Willows

Please go here to read Betty's final adventures with the Boys! Too cool!

Progress

We have all been making progress in our chosen fields this week.

Mattman displayed unbelievable confidence in the face of chilly, wet, slippery birthday activities.

Dr Jo is rewriting Solar System research.

Heather Boss spent the whole of her birthday in the Bookery, but we did what we could to lighten the load! The occasion was marked by the setting up of a blog for Hookery in the Bookery- the raison d'etre of which will be to record Patricia's instructions for us! But do take a look- though you might need to bear with us for a while!

This is my weekend frippery. I did go out today to buy tasteful, nay sophisticated, yarn to match my burgundy dress for tomorrow night. This is what I came back with! You'll have to look at Hookery in the Bookery tomorrow for the rest!

Spring Shoes

Those of you who have seen the dishevelled wreck who is me will know that I don't have immaculate shoes for every season. Well, I do have favourite boots, Jane, for rubbish weather (most days), and weather beaten plimsolls for drier days. No, the only sort of Spring shoes that I think about are the ones required for our Annual Very Big Night Out.

These were the ones I laughed at last year.

These were the ones in which I did manage both to walk and dance last year.

But these little piggies, these little piggies have 8cm heels and these are the shoes in which I shall be attempting to stay upright on Saturday night. I'm feeling relatively confident. I have discovered videojug.

Betty

This is my first attempt at navigating the new-look Blogger and I'm not entirely happy! I only wanted to say that you should head over to the Wood Fairy for the Willows' magical arrival in England. Many, many gorgeous adventures not to miss!

Eight

Eight things to do on your last day of being eight:

Accomplished- watch TV, eat food, and go to school.

In the pipeline- play in the playground, play with friends, do homework, play Wii, play on DSi.

The list is all Mattman's; the order of events is aspirationally mine!

Sonja Landweer made this. It's called Relationships: Community. It sits on the very top level of the Ulster Museum, just waiting for you. Basking in the bright, white, atrium light of that floor. Admittedly you do first have to prise yourself away from the display with the Venice Throne.

Just the very thing to find on the first morning of a new term when you've raced across town to pick up a birthday present from the museum shop (and therein lies another story!) and think maybe you just might have time to rise up through the levels of history, nature and dinosaurs to the section you never get to stand still in at all, ever!

Even better when you realise that there is definitely time for tea and a cupcake and a view of the park before you return! All this on the day when Ireland starts to vote on which of its paintings it loves the most...

She was alright when she left us...

I can't really blog even a bit about Greater Spotted Ulster and not mention what happened at 11.40pm last night one hundred years ago. We have been zealously changing the channel at the mere mention of it for the last week. This is not because we do not care. Nor is it even the same black Belfast humour that coined the title phrase.

I do hope to go for a stroll past yardmen soon, and to see Titanic Belfast (though probably not the staircase). It's our huge urban myth that your grandfather built the Titanic. Apparently mine did. I grew up thinking that because my dad worked for a short while as a short youth in the shipyard he must have built it too. Despite the fact that he wasn't born until 1940.

I'm not good on books/films/anything that disturbs. I don't mind having my conventionality disturbed, or my complacency, or my worldview, or even to be honest my sleep pattern. I just don't cope well with the use of tragedy, pain, abuse, horror for any reason, literary or otherwise.

Yesterday's Belfast Telegraph listed the 1512 names and gave ages. Most in their 20s or 30s. I hear ghosts in the cold. It makes me cross.

Easter Holidays

The Willows are bouncing down to England. We miss them very much! As Lisa said in her comment on the last post, I too would love to look over Pom Pom's shoulder when finally she opens the book. I need a new project, or maybe I should just get on with the current one! Here it is- yarn rippling over sea rippling. A good way to cross the Irish Sea!

No better way to spend a few Easter days- Egg Hunting at Culzean Castle, Canadian canoeing on Lough Lomond, and all around Edinburgh. Mattman and I would like to live in Edinburgh- Pam, we'll definitely meet for coffee next time! I promised Mattman to tell you that the average visitor to the Museum of Scotland emits 898kg of Environmentally Bad Things when travelling. I apparently am responsible for 89kg, but Mattman scored only 11kg! Next time he goes he will, he tells me, remember to say that sometimes he cycles to school instead of walking, and this will, he thinks, lower his score even more...

Icebergs: topic of the month for Belfast folk!

Empty Nest

I know that I've had them far, far too long. It was the book! Frances was right; you have to read it slowly and attentively and smile and laugh and ponder in all the right places. And then, my goodness, then you have to humbly add something of yourself therein and, Pom Pom, you could not overestimate how even more beautiful your book is becoming!

So as well as St Patrick's Day the boys ended up staying for Easter. There were many eggs, real and au chocolat.

An Easter Egg Hunt and lots of birthday cake too.

But now it's time to go for a sail across the Irish Sea. Things that I have done- for the benefit of those still awaiting their turns in the European/Australasian legs of this Willows' Grand Tour of the Whole World:

I have read, and coloured and written in the book, and put my name and town in the inside cover. I haven't taken a picture of me reading the book, but this is mostly where I read it! I have added a little something in the hidden pocket for Betty. I have stamped their passport. And I am most gratefully (sorry, Mole) packing all three of them up for one last Celtic Adventure!


I loved the way that the book ends with everyone happily and safely strolling through the Wild Woods, now tamed. So it is highly appropriate that we change the Itinerary just slightly so that the next stop will be back in the woods after such a long stay in suburbia! Betty, the Wood Fairy- the Willows are on their way!

Easter Sunday

Good Friday

Bunting is next to....

I have been working on a project this week. It's for PC's birthday which happens to fall on Easter Sunday this year. It's actually for the fence out back, but there was a family lunch in mind!

It was good to have a project on the go. When Queen Niqi came round to Strawberry Land not once but twice in search of crochet advice, it meant that I could potter with more degree of credibility than she might normally hope to find!
She did single-handedly interpret her way round (no pun intended) this month's Mollie Makes' spiral flower. No strawberries were in any way involved in the making thereof! Though Hookery in the Bookery did spend all Wednesday night pondering thereon, and the Mighty Patricia has now her own illustrated pattern and prototype. Well, actually I have the prototype, because she's that sort of generous!

I went on doing things with triangles. And on and on! And with egg cups which was mildly satisfying!


Ten centimetre gaps worked best. I had to be very focussed because there was an awful lot of hoovering, dusting, shopping and strawberry entertaining that could possibly have got in the way.

So I didn't let much come between me and the goal. I do somewhere in my mother's genes believe that cleanliness is next to Godliness.

But I have decided that bunting can obviously be next to cleanliness on the list of things to do. So, could we not also have it as next to Godliness? A post-post-modern twist?

Fun with Floss

Thank you, Floss, for hosting another Thought Fest in Lent! I have very much loved reading hearts and minds this year! Today I am very struck by Angela's enjoy and Floss' fun! As the drummer said at the Rend album launch we were at over Christmas, "For those of you who don't have faith, it's not all weird, you know!" Last Rend of Lent, you may well be glad to hear! I will be choosing a commenter from this post to send an album to this week- Happy Easter, esteemed bloggistes xx