yarnstorm

stitching peace and quiet

It's just dawned on me why Crinoline Lady embroideries were so popular with ordinary housewives in the 1930s: they were stitching themselves some peace and quiet.

It's always struck me as slightly perverse that women who were in touch with the daily reality of childcare, washing, housework and queuing in shops, and all without modern conveniences, should want to embroider solitary ladies simply looking pretty or gently exerting themselves to pick flowers while dressed in large hooped dresses which prevented any natural movement. But now I realise that they were stitching a fantasy in which they were free to be decorative and self-absorbed in a flower-filled landscape in which hollyhocks grow in profusion (and never refuse to self-seed) and herbaceous borders pop up as if by magic. There are no partners, offspring, bosses or phones to deal with, and all is peaceful and quiet.

I've reached these conclusions after wondering why I chose to start embroidering my own crinoline lady just as the children are all off school and asking to be driven hither and thither or tested on physics and history and Latin for next week's exams, when I have my accounts to do, bits of work which need to be completed, and someone asking to be taken to TopShop in London. I realise I'm putting myself somewhere else where my greatest concern is to match my dress to my flowers and to decide what colour hair looks best with my bonnet.

And I thought the Crinoline Lady was just another pretty woman, when really she was the alter ego of thousands of stitchers. She's addictive, too - I can't wait to get back into her garden.

wet weekend

It always make me laugh when I hear someone described as having a 'face like a wet weekend', a phrase which memorably evokes misery and sulkiness. It's so expressive and apt and, coming from the rainy north-west of England, one I heard a great deal when I was growing up.

The weekend was incredibly wet, but I spent it in a large, cosy, wooden hut on the beach at Whitstable listening to the wind and rain and sea while I worked for two days. There is something wonderful about being dry and warm while the wind whips round you and the sea crashes on the pebbles and the rain beats against the windows - but I felt sorry for all the people who were on holiday there and who were probably not enjoying the wash-out bank holiday weekend as I was. 

I stayed at my friend Marilyn's place. Her marigolds are stunning, and are holding their own against the weather. These are the mothers of my marigolds - Marilyn lets me collect brown paper bags full of seeds later in the year which I scatter in my garden. But I haven't quite achieved a full bank of marigolds yet. This abundance reminds me of the nasturtium allee at Monet's garden at Giverny; apparently the head gardener there buys his nasturtium seeds by the kilo. Now that's what I call gardening.

The rain has forced Marilyn to hold off planting her geraniums and pelargoniums,

but the poppies in pots are loving it.

I came back having slept brilliantly - I was lulled to sleep by the waves and rain - and I certainly don't have a face like a wet weekend after my wet weekend.

leafiness, smelliness, greenness and yellowness

Alice's French exchange student has been with us all week, and there is a bowl full of glowing lemons on the kitchen windowsill. Her mother sent her with a big bag of fruit and leaves which she had picked the day she left, and when I pulled them out I was overwhelmed by the amazing oily, lemony fragrance. Many of the leaves were young and shrivelled quickly, but the older ones can still be rubbed for the smell, and the lemons themselves are incredibly juicy and intensely perfumed.

I'm growing sweet basil on the windowsill in my study. I love doing this and watching the tender, pungent leaves multiply before my eyes. I have a very unorthodox way of raising basil - I don't thin the seedlings and I don't plant them out - and it never fails to give pots which look like they could do with a trip to the hairdresser's. (I can never stop myself thinking of hair and heads when I see pots of basil because they remind me of the long poem by Keats, Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil, in which the heartbroken Isabella buries the head of her lover - killed by her brothers - in a pot of basil. I got into such trouble at school when I was 17 for laughing uncontrollaby at this image - unfortunately I had to read out the stanzas in which Isabella loses her mind and cries out for her Basil, and my teacher was appalled at the way I snorted with laughter in between each line. I still think it's a wicked poem.)

Although my pots are easily big enough for human heads, there's nothing more than compost and water and lovely, peppery leaves inside them. Honestly.

I've also got all kinds of leaves popping up in seed trays. These are the first leaves of marigold, courgette, chard, sweet pea, nasturtium and cosmos. They make a wonderful patchwork in the trays and I rotate them to maximise sun exposure - but also for the fun of making different arrangements of leaves.

I particularly like these 'Bright Lights' chard seedlings. It's amazing how you can see the different colours of the stems (bright pink, red, orange and yellow) even when they are tiny.

We have baby quince on the tree now - just look at that soft fuzz and yellow goldenness. They are about one inch long (a couple of centimetres) and I'm hoping they will all stay on the tree despite the strangely hot then strangely cold weather this month. 

And since this is a post about lovely yellow and smelly things, here's my favourite flower of the moment - an intensely beautiful and perfumed rose which is simply perfect.

                                ***

Your lists of 'small pleasantnesses' sent shivers down my spine - they were so cheering and delightful to read. And thank you also for all the generous comments about the Allotment Quilt - you are very kind.

'small pleasantnesses'

We call these 'Spicy Biscuits' although the original recipe was for 'Shah Biscuits'. Alternatively, they could easily pass for 'Ginger Biscuits' or even 'Ginger-Nuts'. But I think I might start calling them 'Small Pleasantnesses' after reading Period Piece by Gwen Raverat.

They are Tom's all-time favourite biscuits*, and when he invited a couple of lolloping, hungry, fourteen year old friends to play cricket in the garden one evening this week, these are what he asked me to make for when they came in from school. There wasn't a lot of conversation, but there was plenty of biscuit eating, and the three of them ate the entire plateful in-between yorkers and wickets and forward defences (ah yes, she knows, you know).

Just the day before, I'd been reading about Gwen Raverat's Uncle Lenny and how he enjoyed a ginger-nut for his elevenses when the young nephews and nieces visited. But his wife teased him that he wouldn't be able to have any when they'd gone, and the children were 'dreadfully upset'. GR could see that Mildred 'cared so little for bodily joys, that she could not understand how small pleasantnesses like ginger-nuts can add up together to make life solid and good'.

I was so delighted to discover this phrase that I started thinking about my own 'small pleasantnesses'. Toast and Marmite, lavender bubble-bath, giant white chocolate buttons, orange marigolds, dense fruit cake, weekend newspapers, roast chicken, squishy pillows, bone china mugs, freshly baked bread, bamboo knitting needles, cold white wine, cherry muffins, snapdragons, towels that have been dried on a washing-line, fountain pens and pink ink, treacle toffee, Persephone books and nutmeg are just a few that spring to mind. But I could go on for a long, long time because I'm happy to be the antithesis of Gwen R's Aunt Mildred.

What are your favourite 'small pleasantnesses'?

   

* the recipe is in the post of 30 September 2005

footloose

I am particularly enamoured of the way in which Crocs can be used as a modern version of Dutch tulip vases which have a hole for each stem, or as an alternative to florists' mesh which holds flowers upright and apart.

Crocs are also amazing to wear for gardening. When I was planting some seedlings into wet, muddy soil I could feel it oozing into my shoes and between my toes as my feet sank into the earth. It's not an unpleasant feeling, and the subsequent hosing of muddy feet and shoes is childishly enjoyable.

I'm giving myself a couple of footloose days while the sun shines and I can kick my shoes off when I feel like it. Mind you, I like my new red Birkenstocks so much that it's difficult to take them off - and I love the dappled shade on the grass and the little spots of light which bounce off my wintery white feet.

Red and white is such a fetching colour combination...

allotment quilt

Spring has sprung and the Allotment Quilt has burst into flower and fruit and vegetable. This quilt has been a pleasure to sow, sew and harvest, from the moment I had the idea when I was in Stockholm last October, to hanging it up onto the long branch of the cherry tree yesterday so that I could stand back and enjoy its glorious colour.

It's called the Allotment Quilt because I adore allotments with all their neat plots, lines and patterns. I visit the local allotments in summer to admire the beans and sunflowers and tomatoes and dahlias, and I have favourite allotments I look out for when I'm on the train to London. I keep magazine articles about allotments and allotment-holders because one day I want to join their number and make small talk about broad beans and rhubarb, mulching and staking.

When I was in Stockholm I visited the most amazing organic cafe surrounded by fields of flowers and veg growing in long, wide lines, like an enormous, giant allotment. Everything was coloured yellow, gold and all shades of green, with strong flashes of pink and red from chard and cosmos, and I began to imagine a quilt based on this wonderful scene.                                                                                                                                    

The trees were more vibrantly yellow than at home where I'd noticed far more reds and oranges,

and I wanted to keep that sunshine, sunflower brightness in my quilt.

Seeing the Stockholm pictures with the quilt pictures makes me think I've done what I set out to do.

I put together a big pile of suitably leafy, flowery, fruity, veggie, twiggy fabrics (they all had to fit the theme) which I then cut into strips of random lengths across the full width of each piece. I laid out the strips in two blocks making sure that no seams matched in the middle and that there was a balance of thick, thin, pattern and colour, and I machine-sewed them together. I'd originally planned to have three blocks but this quilt grew like Topsy, as if it had been sprinkled with some natural fertiliser. The finished quilt measures a whopping 87.5" x 102.5" or 222cm x 260cm.

I'm getting to like borders on my quilts these days, and decided a narrow dark one would frame the whole thing well. I also wanted a yellowy, vegetal outside border and used the Martha Negley twig fabric which makes the edges of the quilt look like they are sprouting new growth, or at least in need of a little strimming.

I've been looking for an excuse to use the Kaffe Fassett Arbour fabric in Tobacco for ages(it's from the Lille Collection - possibly the loveliest group of quilt fabrics ever, I think - I bought mine from Glorious Color), and the Allotment Quilt meant I could use acres of it. Because the quilt had grown so organically, I found that I didn't have quite enough for the back even with two full widths, so I added a strip of one of my favourite vegetable prints to make it wide enough.

I hand-quilted it with yellow thread in horizontal lines quite far apart and following the seams of the strips which means that some of the quilt lines are offset and don't carry on over the full width - something I did deliberately because I like the less-than-perfect gardening approach that comes with allotments, and was quite happy to reflect this.

I love this quilt. I think it's my favourite so far. Next step, a real allotment...

golden days

Today is a golden day. The sun is shining after days and days of rain, the words for the book are in, and I am spending the day doing some supplementary photography. This is so unpressurised in comparison to writing that I can just float around the house like a dust particle on a beam of light, happily moving from room to room to garden and back again to the kettle.

I've made flapjacks, too, which is always a pleasure because I love opening a tin of golden syrup and seeing the thick, clear syrup catch the light as I scoop it out and let it trickle into a bowl or back into the tin. 

The best flapjacks should be golden and chewy and these have emerged from the oven nicely oaty and syrupy. (There is a recipe for flapjacks in the baking archive).

I'm on the final stages of the Allotment Quilt so I'm surrounded by the warm, rich, yellow, ochre, saffron and amber tones of the fabrics, particularly this Kaffe Fassett one called Fruit Basket which seems to embody that golden day feeling.

And I'm re-reading the very wonderful Period Piece by Gwen Raverat (granddaughter of Charles Darwin) which is overlaid with golden memories of growing up in Cambridge surrounded by her remarkable family.

I hold onto my golden days like, well, gold. I treasure these little nuggets of peace and enjoyment, because I fully expect it to pour down tomorrow...

                                ***

Many thanks for all the comments on Wednesday's post. Once Alice and Phoebe had given their approval of the photo (which I took when they were at school) and confirmed that it was indeed a true likeness, and once I'd posted it, being visible/invisible suddenly didn't matter any more. Quite right, too.

visible

Well, what a response to the last post. It was gratifying to read so many balanced and eminently sensible comments which told a very different story to the ones we read and see almost daily in the media. Thank you to everyone who left a comment.

I realise, of course, that it's all too easy for me to rail against women who are desperately fighting, controlling and altering their bodies in attempts to look younger and telling everyone else they should do the same, and then not be honest about myself. Until now, how I look has been irrelevant to what I write, but now that I've championed the natural look, I think you need confirmation that I'm not on my fifth face-lift and stretched, peeled, plucked, dyed and falsely tanned.

So here I am. No make-up, no flattering light, no filters, no Photoshopping, no airbrushing and no face-lift. Everything is visible, unconcealed, forty-seven years old, and mine.

life's too short

Yesterday, I read a short review in one of the Saturday papers of The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs which concluded that 'life is just too short to waste on knitting'. Well, if I hadn't already been incensed by another article in a Sunday paper which claimed that it is now a 'cultural imperative' for older women to spend their time, money and energy making themselves look younger, I certainly was when I read this. It dawns on me now as I write that the two are linked, that those in the media think we should all want to wear the same clothes as our daughters, be horrified by our wrinkles and never, ever do something as ageing as knit. 'Be the schlumpy granny at the school gates whom none of the other dads fancy by all means, but only if you don't mind being perceived as something of a freak'. My blood boils...

Well, I think that life's too short not to enjoy yourself knitting if that's what makes you happy. Sod the lasers, implants, peels, serums and 'derms' (I am so out of touch that I didn't realise that everyone now has their own dermatologist), I say. It was very revealing when Simon showed the children the photos of the author of the article (46 but wants to look 30) that they all guessed her age as 45. It just shows that those who are authentically young recognise that those who try to look young never succeed in doing so.

After this little discussion and demonstration of the follies of those who knock knitting and promote superficial values, I went back to knitting 'Sparkle' in Rowan Classic Style (Book 16) in a lovely, soft shade of Rowan Silk Wool DK called Limewash. Much, much better for the complexion than self-delusion and ridiculously overpriced, allegedly age-defying creams.

sustenance

When the going gets tough, the not-so-tough get baking. As I edit and tidy up my words, my mind wanders to the kitchen and baking suddenly appears imperative. After all, book or no book, we all still need sustenance. This is Marmalade Cake from the recipe in Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, but with far more and far brighter icing than he suggests. He likes a wafer-thin drizzle, but we prefer icing your eyes and teeth can feast on.

And Queen of Hearts jam tarts seemed like a good idea yesterday. Everyone had gone out to give me space to work (for which I was grateful, of course) but then I thought how nice it would be for them to have a dainty jam tart or two to eat when they came back. They were so distracted by the tart output that they forgot to ask about my word output.( I would not for one moment suggest that this was my ulterior motive...)

I've also been seeking brain sustenance in the form of poetry recently. I go through phases with poetry and often don't read any for ages only to rediscover its delights, and then wonder why I don't look at it more often. I've just read the collected poems of Edward Thomas (1878-1917) which are quite beautiful. I love the way he writes about nature and solitude and Adlestrop station; his poems on rain seem written for this very moment when I wonder whether it will ever stop. And I cannot get the one about swedes out of my head - a poem about the beauty of this humble vegetable gives my imagination all the sustenance it needs.