"I'll come to supper in a minute, I've just got to finish this drawing!"

My little boy has suddenly started to enjoy drawing. He draws with fierce concentration. It turns out that the reason he likes to hold his pencil in his fist is that he clenches it so hard that his hand muscles get achy!

I can't believe how recently it was that his drawings were just scribble.

This is a Diplodocus, whose neck is so long he can bend it right under his legs and peer up at you



This is an unnamed dinosaur with scaly skin

 

This is a knight on his horse

Scared of the dark? Well, maybe just a little bit...

Upper image: Jolly Pumpkin (from a photocopied sheet). Lower image: Friendly Ghost (drawn by my son).

Now I'd never really liked Hallowe'en: I was rather a timid child with absolutely no desire to go into all that scary stuff, Things that went bump in the night and so on. Thinking about it now, though, I do wonder about this, because I used to love folk tales, ancient myths and legends, the bloodier and more magic-soaked the better - Greek, Norse, Irish, English, Welsh, and anything else I could find - with their glimpses of different, alien worlds and ideas.

My problem with Hallowe'en was, basically, that it was so very ugly: if you were a girl you would probably end up as a skinny, warty witch with missing teeth and birds-nest hair. As a whole, the concept did not seem to have much to recommend it from the point of view of a skinny, gap-toothed kid who had veruccas from the swimming-pool and hair that would never behave itself, no matter what you did with it.

But now? I see my four-year-old son and his need to tell stories through play on topics which puzzle him, things he needs to figure out in his head. Often these are the dark things that grown-ups don't like to talk about, like violence and death. So it's not at all contradictory that my son is scared of the dark, but that he loves Hallowe'en. He is mightily puzzled by death, and he loves ghosts. He particularly likes friendly ghosts (see his drawing, above - isn't it great?).

I now understand that we all sometimes need space to tell our stories about the scary stuff, to be able to look the Thing that goes bump in the night straight in the eyes and say F*** YOU.

And my hair still will not behave itself, no matter what I do with it.

In Which We Discover That Tiggers Do Not Like Carrots

So, my son's class at school has done this amazing thing and helped to sponsor a Bengal tiger in Nepal.

In return, they were sent a small cuddly tiger, and so the children are taking it in turns to take Little Kamrita home with them for the weekend. We had the honour of being the very first family to host Little Kamrita, so we decided to take her to the museum so we could help her learn all about different sorts of animals (they have a whole floor dedicated to natural history - fantastic!).

Rather happily, the natural history floor also happens to house the museum cafe. Because Little Kamrita was our special guest, we treated her to a cafe-latte and a slice of the cafe's excellent carrot cake. Although then "we had to eat it for her because her teeth were rather new..."

Here is Kamrita saying with regal hauteur: "Carrots? Carrots? We are a tiger!" Sorry, ma'am.

Confusion about amber

So I'm coming to a few decision-points in my life.

As I don't seem to be able to make a decision, I've made a necklace instead - mainly upcycled from that haul of assorted costume jewellery that my marathon-runner friend gave me a while back. The theme is amber. It is quite a heavy necklace because the blue glass pearls and the amber glass focal are both pretty heavy, and there's a fair amount of metal in there too. The disc-shaped spacers are dark-brown wood, although in this picture they look almost black in the sunlight. They go well with the amber.

But what does amber mean, really?

Amber with red means: wait, but get ready to go.
Amber after green means: go, but get ready to stop.


Argh! It's too confusing! Am I coming or going?

That blue. It gets in everywhere, you know.

I realised recently that I didn't have enough green necklaces! Which was clearly a serious deficiency, especially as green is one of my favourite colours. To redress the balance in my life, I decided to make a green necklace. However, it turns out that there is quite a lot of blue in there too now. I don't know how this happened, but blue often creeps into my jewellery when I'm not looking. How does it do that?

Here, you can see the necklace all draped over itself so you can see some of the beads in close-up. There are some gorgeous big green lentil-shaped glass beads from Yum Yum Beads in Leeds, the last of my white-on-grey-with-white-core spotty beads from the late lamented Bead Hive in York, some vintage acrylic ridged beads from the charity shop, and some actual real cracked agate from Ilona Biggins. Also some black Czech glass cubes from Preciosa, and some bright turquoise oval glass beads which I got on holiday last year in a knitting shop (as you do). Most of the rest (various small blues, and two silver foiled beads) are from the Brighton Bead Shop.

Here's a picture of it all laid out and looking a bit more necklacey. And really quite blue. Oh well.

Friends, flowers and tattoos



One of my friends from work is going through rather a rough patch at the moment, and I wanted to make her a bracelet to show my support for her. I took it round to give to her at the weekend.

It's mainly greens and blues, with a dash of orange for contrast. It has lots of natural motifs because I often see her wearing clothes with this type of design (although not bracelets, of course, because we're not allowed to wear bracelets at work). And when I gave it to her, it went with what she happened to be wearing that day!

In other news, one of my other friends is planning to leave her job in order to re-train as a tattoo artist. Good for her!

Blue sparkles

It turns out I have quite a lot of blue beads - but they don't seem to want to go into a big piece all together. I have however persuaded them to go into a pair of earrings, where they are moderately happy. My wirework is continuing to improve - slowly.