yarnstorm

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.

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.

 

bun-run

We're having a bit of a bun-run here. The new book includes several recipes for traditional, yeast-raised buns such as sticky buns, jammy buns, currant buns and spice buns, so we've been bun-baking in the morning and the evening (see buns below in the gloaming)...

...and in the middle of the day (see hot cross buns below in the weak afternoon sun - I know it's not Easter yet but the recipe - and the deadline - couldn't wait).

I've never been one for a 'baking day' (unlike Milly-Molly-Mandy's Muvver who always bakes on a Saturday morning) as I think everyday has potential for baking. And we have also come to realise that any time of the day is good. This morning I'd made a big fruit cake and 18 eclairs by 9am, and Phoebe often puts her apron on after school when I announce that something I've been writing about needs to be tested and tasted.

Despite the element of pressure, it has to be said that the bun-run has been most enjoyable. I mean, when you get to eat something like this (a Devonshire split) after slaving away over yeasty dough it hardly counts as work, does it?

possibilities

I'm not a great one for yarn stashes. I don't know whether it's the puritan in me (ha) or a habit ingrained during my student days when I would plan my knitting and save up for yarn for weeks and weeks, but I'm not comfortable with having lots of unused yarn around, waiting on the off-chance that it will be knitted.

Actually, I think it's because I still relish daydreaming and picturing whatever it is I want to knit in a thousand different colourways, flitting between patterns that appeal, and generally taking my time, considering different labels and fibres and sources and possibilities, browsing books and magazines and websites. And it's all guilt-free.

I have slowly realised recently that I haven't knitted a sweater for myself in a long, long time. This came to me as I read these three wonderful knitting books: Knitting in America by Melanie Falick, The Fair Isle Knitting Handbook by Alice Starmore and The Art of Fair Isle Knitting by Ann Feitelson. These have taken me back to where I started with knitting - garments, fair isle and aran - and it gradually dawned on me that I want to knit a big, warm, complicated piece for myself, the kind of thing I did for years and years before I had children. I want to show off the yarn, the design, the stitches, and I want to immerse myself in knitting.

And now that I have decided to do this, I have carte blanche to consider the options. Do I knit something in wonderfully traditional Fair Isle yarn? I have just received the shade card from Jamiesons - real, Shetland wool in 160 real Shetland colours. Enough to keep me happy for days and weeks while I imagine colour combinations...

...and pore over Alice Starmore's book. This is a gift, a very special gift. It's one of those books I was talking about in my last post that should never be have been allowed to go out of print. It's an amazing resource, and the sections on colour and inspiration are phenomenal, and I can't believe I own a copy. No more reading it in the British Library and trying to commit each page to memory.

Or should I return to cables and stitch patterns and knit a sweater like the one in Knitting in America by Kristin Nicholas? Should it be classic off-white? Or tweedy and earthy? Or pale blue or lilac for a change?

Ah, the possibilities are endless. And, as these books remind me, there's no rush.

* Alice Starmore's book was published as Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting in the US (Taunton Press, 1988) and as The Fair Isle Knitting Handbook in the UK (Blandford Books, 1990).

specialist knowledge

Hippeastrum 'La Paz' is a modern hybrid, a member of the American Cybister group, to be precise. It was bred by Fred Meyer who had a lifelong passion for unusual plants and who bred Cybisters (nine of which were commercially available by 2002) with strange shapes and frilly-edged tepals and intricate patterns and exotic colours. Other Hippeastrums in the group include H. 'Emerald', H. 'Reggae', H. 'Tango', H. 'Chico', H. 'Flamengo'. He obviously had quite a flair for plant names, too.

I know all this from reading Hippeastrum: The Gardener's Amaryllis by Veronica Read which is one of those treasure troves of specialist knowledge which should never be allowed to go out of print. Veronica Read holds the National Plant Collection of Hippeastrums (I once saw a programme about her and couldn't believe how many plants she had inside her house) and her book, published in 2004, is a wonderful companion to amateur bulb growing. But it's already out of print; I have a copy because I was lucky enough to find one marked down to half-price at the end of last year. 

I love quirky books full of quirky information, especially when they are about quirky plants. If I hadn't read Veronica on 'La Paz' I would have thought it was a rare species that exists only in remote mountainous areas of Brazil, not something created in the US for easy domestic cultivation in the twenty-first century.

I find there is great pleasure to be had in immersing myself in the minutiae of another person's passion. It's incredible how far you can go with Hippeastrums and I love the fact that even though this is a very studious, botanical study, there are also frequent glimpses of excitement in the descriptions of the plants. Of the Cybisters, Veronica Read writes, 'Some have delightful, sharply pointed, curvaceous buds which remind me of the heads of newly hatched chicks, and some flowers look more like exotic insects'. Excellent.

When it comes to specialist knowledge, you simply cannot beat the book.

   

scattered thoughts

I like to keep everything important close to me while I work. Books. Notes. Recipe scribbles. Cup of tea. Green and Black's Caramel chocolate. I always say that all I need is an A4 space while the rest of the room can look like a bomb has hit it. Last year I read A Perfect Mess which has all kinds of wonderful theories about and explanations for disorder, and discovered that the apparently chaotic ordering of my workspace is actually extremely ordered and organised. (I love this book.) Not that anyone else can tell, and it does rely on absolutely no-one apart from me touching anything in my office. Least of all the chocolate.   

Just as I concentrate on one small space in my office and one small space in my brain while I work, so everything else in the room and mind is scattered in inverse proportion. It's all I can do to keep mugs, pens, scissors, papers, thoughts, ideas, plans, fabrics, books and yarns under control.

   

But sometimes there's a certain beauty to scattered piles and I often find myself rearranging the fabrics or suddenly espying a colour combination I hadn't seen before - usually when I'm in the middle of Something Very Important. Like describing jam tarts.

And, at this point, while my thoughts scatter once again, can I just tell you how gorgeous the new Rowan fabrics by Kaffe Fassett and Philip Jacobs are? Quite amazingly rich in colour and varied in pattern.

I may be scatty and scattered at the moment and pressed for time to reply to comments and emails and requests, but please don't think for one moment that I'm not reading every single comment here with pleasure and interest. I saw a discussion on another blog this week as to whether the writers of blogs that are widely read actually take any notice of comments. Well, I am fortunate enough to have quite a few visitors to this blog and I can tell you that I certainly never take comments for granted.

And now it's time to get back to that little space on my desk and in my brain before the children come home from school, and my thoughts and many more things are scattered all over the house.

mellow yellow

I'm just mad about saffron, to borrow the words from 'Mellow Yellow' by Donovan. I never liked Donovan particularly, but he was always on the radio, in the background, when I was young. I didn't know what saffron was, and certainly never met anyone called Saffron (still haven't), but saffron stuck in my mind.

Later, I read all about the amazing story of saffron and once visited Saffron Walden half-hoping it would be bathed in a mellow light and have fields of crocuses all around (it wasn't and doesn't). Occasionally I bought a little tube of dark red filaments and marvelled at how such a tiny amount could turn a whole pan of rice a beautiful shade of yellow and completely fill the kitchen with a unusual, strange, exotic aroma.

I also knew about Saffron Cake (more a bread than a cake) but only from reading about it in recipe books. So when I came across a lovely reference to saffron cake in a children's story while researching my book, I had the perfect excuse to bake one.

As soon as I poured warm milk over the saffron strands the colour bled out and the white turned a vibrant shade of yellow which was even deeper and richer after an overnight infusion. I'd just watched Girl with a Pearl Earring which reminded me just how precious and costly Vermeer's pigments and susbtances were; saffron has retained this aura and reality of expense and I didn't want the recipe to go wrong.

Kneading a yellow dough was fantastic - like dealing with grown-up, edible Play-Doh - and it rose beautifully in a gold cloud. The moment of reckoning, though, is always in the slicing, and I was suitably thrilled when the first slice fell to reveal a stunningly yellow crumb, speckled with dried fruit and peel. Eaten with butter it was a taste of old, old cooking; just half a teaspoon (I don't know how much that is in drachms - the traditional Cornish measurement of saffron - maybe half a drachm or 1/16 of an ounce) transformed a sweet, yeast-leavened bread into something which is part of a tradition which goes back 3,000 years.

The recipe will be in the book. Quite rightly. 

haven

The last few evenings have been a haven of peace and quiet. I've been able to watch 'Frida' and marvel at the rich, vivid colours of Frida Kahlo's wedding outfit, the excellent BBC adaptation of Cranford and marvel at the drabness of the early nineteenth-century clothes, and I've been able to read Garden People by Ursula Buchan and marvel at the amazing acid colours and tones of Valerie Finnis' photographs.

And all the time I've been knitting my own Haven. It's from the new book by Kim Hargreaves and is knitted in the soft, thick Rowan Cocoon. I chose a pale, silvery grey, and with the Art Deco style pattern, my scarf has come out looking a little like the top section of the Chrysler Building in New York.

My next piece of knitting is a Kim H hat for Alice. If I can bear to disturb the lovely box and packaging.

I completely forgot to mention that I went to listen to Kaffe Fassett at the V&A last Friday evening. I guess that's because I sometimes have to carry something around with me for a while before I talk or write about it - especially if it's something which really makes me think. (Dorothy Rowe writes about this phenomenon brilliantly.) It was a great talk - the visuals were stunning and I wanted it all to slow down so that I could look at everything for as long as I needed - and it was massively inspiring and energising and confidence-boosting. I could do with something like this once or twice a year to help realign my perspective - and to jog me out of my comfy haven.