Bread

So I'm not sure that the previous video works for everybody. I'll leave it in case it does for some. Any comments on that?

Je ne sais pas si le vidéo sur mon poste précédent fonctionne pour tout le monde - dans le doute je la laisse. Des commentaires à ce sujet?

Photo documentary follows about my six year old making bread on her own and thinking it was the best bread she had ever eaten ever.

She's proud. I'm proud.

We're going for baguettes tomorrow. Because she knows you need a special steam oven for baguette - as any self-respecting six year old French kid would know apparently (!!!) they teach it at school (when they are not on strike) - and I know that experimentation with a water bath in the bottom of the over must be worth it intellectually, scientifically, even if the results are mediochre.

Ce qui suit: un reportage photo sur ma fille de six ans qui a fait du pain toute seule. Elle l'a trouvé le meilleur qu'elle avait jamais mangé jamais. Deux fières. Demain on attaque la baguette (avec un bac d'eau en bas du four pour voir. Au nom de la science).

So cool

Found this on Apartment Therapy and loved it.

44, 54, 64

So a historic day...?
I have just listened to Obama's speech on the World Service via Internet radio and my Roku Soundbridge. I love technology! The speakers on my laptop were feak and weeble compared to my children's cries for food and then I remembered the Soundbridge connected to my amplifier... anyway all that is quite beside the point. I have an awful confession to make which is that I feel disappointed with the speech. I don't quite know what I was expecting. Maybe you have to be American. I thought it would stir me and inspire me but for me it was humdrum. It actually made me think that nothing was going to change after all. Maybe I didn't get the point because of the distraction of my children. I will certainly be scouring the internet for other people's opinions about it. (Hoping I missed something). Still I quite fancy an Obama cross-stitch cushion. Via The Guardian.

I made a little pouch to hold some amazing memory cards that little man got for Christmas courtesy of my lovely aunt (hello there lovely aunt!). We love playing with these cards. My daughter is a whizz at memory and can beat me hands down without cheating on her part (or mine come to think of it). And my son loves looking at the pictures and naming them and telling me what colour they are and finding the second one etc etc. And FYI, 54 is not my age (as my daughter thought - huh) it is the number of cards in the set. So I can check they are all there. I originally learnt how to make bags like this from this amazing tutorial.Oh, and I am just about to cast on 64 stitches for a second red sock.

Log-cabin revisited

This cushion became very worn and holey. Indeed, I learnt my lesson and never now use fragile fabrics on cushions even if the fabric has special meaning. So I spent part of the afternoon repairing it and this is what it looks like now. I hope it gets some more holes in the future. I like the evolutionary value of patches. Now... off to feed the ducks before it gets dark.
Mon coussin. Le premier de toute une série et le plus aimé. Mais il était bien troué et donc cet après midi je l'ai réparé. J'aime bien sa nouvelle tête. Il en aura sûrement d'autres et j'aime bien aussi cette idée - la réparation vue comme une évolution. Un moment de tranquilité que j'ai adoré. Mon fils dormait pendant que moi et ma fille étions chacune totalement absorbée dans nos projets respectifs - la réparation d'un coussin et l'écriture d'un livre.

Apron on all day

I made biscuits today. And I have no idea if I have already blogged about them (note to self: must start labelling posts). But here we go again if I have. (just looked and I have, in October, here) They are the chocolate-chocolate chip-walnut cookies from Veganomicon. I don't put walnuts in though. They are so very delicious but I said that already. That book has to be my all time favourite recipe book for actually making things out of. I'm a great one for reading recipe books but never making anything. I told my daughter I was a "dunker" and she wanted to know what that meant. I had no problem showing her. (hey YOU close your eyes for the next photo).

Encore ces petits gâteaux déclieux. Mais au moins maintenant vous savez d'où ils viennent - un livre absolument génial, rempli de bonnes recettes végétaliens...
And tea was pizza. Again. There are probably a hundred photos of pizzas I have made on this blog too: there certainly are on my computer. My base seemed weird as I was kneading it but it turned out to be one of the best I have made. And on my one I just put lambsfoot lettuce dressed in olive oil, salt and pepper and one sliced, fresh shitake mushroom. Absolutely devine. I have never had fresh ones before.

Bizarrement Monoprix avait des champignons shitake frais et j'en ai mis un sur ma pizza ce soir. Une pizza toute simple. Un champignon, une poignée de mâche, un moment délectable. J'ai envie d'écrire " délectablé " car c'est malheureusement dans le passé.
I made enough dough to make other bready things tomorrow. Like olive bread sticks for the kids who would eat nothing else and "snails" - another family fave whereby you make a savoury chelsea bun type thing with homemade red-pesto (whizzed sundried tomatoes, basil, garlic, almonds, olive oil) instead of sticky raisins. Right. Onwards...

Painting!!

So I was winding this wonderful wool the other day and ended up in a tangle!! (how???!!) I love this wool and it is so perfect to knit with that I have discovered a major imperfection with my knitting. I think it's a tension thing (complicated to explain but my stocking stitch doesn't look like lots of Vs, it looks like lines of rope) and I think it doesn't really matter and I definitely think I shouldn't start trying to correct it until I have knitted the second of what will be a beautiful pair of socks.

I and the kids got creative yesterday. We all had lots of fun painting. I carved a potato into some simple stamps and my daughter and I experimented with those while my son just let loose with the brushes and, of course, his hands.

Today when we got back from school I showed little man one of his dry paintings and he immediately wanted to do some more. And so we got the paints out all again.

We are moving (cross fingers) in a month's time and one of the things I am most looking forward to is having an upstairs where I can hide the television. Actually none of us ever watches television (apart from the football World Cup and the Euro), but we do have a large collection of DVDs and I think that the children watch them far too much - partly because the television is right there where everything else is. In the new house, we plan to put the television on the top floor, out of sight and hopefully out of mind, and on the ground floor, in the kitchen/living room open-plan, awesome space we will have, we will put our music and books and... an amazing craft cupboard - full of tempting potential projects such as paints, pens, pencils, paper, stickers, old magazines, glue, toilet rolls, stampers, anything that will encourage us all to put our imagination to good use. Moving is going to be so difficult on many levels so it is nice to concentrate on the good things - new habits are easier to make in a new environment.

Stuff

We have been blighted by illness again. Little boy with a "gastro" . "Gastro" is what the French call what I would call a "tummy bug". Not nice. Yesterday he spent all day either in my arms without moving (not the usual squirmer) or on the sofa swaddled in blankets with his bread and jam on his lap. He wouldn't let me remove the bread and jam even though he only ate one tiny square of it all day. He is really starting to talk well, stringing words together and learning new ones at an incredible pace. Yesterday though I don't think he said one work all day until late afternoon. Poor little guy.

J'étais interdite d'enlever l'assiette même si mon petit garçon malade n'a mangé qu'un petit carré de tartine de toute la journée. Et oui, encore une gastro..
Girlie is as resiliant as ever and just has a cold. Today she is over playing at a friend's house. At first she wanted me to pick out her clothes (any skirt or T-shirt would have done apparently) but since I'd like her to gain more autonomy this year I dug my heels in and so she went clothes picking. So glad she did - I love her style. Blue flowery tights are underneath those blue summer trousers I made her...

J'adore quand ma fille choisit ses vêtements en prenant le temps, je trouve vraiment qu'elle a du style!!And I have just finished grafting the toe on my first completed "love sock". Here is a floor-eye view. I love this sock. I can't wait to cast on the next one but I think I will put it on hold while I knit up a couple of hats and socks for other people... I have some sewing projects I want to get on with too. Oh I checked my bank statement and the wool I bought in the UK over Christmas came out in euros practically what it had cost me in pounds. YAY!!! Methinks a little log-on to a certain internet site might be merited...

J'ai terminé la première de la paire. Mais la deuxième va devoir attendre - hélas - car j'ai trop de projets à faire pour d'autres personnes à part moi-même. Ahhh. J'adore cette chausette. I do like hand-knitted socks... The other sock is one of the pair kidnapped by the Chinese "nounou" back in 2007 (gulp) and which I happen to be wearing today. It was funny because the other day I saw her in the train to Paris (hadn't seen her in over a year) and was actually wearing the socks. So I pulled up my trouser leg to show her and we both had a laugh! You don't need to speak the same language to communicate.
Another funny thing was that I was in IKEA with my friend the other day (not the same other day) and who should walk by but my postman and his family, whom I have of course never met. I said hello to my postman and he to me and then we both did a double take because his wife said hello to my friend and she to her. Turns out my friend was my postman's son's teacher last year!!! Small world.

J'étais à IKEA avec ma copine l'autre jour et j'ai vu mon facteur avec sa famille (que je ne connais pas bien sûr). On s'est dit bonjour lorsque on s'est vu et puis, trop drôle, sa femme et ma copine se sont saluées aussi!! En fait le fils de mon facteur était dans la classe de ma copine (instit) l'année dernière!!! Une coïncidence assez marrante.

Have a good weekend!!
Bon weekend!!

Landing

I'm only writing now to test blogging photos directly from Picasa. This is a photo I took on Friday, when it snowed but not as much as today. The pigeons have landed.

The after-school snowman

I need to thank my friend because I ended up holding little boy, who developed a welly allergy and so was just in socks, and she ended up doing all the hard work, helped (and we're only really talking nose and arms here) by her two sons and my girly...

Je dois remercier ma copine (MERCI COPINE!!!) parce que mon petit a développé une allérgie à ses bottes et j'ai dû le porter pendant que ma copine faisait tout le travail de construction... (aidée quand même un peu par nos trois autres enfants).

Perfect weather for...

It has been snowing all day today. I can't remember the last time that happened. I have a plan to build a snowman in the park with the kids when I've collected my daughter from school. Yay!!

This is a pile of Christmas trees dumped in a comunal collection spot for recycling. I think they almost look nicer decorated just with snow.

And what perfect weather for transforming this...

...into this.I picked up a copy of The Clan of the Cave Bear in a second-hand bookshop on Saturday and I am so enjoying reading it again. I love this book. Can't wait for tonight, snuggled in bed. Book. Hot water bottle.

Sock love

This "sock" being the stocking I made for my little boy. In my mind it was a "crocodile meets suspected friends" scene. I didn't take a good photo unfortunately but I really like it and of course little boy thinks it's a dinosaur so he's very happy.

La chausette de noël que j'ai faite pour mon petit garçon. "Crocodile rencontre similaire". Je l'adore et mon fils aussi car il pense que c'est un dinosaure bien sûr (et qui dit qu'il a tort?).And this is true love!! Those colours make me feel so happy and I can't wait for these socks to be finished so I can have many happy sock moments with them!

L'amour. Pour des chausettes. Je les aime déjà en me basant sur leur potentiel.

ten minute message

I've got ten minutes to get in before the end of the first day of the new year... I shan't use them all because all I want to say is...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

BONNE ANNEE!!!!

(Edit: I changed the photo. This is the little tree my daughter decorated herself)