Days out with the kids: The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester

If I was not a writer, I would just write one word here: Go. And you should just do it.

But one word won't do. So I will tell you some things about the Whitworth in Manchester. Firstly, there is a beautiful textile exhibition there until March 2016. It catches you off-guard. It stuns you. It can basically be summed up in that beautiful set of peacock-feather giant pompoms above. It places pattern, texture and colour together in ways that are intuitive rather than necessarily chronological or thematic. I stood nose-to-glass like a child without pocket-money gazing longingly into a sweet-shop. My children ran around but, unusually for me, I can't say I really noticed.

And then there's the art. Oh my. The Farrow & Ball-esque paint on the walls was beautiful in itself. But then they socked me in the eyeballs with paintings thrown together without care to date or genre, but with full-on appreciation of what picture speaks to which. Ignore the small children in the picture below (yes, they're mine, and yes, they're pretending to be caterpillars, and no, I have no idea why!) and just pretend you're that lady and, like her (I imagine), you're in heaven. Sketches and paintings, artists that are familiar to you mixed with those you wish you had heard of before. Installations like the whole, huge room full of vacant poppies, the perforated paper from the printers hung like a tent of grateful sorrow. A brass band of instruments flattened and hung like a 2D mobile. The most peaceful 45 meter long landscape drawing made from the powder of war. I can't be effusive enough. 

So, most of what I've said already is only applicable to you if a) you're on your own in your art gluttony or, b) your husband has very sweetly noticed you're more than a little bowled over and is watching your children. But, hang on: this is a child-friendly gallery. I'll tell you why: there's a fabulous room (the Clore Gallery) where you'll find all sorts of crafting and art for children to join in. Their walls of childrens' work are just as absorbing as the gallery walls. And they have art picnics which - I know, I know, heaven to an artophile mother - consist of a hamper full of drawing and collaging supplies that your children can take around the gallery and use while you go a little art-doolally. And we did, children and mother alike. If, like me, you've taken a break from art galleries while you mother your children, don't. Take them with you. Take them to the Whitworth.

Not convinced yet? The Whitworth is set in a park where your children can play and you can go on a sculpture trail. There's an art garden, Artist Sundays, art clubs and parties... I won't link to it all here. Just go to the website or,  better still, go there yourself. As a born and bred Londoner, I hope you can understand the gravity of what I'm about to say: for me, the Whitworth fills the place in my heart where the Tate used to be. And that was a very large, very precious hole to fill.

Sorry, I'm conscious that the photos I've used are more than a little rubbish. I'd go back to take better ones, but not only can I not afford a dSLR to do so, to be completely honest I can't afford the train fare right now either. So, go yourself, take better pictures than I did, and then tell me about them. I'll come and look at your pictures. They'll keep my arty heart ticking over until I can go back again.

And before I go, Raaaaaarrrrr!!!! Because after our picnic in the car (it was pouring down), we made a dash to the Manchester Museum up the road (our provincial version of The British Museum) for an hour of "Where are the real froggies? Let's go in a lift! Look, a dinosaur! I want to see the bows and arrows before we go!" Etc. It wasn't really stop-and-take-a-picture pace but the boys loved it. We went before and enjoyed it more fully but even this little whistlestop tour ticked the boxes.

Wondering: In which I tell you how I'm rebuilding my blog

What do I want this blog to be? What do I want to build?

I think this is what hampered my blogging in 2014. Not knowing the answer to that question. Seeing so many other blogs out there that inspired me and finding, as often happens, that the influence of others clouds the truths of yourself. I am so drawn to bloggers whose clothes and style I love, but I've never felt comfortable showing myself online. I love DIYs and tutorials but did I really want to commit to all the hard work and time involved in doing that myself? I love to write above all else but the blogs I am drawn to and hooked by are those with the beautiful pictures using fabulous cameras that I cannot achieve. Do I want to strive to become a well-known, monetised blogger in such a saturated market? Do I even want to view my blog in market terms? I'm not sure I even know the answers to these questions now.

And then I realised that my answers are in what I thought my blog would be the day I started writing it. There were six words I attached to it: making, baking, wandering, wondering, sewing, mothering. Those are the things I wanted to share and document. Combined, they are who I am, they are the touches of domesticity that feel like home to me. And so they are what this blog is and will be again. 

I am part of a community of women in the UK and further afield that feel it is not a contradiction to value intelligence and yet want to focus their lives on their homes and family. To be ambitious and yet content. To be interested in serious and important things yet also love simple and beautiful things. You can be interested in both fashion and world affairs. You can be ordered and yet free. You can be all the things our foremothers fought for in the feminist movements of the past century while being happy, fulfilled and worthwhile wearing a pinny, baking a cake, kids round your feet, crayons all over the table, haphazard twigs from your walk in a vase on your table, and muddy footprints by the back door. And so that is what you're going to get from me.

(And, slightly unrelated, but on the subject of building something, my middle boy built that fabulous tower in the even more fabulous Clore Art Studio at Manchester Art Gallery. If you're in the area, you really should go.)

A little art, please

This is not the first time I've admitted to being 'slowly efficient', but here I go again, showing you our decorated window from May (yes, again, I know it's July!). It was for our village's childrens' books themed May Queen celebration. Recognise her? It's Matilda. I so enjoyed painting her. I wish I'd had a little help, but the Big One thinks he's too old for this sort of creative venture, and the Little One is still at the stage of (very artistic) scribbling. Matilda is close to my heart - I was always a little bookworm, and liked to fancy myself as a potential intellectual genius when I was reading the book (I was an eight-year-old with delusions of grandeur).

I wish I could tell you I look at this picture only with pride, but all I can see right now are my depressingly under-loved window boxes. I'm just about keeping my head above water with the mothering, housework and sewing/blogging/baking adventures. There is no time for my poor neglected garden! I have dreams of tumbling nasturtiums but that will have to wait til next year.

And yes, I know, the windows and ledge need painting too. You should see my list of things to do. I think I shall rename it my 'list of things that will never get done'.

'Arts and minds

Trampled down by the drudgery of unfinished housework and a 'to do' list that appears to have over-eaten, I am reminding myself of the days when my heart soared and I felt inspired.

We've done a few walks recently with the two littlest boys. Little One in a carrier on my husband's back; Tiny One in a sling on my front. We waited for the right conditions: decent night's sleep, dry weather, no one too hungry, no one too grumpy. The walks were glorious.

One was up a hill behind our house, round the top and past the reservoir. The last half-hour of the two hour walk was murder on my under-used legs and my dragged-down shoulders. But the physical exhaustion was worth it for the mental elation. A walk! With the kids! There was wind in my face, a hill beneath my feet, nothing but nature and space all around me, and inside I felt like Maria spinning on top of her 'Hills are alive'. Best of all it showed us both it could be done - that the boys would let us walk, would sleep or look around, but not moan incessantly to get out or get home.

One was up and down beautiful valleys and hills; a whole morning in the warm sunshine. We saw birds, streams, a ruined stately home, lizards, grasshoppers, a ruined mine, glistening water, trees of every ilk. I'm not sure how long we can do this, for though our strength carrying the boys will increase, I think their weight will increase faster. How long will we have to wait while the Little One's too heavy to be carried but too little to walk? I hope not too long. I have to be able to get up a hill to blow out the cobwebs and put the skip back in my trudging feet.

Another, disparate inspiring day was had about a month ago now, when our county held its Open Arts event. We managed to get to just one exhibition, little boys in tow, in the house of an artist. There were six exhibitors in total, including a crocheter (that can't be the right spelling!), sewer (always want to put a hyphen in 'sew-er' to remove lavatorial connotations!), illustrator, and several artists. I even spoke to some of them. I could hardly speak to anyone about it afterwards though. It was like that moment in Sleeping Beauty when, after 100yrs of sleeping, someone clears the jungle of vicious weeds and finds the castle again. I haven't done any art for 13 years, even though it was my raison d'etre for so long. About five years ago I dared to pick up a pencil and found I couldn't draw any more. But seeing that exhibition and talking to artists who believed in me despite not knowing me or my non-existent work... part of me woke up again. It's pretty scary, but I think I might be able to train myself back into doing it. And the sewing is a part of that.

Am I rambling? Time to get back to that merciless 'to do' list.