One I made much earlier

Strange as it seems, even to myself, a few years ago, I did no crafting at all. None. I couldn’t knit; I didn’t bash metal; I didn’t know one end of a spinning wheel from the other, and I wouldn’t have known my lino from my litho if it bit me.This, after a childhood and [...]

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Bluebell-viewing season

Having enjoyed the annual wonder of the bluebell woods again, with this year’s display being particularly impressive (is ‘spectacular’ too histrionic a term for such an understated miracle?), and despite having taken approximately a million photographs (or, at least, enough to fill my camera’s memory card, which I believe is a first, in a fairly [...]

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Life: just roll with the punches

The house is very slowly being put back into its usual state of trauma after enjoying a quiet week off while we were in Cyprus. The little ones are apparently unable to play with anthing for even a minute without upending the entire box of Lego, or Playmobil, or both (but it’s at least an [...]

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Why are there sheeps in there?

Good question. We’ll come to it later on. Yesterday, we went to an Open Farm day at one of the farms which supplies our local farmers’ market. I’ve always liked them, and their meat, and the idea of buying local organic produce, etc. All those things that mean we turn out week after week to [...]

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Patterns on the brain

The more we understand about the natural world, the more we discover that it is full of patterns, generated perhaps in random ways, but retained by nature for their strength and robustness. What it is about patterns that causes the human brain to love them nearly as much as nature does, and to find them [...]

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The Quantum Duke of York

I have a mathematical friend who once, in our university days, treated me to a very nice meal he had cooked, and afterwards, espresso and an explanation of quantum theory. It may have been a complex intellectual wooing manoeuvre, but if so, it failed miserably as I was so busy trying to bend my head [...]

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Thinking like a toddler

Recently the little ones have been engaged in more equal struggles. Child Three has suddenly got verbal, and therefore is better able to defend his position, and express his desires to his sister, who used to just issue decrees about what he was going to play with, and what she was going to do (not [...]

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Tupperware for time (and you can keep nachas in it too)

One evening last week I went to a parents’ evening at Child One’s school. I will freely admit that I did this largely because I expected them to say many wonderful things about her, and to a much lesser extent to be reassured that there were no unnoticed hiccups in the transition to secondary school. [...]

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Tripping over the builders

I’m back from my friend’s, and the sun is shining for the fourth day in a row, and the builders are lurking in the garden with noisemaking equipment and the radio (I so wish I could impose my taste in music, or shared theirs) . All seems well with the world, so there’s a glaring [...]

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Born pyromaniac

“Most glassblowers aren’t born artists,” says Caleb Siemon. “They’re born pyromaniacs.” On Saturday I found out a little more… but I haven’t any time to write about the most thrilling day I’ve had in a long time because I’m taking the little ones and running away from the builders. We’re off to see my oldest [...]

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