Birthday Weekend

This weekend it has been mine and my sons birthdays. It has been a busy time but great fun. Apart from present buying I started on Thursday making cakes. As I work at a school with a large staff I needed to take two cakes into the staff room with me on Thursday afternoon. I then needed cupcakes for my boy to take to school for his class on Friday as well as a cake to put candles on and share for his party on Saturday.

I am a great fan of the recipes in Nigella Lawson's books. I am not keen on watching her on TV, but her books are just great and her recipes always work out so well. On Thursday morning I decided to make a ginger and chocolate cake, red velvet cupcakes, a proper chocolate cake and what Nigella calls a 'birthday cake'. I really enjoyed my mornings baking. I am well aware that my cakes always look a bit 'rustic' but they seem to taste pretty good, thanks to Nigella and our wonderful eggs.

Friday was a day for manically cleaning the house. This is something I hate to do. Don't get me wrong, I do not live in a tip. But I think other people are naturally more critical of your home than you are, after all you live there and you love it.  I so want other people to see my home the way I do. For this reason I tend to be ultra critical and try to see my home through the eyes of others, therefore I notice all the shabby edges and the bits that need redecorating and despair of ever making the place nice. I need to accept I will never please everyone, maybe I will be wise enough by my next birthday?

 Since then we have been to the cinema with a dozen children and adults followed by sandwiches, sausages and cake back at home (the children were so good). Today was a frenzy of lego building, topped off with a very decadent and naughty Domino's pizza, a special request by my son. Now I feel I deserve a glass or two of the special wine I have been saving since Christmas and a relax.

It has all been manic and fun and I am really looking forward to getting back to some normality and, more importantly, some sewing tomorrow. Ahhhh!

Vintage patterns

I have been happily sewing away today at a girls that dress I have made about 20 times before. It isn't the easiest or quickest dress, but it isn't too complicated either. And each time I make it I am just delighted with the result. It is a McCalls pattern from the 1970s, bought from EBay on a whim about a year ago. It has set me off with a 'pattern habit'

I just love everything about them, I don't think I can even confess the truth about how many hours I have spent trawling through the internet looking to see what is about.

The illustrations on the covers are so much more romantic than the awkward photos you find on modern pattern envelopes, I find myself convinced that if I made up that dress I too would have legs twice as long as I am tall, or a waist so tiny. The children always look so beautifully turned out and angelic.

Inside the envelope you get a slightly (delightfully!) yellowed and sweetly fusty smelling instructions with annotations and sometimes extra pattern pieces with the name of a child that has probably long since grown up.

I can't pretend that I have made up every dress that I have the pattern for, but it is such a lovely resource and they are great things to own. As with modern patterns some make up better than others. There is only this one that I made that looked old fashioned,

 although I thought that was rather delightfully reminiscent of the type of dress my Mum made for me when I was small, and it looked really lovely on my friends little girl with white blond hair. Most of the dresses I make just look quirky and unique and rather wonderful, especially in the '30 style reproduction 'feedsack' prints that I so enjoy using.

And there is the knowledge that the dress that you are making up is one that is unlikely to be being made by anyone else, although I do occasionally spend an evening searching on Flickr in the hope that I will find someone else's interpretation of the same pattern.

I suppose in the grand scheme of things there are worse habits to have. When I look on Ebay I tend to overlook the patterns from commercial sellers that cost £4.99 + postage (too expensive) and I would never entertain the idea of buying a digital reproduction of an old pattern, that would not be the same at all! I have so far resisted the temptation to buy anything really old. There are precious looking patterns from the '20s and '30s out there, but I would never be able to bring myself to use them. I don't think I have ever paid more than £3 including postage for a pattern, and on average buy two or three a month, despite the time spent browsing.

I am now off to look through (and I am sorry, yes, smell) the unusually large bundle of 5 patterns that arrived in the post this morning. What a thrill!!!