dovegreyreader scribbles

The Children's Book goes to Pot

When is a book a pot?
So with The Children's Book wedged firmly in my mind's eye, stuck there good and proper as I browsed in the Craft Gallery in town this week, there it was.
A little Raku pot just 4" x 3" but in the colour, and it whispered those immortal words of purchase to me as I gazed.
It needed a home and yes, after a quick assessment, I was up for it.
Of course I don't strictly need a little Raku pot, but as you know I have a well-attuned addiction to this colour which is a worry because I'll buy anything if it's in that range, even show me a turquoise horse galloping round a field and I'd put in an offer and be organizing a matching stable block in the garden.
So this pot is now grazing quietly on my desk looking perfectly lovely gorgeous and will be a permanent reminder me of that reading experience.
Things could have been much worse.
I can argue that this is a prudent compromise given that I could have been on the lookout for the Rene Lalique brooch on the cover of the book but now won't bother.
I didn't know much about Raku but I do now.
This pot, made by Cornish potter Ben McManigan, was by all accounts rapidly fired to 1060 deg C and whilst red hot was placed in sawdust where it was then allowed to burn.
The pot was then rapidly cooled by spraying water on it, then cleaned with warm water and allowed to dry naturally which creates particular colours and textures depending on the chemical components of the hand made glaze.
In the words of A.S.Byatt's master potter, Benedict Fludd,

' We are chemists - we must know metals and ores, temperatures and binding elements, weights and measures...we are like alchemists of old - we employ fire, smoke, crucibles...to make our vessels...those containers necessary for daily functions, food and drink - which can be lovely, however plain, graceful, however simple...'

Oh yes, sometimes a book is a whole lot more than just a book.

Menabilly's Secret Garden

Today would have been my Mum's birthday and, as it was my Mum who taught and inspired me to sew, it seems fitting that today's post is a needlework one.
The intricate way that books speak to other parts of my life never ceases to astonish me and I hope I'm not alone with this little foible, somehow I think my synapses must be completely tangled when reading a book makes me want to walk to the fabrics and create something out of the image that book has placed in my mind's eye. I never know when it will happen either but something twangs big time and that's it I'm done for and must stitch.
They say you stitch what is happening in your life into your quilting, I'd add that I stitch my reading in too and every so often a book has that power to inspire.
 I have no idea what the lasting relic will be from A.S.Byatt's The Children's Book other than the fact that there will definitely be one, something will be made eventually that reflects the iridescence of a book that has invaded my every sense. I'm already on the alert for fabrics that reflect that shimmering Art Nouveau world, the pots, the dragonflies, the swathes of light and colour...the turquoises and midnight blues, the lapis lazuli with gold, the Gustav Klimt glow, all images that gather to exert that sheer force of creativity that floods out of some books and I will know them when I see them, the colours are now very firmly fixed.
Likewise for Justine Picardie's book Daphne last year.
The colour used on the cover seemed to need a Farrow & Ball name, Menabilly Red or something and I had searched to no avail to find the exact fabric with that tone of red with a tinge of brown but surely there's a pinkish edge in there too. No matter because I bumped into a quilting-reading friend recently who came to the Port Eliot dovegreyreader event last year and she greeted me with
'I've found it, the exact colour, I'll send it to you'
and the next thing a piece of fabric arrived in the post from her, and find it she has.
It's near perfect.
So while I wait for The Children's Book creation to ferment into being but still needing to make something, anything, I hopped to my table and put together my belated homage to Daphne.

Not wishing to over-reach myself I wanted just a single block and after a great deal of searching found the very aptly named Secret Garden, now Menabilly's Secret Garden using a liberal amount of quilter's license and a chance to do some hand-piecing which I so rarely do these days.
It's so long since I've reached for the pencil mug (this my treasured Emma Bridgewater, bought in St Ives, handle fell off two days later, too far to take it back and get a new one) then templated, drawn and scissor-cut with a 1/4 inch seam allowance. I'd quite forgotten how soothing it is to leave behind the lightening speed of the rotary cutter and the whizz of the Bernina - job done in thirty minutes, and revert to the time-honoured basics of hand sewing and be happy for it to take months.
Even seemed like a good time to clear out the sewing box too.
Things are progressing and now it comes back to me, there's an element of holding your nerve involved with hand-piecing and quarter inch seam allowances cut by eye, because it looks like it'll never fit together but somehow, with a bit of tweaking and pulling it always does in the end.

 

Knit-a-Poem

The Tinker is home today and sends thanks for all your good wishes, and my grateful thanks to Thelma for sending a link to The Poetry Society Knit-a-Poem project.
Don' t panic, you won't have to knit Hiawatha or The Prelude in its entirety, just one letter towards the world's first knitted poem to be revealed at the end of the year and all to help celebrate the society's centenary.
I've registered by e mail and am just hoping I don't get landed with 'S' or 'B', a nice easy 'I' would be good.
Now I'm trying to think which poem it might be and not a single 'sleep which knits up the sleeve of ravelled care' woolly sort of line comes to mind.
Any suggestions?

Surgical knitting

What a great opportunity surgical intervention offers to one's knitting life.
Isn't this what knitters wish for occasionally?
A quick and time-limited bout of semi-immobility?
You're supposed to rest and everyone around you is definitely giving the impression that it's fine to do so, you can't get to a wool shop to buy more wool to start more things that will remain unfinished, so you must look to the stash and thence to the UFOs (unfinished objects) and perhaps do some completer-finishing.
First I proceeded to the successful completion of the Noro Kureyon gilet-waistcoat affair, you might have caught a glimpse last Sunday but here it is my latest robe of glory.
Far in excess of satisfactory to the point where I'm feeling a bit smug about this one, I love it for its mismatchedness, it fits nicely, I found some neat little buttons and I'm going to bind the rib faux-pas debacle with velvet (thank you for that wonderful idea whoever it was out there who suggested it) and this wool is dreamily soft and quick to knit up.
I then reverted to the stash and wasted an inordinate amount of precious time getting my tricoteurial come-uppance before I realized that buying this wool online, 500gms for £12 was always going to end in tears. In fact you can see that I actually kidded myself it would be better on a second attempt on smaller needles when of course it was all hopeless.
Pure wool supposedly (but I have my doubts) lovely colour, indigo flecked, but thin and substanceless in my hand and thinner and even more lacklustre as I knitted...twice.
I'm not even sure what I thought I was knitting. I blame the combined effects of a visit to the Kingdom of Anaesthesia with a browse through the new Rowan Alpine pattern book and a sudden penchant for sleeveless knitting which gains the finished object so much faster,
It was not to be and nor am I sure what kept me knitting when it was so obvious the thing, whatever it was, was a complete disaster until eventually I ceremoniously ripped it off the needles and then wondered anyway about the logistics of that collar which involves a 258 stitch rib with a complex degree of shaping difficulty built in.
So I settled back into the Baby Llama jumper now onto sleeves and which rates as the softest most rewarding wool it has ever been my privilege to cast onto a set of needles, the colour and texture all perfect and this picture doesn't really do the depth of this blue any favours, it really is delicious.
Of course no bout of knitting complete without some more socks and the new Noro sock wool, slow to reveal its secrets but I'm sure they are there.
Incidentally, does anyone else use the wool from the centre of the ball rather than the outside?
Don't ask me why I did but I wish I hadn't.

Haute couture

Sometimes I just have to make things.
More specifically things to put other things in. There's something really satisfying about being a home-made bag lady.
When I 'retired' from the NHS I declined any retirement bash but said yes please to the gift vouchers. It's a bit of a palava but you get £10 for each complete working year on current contract, if you say yes to the bash then there's every chance they'll buy you something instead, usually a picnic set for your caravan or something. So I put the word out, vouchers please and in the end John Lewis proved to be the only store participating so I settled for that.
After a bit of deliberation I bought myself a very natty little netbook which will be handy for roving blog events and roving anything else where I can find a wireless connection, and since it came just before Christmas I've been searching for a cover for it...or a skin as they seem to be called.
A naked netbook just wasn't right but the usual range of black leather or neoprene wetsuit-like garments didn't seem right either. I felt sure my netbook would be looking like mutton dressed as lamb which wouldn't do at all and if I want to sniff wetsuits I'll go up to the shed, so I knew I'd have to make something dovegrey-ish as per the e-reader range of fitted clothing.
There are now three exclusive e-reader haute couture garments in existence and out there strutting their stuff.
I'd done a whole three months of procrastinating about this netbook attire until in the end I set myself the task, found the fabrics, started cutting but I wasn't feeling that usual thrill of the project.
Deciding on a brew to ponder the process I walked into the kitchen, put the kettle on, turned round and there it was hanging on a hook, a half-quilted tea-cosy.
I'd made it ages ago, guessing at the size of the teapot (wrongly) and it has just hung there looking half-nice ever thereafter, but it looked just the right width and I felt sure it could be transformed into a gorgeous netbook cosy without too much bother.
  I stitched the hanging tab into a pen holder just to completely remove all evidence of a former life and was feeling quite pleased with the outcome but wondering where to stash the wires, plug and gizmos.
Well strike me with a wet kipper if I didn't suddenly have a distant memory of another bit of test tea cosy, machine quilted but not quite right either (does this happen to everyone else too or is just me that makes things up as they go along and then wonders why it's not right) and might it just make a little 'thing' to put the wires in?
Yes indeed, my netbook is now suitably 'dovegrey' dressed, have garments, will travel.

Knitting clinic

I've been busy being sociable this week in the wake of those early months of NHS escape when I just wanted to become a bit of a recluse after a working lifetime of talking all day long. The silence has been magical but time to catch up with friends,so being a lady who lunches etc and in between-times trying to sort out this bundle of kittens which has predictably not gone according to pattern.
I love the Noro Kochoran wool, be in no doubt about that, but it is fairly obvious where I've been working on this little waistcoat-gilet thing as the trail of wool/alpaca/silk follows me round.
I'd opted for making the whole a bit longer, not a lot just about six more rows of rib and six of stocking stitch before the shaping starts but that must have slipped my mind as I pounded one-eyed through the right front whilst watching  television with the other eye and most of my brain.
So something of a rib mis-match when I came to join it all up was hardly surprising and something really odd has happened to the left front shaping at the top, it's wide of the mark.
But we don't aim for perfection here I could fiddle the top to size when I picked up for the neck and shoulder so I focused my energy on the much more alarming rib dilemma.
The decision was that, though I'd never done it before, it can't be that difficult to unpick the cast on row, pick up the stitches and sneak in some extra rows at the bottom surely?
So those rows would be upsidedown, would that matter much?
It would only be a few.
Several hours later I was nearly at the complete unravel stage because for some reason the rib just would not fall into sequence and eventually I surrendered and shoved in an alternate knit row to sort of but not completely get me out of trouble.
Is there a knack to this?
A secret that no one has shared with me yet?
If so could you?
Can it be done invisibly?
It still doesn't look quite right and the bottom is now obviously a cast-off not a cast-on and now I see I should have cast off in rib which I can sort, but please if you ever see me wearing this could you not stare at the front right side ?
Chances are I'll have my hand over it anyway because I think I will always know it's there and really I should have just gritted and frogged. Ship - spoil - ha'porth - tar comes to mind, we'll see.
Don't tell me to do it now either because it's all too late, the shoulders are joined, the neck is picked up and all through a very chatty Girl's Night In evening so it is a minor miracle that I have the requisite 107 stitches for this bit, especially as I stopped to help someone do the maths and rotary cut all their quilt lattice strips halfway.
Meanwhile as I was no longer subscribing to Mslexia and newbooks (forget about the new sub to the LRB) I decided that I could at least sample one edition of the new magazine for knitters, imaginatively called er... The Knitter. I'd already resisted Numbers One and Two unopened on the groundless reason that I wouldn't knit what was on the cover but in the end I just had to succumb for research purposes.
So what's the word on the street?
Has anyone else seen it?
I'm intrigued by the instructions for the seamless Moebius Cast-On anyone an expert? Does the method have potential? I can't get my head around it at all, saw something clever going on with a circular needle and stopped because I also have the book about knitting two socks at once on a circular needle and that's scaring me a bit too.
But there was news of a UK Ravelry Day in Coventry on June 6th, can anyone go and enjoy it on behalf of the rest of us?
For once the adverts are informing because I'm like a thing possessed over knitting websites and wool shops so imagine my delight when this pattern caught my eye
and Blacker Designs turns out to be on the doorstep.
Despite the cost (£5.99, eek) I was ready to be impressed by The Knitter and I think I am a bit, patterns, inspiration-a-plenty, nice presentation, glossy pages, smells nice (shallow I know) and there's even a books page recommending The Believers by Zoe Heller and When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson so it's official even though we knew it all along, knitters read.

A gift for Bookhound

I think it quite possible that there is no sight more destined to gladden Bookhound's heart (apart from the sight of me that is) than this one.
Not the diminishing store of marmalade, but sitting right next to it on the shelf, that tin of paint and a nice new paintbrush which I very generously bought for him a few weeks ago.
I know he was secretly thrilled but just tried not to show it.
Breakfast Room Green is to be the experiment for what is rather Agatha-grandiosely titled The Summer Kitchen. In fact it's a room built by Bookhound (that builder of many rooms) which leads from our ..er...Winter Kitchen onto the garden and houses a big larder and a variety of appliances that come into their own when the Aga is switched off.
Thinking green which I don't very often I also invested in a new little teapot (actually a T-Pod with a nifty little tea-leaf basket inside) for those one-mug-for-me occasions after my last one took a direct hit in the dishwasher. Unlike others who live here I of course know to slide the loaded dishwasher trays in gently and close the door carefully and I would never just aim my foot in the general direction as I walk past and shut the whole thing up with a crockery-jangling penalty kick.
But it's clear that suddenly I'm feeling a real bout of the Greens coming on.
If Breakfast Room Green proves to be our new discovery then we may even let it stray over the Ciara Yellow of the ...er...Winter Kitchen. Now that I've purloined the big table for elsewhere there seems to be far more space in there but we have great and lengthy debates of the 'will it make the room look drab and smaller' variety because in fourteen years we have yet to tire of Ciara Yellow and the warm-glow lift it offers on a dull, grey winter's day.
I suspect I was unwittingly suffering the early symptoms of Greenitis as I perused the fabrics at Cowslip Workshops too because it seemed no big deal to wander way beyond the boundaries of my 'teal blue - yellow ochre - deep carmine red' comfort zone and into the no-woman's land of polka dots and brightness and before I knew it there I was in the green and yellow corner.
This time of year my retina tells me it needs to be swamped with colour and as I walked around with a pile of sensibly safe but very bland greys I suddenly put them all back and went all rebellious and Kaffe-Fassetty bright and that was me done for.
Girl's Night In as of one reached for the sunglasses as I just went for it, but why mess about?
We decided that colour is a quilting maturity thing as they looked on aghast, you'd have thought I was about to do the equivalent of a quilting bungee jump over the Victoria Falls.
Pshaw, we leave such safe endeavours to our sons, no this is much more scary.
Perhaps those in their embryonic quilting state have to move carefully through the safe palette, the pink and green florals, the pastels, the sprigged flowers before they can throw caution to the wind and play daring.
I have some help to hand because Doug Worgal very kindly sent me a copy of a book he edited whilst editor of The Kansas City Star, Quilting a Poem, Original Designs Inspired by America's Most Beloved Poets by Frances Kite and Deborah Rowden.
I'd already half gone there with my homage to Emily Dickinson's poem 1423, and the line which blesses  this quilt, The inundation of the Spring Enlarges every Soul (which I'm sure this will when it's finished, and I promise not to show it here again until it is...sorry did I say that last time too?)
Quilting a Poem is an inspirational stepping-stone book for me because it does what I have been fiddle-faddling around and trying to define for ever and longer. I have spent happy hours reading it and pondering where it may lead my own quilts and my thanks again to Doug for sending it.
Beautiful poems from Edna St.Vincent Millay, Longfellow, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost and many more and artfully modern quilt blocks which cleverly capture the essence of the words in fabric.
However I suspect I am going all back-to-front about this.
I should probably read the poem and cut the cloth in that order, not read the cloth and then cut the poem to make it fit.
Can I make the poetry of Ted Hughes fit those fabrics?
Perhaps not but I think Sylvia Plath's Bee Poems might just, we'll see.
Daring is of course good and challenging but dangerous and likely to involve having to redecorate much more of the house to match.

Girl's Night In go out

This is unusual but Girl's Night In went out for lunch this week, just to prove that we can do it.
Three of us have escaped the clutches of NHS employment in recent months so it seemed like a good enough excuse to get the others to take half days and let the organisation run itself and off we trotted to Cowslip Workshops for a treat.
On the way to Launceston (up to the village school, turn left, you know the way by now) I nipped into the Village Post Office possibly almost for the last time, because next week we lose the one we know and love, though not completely.
Hilary will still run the little tiny shop for the newspapers, sweets and emergency birthday cards and it is indeed tiny but warm and cosy and a village institution. When the cat is asleep on the newspapers there really isn't enough room to swing even a hamster round, but all you ever need to know about village hatches, matches, dispatches, scandals and disasters can be heard therin.
We will gain what is known as a Partner Service to be run from the re-vamped Village Shop next door, after a year of being empty now a new and up-market-ish organic farm shop affair that I have to own up I haven't frequented to date.
Anyway, for posterity and all that, here are the hands of Hilary and 'tis across that very counter and through those hands that anything we may have posted to any of you has passed.
Twenty minutes later and Cornwall and Cowslip looking their very best, and as a working farm please just imagine the baaing, bleating and lowing noises going on in the background as I took this picture looking across to Launceston and the Castle.
The Cowslip lunch was delectable and interestingly we managed to do the mental maths and divide the bill up between us with minimal fuss, which I can only put down to us all imbibing Elderflower Presse rather than Elderflower Wine. If you could see the elaborate messes that two practice managers, two practice nurses, a counsellor and a health visitor have got into in the past...well if you put in £5 and give me £2 of that and then I put in a £10 note that makes it right, no hold on, I'll put in a £20 note and you give me £12, you know the sort of thing.
Then it was time to browse in the Cowslip shop and inhale that aroma of mile after mile of new fabric and start gleaning inspiration, thinking out new projects, buying fabric to finish ongoing ones (one of our number has quietly come up with thirty blocks for a very beautiful hand-pieced quilt without us paying much attention month by month) or just stash-buying and knowing something will come to mind eventually (me).
The Fat Quarter Quadrille began as we all stepped around clutching our choices, putting back, picking up again, holding at arm's length just to see. Then doing the ruby-beholder test without a ruby-beholder (or even a cheap substitute Quality Street strawberry wrapper between us) and asking 'what thinkest thou' to whoever was stepping alongside and generally feeling quite relieved that it wasn't our job to tidy the shop at the end of the day.
As for what I bought (because surely you knew I would), more of that tomorrow but I'll give you a clue, it's in here somewhere.

Burford reminder

I have been most remiss but thankfully the Tinker is ever-vigilant on my behalf and reminds that a few years ago he made a tapestry kneeler for Burford Church and here it is.
 

Household wants and a little competition

I've done it again.
Does anyone else buy something out of pure sympathy?
That wistful sense of melancholy over something neglected?
For me it's usually something vintage and craft-associated, for Bookhound it can be anything.
Either a basket full of tangled lace bobbins (that was both of us)
or the tatty old bag of ancient knitting needles, (actually that was Bookhound)
perhaps a tin of old wooden Sylko cotton reels, tools that have probably been lovingly used to create beautiful things and then cast aside in a house clearance.
I don't need them of course but I do get this overwhelming urge to acknowledge something about their history. As you know I've been reading Stella Duffy (and my thanks to Stella for that brilliant dgr asks...) and Stella has given me cause to think about the whole idea of 'witness'.
It's mentioned in The Room of Lost Things and now I reflect on it I'm seeing it as another big theme in the book for me, that witness to the lives of others.
And subtly the thinking transfers itself to inanimate objects.There is something indefinable and abstract about being a witness to the treasures that these things may have been to people, but abstract or not it tugs at my heartstrings.
Often Bookhound can steer me along and divert that witness onto the menu at Costa Coffee, but often he's worse than me and will come home with something homeless and in need of adoption like this vintage quilt found lining a box of tools (£5)
or a Household Wants Indicator
I'm sure you'll agree that no home should be without one of these. We find it so tiresome to run out of isinglass or dentifrice, and gas mantles, don't you just hate it when you're out of those. No more frantic twelve mile round-trip dash to Morrisons for hearthstone either, now nothing need be forgotten with this helpful addition.
Incidentally as it's Persephone Books Tenth birthday this week can anyone name the book published by them and give the quote that features one of these?
In fact, let's push the boat out, a prize for the first person to come up with the correct answer.
Or there was the day Bookhound turned up with an ancient Knitmaster 321 knitting machine and we all know what happened with that.
So each week we browse around the Tuesday Craft Market here in Tavistock.
The Tuesday Market has grown and grown into something quite special and now we have to get down there before the coaches arrive because it's obviously on the tourist trail even in February. We have our favourite stalls, the ones where somehow the owners are very clever at finding the most incredible things and I had looked at these week after week after week for months.
Tiny little baby boots, about four inches long and knitted with consummate skill and attention to fine detail. I can't place them time, wool or pattern-wise or even hazard a guess as to whether they are even English but I fell in love with them on week one, but they were expensive for what they were and it seemed like a folly purchase that I should resist.
For several weeks we diverted to Costa Coffee.
Week by week I checked them, stroked them, invested them with a history, bore witness and offered them as evidence to the skill of the knitter, and then last week it was bargain day on the stall and there they were, mine for £1.
Result.
All I could think was I hope someone as daft as me finds my old hand-knitted socks, or my knitting needles,(omg imagine my Lantern Moons homeless) or my quilting stuff on a market stall in years to come, feels sorry for them and wonders who made them or used them, imagines who turned those heels and kitchenered those toes, bears witness, invests them with a life and imagines them up a history, gives them a loving home for a little while.
It's not just me is it?

Govt. announcement - Financial bail (bale) out for the wool trade unnecessary.

...dovegreyreader single-handedly injects sufficient cash into the marketplace to quantitatively ease and shore up the wool trade against the recession. Governor of Bank of England Mervyn King sends personal message of gratitude and now able to re-direct his £75bn of new money currently being printed to other more needy markets ...there is talk of dovegreyreader being enshrined on a high value bank note in recognition of services to the nation's wool economy.
We went here...again.
And there it was, wool...snug and warm, happy and content, cosied up on the shelves and by one heck of a stroke of good fortune up for adoption.
Today.
As you know Spin-A-Yarn love their wool dearly so I had to go through a pretty rigorous assessment and selection process to even be shortlisted, but imagine my delight when they agreed that I had been accepted as a wool-mother.
After a lot of umming and aahing, holding and stroking, shall-I-shalln't-I-ing I eventually decided to re-home 400gms of Noro Kochoran, a wool,silk and angora 50-20-30% mix which is like knitting with smooth spun butter but less messy.
and I made room for some of this Noro Sock Wool to keep it company.
I then decided that the principle of workman-tools-best must apply and so have also taken in a stray pair of Lantern Moon Rosewood needles.
Lantern Moons I now discover are the equivalent of knitting with an Alfa Romeo Mito GTA ( yes I typed 'must-have car' into google) when you've been used to chugging along with a 1960s Ford Cortina even if it did have a go-faster stripe.
All of which gains me promotion to the elite. I have now spent enough to reside in Spin-A-Yarn Loyalty Card 10% discount territory for ever and ever.
The non-knitter might erroneously think that to knit was just well...to knit.
Any old needles, doesn't matter what they are like.
Us knitters know otherwise, and yea though we be in possession of many hundreds of needles these are never sufficient for the next piece of work.
These are the tools of our trade to be upgraded and improved upon at every opportunity (is this convincing enough?) and with Lantern Moons, which are indeed like swapping a Fiesta for a Bentley, and my Brittany birchwoods, my days of plastic Aero's are long gone.
It seemed imperative to get the Kochoran onto the Lantern Moons and settled into their new home right away and I love the little Colinette Prism waistcoat so much I 'need' another one.
This wool really is the such stuff as dreams are made on and I must remember that's The Tempest in case it comes up in next year's book day quiz.

My Pink Elephant

It is a formal indictment of the severity of the Winter weather when I am reduced to wearing my greatest ever knitting travesty.
Look it really was quite snowy, even the Gamekeeper was on foot.
I gather from the Tinker that when I'm as old as him I'll be given money by the government to keep warm and then I'll be able to walk around indoors in a vest and shorts all Winter, but whilst I wait for the years to pass, needs must and I have to resort to this.
The fact that I even have the nerve to get it out of the cupboard should tell you how cold it's been, but then you all know how cold it's been and though to Canadians this is probably sub-tropical, even so please understand and forgive.
It's my Pink Elephant, my worst ever knitting nightmare, the Alafoss Lopi wool jumper. They obviously know a thing or two about warmth in Iceland.
Nice Rowan pattern, tension was fine but  as I knitted I knew things were going awry and if I tell you I nigh on needed a block and tackle to get that neck picked up and knitted that should help you visualise the process.
Now years on there's really no accounting for the effects of time and gravity on a jumper that weighs a ton, bobbles and sheds fur faster than three cats and now resembles a pink fluffy knitted frock (which even I couldn't be persuaded to wear unless it was near Arctic, which it was). In fact by the time I'm the Tinker's age (deo volente) and taking into account old lady height shrinkage, there's every chance this will be a lovely Alafoss Lopi ballroom gown.
I have to overcome the gales of derisive laughter but to be honest I've gone beyond the point of caring, it hadn't been that cold in eons, and even though this thing had grown at least a foot since I last looked at it so now it's reaching my knees, it's keeping me as warm as toast.
Meanwhile other knitting has been in progress but I can't share pictures here yet because it's the hot-water bottle cover that I offered to knit in very part-exchange for this most memorable and much-loved gift.
Hot water bottle covers to Canada feels like Canada sending pasties to Cornwall, but Canada put out the plea and I responded. After a protracted search I found the most perfect wool and managed to get the design out of my head and onto the needles and to fruition with minimal frogging.
This free-range knitting is quite a new departure for me so bless Bookhound, I was working it all out loud to myself on the drive home from the woolshop in Honiton; he'd possibly glazed over by Okehampton,
'You see if I cast on enough stitches and knit one big piece...'
'Perhaps I should do it on circular needles...'
'I wonder if Canadian hot water bottles are bigger than English ones...'
'What do you think if I cast off half the stitches and carried on knitting the other half, would that make an envelope flap?'
'Would that look right?'
'Oh I've got a good idea, I could pick up and knit a sort of neck thing...'
'Got to think how to get the hot water bottle in and out though...'
Then Offspringette came over halfway through and there was further consulation and debate, it's been a right old family affair until yesterday when we finally sent it on its way and Hilary at the village post office (closing later this year...'what will you do Hilary' I asked...'I'll get a life' she answered quick as a flash) looked up Canada - air mail and we did dispatch.
Anyway, it has been a joy to knit and now it's on its way to Calgary and we can but hope that Mrs KevinfromCanada's feet enjoy it.
Back to the baby llama wool jumper and I'm keeping a very tight rein on that lest it get Icelandic notions.
Do you have any knitting travesties to share?
I'd feel comforted to know it wasn't just me.

Confessions of a wool shop owner

Spin-a-Yarn at Bovey Tracey have fessed up, the lovely woolaholic owner has e mailed.
I knew it.
They were 'pretending' to stock-take but it wasn't an Oscar-winning performance even I could see that.
Actually it was a lock-in and I was right, they were all sitting on the floor stroking the wool, which would explain the glazed eyes and ethereal smiles.
Can you just imagine being locked in there overnight?
I'd have at least ten things on the go by morning to be completed by about 2012.
Monday opening starts officially tomorrow, so I'm delighted we've got that sorted for all us knitters and don't forget to add a Bovey detour if you are travelling West anytime soon.

Sunday Salon - The Button Miracle

So, even better, what happened next a complete miracle of its own.
We walked to the Antiques Market down on Topsham Quay, Bookhound goes right to look at bookshelves and I go left to the vintage haberdashery corner.
This corner is a real little snuggly, cosy bit of heaven.
Old knitting and embroidery patterns, brightly coloured knitting needles, old zips, threads, cotton on wooden reels and things you'd long forgotten existed like bodkins and knicker elastic, suspender clips and darning mushrooms. Then there's a vast array of beautifully starched vintage embroidered tableclothes, table runners, those old dressing table mats, napkins, Christening gowns, you name it, it's in there and of course buttons.
Boxes and boxes of them, and somehow I just knew they'd be in there, five petrel blue buttons with my name on them. So it was absolutely no surprise whatsoever when I eventually found them stitched to a card and all for £1.
So the wool shop was closed and the Wool Angel might have been trying to tell me something along the lines of complete-finish-complete-finish whilst the Button Angel was definitely on my side, and so I finally have something to show for that Colinette Prism, frogged to within an inch of its life over the last ten years.
It was Girl's Night In here this week and as it was January we had decided on a jolly New Year gathering to watch the sing-along version of Mamma Mia while we stitched. Everyone has to drive, and some even have to go to work the next day, so we don't do alcohol, but we've been gathering for nigh on ten years now, we all know each other well enough to do very daft. Honestly, there are good reasons not to have neighbours so, with surround sound and the house evacuated by the men, we did justice to the whole bloomin' lot. I'd reached the sleeve cast-off just as that brilliant Dancing Queen sequence came on and was stitching seams just as Meryl and Pearce were doing their clifftop rendition of Winner Takes It All, so that's why those are a bit rough because we really threw ourselves into that. The buttons didn't stand a chance because by this time Julie Walters was dancing on the tables for her rendition of Take a Chance on Me and we were singing in hysterics.
The pattern is Design 29 from the Noro Mini Knits book and gasp...if you follow that link, just look, another wool shop in Devon that I didn't know about, it's Honiton the very next Saturday/Monday we have.
Oh no it's closed on a Monday...at least I checked.
I knitted this on 5mm and 6mm needles with ease, short is the new long apparently and so a lovely quick thing to knit and just look at those buttons, quite wonkily perfect.
Bless the Button Angel and why not sing along with us, that's me in the silver boots... go on, no one's watching.

The Devon Guild of Craftsmen

Ages ago now, in fact it was the very exact same Saturday of the Western Morning News - Bovey woolshop excitement because we found 'that' newspaper in the cafe...

...and the cafe was in The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, also at Bovey Tracey and a place of inspiration if ever you find yourself nearby. The gallery was plumped up to bursting with goods and potential chattels ready for a busy Christmas season and in amongst it all my most favourite pottery of all time, Penny Simpson's divinely beautiful deep and indescribable blue. I have three treasured pieces, the fish bowl, the little jug and a dragonfly tile and given the means I'd buy the whole lot and probably decorate the house to match.There is a depth to this colour that mesmerises the eye.

The gallery was looking its best, quite a few changes since our last visit and an excellent cafe too...with really good newspapers like the Western Morning News of course.

The hare is made by Blandine Anderson and there was a stunning display of her work, ceramic animal sculpture with a twist, quite unique.
Then every which way you turned vibrant colours and wantable things, Bookhound had to steer me round fast because we'd already bought that delectable baby llama wool (in Penny Simpson blue now I think about it) which is now starting to look like a jumper I'm pleased to report...well once it has sleeves it will.

and then back home across Dartmoor, a beautiful exhibit all of its own.

A Time of Gifts

So I might have failed on the well-fed Christmas cake, the hand-made cards and the crackers but never let it be said that I neglect the homemade gifts. An essential component of the stockings and a few of these I did manage...just, except for Bookhound who can never decide what he wants me to make and ended up with a thing for cleaning the blinds instead and the Gamekeeper who asked for long shooting socks or hose as they call them in the catalogues. These come up to the knee and he's got great long legs, I'll make a start and would probably aim to finish those sometime during the 2012 Olympics.
Firstly the Tinker had been enviously eyeing my homemade, customised Sony e reader cover so I made him one of his own in bookish-themed fabric. The Tinker now very attached to his e reader and uses it all the time. So far he's notched up several books on it including The Count of Monte Cristo and Frankenstein.

For Offspringette I'd wrapped up the Colinette Jitterbug socks and also resurrected a scarf that I'd started when that fluffy, nightmare to knit, stretchy wool first came out. This is where I glance across to Yarn Harlot who knocks up a scarf in an afternoon to give as a gift that same evening, not five years later.
No matter, things were progressing quite well if a little behind the times fashion-wise. I just hoped this lack of attention to detail would all be buried and forgotten in the loving care lavished on the homemade element.

It's awful stuff to knit because you can't see if you've dropped a stitch or not so you just have to crack on in sure and certain hope that if you have it will unravel and you might notice, which I did until Offspringette, unknowing of this impending fashion disaster, announced that she'd really like a hot water bottle with a knitted cover.
Much better idea.
It's now official, you can turn a scarf into a hotwater bottle cover quite easily. Just keep knitting and do a bit of decreasing, knit some more, stitch it all up, make the top bit fold over, drop a few stitches to make it look like you've made a clever buttonhole,stretch it a bit, add a button and abracadabra,

The Kayaker is another whole fussy, fashion-conscious, don't-make-me-look-stupid department to himself. You could waste weeks of your life knitting the very wrong thing so I wrapped this up for him and loved the look on his face when he opened it,

then said if you want the hat I'll knit it for you, if not that wool can go back in the stash.
He wanted the hat and we settled on the simple Stitch 'n Bitch pattern which I then adapted for a circular needle and it was done through a long evening (one of those that starts at about 4pm) .
Quite astonishingly this hasn't left his head for a week.
Result.

If it's Saturday, we're Knitting

You could be forgiven for walking into Chez dovegreyreader and asking, as did the Tinker, whether we were having trouble with the TV reception and was this contraption perhaps a new aerial?

No, it's my temporary skein-to-ball winding chair because I'm doing a lot of skein-to-ball winding right now. The Colinette Prism is frogged for the tenth time, skeined, washed and re-balled and already hopefully being lovingly melded into its final and permanent creation, a shortish but lovely little waistcoat affair from a lovely little Noro pattern book, Designer Mini-Knits. Great value at £7.50 because it's full of quick but beautiful patterns for gloves, socks, leg warmers, jumpers and hats a plenty.
Talking of patterns, has anyone else discovered Ravelry? Free online knitting patterns galore, you have to sign up for an invite which takes about four days to be authorised but then it's like knitaholic's in paradisum when you are allowed in through the pearly portal.
I'm also busy knitting up a plain jumper but in a new wool; baby llama is a first and I hope there isn't  a little llama out there shivering, but it's divinely soft and the picture doesn't do justice to the depth of the petrel blue or the perfection that I have discovered in the Brittany wooden needles. At £4.50 a pair,no more expensive than plastic or metal, light, sleek and slidey, great to knit with and long enough to tuck comfortably under arms for us peasant knitters, I'm a convert.
Meanwhile another new discovery this week, and why has this one taken me so long?
I can knit in the car...while Bookhound drives of course, but this sock just flew along as we flew up to Book Barn and I'm loving the way the self-patterning has fortuitously worked itself out around the heel.
















 

Is this legal?

It's Saturday, time for us knitters to indulge.
Currently I am still wondering whether it can really be legal to sit and knit in daylight hours?
Mind you, would you just look at this miserable, wretched, depressed feline?
Rocky's had a very busy time of it, fireguarding. Finding it glowing nicely much earlier in the day than he is accustomed to he has taken it upon himself to dutifully keep watch and I think the stress is painfully evident.
 

I've thrown in the towel and just surrendered to the startitis which has all gone hopelessly and recklessly over the top.
Some odd-shaped freestyle socks, on the brilliantly lovely bright and shiny and very very pointy Boye's 2.75 needles, socks to invent as I go along, so they will not be a matching pair, in fact fraternal socks according to Crafty. Incidentally check out what Crafty's up to with the Remains of the Sheep while you're there, "Rome wasn't spun in a day".
Love it.
Meanwhile I'm using the remains of the Wensleydale Sheep Shop wool-alpaca mix so I'm feeling virtuous, and at least have half-forgiven myself for the first pair I made which inadvertently went through a hot wash and felted up far better than I could ever have managed to felt something had I been intending to.
Age old Fair Isle tension issues abound, it's impossibly tricky to gauge and thread the wool loosely on four needles (any tips?) but in socks I find this doesn't seem to matter, once on the foot it all seems to sort and settle. There is something quite exciting about free range sock-knitting and I should go there more often.
But something equally pleasing about self-patterning wool, the knitting just flies along in anticipation of the next surprise colour change so I've dug deep into the stash and found this. It's Schoeller & Stahl Fortissima Colori 75% wool 25% polyamide and, knowing I had Socktopus wool on  the way I decided to get this on the needles too....well I don't just read one book at a time so why be any different about knitting.

This all proved to be in the nick of time as the little order from Socktopus arrived. Don't miss Alice's blog  I've been discreetly drooling over those pictures of the new shop, we can but hope for a Devon branch. So my little bit of the shop arrived beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and suddenly I find myself effortlessly making new and instant woolly-attachments.
This is Bearfoot by Mountain Colours , all the way to Devon via Chelsea from Montana's Bitterroot Valley, hand painted wool, mohair and enough but not too much nylon. My colour choice, Mountain Lake, sits very comfortably within my happy-knitter colour zone.

But I've also been doing some finishing off. I'm pleased enough with the Tank Top V neck, though even with just two pieces it was like wrestling with a lap full of fluffy heavyweight kittens. Big wool on 8mm needles always seems to equal big gaping 8mm holes when I reach the 'pick up and knit' bits, but a little judicious weaving in of ends seems to have plugged the worst of it. I'm also throwing caution to the wind and following the Stitch and Bitch advice to forget all that rubbish about pressing and blocking before making up.
Just join the thing up and then dunk it in water, it all feels like a merciful release.

Doing the Jitterbugs

I am my own greatest and harshest knitcritic but very very occasionally all the planets seem to have aligned and I think ' hmm, the girl done not bad.' It doesn't happen very often but when it does Bookhound must be informed.
Firstly I must wave socks in the air, then and often without warning I tend to fling them across the room at him.
He's used to this.
He must then be alert to catch and examine while I elaborate on the finer detail.
Look, no ghastly holes around the turn of the heel.
Look at those Kitchener toes, they did what they were told
Phew, look, just enough wool.
He nods sagely and encouragingly in the way that I do when he catches a great big salmon...mmm, yes, lovely.
So here they are, the Colinette 'Blue Parrot' Jitterbugs off the needles at long last. It seems an age ago that this happened but abracadabra, beautiful 100% Merino Easy Care wool, Boyes 2.75 dpns and the Addi Turbo 30cm circular , my basic safe sock pattern (60 stitches and the rest is simple division) and I'm loving them.

But the wool stash seems to be reducing fast so yesterday it was off to a wool shop I'd heard rumours about and it was reported to be utterly butterly perfectly lovely gorgeous.
So back over the top of Dartmoor to Bovey Tracey, home of the Devon Guild of Craftsmen but also home to Spin A Yarn, specialising in exciting, unusual and natural yarns from around the world.
Off Bookhound went to the butcher's, the baker's and the candlestick maker's (very well trained) and in I went to hopefully feast on the wool.
Would I be met with a few balls of bri-nylon, some acrylic chunky and lots of matinee jackets?
Would I heck!
I was so sick with excitement it's all a bit of a blur because to be honest I went a bit light-headed on entry so judge for yourself, and more about my purchases when I've stopped the hyperventilating because seeing these pictures has brought on a relapse. I think the secret might be to start breathing calmly into the paper bag on approach and you might just want to have one to hand before you read any further.
I met Joyce of Spin A Yarn who writes an occasional blog here and I think reading that the knitters amongst us can instantly arrive at an accurate aetiology for my presenting symptoms.
A woolaholic in charge of a wool shop.
I have found knitter's heaven in Devon.


 

 

Knitting Madness

I think perhaps we'll declare it officially lest there be any doubt, though it has been frequently thus.
Books are mostly for weekdays and I'm setting weekend space aside on dovegreyreader scribbles not only for rambling tours around rural Devon and Cornwall, but to indulge in an unbridled craft-fest.
It's inevitable now that I have more time, I'm just going to jump right in and indulge and if you want to come along or offer advice please do.
Now for starters there's a spinning wheel here somewhere. Perhaps, once I've found me a sheep and persuaded it to stand still, if I can find the loose end I might start unravelling it and turning it into a jumper...that's all I have to do isn't it?
But firstly we must be clear about a few things.
Don't for one minute think you're in the hands of an expert here because I have news. Leaving sock-knitting out of the mix (for which I had claimed world domination with my nicely ordered 5 dpns heel-turning technique) I have been outed by the Girl's Night In crowd as a completely cack-handed knitter which to be truthful has all come as a bit of a shock.
I thought stupidly that I was quite a 'good' knitter, the tension comes out nice and even and eventually, given a fair wind and sail and a couple of years on, expect a garment which OK I'll admit may have long gone out of fashion and which I then frog and start knitting into something else, but it was reasonably presentable. In fact the half-made skinny rib jumper in the loft has been in and out and in and out and in and out of fashion many times since it's inception in 1975, next time round I plan to finish it and find someone who's a skinny size 10 ( US 12 which I was in 1975) to give it to.
Before we go any further is everyone clear about frogging?
It's caused a good deal of mirth here let me tell you with dark hints of amphibian abuse but it's all easily explained on Planet Knit and is derivative of the rippit sound a frog makes.
Rippit...rip it...undo your knitting...get it?
But ever since I can remember (i.e. since I learnt to knit with a cardboard basket of rainbow wool and some 6" plastic needles) I've always tucked the needles under my arms and just gone all out for the kill, flailing my hands over the top and around and admittedly I've been told by the family that I've needed a bit of air-space around me, and it's all very distracting, but now apparently I discover that's not grown-up knitting.
I'm distraught because Girl's Night In seem to hold their knitting very sedately underneath, like a posh knife and fork and delicately loop the wool in minimalist fashion with a quick flick of the index finger, so they looked on aghast, in fact with such undisguised horror as I started lashing the wool around the needles with my armpit clutch technique that you'd have thought I was eating off my knife or something.
What's the matter I said, because they were all staring and then they broke the news as gently as they could,
You knit like a six year old.
Attempts to re-style me failed miserably (but thanks for leaning over my shoulder all that time and trying Jen) so I'm going to have to knit in secret from now on because apparently I'm an embarrassing disaster to watch.
But I take hope and gather heart because I bet Stephanie would tell me it was all fine as long as I came out the other end with something wearable. So thankyou everyone for funding two books (craft books are allowed at weekends by the way) written by my new friend Stephanie 'Yarn-Harlot' Pearl- McPhee. Even better I think Stephanie is based in Canada and we love the whole Canada thing here. I've ordered a couple of Stephanie's books with the Amazon Associates money that trickles in each time anyone clicks from a book on the sidebar here and then places an order. Trickle is about right because it takes about fifty sales to earn a books-worth but I've been letting it accumulate for a treat and this week I decided I had earned two, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off, The Yarn Harlot's Guide to the Land of Knitting and Things I Learned From Knitting whether I wanted to or not.
I'm off to cast on...in secret of course.

Another cabinet meeting

I've no confidence that my expertise on the new typepad editing screen is up to snuff yet and will apologise now if this post delivers itself at its usual time of 12.15 am to your eyes looking like a vampire's haversack of muddled text and pictures. If it's awful I'll sort it in the morning but we've still got the bottom drawers to do and it's now a case of Love My Cabinet and how on earth did I leave it in the hands of the men for so long?
The bottom drawers are dedicated wool, knitting and accoutrements territory and of course create the rather disturbing sight of all the wool I've ever stashed away, bought because it was bound to come in or the colour was divine and it was bound to knit up beautifully eventually or just couldn't resist because it was in a sale and why leave it there. Quite a few balls I discover have suffered from voracious mouse appetites in the loft and are a mass of four inch strands which helps to reduce the stash somewhat.
Even so, gathered together in one place it looks a like a lifetime's embarrassment of unmade projects and left-overs, there's more than one sheep's worth here I think.
 

Whilst I was in the mood to capture furniture from the opposition I decided that BH's drawing board would be very handy to have around. Rotary cutting mats are an essential tool these days but where to keep? They are best stored flat so this seemed like an obvious solution, of course the drawing board needed to be mine.

Then I needed to import the rug from the kitchen and snaffle myself a quilting armchair with work in progress always to hand and not having to be constantly moved.

Now to be honest by now I'm thinking the kitchen table's a bit wasted in the kitchen.
We love it and it's great to spread newspapers on over coffee but I mean how many hours out of twenty-four do we actually sit there and eat ?
One?
and a bit?
Barring Christmas, rarely all five of us plus the Tinker. No we could easily manage with something smaller in the kitchen and I could have this huge table for all my sewing needs. I put a fairly persuasive argument together, caught them on the hop with no riposte at the ready and directed them straight on from piano shifting to kitchen table removal before they could say 'B Flat minor goodness me that's heavy.'
It's mine all mine.

So now all that's left is for me to get on with these.

Cabinet Meeting

Yes, if Gordon Brown can have them it's time we had one too, plus it's Friday so I'm prescribing a feast of retina-dazzling colour right now, we must fend off early-onset Seasonal Affective Disorder after all.
Meet my cabinet and all you chaps might want to wander off now before I decide I'd like the piano moved again.

Isn't it quite the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen? We picked it up in a junk place ages ago, squeezed it in the Land Rover and home it came. It's actually an old Anchor Embroidery Thread cabinet so each drawer has little compartments and where it says Colour Range Panel, well that does exactly what it says on the tin.

Now at this point, the moment when it came in the front door, I was really slow off the mark in that I didn't lay an immediate claim and before I knew it the thing was stuffed full of fly-fishing gear and fly-tying feathers. It's taken years to re-capture but I've waged a deliberate and considered campaign and it's back in my possession so I've overseen the shift into my corner of the sitting room, now officially designated as my work area.
This also involved Moving the Piano.
Truth be told the Moving the Piano request does not induce mirth and merriment amongst the men but we'll skip that bit. Here it is in its new home, tell them it looks lovely for me and was worth the hernias would you.

Now back to the cabinet. You can probably catch a tempting little glimpse of all the fabric, the haberdashery and notions in there but I'll just give you the complete guided drawer-by-drawer tour.

I'll save the bottom half for another day, but who'd have thought a cabinet could make a girl so happy?
Actually...I'm just wondering...did I prefer the piano where it was after all...

Bag Lady

I've resurrected my knitting bag to cope with all this casting on that I'm doing.

I made the bag eons ago at a Felted Wool class and I think the first thing you may notice is that this is one very over-gilded lily. It all involved using up old boiled blankets and I got completely carried away to the extent that even the lady taking the class begged me to stop adding bits.
But I love it and now it's crammed full with wool and needles and patterns and earning its keep at last.
And there's another job waiting for me, that dresser-full of Cornish Ware needs some Fairy Liquid-like attention.

But I must also show you this perfectly lovely gorgeous felted bag which Libby Cone very kindly sent.You may remember Libby's book War on the Margins which I loved and wrote about here. Libby was so thrilled she said she had to knit me something and this little e-reader / sock-knitting bag arrived this week; eat your heart out Jonathan M, Pony e-reader Bookseller Crow :-)
It's not a pre-requisite that authors whose books I mention knit me something but it was such a kind thought and I'll treasure it.

A winter of knitting and quilting content.

I've gone slightly overboard in the anticipation now that I know for sure it will happen, but I can't begin to describe the joy at the thought of more time to pick up some of those craft activities I love doing and to catch up on things around the house.
Like most people who go out to work for most of their adult lives other than the child-rearing years (I stayed home for seven) and then stop, it has now dawned on me that (illness apart, and that doesn't count) I have never spent more than two weeks in one stretch in this beautiful home of ours since we moved in fifteen years ago. No wonder I have so much to do.
I'm in charge of soft-furnishings and they are in need of some attention. In fact I think all curtains need my attention and I could use some good drying days to get them through the wash; my mum was such a stalwart curtain-washer, changing over winter curtains to summer ones and washing them far more often than the once every how-ever-many years which seems to have happened here.
I don't do much decorating, it's not in my general household job description as I sensibly failed the early induction about thirty-two years ago (along with the Unblocking Drains, Pumping Out Septic Tank and Car Maintenance modules, stupidly I passed the Clearing Up Cat Sick module with distinction) but I know someone who does, so I think I'll just do a bit of standing, staring with a bit of sighing appropriately at a few dire corners which could use some sprucing and hope I'm noticed.
Turning to crafts, recent knitting has been limited to either socks (compact and portable, can almost do with eyes shut now) or telegraph-pole-sized needles and rope-sized wool in order to actually stand a chance of completing a finished object. I've prised the Rowan Big Wool from beneath the cats (or thought I had, look who I found in there just yesterday) washed it all and the cardigan is coming along nicely again. I did the back about a year ago, the cats moved in and claimed it and I've done nothing since. So one episode of Strictly Come Dancing, John Suchet tracking down his ancestors, Tess of the D'Urbys, more Strictly and a bit of The X Factor and there we are galloping up the second sleeve within a week.
And that's another thing, I've had very little time for TV watching so I have some catching up to do. I've heard such good things about The Wire that I've bought the first series on DVD just to see what I think, be good to get engrossed in something like that through the winter evenings or even dare I say it the afternoons?
Is that allowed? Think of all the knitting.
Missing in Action my big folder containing about forty years' worth of knitting patterns and that is exercising me greatly at the moment because I WANT them now. I've sent a search party up into the loft to no avail and that means I'll have to put on the head torch and go up there myself. All because I found some Rowan Country wool at a knockdown sale price and there's enough to make a tank top, cue those 1970's pattern books. I couldn't wait another minute to cast on, just had to see how it knitted up, so I'm winging it at the moment and may have to invent decreases and neck divide manouevres further on. It'll do for Rocky on cold days if it goes wrong, match his eyes nicely.
As for the quilting, well I should think you are as sick to the back teeth of the unfinished Millenium Quilt as I am, but all it takes is one good session with the quilt on the hoop, the thread waxed and the eye back in for those six quilting stitches per inch and you wonder why on earth you've stayed away from it for so long.Things go a bit wonky for a while but soon straighten up as the technique and the speed return and I've used a very extravagent wool batting instead of polyester for this one so it's like quilting through butter.
Yes indeed, I'm planning for a winter of domestic content here and meanwhile I've become slightly addicted to reading this and am wondering just how to get a half-knitted sock into Gordon Brown's hands.

Words & Tapestry - Leila Thomson

You have to feel sorry for The Tinker ( 83 year-young father of dgr).
Flying off on a nice relaxing holiday to the Orkneys with some friends and as he's going I say
'Oh while you're there would you nip into the Hoxa Tapestry Gallery for me?'
It transpires that the Hoxa Tapestry Gallery was actually the very furthest point away by land, but go they did.  to get me Leila Thomson's book Words and Tapestry.

I have loved Leila Thomson's work for several years. Having graduated from Edinburgh College of Art she returned to her birthplace on Orkney to bring up her family and weave her magnificent tapestries. They very much reflect the life and the landscape around her and her colour palette is rich and vibrant. Deepest indigos for the sea, earthy browns and greens for the shore and a highly distinctive and recognisable style ensuring the 'that's a Leila Thomson' response when you see one.

A glorious fusion of spirit of place and creativity, echoes of space, the sort of tapestries you'd build a house around if ever you were lucky enough to own one. Currently the waiting list is two to three years so I'll make do with the book. It is a delightful warp and weft of tapestry and poetry, a weaving of wool and words, all too delightful to do justice to here but check out Leila's website for her work.
Stunning and inspirational...and now I want a loom...

Snowshill Manor

Snowshill Manor has lodged deep in my memory since the day it came up as a quiz question
'Name the eccentric collector who lived at Snowshill Manor'
and I hadn't a clue.
So finding myself within hopping distance off I went to be a National Trust tourist.
It's a balance that is never quite reconciled in my mind, the preservation of these fabulous places versus the National Trustification of a property but without it we wouldn't have them, I know.
It's therefore best to imbibe the beauty of the setting whilst rising above the numberless signs spelling out the serious implications of touching it, and likewise avoiding the prickly burr heads strategically placed to prevent you sitting on any chair. Look beyond and see the sheer magic of Snowshill, swaddled in history and harbouring countless untold stories which your imagination starts writing for itself.
The rules and regulations with their veiled admonitions had clearly affected a German couple quite deeply, in fact they were on the brink of traumatic stress disorder when they saw me about to sit on a seat in the garden. Dashing over they breathlessly begged me, whilst looking over their shoulders, absolutely not to sit on the seat, it was very verboten indeed. We discussed the absence of the prickly burr, of any signs saying not to sit, nothing to warn us how quickly the wood might deteriorate and the fact it was a bog standard garden seat. Reassuring them that I'd take the flak if we were wrong we all collapsed onto it thankfully and admired this rather fine dovecote.
So it was Charles Wade who inherited a fortune from family sugar plantations, bought the house in near-derelict condition in 1919, proceeded to renovate and then started collecting.
A hugely eclectic mix of the unusual and the rare and truly you never know what will be around the next corner or up the next staircase. So much in fact (22,000 objects and 2000 costumes) that there was no room for Charles to live in the house so he lived in a tiny little Priest's Cottage alongside.
Setting aside any qualms over the origins of the fortune, hats off to Charles Wade for doing something marvellously individual and unusual with it all when he returned from fighting in the Great War. In his little memoir Days Far Away, Charles Wade does indeed do much of the imaginative back-story writing that his collection demands, and with ease I imagined the man as I read it. Trained with the eye of an architect and in the finer aspects of design he invested a joy to his collecting,

'I have not bought things because they were rare or valuable...but of interest as records of various vanished handicrafts. What joy these old things are to live with, each piece made by the hand of a craftsman, each has a feeling of individuality that no machine could ever attain...this collection, not a museum, will be a valuable record in times to come.'

If you haven't been to Snowshill don't miss it, you'd be in great company, J.B.Priestley, the Johns Betjeman, Buchan and Masefield, Edwin Lutyens and Virginia Woolf all paid a call, and you may also sight the pure white Snowshill cat suitably named Tinker.
Mind you, Virginia was not impressed. She visited along with Susan, Lady Tweedsmuir (wife of John Buchan) and Elizabeth Bowen on July 3rd 1935 and wrote that same day to Vanessa Bell,

'We went 40 miles to see a necromancer - that is a retired East India planter who lives in a mediaeval farm [Snowshill] which he has filled with old clothes, bicycles, mummies, alligators, Italian altars - not, I thought, very interesting, and I think rather a fraud, as he pretended to have no watch, and so I lost my train and only got back at 8.30.'

John Betjeman, in a letter to Charles Wade requesting photos for a magazine article, less than optimistic about a return visit,

'I hope I shall see you if ever I come to the Cotswolds again, but with the likelihood of a revolution in London, and death by motor accident or rapid disease, any sort of peace seems out of the question.'

Pay no heed, despite veiled hints of witchcraft and the occult, Charles Wade seems harmless enough and Snowshill a real horde of treasures in the finest traditions of English eccentricity.

Margaret Calkin James redux

Safely home again after a few days of post-Dartington rest and relaxation staying at a "remote and top secret location with current literary connections and a very gorgeous dog" in the Cotswolds, it was my absolute pleasure to visit the Margaret Calkin James exhibition currently on display until September 21st at the Court Barn Museum in Chipping Campden. The museum itself a tribute to the Arts and Crafts Movement and the setting a perfect one for the work of Margaret Calkin James.
I wrote about Margaret here after I'd picked up her book on the Rainbow Workshops whilst browsing the V&A bookshop and had a lovely e mail correspondence with her daughter Elizabeth Argent at the time.
Imagine my delight to find that Elizabeth was at the exhibition, talking to visitors and showing them around. We had a good chat and I'm so glad I went because this will be the final public exhibition of Margaret's work before it is all archived in the V&A for posterity. Hopefully it will be on permanent display but there's something about seeing textiles behind a glass case which slightly detracts from the whole experience.
Memorable for a textile fanatic like me to get close up to the fabrics especially the hand block printed schoolroom curtain from Margaret's home Hornbeams, used as the endpaper in the Persephone Books edition of The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart. A book illustrated by another dovegreyreader favourite, Gwen Raverat.
It has to be the sign of a truly dedicated artist, one who cannot live and breath without their craft, that Margaret, having suffered a stroke which rendered her right arm useless, taught herself to use her left hand and carried on producing the most exquisitely beautiful tapestries. Still very much in evidence, Margaret's characteristic eye for design in a different but immaculately worked medium and one that Elizabeth recounted brought her mother great joy in her later years, the sight of the blank canvas there to be worked would gladden her heart.
Elizabeth kindly allowed me to take some pictures to share with all of you, but if your are passing Chipping Campden it's definitely worth paying a visit because you can buy a poster of that fabulous Rainbow Workshop sign for a mere £5.
Then you could take a wander around this lovely little market town, you might even run into a famous author, who knows?
You could also nip along to Snowshill Manor which is what I did next.
Remembering forever of course our Belvoir/ Beevor Castle indiscretion, the locals tell me it's pronounced Snowzell, best to get these things right before you go.

The Wool

I needed more sock wool like I needed more books I suppose.
In other words I need never buy any ever again.
I've got more than enough to last several lifetimes, but sometimes the temptation subsumes all reason and this hank turned out to be quite the saver of the day in a strange and roundabout way.
Colinette Jitterbug is my new best knitting friend, fabulous to knit up, snug to wear and now I discover it survives the washing machine, so I just thought I'd head to the website and look at the colours.
Only look.
Then I saw this colour and thought well one hank won't hurt, and there's a discount for registering on the site so that's too good an offer to miss.
It was only on going to our little used Paypal account to make the payment which also goes to a rarely used e mail that I found the account was 'on hold'.
What's this 'on hold - account suspended pending investigation' ?
Then I feel a bit queasy when I see that the account shows three payments totalling $1000 and made to one Ryan Alexander in the US.
I dash to the online credit card account and there it is, Ryan has siphoned off $1000.
KEEP CALM! I shouted to Bookhound which is really the cue for him to do anything but and then start pacing round in circles with clenched jaw and pursed lips wishing very unpleasant things on people called Ryan Alexander who live in America (with apologies to all the honest-as-the-day-is-long Ryan Alexanders out there) and me to go all wonky - thermostat / woman - of - a - certain - age  hot and feel a bit oh - my - god - we've - been - robbed sick.
Thankfully Paypal had highlighted the transactions as suspicious within fifteen minutes of them being made at 4 am GMT ( I know I'm a fiend at buying online but not at 4am GMT) and had put everything on hold pending verification of the account. They then agreed that we had nothing to show but a huge credit card deficit for our supposed payments to Ryan, we changed all the passwords and security questions and it was all eventually sorted. Next time I try to access Paypal there will doubtless be the forgotten password nightmare and the what was the name of our first budgie dilemma or did we say my primary school or yours.
But none of it would have come to light until Bookhound had picked me up from a dead faint on opening the credit card bill several weeks later had I not had a wool transgression.
So you see there are real advantages to temptation and many thanks to Colinette for assisting me in making that discovery.
Meanwhile I think I should probably buy sock wool online on a regular basis in case this happens again,

Justine,Daphne,Deirdre,Dilys,Rebecca and Rachel.

Making connections with textiles and reading as my mind always seems to, I'm thinking it might be the same bit of my brain that engages both, and each time I ponder Daphne and a quilt that would match the books I return to the fabulous work of Dilys Fronks.
Dilys,( who kindly gave permission for me to use this picture,) has adapted the technique of reverse cut and sew applique to create a style of her own based on garden gates.To see one is to want one, to make one looks like a life's work, but wouldn't one of these done with the Rebecca Manderley gates be sheer absolute perfection?
In the past I've used cut and sew applique on smaller scale Baltimore quilt blocks as per Ellie Sienkiewicz (this one the legendary Divine Guidance for which a great deal of the same was needed) and I have got as far as making the background for a Dilys-style wall-hanging. The idea was to base it on The Eden Project, those roof hexagons begging to be replicated in the black lattice work and that's where I got well and truly stuck.
The background is made of a colourwash of small squares and is not as easy as it first seems. Deirdre Amsden recognised as the first quilter to use this technique and I've done simple colourwash before (this one my very first attempt in Liberty Tana Lawn,very simple!) and pre-requisite is a design wall. I have a huge flannelette sheet pinned up which serves as mine and with vast quantities of light-medium and dark fabric squares at the ready it all takes you back to the days of Fuzzy Felt. I start to play and squint and step back and reposition, use my own version (red cellophane sweet wrappers)  of something odd called a Ruby Beholder and seven hours later I find I am still stepping back, squinting and moving squares to create a balanced chiaroscuro of light and shade for my garden of colour.
Bookhound will helpfully appear when summoned.
Never summon a designer in the midst of this process....that looks wrong...but I liked that bit...the perspective doesn't work there...that took me ages...try this here and that there...I'll start again. Whenever I make anything like this I always ask him because, pain me though it may, he is actually always right and perhaps I should just hand that bit of the project over to his capable hands?
If you're going the whole Dilys the gates are then drawn onto a large piece of black fabric ( Bookhound's actually a draughtsman too, he could surely manage that bit while I oversee?) which is laid over the pieced top and meticulously cut away and appliqued onto the background inch by inch slowly revealing the garden beneath.
Perhaps I could be allowed to start a very little one when I get some of these other projects finished?
Currently I have a log-jam of quilting in completer-finisher mode and nothing in that really exciting thinking, planning, fabric-choosing, cutting, sewing stage...though I have thought ahead and gathered a few Daphne-esque fabrics as one must.
That Eating Room red cover on Justine's book just made me you see, but without further ado we must away to Fowey where Justine is waiting. I'm squeezing into her reading group on My Cousin Rachel this afternoon too so there will be lots to report later.

Kitchener grafted toes

Strange how so many soldiers have given their all in the name of knitting, Cardigan and Raglan come to mind and finally, you know it's coming, the dreaded Kitchener grafted toe. It always sounds like painful metatarsal surgery at the Battle of Omdurman to me.
Now that I've got my bearings on the needles I'm well into sock-finishing mode, things are clicking along nicely and the 100% Merino Colinette Jitterbug Toscana's are done.
There's a moment when I head towards the toe that I hit maximum concentration. The stitches reduce down and the whole thing has to transfer from my tiny circular needle back onto three double-ended needles.

Finally down to the last twenty-four stitches and cometh the Kitchener moment. It's not that difficult but for some reason I have never been able to memorise the sequence, I slavishly follow the pattern row by row.

The remaining stitches divided between two needles and that tail is threaded onto a needle and there follows a system of thread needle knitwise / purlwise / leave stitch on / take stitch off needle until the whole thing is woven together. Woe betide any interruptions because I can never find my way back into where I was.
But finally, this joyous sight prevails and I bless the day I decided I finally had to learn to turn a heel.

Sunday Salon - confessions

Not books but socks for now though I am reading a remarkable book today, more of which later.
I often read that line of occupations at the top of this blog and think, well two of them remain steadfast and true week in week out, one other has just been knocked back into shape as I am gradually making inroads on my unquilted wall hangings but what of the other, the sock-knitting?
Well, 'tis a neglected and parlous state of affairs in my sock-knitting kingdom, and having watched Cornflower create beautiful socks through the winter with ease I have finally faced the wool basket and sorted out the mess.
This is how it stands, four completed socks from four different pairs, three matching in various stages of progress and one last not yet cast on. The trouble is I don't watch enough television but in order to get the socks finished I've nurtured an addiction to I'd Do Anything and The Apprentice neither of which require too much concentration if I'm at a K2tog,K1(marker),K1ssk2tog counting moment. So there's a glimmer of a turned heel (k5,ssk2tog,K1, turn) and a grafted Kitchener toe (far too complicated) at the end of the ball of wool and the possibility of a matching pair any day now.

Books & Quilts

Some annual leave over the next fortnight and a good time to apply myself to a few craft projects.
A glimmer of inspiration hovers and needs to be addressed but having gazed around the fabric stash, and with great restraint kept my hands off the pattern books and the rotary cutter, I decided it was time instead to get this little wallhanging quilted. It was pieced last year (or was it the year before) and all the blocks were inspired by books I'd read. Strange and incomprehensible to many perhaps, how reading a book can make you want to make a quilt, but the two are inextricably linked in my mind and the fabric for this one was from a range called Wuthering Heights so what else was I to do with it?
Sitting and quilting on a weekday afternoon feels mildly decadent but quilting time is never wasted. I can't find the quote but I'm sure it was Claudine's House by Colette and her mother's reluctance for her daughter to learn to sew because then she will have time to think, and who knows where thinking will lead? Well I've just finished reading Daphne and there's a great deal in there to think about. I'll post about it in full very soon but it's been an inspiring read and I'm about to reread Rebecca. It's a pretty safe guess as to my two choices for naming this little quilt.
The old tradition says that you stitch your life events and thoughts into a quilt as you make it and I think this is especially true as you hand-quilt. I can look back on all the quilts I've stitched and know exactly when in my life I've made them.
When I haven't threaded a needle for a little while I find it takes a time to get my quilting eye in, (no, lets be honest it takes me an age to thread a needle first, I use tiny Clover Gold Eye No.9 and will move to smaller 10s when I'm back in the groove) the needle feels miniscule, the stitches feel too big, too far apart, crooked and uneven, my fingers feel like sausages and my thimble feels awkward.
This one is pear wood and I've been using it for over twenty years. It must have come from a magic pear tree because no other thimble will do and no other fits so well. After a while it warms up, the magic seeps into my finger and those soft grooves, worn in over the years, start to connect with the needle and I feel the stitches.

Slowly but surely the rhythm returns and then I'm away and I thought if I share the progress of this on here over the next couple of weeks I will finally be forced to finish it or be shamed into confessing I haven't.
Quilts in progress look messy, tacking and raw edges everywhere, but I was pleased with an afternoon's work on the hoop to get the centre quilted. It was so long since I'd marked this one with quilting patterns the disappearing marker pen had all but disappeared and I've had to rethink it.

Once I'd done some Daphne thinking I decided I could do audio book, so I listened to The Woman in Black by Susan Hill. I haven't read it for years and the listening has been as spine-chilling as that first read. As the mist from Eel Marsh started to gather the stitches started to flow and I was as engrossed and remote from the world as if I was reading. This one is narrated with acres of atmosphere and suspense by Paul Ansdell. One CD left to listen to and I'm onto blocks and borders now and on a hand-quilting roll.
Just what I needed.

Sunday Salon - Cowslip heaven

" I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear"

A different Sunday Salon post today, books feature eventually and that was the only quote I could find on cowslips so it will have to do. There's nothing like catching up with a good friend and heading off to Cowslip Workshops over at Launceston for lunch and a browse in what has to be...yes I'm going to say it the best and most idyllic patchwork shop in The Entire UK...no, let's not mess about, say The World.
Now that a beautiful restaurant has been added the visit can take all day once you've had coffee, browsed the shop, had lunch and a debate about projects then gone back into the shop and firmed up the fabric choices and indeed we took a long four hours over it all on Friday.
Cowslip is set on a working organic farm so we drove around the boxes of leeks just harvested, past the newborn lambs, parked up and let the inspiration begin to flow and there is no doubt it always does. I had put a ridiculous embargo on all fabric purchasing and starting of new projects pending a bottleneck of unfinished wall-hangings and quilts waiting to be quilted. Add to that enough fabric in the stash to carpet the earth twice over with some left for most of the moon including double-lining all craters and there was absolutely no need for me to buy anything.
Except all quilting and no planning or piecing makes dgr a dull seamstress and so needs must.
Books and reading always inspire my needlework and it was obvious that with my current Thomas Hardy phase in full bloom the sight of these fabrics would bring on a relapse over the embargo. Doesn't that bookish writing plus oak leaf and acorn and the brown bark fabric just firmly declare Under the Greenwood Tree meets Gabriel Oak?
Well it did to me in a flash too. This also takes me quite a way outside my colour comfort zone of teal / yellow ochre / deep burgundy. I am a complete stranger to the brown and green corner at Cowslip but my stalwart friend edged me over there and saved me from myself when I panicked a bit and had added in something a bit too bright and garish.
I haven't a clue what I'll be making but I expect a week off work will allow my creativity to surface from the depths and make itself known. It always twitters away in the background but a good long run of freedom and it rushes forth like a mad torrent. There'll be steam coming off the Bernina e'er long.
I'm also planning a little piece of Celtic hand-applique and quilting to celebrate my reading of John O'Donohue's Anam Cara but more of that (with explanation for those who think Celtic quilting is about football) in another post, though you'll be delighted to know I thought ahead and stocked up for that project too...and one or two others.
Lest there be any doubt as to the benefits

"Useful and ornamental needlework, knitting and netting are capable of being made, not only sources of personal gratification, but of high moral benefit, and the means of developing in surpassing loveliness and grace, some of the highest and noblest feelings of the soul."
Author unknown, from The Ladies' WorkTable Book, 1845

So that's alright then.

Saturday on a Thursday and my old friend Gwen.

Stream of consciousness is a useful tool when you write a blog.
One bookish thought leads to another and before you know it I'm scurrying to my shelves for a pile of books to share on here and, love them though I do, it really helps if the house is empty and the thoughts flow unhindered
Last Saturday morning and Bookhound is out for the day helping the Gamekeeper do what the Gamekeeper does.The Kayaker, currently between rivers, is in residence but has headed off to Wales for the weekend. West Country rivers are disappointingly low for his liking so a trip in search of white water has guaranteed us a day and a night of torrential rain here.Then he's off to something called The Hurley Rodeo where they ride kayaks instead of horses but probably shout yeeee-haaaaah giddy-up neddy just the same.
In amongst the post was one of those catalogues from a second-hand bookshop, this one Bow Windows in Lewes, Sussex. I'm not a collector of rarities any more, so nothing seems affordable, but one book catches my eye, The Wood Engravings of Gwen Raverat published in 1959, a first edition going for £200.
Still not affordable but I had a quick covet.
Anything by Gwen Raverat now fetching good prices and mention of Frances Spalding earlier this week leads me immediately to her biography, Gwen Raverat, Friends, Family & Affections.
I'm sure I must have mentioned it here before, ( in fact I know I have because idly typing Gwen- Raverat- woodcuts into google images flags up just about every picture I have ever put on this blog, it's on here somewhere ) and many will have read Period Piece, Gwen's own account of her childhood, but if you missed the biography and want a page-turningly readable and informative account of a woman you may know little about this one is not to be missed.
Born in 1885, Gwen was the granddaughter of Charles Darwin and thus part of a well-established and highly respected Cambridge family.What radiates from the pages of Frances Spalding's book is a fascinating character, hugely resilient, devoted to her loved ones and immensely talented. Moving on the edges of the Bloomsbury Group, Gwen enrolled in the Slade School of Painting and Drawing; wood-engraving of little interest when she first sharpened her chisels but her talent soon became apparent.
Much more to it than cutting a few lines in a bit of wood as I first thought, woodcuts follow the grain of the wood, wood-engravings are cut on the end grain.The illustrations are plentiful, page after page of Gwen's work and if you are near Cambridge, and can find the Broughton House Gallery , you can indulge in some reasonably priced books of the engravings as well as browsing The Gwen Raverat Archive.
I never tire of looking at them and would like to think I could now spot a Gwen Raverat at twenty paces but that might be a bit ambitious.However the book opened my eyes to the whole craft and I went through a very dodgy patch of wanting some chisels to have a go until 'someone' tactfully reminded me that it helps if you can draw in the first place, which I can't.
It's probably infringing all copyright rules to add a woodcut here but how can I not share The Land of Storybooks? The photo, of the photo of the copy of the original is mine if that helps and I can only beg forgiveness from Family Raverat, but I'm sorry I just have to do it. I'll go to prison and help in the library, that's fine.

Homeless old bag finds happiness at last.

Though bookhound usually goes off on the trail of books occasionally he returns home with something else entirely and so I'm never surprised and usually delighted with some of his finds.
So this bag was £1 in a local charity shop.

Not a lot of use as a bag it has to be said, but open it up and here's a sight to delight the knitters among you.Someone's lifetime of knitting and crochet in there.

The non-knitters won't see the joy in this at all, the rest of you would have loved the happy time I spent at the kitchen table sorting through this lot.

No of course I don't need them all, but that's not the point. Some things just have to be rescued and someone has to do it, remember the lace-making muddle I had to airlift to safety last year?

The Loudest Sound and Nothing

I mentioned The Loudest Sound and Nothing by Clare Wigfall as one of my sanity reads in the midst of Booker madness and as today is launch party day it seems an apposite moment to post my thoughts.
You may remember I loved the cover, some hate it, but in this world of ever more complex and garish look-at-me jackets this one has been quite a restful treat.
I am not the greatest lover of the short story in the world, in fact I give up on more collections of these than I finish. Once I get a whiff of that "this was a novel going nowhere" aroma, disillusionment sets in and I lose the will to carry on.I was therefore pleasantly suprised to find a collection that caught my interest on the first page, sustained it through to the last page and definitely had me wanting to read more.Each one beautifully complete and the sense that you had just read something as fulfilling as a 300 page novel.
These stories take you everywhere, across the boundaries of time, place and circumstance to the individual worlds of people "all searching for something missing". Nothing is quite what it seems and thus is life revealed to be the complex and strange set of events that most of us know it to be, but rarely is that rendered so carefully on the pages of a book.
Clare Wigfall has written her opinions about the short story here and as I read her thoughts, that each of these story titles held a specific memory for her, where she was when she wrote it, what was happening in her life, what she was reading when she wrote, it was but a hop and skip for me to the obvious analogy with making a patchwork quilt.
As you piece together all the separate fabrics to make a whole and then stitch what is happening in your life into a quilt, then it would seem perhaps a writer does the same with a collection of short stories and doubtless with a novel too. I'd never thought of it quite like that before and, now that I have, I think I am a born-again short story collection reader with a passion and will be looking for many more.
There's been precious little quilting on here of late (sorry been a bit busy) so here's that little wall hanging, 6" blocks and names based on the titles of books I was reading at the time, now tacked to its layers of batting and backing and marked up ready for a winter of quilting ahead.
Plus below, a list of the names of the blocks and the books the block names represented for me, not always obvious unless you've read the book it has to be said (starting top left and moving clockwise)
Lady of the Lake - The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin (I love that little piece of chocolate brown in there, perfect for drawing in the eye)
Wedding Ring - Adam Bede by George Eliot
Cat's Cradle - The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill
Magic Cross - My Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Ocean Wave - The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch
Maple Star - The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
Silent Star - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Father's Choice - Room For a Single Lady by Clare Boylan

Art Deco is still me

I'm sorry to be a nuisance and go on about it but I'm still suffering the pangs of the Art Deco craze at the moment in fact I'm not sure I've ever really grown up where crazes are concerned.The enthusiasm just grips me feverishly, not that different from all those school crazes, French skipping (one packet of elastic bands knotted together) juggling balls, cat's cradle,(did anyone know beyond the first three moves?) jacks.
So now I'm seeking out Art Deco everywhere and badgering Bookhound for a trip to Burgh Island over at Bigbury Bay. Hot on the heels will be a bout of the Agatha's I'm sure. All stirred into action by my V&A trip, and the sight of this book.
Firstly I can confirm that it does weigh a full 6lbs and this could be why I didn't buy it at the V&A thinking sensibly for once about the journey home.So in moments like this it seems wise to let The Book Depository take the strain, post free and 2/3rds of the cost.The reality was that the postman refused to lift it out of his van and made Bookhound walk out and get it.
But you only have to gaze to know what a treasure trove it is.
The older I get the more I seem to be realizing how much I still need to discover and how many things I thought I knew enough about but actually know very little. Then I'm off on a wild forage for anything I can find.
I'm looking forward to finally seeking out the real origins of Art Deco and how and where it developed once I can get past the ravishing pictures and onto the words.Once I've got a grip on that I think it will be possible to sift out some great Art Deco novels. F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is probably a good place to start.Such a vibrantly strong design style that seems to have dictated a whole way of life must have found its way into fiction every which way.Suggestions welcome.

Not a jot of Art Deco in the house I thought until I suddenly remembered this little powder compact which belonged to my mum and was brought back by her brother-in-law from the 1939 New York World's Fair and still some powder inside.

Margaret Calkin James

Undaunted by the closed textile galleries at the V&A I was browsing in the shop when I came across a delightful book about a designer from the 1930's. I had never heard of her by name but of course I knew her work.Instantly recognizable and this was the book that I read on the train home.
The Sign of the Rainbow by Betty Miles about Margaret Calkin James born in 1895, a truly gifted artist and one of those whose work just appeals to my eye instantly.
Enrolling in Central School of Arts and Crafts was unusual for a woman in the early 20th century and the emphasis was on "secure technique as the pre-requisite for confident self-expression". Add in Margaret's "lively freedom of expression and awareness of new ideas" and you have a recipe for something very special indeed.
The Rainbow Workshops in Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury, established after the Great War and very much in the tradition of the Omega Workshops of Roger Fry, became one of the first galleries opened by a woman to promote art,craft and design.The idea of selling directly to the public was innovative and a way of avoiding the conservative retail trade and thereby promoting new ideas.
Like me you may have unwittingly been looking at Margaret Calkin James's work for years and not realised, how about these London Transport posters?

Or this endpaper from a republished edition of  The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart? This School Room fabric incorporates some of Margaret's favourite motifs, the ark on the waves,stylized plant forms, a Dutch boy and a dancer and a Christmas tree to remind them all year round of family togetherness.
There were a series of beautiful book jackets for Jonathan Cape which almost make me think it is time for the return of the Art Deco dust jacket, somehow they seem timeless.
Perhaps Art Deco has never quite slipped from our consciousness?
Later in life Margaret suffered a stroke which deprived her of speech and the use of her right arm.You can only begin to imagine the devastation.However reading this book one thing becomes quickly apparent, Margaret Calkin James was a quietly determined lady with an indomitable spirit. Nothing was ever going to stop her creativity and she embarked on a series of designs in wool embroidery using her left hand.
One very remarkable and exceptionally talented artist whose work deserves to live on and who now merits an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (head to the website and log on with your library ticket number ) and I am grateful to Elizabeth Argent, Margaret's daughter, for permission to share some of the images here.

'It was a splendid morning too.Like the pulse of a perfect heart'

'I love walking in London' said Mrs Dalloway.'Really it's better than walking in the country'
and I felt like Clarissa Dalloway too as I scurried around London on a beautiful day on Friday and revelled in my recent re-read of what may be my favourite Virginia Woolf book.
I also did something I've always wanted to do.
I hailed a taxi and said "The Savoy please"

Prior to this I'd had another Mrs Dalloway moment as the bells chimed midday, the leaden circles did indeed dissolve in the air, enough to make me stop and listen, check for the sign-writing aeroplane and then panic realizing I'd spent far too long in Daunt's Bookshop in Marylebone and was going to be late.
I was even later because "the world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames" and then did just that. Oxford Street closed and the traffic gridlocked because the New Look store had undergone a new look to the tune of a million pounds after a fire.
I was at The Savoy for the Awards lunch for the Romantic Novelist of the Year and meeting up with the Transita authors.Dame Tanni Grey Thompson was the chairman of judges and gave a very funny and entertaining speech.The lunch was splendid and I sat and chatted to Mary Cavanagh, Stella Sykes and Danuta Kean in that sumptuous Art Deco haven that is The Savoy.I had a bit of a spot-the-art-deco prowl around afterwards but my furtive pics came out predictably furtively blurry.
Next I hoofed into Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait Gallery where I wanted to see the exhibition of Women Writers.

I never did find Room 31 and that exhibition because I got distracted by everything else and time was ticking on so I walked up to catch the tube from Covent Garden thus taking in another favourite venue.
More ambling as I listened to the quartet playing there and a young man on the flute who was ever so slightly more accomplished than me.
It was late night opening at the Victoria & Albert Museum and I was on a mission to seek out some textiles, specifically following up some I'd seen in the Penlee Museum in Penzance, hand blocked in St Ives in the 1930's by Crysede and designed by Alec Walker.Never heard of and wanted to find out more but also what a great place to test the "museum" setting on my new camera (silent, no flash...discreet, should have used in Savoy)
Invoking the ancient Law of Sod, textiles was one of the galleries not open late.
In a way closing half of the museum solved my problem because it's vast and easy to waste half a day deciding what to look at first, I had two hours and the shop and a pot of tea to do.
Somehow I ended up in Ecclesiastical.

However I'm never so happy as when I'm gazing at a pot of Earl Grey tea and I suspect the V&A takes the biscuit for nice cafe setting.

By this time I've been on the go for 14 hours so I'm even happier when I arrive here

and put my feet up (sorry, yes that is my shoes resting on the First Great Western soft furnishings) homeward bound for Exeter St Davids for the next 3 hours or so and a peruse of my purchases.
The books to carry me home, Extracts from the Red Notebooks by Matthew Engel,excellent reading.
A new book (to me anyway), The Daphne Du Maurier Companion edited by Helen Taylor and some interesting new writing about an author who is due for a revisit from me.
Finally At the Sign of the Rainbow a book about the 1930's designer Margaret Calkin James who set up The Rainbow Workshops carrying on the ideals of the Omega Workshops and who produced some memorable posters, fabrics, wallpapers and book jackets.An old Woman's Hour piece can be heard here.
On the top there a supply of Moleskine Cahiers which I've decided will be my new Commonplace books.

Yet again I remind myself I must read the instructions for my iPod Shuffle because I had a right old mix and match of Jonie, Annie, Rod, Seth, The Sixteen and a few others I didn't recognize.
But London, I do love you, if only for a day.

Bed Socks

I hope I haven't given the impression that being ill = idleness, clearing up the occasional house flood and otherwise lounging around in bed doing nothing; when all else fails there's knitting.
I've exchanged a few messages with fellow sock-knitters recently.We all yearn to knit those really complex patterns but common sense always prevails and it's back to my basic 60 stitch easy maths pattern so that I can watch Deal or No Deal at the same time...except I'm right off that now.
I've got a lovely stash of wool waiting from the Yarn Yard, monthly hand dyed surprises have been arriving, but in the meantime I've cast on this lush Colinette sock wool. I've loved Colinette wool for years, almost one of the earliest unique yarns on the market, lovely textures and colours so I snapped up some sock wool recently when I saw they had started making it.

The joy of random wool is exactly that, you have no idea how it's going to knit up and this one has been quite surprising.There's also a point you reach with any sock, just after you've turned the heel, when it resembles a balaclava for a ferret and for some reason that always makes me smile.

The Perfectly Lovely Gorgeous Quilt

At most surgeries I've worked in, eventually word gets out that I like quilting and invariably a group of staff will emerge who have always wanted to learn, so we start with a beginners class and they are quickly addicted.The last surgery cottoned on big time and ended up with this beautiful set of wallhangings for their waiting room.Scroll down to The Abbey Surgery Team link, fight your way through the staff lists and there they are.
I moved on to another GP practice 7 years ago and currently the "Girl's Night In" group still meet monthly but came along to Week One about 5 years ago with intros like "You know I've never threaded a needle". That is never a problem and I've yet to teach anyone who hasn't picked up the basics, caught the bug and become a proficient quilter very quickly. That's not down to my teaching, it's down to the craft itself which is so welcoming and wonderfully all-consuming once the basic mysteries have been revealed.
Here's the "Girl's Night In" first attempt at a group quilt and made for a baby expected by another member of staff, in fact we've just finished our fourth one of these, it's clearly a fertile place to work.
A rather grainy photo and nervous breakdowns over tiny little mistakes...spot the applique butterfly concealing a hole snipped while cutting quilting thread, but I just kept saying, "Don't worry, it's perfectly lovely gorgeous" and so that is the name we gave this quilt.
We also bought baby Joe a pair of sunglasses because it's quite a dazzler.
We've re-convened after Christmas and, with no babies on the horizon that we know of, it was be down to work on all our own unfinished projects.
I'm sure you're all really good and finish everything you start but surprise, surprise, I don't and so I'm going to share a few more of my UFOs on here occasionally, some of them go back decades.You will be shocked I'm sure.I clearly need to hone my completer-finisher skills.
Sunday confessions later and shock revelations about the state of the toilets in the world's largest bookshop, bet you can't wait.

Proof encounter

After last week's proof encounter this one should have made me happy because it came wrapped in the dust jacket.
It has been explained to me that, although they are basic fare, proof covers do in fact attempt to reflect the content of the book, hence the orange for the Chinese dissident of last week and so to this week's read The Sound of Butterflies by Rachael King to be published by Picador in March.
Lurking under that dust jacket a jewel-like, well-within-my-zone, turquoise blue cover reflecting the dazzling array of butterflies collected by Thomas Edgar on his travels up the Amazon river.I quickly discarded the dust jacket this time because the book blended perfectly with my current quilting project.
In fact it more than blended. Sometimes there is a real fusion between what I'm making and what I'm reading and so my wallhanging, previously titled The Inundation of the Spring should now  be called The Inundation of the Spring With the Sound of Butterflies.I had used a line from an Emily Dickinson poem
"the inundation of the Spring enlarges every soul" but the vibrant colours in the wallhanging are more than reflected in this book.
That aside there is also a real Heart of Darkness theme running through Rachael King's book so the fusion will have to stop there.
My senses are always heightened by any mention of lavender in connection with Heart of Darkness.Wasn't there that rather ambiguous reference to the dough being lavender coloured? And was it dough? Rachael King drops in quite a few lavender references in this book and would you believe it, as I read the line "the copper-shot lavender chiffon falls in soft folds about her body" that theme from Ladies in Lavender started playing on the radio.
I was convinced it was another sign and we were in for an ambiguous casserole.
It's 1904 and young Thomas Edgar returns home to his wife Sophie from his lepidopteral expedition up the Amazon a changed, silent and very disturbed man.
Was it something he ate or was it something he saw? Was it something he smoked or was it something he caught? Did he catch the butterfly of his dreams?
I couldn't possibly comment but The Sound of Butterflies is a good involving read contrasting the constraints of life in Edwardian England with the rather more lax state of affairs in the Amazon jungle.Both jungles of their own kind when you come to think about it.
It's all left me with an overwhelming urge to go to the Natural History Museum and gaze at all those tropical butterflies, though really I should be getting on with some quilting because, as a way of making myself complete and finish, The Inundation of the Spring With the Sound of Butterflies is entered in an exhibition later this year.

Crafter Culture

It's rare these days for me to acquire a new craft book.
Even I know that I don't have enough hours in the day to start up something new, so although I might be tempted and make noises about getting a kiln or learning to spin, the reality is I usually try and talk myself out of it. I was seriously going to get into spinning and wool dyeing until Bookhound sensibly said why not buy it ready done and I couldn't really come up with a reason to proceed.Then there was the weaving and then paper-making and marbelling then....
So really the last thing I needed was The Crafter Culture Handbook by Amy Spencer (published by Marion Boyars) but I'd heard a whisper or two about it and was then offered a copy pre-publication and so I bought one.
Amy Spencer looks at the politics of crafting and why people take them up, whether taking a stance against sweatshop production, for self sufficiency reasons, recycling ethics or just for the sheer pleasure of creativity.Personally I feel as if I'm on the crest of a wave when I'm creating.
This is the book for the person who is perhaps new to craft and hasn't yet embraced the thrift side of the whole thing. Approach any craft in the 21st century and you'll spend a fortune buying specially made, pre-packaged new things to cut up and make into more new things.
I'm the worst I know, I know, I love some new wool and some fabric to add to my stash but I have also done my share of making do and mend and I still do.Currently an unquilted Amish quilt top is about to become a door curtain.
This book is a lovely combination of digging around charity shops for jumpers to unravel, unusual electrical crafts, lights made from colanders, pick-ups for guitars, rag rugs, fleece rugs, bags crocheted out of plastic carriers, you name it, it's in here and plenty more that would never have occurred to me.
There are two sections that I love and I will be using very soon, homemade lotions and potions is the first.
I now HAVE to make my own soap which apparently can be done in the microwave and there was me thinking I'd be up in the shed with old saucepans on the camping stove. Then there's the lip balm, hair conditioner, face masks, toner, it's all in here and no amount of suggesting I go and buy it ready-made will do this time.
The other must-make section is called Paper and Ink and here, well first find your octopus...no I'm joking, no animals get hurt in this book so no octopus ink recipes, but there are instructions to make a beautiful Coptic Bound notebook.
Somewhere I still have the book on how to make your own paper so perhaps I could?
No?
Oh alright then, but some beautiful paper out there to buy now and good instructions here about paper grain about which I knew nothing, take it from me, the rip test tells you all you need to know.

Stashing wool

Karen over on Cornflower has been extolling the virtues of stashing wool;that cumulative necessity that stalks all knitters (fabric for quilters) and the need to keep the stash updated and ongoing has come upon me. As you can imagine I really do actually have enough wool lined up to sock the nation but it remains incumbent upon me to keep the supply topped up.
This is easy when you visit The Yarn Yard and I thought joining their version of A Skein a Month Club would be an inspiring start to 2007's knitting.
I'm a fiend for getting wedged in my own colour comfort zone (petrel blue, burgundy, yellow ochre, teal you know the sort of thing) and I think the whole idea of letting someone else do the choosing and foisting is an excellent one.
You just sign up for 3 months at a time and an exclusive hand-dyed mystery skein will be delivered, so I have and I'll see what happens.
If you knit socks you also spend your life searching out 30cm circular needles and you have a strange penchant for sets of double pointed needles of unusual origin.I'm floundering at the loss of one from my precious set of 2.75mm Brittany Canadian birch ones so Yarn Yard's fetching Boye purple aluminium looked worth a try.Mine have arrived and they may not look that exciting to you but OMG these are top drawer dpns.
New year, new needles, new socks.

On the First Day of Christmas

Not very festive colours but the best of traditional designs for the First Day of Christmas, Star of Bethlehem.
With a rotary cutter and some nifty strip piecing and re-cutting these are not quite the labour of love they must have been for the pioneer quilters.
Still a lovely design and very satisfying to make.
This one about 3ft square and hand quilted.

The Twelve Days of Christmas Quilt Festival

I've decided to have my very own Twelve Days of Christmas Quilt Festival  on here and you are all invited.
As well as all the other random ramblings, something that I have made going up at 6pm each evening here from December 25th until January 5th, and that last one on the Eve of Epiphany will be the ultimate quilt journey confession, the rather large and as yet "unfinished" Millenium Quilt.
Once revealed to the world, I may be shamed into completing it this year, these things take time.
In the meantime I'll share some of the things that clutter up our beds and walls down here.
This one by the way is the antique quilt found in the market here for £10 and which clutters the wall over the piano hiding a multitude of nail holes; the residue of a penchant for framed antique sheet music for which we no longer have a penchant.

Festive Quilt 1

Thought it might be nice and festive to share some of my favourite Christmas-sy looking quilts over the next few days so here's the first.This an antique quilt made in Ohio and the pattern never fails to intrigue me.Wish it was mine but it's not, saw it at a sale earlier this year.

Dragonflies and an eyeful of blue

If I had to declare on a favourite colour it would be identical to Penny Simpson's ceramics, made locally at her pottery in Moretonhampstead on Dartmoor and very distinctive and more-ish it is too.
I have just three pieces but I treasure them for this deep shade of kingfisher blue with which Penny has created her own very distinctive style.This colour never fails to work its magic on even the dullest day.

and then there's this perfectly lovely gorgeous dragonfly tile

I have a strange and unexplainable fondness for dragonflies.I don't write my name in any of my books but they do all have this little stamp inside and anyone who gets anything from me in the post is usually similarly blessed with a dragonfly on the envelope somewhere.

Bookhound, always on the look out for things dragonfly-esque trotted off and bought me this beautiful embroidered textile picture at Quilts UK this year.It's by Nicky Dillerstone of Grimsby and hangs in pride of place on the wall over my desk.

It's true what they said!

Susan Hill is right (her delightful daughters warned me about this, apparently she always is) too much reading and not enough clicking of needles heard on the blog lately.
Nope, you're not getting books today. That's a pity,it was going to be sooooo good too, sorry, all about this really good detective series that I've just got the Tinker hooked on. I'm beginning to feel like a drug dealer with these books,they are going round my reading friends like crazy and a serious addiction has set in,verging on desperation...if you finish that tomorrow can you drop it into me at lunchtime so I can start it.
Oh well, never mind, it'll wait.You're getting this which I will be working on at a friend's house where I'm heading for an afternoon Quilting Bee and to talk about...er...books.

However I am allowed a special dispensation with permission to knit,so I might just settle down to some nice easy work on a pair of these, who knows?
Well you will be the first to, and you know who to blame.

I surrender

OK OK I bow to the wishes of my public, the sock-knitting quilting never stops but I didn't want to bore you with it all. I'm reminded of a recent dearth but it's back in my heading and expect an inundation for which I will make no apology.Nice to see you all pay attention and notice these things.