In short, this vintage style mug that I’d admired in a store on Saturday evening.

It has gold detailing on it and a blossom design that also goes inside the mug. It’s made by Pip Studio and they also make matching bowls, dinner plates and tea cups. So sweet!

I don’t tend to go that mad for birds although my favourite mug is a Mexican, earthenware one with a bluebird on it and  I also have a matching jug. This one I’ve christened the Twitter mug for no better reason than it reminds of the logo.

I’m now off to drink the tea that was brewing in the mug while I photographed it

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Sadly not from my garden, but a colleague was selling 2 kilo bags of apples from his garden for only £1 which was a steal.  I usually make apple crumbles but I might venture out into making a pie.  Depends on whether I can cope with making all that pastry

In other news, this arrived yesterday

A beautifully wrapped package from BackStitch which even had a hand written note.

And what was inside?

It’s the Oolong dress pattern from Colette.  As you may have gathered from the name, it’s a tea dress style  which is cut on the bias.

This is the first Colette pattern I’ve ever had and it’s different from the commercial patterns I’m used to. The instructions appear very clear and detailed and are sewn into the card wallet.

Goodness knows when I’ll get around to making this., always the way!, but it does look very interesting and excellent service from Backstitch.

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(adopts best Rolf Harris voice) Can you tell what it is yet?

It was my order from Cloth Kits. I checked out their site last week and couldn’t resist ordering  these lovelies

Glorious polka dot buttons

There were 40 but there was a gust of wind while I was photographing them outside and I lost one! I now have 39. I hope to find the missing one in the garden soon! Still not 100% sure what I’m going to do with them yet but they’re so lovely, I just had to order them. I love me some polka dots.

I’ve also picked up my needles again after a bit of an absence and am now on the gusset of soxie sock 2

Decreasing!

Apologies for the blurry pic. Once this is finished I’ll either cast on another second sock project or turn back to the Ysolda beret.

Oh, we were at the UK Pinball Party on the weekend and although we didn’t win anything, we had a great time

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It’s been a work in progress for a while. The staining, with one of Cuprinol’s garden shades, took ages and we still missed little bits. It also didn’t help that just as we were getting to the last of the painting, the heavens opened and it poured down with rain. Rain that washed sections of blue off

We hoped to assemble it the same weekend but yet again, the weather went against us. The wind was pretty bad and it would have been a nightmare to errect. But yesterday it all went together. It took a few hours and was hard work, even though Doug did the really hard bits and I held things in place.

It still needs more stain and to have some grass brushed off it and then a base to stand on but aside from all that I think it’s beautiful. I did a double take when I looked out of my window and saw it this morning while making tea. It’s going to be the perfect place to relax, knit, read or surf on my netbook. I expect my cat Emma will be fond of it too

KnitCast – episode 32 where I meet Mags Kandis and chat about her new book Gifted, the love of making stuff, colour and Frieda Kahlo is now online. I’m also giving away a copy of Gifted. For the info head on over to Knitcast.com

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I have been growing some things. Some have worked out, others haven’t.

First up – lettuce.

Lovely Lettuce

More red coloured luttuce

The weird blue things in the soil are organic slug pellets. I hate slugs and snails. Even the ones with the cute dark spirals are their shells. They’re evil and munch away on things before I’ve had chance to have a taste myself.

This is the second batch grown in this self watering windowbox (it has a reservoir for water). The first lot were eaten all except for one seedling which after careful nurturing I discovered to be a weed. That really sucked but, it’s a hazard of gardening when you’re growing something new and don’t know what it looks like when it’s a young plant.

Basil – I started off with 23, count ‘em, 23, basil seedlings. I now have 10 left. Damn slugs.

Hopes this grows fast - I want pesto!

My cauliflowers have been hit hard by aphids I sprayed them with a soapy solution but it’s not helped.

Poor cauli

My corn is the strongest looking plant so far.

The hardiest of my three corn plants

I really want it to succeed. Even one ear of corn would be great, so fingers crossed.

Poor pumpkin. It’s been hit by aphids too. I’m not sure if I can rescue it.

Struggling pumpkin

This summer squash isn’t looking too bad but I’m still concerned about the aphids.

Healthyish squash

Another pest that I have to deal with, albeit a cute one, is Emma. She likes lying in the raised bed. As a result I lost some carrots. I went a bit overboard while sowing replacements and now the raised bed is full of little yellow carrot seedlings. I hope some of them survive. I have another self watering tub and am thinking of transferring some of them to that.

I also have some pepper seedlings

Pepper seedling

Smaller pepper seedling

and a very young Roma tomato.

This baby took a long time to germinate

I doubt that either of them are going to be able to do a great deal this summer, but, as always, we shall see.

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I was surprised to find that this was a collection of stories and art work with an article on the new costume and an introduction by Lynda Carter. Really surprised since I was expecting it to just launch into the new story.

The stories appeared to be all new, although I regularly get my comics subscriptions I haven’t been able to read them for a while hence why I assume they’re new. The first seemed to involve all of DC’s superheroines and showed how they felt about her which was quite interesting but I had a soft spot for the story featuring Power Girl (rolls eyebrows at her costume, yet again) since it was quite funny. There was an adventure with Superman which featured a bad guy that I think I remember from my early days of reading WW during the seventies. Before I forget the first story also featured the Kapatelis. I hadn’t realised those characters were introduced way back in 1986, hadn’t realised it was so long ago! Reminds me that around that time they tried to pitch a WW tv show with those characters as a sort of soap. Some of the full page artwork in 600 was just gorgeous. I wonder if they’ll release some of them as posters?

Anyway, I digress. By the time I reached the reboot there weren’t many pages left which was unsatisfying as although I still don’t like the new outfit – her leggings are very tight, so much for trying to make the outfit more acceptable – I still was intrigued enough by the story to want to know more. So this issue just felt like a big tease really. Hope I can get my hands on the next one soon.

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Wonder Woman's first costume

I’ve been a Wonder Woman fan practically all my life. I grew up watching Lynda Carter bending metal bars and running around in heels and a basque at Saturday teatimes.

I have too many WW action figures to count and one of my favourite mugs is a large WW breakfast mug.

My mug

I love WW and she was a formative part of my life. Even that time when at about age six I climbed out of my bedroom window on to the flat roof below and tried to climb back up the wall using a net curtain cord. I quickly discovered that I didn’t have her technique.

As a  comic book reader, I’ve always been highly critical of the way female characters are drawn, usually with enormous breasts, and in costumes that are barely there. It’s just as well that Powergirl is strong considering what she’s packing up top.

Any other woman would have back strain and be seeking a breast reduction.  I read Tales of the Teen Titans as a teen and Starfire wore very little which I found quite bizarre.

WW’s knickerline has got quite cut at times which I found annoying but the overall outfit…well…I’m feminist and yet, and yet, I love that old costume.  Maybe it is because it’s so deeply rooted in me.

Warner Bros stores WW beanie doll sat in front of some of my trade paperbacks

The tv show got me into comics in a big way and at 38 I’m still buying her title and Ms Marvel and Spider-Woman just as I did when I was a child. Ms Marvel’s costume isn’t  any better either. There’s slightly more coverage now than from her belly button baring outfit from 1977 but it’s still quite high cut.

My first thoughts on seeing the new outfit was  “oh my god, they really want to get that film off the ground, that’s why they’ve done this.” Because it was never really going to be that viable to have an actress running around on the big screen in a swimsuit. Even Halle Berry in that abomination of a movie and abomination to the comic book character film version of Catwoman had trousers of a kind.

So this outfit is going to be more saleable in that regard.  If, and when, a big screen version comes around, I would have prefer to see her in her Amazonian warrior armour. She was doing it years before Zena and that look would work.

This new look is so dated and what is going on with the bracelets? They’ve now been turned into gloves. I’ve always loved WW’s bracelets although in some versions they looked incredibly heavy but then she is a super human so I guess she could the weight. But what they have her in now is appalling and just does look right. Apparently they’ll allow her to leave a Zorroesque W mark on anyone who crosses her. This seems miles away from the bullets and bracelets of old. Guess she won’t lose her powers if a man ties her hands together either. (no, really)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely against WW changing her look. Although I hated the change from the glorious golden eagle on her chest to the double W symbol. It was only after I realised the double W had been around for twenty years (changed in 1982 I think) that I finally accepted it. When Diana lost her WW title to Artemis she started wearing a bra and cycling shorts. I hated that.

So, pluses for the new costume are at least she’s got some coverage I guess. Negatives are that it looks 10-20 years out of date. And she hasn’t got proper bracelets.

One of the things that bothers me more than the costume redesign is that they’ve also changed her age. In this time line Wondy didn’t grow up in Themyscira (Paradise Island) for thousands of years. She was taken into hiding at age three and the book’s set twenty years later making her twenty-three.

The new storyline is written by J Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame. I used to read Supreme Power his “sort of” revision of Superman, Batman & WW on Marvel a few years ago.  I do like him as a writer so I’m going to give it a chance. He did some great work on Spider-Man Peter Parker some years back too.

While I was looking for images for this post I found a link to this game which looks pretty good unless you’re trying to fight against Wonder Woman!

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It would be useful if I had some photos of his to show at this point but I don’t so I’ll just show you someone elses instead.

Knitting pinball fact – Annie Modesitt likes pinball and is apparently very good at it. If  I have time at some point I’ll upload the pinball conversation that got cut from the interview I did with her for KnitCast.

Like knitters,  pinball players like to get together, talk about their interests, projects (since most games tend to be quite old they’re usually repairing something), compare and  play each other machines. Pinball is also a sport and if you take part in the league competitions and other competitions – you can be a world ranked pinball player. My ranking isn’t great, last time I checked I was 5000 and something, so a long way to go. I do want to get better but since I’m usually at Doug’s every other weekend and we tend to do more than just stay in the house and play pinball, I don’t get to practice that often. It’s funny, like most things whether it be sewing, knitting or cooking, you tend to get your best results when you relax a little and stop worrying about things being perfect. I still want to get better scores though

Last Sunday we went to the final South West Pinball meet of the season. It was hosted by Dave Rolfe in Abergavenny. Whereas Doug’s pinballs are from the 1990′s and have various computerised modes, Dave’s are from the 70′s and 80′s and are what’s called solid state machines. Even though they’re different, they’re still fun, difficult and frustrating to play at times. Just like all pins! Dave had at least twenty pins and also some arcade machines.

I was really interested in the artwork on them, some of the designs of the games are just beautiful. Central Park is a very old game that wasn’t set up but the backboard is lovely. Just to the side of it is a PacMan sign. It’s stood on top of a Rolling Stones pinball.

I loved the designs on these backboards for quite old games. This pic of Gigi didn’t come out very well, sadly. There’s something quite charming about these designs. Although I’m not too sure how I feel about the clowns!

Although, something to bear in mind is that a common feature among some pinballs that I’ve noticed is that if there’s a female character in the art, she tends to have rather large breasts! As a comic book fan I recognise this trend theme from interests that tend to be dominated by, or at least aimed at, straight males. I don’t remember April from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being that well endowed there but look at the pinball table and there she is, busting out of her jumpsuit! Reminds me of the time I decided against buying a Marvel Black Cat action figure because her costume was unzipped to her navel. Here’s Strikes and Spares as an example.

And check out the lady on Mystic too

Doug achived the highest score of the league on Flash Gordon. Bizarrely, although he doesn’t feature in the film at all, William Shattner voices the narration on the game.

This one could be really frustrating, because if you pulled the plunger to release the ball two strongly the ball just rolled right down the middle. That happened to my first two balls on the game.

I quite liked Vector, mainly because Doug thought it might be based on a film and I really fancy seeing the film.

It looks like a really crap sci-fi film and I love the idea of seeing them spinning around on their wheels with their weird bat hands. As a geek, you have to have room for some bad sci-fi movies

I didn’t quite “get” pinball at first but now I’m quite competitive about it. And like everyone else I’m fairly frustrated when I lose the ball.  In fact, no one ever looks happy with their scores because their game/go finishes they’ve just lost the ball. In a tournament you usually have to play a set number of machines which are on tournament settings. So, no extra balls if you do well and they tend to be fairly hard too. So how did I do? Well, I came 17th out of 18th. I still have a long way to go although Doug says my performance is getting better. He came very close to making the UK Finals but got pipped at the post and came in at 6th.  The next competition will be at the Pinball Party in August. Last year I was just following Doug around and recording his score. This year will be different. I have no idea how I’ll do on the day, lets hope I can relax

(BTW I’ve changed my blog template but haven’t finished tweaking with it just yet)

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Yesterday I used my sewing machine for the first time in three years. I’ve used Doug’s before but it was nice to sit in front of mine again. I was worried I might not remember how to use it but everything came flooding back.

I’ve been wanting to try Heather Ross’ Mendocino sundress for a while and on Tuesday night I cut the fabric out. I’m writing this on the WordPress android app and somewhere in this post you’ll be able to see my first attempt at shirring. I’ve added a few more rows since taking that photo but still have plenty more to sew before it’s done.

I wanted the dress to be lined and decided that I’d rather do French seams than have to overlock (serge) everything. The problem now, however, is that the dress might be too big. But I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Oh, and I’m a year older. I’m sort of used to being 38 now since I’ve felt it since Christmas! Sad but true. As soon as Christmas and January time comes along I start feeling the age that I’m going to be in six months time. I have a feeling that next year might be more different. I’ll start feeling 39 in January 2011 and since that’s almost 40 I’ll be feeling 40 instead. So I’ll stupidly be feeling eighteen months older than I am and eighteen months before I really have to worry about it!

Ah, well it’s only a number. That’s what I’ll keep telling myself….

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And yet instead it’s usually a bit done on the garden, a few rows of knitting completed, nothing sewn but a pattern cut out and sewing machine dug out.  I decide to cook something from scratch and end up leaving it too late so it’s a dinner of fish fingers and hashbrowns again.

I find myself in danger of not appreciating the little things, of not stopping and smelling the roses – although, I did manage to cut two stems from the garden and put them in a vase last week – of not stopping.

I know that little and often is the way to success, baby steps and you’ll get the job done without feeling as though you’re drowning in it. And yet, despite knowing all of this I fall into the same traps again.

So, today I am having a cup of tea while sat at my new garden table. In a moment I’ll go inside and cut out and start to sew a dress. It would be nice to finish that tonight but we’ll see. I have a couple of days off for my birthday and will spend one of them in the garden straightening it out a little bit. Small steps.

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