That's the man who wrote on my butter!

A fun afternoon at the office. David was boasting about his pen (it's a Space Pen) and claimed that, as well as writing upside down, and underwater, it can write on butter. Yes, butter.

Well, I'd bought butter that day, so I chilled it down in the freezer.

David got out his pen, and ... well, what do you know, it doesn't work! It made some nice dents in my block of butter though.

For the record, we tried a much more plausible scenario after that, writing on greasy paper. Which, as you know, works really badly with most pens. Well, the Space Pen writes beautifully on greasy paper, and keeps writing after that. So it IS an impressive pen. But I'll have to work out some other way to write notes on my butter.

What have they done to my nice room!

Argh, some men came in and smashed up my room! That's it, I'm going to make them replace all this with nicer stuff. Day 2 of renovation. Could be about six weeks of this.

The things you find when you tidy up...

Some of the boxes in the craft room hold artwork of mine, including some that has been sent to magazines for publication. And some has been successfully published, and some has bounced right back with a friendly "not this time" note. This is one of those ... I made a cute set of cupcake holders, using card and punches, and eyelets too (I had just got my Cropadile, that's an excellent eyelet setter). I worked out some fancy method for making the big arc shape of the "cupcake" base with a simple circle cutting tool, rather than a specialised die (they weren't around in those days anyway). The cupcake holders came home with a "thanks but no thanks" note, but it still seems like a nice idea to dress up some cupcakes for a special afternoon tea, doesn't it?

Why we are so tired now

After three days of family effort (on and off, we all had breaks to do fun things) here's the craft room empty! We will not miss this grey carpet.

Our spare room, before renovation

It's nice to have a spare room. We call it the craft room, and it's a good place for painting, stamping, and sewing. We all use it. Problem is, it's a good place to pile things too, and a good place for bookshelves. This week we are starting a proper house renovation, turning this room into a student's bedroom with ensuite for Catriona, and sacrificing an odd bit of hallway to create a small and efficient craft room connected to the parents bedroom. It will allow the two rather large boys to get a room each too, setting them up for their end of high school and university years.

This is the "before" picture.

The fete du pain in Paris

Last time we were in Paris, we discovered that there was a "bread festival" on at Notre Dame. Well, that was cool. And this time, it tuns out we just made the festival again! This baker is making, I'm sorry, I don't know the name of it, but a twisted pastry. She takes a piece of croissant dough, already rolled like a Swiss roll. She cuts down the middle, and then twists the two halves together. Then coils it into a ring, and bakes it in a tin. She achieved all these fiddly steps in moments.

Then we ate some. Yay for the bread festival! Recommended for all tourists in Paris right now.

A near death experience - with chocolate!

One of the edible (or rather, drinkable) treats of this trip has been hot chocolate. We tried the recommended chocolat chaud from Patisserie Vienoisse. It's dark and unsweetened. If you ask for cream, it comes with a lot of cream. That's how we had it first time. But I fancied trying again without cream. So we did, this time "emporter". That's take away to you. We took these cups of evilly dark and hot food of the gods to our favourite sitting place, in front of Death in the university courtyard. Cheers, Death!