Rest in Mayhem, Malcolm Mclaren.

This is a little piece of wonderful from some clever people. God Save The Queen by the Sex Pistols in British Sign Language. Thanks to Matt Hulse for sharing this with me.

Talking to myself.

I've never been very good at keeping a diary. My childhood attempts would begin with great enthusiasm in January and tended to peter out  about March leaving only a few entries for posterity. Poor old Posterity faced  with my listings of what I ate for lunch or my fondness for Starsky and Hutch, written on pages decorated with red felt pen hearts.

These days I'm determined to keep a notebook of ideas and inspirations but the old reticence is still there. I don't like the blank pages and the expectation of what should be put on them.  I talked to Miss Frugality, who knows about this sort of thing and she gave me some sage advice which I can paraphrase as - just get on with it and don't worry too much about a page being rubbish as you can always cover up that bit.

I have been filling the empty spaces with daftness and thought and along with the slowly ( very slowly ) improving drawings, conversations are springing up. Little chats between me and what is happening on the page.  Limbs? I ask myself when drawing a prototype felt cat. Make it less like Hitler is the comment next to a pig who doesn't look like a pig. A page with the design for my headscarf has the note, tadpoles are too weird.

I like talking to myself.

Reverse, Reverse.

I'm honing my sewing skills this week as well as knitting my way through what feels like a vat of orange. One day the orange will be a beautiful cardigan, I just need the patience required by eight million rounds of stocking stitch.

More orange on the scene comes courtesy of Alabama Chanin and two t-shirts from a charity shop. This is the headscarf pattern from the Alabama Stitch book and it was a lovely soothing thing to do. All hand stitched and cut, I even did a rolled hem although the original pattern calls for raw edges. I love the way it looks on the wrong side too.

Observant souls will notice that I am wearing the headscarf sitting outside. It must be truly spring.  Yesterday was glorious, the sunlight shone through our daffodils and it was warm enough to eat dinner on the steps.  We could enjoy the last rays of the sun and at the same time avoid the peculiar scrabbling noise coming from the kitchen walls.

A pair of starlings has decided to nest inside our house. That's spring for you.