The Frumplingtons

It’s nearly the end of the year; just a few loose ends to tie up re. this year’s Christmas — better late than never, eh?

Christmas lunch went well; Shana excelled herself and managed, despite a few misgivings, to cook and — just as important — to time everything to perfection. Nothing would have been worse, after all, than having our turkey on Christmas day and our sprouts three days later.

I excelled myself, as usual, in the potato and carrot preparation department. We kept the peelings. I intend to make an art installation out of them. Anything left over will be made into soup.

After lunch, in a fine example of gender role reversal, Shana dozed while I watched Rodgers and Hammerstein’s cowboy opera, Oklahoma! Shana woke up halfway through ‘Poor Jud is Dead’, declared the whole thing awful and flipped over to Top of the Pops. That was equally awful so we flicked back to Oklahoma! well in time to see Jud set fire to the haystacks before slipping over and getting killed by his own dagger, the silly old fool.

The BBC’s Doctor Who Christmas special was only half correctly described. Yes, it was on at Christmas: but no, it was certainly nothing special. In fact, it was a big disappointment.

Thank heavens for Wallace and Gromit’s A Matter of Loaf and Death. I have to say, however, that it has put me off wholemeal Nimble for a while. Next year will have to be a low calorie year, though, at least till lunchtime. Even though we cut down drastically on the amount of chocolates, nuts and other indulgences this year, we still seem to have eaten enough to feed a small Viking army.

And if I never see another mince pie till next Christmas, it won’t be too soon!*

[* Did I really say that? Blimey, I really must have had too much.]

We might not be the greatest gardeners in the world, but we still care about Nature. Imagine my dismay, then, when I looked out this morning on our 1⁄640th of an acre and saw what last night’s cold snap had done to it.

• Our groundsel had given up the ghost.
• Our twitch had turned turtle, and
• Our bindweed had bowed its weary head.

‘Hot diggity!’ I exclaimed. ‘The frost has got our weeds!’

Shana did her best to console me, though. ‘There, there,’ she said. ‘You can always plant some more next year.’

[The Frumplingtons Garden Appeal (it’s a bit like one of those Blue Peter appeals but without the milk bottle tops) starts now. Send all the cuttings you can afford. Please give generously.]

As part of our campaign to revive some of Britain’s long-forgotten cottage industries, we recently gathered together all our macramé books and got busy with a bit of knotting. Joan Fisher’s ‘The art of macramé’ (Hamlyn, 1972) could be considered to be the bible of macramé. The instructions and diagrams are all well drawn and easy to understand.

The rest of the world, however, has moved on a bit since 1972, and some of the fashions might now be described as either quaint or ridiculous, depending on whether or not you’re being charitable toward the author. Pictured below is one of the outfits that is most definitely not quaint. Even the caption describes this veil as an ‘unusual’ use of macramé — well that’s a euphemism if ever I’ve heard one! It could still work today though. All you have to do is shorten those threads a bit, put corks on the ends and stick a cowboy hat on top and you’ve got the national costume of Australia. We have a big ball of string standing by and are taking orders now. Alternatively, if you’re really intent on looking like a wally, just buy yourself a pair of flares and grow some Mungo Jerry-style sideburns.

And that goes for any men reading this, too!

Our living room faces north, our library faces south and our artificial ficus tree (ahem…every home should have one) is halfway between the two. If we’re doing anything in the library, e.g., solving jigsaw puzzles or catching spiders, we have to draw the curtains around mid-morning to avoid being blinded by the sun. On the upside, though, we do get to see some rather attractive shadows on the wall. (Check our Flickr gallery to appreciate the shadows in full glorious technicolor bigness.*)

* I know what I mean.

We’ve had our heads in the clouds for most of the past week; to be more specific, the clouds over Brooklyn. It’s all Carol Dyer’s fault. Her picture, ‘Market days on Fulton Street‘, which some bright spark decided to turn into a 1500-piece whopper of a jigsaw puzzle, just happens to have a few dozen square feet of sky at the top (well, where else would it be?) and we’re not keen on big acreages of sky. Shana, however, persisted and got the thing finished, ignoring all my suggestions about doing only part of the sky and photoshopping the rest. (And I thought I was a technophobe!)

It’s a wonder that Shana got anywhere near finishing the puzzle at all, though, because sometime last Wednesday morning, while completing the back end of the fruit ‘n’ veg seller’s horse, Shana nearly died of fright.

I thought it was all my fault at first. All I’d done was come from the living room into the library to show Shana a picture of a flower I’d done on the Etch A Sketch. The way she shrieked (and especially the way she leaped from a seated position to about two feet in the air without the aid of rocket propulsion) you’d have thought I’d recreated Constable’s Haywain or something. I never realised I could have such an effect.

As I soon discovered, though, I hadn’t caused anything. The real reason for Shana’s sudden turn of energy was the spider who, at that very moment, was pulling himself up over the edge of the jigsaw box; the box from which, only seconds before, Shana had been choosing suitable pieces for her part of the puzzle.

Being the token man of the house, I, naturally enough, immediately took charge of the situation. From my vantage point, perched on tippy-toe high on another chair safe out of harm’s — and arachnids’ — way, I talked Shana through the fetching of a coffee jar (always kept on the kitchen windowsill in case of such emergencies), the placing of the jar over Spidey, and the final desperate slinging of both spider and jar out of the front door in the manner of an Australian fast bowler, and to heck with it if anyone chanced to be standing within range of either.

I came down off my chair by Friday. Well, I had to. Blog post to write about it, hadn’t I?

My efforts in collage are going, as you can see, from strength to strength. (Tsk tsk. Anyone muttering ‘from bad to worse, more like’ should feel thoroughly ashamed. Clearly, such people do not understand art.)

This piece is called ‘Any old iron’. Iron is referenced in three different ways: firstly by part of the periodic table; secondly by the steam iron; and thirdly — and this is something that might be noticed only by those with truly artistic sensibilities — by the playful use of materials, viz. a scrunched and flattened portion of aluminum foil, which gives this work a more tactile texture and alludes to the act of ironing, i.e., pressing clothes. The question is, will that pink iron ever manage to smooth out the rough surface of the foil, or are my collage creases destined to become permanent?

I’ve never done any quilling before. And, as I often say to Shana, I also don’t do fiddly. After seeing some quilled snowflake’s on someone’s blog recently, however, I thought I’d give it a shot. Now, don’t be harsh. This is my first effort, after all.

It’s even better when you consider that I was using the most rudimentary of tools. Who’d ever have thought a corned beef tin key could be used for the delicate art of quilling?

The Etch A Sketch is fine for drawing straight lines, but curves and circles (especially if you want them to be at all regular in shape) present more of a challenge. After only a couple of days’ practice, I have now mastered the art of manipulating the aluminum powders hidden within the device and have produced the holy grail of Etch A Sketch users: an ampersand. I shall leave it to you to fathom exactly how I accomplished this feat. It could’ve been sheer artistic skill; or fantastic hand-eye coordination.

Or maybe it was all down to great knob control!

[Next week: the Mona Lisa.]

Our Christmas shopping schedule has just suffered an unforeseen setback caused by the intrinsically humorous qualities of — would you believe it? — chocolate.

It surprised me, too. Chocolate is, after all, a serious business, a staple diet of millions in our part of the world. It’s even available deep-fried north of the border. Round here, though, we’re a bit more genteel; we like our choccies individually wrapped and with little charts giving names and brief descriptions of each one. Last year we had Quality Street, so this year Shana thought it was time for a change.

“Do you like Woses?” Shana asked, taking a look at what was on offer at our favourite online supermarket. I knew she meant Roses, but I couldn’t figure out why she was aping tv presenter Jonathan Ross’s characteristic pronunciation of the letter ‘R’. I decided to reply in the same manner and so, mimicking Shana mimicking Jonathan Ross, I answered,

“No. I prefer gewaniums.”

For some strange reason, Shana and I then collapsed in a prolonged fit of the giggles.

“Abandon shop!” cried Shana, logging out and almost falling out of the office chair in the process.

Normal shopping service will be resumed in due course.

With only fifteen days to go before you realise you’ve left your present-buying expedition too late, some might say it’s still too early to wish people a merry Xmas. So I’ll wish all our readers a merry Etch-mas instead. I’ve opened my prezzie early this year. There didn’t seem much point wrapping it up after it arrived this morning, only to unwrap it again five minutes later. But why the hurry? Well, my excuse is that not only would the present in question not fit under the Christmas tree, but that it’s actually bigger than the tree itself. Having said that, I should point out that we’ve gone for a little diddy minimalist tree this year; next year we’re getting one small enough to go in a doll’s house — let’s just hope the festive turkey doesn’t undergo a similar reduction in scale!

Shana has been keeping schtumm about my surprise present (an Etch A Sketch, in case you haven’t notice the photo below) for the past few weeks. Now that I finally have the thing, I hope she’ll be suitably impressed with my artistic efforts. I decided a picture of a Christmas tree would be kind of appropriate to begin with. And if you’re wondering, yes, it is done in the ‘naive’ style. Easily as good as anything Kandinsky ever managed, I’d say.