In which Significant Otter and I try to sort out my exercise regime

Me: Now I'm working at home I'm not cycling to work anymore and it's making me fat and lazy. I think I might have to join a gym or something awful.

SO: What gym are you going to join?

Me: I have no idea. I don't even know where there are any. Or what happens at them. I thought of maybe doing 'spinning' lessons, but then I discovered that it's not just aeroplaning around a big room with your arms out until you fall over. It's just a fancy word for exercise bikes.

SO: And they stick your feet to the pedals so you can't stop.

Me: WHAT??? F**k that. That sounds awful. Plus I can't do classes. I'd have to speak to strangers - sweaty ones - and they might even want to have coffee afterwards or something and you know I'm not great at interacting with other people on my own and not freaking them out.

SO: True. What about jogging round the common?

Me: Jogging's boring. Plus I have bad knees. Probably.

SO: Cycle to Sainsbury's instead of taking the car?

Me: Are you kidding? There's a massive hill on the way back. It'd be knackering.

SO: So you wouldn't have to do it as often.

Me: Yeah, but every time I did do it I'd have to stop for a little cry at the top. And I could only carry, like, one apple back from the shop at a time. Not that I buy apples. But I would have to if I was fit.

SO: Swimming?

Me: I'm really bad at it. And people tut at you if you want to do widths because you get scared doing lengths when you get to the deep end and can't put your feet down. Plus I always want chips afterwards because swimming makes me really hungry. I think a gym might be the only way. Gym machines are kind of like computer games but with physical stuff, right? Like Wii Fit?

SO [losing the will to live]: Yes. Yes that's just what it's like. Shall we just get you Wii Fit?

Me: That is a brilliant idea. Except I can't do any of the really energetic stuff because we have downstairs neighbours.

SO: You could do them in the day while they're out.

Me: They're in all day. I know that now, because they keep saying hello to me in the garden. I can't go in the garden now in case I see them and I have to make small talk. I wait for them to go out before I go to put the laundry on the line.

SO: I think the exercise is the least of your problems.

I'm a lonely soldier. But I like it.

I am writing this from my bedroom. I am not in bed - in fact, I am up and cleaned and dressed despite it being barely noon. But I am sitting in here to write because the rest of the house is so hideously messy and cat-hairy and in need of housework that if I go out there I will never get anything done due to the sheer, paralysing, deer-in-headlights horror of the Clean All The Things list. I won't actually clean anything, either. I'll make tea, or come across an important magazine article that needs reading, or play with the cat because it looks lonely (translation: "Wake UP, Doug. Play with me. Please?"). Only the other day I ended up doing my tax return in a supreme bout of championship-level procrastination whereby it somehow became a better option than whatever small, less complicated task I was supposed to be doing.

Procrastination and housework avoidance are just one a few of the issues I have come up against since becoming a full-time work-at-home person a month ago. Due to a very amicable redundancy, I switched from going to an office to sit at a desk (procrastinating), every day to being self-employed, doing much the same work, sitting on a cat-filled sofa (procrastinating), every day. And I have to say, on the whole, I'm enjoying it. I find that I actually get more work done in less time, as I'm more painfully aware of the tasks I need to complete every day. And while I do procrastinate wildly, I do eventually Get Shit Done, partly because I feel like I need to justify my time and prove that I'm not just stroking kittens (I am), drinking tea (I am), and wearing pyjamas (usually).

I find myself trying to fit more into every day because I'm not constrained by the 9-5. Popping out for a loaf of bread becomes a trip to Sainsbury's followed by Ikea followed by oh I might as well stop for some cake followed by Hobbycraft followed by oh well it's not that far to that nice fabric shop in Tooting I might as well do everything at once seeing as I'm oh dear it's 6pm and I haven't actually done anything of any worth. And I will have invariably forgotten the bread.

Internet social networking, which was once a horrible, dreadful time-sucking vortex of pointlessness, becomes a veritable boon for the home-worker. Deprived of water cooler moments in the office (we never actually had a water cooler. Who does, really?), my social interaction is reduced to 140 character tweets about how many cups of tea I've had or long, entertaining conversations on Facebook with fellow procrastinators about how we really should get off the internet and do some work. The world of craft is fantastic for this - Facebook is populated by dichotomous agoraphobic socialites working away on their solitary artistic pursuits, stopping to post a picture of a tangled bobbin, a cat eating their knitting, or an anecdote about the post office queue (a rare outing and one which often necessitates the first Outdoor Clothes of the day).

Then there are the more complicated issues of fending for oneself all day, alone. No longer able to run across the road for an Americano, this week I had to learn how to use the coffee grinder, something which is normally the task of the Significant Otter. This occured:

Not pictured: floor. With coffee.

Honestly, I feel like Bear Grylls in the wilderness. Only I'm not drinking my own pee. Yet.

STOP PRESS!! BADGERZILLA UPDATE!!

The national press may have gone quiet on the Badgerocalypse front but they have missed out on today's important development - we now have an artists impression of the attack of the 50ft badgerzilla from hell which may or may not also be a zombie:

THE HORROR!!!!
 

Thanks to our artist-on-the-scene Little Black Heart for this hard-hitting reportage. We can only imagine the atrocities she must have witnessed in the pursuit of the truth.

You can see more of Little Black Heart's awesome work here and follow her on Facebook here

Don't have nightmares, now.

SAVE YOURSELVES! IT'S THE BADGEROCALYPSE!

I'm not going to beat around the bush. Yesterday, the best headline in the history of the printed word burst forth onto the world. I give you:

BADGERGATE!!! (click for original - hilarious - article)

Now, already this is the most brilliant thing I've read in ages. But what makes it even more fantastic is that this is happening AT MY OLD SCHOOL.

Fame at last! I'm a bit jealous, if I'm honest; in my time there we had absolutely no giant wildlife scares. This is literally the most exciting thing to happen at that school since the whole Sixth Form got suspended in leavers week 1997 for drawing massive cocks on the school field with bleach.

Terrified schoolgirls are apparently being held hostage by this Godzilla of the badger world:

"On one occasion it was spotted underneath one of the mobile classrooms and the pupils were told to close the window and not to leave until it was safe."

 If they are the same mobiles that were there when I was, their flimsy walls will provide little protection against an attack-badger, especially this one who, we must presume, shares the size and bloodlust of a rabid grizzly bear on acid.

Angry badger. He will CUT you, yo.

This morning, it's gone viral. Even the Daily Mail is covering the story. I haven't actually read their take, for fear of catching Nazi, but I assume they are going with the angle that this is an immigrant gay badger intent on stealing our jobs and giving us all cancer. Who also killed Princess Di.

Sadly, I have it on good authority that this is not actually a hitherto undiscovered Giant Badger species, nor a mutant badger that has grown to the size of a small car after ingesting radioactive fish washed down the coast from Dungeness B power station. My sister is a pupil at the school (yes, I do feel old), and she reported first hand, with the practiced pragmatism of the 16 year old proto-goth:

We'd never need a DNA test to prove we were related...

 So it seems that it is, in fact, just a normal sized badger, but the average teenaged girl thinks that badgers should be the size of hamsters. I sympathise with the confusion, really, as for years I was convinced that puffins were at least as big as emperor penguins. I'm still slightly disappointed at how small they actually are.

This is clearly an ENORMOUS GIANT MAN. (photo from bbc.co.uk)

The final line of the original article gives me hope, however, that Badgergate may yet take a dramatic turn. Check out how curt the school have been with their official statement.

"A spokesman for the Folkestone School for Girls said there was no problem with badgers at the school and that they had no comment to make."

Methinks they protest too much. It's a badger CONSPIRACY, people!

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I don't have any badgers in my shop. But I do have foxes. See what I did there, woodland animal fans?

Click the picture to visit www.lemurlady.co.uk and buy my stuff. No angry badgers.

The further adventures of Flat Stanley and his tragic almost-demise.

Those who have been following this blog for a while, or who have maybe just been putting very odd search terms into Google, may be familiar with Flat Stanley, the result of my first (and so far only), foray into the art of taxidermy. Stanley was an ex-guinea pig, who had been humanely sourced and who I raised from the choir invisible under the expert tuition of Amanda from www.amandasautopsies.com/.

Flat Stanley, as his name suggests, did not turn out to be the most handsome of specimens, but a little Phantom of the Opera costume both hid his disfigurements and gave him a jaunty air. (Original blog post here....)

Since then, Flat Stanley has been happily housed in a glass case (um, ok, it's actually a giant sweetie jar. But we took the labels off and washed out all traces of sherbert lemons), on the mantelpiece. His fame has been such he and his jar have even been on stage:

He was such a diva.

Then, last night, something TERRIBLE happened.

We came home to a scene of devastation. Flat Stanley's sweetie jar, with Flat Stanley helpless within it, had fallen off the mantelpiece. Glass was everywhere. As for Stanley...well. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. Doug the cat (for we know it must have been him, his sister is far too thick to work out how to extricate a stuffed rodent from a jar), had no intentions of letting Stanley rest in peace. This conversation occured:

LL: What is that? Is that, like, a dead bird or somethingOHMYGODITSFLATSTANLEY!!!
SO: Don't look. Oh God. Don't look.
LL: He...he....he has no hands!
SO: Nope. Or feet.
LL: And his FACE! Doug has eaten HIS FACE!!! What is WRONG with that cat? He's a psychopath!
SO: At least Doug didn't hurt himself on the glass or anything while he was carrying out his abominations.
LL: Yeah. I wouldn't have wanted to explain that to the vet.

SO thought that the cats had knocked the jar off the mantelpiece. I maintained that Stanley had been up there since last September and they'd never knocked it down before. BUT I don't think it is any coincidence that this happened very shortly after the arrival of Super Rat (who I think might have evil kinetic powers. SO says I have been watching too many films). Our mantelpiece became a lineup of suspects:

The skull is plaster of paris. I promise.

Whether he fell or was pushed, Flat Stanley had gone from being a slightly odd but kind of adorable ornament to a TERRIFYING FACELESS ZOMBIE RODENT that I couldn't have in the house any longer. I wanted to throw it out, but SO was all "no, I can save him and make him less like the stuff of nightmares". I was off out for the evening, so I gave SO an ultimatum - by the time I got back, the Thing that used to be Flat Stanley either had to be buried at a crossroads or somehow made into something that I could bear having under my roof and that wouldn't rise in the night and kill us all.

While I was out, this text conversation occured:

SO: Flat Stanley looks like a burns victim. in his bandages.
LL: Are you trying to make him into a mummy?
SO: i might have to age his wrappings with tea bags.
LL: I'm not sure if you are a genius. I think you might be. i also think Flat Stanley might be haunted.


So. Long story short. When I got back, this had happened...

IT LIVES!!!!

 If you read this, Significant Otter, thank you. Thank you for fixing my faceless, limbless, possibly haunted dead guinea pig. It's these little things that make a marriage.


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Epilogue: I almost wasn't going to share this last bit, for the sake of everyone. But a problem shared is a problem spread around, so I don't see why I should be the only one holding this hideous information in my head. Shortly after this picture was taken, this occurred:

LL: Where did you get all the cotton wool to reconstruct his feets? We don't have any cotton wool.
SO: Um. I owe you two tampons.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

You're all welcome.

Stuff I did when I wasn't here (with apologies for title nicked from The Bloggess)

While I've been cracking on with keeping the shelves filled at the Emporium, you may have noticed I've been a bit quiet recently (damn, I hear you cry, she's back). This is because I've been beavering away with various other creations in the meantime. So to prove I'm not lazy, here's what I've been up to...

This spring has been frock-coat-ageddon as I've been helping with costumes for various plays at my local haunt the South London Theatre. April saw my most ambitious task yet as I made a tail coat for the character of Branwell Brontë in Polly Teale's Brontë. It helped that a) the director of the play is an all-round sewing ninja herself and chose and cut the pattern, so all I had to do was fit it and sew it together, and b) the character in question was being played by Significant Otter himself, so I had a live-in model to stick with pins.

Still, it was pretty tricky considering I very rarely dabble in clothesmaking. Significant Otter is, basically, shaped like Johnny Bravo, which resulted in lots of extra fitting around the waist and some serious shoulderpad action up top. And I have resolved never to work with velvet again, mostly because of the quite ridonkulous amount of fluff and fuzz it created in my sewing machine, on the floor, in my hair and all over my pyjamas (yes, I sew in my jammies, what?). Turned out rather dashing in the end though, I think:

Picture by Philip Gammon. (NB this was part of the play, not an emergency onstage hem repair. Honest)

Buoyed by this, and while waiting for some fabric to arrive for some custom orders, I decided to have another crack at making something for myself. My sartorial leanings are eclectic but generally err towards the vintage. The problem with genuine vintage patterns, however, is that they can be fiendishly difficult to make and fit - something I don't have the time, patience, or dressmaking experience to be doing with. The joy of bags and purses, you see, is that they don't have to fit actual humans. Give me a complicated buckle fastening or a folded strap and I'm all over it, but ask me to grade a dress pattern and it's tantrums and tears before bedtime.

Enter my saviour: Eliza M (www.elizamvintagesewing.co.uk). The UK-based Eliza M creates patterns based on staple vintage styles that do away with all the complicated stuff and are simple enough for beginners and intermediate sewers to approach without fear.

This was my first experience with an Eliza M pattern but I will be buying many more - I really can't recommend her enough if you have vintage tastes but modern skills (i.e. you are not an actual sewing wizard like Anne on the Great British Sewing Bee. Incidentally, does anyone else think that 75 years of experience is basically cheating? She was like a sewing Yoda).

I chose the 'Pussy Galore Blouse' (stop sniggering at the back), and a cheap, £6.99 a metre cotton lawn from my local haberdashers in a cornflower blue with white swallows (or possibly ducks. or geese? pigeons, maybe).

The pattern itself comes in a clever A4 slip folder which means no more stuffing bits of tissue back into suddenly-too-small envelopes. I was immediately heartened by the final instruction:

Clearly, these are my kind of peoples.

The instructions are for the most part simple and clear, although I had a bit of an argument with the facing on the inside of the neck, which at one point turned into an Escher-like puzzle and I was in danger of creating the worlds first Mobius-blouse. However it resolved itself eventually and I came out the other end with an Actual Thing:

It's got arms and buttons and everything!

The fit is a tiny bit off, but that's more my own inexperience than anything, and I did mess up the collar a bit, but it doesn't show because of the whacking great bow at the front covering a multitude of sins.

All in all it took me a couple of evenings and not all that much swearing at all. I'm now mulling over which of the Eliza M trouser patterns to attempt to complete the outfit.

So if you've been scared off vintage dressmaking because you wouldn't know a princess seam or a pintuck if it smacked you in the face, fear not! Eliza M is there for you. Go for it, my sewing paduans!

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In other news.....this is the fabric I was waiting for. Yup, they now make Star Trek fabric. Bow down in awe.

The middle one is currently available as a made-to-order phone cover , but if you have a burning desire for a Star Trek/Star Wars purse, Kindle cover, bag, teacosy (maybe not the teacosy), then head on over to  https://www.facebook.com/lemurlady and get in touch.

The Massive Patriotic Stripey Crafting Insect

Not a sewing bee.

Hands up who watched the first episode of 'The Great British Sewing Bee' last night?

Keep your hands up if you started watching with the intention of going "pffft, I could do that". Quite a few of you? Yeah, me too.

Now keep your hands up if you still thought that after the first round of judging? Yeah. Not so tough now, are we?

The challenges sounded pretty simple - make an A-line skirt from a pattern, alter a neckline, fit a dress. But that was before the scariest HE teacher in the world (who looks like she might have swallowed a bee herself), and her sharp suited friend stepped in with their eyes for microscopic detail. Those poor contestants are going to be having nightmares about slightly puckered zips and unbalanced hems for years. I'd have run away, crying, trailing bias tape in my wake within the first half hour.

Also not a sewing bee.

But let's not be downhearted, fellow sewists. Because we all know that what the GBSB contestants face is not a patch on the challenges we face every day of our crafting lives. In order to really give them a fair test of what the real-life home sewist has to cope with, I think they should add the following tasks:

The All-Nighter
Contestants must create a school nativity costume/theatrical prop/fancy dress outfit/party dress from only items they can find in their own house. The challenge will be presented to them at 8.45pm the night before the item is due to be needed. Extra points awarded for sewing quietly and not waking up the house.

Speed Unpicking
Contestants must race to unpick a sleeve from a garment which has been put in upside down. Extra points given for creativity of swearing.

Pin Management
Contestants must tip a box of pins on the floor and attempt to collect every single one within a two minute time limit (the maximum amount of time one realistically has before a barefoot child/spouse/family pet comes in and treads on them all).

Bumblebee does not sew.

Additional Rules

• For maximum realism, contestants are allowed a constant supply of tea (however, any contestant seen finishing a cup, rather than letting half of it go cold, will be disqualified). For the All Nighter challenge, wine may be substituted for tea.

• At irregular intervals, several cats will be released into the studio to walk all over the tables and sit on the ironing boards. 

• And, most importantly, no matter how tight the deadline, contestants must spend at least twenty minutes of every hour procrastinating on Facebook and/or making toast.

 Yeah. That's more like it.