Songs, skirts and scones

Me. Thirza Mulder, wife to Paul, mum to Hendrikje (2003), Kathrijn (2005) and Tjabering (2007). Dutch in origin, but living in Armagh, Northern Ireland  since 2003. Full time archivist, shared between the Armagh Public Library and Armagh Observatory.

My singing. In primary school I had to stand up on a chair one year, as birthday girl, and to answer the classmates question: ‘how old are you now?’ After my shaky reply, the teacher complimented me on my singing. Gosh, singing, is that something you can ‘do’? I quite liked that idea and have loved singing ever since. There was just the problem of what to sing and who to sing it with. Over the years I have sung in some choirs, but never quite liked it: all those voices singing differently to mine put me well off, AND out of tune, humpf.

Then, 1999. Paul and I were fortunate to spend three months in Dublin, working and enjoying all the music that was around us. In July Paul wanted to attend the Joe Mooney Summer School in Drumshanbo, County Leitrim to take piping classess. And lo and behold, what’s being offered as well, traditional singing. I’ll do that. My goodness, how I loved it! Six days in a row, three or four hours a day, learning songs of that great Fermanagh singer, Rosie Stewart. The songs are beautiful and most importantly, I can sing them without others, or accompaniment. I was hooked: I went to festivals, workshops, both in the Netherlands, where we still lived, and (primarily) in Ireland. After a number of years we thought ‘we might as well move to Ireland’, as Paul also travelled back and forth for his piping tuition.

In 2003 we moved to Armagh, where there is great tradition of music, not the least through the Armagh Pipers Club and the William Kennedy Piping Festival. We continued to learn, although the arrival of our children and the initial lack of a car (or a licence for that matter) kept us quite confined to the local area. A year and a half ago I was pleasantly, well, shocked to be asked to pass on the songs that I had learned to young people attending the Pipers Club! I agreed and enjoy the impulse this has given me to continue to learn new songs, to remain a student, whilst passing on songs as well.

On this blog I will talk about songs I sing, songs I want to sing and songs I am taught. I will try and put audio samples in , so you can hear what sort of songs I would sing. If you have any question or requests, I will certainly try and help. Perhaps I will set up a separate page with only audio samples and the relevant lyrics. Let me know what you might like to hear or see!

My baking. I am not a great cook, let me start by stating that. I can make edible food, but Paul is the chef in the house: he can even make fishfingers, peas and roast potatoes taste divine! But then again, he is a lousy baker! I thought I was as well, until I felt this incredible urge during Tjabering’s pregnancy to ‘make home’, to nest. I really wanted to give our house that homely feeling, or rather, scent of baking. After a couple of muffin attempts I found out that all the baking disasters in the past where caused by either my impatience or rickety ovens. I always thought: ‘ach well, that oven is warm enough now’. Stupid. I know now that the absolute essential thing in baking is letting the oven pre-heat to the stated temperature. If your mixture is not tasty enough, at least it will be edible with something completely overpowering on the side. If it is not cooked properly… yugh. Of course I need to follow the recipes strictly, because otherwise I wouldn’t have a clue what goes in for what reason. Substituting lacking ingredients always involves a lot of googling!

So, as I said, I started baking muffins, quick and easy. Then cakes. Then I thought I needed Leiths Baking Bible…. Thank goodness by that time I had to get back to work where I could share my baking, rather than ‘having’ to eat it all ourselves.  I now try and bake something every weekend. Usually any baking during the week means either that it is a holiday or something important is coming up. Or maybe just that I need some meditative time on my own (industrial mixer tends to scare people away, don’t know why…)

My sewing. Similar to my baking: the idea of sewing always tickled my fancy, but I never was very good at it. Quilts were something I admired from a distance. I decided however in 1991 that I wanted to make Paul a quilt for our first ‘dating’ anniversary, New Year’s Day 1992. I didn’t have a clue on patterns, fabrics, techniques. I just had a second hand sewing machine. I bought some blue fabrics (not necessarily matching or beautiful, ahum) and bright red for the backing and the border. Even though the pattern was extremely simple, it took me, ah, mmmm,  over a year to finish it. I didn’t quilt it, but tied the layers together on all the corners of the squares. On the back I embroidered something sentimental…

After that it took me a good few years to make another quilt, this time for friends who were getting married. I made a quilt with large dark blue, deep yellow and white cotton blocks. The center blocks held the embroidered (machine made, mind) poem from their wedding invitation. The quilting, I can even remember, it happened so fast. During the wedding day I even had to cycle back home between the ceremony and the reception to sew on the border….

At that time I also tried some clothes sewing, but without nice patterns for my size of girl, there isn’t much fun to be had. Quilts took up to much time and I didn’t find any of the traditional (which I didn’t really realised were traditional) quilts very appealing. It wasn’t until my mum ask me to google a particular type of quilting that she wanted to a couple of years ago. During this search I came across all sorts of beautiful modern quilts that did appeal to me. One of the names that kept popping up was The Modern Quilt Workshop, a book by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr. I didn’t wait very long before I bought the book and was able to make a quilt from one its patterns. During Tjabering’s pregnancy I worked on a Plain Spoken Quilt and finished it the day before he was born (elective section).

I had bought quite a large amount of fabrics for his quilt and really wanted to make the girls one as well, from those same fabrics. This way they would have something made by me that would link them as brother and sisters. For Hendrikje I started the Eclipse quite soon after Tjabering was born, but put it away fairly quickly ‘Let’s have a break’. This break lasted nearly two years! After I ended up on the MamaSoule website, I was enthused to get started again. Every day I tried to at least cut some pieces or sew a block. Just before Christmas I finished her quilt.

It has made me very aware that I actually do love sewing and that I want to try more smaller projects that may only take a day or two. This blog is were everything will be tracked!

I hope you enjoy my ramblings. I would really appreciate any comments on any part of the blog!