Look what I found today, in my lovely kitchen shop!  Aren't they beautiful?  They had to be tested, though, immediately.  The only recipe I could find that needed lots of mixing bowls was, unfortunately, for banana and golden syrup muffins.  So  I mashed bananas and beat eggs, and creamed butter and sugar to my heart's content. 

They didn't last very long, though, so I might have to try it again.

In other news, it has mostly rained today, and I either have a stinking cold or stinking hay fever, I can't work out which.  So I've blitzed it with lemsip and loratidine (?) and still the sneezes keep rolling in...

We have all stayed indoors, today.  My beloved has rigged up a television and freesat in the front room, so I have curled under a rug watching rubbish films on the satellite channels.  My poor son is being copiously and violently ill.  I rather suspect a migraine, but since he can't keep anything down I can't even offer paracetamol. 

Tomorrow, we have to go to my stepmother's birthday party, which will be trying.   And is a long journey.  Perhaps if small son is still copiously ill, we won't be able to make it...

So.  The apron.  It's delightfully fifties, and reversible (the other side is a white, floral Alexander Henry fabric which I will show you another time, the camera being almost as big as the photographer, today).  The ties and bodice top and waist strip are made from a lovely Alexander Henry day of the dead fabric, which there wasn't quite enough of to make the whole thing... but I love this pattern.  It's almost good enough to waltz around in wearing nothing but lingerie and high heels underneath...

And on that salubrious note, I'm going to go and cast my vote.  Do the right thing, people!

Chocolate mousse didn't go so well; failure was roundly blamed on the children but, in truth, I'm not sure it wholly belonged there. 

Still, it will probably taste good.  It's currently in the fridge, setting, and I am tempted to make some meringues, to go with it, just to prove that I *can* keep the bubbles nice and light and delicious.

And there was the consolation of 10 egg yolks that needed not to be thrown away.  Egg yolks which, as it happened, whipped up very nicely to make eggy bread.  What do you call eggy bread?  When I was little it was french toast, but that's something else these days.  At Uni, it was universally referred to as Tinkers' toast, but I'm not sure that's sufficiently enlightened to be encouraged.  Anyway, we had eggy bread (with golden syrup trickled on top) for brunch, and then I took my temper out to the shed.

The shed is a place of gloriousness.  In fact, it's two sheds in one.  The back door leads to a bike storage/general shed.  The front door (and windows) though are mine.  All mine!  It is my retreat from family life (and failed chocolate mousses).  It is a fully insulated, boarded and decorated room in the garden.  I have electricity, light and heat.  It is my atelier cum office (cum retreat from failed chocolate mousses).  Often, I make quilts and clothes in it.  Today, I am mostly making an apron. 

This image is very cleverly (if I say so myself) stitched together with a tool called Double Take which you can find here - I rather stupidly moved the chair half way through taking the pictures (contrary to the fisheye impression, the inside of the shed is a very tight space, not always conducive to spinning round taking pictures!).  I have lots of fabric storage under the cutting table on the right, and you can just see a little pressing board on top of the cutting table at the back.  The white blob just above the floor and under the laptop is an overlocker, and the main sewing machine is in the sewing cabinet on the left.  The zig zag shelves hold all my paper dressmaking patterns, and cunning thread storage boxes, while the book cases (there are two of them at right angles) hold books, magazines, art materials and so on.  My shed is truly a place of wonder.  And peace!

And that's enough for one day.  There may be a photo of the apron, later.  But there may not!