Reading More Books (But Not Blogging About Them)

My New Year's Resolution last year was to to try to read more books and to blog about my progress.

I managed the first bit okay(ish), but I totally failed at the second part. I started off super keen, photographing all the books I was reading and writing what I thought would be the first of a series of monthly blog posts (haha). I didn't blog about books again until August, but I kept track of my reading all the way through spring and most of the summer.

I bought books from my local bookshop, and second hand. I borrowed them from the library and from my mum.

 

I read books in bed first thing in the morning (sometimes with a cat for company)...

... while eating breakfast...

... on trains, in cafes, on lazy summer afternoons...

 

... just before bed, and late at night when I couldn't sleep.

 

I read fun books and boring books, old faves and new discoveries, some I absolutely adored and some which were so terrible that I'm baffled as to why they are (apparently) so popular.

I kept a draft blog post running with photos and a list of the books I'd been reading. Then when I discovered the joys of audiobooks in the summer I dutifully took screenshots of each book I started, still thinking "I'll get round to blogging about these sometime soon!"

My enthusiasm for reading waxed and waned through the year but at no point did I actually feel excited to blog about what I was reading. It gradually dawned on me that this was because I don't actually enjoy blogging about books that much and the act of keeping track of everything I was reading was sucking a lot of the joy out of the process.

For neatness though, I've had a think and tallied the books I read from June to December. Excluding the books I've forgotten about, all the books I started but gave up on and the many many books which I keep meaning to finish but just not getting round to, I read The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett , The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley, The Cuckoo's Calling, The Silkworm & Career of Evil  by Robert Galbraith, The Other Mrs Walker by Mary Paulson-Ellis, and The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham.

I also listened to How to Stop Time by Matt Haig, The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan, Rack, Ruin & Murder by Ann Granger, Death Descends on Saturn Villa by M. R. Kasasian, A Study in Brimstone & The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles by G. S. Denning, Tales from the Dead of Night: 13 Classic Ghost Stories, Origin by Dan Brown, Murder by Sarah Pinborough, one of the volumes of The Time Traveller's Almanac, and La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman.

So (along with the 13 books I read earlier in the year), that's about 31 books in total for 2017. Not a particularly impressive number but definitely a lot more than I read in 2016.

I don't know how many books I'll end up reading (or listening to) this year. I hope it's more than 31 but it might well be less. Either way, I definitely won't be blogging about them!

Please note: the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, so if you click through and end up buying something (anything!) on Amazon during that session I get a very small payment for the referral.

My Resolution for 2017: Read More Books

I grew up surrounded by and addicted to books.

Every birthday and Christmas as a kid, I asked for new books. Most weekends as a teen I was either down the library or browsing my local second hand bookshops. I read widely and voraciously and didn't really understand people who said they didn't like reading, or weren't "interested" in books. There were whole worlds in there, both real and imagined and I wanted to explore as many as I possibly could.

Then, somehow, gradually, I stopped reading. I don't know if it was just the distractions of exams and Uni and the internet (and writing things of my own!), or the number of books I was told I "should" read as I got older and loathed but kept on trying to like because they were apparently "the best books" (so foolish!). Either way, books stopped being my constant companion and became something just for lazy holidays or long train journeys.

In recent years I've made efforts to try and get back into reading - with mixed success.

My Nice Days Out have helped, as I now always take a paperback with me for reading in cafes and on train journeys (and during train delays!) so I always have at least one book that I'm slowly working my way through... but I have resolved and then, er, re-resolved to make more time in my regular life for books and it just hasn't worked out.

Lots of people swear by audiobooks, but I find that unless I'm doing something really, really mindless while listening to them I can't concentrate on the task and the narration and I tend to suddenly realise I have no clue what's going on in the plot (is this a sign I am getting old? It probably is). I used to listen to them (and BBC radio dramas) quite a lot when I was doing repetitive work tasks like cutting out felt shapes or making up felt bundles for my shops, but these days my schedule involves a lot fewer tasks like this!

So this year I am determined to try to read more actual books. To read a chapter in the morning instead of checking Twitter on my phone. To have a proper lunch break, paperback in hand. To turn off the telly or the internet in the evenings and pick up a book instead. To go to the library more often so I'll always have something I can't wait to start reading...

... and, of course, to blog about my progress to try and keep myself focused.

So, I'll be blogging once month about what I've been reading (I've started the year with some of the British Library's Crime Classics) and how/where/when I'm managing to make space for books in my day - what works for me, what doesn't. I hope you'll enjoy following along with my progress throughout the year.

What are you looking forward to reading this year? And when do you find time to read? Have you ever fallen out of love with reading like I did? Maybe you've even made the same New Year's Resolution as me and are embarking on a similar journey to fill your life with more of the joy of books? Leave me a comment and let me know!

June in Pictures: Blanket Squares, Summer Sunshine, Packing Parcels, and Playing with Paint

How is it halfway through July already?? Eek!

I'd better blog about my June Instagram pics before we blink and it's August :)

At the start of June (when it was really rather chilly) I was spending lots of my evenings working on my mini patchwork squares blanket. Whenever I have any double-knit acrylic yarn left over from other projects, I use it to knit mini moss stitch squares (just 10 stitches across) to add to the blanket.

Once I've knitted the leftover yarn into squares, I sew them into blocks (one colour per block). I've been sticking to the same few shapes so the blanket is random but cohesive. This is a slow, labour-intensive process but a really relaxing one!

Once I've sewn the squares into the various shapes, it's time to find a space for them on the blanket. (Sometimes I lay the blanket out before sewing the shapes together so I can sew the squares into the perfect shape to fit a gap but not this time). I'm trying to get a nice mix of colours and shapes across the blanket - so, again, this is a controlled randomness.

As I add the squares, I mark them on the matching chart so I can track my progress. I'm up to 514 squares so far... 386 still to go! 

The finished blanket will have a sweep of colour down the middle and the rest will be white, so I've also been knitting lots of little white squares behind the scenes. Sadly, white squares do not make for very exciting photographs.

All those little squares take a long time to stitch together, and there are a lot of yarn ends to weave in. Every time I share pics of this project there's always someone who recoils in horror at the thought of all that boring stitching but honestly I find it very relaxing and almost meditative. This is definitely not a project I'd recommend embarking on if you can't bear weaving in ends!

It was my birthday at the beginning of the month (yay!), and I was gifted some excellent things including Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton and a book & comic by the always awesome John Allison.

Summer finally decided to show up, so I spent my lunch-breaks reading in the garden - enjoying the sunshine, the flowers and the chirping of birds and buzzing of bees.

What a contrast to later in the month when we had days of sudden thunder and rainstorms! Ah, England I love you but your weather is not reliable.

Back on the crafty front, I made a DIY envelope from an old map. It's so easy to make your own envelopes (you can cheat and use an existing envelope as a template!) and they add some extra specialness to a bit of snail mail.

 

I de-stressed by spending a few hours playing with paint (I am terrible at painting but this was so much fun!).

I continued to work on my felt flowers - these are old designs I used to sell in my shop that I'm giving a new life as sewing patterns (coming to my shop later this summer!). I've been getting the designs absolutely perfect and taking lots of notes so I can write detailed step-by-step instructions.

I also had a tidy up in my studio, adding last year's magazine features to my "archive" (a fancy word for a few folders on my bookshelf). I worked on lots of fun projects in 2015 but the partridge and pear wreath I designed for Mollie Makes was probably my favourite - not least because it ended up on the cover (very exciting).

During my studio tidy I got as far as writing a list of "things to photograph!" - including these colourful finished projects - but not as far as actually taking the photos. Hopefully I will have actually ticked these things off the list by the end of July! I do so adore these bright colours.

I cleared out lots of crafty supplies and other bits and pieces and held a destash and declutter sale. It takes a long time to sort and weigh and measure and photograph everything for a sale, but it's so good to have made some more space in my studio and to have found new homes for so many things that were sitting around in my home unused and unloved.

After my sale, I had lots of parcels to post! That fab parcel tape is by Hazel Nicholls - I love using decorative tape, it's such a simple way to cheer up the packages I send.

After my destash/declutter sale, I had another sale: this time of lots of samples I'd stitched for craft books.

(The projects pictured are from: Banners, Buntings, Garlands & Pennants; Super-Cute Felt Animals; Mollie Makes Woodland Friends; Mollie Makes Weddings; Tis the Season to be Felt-y; and Craft Camp)

Again, there was lots of weighing and measuring and photographing and parcel packing... but all the work was well worth it as lots of pieces found new homes and I have lots of space for new things in my studio (hurrah!).

I also love this photo I took of samples stitched when working on my second book, Super-Cute Felt Animals. You'll find some of these projects available as free tutorials here and (almost all of) the rest in the book itself.

 

Finally, no Instagram round-up is complete without our sleepy cat sneaking in somewhere. How he manages to sleep upside down with one leg in the air is a mystery!

You can follow along with all my creative adventures (with the occasional cat photo!) over on Instagram. 

Reading vs Crafting

Do you spend your spare time in the evenings reading? Or crafting? Or doing a bit of both?

I'd love to do both but I usually find that I'm so absorbed in a craft project that I sit happily stitching away (while watching a DVD box set or something good on the telly with my family) until it's time for bed (or way past my bedtime if it's a particularly exciting project!) and the books on my reading pile get a bit neglected.

Above: some of the current projects I've got in progress - embroidery, cross stitch and knitting.

I resolved to try and read more a couple of summers ago and I have definitely been finding more time to read since then - though my plan to blog about what I was reading kinda fizzled out! Oops.

But while I've been reading a bit on my Nice Days Out (train journeys are sooo much more interesting with a good book) at home I keep falling back into old habits and neglecting the interesting things I'm reading in favour of MAKING ALL THE THINGS or just doing a nice bit of colouring in to relax down after a busy day's work.

Above: testing felt tip pens ready to do some colouring-in.

There is nothing wrong with this, of course! Making stuff is awesome! Colouring in is super relaxing! But it does make me sad not to be reading as much as I'd like.

On my reading pile at the moment:

...The Knocker on Death's Door (a nice little whodunnit to read on the train)
... QED: The Strange Theory of Light & Matter (something science-y recommended by my dad)
... The Hare with Amber Eyes (the hare was part of the excellent Magnificent Obsessions exhibition I visited recently so now of course I wanna read the book)
... A Short History of Nearly Everything (I was reading this on trains last summer and really enjoying it, then I got a smaller bag that it didn't fit inside!)
... The Wealth & Poverty of Nations (an old fave that I started to reread to see if I wanted to get rid of it but am now continuing to read because it's great)
... Work/Life 2 (lots of great illustrators, very inspiring)
 ... Homeward Bound: Why Women are Embracing the New Domesticity (this is all about Etsy and blogging and women giving up their jobs to grow organic veg and homeschool their kids and it is soooo interesting)
... Studio Life: Rituals, Collections, Tools & Observations on the Artistic Process (I reviewed this recently, it's great and I want to read the rest of it!)
.. A History of the World in 100 Objects (I tried listening to the podcast version of this but my mind kept wandering, so I'm trying the book version instead and am looking forward to tracking down all 100 objects in the British Museum when I've finished)
... and an issue of UPPERCASE magazine (I treated myself to a whole stack of copies of this beautiful magazine last year, I just need to find the time to actually read them)

I want to read / finish reading all these things! And lots more!! 

So, this post is me resolving, again (re-resolving??) to try and carve out more time in my day for reading.

I'll let you know how it goes :)

Two Very Different Kitchens - One fit for a Queen, Another for Bicycles!

My first Nice Day Out of 2015 was actually two half-days, as I took a couple of small local trips.

First up my mum and I spent a morning in Windsor. On my last visit to Windsor Castle back in 2013 one of the staff had recommended I return at Christmas to see the decorations... I'd not got round to it last Christmas so I was determined to manage it this time!

Looking up their Christmas opening times I spotted that they were running tours of the Great Kitchen, which is something that's usually only available for tour groups. A behind-the-scenes peek at Windsor Castle? Yes please!

It was nice to see the town decorated for Christmas...

 

... and the Castle is always a fantastic place to visit. We explored St George's Chapel then headed to the meeting point for our tour. It was rather thrilling being able to go into spaces that are normally off-limits to tourists - not just the Great Kitchen itself but all the rooms we had to walk through to get to it - and our guides were friendly and informative, sharing lots of tales of the history of the building and the people who had lived and worked there over the centuries (you can watch a short video about the kitchen tours here).

After the tour was finished we visited the dolls house (always wonderful) and the state apartments which were looking wonderfully festive with tables laid for Christmas feasts and huge, beautiful Christmas trees in several of the rooms. Then we headed back into town for a cuppa and some cake and chatted about all the great stuff we'd seen.

I'm hoping to pay another visit to Windsor Castle this summer for one of their Conquer the Tower tours - I love the idea of climbing the Round Tower! As local residents we're lucky to be able to visit the Castle for free (though these tours are extra), it's such a spectacular place with so much to see I definitely want to take advantage of it while I'm living here.

For my second half-day-out I took a trip to Reading. Awesome arts organisation Jelly were having a moving sale, which I thought was a great excuse to have a wander round the town, stretch my legs and do some shopping!

It was lovely to see how much-loved-but-now-closed department store Jacksons is now being used as a creative community hub. Jelly will be running workshops and other crafty events there soon (in the department where I got all my school uniforms many years ago!), there's also a crafty gift shop, a workshop space and the very cool Reading Bicycle Kitchen where you can access the tools and expertise to fix your own bike. 

You can't tell from the photo but the legs on that bike were cycling :)

P.S. You can read about my previous Nice Days Out in Reading here, here and here and my trip to Windsor & Eton here.

Reading University's Museums of Greek Archaeology & Zoology

I had to go to Reading this week to buy some supplies for a couple of projects. This turned into one of those slightly frustrating shopping trips when you go to all the shops at least twice because you need to check out all the options before deciding what to buy... but when I'd (finally) tracked down what I was after, it was still just after lunchtime. I thought "it's a nice, sunny day and you've already spent the trainfare getting here, why not have a Nice Afternoon Out instead of going straight home?" So that's what I did!

I headed out of the town centre...

... and walked towards the University. It's a 35-40 minute walk (maybe a bit longer if you keep stopping to take photos for your blog, haha) part of which is uphill, but it was great to be out in the fresh air and stretching my legs after a few days stuck indoors working. Although, I'm not going to lie, catching the bus seemed like a much better idea when the sun went in and it started to rain! Ah, England.

 

I passed the Museum of English Rural Life (not pictured) but it was closed for the day, so I carried on walking to the University campus.

I think the last time I went to Reading Uni was about 15 years ago when I volunteered with a local group who held their committee / board meetings in assorted meeting rooms on campus. I remember getting lost every time I visited but luckily my map reading skills seem to have improved a bit in the past 15 years!

First up I headed to the Humanities & Social Sciences building...

... and visited the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology which apparently houses one of the largest collections of Greek ceramics in the UK. This small museum uses the ceramics of the period to illustrate many different aspects of life in Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt, everything from mythology to education, and from weddings to issues of citizenship.

They also have have some ancient textile fragments on display (amazing when you think just how old they are) and lots of leaflets with interesting additional info (do you know what a "squeeze" is in archaeological terms? Neither did I but now I do!).

Then I went to the Animal and Microbial Sciences building ....

... to visit the Cole Museum of Zoology. As the museum's website puts it, here you can "tour the animal kingdom in just an hour!" The museum is arranged by type of animal, from invertebrates to mammals, and there are creatures big and small - from cases of butterflies and other insects all the way up to a python skeleton, an elephant skeleton and a woolly mammoth tusk.

Honestly I wish I'd had a bit more time left in the afternoon to properly read all the information in the display cases as it was really interesting. There were a few displays that made me shiver though - particularly the large spiders (brr) and the truly huge "giant spider crabs" which look exactly how their name suggests they might look (double brr).

If you ever find yourself in Reading I think these small (free!) museums are well worth a visit, they have all the quirky charm of a local museum combined with a rich depth of information about their "specialist subject".

I can't believe it took me so long to visit them after living in the area / going to school just round the corner for so many years. Next time I have to go to Reading to buy craft supplies or to go clothes shopping I'll definitely be trying to squeeze in a trip to to the University's other museum (the MERL) instead of just heading straight home. 

A Visit to Aunt Elsie's, Jelly, & Reading's Museums

Last week I popped to Reading to do a bit of shopping, and to visit Aunt Elsie's Christmas Do. 

Aunt Elsie's is a fair organised by the nice folks at Jelly (who are celebrating 20 years of doing creative stuff in Reading) - I am forever marking myself as "maybe attending" on their Facebook events pages and then ending up being busy and not able to make it, so I was really pleased to have the time to attend this one and to be able to (finally) check out the work of some local makers and artists.

Here are a few snaps of some of my favourites from the fair...

Vintage yumminess from Alexandra Vintage:

Quirky jewellery & gorgeous artworks (inc lovely pictures printed onto felt, then embroidered - so much delicious texture!) from Half & Half:

Books and charming, romantic postcards from independent poetry publisher The Emma Press ... plus colourful cards, artwork and gifts from illustrator Anne Wilson.

Pretty handmade textiles from The Token House (love those fabric gift tags, and the knitting happening behind the stall!).

Colourful handknits and knitting patterns from Alabama Whirly:

Plus lovely, chic ceramics by Lauren Denney:

I chatted to some of the stallholders, had a cuppa and a completely delicious brownie from the folks who run the Shed cafe...

...  and bought a sweet mixtape postcard from The Emma Press:

The card with the fab knitted mistletoe (which comes with a link to download the knitting pattern so you can knit your own mistletoe - isn't that great?) is by Suzanne... a.k.a. Knithappens, a.k.a. Alabama Whirly a.k.a. the superstar founder of Jelly and an all round lovely lady whom I met via Etsy many years ago.

As well as enjoying the delights of Aunt Elsie's, I was given a tour of Jelly by one of the "resident" artists, Mark Andrew Webber. Such a fab space, with lots of treasures inside (like a knitting robot and a giant pompom!).

 

It was great to meet Mark and chat about his work, and his creative process. Earlier this year he completed a huge linocut map of Berlin which is even more impressive "in person" as it is in the photos I'd seen of it.

After Aunt Elsie's I walked around the corner to Reading Museum to visit a few of my favourites from their collection and to check out their current exhibition: Making Faces: Tudor to Modern (more portraits!)

I really enjoyed this exhibition - the chronological grouping of portraits from the different eras worked really well, especially as it's all in one large room so you can easily compare them and get an overview of the changes just by looking around the space. I also liked the little cabinets with everyday objects from each period (the mobile phone from 1998! OMG) and reading a bit more about some names I recognised from Reading's history.

Then I took a walk (which felt very autumnal though it is, of course, December)...

... to the river... 

... to visit the Riverside Museum at Blake's Lock.

Despite having gone to school in Reading for 7 or 8 years, I'd not been to this little museum before. It's very sweet - one building with a gypsy caravan and some displays about life on the river, plus the Turbine Hall where you can see the old machinery and look out over the lock.

Those windows, man! *Swoon*.