Typecast

Suddenly, the temperature has dropped and it's jumper season. However, I appear to have been preparing for this for most of the year by challenging myself to make at least one wearable per month. Four jumpers and a summer top later, I have a small collection of handmade clothes, a better understanding of my crochet tension and several reminders that having 'plenty of yarn' is not a guarantee. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nickie O'Hara (@oh_nickie) I’ve shared each finished project on Instagram - both the wins and the disasters - but I wanted to bring them together here to show the progression. Looking back through the captions, there’s a recurring theme: lovely pattern, enjoyed making it, sizing needs some attention. There has been progress, though. I’m checking things earlier, making adjustments and getting more confident about changing a pattern to suit me. There have also been occasions when I’ve had to put the whole thing down a...

Icons Week, and the most iconic thing in the building was Danny Dyer sitting next to Ray Winstone.  Craig and Anton arriving as the Gallagher brothers genuinely made me laugh out loud, although the longer I looked, the more Kevin and Perry they became. The costume department had clearly enjoyed putting those two together but had maybe run out of inspiration for the ladies. Shirley’s Lady Gaga was rather harder to identify. When Vanessa asked “Who is Shirley?!”, I helpfully explained that she was an English ballroom dancer, teacher and adjudicator known as the Queen of Latin. Apparently that wasn’t the information required.  Motsi's whole look was styled on Beyonce's famous Coachella look - and now I've conducted an image search, I can see it, but surely there were more iconic Queen Bey outfits than a hoodie and some denim shorts? I did like the couples being introduced as their musical icons alongside their professional partners. A small production change that worked in the...

I've got a week off work. A whole week with no early taxi ride to an airport, no alarms, no work emails and absolutely no plans to do anything particularly productive. So naturally, I've started it with a cold. Not just a little sniffle either. I feel rotten. Having a new puppy means that it's a bit difficult to take myself back to bed with a hot drink and a box of tissues, so I decided that the most sensible thing to do was bake a cake - a date and walnut cake, to be precise. Now, I haven't baked a proper cake for ages, so the first job was to check what ingredients I already had.  I'd already bought some dates (that's where the idea originated from), but I wasn't entirely sure what was lurking in the baking cupboard. And here's where it all went wrong. Our kitchen has one of those pull-out cupboard units with four shelves. In theory, it's a brilliant storage solution. In practice, it's where ingredients go to disappear. Nothing is particularly ...

Chris Appleton leaving last week wasn’t a surprise to me. I don’t think his following translated into enough votes to keep him in. At this stage, Strictly still feels like a popularity contest, and being someone’s favourite hairdresser isn’t necessarily enough to make you their favourite dancer. Jaime landing in the dance-off was more worrying, although it needn’t end her chances. Alesha Dixon, Abbey Clancy, Caroline Flack and Ore Oduba all survived one before winning; Ore survived two. I’m not writing her off just yet. I love that the stylists are leaning into Emma’s own style now rather than putting her in another evening dress. The very loose-fitting trouser suit was gorgeous and very her. Jojo, meanwhile, wore the only two colours that make my teeth itch when worn together: orange and pink. Tara’s verdict in the group chat was that “Only Jojo could make getting tangled up in Xmas wrapping paper look THAT good!!” She’s right. I still wouldn’t want those colours in my wardrobe. I’m a...