Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

Sorry, couldn't think of a better title. Haven't blogged for a while. I'm trying not to keep quiet for too long. Writing about things, even meaningless things proves they actually happened. (Sometimes, when I'm feeling a little out of touch with reality I wonder if my memories are real. Supposing technology existed to create memories that never happened, like in Total Recall for example. How would you know the difference? I think about these kinds of things a lot. These kind of questions make me wonder if I'm normal. I bet other people don't think about these things....)

I could ramble on about that since I'm in that kind of mood but I won't. I started this entry with a goal of some kind.... Typing is hard. I've let my nails grow too long. When I reach a point that everyday things are a little tricky or uncomfortable it's time to cut them. Anyway.

I've taken the second step towards a new hobby. The first step being me finding out about the hobby via interesting youtube videos, a little research on the matter and video tutorials. A couple of days ago I got all the supplies I needed. Today I made my very first lump of cold porcelain. Yay.

I spend a lot of time drifting from one interesting, crafty hobby that I can sit down for to another. Sometimes I wonder if the next thing I try will be something I have a natural talent at. People do seem to have natural talents for things. I'm jealous of that. But I know that very few people are lucky enough to be good at something without trying.

I can make lots of origami things. Admittedly none are my own design and if I don't do a particular design for a while I need a reminder, but I can do them.

I can make pretty cards from limited resources (most of what I have is poorly made merchandise from Tesco). Okay so It's not amazing. Better than a complete beginner though.

I can knit. I've knitted scarves of my own design. I've made a hat, a baby jumper and almost made a full baby body suit, I've made socks, 2 little toys, admittedly these are all from patterns but I still made them.
I can also do basic crochet and amigurumi. I've made two unique designs for that. I made a clumsy stuffed pig named potato and I made an apple (It's a bad apple from the song Bad Apple).

I can cook to some degree. I love adding a little mixed herbs and spices to things to give them flavour.

I can sew. Only basic sewing but if something rips I can sew it up.

I can also do cross stitching, haven't done it for a while though.

I can stray off topic for no reason. Sorry. Sometimes I need a little self validation to remind me of what I can do. So it's not important. It's not going to change the world. I don't care. I can do it and not everyone can. It's not a matter of them not being able, it's because they do other things and that's okay too. I can't do everything that everyone else does.

Anyway. What else did I set out to say? Ah.

Mum's birthday didn't exactly go as I planned when I mentioned it a few blogs ago. I'd planned to go out and buy some new, better, card making supplies but in the end I didn't want to go outside. So I ordered the book on Amazon for next day delivery. On her birthday I went round the corner to buy some cream, strawberries and a sponge cake. Since we didn't shop that weekend and mum did it during the week I couldn't get that cream I was after. If I asked her to get it she'd get suspicious and I hadn't seen it since Christmas finished. I planned to make her a strawberry roll cake instead. We had sponge mix already. I got the cake as a backup in case things went wrong.

I could only get light whipped cream for the filling and that goes runny pretty much as soon as it's out of the can. The roll cake came out burnt in 2 corners and a little too stiff anyway, although I still tried to make it work. The cream melted into the sponge and made it soggy.

I iced the shop bought sponge with white chocolate and topped it with 6 evenly sized strawberries (I cut them to size). I was going for the kind of cake I see a lot in anime, covered with cream and topped with a ring of strawberries (check out cooking with dog. The Christmas cake video on youtube for a perfect example of what I mean). I was going for a simple design that slightly resembled that. I even perfected something I failed to do last year. Put a little chocolate tablet in the middle with HAPPY BIRTHDAY on it. I was very proud of it.

I hate going backwards, especially when I think that something I've done wasn't good enough. Last year's birthday cake was a mess. I didn't want to repeat it. That's why I iced the cake with some old cooking chocolate that was still good, because I suck at making good icing with icing sugar, and we didn't have any icing sugar.

Since I've been doing this for a few years now, doing it because I can isn't good enough anymore. Appreciation because even though it looks kind of crummy you know I tried hard with it, even though it didn't turn out like I wanted, isn't good enough. It has to look at least slightly appetising. It can't just look like love and little skill has gone into it. There has to be skill. It has to look almost shop bought but maybe not quite. It has to be somewhere between my previous failures and professional quality because if it doesn't then there's not much point me trying to decorate it now is there.

That's why I worked hard on both cakes but the sponge more so (after the roll cake collapsed). The roll cake failure is disappointing but forgivable since it was my first time making it. Decorating a plain shop bought sponge cake is a different matter. Like I said, I've been doing that for a few years now. Failure is not an option.

But. Enough about cake.

I made her a card. I spent the whole day on it. The card was similar to the cake. It had to be better than previous ones. The day before her birthday I was trawling through tutorials but I either lacked the skill or supplies to make them. Eventually I got hooked on basic pop up techniques. I found a tutorial that made me remember I used to make basic pop ups when I was little, at one point I was rather obsessed with it. (You know when you make 2 snips in a folded sheet of paper and invert the fold?) I played around with that for a while and eventually designed a pop up mug. It was actually too big to fit inside the card so I stuck extra bits of card to the front in a pretty frame shape but left the back uneven since that didn't matter. I made a top and a bottom for the mug and added a handle to it. Then I used some extra card and put happy birthday on it in fun sticky letters. I stuck on a tab and put it inside the mug so when you pulled the tab the happy birthday message came up. It was quite rough and didn't work as well as it did when I first made it but it was pretty good.

For mum's birthday, about a week or 2 before she suspected her friend was up to something because people kept saying happy birthday for last week. Despite the fact that it was the wrong date, generally people don't know when her birthday is. Like with me, people don't ask so I don't mention it. A few days before the day I got a strange email. I don't log onto Facebook. I don't like it. I feel awkward using it. But I get email notifications for messages and friend requests and such. I don't respond. Providing the message is small enough I can read it in the email notification.

So. I got a message from someone claiming to be mum's friend's son. I didn't doubt it. When I was working there he was having a baby girl and I knitted my first clothes for her (a furry white hat with a Hello Kitty face and a furry white jumper to match. This is because when I heard about the baby I gave her a nickname, like I do with all babies I hear of from and/or relating to the few people I know of (In this case it was mum's friend's third grandchild but that son's first baby. Mum told me how he was so excited about it when they found out the gender but when he told his father that it was a girl the father was uninterested and that upset him so I vowed to myself to make the baby a pretty present. I had a little hobby at the time of imagining what kind of hats I'd like to knit for certain babies. Mainly things like a frog, a ducky, a bear or a bunny.) For some reason I nicknamed this baby Kitty, after Hello Kitty, or Kitty-chan). Recently he had a baby boy (I call him Snow bear) too but I didn't knit anything this time because it was too close to Christmas. (When we were going to see the family last Summer (though it was actually Autumn but let's not get into that) I made 2 congratulations cards, one for a boy and one for a girl, since I didn't know Usa-chan was a girl then, but I never used them because there was no one to give them to. Annoying. I worked hard on them too. Mum told me that her friend was expecting another grandson so we could use the boy card for that. When he was born we bought a cute little coat (it's kind of like Chi-chan's full body bunny suit I was making, except a professional job and it was fleecy, not knitted) with little bear ears on the hood (exactly like the one we bought Chi-chan last Christmas only this one was either white or pale blue, can't remember now, and Chi's was brown.) They sent us pictures of him in the coat in an email saying thank you, especially since it was cold (they also sent a thank you email about 2 years ago for what we gave Kitty-chan.) That's why I call the baby Snow bear, because of the bear coat. Anyway. Unnecessary back story there. Basically I know of this person reasonably well but I don't know him personally, I've never met him (although he was in a few pictures holding Snow bear).

He said that his mother had asked him to ask me what perfume mum liked. Not wanting to log onto facebook just for this I questioned mum on her current perfume (I know her favourite but we haven't been able to get it for a while) she was a little suspicious but didn't have a clue as to my purpose. I looked through the Boots website to make sure I was recommending the right one and check the spelling and availability and discovered that mum's favourite is available again.

I wrote a short yet surprisingly formal letter listing the 3 most recent choices and describing the third one as "The Holy Grail of sorts" because it was mum's favourite. I sealed it in an envelope and instructed mum to hand it to her friend as soon as she got to work.

They got her favourite one. I didn't tell her that it still existed so she'd be surprised if they got it for her, which they did. She wears that one to work now. It's long lasting but not overpowering like some others she's tried.

Mum stopped off in Tesco during that week to get assorted cupcakes and things to take into work. She wouldn't normally do that on her birthday but since people knew of it this year there'd be a little spread for everyone. I was annoyed with her. Why should she take in cupcakes for her own birthday? Shouldn't they supply the cupcakes? And what if they weren't really planning anything? She'd look like an idiot. I already think they take her for granted. That's one of the reasons I never want to work in an office again but maybe I'll complain about that later.

When I was in primary school (I'm not going to explain primary school to those of you with different education systems. I advise Wkipedia or something. I had to look up the American grading system to understand what people kept going on about in American films and sitcoms "I did this in 5th grade which is clearly advanced for someone of that age" but means squat to me so I don't get the joke). So, Primary School. Whenever a student had a birthday it was a custom that they take in a bag of sweets and stand at the door as everyone leaves to give them a sweet. I never quite understood this. Firstly, if they didn't know when my birthday was why should I give them sweets? (I've never had many friends, even then, which explains a lot about me now) It's not like I had a close bond with any of them or anything. It almost felt like bribery I guess. Although, I never had such objections when other children had a birthday and brought in sweets so I never complained about it.

Naturally you don't do such things in Secondary school and since I had no friends my birthday slipped into obscurity. I thought the world of work would be like that too, which is why mum taking in sweets for her own birthday annoyed me. To make matters worse she went about it all wrong. She didn't go for the cheap cupcakes. Oh no. Quite the opposite. She also got an assorted box of Krispy Kremes which, thankfully, she decided not to take. Unfortunately that meant I had to eat them. I've been trying not to eat so many sweets, especially after the Christmas indulgences.

If you're going to take in cakes for a bunch of people you work with but don't really know on any great level and you're not trying to show off by taking in home baked goods, or show off how rich you are by buying expensive goods, or buy people's affection so they'll like you more, then assorted cheap cupcakes are best. A 12 pack or 3 of cheap, simple fairy cakes with a little icing are much more appropriate at least, that's what I think. Then again I hated my work colleagues and pretty much everyone else in the office. Also these kinds of things are usually done during or after lunch, meaning they wouldn't want something too filling. Well. It worked out well anyway. All that was left was a tub of mini muffins. I still think it's stupid that she took in cakes for her own birthday though, she barely speaks to half the people in the office (since most of the people she did know have been let go or moved on and her office merged into another one full of people who were mainly strangers, and mostly men so she doesn't have much to converse with them about).

Anyway. They gave her a card signed by everyone (the usual thing you'd expect in an office) a big pink bouquet of 14 day or so flowers (from a florist. Sprinkled with glitter. A little tacky. Flowers are beautiful as they are. They don't need glitter.) and her perfume I recomended. They also gave her a box of Belgian chocolates and Quality Street.

Overall she was pleased with everything so that's all that really matters.

Ah. I didn't mean to go on for so long. This was only meant to be half a page to a page and only for half an hour, not an hour and a half.

Oh Blue, you talk far too much. No wonder people don't want to read it...well, I guess they wouldn't. I wouldn't.

Like I said. My blog is mainly for me, as proof that what's happened has happened.

A very tired Bluebiird out.

Egad. 6 and a half pages