Typecast

Last week I enjoyed a Rumba. This week I’m about to praise a Couple’s Choice. If this continues, somebody needs to check whether I’ve been replaced. Don’t panic. I still found plenty to complain about. Anton appears to have brought his own scoring system, the Faffing Police have a coat-and-hat incident to investigate, and Craig described somebody as chewing toffee with their bottom. This is your Saturday evening entertainment, everyone! We said goodbye to Sarah and Julian last week, with Bethany and Nancy surviving the dance-off. Delta and Kai are back after their injury bye, and we had a relatively normal week before Halloween arrives with its wigs, props and inevitable opportunities to conceal the footwork. Not that the costume department was taking the evening off. It hadn't gone unnoticed that somebody possibly secured a bulk discount on hair gel. Lauren had sculpted waves, Nancy and Alexis had little curls, and Motsi looked as though she’d just stepped out of the shower. Emma,...

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 ...

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...