yarnstorm

chic chocs

There are cheap chocolate buttons. And there are chic chocolate buttons. These fall into the second category and have been brightening my days quite considerably since I first discovered them a little while ago at Hotel Chocolat.

They come in their own dinky little button box and are very difficult to eat. It's not that they don't taste delicious (they do), but it's very hard to spoil the pretty arrangement and then when you do, to decide whether to go for a brass button or a leather button or a gentleman's blazer button, or just a simple two-hole button. 

They are also wonderful vehicles for sorting and matching and general playing. Then eating.

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Tulip for today: late double 'Lilac Perfection'. Picked in the rain and photographed immediately.

And perfectly named.

                               ***

I'll miss my tulips for the next few days while I'm away. But there will be compensations.

Back next week.

postcard from the edge

It's funny how an image can stay with you for life. This painting by Harold Gilman has been part of my personal visual library for a long, long time. So clear are its details and associations, I can go for years without seeing it but when I do it suddenly brings home all kinds of memories.

I first saw 'The Eating House' (c. 1914) soon after I arrived at Sheffield University to train as a teacher of Russian and French after my degree. I lived in a tiny room in a tiny terraced house very close to where the Yorkshire Ripper had recently been caught (which somehow put us off late nights out). I spent most of the year avoiding doing lesson-plans by listening to the radio and knitting a cabled pink mohair Patricia Roberts sweater which I subsequently never wore. When I did go out, it was often to the virtually empty Graves Art Gallery to see the wonderful collection of paintings there. And this is where I bought the postcard which occupied pride of place on my pin-board.

In between knitting and feeling very sorry for myself, I spent hours looking at this painting. I remember wishing myself into the scene so many times that I was almost convinced that it must exist somewhere in a city like Manchester or London. I loved the colours, the view-point, the anonymity, the promise of something filling to eat like pie and chips or liver and mash served with cups of steaming tea. I always felt this must be a warm place to sit and read a newspaper - something I needed to combat the freezing Yorkshire winter outside (and inside).

It was a horrible year. I was cold, heartbroken, lost, lonely and most definitely not cut out to be a teacher. But I stuck it out and used the university 'milk round' to get a job which didn't involve caring about school uniform and staff rooms. And then I tucked the whole experience away in a mental box, and got on with the rest of my life.

So today when I saw the painting once again at the excellent Tate exhibition of the Camden Town Painters, it was like being back in that student room, dreaming of a place where I would be comfortable. It's much bigger than I remembered, and the colours are still quite brilliant and unfaded. It still makes me want to abscond immediately to a place like The Quality Chop House (which I disovered with Simon, and is the closest I have come to finding Gilman's eating house) to enjoy some black pudding or devilled kidneys.

I was almost surprised that no-one else seemed to be having the same reaction as me. Surely everyone must know how wonderful this painting is? Because even though it's something of a personal Pandora's box, it also gave me the one thing I needed more than anything - the hope that things would get better. And they did.

The postcard is up on my wall where I can see it in my office (which is uncannily similar in colour) and all the bad memories are back in their metaphorical box. Where they belong.                            

this is why i grow tulips

So that I can go out in my pyjamas on a Sunday morning before everyone else is up,

and pick a few short and stubby but incredibly bright and beautiful

late double (or peony) tulips called 'Orange Princess' (which I do not remember ordering last summer) to put in a short and stubby glass vase to make my kitchen windowsill look incredibly bright and beautiful.

So that I can also pick a gaudy mixed bunch for another windowsill.

So that I can bask in their glory for a few brief days.

So that I am reminded that I have something to look forward in the horrible, cold, miserable bulb-planting month of November.

magic

She may not make Queen Cakes, but she is undoubtedly the Queen of Cakes.

This week, Phoebe was put in charge of organising her class's fund-raising through the sales of cakes with a magic theme. So I keep finding shopping lists, lists of girls' names next to responsibilities, promotional material, and cake designs all over the house.

Although she is queen bee at school, it was this drone who did the cake-baking at home. Phoebe couldn't manage to make and decorate after school, so I was drafted in to supply the sponge while she was out. Several dozen fairy buns one day, and yesterday four separate cakes to construct the first prize in the school raffle. I loved the way Phoebe skipped off leaving me with all my instructions for the day, but then phoned from school to check that I was following them to the letter. Would I dare not?

So this is her Magical cake; vanilla sponge sandwiched with lemon buttercream and covered in a fetching shade of aqua frosting, topped with silver and blue adornments and a light sprinkling of iridescent fairy dust. It's a '12 aig cake' as the housekeeper in the Billabong series would say when boasting of how many eggs her creations contain (except her piece de resistance is a mere '10 aig cake'). 

I feel like a brickie who puts the construction together with bricks and mortar, while Queen Phoebe is the architect with all the wild ideas. Long may she reign.

                             ***

And here are some magic tulips. These are 'Daydream'; they come up yellow and then change to a beautifully attractive soft apricot orange on the outside (a colour which reminds me of butterscotch Angel Delight),

but with vividly tangerine interiors. Utterly magical.

   

i hear you, habu

All the new trends, ideas, crazes and passions in knitting are like white noise to me. I am aware of them clamouring for attention, but as they all seem to reach me on the same frequency and at the same volume, I am often unable to work out which one to listen to.

But I think that Habu Textiles must have changed frequency recently because I have become more and more aware of it within the wide spectrum of knitting noise. It started with Alison who writes so beautifully about the Habu philosophy and the sculptural quality of the yarns and, once I had picked up the sound of Habu, I started to hear it everywhere.

Then I found the book. This has been my bedside reading for quite a few weeks now. I find looking at the photos of the strange and wonderful knits taken in front of the simplest of backdrops utterly captivating and, when allied to a habit of contemplating the Japanese knitting patterns, really quite soothing and soporific, and I fall asleep thinking of unusual yarns and knitted creations which challenge my perceptions of clothing. 

I've managed to go to New York several times and miss Habu completely. So on my most recent visit, I decided it was time to make the journey to the yarn store which also challenges our ideas of what a yarn store should be. I knew I'd be on borrowed time with Alice and Phoebe in tow (I wouldn't be able to give the yarns and patterns the full thought they need with two girls sighing and rolling their eyes in the corner), so did most of my planning by email.

Habu were incredibly helpful and I pre-ordered a couple of kits to be collected on the day so that we wouldn't have to wait for the yarn to be wound onto cones and could therefore spend more time in Billy's Bakery. They discussed colour choice and let me know yarn availability in advance and made up the kits in Medium but with Large quantities of yarn to allow for my extra height.   

So when we turned up at the utterly anonymous-looking building and found ourselves in the Habu room which is just as all the photos show - small, simple, plain and devoted to the low-key (no shrill noises here - more the soft lapping of waves) -  and I wasn't taken aback, I realised I had tuned into Habu pretty well.

Habu seems to invoke a sort of calmness, a total lack of knitting hysterics, and I knew I couldn't start knitting until I had cleared my other projects. So it wasn't until this weekend that I cast on Kit 21 which is knitted with two yarns - linen paper and silk - and mine are (what a surprise) both food colours: eggplant and cocoa (sounds like a horrible taste combination, but it's looking good on the needles).

 

I wanted to go for a full-on Japanese knitting experience and use bamboo needles, but I found the yarns stick too much so I changed to the very European Addi Turbos which don't look as lovely, but do the job better for me. I haven't yet hit pattern issues as the back is straightforward and requires no shaping, but I know I have the joys of decoding the instructions to look forward to. I realise also that there may be a little squeak of anxiety around button-choice (I see that buttons are a big issue with many Habu aficionados) as I don't yet have the buttons for this jacket/cardigan. (When Tom asked me what I was knitting I wasn't sure what to say - Setsuko's designs are more for knitted pieces to wear on bodies rather than for the standard types of garments we are so used to knitting).

I've knitted a few inches of the back and am feeling my way into the experience. It really is a new tactile sensation as well as a conceptual one. And it's also auditory; when you block out all the white noise of daily life, you really can hear your knitting - the paper yarn makes little soft rustling sounds. But you need to be very quiet to hear it.

                                ***

Book details: Setsuko Torii Hand-Knit Works ISBN 895113825

I also like this knitting book with one of the most beguiling covers I've ever seen and some lovely knitting inside.

Knit ISBN 277113753

Both from Amazon Japan

on my desk

Nicola Beauman and I go back a long way. All the way back to April 1989 when I bought two copies of the 1989 Virago edition of Nicola's book A Very Great Profession - one for me and one for my Mum. For a long time, though, Nicola knew nothing of this relationship as we didn't actually meet until 2001.

In the intervening years, and ever since, this book has been a vital part of my life. Until now, I have only ever had the one copy and have always felt uncomfortable if I couldn't locate it in a nanosecond; it had to be taken down from, and put back in, exactly the same place every time I referred to it or read it. And, goodness me, I have done that so many times over the last 19 years.

There are only two people who have ever truly and deeply influenced my reading; one is Adam Roberts and the other is Nicola. Adam changed how I read, and Nicola changed what I read. It's thanks to this marvellous book that I not only discovered a huge body of women's literature, the sort of books I knew I was looking for but couldn't uncover on my own, but also a wonderful connection with all sorts of women, real and imagined, who weren't afraid to explore the details and depths of ordinary lives.

So when I read nearly ten years ago that Nicola had created Persephone Books, I was delighted, because I could see that, like an addict, I would always be able to get a fix of a good read.

And now A Very Great Profession has been reissued, and it's not a moment too soon. For a start, my first copy is looking a little ragged so I am thrilled to have a brand new one with the most inspired bookmark ever (Celia Johnson as Laura Jesson in Brief Encounter). But, just a little more importantly, this book is an absolute treasure for anyone with the slightest interest in middlebrow fiction; not only does it cover a huge number of themes and books, it also has a brilliant glossary of the most important and significant writers of such novels. I know I only have to turn to these pages to be inspired to read a previously unknown author.

I am delighted Nicola's book has been reprinted, and have to say it looks very lovely in grey.

                                   ***

On the subject of the most recent Persephone Biannually, I too have read the 'Our Readers Write' page. I laughed at the comment which refers to me and blogs in general and feel I should say that the only opinion this reflects is that of the writer. It is not my opinion and it is not Nicola's opinion.

                                   ***

And since it's that time of year, I think we should have a gratuitous photo of tulips. These are also on my desk today, freshly picked this morning.

seventies speak

Whenever I see lots and lots of beautiful apple blossom like this, I always think of the great 70s advertising slogan for Cresta (great bear, horrible product): 'it's frothy, man'.

Wisley yesterday. A vision of blossomy white loveliness,

and some pretty fantabulous tulips,

as the disc jockeys of the 1970s used to say.

mixed bunch

I caught sight of myself this morning as I walked past the mirror holding a jug of mixed tulips. It made me realise two things; first, that the more tulips you have, real or reflected, the brighter you will feel and second, that our rug* goes beautifully with a mixed bunch.

I'm at the end of four weeks of school holidays and I'm a little weary. It's been a mixed bunch of a month, with two children off at the beginning, an overlap when all three were at home, then just the one. But I can see I am starting to consider the reality of them all being back at school next week - as evidenced by my decision to go for the merriest mix of tulips I could find in the garden today.

 

Having seen the tulips' reflections, I thought I'd play a little more with mirrors. I found it amazing to be able to see more than one view of a vase and a bunch of flowers at a time, and thus compare the effects of different lights (I, for one, am always twirling vases around as I can never decide which is the better 'side').

When I saw the photo below on the computer screen I was delighted to notice that there is even a third arrangement of tulips (in the base of the mirror) which made me think of several well-known paintings that feature convex mirrors which condense a scene into a tiny circle.

Now there's a fine mixed bunch of thoughts.             

               ***

I went to the London Book Fair on Monday. It's not an event for authors but I had to deliver some fairy cakes and have a meeting. Seeing Sebastian Faulks in the flesh stopped me in my tracks momentarily (very tall, very striking, very smart and absolutely no shabby tweed jacket with leather elbow patches or corduroy trousers), but as I couldn't stand there gawping all day, I carried on looking at the publishers' stands.

As ever, I gravitated to the display of Stewart, Tabori & Chang books. This is not just because my book will be published in the US by STC Craft in September 08, but also because they produce the most amazing mixed bunch of craft and interior books which reflect their authors' personalities and visions. There is nothing predictable about STC books, unless it's the fact that they all look wonderful and yet feel very different.

I particularly liked the look of Kim Parker Home and added it to my mental list of books to look out for. But it took a while (Monday to Friday) for the penny to drop. No wonder I was drawn to Kim Parker's style and palette - we already have her in our house. *The rug which goes so well with my mixed bunch is one of her designs.

I now see why this rug appealed when we bought it; it's like having a pressed and dried bunch of flowers on the floor all year round.

Plus, you wouldn't believe how much fun I have hopping and jumping from flower to flower when no-one's looking. And next week, when everyone is finally back at school, I'll be able to hop, skip and jump as much as I like.

natural technicolour

Nine stunning tulips. They really are this colour.

postcardpost

One of the most exciting things for me about changing jobs in the pre-computer era was the prospect of a new business card. It was the only way I ever saw my name in print for years. When I started my own business working from home, one of the first things I did was design a colourful and very uncorporate card.

But these days I find I rarely use business cards, which is a shame because I enjoy any excuse to think about paper weights and colours and surfaces, and inks and typefaces and logos. But recently I've realised I'd like something more solid than a email to give out either in person or send through the post.

So I started looking at the idea of a very simple business card (something like the fabulous letterpress cards they have at Purl in New York), but realised that I'd probably waste about 489 of a print-run of 500 because the details would be bound to change before I'd used them all.

Then a while ago Jane, my agent, said she thought some of my photographs would make nice postcards. I liked this idea but discovered that traditional printers require a minimum run of 500 - and I feel sure I'd get fed up with the same image year in, year out because, let's face it, I'm not exactly Jane Carlyle when it comes to letter-writing.

By putting off sorting out my calling-card problem for too long, I found I was buying far too many postcards and cards from shops because I like to include something colourful and attractive with letters and correspondence. But last week I decided I'd dillied and dallied quite enough. And when I finally got down to being serious about postcards, it turned out that I'd been using the wrong search term when trying to find a good, flexible, quality printer - it wasn't postcards that I was looking for, but notecards.

And once I realised the error of my ways, I found myself on the website of the ne plus ultra of flexible, quality notecard printers: moo. Moo print all sorts of cards and you can choose from a range of colours and typefaces for the words on the back, do a little photo-cropping if you like, and order as many or as few as you like. Absolutely brilliant.   

My notecards arrived today in little wallets with a jolly 'Yay!' sticker, and I am thrilled to bits with them. I chose ten images to see what sort works best, and I think I'd re-order all but two again. I can scribble my current contact details on the back and they can be business cards or I can use them as compliments slips, greetings cards, thank you notes and correspondence cards.

And the best thing about them? I can dispense with the awfulness of deciding on a business title and put whatever I like on the back. So I have.

                               ***

While I am on the subject of using my images, I have recently seen several of my photos used on other people's blogs without my permission (including one of the pictures above, my crochet squares and the Disney doll dress). I don't like to have to repeat this, but please don't use my photographs (or words) without asking me first. Thank you.