T-Bird Anni Rides Again

As part of my promise to myself this year is to reduce my fabric stash, and because I had enough linen left over from making my skirt to make them, I have started on the coifs I will need if we do Kentwell next year.  This will give me a few less items to fret over this time next year and also means that I won’t have a bit of linen hanging round that’s not quite big enough to make clothing out of but certainly too big to throw away!

I did a prototype in cheap cotton with the intention that I could use it to keep my hair clean when we were painting at work.  I’m one of those people who, no matter how hard I try, always end up painty so keeping my curls out of harms way was an important consideration.  There are a few different patterns knocking about on the web but all of them have no sizing etc included and thus expect you to do that pattern scaling up thing that people who are good at sewing probably do in seconds and mere mortals like me get all stressed over.  I eventually decided taht the easiest way would be to download the  image off The Tudor Costume Page’s Coif instructions and play with the printer.  I printed it as a “poster” over 4 pages, stuck it together, cut it out and “tried it on”  It was a little big but it gave me a good start point.  I used the red line that she marks as the stitching line as a guide to trim it down a bit, chopped about a cm off either end and that was then okay-ish so I made my brim from that and sewed the two pieces up along the outer edge (leaving the ends open and the bit where the centre piece fits in unstitched).  It was at this point that I realised that the picture on the site isn’t actually a proper mirror image so I have a wonky brim.  No matter, I corrected that on my paper pattern (well, duh, that will teach me not to fold a pattern in half and check before I cut won’t it!) and decided that, for this prototype a bit of wonkiness wouldn’t matter.  I needed to make a fairly big seam at the back so that it was a snug fit at the nape of my neck and then I moved onto working out what to do for the centre.

Now, the lady at the Tudor Costume Page was a little vague on this bit.  She used her biggest cook pot to draw round but didn’t say how big her pot was leaving me with not much idea of how big it needed to be….. I used my stock pot and discovered that, after tacking it into the brim, I obviously have bigger cookware than she does!!!!  Moving swiftly on  I actually engaged my brain a bit and tried again.  I put the brim onto my head, plaited up and pinned up my hair and then measured from the brim at the nape, over the fullness of my hair and to the brim at the front.  I added a good inch on for seams and cut out a circle with that diameter.  Well, I say circle… it’s not, I didn’t draw it, I eyeballed it so it’s slightly squarish in places but I doubt anyone will notice.

The next bit is fiddly and I think there may be a better way to do it if I were to sit and think about it but anyway.  I marked each 1/4 of the centre and the brim, threaded up my needle with enough thread to do a running stitch all the way round the centre piece and did loose sts all round, about an inch in from the edge.  Then I pinned the 1/4 marks on one piece of the brim to the centre and carefully gathered it all up so that the centre fitted the brim and went mad with the pins.   Once I’d made a fairly good impression of a hedgehog I backstitched it all into place, swearing regularly as I got stabbed by one of the excessive number of pins.  After that it’s just a case of turning the brim right side out,  rolling a hem onto the side of the brim not already sewn to the centre, pinning it and carefully stitching it down so that the join between the brim and the centre is enclosed inside the two layers of brim.  I whip stitched that down, trying to hide the stitches as much as possible on the grounds that, if I put it on “inside out” by mistake no one would know the difference as the stitches would be hidden.  In retrospect I should have either ironed the brim or at least pinned it with the hems properly pushed out so that the two sides of teh brim were definitly laying flat to each other which doesn’t quite happen in my prototype but it’s not wonky enough to really be noticeable.

The final result was a little deep in the brim, looking alarmingly like a prairie bonnet at the front, but a really good fit and stayed on really comfortably regardless of what I was doing.  As a bonus, it also fitted Aprilia and all her hair too.  So, based on that, and keeping all my little oops moments in mind, I then cut out the linen for the “proper” ones and spent an evening each on those. I took a few pictures but forgot to photograph the really fiddly bit when the centre is being gathered onto the brim. Just imagine lots of wrinkly fabric and a billion pins and you will have the general idea. They really are quite quick once you stop being all brain dead and start thinking about it properly!

Jax over at Live Otherwise asked for posts sharing how life with disabilities looks for different people.  This is my contribution towards her Carnival of Differences…. (links to the Carnival will be added once I have them….)

My daughter isn’t disabled.  She’s not terribly able though either.  She’s somewhere in between, like many many more children and adults with her difficulties, she’s too able to qualify for any help and too disabled to cope without help.  She looks so normal, most of the time.  She acts pretty normal most of the time too.  And you know what?  Really, in her own space and place she’s perfectly normal!  She is my beautiful, wonderful, clever, loving and utterly fantastic child who I love just as she is.  But she doesn’t live in her own space all of the time. she has to leave it, and me, to go into the bigger world every now and then and that’s when the problems start.

She has hypermobility syndrome.  It means she’s a bit too bendy for her own good, and it hurts.  Hypermobility on its own isn’t a bad thing, most dancers, gymnasts and athletes are hypermobile, it allows them to do those lovely bendy moves.  When I first took her to the doctor, I was told that it wasn’t anything to worry about, a bit of physio to strengthen her up and a bit of weight off and she’d be fine.  I’m still not sure how losing weight was going to stop her shoulders and fingers hurting so much she would sob for hours despite the highest dose of pain relief she can safely have.

The difference between hypermobility and hypermobility syndrome (HMS) is pain.  Some people get lots of pain with their bendiness and no matter how good someone could be at fancy gymnastics, if it hurts all the time, they aren’t going to do it.  HMS also causes fatigue because, not only are sufferers worn down by the pain but their muscles are working much much more than a “normal” person just to keep their joints from flexing backwards as they are walking forwards.  It also causes anxiety, a study I found last year showed a significant correlation between HMS and clinical depression and anxiety and yet this information doesn’t seem to have been passed onto the general medical population, or even the mental health services.  It stands to reason though really, if, from your very earliest years, you couldn’t really rely on your own body to do what it’s supposed to do, you are going to be a bit nervous about life really.

So, although she can walk, reasonably safely, for a short distance, she uses a wheelchair if we are out and about.  We have had to buy it as physiotherapists don’t approve of wheelchairs for conditions like HMS as they make sufferers “lazy” and lose muscle tone.  Sufferers are supposed to pace themselves by resting and then carrying on.  That’s fine, but there aren’t any benches in Asda and I’d like to get the shopping done as quickly as possible rather than having to wait at the end of every aisle whilst she recovers for 10 mins or so.  And on days out it’s essential as, eventually, no amount of rest helps and she’s taller than me so I can’t just scoop her up into my arms like I used to and carry her to safety.  But she’s not disabled, she can walk, on a good day, too far to qualify.

And then there’s the dyslexia.  Inch by inch, year by year she has finally mastered the basics of reading.  She’s still a little shaky and likely to look at the first few letters and guess but she can muddle her way through a paragraph or two of a story.  But, ask her to read and complete an official form, for example, and she’s sunk.  There’s no context to give her a clue and writing is something we are still in the very early stages of dealing with.  At home she uses dictation software, it’s free with Windows 7 and actually works reasonably well once you have beaten it into submission.  She can’t do that at the job centre, the benefits office, college (when she gets there), she wouldn’t even be allowed to do OU exams that way as, aparently, it’s too easy to use key words that trigger whole paragraphs of pre-prepared text to be produced thus cheating outrageously.  Dyslexia doesn’t just affect words though, it’s an organisational disability, it affects how her whole brain works.  She does not see detail, she sees the whole world as a single image in all it’s glory.  That’s a glorious gift, unless you are trying to find two matching socks in a weeks worth of clean washing.  It affects directional concepts too, abstracts like left, right, inside, under, over, up etc mean nothing to her and she has no inbuild sense of direction.  If she were to get turned around even on a familiar route she may as well be in a foriegn country for all the hope she would have of getting back on track.  But she’s not learning disabled, dyslexia is a specific disability that does not warrent extra care.

Then there’s her sensory issues.  It may be part of autism or it may not.  The jury is still out on that.  Some days I think maybe she is autistic, other days I think what a load of codswallop, it’s just sensory difficulties.  It doesn’t matter what you call it though, it’s a bit of a problem.  Too much auditory or visual input stresses her.  I’ve lost count of the number of times she has frozen in a noisy or “busy” environment, locked into an overload that robs her of her ability to communicate verbally or even to fully control her limbs.  Suddenly she stops looking normal and starts looking “odd” as she stands there, rocking, moaning, sobbing, chewing her lips or her hands until they bleed.  I used to carry her away to safety, she’s several inches taller than me now so I can’t.  It’s back to that needing a wheelchair thing again…. only many shops (where overload it more likely to happen) aren’t wheelchair friendly so we have to fold it and weave it through the aisles and hope that when she overloads she’s somewhere with enough space to open the chair out and pull her down into it then ram our way out (leaving a trail of devastation behind us….. sorry!)  But that’s not a disability, that’s just something she needs to learn to live with, to acclimatise to by gradually increasing her exposure to it until she learns to push through the anxiety and cope.

She doesn’t feel her body properly either.  She only feels full when she physically cannot swallow another bite so she needs to be monitored to stop her massively over eating.  She only feels thirsty when she’s at the point of being desperately dehydrated so needs to be reminded to drink to stop her from suffering from headaches and cystitis.  She doesn’t feel cold until she’s blue.  She needs to be compressed either by me laying over her or by a weighted blanket so she knows where her body is.  She has a massive need for close physical contact that quite honestly worries me as only a mother of a daughter can be worried as I know that, before very many more years have passed a whole new way of close physical contact is going to open up to her and I don’t want her doing things with her body that her mind cannot safely comprehend the implications of.  But that’s not a disability either.  That’s just a way of being.

My daughter is not disabled.

It’s all my fault, I’ve coddled her, over fed her, sheltered her, over protected her.  I need to send her to school to toughen her up, to strengthen her by carrying a school bag between lessons, to teach her how to deal with people and to seperate from me.  I’ve reflected my difficulties, anxieties, stresses onto her.  All this I have been told by people who are paid to tell me how to help her.

And it’s all a lie.  My daughter is my light, my life, my joy.  She is my sunrise and my summer.  All I do for her is to help her be the very best she can be.  A little financial help would be lovely but you know what?  Money can’t buy those hours curled up together with a book, there is a wonderful privelege to still being asked to read to an 11 year old, we share books now that I love as she is old enough to enjoy a wide range of stories without having to struggle to decode the language.  Money can’t buy the hysterical laughter when she starts acting the fool when people look with pity at her in her chair (then they look at her with more pity, poor disabled child with nutty cackling mother….)  Money can’t buy that wonderful feeling when I sooth my child to sleep and see all the day fade from her into a wonderful relaxed and content face.  Money can’t even begin to give that lump in the throat that comes from watching every tiny victory.  It just buys stuff.  Nice stuff to be sure, really useful stuff sometimes too, but just stuff.  I’d not turn it down, but I’m not sure I want to fight tooth and nail for it when I should be spending time with my girl.

Many of my friends either have been or are going to be Tudor re-enactors at Kentwell.  It’s something that interests me and I’m intending to go for a day visit this year to see how my friends look in their lovely, lovingly hand sewn garb.  Aprilia has expressed repeated interest in taking part in this and I think that in a year or so she may be ready to give it a go.  Something that has filtered through my consciousness is that if Aprilia still wants to do this by next year, I will need to have created at least one set of clothes each, and preferable several extra shifts so that people will want to stand within 200 yards of us by the end of a week!  Now, linen isn’t terribly cheap and hand sewing isn’t really my thing so I’m working on the principle of running up a few bits over the next 12 months to spread the cost and the trauma!

Oh, and  I need a skirt for a christening on Sunday.  I have one I can wear at a push but it’s a bit worn out really so I’m going to run up a petticoat in unbleached linen which will, I hope, pass for a skirt!

So, my first project is a bit of a double whammy really.  Because I’ve only got a few days, and my hand sewing is   s l o w   I’m going to machine it, but with quite long stitches so that they will be easy enough to take out again and hand sew it over the space of a few weeks!  I’m looking at it as a practice run that will still be usable as a skirt if Kentwell turns out to be no-go.  As with other friends who are sewing for Kentwell, the instructions are going to come from The Tudor Costume Page at least to begin with although I may call on more expicit advice when it comes to the kirtle (pinafore type dress – the instructions on the web page scare me…..)

My first trauma has been the linen.  It’s not cheap you know (I may have mentioned that already!) and thus I didn’t want to get the wrong stuff!  However, a Kentwell regular assured me that Ikea to a suitable offering so off I went to look today.  I may have bought one or two other bits whilst I was there….. but anyway.  They sell bleached and unbleached linen.  The bleached is a rather lovely creamy white which is what I’m used to seeing on photos of Tudor dressing up types but then, the unbleached was a gorgeous oatmeal-ish brown colour which I thought would be a more practical skirt colour and a friend had mentioned that there was a push towards unbleached linen for Kentwell so I stood and dithered and then went with the unbleached after a brief discussion with a total stranger (what is it with people who shop in Ikea???)

It’s in the wash now, with a fair bit of fabric softener because I’m a wuss, and then it’s going to get tumble dried in the hopes that that will dispense with shrinkage.  I have to say I do rather like the unbleached colour and I hope that it doesn’t fade too much because I can quite see me enjoying wearing it as a normal (long) skirt!  Now, because this is going to be a skirt before it becomes a petticoat, there is the obvious problem of not wishing to flash anything I shouldn’t so, I’m slightly corrupting the petticoat pattern and am going to slip a pocket in where it closes and make it side fasten thus giving me somewhere to stick my hankie for Sunday but still being close enough to being right that all I will need to do, if it’s not acceptable if I do Kentwell, is snip out a little fabric.  Who me? devious?  yup!

This turned up on a FaceBook group recently. It is a letter from a member of Kent county council to a local home educator. Yet again, under the guise of monitoring accademic achievement we are being accused of not safeguarding our children. May I refer the Secretary of State for Education to the very comprehensive Freedom Of Information request data that showed fairly plainly that being a home educated child does not increase your risk of being abused or exploited in the home. Anyway, here’s the letter with names removed….

I don’t think any specific statute has been identified as yet, but Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education has made it clear that he intends to introduce a requirement whereby home educated children will be linked to a school and their academic achievement will contribute to the schools results. Rightly or wrongly I believe that will mean an assessment based on exam results.

I do agree with you that children’s needs can and should be met in different ways. But it is also important that appropriate measures are in place to ensure proper safeguarding. Sadly nobody actually knows the full extent of home education, but we do know that many more than the 823 children of which we are aware, are educated outside of traditional settings. Clearly there are many very sincere families that make considered decisions in the best interests of their children and that is to be welcomed. However, I am concerned that all children are given opportunity through education. Kent County Council will have to adhere to policy as laid down by Government but I can assure you that we fundamentally believe in a mixed economy of education provision of which home education is a contributor. The issue though has to be ensuring that an individual child’s needs are appropriately met and the child is adequately safeguarded. May I remind you that for many children from not just in Kent, that they are safest when they are at school.

The emphasis on educational attainment being measured through exam success does not in my opinion properly reflect the skills and abilities of all our children. Kent has had a policy of encouraging a vocational curriculum for those where such skills are more appropriate and we will continue with that.

I am not and nor is KCC anti home education, we are increasing three fold the resources that we commit to supporting home educated children, but a major part of that is that we do need to know where all these children are and then ensure that they receive an appropriate education that meets their needs and helps to prepare them for adulthood.

I am quite sure that any visit to yourself would demonstrate clearly the benefits of home education. It is the one to two thousand children who are outside of traditional settings and unknown to the authorities that concern me.

I
And Breathe……

Last week I had an essay to do, as anyone who is unfortunate enough to read my FriendFeed or FaceBook feed will probably know!  I got an extension as I’d not managed to get to grips with it at all and really needed to crack on properly with it.  That didn’t stop me taking Aprilia bowling though, which was good because whilst there not only did she have a lovely time (thank you to our wonderful local HE friends who have accepted Aprilia into their circle so lovingly)  and I had a good time chatting to the grown ups (mmm, grown up chatting, the one thing I actually miss about not working full time!!!) but I was offered a day without Aprilia for me to work on my essay.  Phew!

We didn’t make it to home ed club on Thursday, she was all over tired etc so we had a snuggly afternoon at home instead which helped her to recover although she didn’t want to go to Kung Fu in the evening.  I went and enjoyed it but realised just how rusty I’d got with over 6 months off!

She had a good riding lesson on Saturday but didn’t canter because it was a different instructor and Shaddow always plays silly sods for this particular instructor!  Was quite funny listening to Aprilia berating the poor horse all round the barn for being a silly horse, a lazy horse….. etc!  Then it was home and a hot shower to get warm and we started with a long and drawn out process of ragging her hair.  She has rather a lot of hair you know…..  We’ve never tried rags before but her hair is too long now to practically curl it with tongs so we thought we’d give it a go.  The only scrap fabric I had that I could justify using was fleece which has the benefit of not fraying and being fast drying so wasn’t going to hold the damp on the hair.  It took a while but much less time than trying to heat curl it and eventually she looked like this

and yes, I know the photo is sideways…. just tilt you head, it’s quicker than me fighting with it to edit it the right way up!

Duke took the rags out in the morning because I was at work.  Aparently there was a bit of pulling involved and a few minor tangles but nothing too traumatic.  She didn’t like the effect because neither of them thought to brush it through and she looked like “one of those ugly Georgian wigs” aparently (Horrible Histories have a lot to answer for…. actually I thought it looked more like Charles II but I refrained from telling her that!)  A bit of shine serum and a gentle brushing smoothed things over and she went off to play with J&S looking something like this

I cracked on with the essay, having dissuaded Duke from taking me out for a meal (lovely thought sweetheart, hold that thought for a non critical-essay-writing-day hey?) and the first half of it is quite good once I had got to grips with it.  The second half is awful.  I’m not being over critical here, it is just awful!  I was supposed to relate some critic’s work to a Dickens book but the book in question is huge and I just couldn’t find what I needed to quote so I went for generalisations and vague references to characters rather than scenes.  Ho hum.  Onwards and upwards!

Meanwhile, Aprilia was having a whale of a time with her friends.  It seemed to revolve arround playing on Sims 3 and PS3 games and maybe some phone games too.  Oh, and eating choccie biccies and cheese toasties made with “paving slab bread, er, no I mean door steps don’t I?”  I like the idea of bread slices as big as paving slabs…..

Skipping ahead to today (because really, not a lot has happened in between)  I got 2 parcels today.  One is a microwave crisp maker off Amazon which means I can make fat free crisps (nom nom nom) which I may post properly about once we have played with a bit more and the other was a belated Secret Santa from an exchange organised by Jax at Living Otherwise.  My original Santa fell at the final post for whatever reason but someone stepped up as “Angel Elf” and sent me a lovely soft knitted cotton wash cloth and some sweeties.  I think I know who you are Angel Elf and you are very lovely.  Thank you!

so, to keep me from cluttering up FriendFeed and FaceBook with all the gazillion questions I have….. here we go…

It’s a Galaxy Ace which is an Android phone a little smaller than an iPhone. It didn’t come with instructions but I’m getting there (slowly!!) anyone who has one (or any other Android device) and can give me any tips would be worshipped for ever.

So, what apps do I absolutely need? Obviously I have Angry Birds already (well, I would really wouldn’t I…..)
and I have WhatsApp

I need a FriendFeed app
I could do with a book reader type app
anything vaguely educational for Aprilia to play on whilst we are out would be good (you know, do 5 mins on this then you can play angybirds)
and then any recomendations for really useful toys er, i mean tools, well, no, I mean toys don’t I?

Aprilia made me some frozen yogurt the other night and we have been enjoying it for the past 2 days. It’s too good to forget how she did it so here’s the recipe…. it’s shockingly good for something that’s actually quite healthy!

About 100g blackberries (I imagine other soft fruits would work pretty well too)
about 250g fat free yogurt (if you aren’t trying to lose weight, have full fat yog and enjoy extra creaminess!)
2 tsp honey
sugar or artificial sweetener to taste (remembering that when it’s frozen it will taste slightly less sweet) We used Asda’s sweetener which is sucralose rather than aspartame and thus doesn’t send Aprilia loopy.

Blitz it all up in a blender then stir in sweetener to taste.
put in freezer for about an hour, take it out and blitz again, repeat a couple more times. This make the ice crystals smaller so you get a smoother pud.

Take out of the freezer 15 mins or so before you want to eat any so that you don’t bend the spoon trying to serve it.
Serve with fruit or just as it is.
Yum.
Works out at about 4 syns for the entire batch if you use sweetner rather than sugar (would be under 2 if you don’t use honey but hey, honey is yummy)

I’ve finally caved in and rejoined a slimming club. I know that lots of you manage perfectly well without such frivolous expenses as paying to be weighed every week but it’s just not happening here. Whilst that’s no great trauma for me, it is going to be a huge problem for Aprilia if it’s not addressed so, for a couple of months, whilst I get the hang of it, I’m going to pay someone else to keep us both honest.

It’s changed a bit since I last did Slimming World, back then (15 years ago or so) you did either meat and veg days or carbs and veg days. Now you can do a mix of meat and carbs in the same day (and “Extra Easy Day”) which confuses me no end but I doubt I’ll do that many of the “Extra Easy days” as I can have more milk in either meat or carb days and I like to have lots of milk!!!

They also now have a slightly different way to dealing with young members which is going to be very useful for us getting a grip on Aprilia’s weight. Basically, what I can only have 4 portions of per day (two high fibre foods and 2 dairy servings) she can have pretty much unlimited quantities of which means that if she wants a snack she can add high fibre cereals/cereal bars into the choices as well as fruit snacks.

They also now have reward stickers for doing exercise. This is also new since I last was a member but makes a lot of sense, I mean, if we need reward stickers for every half a stone we lose, stickers for getting off our bum and doing some exercise will probably work pretty well too! So I’m aiming to get a “Bronze” award in 4 weeks for which I need to do at least 45 mins of exercise spread over 3 days and maintained for 4 weeks – I am pretty certain I already do 45 mins or more of exercise a week anyway but 45 mins of purposeful and structured exercise spread over the week is a good place to start. Last night I did 15 mins on the Wii Fit, only need to do that twice more for this week’s tick…..