lines

Firstly,  more for my gratification than anyone else’s , I have a picture of the boy O’Dowd from yesterday afternoon,

Look at those eyelashes.  That noble pose.  This was taken as he hovered above me, searching for an elusive piece of chocolate he thought I’d left on the side table.  Those of you who think rabbits are not climbers, think again.

And now onto other business.  This week I have been cooing over the pictures from vintage children’s books that doe-c-doe shows every week on her blog and so took two of them and turned them into embroidered pieces for my walls at home,

I love the simlicity of these drawings, slow deliberate lines that look like they’ve been drawn directly into the book.  I also like the splash of colour in the girl’s paintbox, the original was shaded with a lighter blue but that wasn’t something I wanted to do on cotton so I figured this would add extra tone, so to speak.

I still have a heap of children’s books from when my sister and were little, mainly of the Dr Seuss variety.  My favourite was Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose, that darn moose was just so thoughtful.  And then there was Topsy and Tim who I think have had a recent face lift, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and when I was older, Swallows and Amazons and days imagining I was a pirate who could stumble across a secret island and set up camp.  I think my love affair with Berlin started with books too, and Emil and the Detectives where you could foil an adult’s crime with the help of a few new friends and your cousin and her bicycle.  It just doesn’t get much better than that… x

fanfare please…

…as I announce that the winner of my one year blogiversary is …. Becky!  Becky was picked at random by Donald O’Dowd who decided that the piece of paper with her name on looked the tastiest.  Becky, I’ll email you soon to get your address to send the goodies to!  Thank you to everyone for your movie recommendations: as I said before, some I’ve seen and some are in my ever-growing queue…

It’s ten years since I moved to Liverpool to go to University and the other day I remembered the time during my first term that I embarked on the three hour train journey back to Yorkshire with a bottle of Lucozade, my pyjamas and a pretty horrific bout of tonsillitis.  Like some kind of homing pigeon my initial instinct upon feeling ill was to fly back home again.  And have my mum look after me, because no one looks after you like your mum does.  Of course, I felt better after a few days but had to stay in the house as in my haste to leave the big city I’d neglected to pack any clothes suitable for anything more than lying in bed and groaning quietly.

I remembered this because on Thursday, on the verge of a cold, I decided to go and see my mum.  And boy, was I glad I did.  Because at 2 o’clock on Saturday morning I was sat in our local A&E waiting to see and on-call doctor about the fact that I’d been throwing up since 3 o’clock the previous afternoon.  With my mum by my side.  Now there’s lots of reasons why I was glad to be home when this was happening; I was seen by a doctor straight away, being the only person in the waiting room (ah, country hospitals…) when I was given an anti-sickness injection by the doctor I could ask for my mum to hold my hand while it was being done (I know, but I’m terrified of needles) and when I got home I knew that everything would be taken care of for me.  Don’t get me wrong, John’s devotion goes a long way, but I think that even he would draw the line at tending to someone who was making noises like the girl out of The Exorcist until the early hours of the morning.  But not my mum.  And really, what more could you ask for?

But before I did get sick – gastric flu, if you want to know – we went to Durham for the afternoon.  Durham is beautiful, it’s Oxfam: expensive, it’s river: clean and, according to George, it’s Park and Ride: one of the best in the country.

Then, after I recovered we went to the local bank holiday Monday car boot sale and got this,

But more of that to follow.  For now, a cup of tea x

square eyes

Yonks ago I signed up to LoveFilm, watched the whole series of My So-Called Life, The Darjeerling Limited and a couple of others then lost the last disc I got.  So, no more LoveFilm for me.  Then this week, whilst cleaning out a cupboard I found the missing disc and thus my DVD rental career began again.  And now, in response to those great recommendations you gave last week, here are some amazing films I have watched recently.

Love the relationship between Capote and Harper Lee in this one and the way you experienced Capote’s response to Perry Smith along with him.  Philip Seymour Hoffman is just a genius.  Then there was this,

I like films where just because they’re not English speakers doesn’t mean they have to put on a funny accent.  Sam Neill is Russian but doesn’t have a stupid faux-Russian accent like the one Geri Halliwell attempted recently when reading her new childrens’ book (don’t even get me started…).  A while ago Kenneth Branagh was in a TV drama for HBO called Conspiracy that was about the Wannsee Convention arranged to structure the so-called ‘final solution’.  Obviously, it was all in English but without the fake German accents and the fact that it was so close to normalcy, to how I talk meant that it was even more powerful and frankly, even more frightening.  Then this,

You wouldn’t want to watch this more than once but it was superb, particuarly Forrest Whitaker.  Then, for some light relief we got this,

 Just perfect.  Funny and sweet and lovely.  And finally,

This was, I think, Wes Anderson’s first film and it has everything his more recent films have; strange lapses in conversation where neither person knows what the other one is talking about, slightly odd older men, a love story set to folk music and a reality that isn’t quite reality.

And there for you are my recommendations.  Not that anyone ever listens to me… x

a whole year later…

Things that always sneak up on me,

1. Pesky rabbits begging for treats while I’m making the tea.

2. Deadlines for writing school reports.

3. Drunkeness.

4. Family birthdays. Especially the ones of newer members who haven’t had a birthday before.

Which is why I was up until quite late last night making a quilt for Ella’s first birthday.

It’s hard to decide what to buy someone whose sole purpose in life is to climb up things like a monkey and put as many different things as possible into her mouth.  I mean, this is the kid who spent a good fifteen minutes chatting to and laughing at her bottle when I looked after her a couple of weeks ago.  And she has piles of toys.  Piles.  Sometimes when you look at the piles you half expect to see ET in the middle of them, wearing an old ladies hat or something. 

The patterns are from Pimp Stitch, home of some incredibly cute patterns.  The backing fabric is from Ikea and the stripe was 29p (29p!) a metre from my local fabric shop.  I don’t want to give it away. 

I remember when my sister was her age her favourite thing in the world was an SMA tin with a circular hole cut in the lid and six practise golf balls.  In the plastic balls go, shake them up a bit, out they come again.  In the plastic balls go, shake them up a bit, out they come again.  Repeat until The Moomins starts, bath and bed.

Thank you so much for all your film recommendations and favourite quotes!  Some of them I’ve seen already and it was a relief to find I’m not the only one with odd taste in movies, some of them have now been put on my LoveFilm order list.  I’m going to pick a winner at random later on this weekend and get going on their embroidery and prize parcel.  But for now, with the baby present sorted, I’m now off to find another one for a thirty year old man who is going to see Star Wars: The Clone Wars with John this week.  Now there’s a tricky person to buy for… x

dumb

Have I ever told you that my favourite film of all time is Dumb and Dumber?  I know I’ve already professed my love for stupid, silly comedies a la Tom Hanks but I can’t remember if I’ve shared this little secret.  In all fairness it’s not much of a secret because my nephew and I quote it to each other at every available opportunity.  I mean, how can you not like scenes like this…?

And so when I saw that the embroidery summer challenge over on Craftster was to create a sampler of your favourite quote I couldn’t resist,

Those of you who know the film will know what each of the pictures means and those of you that don’t (god forbid) can hop on over to my flickr for an explanation.  Or just get the film.  You know you want to.

Which leads me on nicely to my first birthday competition and giveaway.  I want you to do two things.  First of all I want you to tell me your favourite movie quote of all time and explain why you love it so much.  Then I want you to recommend a film to me, something that you think I might like based on my (at times, moronic) tastes or something you think might widen my horizons a little.  The winner will be picked at random and have a sampler of their favourite quote created for them and some little goodies to go along with it.  You have a week to educate me, have fun! x