jane brocket

sweet haberdashery

It can't be a coincidence that I like haberdasheries and I like sweet shops. There's a lot of overlap: tempting displays, lovely colours, little bags full of small treats and treasures, a feeling of stepping into another world.

One of my favourite haberdasheries is Mrs Moon in St Margaret's near Twickenham. Mrs Moon is run by two extremely nice sisters who would probably also run a wonderful sweetshop given half the chance, and they stock huge amounts of beautiful yarns and a very well chosen mix of haberdashery items.

Susan and Karen have just launched their very own yarn called Plump which is thick, soft, warm, cuddly and snuggly. They decided to name the fourteen shades of Plump after their favourite sweet things, which is an appealing and appetising approach because who would not want to knit with Damson Jam and Marmalade, or mix Cherry Pie with Clotted Cream, or create pretty effects with Fondant Fancy, Sugared Almond, Peppermint Cream and Bonbon? The names are evocative and spot-on: Rhubarb Crumble really is that.

Plump is a superchunky 80% merino/20% alapaca yarn which is sweetness itself. I haven't knitted for a while, but this is going to be the thing that gets me started again.  In the meantime, I've had some fun with the yarn and a bag of sweets.

haberdashery reprise

Now that we are clear on the meaning of haberdashery in the yarnstorm context, I'm happy to confirm that thriving haberdasheries do indeed exist in many places in this country.

This is a beautiful display of bias binding, a very ordinary, useful haberdashery item made to look extraordinarily interesting, colourful and desirable. It's in Darn It & Stitch which is on the colourfully named Blue Boar Street in the centre of Oxford. Jo who runs it is very helpful and enthusiastic and has some lovely stock. 

what will survive

[detail of the Arundel Tomb in Chichester Cathedral]

"Side by side, their faces blurred,   

The earl and countess lie in stone,   

Their proper habits vaguely shown   

As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,   

And that faint hint of the absurd—   

The little dogs under their feet.

 

Such plainess of the pre-baroque

Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand."

 

These are the first two stanzas of the poem by Philip Larkin which ends with the famous last line 'What will survive of us is love'. There's a framed copy of it hung up on a column next to the Arundel Tomb in the cathedral so you can read it standing pretty much where Larkin stood when he visited with Monica Jones.

 

I am fascinated by Larkin, his poems, his letters, his life in Hull, and in many ways he's the last person you'd expect to write this famous line (which is so often quoted out of context, and not as clear-cut as it seems). Still, it's in keeping with the complexity of his life and his poetry which both have a seemingly, outwardly simple form (unmarried provincial librarian writing short, easy to read poems) until you delve deeper. But both the sight and poetic image of the husband and wife holding hands for all eternity never fail to move.

facebook

I started a Facebook page a little while I ago. Although I took some convincing about the whole Facebook thing, I'm actually enjoying writing it and put up a photo most days so that it's now a colourful miscellany of bits and pieces. Just in case you're wondering, you don't need a Facebook account to read it as it's an 'open page'. Do take a look. You'll also find lots of people and businesses with interesting Facebook pages. I like Saidos da Concha, Retrosaria, Ancient Industries and Persephone Books.

fabric sampler

The theme of Quilt Me! is inspirational fabrics. Fabrics that shout 'quilt me!' at you when you discover them. Fabrics that immediately occupy a place in your heart and claim a place in a quilt. But they don't just have to be wonderful quilting cottons such as the Charley Harper designs or those in the collections by Lotta Jansdotter. They can be any fabric that's quiltable. In the book I use tweed, linen, silk, hand-embroidered tablecloths, cord from trousers, wool form skirts, cottons from dresses, ticking, velvet and many other extremely lovely and effective fabrics (but I avoid anything stretchy, gauzy and slippery.) 

For the most recent Ray-Stitch workshop I put together a pile of mixed fabrics to illustrate what we were going to be making. It started with a few of Simon's old shirts which appealed to me and were well past their wear-by date, then I added some wool tweeds, some tie silk left over from another quilt, and to brighten it all up I put in a few quilting cottons that have been sitting around in a drawer for a while with no home to go to. I cut them into 10" long strips and a variety of widths and demonstrated how they could be put together to make the beginnings of a quilt. Then everyone sorted, cut out, and pieced the fabrics they'd brought with them and the results were fantastic. It was a busy day, but a good one.

[works well with the walls in Alice's room]

I brought home my bits and pieces and now I've finished the top. It's a fabric sampler quilt, really, a way of showing just a few of the different fabrics you can put into a simple but interesting quilt. It's as easy as pie to make, infinitely variable and can be made in any size you like. I'll be doing another workshop at Ray-Stitch on the same theme on Sunday 13th April. I'll bring this and some other fabric sampler/wardrobe quilts to look at, then it'll be a day full of fabulous fabrics.

(I've been meaning to say that Quilt Me! will be published in the US in August this year.)

illustrating quilts

Sam Brewster was an inspired choice of illustrator for Quilt Me! (thank you, Amy). Sam creates imaginative and clever maps that remind me both of geography lessons at primary school a long time ago, and of Soviet illustrated children's books also of a certain era. They tell me all I need to know about a place, and make me smile.

 

My quilts are like maps, in a way, in that they cover a set space and guide your eye instead of your feet, but there the similarities end because they have many repeats and big areas of pattern and none of the pictorial quality of Sam's maps. And yet he managed to turn what is actually a very plain, workaday requirement - to show how a quilt looks when flat so that you can see and follow how to make it -  into lovely examples of illustrative art. 

I'm so used to seeing my own quilts that it's Sam's work that strikes me when I look at the book and they, in turn, make me look at the real quilts with a fresh eye.

All photos by Sam Brewster.

(Sam also created the Yarnstorm Press logo. He's a real whizz to work with.)

emily patrick

[Rosehips and White Tulips (2011) Emily Patrick]

If I could buy a painting by a living artist, I'd buy one by Emily Patrick. I've known about her for years, have seen her work at one of her exhibitions, have several catalogues of her work and postcards, and I included one of her paintings in The Gentle Art of Domesticity, but alas I don't have a real painting. I did however happen to come across her last summer while she was painting in the middle of a beautiful meadow which wasn't such a surprise given that she paints wonderful landscapes.

[Book Bowl Tulips and Feathers (2012) Emily Patrick]

She also paints all the sorts of things I love: flowers (many tulips), plants, books, china and jugs, fruits and vegetables, domestic scenes and gardens, snatches of everyday life, tables covered in cotton reels, paperbacks, postcards and bowls, none of which are perfectly set out or regimented or stiff or tidy.

[Anemones and Blue Wall (2010) Emily Patrick]

Instead, there's a tremendous naturalness and an incredibly light touch. The colours are fresh and pure - the oranges, aquas, turquoises, greens, pinks and magentas are particularly wonderful.

Emily has a comprehensive website which makes for great browsing; you can look at all the prints of the paintings that feature the same yellow jug or all the variations on the theme of interior. I know this because I've spent far too much time doing exactly that.

uncommon sight

We did the snowdrop walk at Welford Park yesterday. We were excited by the numbers of clumps of snowdrops on the verges in the hamlet as we drove in, thinking this was what we were going to see. It was only when we started the walk that we realised just how many snowdrops there are: millions. Not just in clumps, either, but in rugs, carpets, swathes or whatever sort of ground cover you care to evoke.

Apart from a few patches of cultivars near the house, these are all the common snowdrop Galanthus nivalis, but in very uncommon quantities. 

Our favourite part of the walk was the Snowdrop Beech Woods (in these photos) which sounds like something out of Winnie the Pooh, but a polar version. I didn't know that snowdrops have a light, sweet scent (akin to that of daffodils and hyacinths so very springlike rather than perfumed) and this wafted through the woods which looked very Russian in a way, with the tall, thin beech trees (instead of birches) and a snowy covering (flowers rather than snow).

Then there are paths, and bridges, and the beautifully clear Lambourn river and its tributaries, and clumps and groups and patches of snowdrops everywhere. There are also some aconites, the best of which are close to the house (below).

Talking of the house itself, it's straight out of a Jane Austen novel. (Just down the road is the village of Wickham and as this is all close to the Hampshire that Jane Austen knew, I think there must surely be some connection.) Just behind it is the beautiful flint church with a very unusual C12 round tower topped with C13 spire, the kind of place you should really visit on a bicycle in summer on a tour of churches to collect brass rubbings (there's a fine brass inside).

Finally, there's the tea tent with the estate's own sausages in baps, hot soup, good cake, and a cup of tea to be enjoyed in the old laundry, should you wish. You can also buy a pot of two of snowdrops in the green, but we came home with the floral version of snow blindness and no snowdrops as six or twelve snowdrops would look very sad and sparse in comparison to what we'd just seen.

linked up, loved up

[Alice's cake] 

It took me ages to stop reading LinkedIn as Linkled-in (but I am still reading miniseries incorrectly, like some version of medieval ministrations to the poor rather than mini then series), so I couldn't call this post  'linked in' because it would be too difficult for me to read. Plus, linked up sounds more like loved up, which is what I am today.

The Gentle Art of Domesticity e-book is now on sale in several places, and is about to appear on more (Nook, Blackwells, Foyles and others), but I thought it would be useful to give links here to the pages as it seems it's a little difficult to find the book on iTunes and Kobo at the moment.

Kobo

iTunes

Amazon UK

Amazon US

As it's a love-in day, I'm giving away six iTunes vouchers for The Gentle Art of Domesticity which means six people will be able to read the book on an iPad for free. If you'd like a copy of the ebook, just leave a comment below with your email letting me know your favourite birthday/Valentine's cake. I'll email six people on Wednesday with codes for vouchers that will need to be redeemed by 12 March.

Now I'm going back to the kitchen to carry on baking two birthday cakes. Tom and Alice are 21 today, so it's a chocolate cake for him to be decorated wildly by Phoebe who has made a wonderful Instagram photo collage for Alice, and a Red Velvet cake for her (both recipes are in Vintage Cakes).

...Tom's cake

bright spot

I saw this lovely box arrangement in Shoreditch yesterday and it's the first time I've ever seen a true grown-up version of the Playmobil vegetables and crates which Tom, Alice and Phoebe (and I) all loved when they were little. I was so pleased to come across it and took a photo of it to put here because it's a much-needed distraction and flash of colour amidst rain, dark clouds, more rain, high winds, rain, floods, houses standing in dark, cold, brown water, rain, making detours because of closed roads, stepping over hoses and pumps emptying water out of houses, avoiding cars parked on roundabouts and main roads because the owners can't drive as far as their houses, rain, and unwanted creatures taking shelter at night in the loft. 

Our house is still in a dry spot, but every day we are checking the river, looking at water levels around people's houses, finding out from the BBC news what's happening close by. I don't know what the solution is, but the soldiers need to get their wellies on and David Cameron needs to stop saying 'we will do everything it takes to sort this out' and start saying what will be done. I feel so sorry for everyone whose property has been affected here and in other wet parts of the UK. Looking out of the window as I write, it's clear this enormous flooding problem is not going to go away quickly.