It's all in how you look at it

Rust on beach

You can complain because roses have thorns. Or you can rejoice that thorns have roses.

 - Tom Wilson, aka Ziggy 

One of the things I treasure and protect in my own make up is positivity. When that falters, I know that something is out of kilter somewhere. At other times, I get a little jolt of joy when I realise anew that my default setting tends toward silver linings and gratitude.



Read More

Back from V Festival 2009

1657184

Well, I survived it. Survived the deflated air mattress, survived the portaloos, survived the throngs, survived the lack of proper showering, survived living out of a backpack... and it was worth every minute of it. Now I'll have to add to my list of bands and artists seen live:

  • Dizzee Rascal
  • Razorlight (for the 3rd time)
  • The Killers (my main reason for going this year)
  • Snow Patrol
  • The Script
  • Elbow
  • to some extent: Athlete, The Ting Tings, Paolo Nutini, The Proclaimers and Katy Perry (not great sound where we were sitting)
  • and more that we overheard, wandered past, caught a song or two

Now to finish weeding through nearly 400 photos, which caused some drama yesterday when it seemed I had lost them. A bit of nifty techobabe action though, and all is well.

Read More

Wellie Love

Getting ready for last weekend's V Festival, my friend and I were looking for wellies. I've always had curvy legs, and I am not at my slimmest at the moment, so we were both looking for wider calf styles. In the end I decided to alter a standard pair. It was very easy, so if you want to accommodate rounder calves or just fancy a shorter style, here's the how-to in 3 easy steps:

Wellie love 1

Trim to the length you want. Regular scissors can cope with the rubber, but don't use your best pair. I put them on and carefully cut down the seam at the back until it was below the curve of my muscle. This turned out to be a little less than 15cm, so I carefully marked 15 cm down all around the boot.

Wellie love 3a

Choose a material to cover that raw edge. I used some denim from an old pair of jeans. Cut a strip 2 1/2 times the depth of cuff you want, and a bit longer than the circumference of the top of your wellies. Fold this strip lengthwise, wrong sides together, and oversew the raw edges to the inside of the boots (I used quilters' tiger tape to keep my stitches even). Fold the cuff over to the outside of the boot. I used my crop-o-dile to fasten the overlap with the big eyelets.

Wellie love 3

Update: it didn't rain, so they only made the journey from the tent to the portaloos!

Read More