yarnstorm

thalia and friends

N. 'Pheasant's Eye'

Although my love of daffodils does not quite match my passion for tulips, I have been growing them for years. They are undemanding and easy-going, they can be planted in pleasant September weather (unlike tulips which demand to be planted in arctic November conditions), they do brilliantly in pots and in the ground and, the thing that clinches it for me, they come up year after year after year.

The beautifully scented Pheasant's Eye daffs above are from bulbs which we planted eight or nine years ago, and they look as fresh and youthful as the Ice Follies below which were planted ridiculously late (in January this year) and yet still came up on cue. Ice Follies were the first narcissi I ever planted more than twenty years ago, and I still have a soft spot for their simple flowers with wonderful softly buttery yellow centres which fade to the palest lemon as they age.   

N. 'Ice Follies'

This year, as in many other years, I am also enamoured of Thalia's name and her nature. Coolly white and utterly refined, she has the perfect name - that of a goddess and one of the Three Graces. I don't think any daffodil can be considered unfriendly, but Thalia does look best on her own in almost splendid isolation. 

N. 'Thalia'

Unlike 'Tahiti' (below) which almost shouts hello at me as I walk past and is clearly happy to attract attention with ruffled double flowers and a combination of deep orange and bright yellow. They remind me of layers of petticoats worn deliberately for show rather than any more practical reason.

N. 'Tahiti'

The house smells lovely - it's surprising how many daffodils are scented - and I have a line of vases with the different varieties on the lounge windowsill looking for all the world like a chatty, happy group of friends. And Thalia is in the kitchen, where I can admire her purity and prettiness, and she can be my special friend. 

(All the photos except the last were taken in the space of an hour today. That's how much the light changes minute by minute at the moment.)

dove-grey oasis

The pale grey skies yesterday matched the dove-grey exterior

and complemented the spring flowers outside Persephone Books.

The shop is a silvery oasis in London, situated in the wonderfully named and characterful Lamb's Conduit Street (little cafes and delis, flower shop, book shops, pubs and wine bar, and a very imposing undertaker's business), a sort of civilised, homely curiosity shop with a Georgian-style mix of domestic and business (it's both shop and office, but it feels like a large, comfortable room in a private house - cushions and flowers and reference books and wonderful posters all contribute to the atmosphere).

I was there for a stimulating, thoughtful talk by, and lunch with, Christina Hardyment whose book Dream Babies has just been republished. 

I've always been highly sceptical about baby and child advice/gurus; having twins first made me realise very quickly that there was no single babycare theory which could be applied successfully to all babies (especially to two so very different personalities) and I quickly discarded all the books I'd bought. But it's fascinating to hear the historical perspective on childcare, and Christina Hardyment treads a careful path through this minefield.

Going into Persephone Books for a couple of hours is like coming upon an oasis. I go to imbibe the atmosphere of gentle intellectual debate and to meet thoughtful, interesting women. Last time I was there in December, I was the speaker and I made some Persephone fairy cakes for the occasion.

But it was lovely to be spoken to, and catered for, this time.

a good run

What do you do during the four days of the coldest Easter for forty years? Well, if you're me you manage to convince yourself that the long weekend was custom-made for hand-quilting a quilt.

So when I say Easter turned out to be a good run, I don't mean the sporty kind. I mean that I was able to spend hours and hours doing running stitch up and down the edges of the green and red diamonds of what is to be my Amaryllis Quilt.

I took up residence on a comfy settee and stitched and stitched and stitched. I had my red thread, red thimble and red tea mug which was replenished at regular intervals, plus plenty of good company.

We watched rugby (I predicted 'man of the match' correctly twice - something of which I'm very proud considering I wasn't actually watching, only listening), Pride and Prejudice (the very pretty but insubstantial recent version with lovely linen dresses), our favourite scenes from The Pajama Game (I realised that my Hot Summer quilt was remarkably similar to the clothes worn in the picnic scene) and Ocean's Eleven (why does Brad Pitt's character never stop eating?). And I received offerings of chocolate and wine and daffodils picked from the garden.

By the end of the holiday I had quilted the entire thing. I think it took about eighteen hours in all, but it was one of the most restful marathon quilting runs I've ever had.

eat us if you dare

Never mind the Terracotta Army, we've been invaded by the Chocolate Bunnies giving us evil looks,

and challenging us to eat them.

Who dares wins.

inky socks

I have had an ongoing love affair with Winsor & Newton inks since I was a teenager. I adore the little boxes, labels and pots which have hardly changed since I first discovered them. I used to save up my fish-and-chip shop earnings to buy one colour at a time for decorating eggs, then I'd line them up with the bottles on top of the boxes and examine the details of the packaging for hours on end.

Of all the fabulous colours, there was one which intrigued me more than any other, and this was viridian. It was so deep and full of itself that I used to think of it as a complete one-off in the spectrum. I tried it out in many patterns and colour schemes on my eggs, but always regarded it as a somewhat stand-offish colour which kept the rest of the rainbow at bay.

So I wasn't surprised when I started knitting these socks for Simon to find that it was the viridian bands that stood out. But gradually it dawned on me that they also managed to look wonderful with all the other inky colours. This quality of inkiness works brilliantly in these socks and, sure enough, when I went to an art shop to check, I found that Winsor & Newton have an ink to match every stripe in Simon's socks.

In fact, after a while it was the viridian stripes that I looked forward to encountering on my spiral travels; the yarn at this point seemed somehow richer and denser and softer. Or maybe it was me just softening my attitude towards an awkward colour?

Only Kaffe Fassett could make viridian seem willing to work with other colours. His colour sense is just amazing; these socks are knitted in his Regia Caribbean sock yarn #4261 on 3.5mm dpns to the same old pattern I use all the time.

Modelled by Simon, with Phoebe's encouragement to turn his toes out properly.

new season

I was buying flowers to give to a friend when I saw a bucket of tightly curled, pale orange parrot tulips and I couldn't resist a couple of bunches for myself as a promise of things to come.

It's not quite the season yet (although I've seen a few species tulips popping up here and there) and I know these are forced for the market, but they served as a welcome reminder that it's long now till tulip-time. I've started surveying the garden on a daily basis to see what's happening with our own tulips, and already there's enough going on to keep me in a general state of low-key excitement. 

Although these weren't labelled, I'm pretty sure they are 'Orange Favourite'. They start off relatively peachy and palely blushing but they turn into raving tangerine beauties as they open up. They are lighting up my windowsill and making a wonderful still-life with the best brand of sliced bread, the electronic egg-timer Simon & Phoebe gave me, and a subtle colour of sock yarn.

And in the spirit of looking forward and thinking about what comes next, last night I read The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp from cover to cover. This is a book that Jan recommended to me a long, long time ago, but somehow or other I never found the right moment to read it. Like the tulip bulbs, it lay dormant under a few layers of books until I unearthed it the other day during my big office tidy-up. It's very focussed, well written, thought-provoking and, for me, reassuring and revealing.

New books, new thoughts, new flowers. Ah, the joys of a new season.

 

the final flourish

This is it. The last recipe to be tested for the book. It's also a first as I've never made a walnut cake before and I am relieved I didn't have to go through several versions on this final day. Apart from anything else, levels of icing sugar have fallen dangerously low and I might have had to go out to get some more. How ironic that would have been after six months of having cream and butter fall out of the fridge every time we open it, bags of flour crammed into cupboards, and layers of different coloured sugars on every available shelf.

And now I feel like a free woman. Tomorrow, for the first time in fourteen and a half months I'll be able to wake up without thinking about a book deadline. My calendar has suddenly opened up and I realise there is life beyond 14 March, and yet I feel strangely unprepared for the freedom. Maybe I just need to re-test a few recipes...   

So what am I going to do with my time?

I am going to sort out my office. I have a disconcerting ability to ignore the fact that the whole room has crept up around me while I've been working, and I need to rediscover its real boundaries by moving dozens and dozens of children's books, papers, recipe books. I might even find there is room to swing a cat in here.   

I am going to read some grown-up books without looking for food moments and treats. This will be difficult as I've grown so used to my eyes scanning pages for mentions of cakes, biscuits, eggs, ginger, jam, sandwiches, picnics that I'm going to have to readjust to reading whole chapters again. But I suspect I'll still be thrilled when I meet a scone or a fruit cake.

I am going to knit and quilt. The thing I've been looking forward to most is moving away from the computer screen and having something soft and colourful in front of me again. Life will cease to exist in black and white and will turn into glorious Technicolour rather like one of the wonderful transitions in A Matter of Life and Death.

I am going to soak up some new ideas and inspiration. I have my tickets booked and I'm going to be doing some visiting and travelling.

I am going to get some fresh air. Goodness knows, my lungs need some.

I am going to get some sleep. Goodness know, my brain needs some.

Best of all, I am going to spend time with Simon, Tom, Alice and Phoebe who have been amazing over the last year and have seen me through some pretty tricky moments. And they have been the best treat-eaters a cook could ever wish for. This walnut cake is for them.

   

 

spring in my step

I'm a little earlier than usual this year. Normally, it's towards the end of March that I start to think about seeds and buds and shoots, but I've found that I already have a spring in my step. Maybe it's the sight of the huge, closed-up flowers on 'my' magnificent magnolia (it's not mine at all, it's about two miles from home, but I have an almost proprietorial interest in it). Maybe it's the fact that I can sense the freedom from the desk and screen that will come at the end of the week. Or maybe it's the colours of the socks I'm knitting - spring green and blossom white.

Whatever the reason, I'm back to reading gardening articles and books with a sense of purpose once more. So I was delighted to see that Elspeth Thompson's article on Sunday was about creating a patchwork quilt effect in allotments and vegetable gardens. Just the kind of thing I love. And then I saw the mention of me and my book, and my day was made. The newly found spring in my step turned into a little jump.

I have been reading Elspeth's columns for years and I love her thoughtful but down-to-earth words and advice, and her eye for beautiful plants and flowers, so I was thrilled to discover last night that she's a reader of this blog. And she tells me she has a website - in the colours I have always associated with her such as grey, lilac and a very specific glaucous green - and a blog about her railway carriage eco-house which will have a sedum roof, an idea that has intrigued me since the time I used to play with my friend in an old air-raid shelter which was covered with living plants. I am really looking forward to following the story and am pleased we'll also be able to see the wonderful pictures to go with the text. 

Spring has defintely sprung a spring in my step and I haven't felt this bouncy in a long time.

desk drama

The last thing I need in my life at the moment is drama. All the time I've been writing Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer, I've nursed a secret dread of something horribly dramatic happening (broken legs, car crashes, teeth destroyed in rugby matches, the usual stuff). I've been under so much pressure time-wise that there's no space for emergencies.

So I am happy to have the drama happening elsewhere. I don't even mind it on my desk - just as long as it is confined to the flowers. 

For the last month the amaryllis have been seeking attention and showing off like mad. One by one, they have taken centre stage like a parade of divas, while I have been in the audience watching the show.

Or maybe I should say I'm their stage manager or lighting technician - trying to stand them in the most flattering light so I can photograph their best profiles. H. 'Emerald' (top) was photographed on a stormy, grey day but somehow managed to pick up the few rays of sunshine that were available (typical starlet) and suddenly turned lime green in the centre.

H. 'Ruby Meyer' (what a name - she's definitely an opera singer) was simply stunning in both diffuse and direct light (above and below). There's a flower that knows how to work the camera, as Tyra would say.

And H. 'Exotic Star' (below) was a game girl with real staying power. Her performance outlasted the rest and she even did a little encore when a final bloom suddenly emerged from the bulb just as I thought the show was over.

It's fitting that the desk drama has come to an end just as the book is almost done. But that does not mean I'm ready for some real drama now.

                                ***

Thank you so much for all your comments about Australian books for children. I've ordered a stack of the titles to read in the British Library, and am looking forward to immersing myself in the stories and foods. I have to disappoint some people though, and say that I'm not up to creating a recipe for a magic pudding - the clue to the reason why is in the name of dish.

another big favour

I need a little help with the subject of classic Australian treats. Does anyone know of any famous Australian children's books which mention treats such as lamingtons, Anzac biscuits, pavlova or peach melba? Although illustrated books and titles for very young readers often have lovely foody illustrations or rhymes, these are not what I'm looking for. So if anyone has a favourite book with a classic treat, I would love to hear from you.

Just so you know - Seven Little Australians and camp-fire damper are already on the list.

Thank you.