About Me

My name, Ciara, is an Irish name that means 'dark haired' (which I am not, of course!), and as is the tradition with Irish names is not pronounced the way it looks! It has a hard C like a K, and is pronounced like the Russian name Kira, or like Keira.

I'm originally from Dun Laoghaire in Dublin, along with my husband Jay Roche, who is a painter and who's work you can view here on his website. We have one daughter age 17 and three sons aged 19, 12 and 8, and we recently moved from a little cottage by the sea in Wicklow, to a town not altogether too far away, and closer to Dublin. We now live in a circa 1940's house, at the bottom of a hill that rolls down to the sea.

I studied ceramics and sculpture but should have studied textiles and now spend my spare time stitching and  sewing. With four children, plus one extra for a few hours every day, I don't have as much spare time as I would like of course but to see some examples of my work check out my labels 'Redwork' and 'Things I Made'.

As is obvious here, I love taking photos. And I also love to write.

In the last number of years, out of necessity due to food intolernces, I began a journey with food and eating habits that has now become a huge part of my life, and for a long time I didn't know how to incorporate it into this blog, which felt too dreamy to be including recipes for clean, gluten-free, sugar-free, plant-based eating. I didn't want to alienate my loyal readers who came to read poetic musings, and see redwork stitchery, and photographs of life in Ireland. But in the end I have realised, all of these things together is what makes up Me, so I am biting the bullet and just throwing in the whole lot and mixing it up together, and I do hope the end result works for everyone! I do have a Facebook page for the food side of things where I also share reading and viewing material on related topics, which is something I love to do.

Do pop in and say hi!