jane brocket

tuesday best

The favourite lemon cake (recipe in The Gentle Art of Domesticity) is our failsafe feel-good bake. Just the sight of the bright lemons and the clean white icing (made with lemon juice so it's pretty tastebud-tingling) in the spring sunshine is enough to keep me happy, but I'm even happier with a slice of the cake on a plate, a cup of tea, and the children back from school.

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Important note for readers in North America: if you have a copy of the first printing of the US edition of The Gentle Art of Domesticity please look at this page before making the recipes in the book (including this lemon cake) as some errors crept into the conversions to US measurements (something with which I had no involvement at all).

monday best

The best of the weekend's reading. Weekend Knitting by Melanie Falick is a classic which is looking just as good as it did when it was first published in 2003 and opened my eyes to a new style of knitting book. The 2009 edition has a new cover but the same great contents. It goes perfectly with the Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross, the first book to re-awaken the urge to make my own clothes since I sewed smock-top after smock-top to wear to school when I was in the sixth form, but with much better words and pictures than my Buttericks and Simplicity patterns. And Material Obsession by the owners  of the amazing-sounding Material Obsession in Australia (although I admit I am saving this one to read properly after I have finished my own quilt book so that I don't get too distracted).

All this and sunshine and silly children, too. A good weekend.

sunday best

   

peach blossom

 

I like the idea of being called Peach Blossom. Not me, personally, of course as I don't exactly fit the Peach Blossom bill, but I can imagine a young girl deciding that this is her name for a summer. Or maybe my niece will use it for Orange Pastel Tree's sister (Orange Pastel Tree being her first choice girl's name).

Now I don't always (well, not all the time) go around thinking that Peach Blossom is a pretty name. It's just that I came across some beautiful peach blossom in the greenhouses at West Dean Gardens at the weekend. Like the walled garden in which they stand, these greenhouses are immaculate and maintained according to traditional and very correct methods. So they look nothing like the average greenhouse and even when they contain just pots and pots of salad leaves and vegetables (as one greenhouse does at the moment) they look absolutely spectacular.

 

I've never seen peach blossom (or even a Peach Blossom) before and was fascinated by the delicate pink flowers and the meticulous and elegant way in which the gardeners have carefully trained the branches to fan out.

 

The slender branches, the new leaves and the pink flowers all look particularly stunning against the pure white wall.

Whether you see it close up or from a distance, it would make a lovely series of fabric designs. Peach Blossom would then be able to wear a dress in 'Peach Blossom' as she and Orange Pastel Tree enjoy lazy, summer days.

toxic shock

Ah ha, I thought, it's about time I branched out and into a new sphere of creativity and making things. I know, I'll try resin jewellery. After all, M. made the most wonderful resin necklaces when she tried it last summer and it didn't look that difficult.

So I booked my place on a course at West Dean with the brilliant Kathie Murphy who is one of the UK's leading makers of very (deceptively, as I now know) simple, sculptural resin jewellery. West Dean is a wonderful place to learn; it's like being at a sort of eccentric, creative weekend house party in amazing surroundings (just as the former owner Edward James would want - I saw Cecil Beaton and Rex Whistler's signatures in the guest book - they were there in 1933).

I'd thought I could handle something messy, sticky, smelly and toxic (the resin, the catalyst, the fumes that result in their mixing, plus the strange rubbers and gels used to make moulds), but it turns out I am strictly a soft, clean, dry textile girl. I also got a shock when I realised at the last minute that the course was all about 'wearable sculpture'; I'd missed the 'sculpture' bit on first reading and I discovered to my chagrin that I do not have a sculptural bone in my body. So whenI wasn't reeling from the toxic smells and the discomfort of wearing a mask and latex gloves, I was feeling horribly two-dimensional and flat.

 

But I managed to mix some pretty colours and set some tiny model figures in clear resin using an ice-cube tray. And the toxic shock taught me lots: that I can't think upside down, back to front and inside out, that I don't like wet and dry papering to make resin smooth, that I am terrified of taking the ends off my fingers with scalpels, that Kathie's work is remarkable in its sculptural beauty, concept, colour, finish and detail. And that I'll be buying resin jewellery from now on.

english beauty vii

My very first attempt at quilting was, like that of so many girls in England, with hand-stitched hexagons on templates made from cereal boxes. And, like so many of those girls in England, I never got further than the smallest honeycomb of hexagons before abandoning the project in a fit of pique and annoyance with its seriously slow progression. (I tried again a few years ago, and encountered exactly the same resistance to hand-made hexagon quilts - clearly age is not mellowing me.)

So when I see a really beautiful hexagon quilt like the one above that belongs to a friend, I can only admire the patience, the skill, the dedication and, in this case, the great choice of fabrics...

...and the back which looks like a fabulous pair of old-fashioned frilly knickers.

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So there we are. A week of English beauty. What next, I wonder?

english beauty vi

A little while ago when we were at Wisley (itself a place of great English beauty) Simon was in a rush to see the perpetual spinach (he has such an exciting agenda) that he yomped up the huge, spectacular rockery and missed the the best plant of all that day, the dwarf iris 'Katharine Hodgkin'. As I wasn't going at such a pace I did see it, but it would have been easy to miss even when dawdling along the paths. You really need to bend down to see and appreciate its wonderful colours and markings. This is an iris I have been wanting to grow for years but have never seen, so it was a real treat. It is quite, quite beautiful and as it is the product of the very English tradition of amateur plant-breeding, it also comes with a good story. 

Here's a lovely article that goes into raptures about this plant.

english beauty v

The very humble, very simple jam tart made with shortcrust pastry and red jam. Not only meltingly delicious but also very beautiful when arranged in lines on a cooling rack before light fingers lift them. I make them with my favourite English jam, the beauty queen of the jam pageant, 'Sweet Tip' Raspberry Jam from Tiptree in Essex. And a few extra letters.

english beauty iv

 

With its noisy, colourful fruit and veg market, long-established Soho businesses and amazing fabric shops, Berwick Street in London is a place of quirky, characterful English beauty, but Broadwick Silks (just off Berwick Street) is a thing of utter beauty. It's filled with shimmering gorgeousness and light dancing on shot silks and richly coloured dupions. I've been in there twice in the last couple of weeks not knowing what to choose but have been helped out by the clever assistants with impressive textile and design qualifications who make  the extra pennies per metre worth paying when they get as excited as you about the project you are planning and know everything there is to know about sewing with silk.

Plus they know how to cut and fold and wrap fabrics so beautifully that when you get home and open your tissue-paper-wrapped parcel, the room is filled a silky glow.

english beauty iii

 

Delightfully fresh-looking daffodils, made all the more beautiful by the fact that they were grown in our own back garden. These are 'Ice Follies'; they have a pale, primrose outside and a sweetly ruffled buttery cup that fade to a pale, ice cream over time. So cheerful they make me laugh.