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Once in royal David’s city, stood a lowly cattle shed;
Where a mother laid her Baby, in a manger for His bed
Sufjan Stevens has recorded a great deal of Christmas music, and I included this track on the 2008 mix. I think this was also the first version I’d heard of this song – Wikipedia says it’s originally from 1848.
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow;
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
This version by Sarah McLachlan was another song on the 2008 Christmas mix CD. Wikipedia helpfully advises that the song is based on a poem by Christina Rossetti written before 1872, which then appeared in The English Hymnal in 1906 with a setting by Gustav Holst.
When I am a seeker, I seek both night and day;
I seek the Lord to help me, and He shows me the way
James Taylor’s version of Go Tell It On The Mountain was on my first Christmas mix CD in 2008. Due to a general lack of contact with Christmas music I think this was the first version I’d ever heard of this song, although Wikipedia tells me that it’s a spiritual that’s been around since 1865.
When I was about to get in line at the checkout the last time I was fabric shopping, a glittery gold fabric caught my eye. I thought something along the lines of “ooh!” and snatched it up, thinking of the Little Bow Pleat dress pattern that I had saved on my computer and how sweet my niece would look in glittery gold.
You will be shocked to hear that this hastily made decision was, in fact, not a good one. The fabric was very stretchy (which I expect is fine for someone with more sewing experience, but was a complete pain in the arse for me), and it has a weird texture – when my niece spilled water on herself at her party it just pooled on the dress and didn’t sink in at all. This is actually quite a practical feature for a toddler’s dress, but it’s not a particularly enjoyable tactile experience.
Due to the stretchy nature of the fabric, I had to get a lot of help during my sewing lessons, including with really basic things like the hem. I would sew around the hem and despite my best efforts the fabric kept bubbling up (if that is the technical term, which I highly doubt). I ended up having to do a tight stitch around the hem before hemming. I don’t know if that’s the technical or correct term either – what I mean is that I sew along with my fingers pressed up against the back of the needle, so that the fabric gets very slightly gathered as I sew around. Then I just had to slightly stretch the fabric on as I hemmed, which I find a lot easier, and it turned out ok.
Doing the puffed sleeves, the pleat down the front, and the bow was all great fun. Inserting the zip was horrible, but it is my considered and educated opinion that all zips are horrible. This is the nature of zips.
The dress looked very sweet on the day of her birthday party, and I am very pleased with it despite my general dissatisfaction with the fabric. I would like to try making it again with a softer cotton or something like that, to see how that changes the shape of the dress, but I also have so many new things I want to make. This is the problem with my excellent taste in patterns – I love everything I’ve made so far and want to make them all again, but I have to balance that with my rather intense desire to make All The New Things Right Now. (It would possibly be a good idea if I stopped buying patterns for a while, but there are so many lovely patterns out there, it seems unreasonable to stop perusing them and then occasionally buying one. Or two.)
Tansy Rayner Roberts writes very convincingly about the wonders of regency romance, and Peter M Ball is very convincing about Anna Cowan’s Untamed. I read both Untamed and Courtney Milan’s The Countess Conspiracy and enjoyed them very much – both very well written, engaging, feminist romances. Untamed struck me as a little more experimental with the tropes of the genre than The Countess Conspiracy, in terms of subverting gender expectations.
The first two books in Ariana Franklin’s Mistress of the Art of Death series, about Adelia the doctor from Sicily who solves mysteries for King Henry II, are both fantastic. Adelia is grumpy and determined and the most wonderful character. The only thing I didn’t particularly enjoy about these books was terrible things happening to children, but occasionally moments of wincing didn’t detract from their general wonderful-ness.
Lexicon by Max Barry won an Aurealis award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2013 and I thought it was fantastically original sci-fi. Listening to The Writer and the Critic podcast be rather more critical of certain plot holes made me realise in retrospect that some things didn’t hang together, but it was still a book I would recommend.
On a more general fiction front, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Sisterland is a very enjoyable novel about… well, sisterhood and families and marriages. I really like Sittenfeld’s writing.
I was really pleased to see We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler on the Booker shortlist, as I loved it when I read it earlier this year. I looked over the other books on the shortlist, and plan to read J by Howard Jacobson, and How to be both by Ali Smith in the next few weeks.
In preparation for our holiday in Wanaka, I ordered several sticker books from the Usborne sticker book range on such varied themes as dinosaurs, trucks and farm animals, and I recommend them heartily as plane entertainment aids for two year olds. “Where do you think this dinosaur should go, Ted?” Edward considered the matter with due seriousness. “Maaaaaaybe… in water!” he said every single time. Soon all the dinosaurs stickers allocated to that page were stacked on top of each other in a small pool of water. Watching this requires a certain amount of parental restraint in not rearranging the dinosaurs in a more aesthetically pleasing fashion, but the lengthy decision making process over each sticker makes it an enjoyably time-consuming exercise.
We stayed in a house next to Lake Hawea, and did various wintery holiday things. The area around Wanaka was a great place to holiday with children with plenty of interesting things to do within easy driving distance. Two year old Edward’s highlights were:
1. the dinosaur slide in the playground next to Lake Wanaka. It’s a slide shaped like a dinosaur. You slide down the dinosaur’s neck. From the perspective of a two year old, this is obviously the greatest thing of all time.
2. repeatedly sliding down on a tire with a parent down a snowy slope – “again! again!”.
3. making “snow balls” and a “snow man” ie. playing around with extremely icy snow which didn’t compact into balls at all.
4. staying “very very quuuuuuiet” in one of the dark kiwi houses at a bird park, and watching a kiwi scurry over a and take a drink from a little pool next to the glass.
Before this holiday, I had underestimated the vicarious enjoyment I get from watching Edward gleefully experience new things. I had wondered whether I would wistfully remember how holidays were pre-children, but instead I really loved watching his first tentative experience with snow and his wide-eyed gazing out of the back seat window as we drove through mountain ranges. (I also very much enjoyed my mother spending a day with Ted so that I could go skiing at Cardrona – vicariously enjoying your child’s wonder is always more fun when you’ve had a day off).
I made this date cake for Edward’s birthday, so that his little cousin who avoids wheat and sugar could partake as well (and I didn’t think the general heady excitement of having a birthday party really needed to be increased with a sugar high.) While a cake sweetened just with dates sounds a little austere, it actually had a lovely caramel flavour and beautiful soft texture.
Things I’m enjoying at 2 years:
1. I think at 18 months I was delighted at his first short sentences – at 2 years, we have weaving rambling conversations about whatever is on Edward’s mind. I am surprised by his recollections – he will often start telling me about something fabulous that that happened to him over a month ago (“Teddy go in train with Dada! People on train! Tunnel!”). He is anxious to identify everything, repeatedly interrogating me with “what dat?”. He can count to five, identify colours, knows the names of lots of things in his father’s toolkit and parts of the car. He is so very enamoured of vehicles of all varieties and gets irritated when I ignore his loud commands to follow concrete trucks when we’re driving somewhere together. “Truck! Concrete truck! Go dat way! MAMA GO DAT WAY.”
2. Not breastfeeding anymore. Edward finally weaned himself (with a bit of encouragement from me) at about 22 months or so, by which point I was very tired of breastfeeding and wanted my body to myself again.
3. Watching his imagination at work. This little cardboard box is a train, he will tell me, a tiny train, it has wheels, Teddy is driving the tiny train on a railroad, the tiny train is going up a mountain, a big mountain – and so on, as he waves a featureless cardboard box around and then chuffs it up my arm. He chats to himself as he plays, sometimes narrating what he’s doing, sometimes imagining things, and loves coming up with crazy “joke” scenarios (“Teddy is eatin’ a tractor!” followed by hearty laughter at his own joke, a trait he has obviously inherited from me.)
4. The great enthusiasm he takes in helping with chores – vacuuming, wiping up spills, tidying up his toys (well – occasionally). This evening I asked him to help me feed the cats, and he promptly barrelled out onto the front verandah, bellowing “hello cats!” before solemnly assisting pour water and food into the appropriate bowls. I’m sure chores won’t remain enthralling for all that long, so I’m making the most of this stage.
Things I’m not enjoying at 2 years:
1. I didn’t think I would have a two year old who doesn’t sleep through the night, and yet I do. So that’s a thing. He mostly only wakes up once and wants to drink a bottle of milk and be cuddled back to sleep. I can’t be bothered doing anything about this but I can’t say it particularly thrills me.
2. The advent of the sobbing toddler tantrum, generally about nothing in particular that I can discern, and usually accompanied by howls of “want! waaaaaaant!” which I can’t help but find a little amusing – the intense base demands of the toddler id.
The next two things I made after my lovely purple knit dress were two Renfrew tops: View A, the long sleeved scoop-necked version in a grey knit, and View B, the short sleeved v-necked version in an orangey-red knit. I spent a long time pothering over which way the grainline was on the fabric before cutting it (“you will be able to see clearly from examining the fabric!” said Google merrily. I could not see at all), and got it wrong. My sewing teacher told me this wasn’t particularly disastrous given that the knits were fairly substantial, and I barrelled on, beginning with the grey top.
I made the grey on a sewing machine, overlocking the seams. The neckline was really baggy, so it was ripped out, trimmed a bit and re-sewn in (with substantial teacher assistance). I don’t think I found anything else too tricky. Making the red top only on the overlocker (except for top-stitching the neckline and making the v-neck) was wonderful. So speedy! Overlockers are magic! Eventually I definitely want to get one of my own. I had heaps of help with the v-neck because it looked fairly terrible and not very v-like when I first tried.
Comparison of the seams – sewing plus overlocking on the left, overlocking only on the right.
The below photo makes me look incapable of dressing myself – what on earth is going on with the left side of the red top. The grey pulls a bit towards the neckline which I think is a result of re-doing the neckband. Overall I’m really happy with them and have been wearing them a lot – they’re a comfortably loose fit, and I like the construction, particularly the waistband. Next time I would like to try for a closer fit, which will probably require adjusting the 14 rather than going down a full size.
I first heard The Parting Glass on a collected CD of Irish music that my parents owned – it was a version by The Dubliners, with a gruff-voiced singer and a shrill whistle wailing the melody along with him.
Of all the money that e’er I spent
I spent it in good company
And all the harm that e’er I’ve done
Alas it was to none but me
I have actually amassed rather a collection of various cover versions over the years – not on purpose, but I think having a collection of The Parting Glass covers tends to happen if you listen to a reasonable amount of folk music. They sneak into your life. I have a few I don’t particularly care for – versions by Sinead O’Connor and Loreena McKennitt, for example. McKennitt’s is pretty much as you would imagine if you’ve ever listened to Loreena McKennitt, and O’Connor’s is just too slow. I really like Cara Dillon’s version, which is very sweet and mournful.
But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I’ll gently rise and I’ll softly call
Good night and joy be with you all
The latest cover I’ve been listening to is an acapella version by The Wailin’ Jennys, which has the most wonderful harmonies. I just wish they’d done another verse so it wasn’t so short.
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all
The Tiramisu was my first piece of clothing sewn for myself, my first dress, my first knit and my first go at pockets! I cut it out at home, and sewed it up over the course of three sewing lessons. The instructions that come with the pattern are great – very clear and simple to read. The trickiest parts that I had the most help with were the pockets, and the bottoms of the sleeve bindings where they meet under the arms.
A photo to demonstrate a) my poor selection of thread colours and b) my terrible hemming. I was rushing to hem it and didn’t pin or press, which I think would have helped with the puckering of the fabric.
Doing the little pleated bits under the bodice was fun! I need to adjust the fit a little the next time I make it – the top part of the bodice needs to be a little longer and I need a slightly smaller cup size. I think I’ll make the skirt a teensiest bit longer as well. Overall I’m really pleased with it though – I like the design (the pockets are fantastic), the heavy knit makes it a great winter dress for Brisbane weather, and it’s super comfortable. I love swanning off to work in it thinking “I made this!”. (My inner dialogue is not modest).
o frabjous day! 