yarnstorm

how my garden grows

I don't so much garden as grow things. In fact, I cultivate some plants just for the sheer fun of watching them, seeing how they turn out, then picking and examining them. I don't care that I haven't got enough to feed a family, or that I grow things we don't like to eat, because it's the colours, textures, habits and surprises which appeal to my gardening instinct.

Today I noticed some rather mature broad bean pods still on the late-sown plants which I'd neglected. And now I'm so pleased I did, because when I split open the pods I discovered these amazing red beans like large rubies - only even more precious because I'd caused them to grow. After swooning with delight with me, Phoebe asked if she could go and pick a few things and what she came back with made me realise just how many seeds I'd sown in spring.

She picked ruby chard and red cabbage stalks and tomatoes and courgettes and nasturtiums and sunflowers and cosmos and snapdragons and marigolds and made the most brilliant arrangements on white plates.

But most of all she picked runner beans. We have a little tradition that every year I grow them with her and then she takes her dainty trug and picks them, dissects them, and plays with before keeping some beans for planting next year. We were inspired by this wonderful book which made me realise that the shared process of growing runner beans is just as important, if not more so, than the final result.   

We also have a fine crop of downy, pale lemony-lime quinces on the tree but I've put an embargo on picking any more until they are larger and riper.

Sometimes my scatterbrain gardening approach means I forget what I've planted where, so I am startled when I find a cluster of magenta gladioli in amongst the euphorbia, and today I came across a single, amazing peach and deep orange gladiolus in the middle of the chard. When did I plant that? And why is there only one?

And in the midst of our very own mini harvest festival, my crochet flower garden continues to grow. Slowly, but surely.

Have a great weekend.

reading matters: non-fiction

Memoirs

This category was the least satisfying of all my summer reading.

I'd seen that Bertie, May and Mrs Fish by Xandra Bingley attracted lots of attention when it was first published but kept forgetting the title. Once I'd read it I found this memory lapse quite apt - the title is misleading and I still can't remember it unless I see the book in front of me.

This is a very hazy book and it's often difficult to tell what's happening. And I'm afraid I was driven mad by the author's constant use of...three dots...in between...phrases...which could go on...for entire paragraphs. I found my eyes were dancing all over the page and myself wishing she would just create whole sentences. I wasn't as charmed as I think I should have been, and was positively revolted by the later suggestions of what Bertie was really like.

Similarly, in Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing the Mango Trees there is an unpleasant and predatory male relation who casts a shadow over the book, but whose influence is never fully admitted or examined. There's a touch of denial in both these books and I couldn't accept the more light-hearted memories because I felt there was some dishonesty in the writing. And just as I was distracted by XB's punctuation, I was bothered by the number of typos and printing errors in MD's book. It's amazing how much the look and flow of the text can detract from the pleasure of reading.

It's hard to write about Dannie Abse's book The Presence because it was written at a terrible time in the poet's life - the first year after his wife of fifty years was killed in a car crash. At the end of the book DA says he hopes it has been a fitting tribute to Joan, but I finished the book knowing little more about Joan and her true personality than I had when I started. But I knew a great deal more about DA and the famous people he knows or has known. However, this was not why I read the book. 

John Betjeman

Trains and Buttered Toast and Tennis Whites and Teacakes are collections of JB's radio broadcasts and various writings respectively, and the first is far better because it contains material which is hard to find elsewhere and has a simple, clear structure.

How I love JB's writings on the English seaside, English trains, English eccentrics, visiting English churches, the beauty of the suburbs, the glory of Bristol and the joy of returing home. These books are like lucky dips in old-fashioned bran tubs and probably best enjoyed while wearing a floral frock and drinking home-made lemonade.

Gardening books

Urban Gardener by Elspeth Thompson is a collection of her articles for The Sunday Telegraph. Although the book was published in 2000 the pieces have not dated and I read this book as a narrative of her tiny, urban garden and her urban allotment which unfolds over time. She writes so well because she notices and enjoys so much. She's knowledgeable but willing to learn, takes great delight in small things and has great taste when it comes to plants. It's inspirational stuff.

Francine Raymond is a leading light in the world of hen-keeping and maintains a kitchen garden in Suffolk which, judging from this self-published book All My Eggs in One Basket, is spectacularly lovely and yet firmly realistic. The book is the diary of one very busy year and FR manages to do an incredible amount - plant, grow, create, campaign, write. I really enjoyed this book because it has a ring of authenticity and passion - and the photos are great.

M.F.K. Fisher

Mmmmm, what can I say? This isn't the first time I've read MFK but it is the first time I've tried to read her books in order from start to finish rather than just random pages. I think the trouble is with the sheer size of this volume; it's like a huge feast when actually I'd rather have MFK served in more manageable courses. She writes brilliantly but almost too much. I can't digest all her writings and there are times when I became a little over-full when reading The Gastronomical Me. I much prefer the pieces with her lighter touch such as when she writes about peas (P is for...peas) or icy oranges or making bread or cafes in Dijon. I'm also not always that comfortable in the company of someone who is so very, very sure of herself.

Alain de Botton

Which, thankfully, is not the case with AdeB who is gently self-deprecating, fallible and prone to anxiety. Thankfully, he also has a healthy sense of humour and irony plus the ability to write about complex philosophies in a clear and level-headed way. I read The Consolations of Philosophy first and took my time. You can't rush the great philosophers and I found I had to internalise every new idea before moving onto the next 'therefore' step. I actually found myself enjoying the ideas of Socrates, Epicurus and Montaigne while on holiday and all thanks to AdeB's excellent distillation of their work. (When I looked at the pages of notes at the back I began to realise just how much he has read in order to produce these short, elegant chapters - a huge feat.)

The Art of Travel is a more personal and poetic book, thought-provoking and perceptive. In it AdeB articulates some of the very woolly thoughts and reflections I've had about my own travels, so I am bound to say this is a brilliant book.

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So that's my summer's reading. There has been poetry, too, and I might write a post about that, as Eireann suggested - when & if I muster sufficient confidence to do so.

reading matters: fiction

I was so looking forward to reading, and not writing, this summer that my reading lists and piles grew like Topsy. Everything and anything that took my fancy was put on one of my teetering paper skyscrapers so that whenever I needed a new title, all I had to do was pull one out without sending the whole thing crashing to the ground like a large-scale game of Jenga.

As we come to the end of the school holidays I see I did pretty well with the piles and can count this as a good summer of reading, so I thought I'd do a round-up of the books that made an impression. I didn't read them in any particular order - one of the pleasures was just picking up whatever took my fancy that day - but when I came to look at them again this morning I realised that I'd read a few sub-groups of books with common themes.

Modern classics

I am no longer afraid of re-reading old favourites. I used to think that I should always be looking for new and exciting discoveries, but these days I adore reading something I know I'm going to enjoy. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is a re-re-re-read and still I cried with laughter and read parts out to Simon (who wanted Tom to be called Seth after the character in this book) and generally loved every minute of this very, very funny book. Each time I read To Kill a Mockingbird I find something new, and this time I was bowled over by Harper Lee's wonderful understanding of skilled parenting; the child psychology which Atticus uses with Jem and Scout is amazingly clever and effective.

I also read Tove Jansson's Summer Book for the first time. It was highly appropriate to be thinking about island living while we were on the Ile de Re. When we first arrived we were looking at the larger picture and the island in relation to the mainland. Within a few days, though, we were seeing only the island, and the longer we stayed the more we observed and focussed on the smaller and smaller detail, just as Sophia and her grandmother do, until they find a whole world on their tiny island. I know that lots of people think this is a lovely, bright summer book, but I found it very sad. Here are three characters who are all trying to come to terms with the loss of their daughter, wife, mother, but are often unable to communicate their feelings. The way in which the father/son sat silently in the same room as his mother and daughter but with his back to them said it all.    

Contemporary fiction

I do my best, really I do. I am very aware that I fail miserably when it comes to modern fiction, but there is a good reason. Mostly, I really don't like it. I don't enjoy it so it becomes a trial and then I get cross with the author and myself. But every so often I try to make amends and to show willing.

I've read some of Sarah Waters' work before and really enjoyed her richly descriptive style and well-paced plots. So I was well-disposed to like The Night Watch, especially as I'm fascinated by women's books of the 1940s. This book is unusual in that the story is told backwards from 1947 to 1941 and it's as if it begins in a huge whirl of activity and atmosphere and then slowly but surely the energy drains away until you finish with just a speck, by which time I knew what was going to have happened and really didn't care too much anyway, because I really couldn't empathise with most of the characters. There are some excellent parts and some very upsetting and gruesome 'set pieces', but the whole thing lacked warmth and true cohesion.

I'm afraid I didn't get on much better with Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk. Oh my goodness, these suburban women are so self-centred and negative, and not one is pleasant to her children while they are awake. Their husbands are throwbacks of the 1970s male chauvinist stereotype and no more than cardboard cut-outs at which to throw rotten eggs.

Persephone

So it was with huge relief that after each of the above I turned to a Persephone book. Ah, the comfort and joy of a well-written, utterly readable and entertaining novel. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson is a delight and I enjoyed it even more the second time. It is is beautifully paced and witty and engaging, and I love the way Miss P grows in confidence and self-belief. I once heard Salley Vickers who wrote Miss Garnet's Angel talk of Miss G and Miss P as 'benevolent witches' who have the power to make transformations for the good, and I think she's right. Miss P casts good spells wherever she goes, and certainly she casts one over the reader.

The Village by Marghanita Laski is another re-read and an incredibly absorbing tale of ordinary lives just after the Second World War. She draws her characters so brilliantly that you are genuinely interested in their actions and stories. And as for the rigid social hierarchies in the village, they had me fascinated and appalled, and shocked that they could have such meaning. It may seem dated, and yet prejudices and snobbery never really go away, they just aquire new forms.

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So that's the fiction. Next, I'll do the non-firction books.

hot summer or wishful thinking quilt

How ironic that I should finish my Hot Summer quilt on a lovely, hot, sunny, summer's day. For this could also be called the Wishful Thinking quilt. We have had such a miserable, grey, wet and cool summer that I decided to quilt myself a better one. Then, finally, on the very day my ironically tilted quilt is completed, nature grants my wish.

It's a version of Kaffe Fassett's Floral Columns quilt in his and Liza Prior Lucy's V&A Quilts. It all began with the wonderfully kitsch, hot ladies fabric which I realised could ruin a tasteful quilt, or get lost in a busy quilt. So this design with nine 9" wide strips allowed the fabric to show off but not dominate. It took me ages to find eight fabrics to enhance and complement my buxom beauties, but eventually I worked out that the combination of tangerine orange and deep teal was what I wanted to play with.

All are large-scale prints and it's a real treat to let such lovely flowers and leaves and bosoms show off in good-size pieces for a change, rather than cutting them up small. Actually, this was the real attraction of the design in the first place - the opportunity to use fabrics I really love and want to be able to admire fully in a quilt. 

I decided a border wasn't necesary and chose a Kaffe Fassett blue and orange polka dot fabric for the binding; you don't see a lot of it but its aptness and jollity makes me smile.

I didn't have enough of any one fabric to back the quilt and couldn't wait for a delivery of one of them from the US, so I went to The Quilt Room and found this brilliant orange fabric with a tiny pattern which was perfect for suggesting a scorching hot day.

The quilt measures 74" x 80" / 188cm x 204cm and is machine-pieced and hand-quilted with a teal cotton thread using relatively large stitches. The fabrics are from eQuilter, Glorious Color and Purl Patchwork.

This quilt is for Phoebe. She claimed it early on when she first saw me playing with the strips on the floor. She helped me with the placement order, chose the binding fabric with me and came to Dorking to advise on the backing fabric. It looks stunning in her bright orange bedroom, and she happily put it on and twirled round and round in the garden for me.

It was difficult to get her to stand still for a moment (top photo), because she was soon off doing a Mexican wave or Hawaiian dance as the ladies might do if ever they came to life.

Fortunately, she was reading when I did the morning photos (all the other photos) - the quilt is far less wriggly on a tree.

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Thank, you, thank you, thank you for all the encouraging and supportive comments on my last post. You are such wonderfully philosophical souls.

the biodynamic me

I can't say I am completely persuaded by the concept of biodynamics, a practice and philosophy I first came across when I was studying for the Master of Wine exams. But I do, in a very non-scientific and faintly fluffy way, think there is something in the idea of natural timing. I can't ascribe my own sense of it to the waxing and waning of the moon, the ebb and flow of the sea or the alignment of planets (although there is some evidence to suggest it does affect us all), but I am very aware that my life goes through phases during which certain things are more dominant and others recede gently into the background.

All this is a way of explaining that I am conscious that the blog, too, is evolving. The person who started writing yarnstorm in early 2005 is still me but I am now, in late summer 2007, in a different phase of my life.

When I began, I was still a PhD student and was desperate to break out of libraries and rediscover my passion for knitting. I had finished my freelance wine work and wasn't earning a penny, and had two children at one school and one at her senior school. Today, I do a couple of wine tastings a year, have three children at three senior schools and, in the last twelve months, have found a literary agent and a publisher, and have written a book. Next week, in keeping with my belief that New Year's Day is actually 1 September, I begin writing my second book for Hodder and my life will enter a yet another phase.

The point is that I don't have the time to do everything I'd like to. In the last few weeks, I've been quilting and quilting, reading madly, baking for Britain, and looking after the children during their eight week school holiday. No wonder, then, that yarn hasn't been seen much around here; I still love knitting and crochet but I have to make choices about what I do with my time, follow my natural timing and, as a result, these two interests have had to wane a little for a while.

So my apologies for the lack of fibre and knitting and crochet thoughts. I do appreciate that some people may be feeling that I've lost my way and abandoned my needles. But the knitting patterns and yarns and plans and projects are all still very much around and within me. I just need a little time and a few good moons and stars and I'll soon be clicking and hooking away again.

I appreciate every single visitor to the blog, and even more so when I'm feeling some pressure. Your sheer good humour, vast body of knowledge and infectious enthusiasm for the delights of domesticity bolster and sustain me. I do hope you'll keep reading.

gentility

One thing I can say with conviction is that I am not genteel. I am tall, have large feet, a loud laugh, and I have never quite mastered the art of gentility. But I do like the idea of genteel cakes, the kind of things the ladies of Yorkshire would eat in Winifred Holtby's novels* and which are still available at the very genteel (but very welcoming and enjoyable) Betty's of Harrogate.

Fondant fancies must be the ne plus ultra of genteel cakes and Phoebe and I have been wanting to make them ever since we saw the modern and sophisticated versions in Peggy Porschen's books. We were put off by the idea of making our own fondant icing, so decided to take a short cut and use Fondant Icing Sugar (just mix with water or lemon juice). Which was just as well as Phoebe went through two whole boxes trying to get the consistency and colours just right and then having to start over again whenever crumbs fell in or whole sponges collapsed.

But she persevered until a dozen squares of vanilla sponge, about ten bowls and acres of kitchen surface were neatly covered in smooth icing. She'd intended putting sugar roses on each fancy, but when we found out just how difficult it is to master these and fondant icing on the same day (Peggy P makes everything look so simple), she went for Mr Kipling-style zig-zags of plain icing.

And here are the extremely genteel results. Sometimes I do wonder how she came to be my daughter.

* I am thoroughly enjoying the current Radio 4 dramatisation of The Crowded Street.

the glory of the garden

It's been a vegetably summer. I've had some lovely moments wandering around allotments and visiting the incredible kitchen garden at Helmingham Hall. I've cycled slowly past market gardens and peeped over garden walls into domestic potagers on the Ile de Re. I've walked round markets admiring the produce, and I've read a pile of books on allotments and vegetables and kitchen gardens.

All of which has confirmed my view that vegetables are 'the glory of the garden'. This phrase is always at the back of my mind; it's from this poem by Rudyard Kipling which, among other things, celebrates the real work of gardening and it was read at my brother's funeral ten years ago. He was a landscape architect so knew all too well that gardening was not about singing '"Oh, how beautiful!'" and sitting in the shade'.

Some of my favourite parts of a garden are the 'tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of it all' and 'the cold-frames and the hot-houses', because these often carefully hidden spots are where the vegetables start and are nurtured as seedlings and young plants and some, later, as tender, mature plants. I like the mix of pragmatism and mysticism which pervades sowing and germination and pricking out and potting, all of which is then forgotten when the vegetables turn into sturdy plants, all hale and hearty and clearly able to fend for themselves in the garden.

Maybe it's this air of robustness and ordinariness which makes some people overlook, or perhaps take for granted, the sheer beauty of vegetables. I am constantly delighted by their wonderful colours, shapes, textures and growth habits and it's good to know there are other enlightened souls who enjoy the sight of courgettes and borlotti beans, artichokes and radishes as much as I do. When I was taking photos of my very favourite potager this summer (a veritable minestrone, crammed with all sorts of vegetables and flowers) a local lady cycled past and said, 'Vous avez raison de prendre un photo. C'est le plus beau jardin a Ste Marie' ('you're right to take a photo - it's the most beautiful garden in Ste Marie').

Just look at these beauties. Smooth, knobbly, spiky, curvaceous, 

gleaming, matt, slender, squat,

exotic, ordinary,

simple, complex,

labour-intensive, happy-go-lucky,

or just sunning themselves.

I've grown some vegetables at home, too. I have runner beans so that I can enjoy the way they twirl round their supports like ballerinas, and then Phoebe can pick them and remove the fresh, mottled seeds (I confess we don't eat them - their taste reminds me of dreadful, overboiled school dinners) and a few golden courgettes which are always eaten. I have some slug-ridden red cabbages with lacework leaves and some brilliant ruby chard which I'll leave to go to seed because it doesn't taste of much and creates a warm, red glow on dull days. Simon has harvested dozens of garlic bulbs and we are already getting excited about potatoes, chillis and purple beans for next year.

For that is the other glory of the garden and of vegetables - we can always live in hope.

baked in britain

One of the rituals of staying in Aldeburgh is getting up to queue at the bakery which opens at 8.30 - by which time there is already a neat and orderly line of children still in their pyjamas and adults in towelling dressing gowns, fresh from their morning swim. Conversation is very civilised - the weather, the prospects of sailing that day, whether to have an iced bun or a muffin. It's a good, old-fashioned bakery (even if it does have new-fangled 'chocolate croissants') which sells all the staples of English yeast cookery, as Elizabeth David might say.

We patronise it every day because it is our duty to keep such enterprises alive, and also because we aim to work our way round the doughnuts, pastries, buns, baps and breads before we go home. (We failed miserably this time because our champion baked goods eater, Simon, had to go back to work during the week.)

In fact, the whole holiday had an English baking theme to it as I found a small but inspiring collection of cookery books in the house and decided to make some cakes I've wanted to try but somehow failed to do so.

Why is that seed cake sounds so unappetising? Is it memories of dried out sponge and annoying, stale seeds which get stuck between teeth? Is it the idea of caraway seeds which are a link to the dim and distant past, or is it the suggestion that it's not a child-friendly cake? Or is it simply unfashionable?

I didn't know the answer as I'd never eaten seed cake before I made it but, now I've tasted a fresh, home-made version, I know that the aversion to seed cake is inexplicable unless it's a question of fickle fashion. It's a lovely, rich, soft sponge with a deliciously faint and exotic aroma of aniseed. And it's very simple to make using a Madeira cake recipe and adding just two teaspoons of caraway seeds (well within their sell-by date) and some grated orange peel.

And in another snub to received ideas, both adults and children agreed it was splendid, and the perfect fortifying agent for battling with the elements.

sweetness and light

When the children were tiny I knew I wanted to find somewhere we could go to on holiday year after year. I liked the idea of returning to a place that was special to us all, somewhere we could slip instantly into relaxation mode and feel at home, somewhere we could build an archive of shared memories and anecdotes and details.

I really had no idea where it would be as neither Simon nor I had any connections with the seaside (it had to be beside the sea) and neither of us had somewhere we'd known since our own childhood. We tried Cornwall, Devon and Dorset but couldn't find what we were looking for. 

And then one grey and windy summer's day ten years ago we took Tom, Alice and Phoebe to Aldeburgh for fish and chips. We sat on the wall of the shelving pebbly beach and faced the ever-changing sea and sky and shared our chips with the cheeky seagulls. And we fell in love with the charm of the town, the bleakness and simplicity of the landscape and the edge-of-the-worldliness atmosphere.

We've been back again and again, and still Aldeburgh offers the sweetness and light we were looking for. We've stayed in many different places in the town, but this was the first time I've wanted to move into a rented house permanently. In fact, it was so conducive to domesticity that one of the first things I did was buy three bunches of wonderful dahlias when we visited the utterly fabulous gardens of Helmingham Hall (an unbelievable £1 a bunch) and arrange them in the living room.

Inspired by these flowers and the general homeliness, we visited Woottens, our favourite plant nursery, to buy some plants to take home, including some 'David Howard' dahlias which I've been searching for for a while (lovely burnished orange flowers with dark, bronze foliage). As the house didn't have a garden we kept the plants in the wash-room - a wash-room to beat all other wash-rooms I've ever known, it must be said - and I spent inordinate amounts of time simply enjoying the effect in here.

This would make a perfect flower-room, I thought.

But the most stunning view was from our first-floor living room and it was best enjoyed with a glass of cold and fruity rose to match my dahlias and my husband (above). I was enthralled by the way that three wide strips - the beach, the sea and the sky - could offer so much drama and variation. One day we would have a calm and glittering silver sea and the next we'd be watching rough, brown, crashing waves.

The sky changed by the hour, and the clouds and the colours offered us brilliant wide-screen entertainment all week.

And I felt so at home that I was able to hand-quilt all my quilt while I listened to Leonard Cohen and the children roller-skated up and down the beach path, queued for fish and chips and designed ridiculous board games.   

Sweetness and light, indeed. 

spongey, jammy, creamy cake

I do like that song in The Sound of Music about tea and jam and bread. I've been singing it all day but my lyrics are slightly different when I do my Maria/Julie Andrews bit. 'Tea, a drink with sponge and jam' is far more apt when we are baking a Full-On Fattypuffs cake.

This is a classic Victoria Sponge filled with the bright red raspberry jam we made, and a good, thick layer of cream. Phoebe oversaw its creation as I have been getting ready for another week away from the computer.

We are staying in England so I have packed warm clothes for cold weather, cool clothes for warm weather, waterproofs, Crocs, books, and a huge quilt to hand-quilt which I've not be able to show on the blog as it's a commission. Suffice to say it's very colourful and very large and that, even after making it, I still love lime.

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I couldn't leave without saying just how much I enjoyed reading all your jam stories and thoughts and experiences and suggestions. Thanks so much for taking the time to write - your comments make the most wonderful jam narrative and one which I'm proud to have on my blog.

See you soon.