Down The Rabbit Hole!

This year marks the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Alice in Wonderland. Macmillan have a fabulous celebration website here. There have been events going on all over the UK [and quite a lot in the USA too, where they seem quite obsessed with AIW]

I should like to get to the exhibition at the British Library – it opened on November 20th and runs through till April 17th 2016. It is FREE!

I was really pleased this week to pick up the book “Everything Alice” from our local library. By Hannah Read-Baldrey and Christine Leech [who developed the Hobbycraft magazine] this book has more than 50 projects related to the book – clothes, toys, teaparty accessories, recipes, gifts – using lots of different crafts and skills.

For the most part the instructions are very clear, the templates at the back are useful, and there are wonderfully intricate papercut illustrations on the pages between the projects. An altogether delightful and inspiring read.

I think the projects I would most like to make from the book are the sugar and spice comfits, the Red King’s Slippers, and the Cheshire Cat Handwarmers.

My own copy of Alice is over 80 years old- it was won by my father just after his 9th birthday, in 1933, as a prize for getting 98% in a Sunday School Scripture exam, as it says on the flyleaf…

It is published by Ward Lock, rather than Macmillan – and the illustrations are not by Tenniel, but by that other great children’s artist, Margaret W Tarrant. I love its heavy pages and pictures.

Just twenty miles from here, in Lyndhurst, you can find the grave of Alice Liddell – the girl for whom Carroll wrote the story. I remember taking our girls to see it, more than 20 years ago, when we had a holiday in the New Forest. The grave has been restored during this  anniversary year. I must get back and have another look.

I made costumes for two school productions of Alice – it remains one of my favourite children’s books [along with Through The Looking Glass] I enjoy the word-play, and the arcane mathematical puzzles – it is so much more than a book for 9 year olds. Here are the stamps the Royal Mail brought out last January to mark the anniversary.

Did you read Alice as a child? Did you enjoy it?

Fully Booked

Serious relaxation includes serious [and not so serious] reading time. Here's my stack, courtesy of Norfolk Libraries - Dereham and Fakenham branches.
From top to bottom. 
Seven Dead - a British Library Crime Classic by J Jefferson Farjeon. Not started this yet.
Numero Zero - by Umberto Eco. I loved "The Name Of The Rose" but gave up on this after one chapter.
Two by Peter James, from his Roy Grace detective series. Halfway through the purple one: Not dead yet [that's the title] Set around Brighton with plenty of detail of police procedure. ***
Making Peg Dolls And More. Great ideas,  clear instructions and templates but look

I don't want to seem picky, but none of these is a peg IMHO. But I will let her off because I think there are a lot of fresh interpretations and inspiring creations. 

I like the swallow marionette with the Thumbelina inside it, based on the Hans Christian Andersen story. There's a similar dragon too. 

The Comfort Friends, filled with soothing lavender are sweet, along with a similar tooth fairy cushion. And you will find Christmas decorations, cake toppers and more. This gets a definite *****
Happy Stitch. Jodie Rackley's 30 projects are well explained but nothing particularly innovative ***

Everything Oz is a great book from the team who produced 'Everything Alice' [review here] It's full of great patterns for items to make for a Wizard of Oz themed event. Foods, favours, fun stuff. Some is rather trivial, some very time consuming to create. But I love the book for this one item... if you make lime jelly with tonic water instead of regular water then it will glow in the dark under ultra violet light! I cannot wait to try this out *****
Wild Things to Make is a follow up to an earlier book [reviewed here] Very similar ideas [dresses, capes, pinafores etc] Good stuff - but Rosie is not in need of any more clothes right now ****
Sew classic clothes for girls [details]  comes from the author of the Cottage Mama Blog. There's an accompanying CD with all the patterns. It's intermediate /advanced level sewing. Good tips re piping etc. But the designs are a bit too 'girlie' for me. ***
I cannot review the bottom two yet as I still haven't looked at them! 

Beautiful Soup So Rich And Green

Waiting In A Hot Tureen** 

Not that I possess a proper tureen. Mine was served into bowls straight from the saucepan.

Bob enjoyed it anyway for his lunch on Saturday. 

He'd been doing jobs in the workshop all morning and I'd been tidying the raised bed. As well as a few leeks [which really did not amount to much] I harvested all the remaining leaves... chard, spinach, lettuce and oak choi. I also discovered two potatoes and one radish. Everything went into a large pan of smooth green soup. 

I used the basic recipe from this book, and followed the suggestion to serve with a drizzle of olive oil and some fresh thyme sprinkled on top. It looked very "cheffy" 

And now the raised bed is empty [apart from three potato plants and some winter lettuce] Everything has been covered with mulch and I've pegged down some green horticultural fleece to deter weeds and keep things looking tidy. 

**This is the song from Alice in Wonderland, sung by the Mock Turtle - a strange creature, illustrated by Tenniel with a turtle's body and the head of a calf. At the start of the 18C, sailors returning from the West Indies brought home to England beautiful green turtles which were made into vibrant coloured soup. 

But the poor creatures were hunted nearly to extinction - and clever chefs devised an inexpensive alternative, created by boiling up calves' heads. By the mid 19C, Mock Turtle soup was so popular, that some commercial brands warned consumers, ironically, to 'beware of imitations'

Heinz were producing MTS right up until the 1960s! I understand that the flavour was allegedly authentic, even if the verdant colour was missing, and the Mock Soup was usually brown. 

Nowadays this soup is extinct, but the Caribbean green turtles are abundant. Good news imho!

I've always sung this to the tune of the Blue Danube myself...