The Sunday Salon: Coraline

Unlike my previous read, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which took me over two weeks to read and I finished and reviewed yesterday, I read Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, in pretty much one sitting (ok I couldn’t resist reading the first 25 pages in bed before I fell asleep last night, but other than that I read it all in one rather long morning bath). 

I opted for Coraline out of my trawl through Neil Gaiman’s back catalogue next because I have been intrigued by the trailers for the upcoming movie (watch here for a behind the scenes featurette talking about the story and featuring Neil Gaiman) and I was not disappointed by the book itself. Telling the story of Coraline and her parents who move into a flat in an old house, it’s the dog end of the summer holidays and Coraline is bored and her parents too busy to play with her, so she goes exploring and discovers a door in the wall that leads to a flat just like hers, complete with parents just like hers, although these parents cook her nice food and pay her attention, thing is they’ve got buttons for eyes . . .

What follows is a rather scary tale as Coraline realises that her ‘other mother’ is not what she seems and want to keep Coraline trapped in her created world. Coraline has to find and rescue the souls of three children who had been trapped by the other mother before and also rescue her parents, aided by the cat who needs no name. A great fun read, which I would have loved even more as a child (and would have consequently been sleeping a little more nervously afterwards!).

On a Sunday Salon note, this may be my last Salon until after Christmas. From next Saturday I’m working for the next three weekends at a Christmas Fair in the grounds of a lovely local National Trust house, which hopefully will be a least a little magically Christmassy, how excellent would it be if it snowed (it feels cold enough)? However, much as I’ll be surrounded by books all day, I doubt I’ll have much time and energy to read, let alone post, so if I don’t may I wish you all a very (early) Merry Christmas and very much happy reading!

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (contains some spoilers but I’ll try not to give it all away)

I’ve finally finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, it was a long book and put it this way I’m now looking forward to my next planned read, which is considerably shorter, with much glee. Although it was a struggle to get through at times, being overly doggy (for someone who is not that into dogs), as I mentioned in my two Sunday Salon posts on the matter and at times the writing of this lengthy book was a little patchy in quality*, I overall enjoyed this impressive (for a first timer) book.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle tells the story of the Sawtelle family and in a way the story of the farm they house their dog breeding business on, from birth to destruction. Edgar is the son of the current owners, Gar and Trudy, a boy mute from birth, he has an affinity with the dogs. When Gar’s brother Claude comes back from service overseas, old sibling rivalries spring back up, resulting in Gar’s initially mysterious death and it’s only when Edgar sees the ghost of his father (the way how Wroblewski makes the ghost appear is a lovely idea but it was sadly one of the bits of the book that for me reads ‘odd’) does Edgar realise what really happens. A brilliant scene follows on, a silent confrontation between Edgar and Claude through a kitchen window and it is absolutely chilling but then Wroblewski switches to Claude’s viewpoint and again I felt the writing suffered a bit. Anyway, things escalate resulting in another death at the kennel, forcing Edgar to flee with his dogs, there follows a slightly overlong section in the woods as he runs away, followed by a nice few chapters as Edgar makes his home with Henry who is trying not to be ordinary. Edgar ultimately realises he has to go back home, the book then switches viewpoints in a more quicker succession, but I think more successfully, with tension building unbearably towards the final scene, leaving only slight dissatisfaction that we never really truly know why Claude did what he originally did other than perhaps hie s really just a nasty piece of work.

* I always feel horrible criticising a writer’s writing because as an aspiring writer myself, David Wroblewski and any other published writer I’m going to be picky about has obviously done better than me, as they’ve got their book out there, I haven’t. I think however it’s just me applying that mantra that they give to all aspiring writers, to read and learn from other writers’ work, to look and analyse, see what works and what most importantly doesn’t, so I think that was what I was seeing plus the quality of most of the rest of the book was so good, it made the not so good bits stand out all the more.

Woolly Embroidery

I’ve been tempted by the Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts Woolly Emboidery book for some time. I saw it on the incredibly shrinking shelves of the craft section in my local Waterstones but it was shrink wrapped and so just like on Amazon, I could just stare at the lovely front cover. However, when I finally got a payment from Amazon Associates (thank you anyone who clicks through the Amazon links on my site), I was like a kiddie in a toy shop, I had been depriving myself of my book purchasing fix and Woolly Embroidery was going to get brought! (I also brought Coraline and The Meaning of Night).

After a long trek through the rain to get my Amazon parcel today, I couldn’t resist tearing open my package under the shelter of the nearest supermarket awning, to finally see what Woolly Embroidery was like inside and . . . I had some mixed feelings towards it. I’m a big fan of Japanese craft, I love Aranzi Aranzo and was impressed by the Zakka Sewing that I reviewed last week, with it’s sashiko embroidery, both of which are (obviously) very Japanese but the Woolly Embroidery book is, at least in part, very English, with lots of cute, fluffy, old fashioned animal motifs and old fashioned roses, which I suppose it very Japanese in a way, as I realise that sort of styling is very popular, more popular possibly in Japan than it is here, where I think most young crafters would think it was old fashioned. However I did like;

• a lovely cross stitch snow flake design on a stole, however the instructions call for a very specific kind of stole of exact dimensions and I can imagine how easy that would be to find,
• an arabesque tote bag
• a wool handbag, with a nice, more modern floral design
• the tree cushion which you can see part of on the front cover is very cute
• some older period crewel designs

I’m not sure how easy it will be to exactly replicate these designs, this certainly is not a book for a beginner (it is a step up from Sublime Stitching!) and it also I suspect, quite difficult to get all the required components in Britain, as the books Japanese instructions have been adapted more towards an American rather than a British audience. However I suspect I will try and make something from this, one day.

Random things

• Boy Lacer is so loving playgroup now, he’s got a lot more confident and independent there recently. On Wednesday, the day after his Tuesday session, he spent most of the day asking me “When playgroup?” and I’d tell him “tomorrow” (he goes on Thursday to) and when that eventually sank in, he went round randomly saying with a big grin on his face “Playgroup tomorrow, painting!”, he’s been painting more at playgroup recently, being more confident to join the painting table and I think that’s his favourite activity, they’ve been making Christmas decorations, so I have a lovely gluey Christmas pudding and Christmas stocking. Even when Mr. Lacer came home from work, Boy Lacer’s first words to him were “I go playgroup tomorrow, painting!”. So all this made me even more determined not to move Boy Lacer if they tried to offer him a place in a specialist nursery setting, so it was very good news this morning, that I will not have that fight on my hands, as he’s been offered a Learning Support Assistant complete with speech therapy, at his current playgroup, very good news indeed!
• Boy Lacer is also definitely starting baby ballet in January, now that will be interesting . . . The school owner knows about his diagnosis and she’s prepared to give it a go, even though when we talked about it she seemed to know very little about the variety of autistic spectrum disorders, more thinking that autistic children were all one type, as in the most severe type. Boy Lacer likes dancing, he’ll quite competently copy the moves to Boogie Beebies on TV and is apparently (according to playgroup) handling the rehearsals for the playgroup Christmas play (he’ll be a shepherd, awwww) quite well. He’s also, anytime he gets let in to the dance studio when we’re taking Girl Lacer to her dance classes, thinks he’s coming to dance to and will happily sit down and start flexing his toes. So, even though his gross motor abilities are poor and actually because of it, I think dance could only encourage improvement, we’re going for it or as the dance school owner says “Giving it a try”. His lessons will be on Thursday afternoons, which is not great timing for me as I’m going to be back and forth from that dance school that day, dance class for Boy Lacer, finish, pick Girl Lacer up from school, quick trip home for her to change and then back to the dance school for her class, it’s not the quickest of walks. I’m frazzled enough just from one dance class on Thursday, two, shudder!
• I was book selling yesterday, my second event of the season, at another school. It started off atrociously, with me selling just £17 worth of books in three-quarters of an hour and I was literally standing there thinking “I’m going to have to give this up. The recession is going to make it too difficult to sell,” and then it was like someone flicked a switch and although I didn’t get loads of customers, the ones I did get where coming away literally with arms full of books (and in one case a llama puppet, I’d tried my best to disguise for them), so my total takings for the night were £150! My previous record had been £85 (same event, same school, last year). So by that point I was on my second take away coffee sized cup of free mulled wine, toe tapping away to the Christmas songs blaring away behind me, feeling very festive! I also could not resist spending some of my takings on some of the other stalls, including a baking book from my ‘rival’ book seller Usborne (yes, right, not, I like Usborne’s stuff and they’re very different from the publisher I direct sell for), for Girl Lacer, as she loves Usborne’s cooking books and for me, well my stall was right next to a stall from these people and their stuff was just gorgeous, so I could not resist a couple of badges and the most lovely handmade envelopes made of old comics, honestly if I received one of those through the post it would make my day!
• And finally, talking about the post, a bit of a moan, at least round here, the posties are no longer leaving parcels with neighbours or on your doorstep, if you’re out, which is fantastic timing, not, considering Christmas is coming up. I can understand that there are security implications but I have never (as far as I know) lost a parcel and for my flat at least, a parcel on the doorstep is not actually that obvious and if a postman was concerned he’d leave it under our recycling bin! So I’ve had two ‘sorry you were out’ cards from them this week and to collect the parcels you have to walk literally right across the other side of town to the sorting office, ironically my second ‘sorry you were out’ card was delivered just as I was across town retrieving my first parcel and I was paranoid today that whilst I was out collecting the second parcel that I’d get another one because between me and Mr. Lacer, considering Christmas etc. we are expecting at least another five parcels, all ordered before we realised the change in delivery policy, now the prospect of an hour walk, a lengthy queue and the prospect of them not being able to find your parcel (oh I was in that queue for half an hour today and the number of people ahead of me who were told that they couldn’t now find their parcel), all this is enough to put a girl off internet shopping, just what the economy needs right now!

Out tea-toweled

The Christmas gift making continues unabashed and this year I’m doing tea towels, majorly.

Julie West patterns from Sublime Stitching

These are for my aunt and her family, she’s difficult to shop / make for and I’m not totally sure she’ll like these but then again I’m not sure what she’d like and well, I guess it’s the thought that counts.

Teeth and ear from Sublime Stitching’s Vital Organs pattern

These are for my sister’s boyfriend, he’s from Korea and I’m not totally sure how he’ll take these!

Chickens based on illustrations from Where’s the Cat? illustrated by Debbie Harter

These are for my dad, not the first time I’ve given him tea towels either but he gets through a lot of them for some reason. The designs are based on illustration from a board book rather close to my heart (in connection with Boy Lacer and my minuscule book selling business) called Where’s the Cat? by Stella Blackstone and illustrated by Debbie Harter. Basically the child finds the cat, which is hidden on the page, Boy Lacer used to ‘get it’ but recently has become confused by the fact that I’m asking him where the cat is and there’s the cat on the opposite page clearly visible from the previous ‘where’s the cat?’ question, Girl Lacer tries to get round this problem when trying to do the book with Boy Lacer by sitting on the page Boy Lacer isn’t meant to be looking at! Anyway on one page the cat is stalking some chickens and I used the chicken illustrations for my dad’s tea towels as he has two chickens himself, including a speckled one, which he is rather attached to. These are the tea towels I like the most, so I hope my dad likes them. Much as I like Sublime Stitching’s patterns, they are all very much a certain style and I’m feeling drawn more to my own style now, which would be a bit more delicate, more old fashioned but definitely not chintzy! Ok the chicken design isn’t mine either but it would be the sort of thing I’d do, just need to work on my drawing!

Jamie’s Ministry of Food

Ok I’m a bit late on this but I’ve just brought Jamie’s Ministry of Food: Anyone Can Learn to Cook in 24 Hours (It’s under a tenner in John Lewis), my friends, most of them not keen cooks, have been raving on about this book for ages.

Right, when I can tear the book away from Boy Lacer, who likes recipe books generally but is particularly fascinated by the fact right now that there’s the same man on mummy’s computer as there is on the book, I think it looks quite good. As an experienced cook (I learnt to cook thanks to Jamie’s Naked Chef days), I don’t particularly need this book to learn to cook and I think looking at some of the recipes I could adapt them to my tastes quite easily but it is great to have all the basic, standard recipes, that everyone eats, all one book, nicely photographed and explained simply. There are some recipes, like his bolognaise and lasagne, where I’m not going to depart from my standard Tana Ramsay recipes because just reading Jamie’s recipes, I don’t think they’d taste quite as nice (Tana Ramsay cooks her meat for longer for a start, which I think is one of the secrets of a good bolognaise) but other than that, I think Jamie’s Ministry of Food may be the book I go to when I want to find a basic, standard recipe because my problem these days is that I have so many recipe books, if I want to cook something basic but still need the recipe, I have trouble remembering which book has which recipe, which is why recently I’ve been cooking from the BBC website’s excellent recipe section a lot, it’s easier to find a recipe by typing it into a search box! Anyway, as per usual, here are the recipes I want to try out;

• Chicken and leek stroganoff – my friends say this is yummy but a bit watery
• Asian chicken noodle broth
• Chicken fajitas
• Chicken tikka masala
• the variations of the Light and Fluffy rice
• the Homemade Curry Pastes
• the Jam Jar dressings
• Evolution Green Salad (which looks a bit like a Nigella salad I like)
• Evolution Potato salad
• Everyday green chopped salad
• Posh chopped salad
• Rice salad
• Leek and potato soup
• Sweet potato and chorizo soup (now this looks yummy!)
• Parsnip and ginger soup
• Best ever French beans (with garlic and parmesan cheese, yummmm!)
• Baked creamy leeks (might make my Christmas table)
• Baked french potatos (now I’m drooling)
• Crunchy garlic chicken
• Parmesan chicken breasts with crispy posh ham
• Pesto
• Oils
• Quick steamed microwave puddings
• Mega chocolate fudge cake

A Tale of Two Fruit Cakes

Me and Girl Lacer made our Christmas cake a few weeks ago, we defected from the normal Nigella recipe and went for the Christmas cake in Rachel Allen’s Bake, which looked a tad more exotic and fruity, I’m quite looking forward to seeing what dried apricots in Christmas cake is like, but obviously I don’t know quite yet, but I’ll let you know, ooh about 21st December (last day of work).

 

Uniced Rachel Allen Christmas Cake

I’d brought quite a lot of dried fruit to make the Christmas Cake and it was killing me not being able to eat it straight away, so not having much else to do with the remaining fruit I made a second fruit cake yesterday, this time using the fruit cake recipe from Jane Brocket’s Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer (she writes about the cake here). Now this one I can eat and it’s delicious, soft, chewy, crunchy, spicy, fruity, buttery, in just one slice, it smells amazing when you cook it to. Plus it’s really filling, so not too much cake gorging!

Jane Brocket Fruit Cake

And as someone who’s not too keen on glace cherries (which Brocket’s cake calls for but not in Allen’s cake), may I recommend Waitrose’s own brand glace cherries, they’re darker than those horribly brightly coloured corner shop things and they taste rather nice). Oh and I still have loads of currants left, I think I know what I’ll be making with those and another Brocket recipe at that.