I am still trying to find my phone, but one of the slightly more pleasant side effects of that is that I am managing to find a few things that I hadn’t been able to find before, one such thing was a £15 Waterstones voucher that Girl Lacer had lost last Christmas, we had to end up giving her the money to spend in Waterstones instead with the promise that if the voucher was found, I’d end up spending it. Well eleven months later (please may it no be that long for my phone), we found it and as good as my word I spent it, on Kirstie’s Homemade Home, which although it has only relatively recently come out is more based on the previous TV series and not on the current one. So lots of gorgeous shots of her holiday home, sigh, I’m not green at all, no not me.
The book starts with a very long section where Kirstie discusses what she would do in each room of the house and only then, 95 pages in, does she get down to some practical projects. There is the wide variety I remember from the first series and most projects very much aimed at the beginner who is fairly confident to give anything a go. For me personally this is not a book to look at for the crafts I already do (sewing and embroidery) but it will be a reference book for crafts I don’t do (or don’t do very well). What stands out for me is the soap making (which I will do one day), flower arranging, screen printing (which I have hazy memories of doing as a child), mosaic, knitting and crochet. I can knit (but still not very well) and I absolutely can’t crochet, despite trying many times but on looking at the how to diagrams in the book, I might just try again, specially as the how to section is followed by instructions on how to make a crochet box out of parcel string.
I have really only one (ok two) criticisms of this book, the first, a minor one is that the beginning section is too long and I’d have liked to have seen more projects instead, like some of the projects Kirstie did in her Christmas special, which aren’t in this book. And the other criticism is possibly to do with this book not really being aimed at my demographic at all, but it’s a pet hate none the less and I have seen it in other TV programmes and books to, basically it’s the current fashion for ‘oh current times are hard and we need to save some money so instead of spending £2000 on a sofa, we’ll spend £500′ sort of thing or in the case of food programmes ‘oh current times are hard and we need to save some money so instead of spending £300 a week on food we’ll spend £150′. Kirstie’s Homemade Home does for the most part fall into this category*, yes spending £500 on something from an antique reclamation yard whereas buying it new would cost twice as much is great, specially as the thing from the reclamation yard probably has more character but it’s still very much dream land if spending £500 on something seems like an impossibility, it’s all very much “Well let’s get back to Ikea then shall we?” because that’s my level.
*There are some exceptions, like I said, with the soap making you’re making it in such large quantities, I think that is possibly a very good money saver and actually most of the projects are relatively cheap to, I guess it’s just the beginning that gets my goat a bit.
