Bookclub and Reading

When I went to University I chose to do English Language and Literature largely because it was my favourite subject at school and it was probably the one that I was best at for A-Level. I loved reading, but I always struggled with the fact that I am a pretty slow reader and even though people are convinced that I am fast, it can take me months sometimes to get through a book.  Like a lot of things I need a "target" to work towards, or nothing really happens.

I'm a bit of a geek too ever since I was 15 I have kept a small flower covered book with a list of all the books that I've read since then (which is now going on for about 17 years!).  Eventually I twigged that it might be interesting to look back on how many books that I had read each year and so from 1998 I've got a log of how many books I've read per year which is as follows:

1998 - 26

1999 - 28

2000 - 46

2001 - 34

2002 - 9

2003 - 13

2004 - 6

2005 - 11

2006 - 9

2007 - 18

2008 - 5

2009 - 2 (!!!)

2010 - 7

2011 - 6

As you can see I read the most books when I was at Uni from 1998 - 2001 which is to be expected as I had a lot more time on my hands,  as well as the fact that I had to read about 3 books per week per semester which was 12 weeks in total (so actually I should probably have read a few more than I did!).

As you can see apart from a blip in 2007 (not sure what was going on then!) my reading has really declined - probably as a result of the work that I do taking up a lot of my brainpower and making me fairly tired so I fall asleep very quickly if I try and read at bedtime.  The stupid thing is that I really do love reading, I just struggle when I'm tired and don't have an end date to get things done to finish a book with momentum unless it's an incredible book and I'm hooked.

When I joined Buns & Roses in 2010 I hadn't realised that they have their own Book Club and I was really pleased that they did - it would give me the impetuous to make sure that I finished a book by a deadline as well as giving me suggestions of books to read that I might not normally encounter (at the first meeting that I went to we discussed Jam and Jeopardy by Doris Davidson which was certainly a different read)  and have a chance to chat through them with friendly ladies eating cake.  I've already read nearly twice as many books as I did last year so I think it's got a definite positive impact on my reading.

We meet at the Tiled Hall Cafe which is next to the Art Gallery and the Leeds Central Library. It's a really pretty venue and they serve gorgeous cakes - Earl Grey Tea Loaf, Scones with clotted cream and jam, Caramac cake and Neapolitan Cake.  They also serve a great selection of drinks including wine and beer and my favourite - Suki tea - I love the Russian Caravan which is like a milder slightly less smoky lapsang souchong.

Our last book club was really fun - we met on Sunday and we had all finished reading the book that we were discussing - The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky which we all enjoyed. 

The Buns & Roses Book club is really friendly, we don't worry if someone hasn't finished the book, or indeed if they hate it that's fine too!  Everyone is fine to voice their opinion and most importantly it's fun - we talk about what we think of the cover of the book and who might play certain characters in a film version as well as discussing more technical things like characterisation and plot.

We all agreed that we liked how the book reminded us very much of being teenagers and in particular Susan who is from America said that it really reminded her and felt very well written and representative of her time in high school much better in comparison to some other books that she has read in the past.  

Sam who was new to book club mentioned that she had read the book slightly differently as she'd seen the film first, but really enjoyed the book and actually hadn't expected the form of the book to be the series of letters that are presented.

In terms of characters we felt that they were all very "real" characters and had a lot of sympathy with the main character - Charlie and genuinely felt as though we were taken on a bit of a journey with him and saw how he developed.  

Lianne had been worried about how the ending of the book would transpire and how some of the fairly serious issues would be handled, but actually felt that it was effectively written.

We all enjoyed the book and I found that I really enjoyed the references to different music of the time and how his teacher recommended different books for Charlie to read to help him develop both intellectually and emotionally.  I loved how one of these books was A Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger as the feel of this book was very similar to that, but the characters were much more likeable.

We tried to think of some Christmas themed books for our December Bookclub meeting, but went for Life of Pi by Yann Martel instead and will be meeting at 2pm on the 16th December at the same place - you are welcome to come and join us.

Hobbycrafts Craft Fair and Cake International

7 hours stacked full of craft and cake - a great day.

I got on the 8.12 am train to head down to Birmingham to meet my friend Celeste and use our £6 worth Tesco Club Card Vouchers for entry to both the Hobbycrafts Craft Fair and Cake International shows.  We met up at New Street Station and took the train to Birmingham NEC (it was a bit of a crush and apparently you can get charged for First Class tickets if they find you just in the vestibule area - cheeky!).

We started off with the Cake International Show and went straight over to look at all the amazing cake competition entries.  Everything bar a few internal supports and dummies is made entirely from sugar and it's quite overwhelmingly amazing just how clever people are.  

I took over 100 photos which is far too many to post here, but here is the link to the whole album.  However, here are a couple of my favourites:

This one was in the Handbags and shoes category - I was really impressed that it's literally been knitted/crocheted together with icing.

This one was in the cupcakes category - I had thought that cupcakes would be a fairly straightforward entry,but I was really impressed how creative some of the entries were.  I particularly liked the typewriter in this one.

These two were in the wedding cake with "at least 2 tiers category" and there were so many entries and they were all amazing.  I liked the Halloween themed cake and I also loved the really tall square tiered cake as it was really different.

This category was flowers made from sugarcraft and they were startlingly realistic.  I was really impressed with the tiny detail on them.

These two were in the "Sculpted novelty cake category".  The Roast chicken looked really realistic and the glaze was really convincing.  Slimer was great too, the shaping was really clever, but there was also some sugar "slime" as well.

These two were in the younger category and I loved Oscar who was in the 12 - 18 year old category - really realistic, fun and reminded me of my favourite Sesame Street character.  I apparently insisted to my Mum when I was about 2 years old that it was "arsker" and not "Oscar" as she was trying to get me to pronounce it.  The Dinosaur was in the Under 12 category and was more impressive than I think anything that I might be able to manage! 

This was my favourite cake - Hagrid's house.  The detail was incredible, the pumpkins, the toadstools and best of all even inside Hagrid's hut had amazing detail.

I'm in so much admiration of these cakes, I'd love to have the time and energy to be able to create something so detailed and impressive - not sure that I would be able to bring myself to be able to eat it though after so much work!

We stopped for some lunch and I showed Celeste some more photos from my trip to Bali and had some Sushi and Edamame beans.

Next we walked around the sales stalls and I bought some chocolate "melts" in purple, red and brown (peanut butter flavour) some cellophane bags, purple and red lolly sticks.  I also bought some cellophane with patterns on them that you put melted chocolate on and when you peel off the cellophane the patterns stay on.  I'm going to be making some Chocolate Lollies for Christmas Presents that I learned at the Living La Vida Cocoa WI workshop in October.   I also bought some edible glitter to make them all a bit more exciting!

We then went into the Hobbycrafts, Crafts for Christmas and Arts Material Live section of the show.  

I bought a couple of goody bags as they are always pretty good value for money - the Prima bag was pretty good with some magazines and an OPI crackle nail polish in black which is itself about £8 and the whole bag was only £3!  The other bag was £6 and had loads in it, lots of card making papers and letters and some ribbons - apparently the value was circa £50 and I can believe it!

I then was enticed to buy some more nail polish after an impressive demonstration when I had a strawberry, flowers and a French Manicure drawn onto my nails in seconds using a set of 10 polish pens from Nails Supreme.  This morning I've turned all my nails into a French Manicure, they are great and really easy to use.  I paid £20 although apparently they are usually £30, but a quick google search revealed that you can buy them for £20 online.

I bought 4 balls of Rico Can Can yarn to make scarves to sell on the stall at the Buns & Roses craft stall.  I've used Rico Can Can before and it's so easy to use - cheat knitting really as it knits so fast and I will make it into scarves that look like this:

I can make a scarf up in about an hour or so in front of the TV, so it's a really good craft for winter nights sat watching my favourite programs from Sky Plus like The Bill, Fresh Meat and and of the CSI or Criminal Minds series.  It also only needs someone to know how to knit basic knitting and cast off, you don't even need to know how to cast on!

I then bought some really good value fabrics for patchworking - 4 pieces for £6 and then some Christmas smelling oil - cinnamon, clove, orange - really smells like Christmas!  Here is my haul!

Someone else was very interested in my bag when I got back in, not sure why as there was no fish or meat in my purchases!

Balinese Batik and Japanese Dinner

Saturday morning I had booked to do a Batik class with I Nyoman Warta - booking was quite interesting as I'd had to wander into his house in person on Thursday at Jalan Gautama No 12 and speak to his son as his wife didn't have enough English to understand what I was asking!  I wrote my name in a book for Saturday and the money I wanted to pay which denoted the size of the Batik that I would be doing.  Anyway, weirdly enough it turns out that I had been trying to book with the very similarly named I Nyoman Suradnya who is at number 10 (i.e. next door!) and had emailed on Tuesday, but not received a reply, which is why I had gone along in person to book.  Just a bit confusing to have two Batik artists next door on the same street with nearly the same name!  You would think that they might try and differentiate themselves a little better!  The benefits I think from the class I ended up taking accidentally are that it was one to one tuition and cheaper from what I can tell from looking at the other teacher's website.  

So I arrived at the class and there was an Australian couple picking up their completed Batik (reassuring as it was literally his house that I'd gone into for the class!) and after a little confusion the teacher gave me some paper and told me to sketch.  I was at first a bit taken aback, I had though that a class would be very much him teaching me, maybe showing me examples or giving me some stencils to use.  I haven't really done any sketching since I took a drawing workshop at Buns & Roses last year!  I sat looking a bit lost for a while and so he suggested that I drew what I loved about Bali - I said that I loved everything and then I thought about the one thing that I love more than anything - Cats!  I took out my IPhone and scrolled through my saved pictures before coming up with the one of Pocky below to base my design on.

I started off by sketching the outline of Pocky with her paw draped over the side of the chair, but slowly changed the chair into a branch and made the underneath into a pond using some of the pictures of the fish I'd seen at the Holy Water temple to inspire me (as well as copying some of the pictures that the teacher had on display).  I also put some Frangipani Flowers in the top corners for decoration as one of the things that I love about Bali is their fragrance and the fact that *Everything* is decorated with flowers and often they are Franipani.  Here is my initial sketch.

After my sketch on paper I was then given a frame with cotton stretched over it and I had to transfer the design in pencil onto the fabric.  Nyoman told me not to worry if the pencil showed as the Batik process would hide it.  He then gave me a sarong to wear (I think to protect my trousers) and showed me how to apply the wax to the lines on the design that I wanted to keep white with a special instrument called a Chanting or Tjanting.  I practiced first on some paper and found it fairly easy to get the hang of, you just need to angle it right so you don't get too much wax rushing out at once and move it with confidence along the lines that you want.  Similar in technique I think to icing letters onto a cake.  Here is the next stage of my Batik with the sketch outlined in wax and a picture of the pot that is used to melt the wax.

Nyoman then provided me with 4 different pots of coloured dye - red, yellow, brown and blue and showed me how to apply the dye which you can do fairly freehand and don't have to worry about staying in the lines!  I used the brown for Pocky and then swirled a lot of the colour around with a reassurance that the next layers would add more detail.  Here is another process picture.

The next stage was pretty simple - applying some green coloured liquid over the whole screen - it looks like he's doing it for me, but he just showed me what to do and I filled in the rest!

The next stage was very simple - he asked his son to rinse the screen for him and then he dried it off with a cloth and left it in the sun for a few minutes to dry.

We then sat down next to the melted wax again and he showed me how to use a normal paint brush to block out bits of the picture that I wanted to stay that colour e.g. some of the fish scales, parts of the Frangipani flower and the whole of Pocky apart from her eyes that would be black and would be the last colour to go on.

The next part was really good fun - sweeping loads of paraffin over the main parts of the picture for "cracking" - basically I coated the whole of the "water section" and the "sky section" with a layer of paraffin.

The next bit is also fun - you run your finger nail underneath the paraffin covered areas to create "cracks".  

When you are happy with the cracks a layer of darker blue dye was put over the entire screen with a bit think paintbrush.

The paraffin cracking process is then repeated and this time red dye is put over the whole picture, first some more areas are blocked out with wax to keep the same colour such at the flowers.

The process is repeated again and this time black dye is put over the entire picture with special attention to applying it to areas that I wanted black such as Pocky's eyes and the fish eyes.  I also did some cracking along the tree branch to make it look a bit like wood.  To make sure that the dye made it all the way through, it's applied to the back of the screen too.

And then finally it was the big reveal, to remove the wax I had thought it would be a case of complicated ironing off of all the wax, but it was actually much  more straight forward - you just dunk it in a big bucket of hot water and it melts off into the water!

They washed it a couple more times to remove all the wax fully and then it was hung over a tree to dry and I chatted a little more with Nyoman who has limited English beyond teaching Batik, but was able to tell me about how he'd been due to exhibit and teach in Holland, but then his sister died and he had to cancel his plans to save for her cremation ceremony and then he had been due to exhibit and teach in Germany and then his father died.  He really was a lovely teacher and so genuine - all along he said that if I wanted a break and to come back later he wouldn't charge any extra as he charged per piece and not per day and how he felt it was important to only teach small groups at a time so that people didn't make big mistakes and were disappointed with what they created.

  

After my Batik had dried I paid Nyoman and walked back to my hotel room for a well earned cool down and break (Nyoman had even sent his son during the lesson to buy tissues as he could see I was so hot!)  

Rachel came over with Kiran who had achieved a record 2 hour nap!  It was getting into early evening so we decided upon an early dinner and walked over to her favourite Japanese restaurant - Kagemusha which has a lovely view over the rice fields and she'd often seen cats in!  I tried some local rice wine - Brem which was only 10000 rupiah (60p) per glass and was surprisingly tasty and we both opted for Bento Boxes for our main courses which came with loads - Miso soup, noodles, rice, vegetable and prawn tempura, chicken and some vegetables and pickles.  Kiran enjoyed the food, but enjoyed pulling himself up over the rails next to the ricefield and shouting with glee!

Right at the end of the meal we saw something that I've wanted to see since I first arrived in Bali this time - a Tokay gecko!  They are basically bigger versions of the small lizards that you commonly see running around all over the place, but make the most noisy and strange calls at night that sound like they should be made by a bird - you can hear them yourself Here.  And here is a picture that I took before this particular Tokay snaffled a moth it had been chasing. 

We walked back up Monkey Forest Road stopping to pick up some Snickers flavoured ice cream for dessert (diet starts when I get back to England, or maybe Leeds at least!).  We decided to grab a glass of wine and so went back to Arts Kafe which was fine until the band started playing complete with Bongo drums waking Kiran up who had very easily fallen off to sleep in his sling.  Wine in Bali is not cheap - it was 75000 rupiah in Arts Kafe which is particularly pricey and usually about 35000 rupiah, however in most places it's about 185000 a bottle which is what we paid for a bottle of Hatten White Wine in Arts Kafe - about £11.  A local beer in comparison is only about 15000 rupiah or £1.  Rachel walked back with a sleepy Kiran, I finished the wine and grabbed a grape juice and some water from the shop on the way back before heading to bed at an unheard of time for me at 10pm as I was totally exhausted!

A day of stitching and motor bikes

This morning I was supposed to get up very early (about 5.30 am), load up the car and do a carboot sale near Leeds Bradford Airport, but when I finally woke up my phone said 9.40 am which was far too late.  

I got up (eventually) and then headed over to my friend Hayley's house for a day of stitching and crafting.  On the way I picked up an apple pie milkshake and a pineapple, strawberry and cherry smoothie from Shaky Jakes, some Bakewell Tart from Costellos and some porridge with raisins from Love Rouge Bakery strangely served to take out in a coffee cup.  All of these things were yummy (although can't personally comment on the milkshake because that was for Hayley as part payment for personal stitching tuition.)  

I first met Hayley at Buns & Roses which is an amazing WI Group based in Leeds City Centre (I might be slightly biased now as I'm on the committee, but I do believe it's awesome).  I was very disappointed that I couldn't go along to one of the workshops in August which was called Night of the Living Thread and the blog post is here if you want to read about it.  Hayley very kindly offered to teach me and so I took up far too much of her Sunday learning how to do some English Paper Patchworking, Fussy Cutting, Blanket Stitch as well as lots of other hints and tips like how to sew on sequins and spray paint fabric.

In between stitching, Hayley and Flower also introduced me to Moto GP (apologies Hayley if it wasn't, but I think this is what it was called) which I found far more interesting to watch than usual car racing.  The riders go around corners with their knees literally on the floor to take the corner as tightly as possible - this is not something that I have ever seen before!

Anyway, I've not yet finished my stitching project, but here it is as a work in progress - Hayley is going to help me stretch it over a canvas when I've finished it.  It's very orange, neon and covered with owls and skulls.   Thanks Hayley for all your help - I had a really lovely day.