Model of a charmless town.

 

We live in a town which on the surface looks like quite a lovely, woodsy sort of place full of niches to explore and what appears to be a community.  It has a nice population size of about 10,000.  People can be seen cycling, jogging and walking on the many many many paths that riddle dozens of parks and woodlands. There is an area with a man made series of streams and ponds and the whole town is surrounded on three sides by woodlands then fields.


Before we lived here (and M. just travelled here to work) M. called it Teletubbie Land because of the manufactured pond and hills that form the heart of the town. Really that should have given us ample warning about the real nature of the place we decided to move to- however temporarily. Now M. just calls it Unfriendly.

It has a smallish chain supermarket, a Dominoes Pizza, Subway, several hairdressers/beauticians, estate agents and a corner store which also hosts the Post office. There are a few cafes which cater to the lunch time needs of white collar workers.

If you were to wander through this town the first clue comes in the fact that Teletubbie Land falls in the middle of an area which consumes half the town and is just office blocks, headquarters and car parks (which you can see lit up all night long from inside). Next you will see the huge building project which is an enormous (for British standards) shopping center. Another clue comes when you realize that you practically have to accost people on the street to have your "hello", "good afternoon" or smile returned by the numerous cycling/jogging/walking people you pass.

 Next you realize none of the woodlands are managed- even the ones owned by the forestry commission have almost no undergrowth due to over crowding and lack of good husbandry. You cross only the occasional dog walker in the woodlands and when you look around only the squirrels appear to be thriving in this nature riddled countryside.
If you were to wander slightly further into the fields you would see... nothing. They are not grazed, or plowed or ostensibly used for any purpose whatsoever. 
That's not to say it has no charms or benefits at all: we see a lot of deer, practically daily, and there is apparently a LOT of hedgehogs as this autumn I've seen at least 4x more than I've ever seen in the rest of my 15 years living in England.

But how is it that a town perched in such a brilliant location with an abundance of resources and possibilities can remain so very charmless?
I believe it has a lot to do with the town's history and is a symptom of our times and follies.

When we tell people where we live the universal reply is "Oh yes- we always liked to go shopping there." The story is this: Whiteley's one claim to fame was an outlet center which drew shoppers and was poorly managed. The outlets were demolished in 2011ish and over the last year a new shopping center has been growing in its place with a lot of signs announcing its opening in the Spring of 2013.

I recently overheard a woman looking at the building works telling her son who was about 4 years old. "I'm so excited! I'm going to go [to the shopping center] every Saturday once it opens!" when the boy asked the obvious "Why?" the woman said with great conviction "Because that's what you do for FUN on Saturdays!"
An acquaintance told me "Oh we are so excited we can't wait for the shopping center to open this spring!"

We were astonished when we learned from a farmer at an agricultural show that a few decades ago Whiteley was a large Dexter cattle farm which has since been developed into the ghastly waiting room it is now. There are no chickens in the yards, no chimneys smoking from roofs and no farmers markets in the area. Sadly I believe we temporarily live in a community whose purpose and ethos is based on convenience and consumerism which is wholly dependant on nonrenewable sources of energy and lacks the simple human interactions which make a place a home.

What will we be left with in 50 years if this is the world we are grooming for our children?

xx Jo



Yarn along and Here we go again...

At present it is a daily struggle not to hyperventilate or allow my head to explode.  I'm not too worried about the head-explosion because the mess will just blend in with the carpets but I am a bit of a whiner when I pass out and get a bruise.

This is our living room as of this morning:

 

M. has gotten a job in California and is headed out tomorrow for his medical and to hammer out the details of starting dates etc (breath, breath, breath) and he will- God willing- be moving all our life across the ocean sometime around the end of December. I will follow with the children mid January (breath in, and out, breath, breath, breath).

 

Knitting at the moment is doubly important to me. I use it as a kind of  meditation: I'm not a fast knitter. When I sit and knit with my mother-in-law she has basically been knitting like a machine and has finished her project within a week and I am gently click clicking away on my project month after month. It means that I am forever growing my projects until I get bored and start another one. So I don't finish nearly as many as I start but I'm sure it keeps my blood pressure down and my brains off the carpet.
 

 

Growing on my needles at present is Delphine in a lovely golden-mustard coloured Rowan yarn. I own the book French Girl Knits which I ordered off Amazon on the weight of Delphine alone. In all honesty there are only three patterns in it I would wear so it was a bit of a wasted purchase but I adored  Delphine and Paloma so much I kept the book.
The yarn is Rowan Pima cotton DK in Dijon. Its so beautifully soft and has a lovely drape you don't always get from 100% cotton yarns. Delphine works up really fast. I had 10 cm on the needles (its knitted in the round) after just two days of picking it up when I had the chance. As lace patterns go it is super duper easy- a 4 row repeat with rows 2 and 4 being the same. The only hitch really was figuring out what the UK equivalent of 'Sportweight' yarn is which the lovely and very knowledgeable ladies in the knitting department of John Lewis were able to help with.

So here is me- going onward with my wonderful and terrifying adventure. Knitting in one hand and packing tape in the other.

Xx Jo
 

Art night.

Tuesday night is my art night. I pack up my easel and canvas, grab my paints and brushes and head out to a nearby secondary school where I sit and chat and laugh and paint and get tips on how to use acrylics. In this case (like last year) this particular course was a gift from M. for my birthday. I like experiencing learning and is some ways it is a bit of an addiction. I pick up new hobbies quite frequently, get passably proficient then move on... its probably not a great thing to admit but I can do a lot of things only a little well. Occasionally some craft or art will meet all my needs for creativity and functionality and then I feel the need to do it all the time (knitting... my fingers itch for needles when idle). 

 

I paint in watercolour intermittently- usually to make gift pictures for family and friends ( a painting for M. of London South Bank can be seen on the wall here) and I love colour pencil painting (here) but I have been actively terrified of acrylics and oils. The solidity of the paint as you put on the canvas gives me a quaking of anxiety, feeling that whatever I'm seeing is going to look like a toddler sploshed it on. M. ever the pragmatist thought I really aught to learn to use acrylics so I can paint his mum a birthday present that is not in watercolour (they already have a watercolour of mine on the wall from a birthday gift in 2011for his dad).

The point of this post is not however the painting, or the picture, but the BOX. Ohhhhh yes the scrumptious little wooden beauty that houses my paints and brushes.
Also a gift from M. procured at our local car-boot sale for an astonishingly tiny price. Though I didn't know it was for me I was there and listened in awe when the vendor quoted such a ridiculously low price M. didn't have the heart to haggle with the poor man. It is old- no telling how old however- and it has a gorgeous patina of age which fortunately didn't wipe away entirely while M. was cleaning it up.
 My favorite bit?

The name and address of a previous owner written in an old fashioned scrawling hand on a stained, battered, peeling piece of paper stuck to the inside lid.

 

x Jo

 

The Jubilee Quilt

Introducing 

(drum roll please- or maybe a fairground organ like you get a British fairs)

The Jubilee Quilt!!!

(terrible photo, sorry- how do you photograph a 7 foot quilt??)

 

Perfect for cozy moments nestled with a hot chocolate and Pride and Prejudice while the rain taps against the windows and the sun has put itself to bed early for the night.
 

It has also been perfect for procrastinating doing things like ironing M.'s work shirts and hoovering the carpets! Not to mention making dinner for the family or washing my hair!

 

This is my first quilt in about eight years.  Note the lack of piecing... ahem... I chickened out of that bit.  However also note the plethora of applique! I started with one patch (the Corgi in a crown) and enjoyed it soooooooo much I had to just keep going. Then there is the freestyle machine embroidery... Kristy Alsop called it the "crack cocaine of the sewing world" and I totally agree. I settled with my new sewing machine, a piece of fabric and an embroidery hoop thinking I would just have a go at a little machine sketching and five minutes later I had finished the London sky line block! Its satisfyingly quick and creative, allowing a sense of freedom you rarely get when sat before a sewing machine!

 

A London Mayor

A Wee Highland Cow

Since we decided to move to the states I've been feeling nostalgic about all the little things in the UK that I will miss. Thus The Jubilee Quilt was born of all those little lovely quirky that I will miss. For example:  what other place can you find a cow that looks just like the Mayor of the capital city? Seriously.
So The Jubilee Quilt is full of things I love: Big Ben, postage stamps with the queen's profile, red squirrels, hedgehogs, foxes, castles, post boxes, red phone booths and the London sky line. 

It has Highland Cows too but (sorry Boris Johnson) no Mayor of London.
 I've adored and continue to adore two special little critters in the quilt. LOOK at those! Does anything get cuter than a red squirrel's tufty ears? Like armadillos you see hedgehogs more often spread several feet across the road but this little guy looks just like the fellow that wandered into our garden a few weeks ago. I picked him up (much to M.'s horror as he moans "They have mites!!") and he squirmed then stopped and just stared at me. When I put him down- cause they are surprisingly prickly- he did this funny little "keep your eyes on the predator" shuffle away from me. So that is what my quilted hedgehog is up to.
 

It took a little thinking to decide what time Big Ben should read right in the center of the quilt. In the end it was M.'s very clever idea for it to read 8:12. It is not a significant time of day for us for any reason but it makes a tiny little puzzle for those of you who would like to work it out.

 

x Jo

The patients recovering.

Thank you to everyone who kindly enquired and sent cards and flowers. We are really happy to report that Mrs. Moo is physically recovering very well from her emergency operation!

 

She is currently recovering in the very best toy hospital in the south of England. As you can see her bed has been made up with one of my best PIP Studio tea towels, Jessica assured me this was vital to Mrs. Moo's mental health.

 

Sadly Mrs. Moo's mental states is still very vulnerable. As she was being rushed to the surgeon after her pelvic floor collapsed the emergency crews neglected to cover her and unfortunately Mrs. Moo heared the surgeon's cries of "Mr. Moo" as her bean bag dangled out her bottom.

 

We are still in discussion with our solicitors as to whether or not to take the case to court.

 

x Jo

 

September means birthdays.

Bath, Sommerset 

 

At last I am in the digital world again properly. After I sent our computer off for a repair in May (ages ago!!!!) It came back months later- broken. Seriously. I had a little tantrum and threw my toys out of the pram. There was much argy-bargy and pointing blame between the store which handled the repair and the company who manufactured and repaired the computer; eventually (another month later) one of them took responsibility and gave us a credit note for a new computer. So here I sit typing at our new shiny laptop.    I t   h a s    v e r y    w i d e    s p a c e d    k e y s     s o     I     m a k e    m a n y     t y p i n g     e r r o r s ! ! !

 

The long and short of it is I have a computer so I also now have photos!! Taken on my lovely new Canon EOS 600D (thank you to my sweetheart for that BIG treat after I... ahem... never mind what happened to my old camera).

 

It has been such a crazy busy summer. We've been all over and done so much I would have liked to share our adventures with you but I don't have the energy to make it interesting. So instead I will bore you with just whats been going on here in the last week... or so.
 

 J. and I both have our birthdays in September. One of us has turned 9, the other of us has kindly asked that her age not be published to the world. I will leave the guessing up to you.  Birthday cakes in the last year (due to popular demand) have almost exclusively come in adorable cup cake holders which look like tea-cups. Our cakes are always served on my great grandmother's glass cake stand which was a gift from my mother when I got married.

J wanted to have her birthday at Alice's Adventure Wonderland which is not so local now we have moved but lots of fun. K is too grown up for it all (though she spent many hours trying and retrying to work her way to the middle of the maze) and E is pushing the boundaries of finding it fun. The benefit of AAW (Alice's Adventure Wonderland) is that its never full and there are no queues so the girls run from one ride to another with a look of maniacal pleasure in making the most of every second. The most important thing was that we all enjoyed it and we enjoyed being together.
 

 

Other than that there has been a lot of quilting and sewing and untill this morning and very little homeschool. We are back to it today and it feels great to have a morning at home just focoused on home and learning.

 

Matt has had an interview for a job in CA and has just this afternoon had an invitation for another interview soooooo.... things are moving and in the right direction. His visa is approved, the qualification reciprosity is done and is better than we expected. All we are really waiting on is a job and to run down our tennancy agreement on this house before we move. We have to remind ourselves daily of the principles of  Matthew 6:24 and not to try to map out the uncertainties.

 

x Jo 

 

 

 

 

 

Smells Funny Round Here...

Our move has been accomplished with some tears and many many many funny moments

Settling into a rental property is ... odd. 

First there is the smell: not Bad as such- it just smells weird like someone else's space.

Then there is the furniture: (this house came furnished) we are the proud renters of a lovely comfy pair of recliner couches. They are gorgeous really. Brown leather, soft and supportive... BUT... the recliners are electric! Whose stupid idea was it to put electricity in a COUCH?!? So not only are you tempted to sit all day but you aren't even required to twitch a muscle to recline back into a comfy slobby slouch or even a sweet sleepily flat repose! I can feel my muscles withering.

Third is the carpets: Im not a really fussy person, I would be happy to live in a shack with logs to sit on (so long as I wasn't asked to be Cold) but the carpets in this house are eye sizzlingly loud. You could fry eggs on my skull after looking at these carpets for 60 seconds.

So there are a few safe ways to view the following photo: look from just the corner of your eye, construct a pin-hole camera, or (for the brave) look quickly before averting your gaze.

I am sorry.

Jo x