is entirely my fault that I ignored the band and folded the neckline over and stretched it out really badly.  So I made some tucks in the front and then added the neckband after all.  The next step in fulfilling Brighid's specs for this dress is that she wants pointy bits around the hem and arms... She added some socks and gumboots an...

So, it's quite bold, and yellow.  It's my Issy top, from Style Arc .  I threw caution to the wind as it was a freebie pattern and made it up without any alterations.  Funnily enough it fits in the bust and is too big everywhere else except through the hips.  Who would have thought that all that reading on altering patterns and several years of experimentation would yield yet another proof? It's not completely unwearable once I have taken an extremely deep hem (size 18 tops, I am reminded again, are not drafted for persons who are 5'4").  I may try and take the shoulders in, something I'vve never tried before.  I am taking the sleeves up to be 3/4 sleeves.  Bold yellow flowers all the way to my hands is tooooo much. It will, no matter the alterations, be very bold, and very yellow.  I'm not sure I will wear it every second day.  I had the red version of this print and I was wise to make it as a dress with plain black for the bodice....

Tomorrow the marathon begins.  Not running, not that much of a sea-change has been going on at the not-quite-so-messy house.  Just the marathon of working full time with extra work responsibility whilst simultaneously parenting and attempting to fit in sleep and books and rest home visiting and garden and sewing.  Today I eschewed my plans to go to work and instead cleaned the lounge.  Really cleaned the lounge, including sorting out all my sewing gear.  I found three tape measures, three packets of new bobbins, countless packets of curtain hooks and more packets of sewing machine needles than I was prepared to count.  All bought because I couldn't find the pre-existing packets in the mess. The finished result is a thing of beauty.  Of course if a camera was charged and I took a photo to share on this blog, you would wonder what all the fuss was about.  A bright yellow room with some old furniture and lots of books and hobby paraphernalia...

Well well well.  I didn't write for weeks because my life has turned into a workfest, and then blogger/google/gmail got so mixed up I couldn't access my account and now, wonders unexplained, I can access it again.  1. sewing.  I made a renfrew top which I appear not to have photographed.  I made a pile of alterations to the pattern before I made it up, and I think I'll make some more yet, and turn it into a frankpatterned mix of renfrew top and red velvet midriff and skirt.  I made another circle skirt for a 7th birthday present.  Brighid is modelling the twirl factor on it above, before we wrapped it and set off for the party.  I didn't have any bias binding and so hemmed with a single fold (looooong hem circumference) and zigzagged it which actually looked quite good. I hemmed two tiramisu dresses which have been worn unhemmed for ages.  I used steam a seam lite for one which was really good, except unbuyable at the moment as the factory b...

I've long been a fan of Anne Else's writing.  Her books on womens history and particularly on the history of adoption in New Zealand, were really important to me as a postgraduate history student in the 1990s.  Last year I read Else's PhD online and for the last several years I've been reading her blogs http://elsewoman.blogspot.co.nz/ and http://somethingelsetoeat.blogspot.co.nz/ .  When her food memoir came out only as an e-book, I was disappointed, but ethically opposed to getting a kindle or other device as it reduced the pool of books to be sold second hand thus available to people who could not afford new books.  But all those concerns fell away last week when my lovely husband surprised me with a kindle for my birthday.  There is no going back!  The books are so cheap and to be able to choose exactly what I want to read at 11pm or 3am or Sunday morning or whenever feels really close to magic.  The very first book I downloaded was Anne Else's T...

I read Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In and I loved it.  I had quite a lot to say about it and started writing this morning, but whereas I blogged happily about gardening for years and still can about gardening and sewing, my responses to Lean In are both personal and also linked to my work.  I realised that I wasn't comfortable posting a full response to Sandberg's book online.  Such is life. But as I'm still blogging about sewing, I can report that I made progress with the merino pavlova top I cut out many months ago.  Until I didn't.  I made darts successfully and then I sewed a complicated piece on back to front using a stretch stitch on my machine which isn't easily unpicked.  Unpicking black triple stitched thread from black fabric without a quick-un-pick is im-poss-ible.  I don't know where my quick-un-picks go.  I lose them all the time.  Not through lack of use during sewing time, that's for sure.  So tomorrow I will buy a-noth-er ...

Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.  It's fantastic and really important and I'm so glad we got it as part of the Book Discussion Scheme for the local book group I go to.  Thinking about what to do next in terms of the challenge to action against injustice to women (specifically, sex trafficking, maternal mortality and female genital cutting) and how to involve my own children in understanding and making links. I'm not quite ready to give up blogging.  I started six years ago and that's a pretty good haul in my view.  But whereas then my blog gave me an outlet for my thoughts and to develop ideas and responses to my world while I was in the thick of nappies and kindy, my situation has changed a lot over time and staying up late to reflect on this blog is something I opt not to do, favouring instead getting some sleep or going it to work to get things done at a time when no one is around to give me more jobs, or doing laundry or organising hockey tr...

Still blogging ... just.  I've compiled a few posts in my head about fundraising and the school gala.  I won't relive the buildup to the gala here after all, but the actual day turned out really well, we made $14 000 which is fantastic for a school of only 170 pupils in a town hard hit by recent economic changes.  I learnt that I still don't mind working hard on the day, and that making candy floss the night before is kind of fun, but that I should not volunteer to make cakes, buy the ingredients and then discover I cannot find the time to bake. The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater is hilarious, even for me the kale afficcionado. In the absence of a local butcher, and given my dissatisfaction with supermarket meat, I decided to try Gourmet Direct , on the recommendation of a foodie friend's stepmother.  Of course.  How else do you find a butcher?  All very Hansel and Gretel so far.  Armed with a free delivery code, I made a selection of meats...

Forward shoulder adjustment, dropped armhole curve, a wedge out of the back, raised back and front necklines and a smidge extra on the sides of the front and back.  I found some tape (the label on the inside says "future protect") which is much easier to work with than sellotape. I think I'm ready to cut out the Cake green hummingbird (with blue sleeves) peplum top for a second time.  The first version was ugly.  I've got a choice of fabrics which I purchased in a speed buying trip to Fabric Vision in Christchurch earlier this week.  I got to Papanui (the suburb where Fabric Vision resides) at 1.15pm, and had to be in town, parked and at the hospital by 2pm, preferably having had some lunch.  Not quite the perfect conditions for careful evaluation of the options, but I had thought ahead about what I wanted to use the fabric for.  The pink in the photo is what I think is known as 'slinky knit' and was very cheap.  The oth...

Earlier this week I fell in love with Carrie Rudzinski.  As it does, life had to go on in its 'normal' and relatively petty fashion, emails and teaching, parenting and washing clothes, meals followed quickly by more family hunger...  But out there are more people who also love Carrie Rudzinski, and one of them filmed her at a poetry slam and posted it on youtube.  For me and for you.  The fifth one who walked away . I was going to post about Kate Atkinson's Life after Life .  It's a great novel, and her structural technique of the life which is lived again and again with small details making a very big difference, is brilliant.  I bet loads of authors want to copy it, but as it's so unique, it's a bit obvious to do so.  It's set in London, the Home Counties English countryside and Germany in both world wars.  I loved this kind of book from as soon as I was reading adult fiction, and then I loved the 'real' London when I lived there, and now this...

Here it is, the latest crafty project, draped over the chair back.  You can't tell the triangle shape as it is all bunched up circular needles behind the chair.  If it looks home made and home dyed and homespun, that's because it is, though the only homemade part that I have contributed is the knitting. It's quite thick wool, which makes it grow fast and warm, and I quite like the colour.  But it's not going to adorn a ball frock anytime soon or a work outfit.  I see a great future for this shawl as I sit up in bed and read. I spent much of the day practising for using the shawl by sitting up in bed and alternately reading my own book (Kate Atkinson Life after Life ) and reading White Boots by Noel Streatfield to Brighid.  Thyroid care, you understand.  Preserving and nourishing my health so my children don't have to step forward into this world with an unwell mother. Last night I attended a rather notorious organisation - the middle class ladies' ...

I loved The Rosie Project .  I probably need (*need*) more Rosie Projects in my life. Look at the cover, even.  I don't read deliberate comedy very often.  But I giggled, properly giggled, my way through this.  It's a better tonic than vitamin C.  I also went to Christchurch and had a minor spending spree - two lovely bras and a beautiful scarf later, I closed my wallet for all but food and petrol expenses.  I went driving out at Greenpark (near Lincoln and Tai Tapu) and looked down behind Greenpark School.  It is going to close at the end of this year, but it was here that my Grandma began her formal schooling, and it was in a paddock at the back of the school that she tethered the pony which her father bought for her to ride to school (taking her younger brother with her). Then I went to Tai Tapu and played lady lunching.  Nice gf roulade (yes I mentioned food, AND gf - it may get worse as the blogpost continues) and I got great value o...

So I've now read The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck.  I don't know what the 'S' stood or stands for, but obviously Mrs Buck thought it was important.  I can't call her "Pearl" because really she is an author of stature and old and dead to boot, and I keep thinking of the song "Pearl's a Singer " which isn't quite seemly. I liked the cadences of the prose.  Really, I did have such a pretentious thought.  I like how it has a fable-like quality which I have decided is because of all the Bible saturation which Pearl S Buck, daughter of a missionary, experienced.  I quote: "Men labored all day at the baking of breads and cakes for feasts for the rich and children labored from dawn to midnight and slept all greasy and grimed as they were on rough pallets on the floor and staggered to the ovens the next day, and there was not money enough given them to buy a piece of the rich breads they made for others." (p.113) It reads like the Bi...

This is what the trees look like in paradise.  First I spent the day reading and finishing Claire Tomalin's Mrs Jordan's Profession .  I loved it.  I found myself thinking about the biographer easily as much as Mrs Jordan.  Mrs Jordan was the mistress of William IV, and bore him ten children, living as his de facto partner for many years before he rudely got rid of her in response to the advice of his royal advisors.  She was also a superb and very famous actress, both before, during and after her relationship with William (the Duke of Clarence while they were living together).  She was born in 1761 and was on the stage from the age of 14.    She worked through all of her pregnancies (13 live children and still more miscarriages) and was back on the stage within a month of giving birth.  Tomalin, herself a very interesting woman, often draws explicit links between modern day parenting and Jordan's effective parenting and caring skills....

There is no logo down the side of my blog for me-made-May this year.  Last year I put one up and then realised, rather pitifully, that I hadn't nearly enough home sewn or knitted clothes for a month's worth of wearing. Nevertheless, I have entertained ideas of doing it anyway.  I've extended my home sewn wardrobe quite a bit in the last 12 months.  On the first day of May, I had my very favourite and certainly me-made polka dot skirt on by accident.  On the second day, which I think was when I realised that MMM had started, I was poorly and fragile and spent the entire time in my shop-bought jammies.  We are up to ten days of May, and I've jumbled through without much MMM design.  When I get ready dressed of a weekday morning, I'm thinking about the kids' lunches and what is coming up at work, not the provenance of my clothing.  I aim for clean, and anything else is a bonus. Today, after kitting Brighid out in hockey gear (something called funstick...

Some parents take their children to church.  We take ours on marches. I love my garden.  I've been out in it, even just tiny bits of wedding and caterpillar squashing, almost every day this past fortnight.  I planted out seedlings of crimson kale. green kale and celery last weekend, and have packets of coriander and rocket ready to scatter this weekend. In The Rushing Woman Syndrome , Libby Weaver talks about exposing ourselves to seratonin through daylight as soon as we get up.  This is supposed to have the effect of helping us start the day bright and full of energy.  I think it is helping.  We have blackout lining on our curtains (I like proper dark to sleep in and also it blocks the street lighting), so it's good to go outside as soon as I get up.  Even when it is raining, I can stand under the lean-to by the old shed and look at the chooks and my garden and greet the day. Although I haven't dared ask my loved ones for accurate feedback, I ...

Rushing Woman's Syndrome , by Libby Weaver, may just change my life.  I've read it cover to cover over the last few days, and it gives me a powerful context for my thyroid problems, plus reassurance that having serious symptoms but still having bloods within the medically accepted range is quite common.  It has helped me to understand what is going on when I get stressed over only medium-sized organisational challenges, like getting everyone to their respective birthday parties, sports tournaments and kung fu gradings.  It's not that what I am organising is impossible, it is that I'm working in frequent (sometimes constant) overdrive so I don't trust that I've remembered everything. Weaver is a big advocate of yoga, so I'll be sticking with that.  She is also passionately in favour of women giving up or cutting back on their alcohol consumption and caffeine consumption.  Caffeine is a non-issue for me most of the time, but I'm now over 11 weeks into my...

 Gimli and the water girl. Cosmos. There were to be more pictures of this weekend, but there seems to be an upload problem at my end. I did make chocolate brownie and added whizzed up almonds and some frozen blueberries. I did make basil and rocket pesto.  I used the first red onion from the garden in tonight's pasta sauce.  It's not going to win any prizes for size, but after several years of attempting to grow red onions, these ones have gotten to edible size. I did some more sewing and wondered at my choice of the brightest fabric in the land. I fitted in paid work on Saturday and Sunday.  I always wanted to contain work within the children's school hours, but this year is looking different already.  Saturday I took Brighid with me and she played on her scooter, read for a while and then helped me with data entry.  Sunday I commandeered the dining room table and everyone else played or worked out in the sun, leaving me to concentrate and mak...