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There will be a hiatus in blogging proceedings here for a little while. I am going to be computer-free for two weeks and am looking forward to spending some quality time with Brockets, books and wine. And I feel sure there will be cake and knitting, too.
See you soon.
A bunch of flowers can be so pleasing. I love the informality, the randomness, the happy-go-lucky feel of a bunch which has been picked from whatever is available in a garden or flower patch. A bunch is so sweet and simple, so much less sophisticated than a bouquet or an arrangement, but a lovely evocation of seasonality and generosity.
I went into my overgrown garden this morning to rescue the dahlias. I picked all I could find - a bunch of several varieties - and liked the way they looked 'just picked' in my hand. So I transferred them as they were into a vase, no arranging, and then stood back to admire their naturalness, their deep, glowing colours and the way they spread themselves out.
A bunch of flowers has nothing to detract from it - sculptural foliage, fancy bows, careful numbering and positioning - so you can focus on the details. Like these amazing buds and petals.
The spontaneity of a bunch of flowers is something to delight in - whether we are the picker or the giver. I am happy to be either.
Serendipity is such a lovely sounding word. For many years I didn't know what it meant, and didn't trouble to find out simply because I feared it may not have an equally lovely meaning. I still think it could be the smell of fresh apples, or the name of a gentle game of cards, or a word for dappled sunshine coming through leaves.
But now I now both the dictionary and the real meaning of serendipity. On Saturday I took Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life down from the shelf where it has been sitting for ten years and read it in one day. It is accessible, gentle, clever, witty philosophy (the best sort, I think) and A de B comes across as a highly empathetic, thoughtful person with a sophisticated sense of humour.
After finishing the book, and while I was full of admiration for someone who has actually read Proust, I looked at A de B's website and there I made a serendipitous discovery. And so it was that last night I made up for missing A de B a few weeks ago by hearing him talk on 'The Architecture of Happiness' at an event organised by one of my favourite London booksellers, Daunt Books, in the building below, opposite the one above. (I was preparing for the talk by looking at the archictecture of the evening.)
It was all I had hoped it would be. A de B is astoundingly articulate and yet incredibly personable. He doesn't dumb-down, but neither does he talk down - he's just a great communicator of ideas. He's also a very clear thinker who encourages you to go further in your thought processes than you would normally. This is what I always found so difficult whenever I studied philosophy, but now I realise that's because the ideas were often presented in such abstract terms as to be meaningless to me. A de B is helping me to understand how to apply philosophy usefully and meaningfully, and not simply think thoughts about ideas.
And, after last night, I don't really believe that it's a matter of serendipity that Alain de Botton also makes a great literary pin-up - of the mild, bespectacled, professorial type.
This is the picture I want blown up and blu-tacked onto my wall, while I get on with the next book.
I'm quilting myself a hot summer. It's probably the only way I'll get one.
I've been thinking of making a 'Floral Column Quilt' as shown in Kaffe Fassett's V&A Quilts for a long time, certainly longer than I care to remember. After all, how difficult can it be to sew nine strips of fabric together to make an over-the-top textile wallpaper? Well, a lot more difficult than you would guess.
It sounds easy-peasy; just go to your stash and bring out nine half-yards/half-metres of big, bold florals and get on with it. But it's not like that in reality. Because I wanted to make something that looked impressive, something that exploited the scale of the strips (approx 90" x 8" inches) and showed off some large-scale patterns to their fullest extent. I spent ages studying why Kaffe's two versions work and it's to do with eye-movement and clashes but also flow and harmonies. What I needed was a great starter fabric and then I knew everything else would fall into place next to it.
Then I found this wickedly hot-summer, kitsch Alexander Henry fabric on eQuilter. I make no apologies for my taste; I love this fabric, and I thought it would be be a laugh to work with and to see whether I could get it into a quilt which was relatively tasteful but with a nice touch of irony.
It has taken months to find eight fabrics which work with it. I've had to abandon many which I thought would be OK (too small, too orange -yes, it's possible - too dull, not the right blue) and it was only yesterday that I finally put the right combination in the right order (above is one of the attempts). It was Phoebe who found the missing piece - the very pretty Denyse Schmidt floral from the Katie Jump Rope collection in a lovely, deep sky-blue that I bought in Purl Patchwork.
I have now cut out and lined up the fabrics in their final order and I am ready to put these buxom ladies into a 'Hot Summer Quilt'. I can feel the temperature rising already.
I honestly thought that I would experience a huge wave of relief when I handed in the manuscript for The Gentle Art of Domesticity on May 15. But, in fact, there has been a huge amount of further work with the design, the visuals, the whole look of the book and the tiny details. It's all been incredibly enjoyable and I have loved working closely with the great team of people at Hodder, and a very wonderful book designer.
The books goes off to be printed very soon, and I have only one more meeting before that to look at posh colour proofs. So, at last, I am beginning to see that the relief I've been anticipating is just around the corner and the very thought of it is making my heart beat faster.
As does the sight of the cover, which is now on display on Amazon. I only discovered this morning that it can be seen and I was quite stunned when it came up on the screen. Excited, nervous, and very stunned is what I am most days, in fact.
I've had a mock-up of the cover on my bookshelf for a little while now, and I still do double-takes when I see the title and my name as I walk through the kitchen. But now that it's available for all to see, I thought I'd show you, the lovely people who have helped make it happen.
I was planning a thank-you post anyway, for all the brilliant comments and suggestions and recommendations you have left recently. But my gratitude goes much deeper than just saying thank you for sharing esoteric knowledge of maths, crochet, French films and apple-peelers (all of which I relish and store away in my mental files). It's a much bigger thank-you for the fact that you come here, read, consider, and so often tell me that you, too, value all these pleasures and delights of domesticity and family life. If you hadn't let me know that these things mean as much to you as they do to me, I would never have had the confidence to even think about writing a book which celebrates the extraordinary in the very ordinary.
So thank you. It won't be long now till we can see what's behind the cover (October 4). In the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy the relief of knowing it's out of my hands until publication date looms and I can get all excited and nervous again.
PS In case you are wondering, yes it's one of my photos but re-shot by a professional photographer. It's the marshmallow heart which Phoebe and I made for Tom and Alice's birthday last year.
GASP.
7,980 possible flowers to crochet. And I only have 21 balls of wool...
Thank you very much for taking the time to explain how to calculate the possibilties of three-colour flowers so patiently and so cleverly to someone who couldn't see the way to do it herself. I am not at all surprised to discover that there are many clear-thinking mathematicians in the knitting & blogging world and I was delighted the problem gave you an opportunity to show off your skills to the rest of us who aren't as gifted with numbers. And I loved learning about maths language and how precise it is - like the difference between permutation and combination. Won't make that mistake again.
I also liked the question about which of the 7,980 squares I would choose to make which stumped me completely. I had a little think, saw the possibility of madness around the corner, and decided to go back to letting my crochet flower garden grow organically.
The benefits of a natural, organic approach were demonstrated to me in a practical way earlier in the day when I went to visit a friend who has three allotments (she shares the work with a friend) next to the long railway viaduct not far from where we live. Apparently, during WWII there were once 600 allotments in these fields which must have been a quite wonderful sight from the train.
Cally grows a lovely mix of flowers and fruit and vegetables and all organically. It's not easy with the pests and rabbits, but she's determined to persevere. And when I saw what she picked while I was taking photos I was amazed at how a 'working with what you've got' approach (trying things out, accepting failure, celebrating unexpected successes) can pay off.
Just look at this beautiful bunch of flowers which Cally gave me to bring home. She simply picked at random from what was in bloom and then put them together quickly but exquisitely. The richly coloured malope, cornflowers, dahlias, mallows and love-lies-bleeding positively glowed in the evening sunshine.
Excellent reminders that you can only plan so much and that much of the pleasure of making flower gardens and arrangements, whether they are real or crochet, is letting them grow organically.
My crochet flower garden is flourishing. I've now made 34 squares, and the time spent with my yarn and hook has given me ample time to consider how it can continue to multiply. Unfortunately, this has been causing some headaches as I can't work out the answer.
I never enjoyed maths at senior school even though I was very quick when it came to calculating totals in the fish and chip shop I worked in as a teenager (there wasn't a till, just a cash drawer, and it was great when fish and chips cost 25p as that was easy to multiply). So I'm hoping that a mathematician or two may be reading because I've discovered a great maths problem with my crochet - but I can't solve it.
This is it. I'm using 21 colours (every square has a cream border so I am not counting that as a colour) and each flower is made up of three colours. So how many permutations of colour combinations can I use before I exhaust all possibilities? Then, if each colour can be in the centre, in the middle, or on the outside of the flower, how many possibilties are there in total?
I'm not planning on making every single one - I have a feeling the number is very large - but it would be a relief to stop attempting the calculation every time I crochet. I want to get back to beautiful thoughts of holidays and summer reading and pretty flower gardens.
Can anyone help?
As the children get older, our family undergoes small but significant seismic changes. Because my three are so close together (32 months from Tom & Alice to Phoebe), when the tectonic plates of family life shift they are quite noticeable. This means we don't have children inhabiting different eras for long periods (even though it can feel like aeons when one child is some way ahead of, or way behind, the other two).
We've just reached the end of an era now that Phoebe is no longer a primary school girl. In fact, that girl already seems lost in the mists of time, fossilised in another world. Instead, she has bounded into the new era and is morphing into a new species of senior school girl with enthusiasm, and great potential to survive and develop. Little changes - hair, style, shoes - reveal Phoebe was ready to move on.
As was I. I like these alterations, the way we all have to adapt to our continually changing family dynamics. I don't get sentimental about the way we were (although the children love to hear stories about themselves when they were little) and I don't try to resist change. Instead, I see it as an opportunity to experience something new.
It took me while to realise that the difficult or challenging 'phases' of childhood all pass eventually. To be replaced with an equally challenging new 'phase'. And so it will go on forever. Also, let's not forget that the children no doubt feel we, as parents, have our phases, too. Some, like Birkies and nail-varnish on toes are even shared. Here is Phoebe's version of this phase.
So I am looking forward to having three senior school children who will become more and more independent as the new era progresses. If I don't change with them, I'm in danger of extinction (metaphorically speaking) and that would never do. Because the other thing that I've discovered in my study of family geology is that teenagers possess a rich seam of humour and wit and imaginative thought processes which makes them extremely good company - provided we are willing to see them as they are, and not as they were.
Here we are, then, in the Neoteenagerozoic era. I just hope there will not be too many earthquakes in this one.
***
In very timely and nicely appropriate fashion, Phoebe has suddenly grown out of all her shoes. As a result, she is newly shod for moving on, as the photos prove. She's even bought herself some skates for a really fast getaway.
For Phoebe's leaving party.
Friday was Phoebe's last day at her school and, indeed, the last Brocket day at the place all three have attended for various lengths of time during the last seven years. So she invited twenty eleven year olds for a party in the garden to celebrate six happy years and some lovely friendships.
The catering involved sky-blue buns for a message, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts for a doughnut eating race.
We tie doughnuts on string to the branch of a tree at mouth height and place a child beneath each one, hands behind their back, and off they go.
Helium-filled balloons to decorate the garden and, later, for cartoon-style squeaky voices.
Sweets for sustinence during ball games and trampolining and dancing and penalty shoot-outs.
Bedding for the five-girl sleepover after the party.
A party girl.
The message.
And they did.
We have so much to say at the moment. It's said that the English like to talk about the weather, so there's currently no shortage of subject-matter for polite conversation. The rain, more rain, and yet more rain, plus the winds, and low temperatures made June far from flaming, and July is no better. All of which is making us quite garrulous.
It means we haven't been able to sit out in the garden since April, or even do any gardening. So when I had a look around yesterday (in the rain) I was taken aback by the verdant growth - and shocked that so much of it is lush, healthy, happy and rampant weeds. Still, the light is pretty dramatic for taking close-ups of the flowers which manage to rise above the uninvited guests.
I was thinking about Englishness and reticence, and the way we talk about the weather in order to avoid more troublesome subjects, as I went round the How We Are exhibition at Tate Britain earlier in the day. This is the most wonderful collection of photographs of England and Englishness from the 1840s to the present. It demonstrated that there is no single way to define Englishness, but there were certain attributes which connected the 600 photos. Mild eccentricity, a touch of earnestness mixed with self-deprecation (in case we try too hard), visible pride in gardens, landscapes, flowers and traditions, a very clear valuing of the ordinary and, as a result, some unexpected beauty in everyday people and places. There's also an undercurrent of gentle good humour without irony which makes you look at photos of Butlin's holiday camps and 1960s beauty contests in a new light.
I thought maybe Robert Frost wasn't the right poet to be reading in this climate of thought, but then realised that he's almost an honorary Englishmen because so many of his poems feature rain, snow, sun, nature, woods, walls and paths. He has the knack of saying so much when apparently simply writing about the weather or ordinary things that it's almost possible to think that really these are all there is to his work. And then you remember that there's a lot more to weather-talk than clouds and rain and even the occasional ray of sunshine.
