Echoes of a Dream

Catching up on books

We seem to have had a visitor filled first week of the holidays so far so it seems a bit odd to wake up this morning to an emptyish house with just me and the children. Tom who also had some time off started his new job this morning and we'll be waiting eagerly tonight for his first impressions.

Last weekend, despite the weather we went exploring in Sussex. On Friday we took in a National Trust property called Standen which is a beautiful example of the Arts and Crafts style. The house was designed by Phillip Webb for the Beale family who used it at weekends and holidays. You can read more about it here and here. If you look in Google images there are some pics too although they don't do it any justice. If you're into William Morris's designs then you'll love this place.The only pics I managed to take were of some Delft tiles in an outhouse - sorry:

 

After that we decided to go down to the sea but didn't last long as it was so cold. Still it was pretty invigorating for a (short) while. This chalk cliff face is known as the Seven Sisters:

Other than a bit of sightseeing I seem to have been madly reading over the past four weeks. It's almost as if I'm making up for lost time. I didn't seem to find time for reading whilst I was crafting and blogging like mad in the old house. So far I've ploughed through quite an eclectic mixture.

First off was Sathnam Sanghera's book "If You Don't Know Me By Now" - a beautifully written account of this Sikh boy's childhood in Wolverhampton. It's about coming to terms with his culture, his father's illness and most importantly about trying to live his own life as he wants to despite strong pressure from his family. I laughed and cried my way through most of the book. Tom's reading it now and I'm definitely getting copies for my siblings this year. Definitely worth a read ladies.

After that I found this on the shelf and as Amber and Rohan had enjoyed it I thought I'd try it too. It's "The Land of Far Beyond" by Enid Blyton and is a children's version of the Pilgrim's Progress. The story is about a small group of adults and children who live in the City of Turmoil. They're nasty, vindictive, horrid people until one day when The Stranger arrives and fills their hearts with love and happiness momentarily so that the burdens in their hearts are shifted on to their backs. To remove these loads they must journey to The Celestial City but on the way they are met with many dangers and difficulties. There is a brilliant account of the book here. A must read for everyone of any age I'd say.

Then this caught my eye in the local library - "Colour Bar The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation". Seretse Khama was the first leader of independent Botswana and this book is about his six year exile from that country because he married a white girl. It was a bit of a shocking read. I'm not naive enough to think politicians don't lie but I was shocked at how much lying went on to keep this man out of his country and away from his rightful leadership (pre 1966). All because Britain didn't want to upset South Africa because they wanted uranium from them. The thing that really came out of this book though is this man's strength of character. How he retained his dignity and self respect despite everything and how he never seemed to rise to anger over his situation. Amazing.

Of course I had to read "The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency" after that. Did anyone see the film last week? I thought it was great.

Somewhere in between I picked up "Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons. Can't believe that I've never read this book. It seems to be a parody of Thomas Hardy and is very, very funny.

I haven't got anything on the go now so I guess I need to get to the library or the local bookshop to pick up something to take to my parents for the next few days. Hope you're all having a great Easter break .......

Happy Easter

Well, I managed to find some of the things for the Easter table. Didn't manage to do any new eggs this year and I guess we'll be too busy this weekend with cousins but never mind we have plenty of eggs from last year. I picked the branches hurriedly from the woods and voila.

Sadly I did not find any of the knitted chicks, the hare, the bread hen or even Mother Earth that I usually have on the table and it's pissing me off because I seem to have looked in every box. Where the heck are they? I suppose there'll turn up somewhere, sometime. Annoying though because I love those little things.

Anyway, I managed to make this out of 'All Year Round' last night. It was a bit fiddly but worth it:

and that's about it I think with regards to Easter decorations.

So here we are on Good Friday which would not be the same without hot cross buns and that's about all I've done this morning. Thankfully, I can show them to you as they look quite presentable.

Hope they taste nice too!

Other than that I want to wish you all a Happy Easter. Hope yours is as good as ours is going to be - restful, relaxing, lots of family time and too much chocolate ........lots o'love.

Unprepared

Why, oh why is Easter so early this year (don't worry I do know the reason). We haven't had a moment to paint any eggs or to set up our easter table yet.

Usually we have at least a week off school before Good Friday to do these things. I thought that we might have managed a bit this week but with it being the end of term tomorrow there have been class plays to watch, Class 8 projects to look at and listen to - and the whole week will be gone in whirl.

We'll wake up on Friday morning and the cousins will arrive and it'll be Easter good and proper.

I had so many good intentions especially after going to a 'how to celebrate Easter' talk last Friday and the sight of this Easter Garden was very inspiring:

But alas I haven't even managed to go and find some moss yet. Sooooo, I think Easter will have to be a bit low key this year. We've still got plenty of eggs from last year and we'll decorate the seasonal table with what we've got and maybe make a much smaller Easter garden on a dinner plate. I need to save my energy and thoughts for feeding ten for four days I think.

Another thing that seems to have taken my time this week was trying to find my stuff for a mini market that was held at school this morning. It would have been far easier to have unpacked everything as I said I would than to have to ransack each box, tip contents out of baskets to find things. You can imagine the mess that I created to say nothing of the extra work. In the end I could only stay for forty minutes as Rohan's play was on after that but I did take fifty pounds which was nice. I also found a lot of brooches and silk squares that I forgot I had so for those who have asked for either or both here they are:

 

and

All of these brooches are £5 ($10) each. The silk squares are £6 ($12) each:

Please email me if you would like to buy anything or wish to have a closer look at the silks.

I also found this bag hidden away (not sure if I have shown it to you before):

t'other side - it's a gorgeous deep purple colour:

Can't decide whether to sell it or keep it (I have far too many handbags). It's £60 ($120) if anyone is interested (it's fully lined with a lilac cotton fabric and has a flat base).

Now, I must brave the cold and go and find some branches to hang those eggs off (and find the eggs and chicks and nests and yellow cloth and hare of course).

Two years - can you believe it.

I was going to sit down this morning and whitter on about all sorts of random things when I noticed on Typepad that I've been blogging for two years now. Yes, two years. I started on March 5th 2006 and I can't believe that I'm still going.

In that time I've turned into a hoarder magnifique, tried lots of new crafts, improved my knitting, discovered Japanese craft books and started and loved plant dyeing. It's been an amazing two years in which I've gained masses of self confidence in my crafting so much so that I started selling on Etsy and Ebay. The blog also gave me something that I did for myself where I wasn't Amber's Mum or Tom's wife I was ME. But more than that it's given me lots of new friends all over the world and the most amazing holiday ever to America last year (where we stayed with complete strangers, now friends that I knew through my blog).

I love being a stay-at-home Mum but I do find it very lonely. Maybe it's my upbringing but for me the nuclear family sucks. I was brought up in an extended family environment and there were always other adults and children around. I'm at my best when surrounded by family, when my house is full and I prefer going on holiday with my sister and her children. The more the merrier. So blogging has in some ways filled that hole in my life. It's given me a community that I grew up in but don't have anymore.

I have 'met' some amazing women online who've become dear friends. I've also loved the interaction, the sharing, the advice giving, the support and friendship that goes on in blogs. It's made me realise that even though we've all had such different upbringings we're essentially the same underneath. We all want to be good mums/wives/daughters/citizens whilst struggling for some sort of creative life for ourselves.

So I want to thank all of you who have ever left me a comment. Thank you for reading my ramblings and admiring the stuff I make. Thank you for encouraging and supporting me. Thank you for all the advice you've ever given. Thank you for sympathising when I've needed it. But most of all Thank You for just being there and dropping by. In my turn I hope I've given something back to you - maybe a bit of encouragement to try something new, a laugh or just another view point ......................

--------------------------------------------------------------

I've noticed in these two years that people change their banners with alarming frequency. I've had the William Morris picture at the top of my blog for the whole duration. I wonder if it's time to have a change myself - a makeover as it were. Trouble is, the picture seems to go so well with the name Echoes of A Dream. Maybe it's new home, new life, new banner time.

Coming up for air.

Well, here we are six days later. We've just managed to resurface and as I look around me I can't believe that this is now home. It feels as if we've just stepped into someone else's life and it's - strange.

The move went very, very well. We had a great company that did all the packing and all we had to do last Monday was to clean the house (and boy was it dirty once we'd moved the furniture out). Arrived here last Tuesday and the removals had dumped most of our stuff by tea time and then we spent the next few days unpacking. We both realised that although we're only in our mid forties we're certainly not as sprightly as we were were seven years ago because we were knackered. By Thursday morning the children's rooms were done and they were packed off to school so we could get on with the rest.

School was good even though Rohan burst into tears as soon as he walked though the door. "I don't like it. It's too big. I don't like the house either because it's not countryside" he wailed. Poor lad. The house is lovely (the landlady had given it a thorough clean by the way) but he's right we're not surrounded by fields and it's on the blind bend of a busy-ish road. But we're only renting I told him and after Tom took him into the woods at the bottom of the garden and showed him where the fields were he was fine.

I guess you'll want to see what the house is like. It's been extended quite a lot over the years so has a lot of rooms downstairs that lead into each other. At one end there is a large sitting room:

that leads back to the front door through this room:

that leads to this room:

that leads to the conservatory:

that leads to the (tiny) kitchen:

There are three loos and two tiny bathrooms and four bedrooms upstairs. Then at the other side of the sitting room there is a separate granny flat/annexe with a bedroom, sitting room/kitchen and bathroom. You have to go out of the main house and along to the front door to get in. At the moment all my craft stuff is there in boxes:

The house is lovely and sunny and has a sloping garden with a wood at the end:

We have been told that the wood is out of bounds but when you're used to roaming the countryside and you have that staring at you all day it's hard to keep away from it really.

As I said I haven't unpacked any of my craft stuff yet and I don't know whether I should. I don't want to work in the annexe as it's a bit dark (and cut off) and the two downstairs rooms are too small for a table and all my stuff. I was thinking about that last night and I wondered if not crafting would stop me blogging too. If I don't make anything what would I write about - how many more 'moving house' stories can you take?

I guess I just need time to settle, to get to know the area without the pressures of crafting and blogging hanging over me. I must admit that not having the computer on for the whole of the last week was liberating. It was wonderful. It meant that I spent more time with the children (which is very important at the moment) and I even started another book. But I don't want to stop blogging though because I love it. I love the community it creates. I love the interaction and even more I love all the new friends I've found all over the world.

So I suppose I'll just take it easy over the coming weeks. Tom goes back to work tomorrow and it will stop feeling like we're on holiday. I will start a new routine, do some more unpacking and suddenly it will all fall into place ....................