Studio Saturday (and Sunday)

Crappy weather meant spending Saturday in the flat having studio time! Ads played with his screen printing kit and I started cutting the weird parallelogram shapes for my quilt. We made a right mess...but...i made good progress! Just need to quilt the top layer to the back and add the binding....

Next project...

Adam's parents got me a fab craft book for Christmas, which had a really cute quilting pattern. Since the John Lewis fabric department was completely pillaged in the post-holiday sales, I ventured up to Beyond Fabrics on Columbia Road. The shop was tiny but had loads of pre-cut fat quarters to choose from. Still debating whether I got too pattern happy but I have learned with quilting that I do better if I dont overthink my fabrix choices...

As an added bonus, I finally got to see the Columbia Rd flower market since the shop is right in the middle of it AND I had a.nice afternoon tea with my friend Nat. Oh, and the sun was shining. :) At Adam's next weekend so I will be able to start my stack and whack quilt soon!

First banjo class = awesome!

I finally broke down and admitted I might need a banjo lesson or two. So glad I did! I met some great people, learned I have been wearing my picks backwards (not embarassing at all :s), amd learned how to fret. My banjo now sounds like, well, a banjo! There are four weeks left in the course, can't wait to see what I learn next Tuesday :)

Best donut in the entire world

Under the railway arches, where I never venture because, well, its kind of damp and creepy, lies st johns bakery. We ventured there this morning and were rewarded with the best, deep fried, sugar coated, vanilla custard filled goodness I have ever tasted.  Their main bakery is in ec1 I think but nevertheless, the place was stacked high with fresh bread, pastries, and homemade granola.

You can bet I will be wandering under the bridge a lot more often...

Fashionista

I have been feeling the urge to sew lately and decided to wander on over to the john lewis haberdashery and see what patterns struck my fancy. I really wanted to make a dress (Actually I really wanted to take a dressmaking workshop since I have not made anything this complicated before, but the workshop sold out! Nevermind.)

I settled on a pattern from vogue - it was from the 'very easy dress' collection :) After a quick check I decided on grey jersey for the fabric, since I liked the colour and it was soft. Two sunday afternoons, one call to Grandma, and fewer ripped out seams than I thought, I had made my first dress! I pimped it out with a new belt and scarf and wore it to work, even though it borders on the short side :)

The last of Indian summer

Sunday with Mama

Now that I know I can post from my phone, i'm playing a bit of catchup! My mom was in town for a few hours last sunday, and we had a lovely brunch at lantana, did some shopping, and spent the rest of the afternoon at the lamb and flag where we took this cute photo. :)

Great day and I pretended for a few hours that Mom just lives around the corner and is free to meet me every week :)

Come dine at Jenifer and Fil's

Jenifer was actually the first hostess in our little Come Dine With Me competition. Adam and I wandered over to Fulham two weeks ago and feasted on: ceviche, pico de gallo, guacamole, rocket salad with chickpeas and cumin, four kinds of tacos (handmade corn tortillas), and little pots of chocolate. So good! My photos from this dinner are pants because we were drinking tequila...

(who won, you ask? We decided it was a tie!)

Come dine with me!

Our own version of the show with Jenifer and Fil! For Adam's and my turn we made: bruschetta, mussels in white wine sauce, mushroom ravioli, veal saltimbocca, and tiramisu. All from scratch (with no hand mixer to help whip the egg whites into 'stiff peaks' for the tiramisu. augh.)

We also went through: 4 bottles of wine, 1 bottle of champagne, 1 bottle of prosecco, half a bottle of captain Morgan, and 4 shots of espresso flavoured rum.

Posting this from my phone so will be curious to see if the photos actually load!

summer so far

i'm afraid that i've fallen back into not posting very often, which i can only apologise for! i'm working 60 hours per week on average and barely finding time to run/eat/sleep let alone write. but, i have been taking pictures for y'all loyal readers with the hopes that i'll have time to post them someday. :-)

first of all, thank you for your warm wishes in response to my last post. london went through a scary few days but the fact that we are pretty much back to normal shows how resilient and good-hearted most of the people in this city really are. the stories of neighbors coming together to reconstruct (and in some cases, thward off rioters by themselves) are just incredible. hopefully we won't see anymore craziness for a while...and that's all i have to say about that.

in other news, i have found time to do a few things this summer in my odd spare moments:



went and saw 'chinatown' at the somerset house outdoor movie theatre - amazing movie (jack nicholson was so young!) and it was wicked to lay on a picnic blanket under the stars and watch a cool flick on the big screen. as a side note, my friend and i got there so late that they were out of food, so my dinner consisted of: a bottle of merlot, banoffee/toffee-flavoured popcorn (mixed) and a brownie. sugar overload? sure, why not.



been learnin' to play the banjo! i can play an alternating thumb roll in the open G chord, working to try and play any other chords at the moment. it's hard to pick with three fingers and fret with two or three fingers on the other hand at the same time but i really enjoy the challenge (i'm sure my neighbors are enjoying as well)



speaking of my neighbors, here's a new, er, sculptural piece that spent the better part of the week in front of my building. i do enjoy a good bit of modern art!



went for burgers at the king's arms, finally! this is our 'local' and we love the atmosphere in the place - worn sofas, hideous wallpaper, mismatched chairs...and no yucky carpets. we've heard the burgers at king's arms are legendary and i'm pleased to say it's not just a legend. i've had a beef burger and a veggie burger and both were hand-made and awesome!



saw a little bit of home walking to a client meeting on fleet street...



spatchcocked my first chicken! my best friend jenifer is living here for six months and has been inspiring me with stories of her cooking classes. this was way easier than i thought, we'll see how it tastes (in the oven now...)



on the feathered friend note, i had a good laugh at this pub's name (yes, i have the sense of humour of a 12 year old boy)

and that's about it! this week i'm off to france and possibly switzerland for meetings, then my dad and pam arrive friday and we fly to italy on saturday morning for vacation. woo hoo! more pics to come i'm sure. xx

Dear Family and Friends...

...I know you’re all wondering about the riots. They’re all over London but the fires/looting haven’t come close to me. The city just issued a ‘blackwatch’ list of Tube stations for tonight and luckily the nearest ‘black’ station is across the river from me (tower hill).

I live in a council estate, which is the type of housing most of the rioters live in (from what I’ve seen on the news) – hence I’m hoping they won’t decide to sh!t where they eat, so to speak. I’m in a building with secure entry (and I have four locks on my own front door)! If it gets really bad, my office is nearby and has security guards, so I can always come to work if I have to. It will be allright. Pray for London.

Love,
Jen

the art of doing nothing

after an insane week at both our jobs, adam and i decided the weekend would best be spent practicing the art of doing nothing. however, we didn't want to just spend the day on the couch watching the idiot box, as my grandmother used to call it, so we piled into the truck and drove 20 minutes through kent to a little village called chipstead.

chipstead was like walking into a holiday brochure for something very quaint and very english. little semi-detached houses lined the streets, with sweet front gardens packed with flowers, and ceramic tiles to mark the house number/name. nestled in the middle of this adorable village was a neighborhood pub called the bricklayer's arms.



the pub was small but offered two leather sofas for us to lounge on (i know, we traded sitting on adam's sofa to go sit on this one) and even better was the fact that bricklayer's is a harvey's pub. i have never had any harvey's beers so i was eager to try something new. everything on draft appeared to be bitter, which i'm not a fan of, but i found a nice light-tasting-but-dark-coloured armada ale. adam ordered a shandy since he was driving and we both settled onto one of the comfy little couches, where we curled up with the saturday telegraph.

yes friends. i actually left the ipad at home and spent the afternoon reading...a printed newspaper. what a delightful experience this is. the smell of the paper, the impossibility of folding any of the pages up the right way again, never finding the section you were originally looking for but discovering something new instead, black fingers. reading the paper is something i rarely have time for, unless i manage to snag a copy of the financial times on a BA flight (BA gives you a nice selection of free newspapers). perhaps this an indulgence i should consider more frequently given that it is such a cheap thrill...

skyline time

i returned tonight from a very long, basically 24-hour trip to switzerland, and was too tired to remember what day it was. i found myself in a very barren kitchen (with a broken dishwasher to boot) and was losing the will to live, when suddenly i remembered i have a can of skyline squirreled away somewhere for such emergencies. a bit of digging, ah, yes! there it is under the five cans of tinned tomatoes. have i got any spaghetti? hmm, a handful, enough for a 3-way, so i just need...cheese! drat, only have english cheddar (real cheese). this will have to do!

8 minutes on the stove and i had myself a 3-way. two hours later and i have...indigestion. never mind. the blissful time spent eating was like a hug for my insides. i shall try to remember this special time as i hunt for the tums.



(er, no, i am NOT wearing a bathrobe in this picture. why on earth do you ask?)

city wedding

yesterday was the second of two july weddings we were invited to attend this year, and very much a contrast to last weekend's event! both weddings were absolutely lovely and amazing, it's just that one was an hour's drive from london and the other a stone's throw from big ben. :-)

for wedding number two, it was adam's turn to have a cold (sorry for the unwanted present, ads...) but the couple are very good friends of ours so we were uber excited. i met the bride through the nike running group when i first moved here and we had so much in common and hit it off so well that we've stayed friends long after we stopped running with the group! she's canadian and her new husband is english, so they're a great couple for adam and i to spend time with because they can relate to our adventures in merging two cultures. (as a side note for my aunty, i heard someone say 'rubbers' today and thought of you! xx)

our journey to the wedding took us to westminster, which is only about 20 minutes from my flat. we carefully avoided the tourists swarming big ben, parliament, and westminster abbey and made our way to one great george street, an immensely impressive building even from the outside.



inside was even more spectacular and it was truly one of the most well-choreographed events i've ever been to. we were dying of thirst from riding the stuffy subway and the bride and groom had pre-ceremony beverages for people as soon as we arrived! we got there around 2:30 and were very well hydrated by the time the ceremony started about 45 minutes later, which was good because i was to give a reading and felt a bit nervous.



the ceremony was beautiful, and the reading they had me do was from 'when harry met sally':

"I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."



immediately following the wedding, the couple had a tea ceremony. the bride's family is chinese and to show the merging of two cultures, they served both chinese and english teas - was really cool. we then drank champagne and ate yummy things like duck pancakes, sushi, and beef wellington for the next two hours.

after champagne, we moved upstairs to dine in a room filled with fresh flowers and candle-lit tables. it was still light outside but the blinds had been drawn and the lights turned low to make the whole setting really cosy and romantic.





dinner was served by a staff who were clearly trained by swiss-train operators, with every dish arriving at the table at exactly the same time and placed in front of each of us with such a precision you were afraid to get in the waiter/waitresses' way. it was like watching synchronised swimmers! we had smoked salmon as the starter followed by beef tournedos and a raspberry pavlova for dessert. food heaven.



to wake us all up after the gluttony, there was a live rock band for dancing and a photo booth to let our hair down in.



after a few hours of dancing (and open bar), the couple had mini bacon sarnies and coffee, as well as take-home boxes for the beautiful cupcakes that replaced the traditional wedding cake.



as the evening drew to a close i ALMOST caught the bouquet and we loaded up our goodies from the day before running to catch the tube. (the bride and groom had arranged for carriages at midnight but we were absolutely beat by 11, and adam pointed out that 'carriages' is brit-speak for taxis, so i felt ok leaving).



another wonderful wedding and we're so excited for all of our newlywed friends!

country wedding

july seems to be the month of weddings around here. we have two weekends back to back! the first wedding was a co-worker of adam's who i had only met once, but i was easily convinced to go since i haven't ever been to an english wedding. i was also intrigued by the fact that it was in the country (near where adam lives) at a really old church. i love getting out and about away from london on the weekends!

i wasn't feeling great last saturday thanks to my having caught the office cold, but i figured i could do a 4-5 hour afternoon wedding no problem, especially since it started at 2 pm. what i didn't know is that english wedding events are TWICE AS LONG as american ones and i was actually in for a full day/night of festivities. ha ha.

i loaded up on cough drops and decongestants and we drove through winding country lanes (some of them one-way roads, more scary than regular english car travel) to the top of a hill, where we happened upon a beautiful old church.



adam was looking dapper in his new suit and i had SQUEEZED into my old go-to dress for these types of events. (i think this is the last summer for said dress. i must have bought the darn thing during my peak running days when i was much leaner. luckily it still fit, but adam had to zip it while i sucked in!) the ceremony was very lovely (and just long enough to feel official without being too extravagantly long), but we had some behaviour issues whist sitting in church. one of the readings was from 'the owl and the pussycat', which i vaguely remembered from my childhood.

the last time i heard this poem i either wasn't paying attention or was much more mature than i am now, because at the wedding, every time the reader said the P word, i had to fight the urge to giggle! i was really struggling to keep myself under control and the guy just KEPT SAYING IT. i stared straight ahead, trying to remain stone faced and saw that the woman in front of me (who was twice my age) was shaking with laughter. no help there. to my left, adam's eyes were squeezed shut and his face pinched in a failing attempt at self control. the woman to my right (also older) had tears of suppression streaming down her cheeks. i know it is a beautiful reading and i feel bad for laughing but it really was funny. especially when the reader had a posh dick van dyke accent and absolutely no sense of humour. oh, the humanity of it all!

we made it out of the church without making terrible fools of ourselves and then to get to the reception, the bride and groom led us down a wooded path and through a meadow to get to the bride's parent's home.







such a gorgeous place but i do wish i hadn't worn 3-inch silver strappy shoes for such a hike! the reception was in the backyard and we enjoyed refreshing pimm's, tasty canapés, and a good dose of afternoon sun before finally settling in for a fancy barbeque-style feast.







as favours, the bride and groom gave away little pots of homemade jam with custom labels. such a cute idea! swing dancing followed the meal (the newlyweds had choreographed their own first dance!) and we finally left around 9 pm. a great experience for my first english wedding, two enthusiastic thumbs up!

reunited + time warp

my oldest friend in the world, jenifer, has moved to london! temporarily, but for the next six months i get to share a city with someone i thought would perpetually be hundreds or thousands of miles away. hurrah!

jenifer and i met in kindergarten at the boyd e. smith elementary school ballet class. my mom has a photo of us somewhere sporting pink tutus and cheeky 5-year old grins. from this early meeting right up through the first few years of college, jenifer could always be counted upon to be a partner in crime. our parents and society in general used to fear the products of our combined brain power, which resulted in genius schemes such as our hitchhiking field trip to Norwood (pre-driver's license, obviously), or the fabulous night we changed the local perkins sign to read 'come in for a hemp feast'. we lost touch during the end of college and reunited in our mid-twenties, only to find that we were working in the same field for competing companies!

anywho. my girl has been in new york for the last few years but thanks to a lovely american boy who has moved to london for his job, jenifer's here too. we were finally able to meet up tonight at my favourite local beer garden - the wool pack.



the weather in london was 60 degrees and sunny, just right for a few drinks after work. whenever the two of hang out, the world seems to go into a time warp where hours pass like seconds and before you know it, oops! the sun's coming up! it happens every time. the problem is that when one of you lives in bermondsey and the other lives in fulham, and the tube shuts around midnight, you kind of have to be conscious of the hour.

we accidentally drank until 10:30 (pub shuts at 11, so we were technically early) and we really wanted a curry, which was a 15 minute walk from the wool pack and also the wrong direction of the tube station. but, lovage has the best curry this side of tower bridge (in my opinion. they put a lot of care and artistry into their food!) so we decided to roll the dice. dinner resulted in another time warp and before we knew it, it was after midnight. we frantically asked for the bill as i whipped out the blackberry to check tfl to see if the trains were still running, which they were, but it was impossible to tell when the last train would be.

we hightailed it back towards london bridge and were side tracked by several of my co-workers who were still hanging outside the local pub. doh! we finally made it to the station and she got the LAST westbound jubilee train before it shut for the night. whew! must learn to pay more attention to what time it is, or start drinking much earlier to help counteract time warp effect...

modern woman

after much chiding during my visit to cincinnati last week, i really am going to try to keep my blog more up to date than posting every three months!

so. i moved into a new apartment on 1 april this year, which was a big step for me as it meant no more hostel-style living situation with four roommates. it was also a big step because it was a pseudo-move-in with adam (pseudo because he still has the place in kent, lovingly dubbed our 'country home'). the apartment is fab, with 10' ceilings, three rooms (including a bedroom), a good sized bath, and a modern kitchen.

the kitchen is probably the best room, hands down. i can't decide what i like more - having my very own large (large for the UK, anyway) fridge, the delightfulness of the gas range, or the perfectly even cooking that the FAN OVEN provides.

what i wasn't so sure about was the dishwasher. to be clear, i grew up with a dishwasher. i've always had one, and when i lived on my own in cincinnati, i filled that thing up and ran it at least 2-3 times per week. heck, even the house share had a dishwasher BUT with four roommates and a limited supply of things like pans, spoons, etc. i got into the habit of washing by hand. it was easier and it made sure all the housemates could have access to what they needed without waiting 2 days for the dishwasher to be run (it always prevented the quandary over whose turn it was to UNLOAD the dishwasher).

adam's country pad doesn't have a dishwasher and he wasn't fussed about using the one in our swanky new kitchen. we've been washing everything with one of those handled brushes that foams soap out the end (these are brilliant). however, when we were in the states last week, we got into the habit of using the dishwasher since my parents gave me funny looks when i tried to wash everything by hand.

we realised how much easier it is to use the dishwasher, especially after you've worked till 9 pm and can't be asked to even MAKE dinner let alone clean it up. why waste your energy scrubbing those pots when a machine will do it for you! i have to say, one reason i didn't use the dishwasher was that i felt guilty running using so much water. But, since i don't have a water meter in the new place and i have to pay 'even billing' based on my whole neighborhood's water usage (it's stupidly high, the way) i may as well use it up!

(sorry, momma earth but i've been guilty of running the dishwasher half empty and probably will continue to do so. hopefully the fact that i walk to work and recycle helps counter balance my horribleness...)

she's crafty (or trying to be)

one thing i really like to do but almost never have the time (or resources) for is sewing. in the states i made all sorts of things - pillows, chair cushions, skirts. in london, i don't have a sewing machine or the space to make a giant mess with fabric. adam's mom kindly lent me her 1964 singer machine for a bit, and i spent several happy hours hemming jeans. sad, i know.

however, part of my new year's resolutions involved trying to be more creative. this coincided with the arrival of a care package from my mama, which included my copy of amy butler's book "in stitches". i've had this book for several years and have always fantasised about making this:



the pattern is seven (!) pages long and in addition to using a lot of scary quilting-related words, looks wicked hard to make. i really yearned for a cozy quilt to put on my bed (blanket makes a better afghan. and he sheds) but i wasn't sure how wise it would be to spend £100 or more on fabric and materials only to find that i actually suck at quilting/hate sewing lots of quilting lines/etc.

so i went hunting for a class to take in london and came across this at the make lounge: log cabin quilted cushion. i liked the idea of something non-committal, e.g. a cushion. if things failed i would only be out £56 and would at least get a pillow out of the deal.

i showed up to the make lounge after work, which meant i was exhausted, slightly frazzled, and more than a little sniffly with a stubborn cold that just refused to go away. i had registered for the class weeks in advance and i was seriously considering ditching to go home and lie in my bed and watch mindless television. i'm so glad i didn't! i was the last one to arrive, which meant that the fabric selection was kind of picked over. normally this would bug me but instead i was thinking "who cares! it's just for practice!" - so i had fun and pulled a bunch of fabrics that i wasn't entirely sure went together. i did choose a "unifier" swatch though, which represented all the colours of the random fabrics i had chosen in one piece (i think i learned this tip in the interior decorating class my mom and i took about 8 years ago!) my unifier fabric looked like this:



surprise, surprise, the fabric designer of this one is amy butler. i really love amy's style and the fact that she's a fellow ohioan. she somehow manages to make even the most country-style farmhouse stuff seem chic.

anyway, i digress. as i mentioned, the type of quilting we were doing was log cabin style, which means you start with a central square and then attach different rectangles building as you go. normally i find that i'm too impatient for things like measuring, cutting, etc. but it was really therapeutic and there was something very satisfying about building my little cushion!

after all the pieces were stitched together to form a big, patchwork square, we spray glued the patchwork to batting (fluffy cottony material) then spray glued it to a backing piece. then came the hard part - measuring and drawing on the quilting lines. the quilting lines are what hold the piece together and give it a bit of texture. our instructor said we could do 1/2" or 1" space between each line. i opted for 1" because i really didn't want to be there all night sewing straight lines. i'm horrible with math and measurements and so was slightly terrified at the prospect of messing up, but it was really easy with the clear rulers the studio provided us. sewing the lines was even easier than i thought and actually went very quickly! before i knew it, i had finished quilting and was sewing up the easy peasy envelope piece for the back of the cushion.

in a mere three hours, i managed to produce something that looks roughly like a quilt!



and the fabrics that i chose willy nilly? i think they look pretty good together, all things considered. at any rate, the class made me realise i would really enjoy creating a full quilt and gave me the confidence to start hunting for fabrics. if only i had the space... :-)

sunday roast™

the iPad, the stylus, and me

living in london means that my family misses me a lot, which means that i get wicked Christmas gifts like expensive Italian leather boots and all the cookies i want to eat (let's be honest though, Christmas around my house has always been pretty good :-). this year was no exception and santa was kind enough to bring me an...iPad!

yes, that's right. this late adopting, pay-as-you-go-Zack-Morris-phone toting gal has one of these new-fangled devices that does everything save flying me to the moon. sweet. however, i've quickly found that you can lead a technologically backward 31-year old to water but she doesn't completely know how to drink.

i'm catching on. slowly. remember people, i don't have an iPhone so i've missed the boat on things like urban spoon, iFart, etc. sadly i spent the first few weeks using iPad for things like:

- playing Paper Toss (amazing waste of time that i can't seem to stop letting consume me)
- playing hangman
- using the iPad as a digital cookbook. the cover i bought has two heights i can choose from to stand iPad up. handy!
- looking for the video functionality (really? how does this thing not have a camera in it!)

however, things like "app of the week" and corporate lunch n' learns are helping me to see the light, so i'm making my way into more interesting apps beyond those that provide mindless amusement. last week's app was penultimate, which was on sale for £.59p and very exciting to me, because it made me think "maybe i could use this bad boy at work for, gasp, productivity!"

visions danced through my head of combining my various to-do lists, client notebooks, etc. into one beautiful application that organised it all AND allowed me to email everything to myself. imagine the trees i'd save, the impressed looks i'd get from clients when i whipped out iPad in meetings. "isn't she savvy!" they'd think as i scribbled effortlessly, digitally, all the fruits of our labour into the wonder that is iPad.

eager to make these visions a reality, i dashed off to curry's last weekend to pick up a stylus. of course you need a special stylus for such magic, and of course apple don't make one. luckily, proporta saw a gap in the market (ok, so the stylus is actually for the iPhone but nevermind) and it only set me back £9.99. such a small amount for such an incredible investment! i couldn't wait to get the four-inch, rubber-tipped stylus out of its clamshell packaging and onto the touch screen.

in all the excitement, it seems i forgot that nothing is ever as easy as it looks and that like anything else, it would take time to perfect my ability to make a piece of rubber and a small computer produce something that looked remotely close to jen writing. i spent the first night desperately hoping to achieve greatness but alas. not so much. what i DID achieve were a lot of scribbles, mess ups, and generally illegible characters. after twenty minutes or so, i managed to produce this (never mind what it says):



twenty four hours, many failed attempts, and one very sore hand later i was able to produce something that actually looked like my handwriting (again, not the work of shakespeare but merely an attempt to write basically ANYTHING):



it's all in the angle, is basically what i discovered. i had the system down to a t when i realised that to achieve such perfection, i had to be curled up on the couch with the iPad resting on a raised knee. maybe not the best for client meetings?

needless to say, i am still practicing how to write on this thing when i am in a respectable position e.g. in a chair at a table. i did, however, discover that it is more fun to draw with the stylus than with my finger:



back to the mindless entertainment again, it seems, but i haven't given up and have been using iPad all week at work. it's for internal meetings only at this point, until i can get my skills to the next level OR until i can remember to turn off the eraser tool when i'm through editing. we'll see which comes first. in the meantime, i'm working on some serious calluses for my thumb and middle finger. ;-)