Transitions

It has struck me recently that while some change is sudden and life changing, life more often transitions from one stage to another. A bit like the seasons. We did have a hot week in April but since then it has been highly changeable and more 'spring' like. Today is warm and sunny as we transition into summer. 

Last night I went to see Cleopatra at Sadler's Wells. It was amazing. I am not a fan of very traditional tutu type ballet, but the Northern Ballet Theatre always produce spectacular shows that combine great dancing with innovative costumes and sets. I cyber stalk them so when I knew they had a new show coming out I was ready to book the day tickets were released - about 6 months ago. Since then I had forgotten what kind of ticket I had booked and so was very pleasantly surprised to find myself in the centre of the Stalls, 3 rows from the front.

When I booked the ticket I had recently moved out of the flat Pooch and I had shared and was staying at a friend's flat in Elephant and Castle. I was worried about money but also knew I deserved a treat so went for the top price ticket. Thinking back, I can remember sitting on the sofa that first night, wrapped in a duvet, and shivering because I couldn't get warm. And today here I am, months later, sitting on a sofa in a different flat where I now live by myself, thinking about a second date I'll be going on tomorrow with Humphrey. While the end of the marriage happened during the course of an overheard conversation that lasted less than 5 minutes, the transition to single woman has been much slower and slightly more gentle. 

It all makes me think of my most favourite experience, one that I rate higher than anything else now that the marriage is over. As the last guide ropes are loosened and as the warm air fills the silk, life is ready to lift off again. 

To float over some old ground. 

And some less familiar.

Before landing again, who knows where. 

Lixie's Adventures with Gentlemen Chapter 3

I have had a number of DMs and texts asking how it all went on Saturday, when I was due to meet Humphrey for the first time.

We met at that romantic destination of choice - Waterloo station.

He immediately got us lost which I took to be a good sign since I am also geographically challenged so could tell how much we had in common straight away. We meandered around the Southbank for more than an hour chatting away and generally laughing. Then got a drink and managed to carry on talking for another 4 hours.

We said our goodbyes and have since arranged to meet again next weekend. Since then we have started following each other on twitter which lead to a memorable email from him which simply said, "Humphrey?". Bless.

I Love This Bracelet

I first saw this type of bracelet when the talented Heather Murray came along to (possibly the first?) SkipNorth and was wearing it. It sparkled on her wrist and was extremely eye catching. 

Fast forward about 5 years and I finally made one of my own. 

Fast forward another year and I wear it a lot and am wondering why I don't make them in all the colours of the freaking rainbow (except the ones that make me look jaundiced. Jaundiced wrist = not sexy.)

The pattern is free and is on Ravelry here. It is well written and let's face it - this is garter stitch, so the hardest thing about the whole project is threading the beads. But if you've got half an hour and a television it is soon done. 

That Heather Murray - she's one clever lady. She knitted her own wedding dress and, unlike many that appear from time to time on the less charitable sites, such as regretsy, this one looked beautiful. And she not only designed this jumper for her City and Guilds, she also dyed the wool herself and knit the whole thing on 2.5mm needles. AND as if that wasn't enough, she brought it as a carryalong project on another SkipNorth and knitted it while chatting. If that was me, doing fairisle on 2.5 mils with 12 background colours, it would be solitary confinement, damp flannel on forehead and occasional cackling.  

So here endeth the impromptu lovefest. It's just that I wore my bracelet again yesterday and spent some time last night considering how awesome it was. Because that's my kind of Friday night. 

Lixie's Adventures with Gentlemen Chapter 2

Chapter 1 obviously went really well. Yup. So I was on a roll for Chapter 2.

I decided to stick with the same ploy - man on bench in the sun - and found one in a park near work at lunchtime. No wedding ring - check. The last one hadn't had one either but at least I was on the look out this time. I sit down. I look around a bit.

Me: Hi. Do you want to have a conversation?

MWIAWWS: --- 

Me: Hello?

MWIAWWS: Huh? Oh sorry, I was asleep, what was that?

Me: Oh sorry. I was just saying hello. 

Man Who is Asleep While Wearing Sunglasses: Oh, well, I'm just really tired. 

Me: Abort! Abort!

So thus far through Chapter 2, what had I learnt? Possibly that the whole men-on-benches thing was a bit too random. The time had come. I was going to have to sign up to a dating site. 

Fast forward to last Thursday and, following advice from Tweeters and Ravellers, there I am messaging a few interesting sounding men. One, let's call him 'Humphrey' since he's a civil servant which just makes me think of "Yes, Minister", made a particular impression and we have now reached the email address stage. For those not in the know (and how I envy you) it goes...

• messaging via the site (all anonymous apart from username and whatever info/pics you post)
• exchanging emails
• telephone numbers
• personal meeting
• fluids

You don't have to go through all 5 steps and the timescales are variable, but that's basically it. So far he seems pretty funny and of course it's impossible to tell at this stage but it's quite fun and harmless which is what I was looking for. 

I have been poorly all weekend which is insanely irritating, but I did manage to do a bit of knitting (more on the grey cardigan), crochet (more on the ripple blanket) and churn out some more home furnishings. I had been looking for a little lamp since I moved in and found them all boring. So I finally bought a bland, cheap one and covered it in leftover fabric from the curtains. 

And not content with the quantity of polka dots in the flat, combined with a realisation that glass coffee tables need fairly regular cleaning, I used another random piece of fabric to make a little tablecloth. 

The red and white polka dot theme is definitely developing well. 

Right, off to reply to Humphrey's latest. 

Radical Honesty

It seems like I have learnt a lot from american television shows. Although if you consider hours of tv watched against amount learnt it's probably not that even. In "Lie to Me" when you first meet the geeky young Eli he is being radically honest. It intrigued me at the time because I do lie a lot (not about important stuff - just to make things more interesting), but my default is to tell the truth and that confuses people because they think I'm joking when I do. Anyway, that was my first introduction to it and I read up on it and did an experiment and then forgot. The experiment was last year and I asked out a guy I have fancied the pants off for some months but who is so utterly unsuitable as for it to be practically a 'Friends' storyline. He genuinely thought I was joking and each time he asked me if I was really asking him out and I said 'yes' he took it as sarcasm and so it never went anywhere. 

Source: imgfave.com via Alex on Pinterest

Then they used Radical Honesty on a recent episode of Bones. I love Bones. I relate to Brennan quite a lot and wouldn't mind relating to Booth ifyouknowwhatimean. There was a debate between Brennan and Booth which went a bit but probably not much like this because I'm doing this from memory. 

Brennan: I think Radical Honesty is a good thing as it means people can work much more efficiently together. 

Booth: That's fine as long as you take peoples' feelings out of the equation. But as soon as you add them back in you need to have the little white lies that show you care and don't want to hurt people. 

Obviously there's a reason why I don't write screenplays and I've undoubtedly done Bones a massive disservice by misquoting all that well-tuned prose but you get the drift.  

I have been thinking about giving this Radical Honesty thing a try. But then I keep holding back because of Booth's well-made and badly quoted point about caring for the feelings of others. But then this highlights my dilemma. I have this ridiculous, pointless, pathetic crush on this guy. It's the same one as in the previous example. Since that incident he has acquired a girlfriend and if there is one thing the last 6 months has taught me it is that One Does Not Go There so it's not even as if I want to act on this crush. But it is unflushable - I can't ditch it. It's like being a schoolgirl again and hoping he sits at your table at lunchtime. It is really annoying too because he is utterly unsuitable, not attractive, not my type at all, we have no shared interests and live very different lifestyles and he often comes out with things that make him sound like a real twat. In fact if something did happen between us I would probably be quite repulsed. It's just so goddamn irrational and I have already tried to get over it in all the ways I can think of but none have worked. So, as a last resort, I have considered radical honesty. I could just tell him. "Hey you. I really really fancy the pants off you but cannot work out why and have no intention of acting on it. So now that's out there let's all just get on with our lives." No. Even as I write that I can tell this is not going to work. But it does seem like it would be a relief to just get it out there. 

The wiki page says "The program asserts that lying is the primary source of modern human stress and that practitioners will become happier by being more honest, even about painful or taboo subjects" It is a bit of gamble though. I just *have* to stop fancying him though because it's fricking ridiculous. 

I've been rambling on about the inside of my foul mind for the last few posts so let's do some non-mental stuff. Doesn't this look awesome?

I spent A Lot of time on the river at the weekend going to and from the Watercolour exhibition at Tate Britain. I had always thought Watercolour was a very specific type of paint that came in little hard cubes and you added water too and it was transparent. 

BUT it turns out that Watercolour is defined as pigment suspended in a water soluble medium. So that means it essentially covers everything apart from Oil Paints. This surprised me but it was a nice surprise as it meant the exhibition contained some nice goache and acrylic numbers that I probably wouldn't have otherwise seen ever. 

I do like travelling by boat. If you're not a Londoner and come for a visit try taking the Thames Clipper for a couple of stops. It's cheaper than those noisy tourist boats and you can still sit outside. It gives you a different perspective on very familiar things.

Plus having read far too much detective fiction in my time I like to keep my eye out for floating bodies. What? Nothing weird about that. It's not like I've ever seen one. My sister has a friend who is on the murder squad of the Met and I asked him if he could find out how many bodies were found floating in the Thames in an average year but he said No. Very sad. Meanwhile back at chez Byrne it looked like Hurricane Craftina had swept through as I had so many part completed projects on the go. Half a dress for muvver, half a skirt for me, parts of a summer cardigan, looking something like this:

...and as for the windows:

It looks a bit jobby but that's the benefit of window crayons - they come off with water and you can start all over again. 

To finish, just when you thought this blogpost couldn't get any more random, here is a heart shaped leaf. 

This is the sign that I really do need to start dating. If nothing else it may put me off men so utterly that I get over my crush. If you know a man who meets the criteria in my previous blogpost then send him over. Must have his own teeth, not be an alcoholic and not try and borrow money off me. I know - I'm picky. 

The Final Analysis

I have signed up for a free trial of a dating site. As part of the sign up you get a personality report. It's all quite interesting (who doesn't like reading about themselves) but I thought the final summary was worth a post here, just to keep in mind. 

Given your most obvious qualities, it would be great for you to meet the kind of partner:

• Who appreciates your need for time spent one-to-one rather than being with lots of people.
• Who shares his feelings with you and feels good about you expressing yours.
• Who listens to you and supports you in practical ways when times get tough.
• Who's able to accommodate when you stick to your guns.
• Who's happy with your direct, straight way of communicating.
• Who can be intuitive.
• Who is as organised and conscientious as you are.
• Who enjoys the relationship here-and-now, day-to-day.
• Who looks at the positive side of things and is optimistic.
• Who welcomes your emotions and expresses his freely.

You'd also really like it if your future partner:

• Isn't too clingy and smothering.
• Lets you cherish and take care of him.
• Is happy to spend some of his free time doing things together.
• Is happy to make joint plans for the future.
• Likes to be physically affectionate.
• Shares your intellectual interests and is able to talk to you on a wide range of subjects.

So there's my checklist for when I eventually venture out.

Make a Clock, using your favourite fabric

This is an idea that popped into my head a few weeks ago and I finally made mine yesterday so thought I'd share the process. 

You will need:

• A clock mechanism with hands (see note below about this)
• An embroidery hoop of the size you want your clock to be
• A piece of fabric big enough to fill your embroidery hoop
• Waste cardboard at least as tall as your embroidery hoop plus 2 cm.
• A pen
• (not shown) Glue suitable for sticking card to wood
• (not shown) Scissors

A note on clock mechanisms: You can get these quite cheaply in a number of craft shops and online. I do not like the sound of ticking and so I looked for something called a "continuous sweep" mechanism. Otherwise any clock mechanism will do. I found mine on ebay where prices went up to £10 per unit, but mine was about £3.50 inc postage.

On your card draw round the inner edge of the inner ring of your embroidery hoop. Then add on an extra 1cm on each end and cut out this shape. 

Using your scissors make a number of small cuts through the extra centimetre of card and up to the line you have drawn. You are effectively making  a number of tabs which will fold up at 90 degrees to the rest of the card. 

Put your fabric in the embroidery hoop and trim off the excess at the back so it looks neat from the front. 

Flip the hoop over and insert your card. You'll see that the flaps I cut earlier are now pressed against the inner hoop while the main body of the card is flat against the fabric. 

Once you are sure everything is fitting properly use glue to stick the flaps to the embroidery hoop (but not to the fabric - afterall you may want to change the fabric in 6 months and having it all glued on will mean you need to cut out more cardboard instead of just changing the fabric).

Using a skewer or your scissors and keeping your fingers clear, make a hole in the middle of your hoop, going through both the card and the fabric. The hole needs to be big enough to fit the shaft of the clock mechanism through. 

Follow the manufacturer's instructions regarding fixing the mechanism in place, placing of the hands and battery. 

Now put your clock up on the wall and sit back while time passes. 

Hints:

1. My clock hands kept colliding and stopping themselves when I first put it together. As they were plastic I got a dish with boiling water and dropped them in for a minute. I carefully fished them out and was able to straighten them so they now move smoothly over each other. 
2. Pliers may be useful for tightening the clock mechanism washers and nuts around the cardboard and fabric. 
3. As mentioned earlier, you are not stuck with this fabric forever. You can make it seasonal with special summer or christmas fabric, or show off some of your embroidery or patchwork. When you do want to replace it carefully remove the clock mechanism and undo the embroidery hoop. The fabric should just fall out and the card is attached to the inner loop so should stay in place. Put in your new fabric, tighten the hoop, make a hole in the fabric where it needs to be and replace the clock mechanism. 

If you use this tutorial please make a voluntary donation of just £1 towards my ongoing craft addiction. 

Chocolate Dipping Sauce Recipe

This simple sauce takes less than 2 mins in the microwave and is good on fruit and, for the true sugarholic, marshmallows!

You will need:

• About 40g of cooking chocolate
• Tablespoon of honey
• Knob of butter
• Microwavable dish
• Fruit/marshmallows
• Skewer/cocktail stick

Precise timings will depend on the power of your microwave, and if you don't have one you can use the traditional bain marie. 

Break the cooking chocolate into pieces and put in the microwavable container. In 30 second bursts, zap the chocolate until it has started to melt (For me this took two 30 second bursts). 

Remove the dish from the microwave and without stirring add the butter and honey. 

Put back in the microwave and zap until the butter has melted (for me this was just one more 30 second zap). 

Stir until smooth and serve while still lovely and warm. 

Additional options: you can add some cinnamon or other spices or a small shot of your favourite liquor. Just bear in mind with the latter that this will make the sauce runnier and so you may want to omit half of each of the butter and honey to compensate. 

Bookmarks to Print

I've been meaning to do this for about 3 years so here you go - print your own bookmarks.

Simply

• download the pdf file
• get hold of a piece of A4 thin card or thick paper
• print it in black and white (my preference) or colour
• Cut into 5 along lines shown

All this was prompted by this amazing etsy notebook:

Source: etsy.com via Alex on Pinterest

More Ideas Than Time

Source: google.com via Alex on Pinterest

This captures things quite perfectly at the moment. I am at that well-visited and often ignored place, a crossroads.

After my split from Pooch (and before my recent re-descent into madness) I had a short-term fling with a man who said several times "You don't want to get into a relationship straight away - you need time to find yourself and work out who you are." At the time I took this to be commitment-phobic bullshit but didn't really care because he was really quite amazing in bed. But these months later I am all too aware of the, undoubtedly coincidental, truth in these words. I still think he was only saying it as a pre-emptive measure against me getting clingy, but then my therapist would say that was because I was globalising.

It was my annual appraisal at work last week. My Director can be terribly annoying but she is very good at conducting appraisals and very good at giving feedback. She talked about my highs and lows, all very fairly, and then also talked about the future. She talked about my 'personal style' which is 'playful' which in itself is 'great' but can mean people don't see me as being the competent professional that I am because they don't take me seriously. Essentially, what it boils down to, is that I'm getting too old to throw paperclips at people in meetings just cause I'm bored.

All this, along with a suggestion that I might like to consider applying for a 2-year program to train leaders in my sector, plus the CEO's anti-pep talk about us all having been working there too long, is making me wonder what it is I want at the moment. 

A year ago I was married, my husband was earning more than me, we had almost enough money for a deposit on our own flat and I was in my job so that I'd qualify for maternity pay and have something decent to come back to after maternity leave was over. Now I'm single, I've had a 1.9% payrise while inflation is 4%+, am paying 50% more rent than before to live by myself so saving much less, and have been in my job for 3+ years with no real incentive to stay or, indeed, to go. I have no ambitions and no aims and the only thing I'm really sure about is that maternity leave and house buying is not going to be featuring in my future any time soon.

It's all so tedious. I saw a book the other day called How to Save an Hour Every Day that guaranteed to save you an hour a day (duh), but I found myself wondering what I'd do with that hour. And if you have to work harder the rest of the time to save the hour, won't you just want to spend the hour slumped on the sofa watching CSI? I like having a job I can do 9 to 5 and then not think about the rest of the time. I don't want to work longer hours or stress about stuff. But equally I don't know that I like the idea of being someone who sees their peers become more senior and successful while they just stagnate. Plus not being able to afford to buy a flat which I can finally paint a colour other than magnolia. So maybe it is worth putting yourself out to become something more than you are. But then it does help if you have an idea in mind for what 'more' would be like.

Anyway. As Poirot would say "It gives one furiously to think." Whatever else happens, at least we can always rely on Rick.

Source: None via Alex on Pinterest

PS: The frog picture was about people being clingy, and not about the sex part. But, you know, works both ways I guess.

PPS: This blogpost was brought to you in association with The Ahmad Jamal Trio, specifically this.
I'm not usually into jazz but this is so freaking sublime. And you can get most of the album on iTunes for £2.49. Sweet.

Spit and Polish

It was Marathon weekend in London yesterday. Unlike in previous years where they went along a road about 3 mins walk from my flat, this time I could kneel on the bed and watch them go down the road outside. For example, this is the woman who eventually won it. She's running faster than I can sprint and this is mile 16.

Impressive.

I heard someone on television saying they are going to leave a lot of the barriers and things in place for the royal wedding. Not that I'm expecting them to drive past my flat. And in any case I shall be further into town waving a small flag and wearing some union jack pants. On my head. But I will actually be there because I'm very happy about the royal wedding and like that kind of thing. I remember having a street party when I was 4 years old when Charles and Diana got married. Happy days. For me at least - not so much for them in retrospect. So having an affection for the royals I was rather freaked out to see this postcard in amongst my latest Artbox order.

That's just freaky. Of course Artbox is my go to supplier for completely unnecessary stationary, including stickers. And what do I need stickers for? (for a flexible definition of the word 'need')

I'm nowhere near finished. The button ones I was particularly pleased with. They're Artbox too of course.

If you've made it this far through this post you deserve a little treat, so let me introduce you to Chapter 1 of "Lixie's Adventures with Gentlemen". The therapist says to gently push my comfort limits to get used to being sociable again and talking to strangers without freaking out and so on. So on Marathon day I'd been in doing the occasional clap out of the window and listening to the church opposite dolling it's bell continuously. It occurred to me after a while that the bell must be electric as it was bonging once every 15 seconds. That is just long enough for you to start thinking it might have stopped when it bongs again. After about 2 hours of bonging I felt I was going insaner and decided to go for a little walk. I went to the Thames path (about 1 min away and in the opposite direction to the bongalong) and having always turned left in the past decided to push my boundaries and turn right.

Naturally it was a dead end.

But, there was a blond guy sitting on a bench in the sun reading a James Patterson book. He was wearing sandals which did almost put me off but I girded my loins and sidled up to him. He looked up and smiled and closed his book which I thought was fairly encouraging so I uttered my awesome chat up line "Would you rather carry on reading your book or would you like to have a conversation?". I tell you, the boys at work are really impressed with that one. When I first saw him I was honestly not thinking "Aha, likely victim." But as we got chatting we seemed to have a few things in common and made each other laugh and time passed quickly. He was polish and also spoke german and russian (something very sexy about russian) and was an engineer. We talked about all sorts but it wasn't until the first hour had zipped past that I mentioned wrestling. And it was about that time that he mentioned his wife and child. I'm not saying there was a correlation, but I will be mentioning wrestling sooner in future just to save time. We chatted for another hour and he wanted me to go to the cinema with him since his wife and child were away visiting family and so he was on his own all weekend, but that just seemed very wrong (I can imagine how I would have felt in the past had I been away and my other half had gone to the cinema with a girl he'd just met that afternoon) so I declined. We'd been sitting on the bench the whole time but he stood up as I got up to leave and it turned out he was about 2 inches shorter than me. Not that it really matters but still....

So what did I learn from Chapter 1? First off that I can talk to a strange man - or at least a man who is a stranger and then may or may not turn out to be strange. Second that I can be proactive and go out and meet people. Third, that I should mention wrestling sooner. All in all, it was a valuable experience.

pushmepullyou

Can you do any pull ups?

Or push ups - same sort of thing.

I am not an exercise enthusiast so I guess maybe I could do one if I really had to. But the point is that you're familiar with the concept. 

I'm so tired.

It's not really physical, although sleeping is a bit hit and miss and the dreams mean it's not always that restful. It's the effort of trying to stay afloat.

Usually you can just swim through life. Maybe there will be storms and rough seas but even if you get tired you can just roll on your back and float.

And if you're lucky you get a lilo or something.

But at the moment I keep thinking of that Sylvia Plath quote* "I'm not waving. I'm drowning." That and the Lichtenstein picture.

To float you have to be bouyant. You have to be less dense than the stuff around you. And apparently this goes for mentally as well as physically. If you don't float then you have to pull or push yourself up and stay up. And it's tiring. But if you let go and relax down it takes an awful lot of effort to pull back up again because you're already tired from the last time you did it.  

Plus you have to keep convincing yourself that it's worth the effort to pull up again.

What has unbouyed me this time? Not that it takes much.

One of my only single friends has started dating someone**. Cause for celebration? Happy that they're happy? Ha. The therapist says my own experiences with Pooch are globalising to all men. She may be right. My first thought on hearing this was "It won't last."

So now I'm tired, depressed *and* bitchy.

* Oh God, she's quoting Plath. Never a good sign.

**OMG!!! And her name is Alex. He's loved up with someone with my fricking name. FFS.

It's a sister thing

My sister came to stay last night. She is rather more glamorous than I am but it so happened we were both wearing out name necklaces so I felt a portrait was in order.

She complimented me on the crafty bits I'd produced for my new flat - such as the curtains and the fabric bowl I blogged about a few weeks ago. I think all of us who craft can become a bit complacent about what we make. It doesn't do any of us any harm to sit back and bask in some praise occasionally. Leave me a link for something you've made recently in the comments and I'll come and leave you a comment on it.

My main project at the moment continues to be the ripple blanket. I have also got a more portable pair of socks on the go but since I finally finished the sock cardi this is my main one.

Happy!