Birthday Weekend

It was my birthday on Saturday and we had a great day!  We had booked a table for thirteen of my favourite people at our local choice for dim sum and when we were all finally seated a chopstick waving eating frenzy ensued, we had food arriving at the table from the steamer trolleys and the rather more unhealthy fried trolleys almost as fast as we could eat them.  There were some old favourites and a few new dishes as well as some delicious choi sum with garlic from the main menu.  The table looked like a bomb site by the time we had finished!  The only problem with these sorts of meals is that they're over all to swiftly with no pudding and wine to linger with, but then it just means that there's more of the day left to enjoy.

We made it back to ours to enjoy pink fizz with mum's famous chocolate cake in the sunshine on the terrace.  The cake was a surprise and a very nice on too, in fact it was so tasty that I totally forgot to take a picture, which is a shame but I won't forget!  Everyone stayed until we had to chuck them out as we plus two others were to drive to Liverpool to see Laura in her promenade performance of Walking Through Windows at Liverpool Cathedral which we hadn't managed to get to all week and Saturday night was the final night.  We made it in to the very last performance which started at 8pm and lasted for almost two hours after starting late.  It was a really interesting evening, highlighting the good works by the women who are commemorated in some famous stained glass windows at the cathedral.  We saw Kitty Wilkinson in her bath house (where I had to do some scrubbing!), Elizabeth Fry in a convincingly nasty prison cell, there was an encounter in the rather more comfortable surrounds of philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts' parlour as she told her story of massive inheritance and how she spent it! There was a rather lame piece of installation art about Dame Julien of Norwich which didn't really make much sense to me, it also looked a bit sad in such a spectacular location.

The show started and finished late and by just after 10.30 we were happy (if rather coldly) seated outside The Quarter which is rapidly turning into a Liverpool favourite for late night noshing. The menu is mainly pizza and pasta with a few 'proper' dishes on the specials board, but we all had pizzas which were very nice indeed. We were frozen by the time we had finished, so no pudding just a weary drive home. 

Sunday started with a frenzy of photography at the desperately unglamorous, slightly smell, itchy and damp Withington Pumping Station (I shoot at all the nicest places!). After a fun filled couple of hours there, we stumbled across the Beech Road festival in Chorlton where we grabbed some tasty Jerk Chicken from one of the many street cafes and had a good potter around. After a quickly restorative snooze at home, my parents came to collect us for a supper at Wagamama, which was, as usual, delicious. A leisurely Cointreau (of three) in Castlefield sent us to our beds.

I seem to have spent all weekend eating!

It's been a busy few days.....

We returned from a very intense but successful trip to Holland, a 4.30am start followed by a 5.00am start isn't my usual schedule, but I survived!  The rest of the week passed in a normal fashion with the added excitement of subjecting my car to it's annual MOT and subjecting my eyes/contact lenses to their twice yearly poke and prod at the opticians.  Both examinations were passed with flying colours.

Friday was a good day on the Etsy front as I found out that I'd been featured in the Etsy Finds Euro Finds, Go Euro which was showing my April Calendar page in my new Sale section.  I sold two to one person, one plus May to another and a whole calendar to someone else and once I realised what was going on and that the last of my April pages was gone, I relisted the expired print version of the image which promptly sold too!  That was six items in about twenty minutes plus the fifth print to my lovely customer in Australia made a very good day indeed!

 

 Pink on Blue $35 at Eyeshoot at Etsy

In the afternoon we had friends round for drinks and then a splendid supper at The Great Khatmandu where my choices were my usual bbq mackerel, tarka daal and plain rice, I don't think I even tasted the other dishes so my current phase of calorie counting wasn't too damaged.  

On Saturday morning I met up with the Manchester Etsy folk and we had our monthly gossip and muffin gathering which is always a very civilised start to the weekend, a quick (that's quick to eat not quick to arrive) vegetarian chilli with hummous at Teacup followed and then home for newspapers and bit of catching up with the telly before our evening's entertainment.  We were destined for an evening of theatre at Joshua Brooks which was the venue for JB Shorts 3 which consists of six short plays all written by TV writers.  Apart from the fact that the venue was appalling, totally cramped, cold and uncomfortable it was an enjoyable evening with a nice variety of plays (each 15 minutes long) ranging from a very stylised party political party to a Big Brother wannabe.  Each one held my attention but I couldn't have coped with more than six.  A very good evening out.  Fingers crossed for a better venue next time.  From there we wanted food and had spotted ZOUK on the way in and liked the look of it, but when we got there it was totally packed and there was a forty five minute wait at 9.30 which we didn't fancy so we popped into Rice next door which was a bit odd really.  I've only just found out that ZOUK is an Indian restaurant, we all thought it was Chinese.  So it's probably a good thing we didn't go as Indian food on consecutive nights isn't such a great idea.  Anyway, Rice next door looked as if it would fit the bill with a range of noodle, rice and stir fry dishes.  I've never seen such a bizarre menu, there were dishes from absolutely everywhere, China, Japan, Jamaica, USA, Persia, France, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain, Morocco, Indonesia and South America!  Someone was a bit indecisive at the menu planning stages.  I ordered pad Thai with chicken which came nice and quickly, obviously just out of the pan, with lovely soft noodles and plenty of chicken, it was a massive portion but unfortunately totally tasteless but somehow managed to be enjoyable.....everyone else liked theirs but I think that the Persian saffron fish kebab sauce looked really suspect, but it was all devoured so just me then.  Home to bed, knackered.

Sunday started with Peter having a breakfast meeting at 9.00 I was up not long after that (actually 8 am as the clocks changed last night, so pretty early for a Sunday), a reviving breakfast of mango and cottage cheese did the trick and we were planning a leisurly day mainly at home until a chum phoned with the news that he will shortly be moving to Mumbai and did we want to join him and a friend for Dim Sum at Tai Wu at 2.00 - naturally we said yes, our stamina for dining out is unrivalled after all!

Dim sum was great, it's the first time we have been to that restaurant, the size and location had previously put us off and I'm very slow to adopt new Chinese restaurants as they are generally very disappointing.  Since we stopped eating at the Yang Sing I don't think I've ever have a truly fantastic Chinese meal, which is a shame as we really did take it for granted there for many years.  It was very good and unreasonably cheap at £35 for five of us, we had loads of steamed dumplings, a main course dish of gai lin, some steamed ribs and various things I don't know the names of.  We'll definitely go there again, it's a bit less hysterical than Glamorous and I think the food might be better.  I'd need to try some dishes from the main menu to make my final decision on that.  I think I'll be able to manage that!

Considering I'm meant to be on a diet at the moment I have managed to eat out four times this weekend.....I feel a bit of an epic session coming on at the gym tomorrow morning.

I'll sign off with this lovely Treasury (I've been watching the Treasury clock like a hawk for the last week of so as I have a lovely Poster Sketch lined up but seem to have lost my knack of snaging a slot.  Perhaps this week will be lucky for me!)
 

A Bunch of Hearts

by Anakim

What a happy sight!

....A pile of five desk calenders in cases all printed, cut, made up, wrapped and ready to go!

I've sold one to Barcelona, one to Finland and four to my mum (which still counts!).

When I started to make them I realised that I had really messed up the sizes - precision never was my strong point! I faffed around trying to make it better, but it just got worse and worse and trimming each individual page by hand just wasn't fun. So I did what I should have done in the first place and set up a proper Master Page and started from scratch. Then it worked perfectly and I was happy and my printer was churning out sheets of Super A3 as fast as it could and my super sharp scalpel skimmed over my crop marks and we were done. Wrapped, packed and two posted.

The flat is, yet again, resembling a bomb site as loads of stuff which we'd been storing at mum's has now come back here to torment us. It's everywhere, boxes and boxes of stuff, my old school trunk, clothes which I don't wear but don't want to chuck out (Ebay is calling), my long ignored violin and even my lacrosse stick. And we have people coming for supper and here I am blogging with about 40 minutes to arrival. The Chinese red braised lamb shanks are slowly turning suculent and sticky in the oven and smelling divine, the spuds are in a big pot of water waiting to be turned to smooth and creamy mash, there's a pile of green veg to be plunged into a pan of boiling water, then we're ready to go. To start we've a spicy prawn cocktail with a coconut dressing and to finish, I'm admitting to a cheat and serving a Gu Torte, which is far better than anything I could have managed in my super busy day today, so I shall not feel guilty.

It's the Etsy Made in Manchester meeting tomorrow morning, there will only be three of us but we have decided to go ahead and have a gossip and lots of tea, it's always nice to have a catch up. Then there's a lunch at Al Faisal's with various friends and then I have every intention to get to Jacobs to purchase a new happy-snappy camera as I really don't like not having one on me all the time and I am convinced that I have missed hundreds of shots in my happy-snappyless time.

Then there's a birthday party in the evening, then on Sunday lunch at mum's for the first time in her temporary for six months flat. I hope she's worked out how to use the oven, dad's up for a few days too.

Weekend and This Week

Here's a lovely Treasury with lots of gorgeously atmospheric browns, I particularly like Tiny Snowbird and Hopes.

Past Meets Present

by Mist Flower Studio

On Sunday I went to the Manchester Rememberance Day Service to see if I could get any decent snaps and I'm not quite sure if I did or not. I got there late as I was enjoying breakfast with our Cambridge friends too much and only really decided to go out at the last moment.....So I was sort of stuck at the back of the crowd and wasn't really inclined to shove my way to the front so I skulked around with my long lens shooting the backs of peoples heads until my hands started to freeze. Eventually everyone elses hands started to freeze and the crowd bagan to clear so I had a better view. I was there for about an hour and a half. I'll sort through the pictures today.

I've also been fancying having a go at Digital Pinhole photography and finally managed to buy a body cap for my D300 so that I can make my lens. Hopefully I'll get that done today and then I'll start to experiment and see if I can actually get some images!