Our own little celebration...

So up the hill we trundled to take part in the village bash - flags and bunting everywhere, real country fayre, over excited adults and children, fizz in plastic glasses, tugs of war and treasure hunts - just the way it should be! What a lovely, lovely day!

My neighbour Roger - a proud country man!

BEAUTIFUL!

I have loved being curled up on the sofa this morning indulging in the Royal wedding - and I totally knew that the dress would be McQueen! Well, it had to be didn't it? Later on we are off to our own village party to celebrate, so I will try to take some pics! In the meantime, here is a nice link to NY mag and their royal album! I have also loved following both Grazia and Hilary Alexander on Twitter this morning, and even smiled at a random tweet by our own unofficial correspondent Chris Grant!



http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2011/04/post_64.html#

Near death experience...

I knew it, I absolutely knew it. Cows are scary creatures - I read somewhere once that 18 people a year die by being stampeded by cows and this afternoon I was nearly one of them! As you may know I sometimes walk my neighbours dog, Bobby, and together we have enjoyed many a lovely stroll, and it has been known, that we will mutually decide to avoid fields with cows in - both being of a nervous of cows disposition. Sadly, Ivan (Mr Bicknell) does not possess this sensibility and will brazenly march through any cow-filled field he happens across. Today was one of those days, and as he was accompanying us, we were forced to march alongside him.... I knew something was odd when it appeared as though the 20 odd beasts were conducting some kind of conference in the centre of the field. We were about a quarter of the way across when they started trotting towards us at some considerable pace in what looked like a scene from an episode of Dr Who (soooo glad that's back on T.V.!) - you know, the possessed animal/human kind - they then surrounded us and started nudging and generally goading us - petrified? Oh God yes! Ivan of course was super calm and did a magnificent job of hanging onto a near hysterical dog and equally so wife as we moved slowly across the field with our impromptu entourage - longest 2 and a half minutes of my life - it was like they were herding us! So be warned - cows are evil!!

TRULY MENACING!!



Veggie patch update..

So here is the finished article - just have to wait for it all to grow now - badgers permitting of course! Oh, and today I cooked my first load of rhubarb and made some very fattening fools (pudding, not me, Ivan (MR Bicknell) and Judith (my Mother-in-law!) for lunch! Thanks to Nigella for the recipe!

I found that the final planting went down very well with a modest G&T!!

Sniff on badger watch!!



At last! An opportunity to get stuck into something creative....

The last project that I set the students filled me with terrible envy - I have a thing about chairs and have had a bit of a yearning to "do up" a few myself recently - thinking perhaps that if I was surrounded by loads I might get over it  - but alas, this was not the case, so not satisfied by watching my students develop their truly fabulous creations, I practically ran to the dump on the last day of term to see if there were any desirable examples that I might pick up, and aha, I was in luck...... A nominal amount later, and a touch of eyelash fluttering - it's not all down hill at forty - I squashed 4 of these lovelies into my car - and drove home, feeling rather pleased with myself and only faintly worried about how I was going to explain to Ivan (Mr Bicknell) why I was in possession of a whole load of chairs that weren't going to fit in our house..... errr - because I have an obsessive personality? actually, the plan is to sell them - but well, we'll see, my taste isn't necessarily everyone elses!

So here is how I filled up 6 whole days of my holiday!

What I paticularly liked about cleaning these up was peeling off the bits of spaghetti - I mean honestly - don't people know that when they take furniture to the dump, there is some sad muppet like me waiting in the wings to do it up? So for future ref, PLEASE - clean the crap off first!!

Unlike my dedicated students, I resorted to the electric sander - Sooo much easier! Thanks to my fab neighbour Roger!

 Next comes the primer...

Then the painting - after this I talked to them a bit to distress them a little (!), but I was so over excited to have finished the boring bit that I forgot to take a photo!

Fabric selection comes next, and in this I also need to stitch on some colour blocking to add interest - very now in the fashion world too!!!

At last! The screen printing - this is the best bit!

Seeing what works...

All done as far as the printing goes - now a bit of highlight stitching and I am on the home straight - thank god! I do not envy G and Lucinda who are doing six chairs each - good luck with that!

Ta daaaaa.......

And do you  know what the saddest part of this whole episode is (- and let's face it, if I were normal I would have laid about all week reading and enjoying the sunshine)? No? Well, for six days all I listened to was the new Glee album - tragic - but if Ivan (Mr Bicknell) will go off to Wales and leave me to my own devices.....!

Happy Easter

Happy belated Easter everyone - I hope the sunshine didn't melt your chocolate!

The garden.

So, you  might remember that I am a bit partial to a bit of gardening - well, I am 40 now! So I have been resurrecting my veggie patch and finding wonder in everything that is at last coming to life in our garden - I even managed to get Ivan (Mr Bicknell) to the garden centre with his wallet - anything to keep me busy when he is planning a climbing trip - I have, you could say, learnt to exploit this! So here we go for this year - and to all you greedy badgers out there - find someone else's vegetables to feast on this year please!!

Before I got my spade out......

4 hours later......

From little acorns.....

Watch this space..... and oh, him too - he really wasn't a help, unless you count covering yourself in dirt and dropping it throughout the house as helpful.......

These things are much prettier!

And off I went again.....

So we land back in the lovely Worldham, relaxed and happy, happy from our trip to Edinburgh and I head back into London before Ivan (Mr Bicknell) has time to make me toast! This time I am off with Simone, who is my neighbour's very lovely niece who, upon completion of her fashion degree in New Zealand, has come over to Blighty for a bit of a change and some job hunting, so I jumped at the chance to check out a few of the shows I had been hankering after with her!

First up was the Yohji Yamamotto at the V&A - I love the Japanese fashion designers and particularly what they stand for and experiment with in terms of concepts, proportions and media, and being able to get so close to these garments was wonderful - he is a particular favourite of Simone's too, so it was a real pleasure to see her reactions! I love the V&A too and firmly believe that you can never spend too much time there - aside from the great art, the shop and the restaurant are pretty damn good too! And no Ivan (Mr Bicknell) I didn't even open my wallet, err, well, maybe a little bit........

Next we hopped on a bus and headed over to Regents Street - two of my favourite shops happen to live here - Anthropologie and Liberty, and it was only fair to share them with Simone - I also caught site of some interesting Kurt Gieger displays which I thought one of my students, Nicole, might rather like......

Anthropologie's Regents Street branch's living wall - not to be missed, and oh god I love the interior, the clothes,  the candles, the things, the......!





Kurt Geiger....

la, la, liberty! And lo, a RE mini exhibit, who also happen to be a particular fave of mine - dontcha just love it when there are nice surprises like this? Amy Gillman - please take note, these photos are for you my dear!

Again Ivan (Mr Bicknell), my wallet stayed firmly shut........

So where next? Well, since you ask, we dived onto a tube or two and headed over to Bermondsey for the Fashion & Textile museum for the Sue Timney exhibition - blimey this took me back to my uni days - a big influence on my degree work and early freelance stuff (my former life). I love this stuff !

Workshops at the Fashion & Textiles museum - hmmm, if only our studios looked this tidy!

A very productive day!