dovegreyreader scribbles

Listening...

I'm not sure why it works like this, but as soon as the light, bright summer months arrive I am afire with enthusiasm for sewing projects and happy to settle down with some audio books as I stitch. In previous years I have been making gifts for the guests in the tent at Port Eliot, last year I hand quilted Blue Moon and this year it is more projects various. And with them I have listened to some wonderful books. Now I don't take notes so all this will be on a wing and a prayer and some general impressions.

Catching up on last year I don't think I wrote much about A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson at the time, but the book has stayed with me and having been a bit ambivalent about Life After Life it was all change and nothing but awe and wonderment for A God in Ruins. I am very tempted, now that a year has passed, to read this one....if you have read it can you tell me...does it read well too?

It seems a daft question when a book is this good.

"A God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd – would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.

This gripping, often deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at war – that great fall of Man from grace – and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of the subsequent generations. It is also about the infinite magic of fiction.Those who loved the bestselling Life After Life will recognise Teddy as Ursula Todd’s adored younger brother – but for those who have not read it, A God in Ruins stands fully on its own. Few will dispute that it proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the most exceptional novelists of our age."

I was completely in thrall to the plot and the narration, had no problem following its twists and turns and time frame and have to say (and I rarely comment on these things nowadays) that the book's absence from this year's Bailey's Prize short list leaves me very puzzled indeed.

Ah well, ours is not to reason why, judges choices on the day etc.

Have I mentioned that I also listened to The Trouble With Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon?

Two young girls solving a mystery in the sweltering summer of 1976 and another good listen with Paula Willcocks narrating.

Happy to repeat an encounter with the writing of Kate Atkinson I kicked off this year's summer stitching by listening to the third Jackson Brodie novel When Will There Be Good News? and was gripped all over again.

This is what I want from an audio book. I want to feel excited about my next sit-down-and-listen session.

A young girl surviving the murder of her mother and siblings grows up to be a GP in Edinburgh. It took a while for me to connect it all up, but slowly the clues emerged, I was in the loop and when Jackson Brodie boards a train traveling in the wrong direction and finds himself a victim in a catastrophic rail crash in Edinburgh and meanwhile the murderer is released from prison, the action really starts to wind up. There are clever connections and plot threads to be woven and all readily followed by ear.

Next up was the very enjoyable Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh, but thoughts coming in a separate post because it's a nice excuse for some lovely New Zealand pictures.

And now...and I don't quite know how this has happened... I am completely, utterly and totally hooked on Ian Rankin and Rebus.

I had never read any, nor seen the TV series, but took a punt on the first in the series, Knots and Crosses, just in case there was a chance I would stumble on a good long haul that I could follow.

Ye Gods, where have I been all this time..

What has taken me so long to discover the wonderful Inspector Rebus...

Edinburgh-based detective, ex SAS, deeply traumatised, broken marriage, ex-wife an English teacher, a pre-teenage daughter, but, and here's the different twist on the usual misery, Rebus is an avid reader but also a believer, a man of faith and it all came as quite a surprise. A Christian who reads the Bible sitting up in his hospital bed (yes, of course he ends up in hospital after a mysterious collapse in a compromising situation) and who wanders around the churches and congregations of Edinburgh trying to find one that he feels comfortable with. He is no saint, but he prays and berates his failings and it all adds something very unusual to the traditional detective mix and I like it.

Knots and Crosses proved to be a sensible place to start, with plenty of back story filled in as an old comrade comes back to haunt and taunt Rebus and I now can't wait to start on number two, Hide and Seek.

If you have read or listened to any of these I would love to know your thoughts...

After my reading fail and audio success with David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet  I am wondering whether to try Black Swan Green. It's another book I just haven't managed to get into to but want to. What's the verdict...

And any more Inspector Rebus fans out there...

Any more good audio books to recommend...

I need to sort out the iPod and the car radio (how do I do that?) because we could listen to these all the way to Orkney and back.

 

 

A Spring Bank Holiday Garden Gallimaufry

It is Spring Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK and we have had a fine and busy week in the garden and a couple of excursions to go and look at other people's too.

And we've also had to bath a cat with fleas.

Not Magnus, he's still AWOL and fast approaching his previous record of sixteen days. No it was the ancient Dowager who so rarely harbours the little critters but I suspect it might a 'bad' year. After a Frontline-all-over failure we braved the swim rather than more chemicals and can you believe she basked happily in a bowl of warm water, reveled in the tea tree shower gel and out floated five fat little nippers.

If anyone has any miracle suggestions for natural deterrents I would be pleased to know of them...

Is there an essential oil that repels them by any chance...

Or a safe product that you have tried and tested.

I do love the way I can ask you all anything.

Meanwhile...

Barrington Court, one time home of the Lyle (of Tate & Lyle) family, was deserted on a Tuesday afternoon and all the more enjoyable for it. This the room used in the filming of Wolf Hall and easy to hear the ghost of Ann Boleyn stamping her foot on that platform.


Barrington Court is unfurnished which we decided we quite like occasionally given that often the furnishings in National Trust properties are not original to the house and it all smelt of wood newly polished for the coming season.

 The gardens were immaculate and a sea of scents and colours just for us...

And whilst it may never occur to me to put wisteria mauve and brick red together in a quilt I really should try it...

We sampled the tea rooms of course and then,  well wouldn't you just know it, Barrington Patchworks, a little shop in one of the barns bursting with fabric and inspiration. Bookhound most helpful in the carrying and choosing...he's got a designer's eye for colours and secretly enjoys it as much as I do. When we had our little shop above his kitchen design studio he became quite a dab hand at cutting fat quarters and helping customers put together their colours for a project.

I'm seeing inspiration wherever I go at the moment, quilts and colours and patterns everywhere and no shortage at Barrington Court. One visit and I emerge with a whole quilt made up in my head...



Our garden is shaping up very much of its own accord at last and though with very little thought to colour (I'm happy enough if something grows) it seems to have sorted that of its own accord.

The aim was always to create a closely planted perennial foundation (who wants to dig all this every year) and to dot the annuals in and around, so I have been nurturing the seeds in the greenhouse for the last three months whilst waiting to see what space would be available in the beds, and truth be told it's all looking a bit full already, without the hundreds of nicotianas I seem to have waiting in the wings.

We have also rejigged the Tinker's dahlia patch this year knowing he wouldn't mind because it really is the best, most sheltered and sunniest spot for the bean canes and the soil is good, rich, old-fashioned-crumbly, fertile field stuff. Who knows how often it had been ploughed, sowed and harvested before it was fenced off in the 1850s for garden.

We live in hope of finding the horde of coins or the Anglo Saxon gold bangle but to date just the shards.

Sadly the Tinker's hardy chrysanthemums have disappeared who knows where, lost, not a sign of them this year but the dahlias are peeking through nicely, the beans are in, the onions have survived along with a row of marigolds from New Zealand seeds. I've fallen in love with marigolds again after last year's Africans in the greenhouse...

and ' Naughty Mariette', which Offspringette had all over her garden when I visited in January, is a taller bushy floriabundant affair rather than the stumpy variety so we are hoping to replicate.

So while the garden settles in for the early summer here there is some time to sit back and enjoy it before the next round of planting out.

How's the planting and flowering going over your way...

 

 

Janet Bolton at Cowslip Workshops

Before I went to New Zealand I booked two courses at Cowslip Workshops, something to look forward to when I arrived home. Shibori and indigo dyeing a real inspiration back in March and I knew the second one would be likewise, a two day workshop with textile artist Janet Bolton a few weeks ago.

From Janet's website...

"Janet Bolton composes textile pictures using the simplest of hand sewing techniques. Her inspiration comes from visual experience, memory, imagination – and sometimes from some quality inspired by the material itself. The placement of each element within the composition and the feeling this evokes being the important factor of each piece of work.
Janet has been on the Crafts Council selected index of makers since 1985, her work is in many private collections and in: The British Council Collection, The Crafts Council Permanent Collection and The Embroiderers Guild Museum Collection."

I have long-admired Janet's work in naive folk applique pictures and have all her books..

...along with the set of postcards I bought several years ago and which remain my favourites.

Six cards that I use as bookmarks, occasionally put some in a frame, risk one and glue it on the front of a special notebook. If I am slow-reading any book I hunt down the Janet Bolton snail. It is the only one that will do and becomes a gentle reminder that this reading lark is not a race, no extra points for reading more books this year than last year, slow and steady and enjoy.

Looking back I see it was 2008 when I 'discovered' Janet, contacted her for permission to use her pictures on here and wrote a blog post...

"At first glance these pictures seem a bit naive, slapdash, even a bit, well basic. Except look closely and see just how clever they are in their seeming simplicity. So often for us first-generation rotary cutters patchwork has become a precise, measured, symmetrical and very formal art. One millimetre out and we've thrown the whole project into disarray and we despair. When corners don't quite meet and triangles refuse to align we flip and fret over our mistakes.
Well actually I don't because perfectionism is not a word that sits comfortably with my craft efforts.
But there seems to be something incredibly freeing about Janet's pictures and I have fallen in love with them, nor do I think I could easily re-create them. Janet does workshops over at Cowslip and I shall get there one day because I should imagine they are huge fun."

Well it has only taken me eight years but I made it and it was more than huge fun, it was two days of slow, mindful stitching bliss, painting with fabric and threads. And you meet lovely like-minded people with whom the conversation ebbs and flows throughout the day. To my right a nurse who had just retired and was walking the south west coast path, on my left a lady who had travelled from France to be at the class. While we were there six quilters from the US were emailing to book places on Janet's next course at Cowslip.

How lucky am I to live twenty minutes away.

Janet is a wonderful teacher, engaging and attentive, full of encouragement and ideas whilst ensuring that everyone feels able to find their own voice in their work. I'd be deep in thought and there would be Janet, quietly at my shoulder, resolving an impasse of colour or placement with some suggestions...and I can only apologise that she burnt her hand not once but twice on my tiny little Clover pressing iron.

It is remarkably difficult to work in 'wonky' when your eye is trained in 'straight lines' and truth be told I now discover that I am not one for the overly abstract and was beginning to think I didn't really enjoy applique either. It was inevitable that my workshop piece would morph from chickens just like Janet's, through to dogs just like Janet's, thence to flowers just like Janet's before I eventually settled on trees just like Lynne's and everything suddenly clicked. There was a whole heap of cut up bits and pieces and a lot of unpicking before I realised that I needed to be doing something of my own that blended with the TexTithe project, eventually choosing a representation of the beautiful woods a few fields up behind the house (which I think you all know as well as we do by now).

I am also a terror for over-gilding the lily so I heeded Janet's advice not to be fearful of empty space and stopped at four lines of ploughed furrow and three birds. Incidentally the background fabric was a piece chopped off an enormous sheet of monogrammed antique (may the good Lord forgive me) French Metis (linen cotton mix) bought in Tavistock Market for £12. To add to the carnage I dunked the lily-white fabric in a bowl of nuclear-strength Yorkshire Tea to give it some patina. A tip from Janet...add some milk because the protein helps fix the dye, and I was pleased with the slightly mottled and uneven effect.

And I was right, it isn't as easy as it looks but I think I now have a starter for ten for a series of pictures that might accompany the TexTithe and will combine with the embroidery that I did on Caroline Zoob's workshop last year. So if Janet Bolton is exhibiting or teaching nearby I can recommend both her work and her classes highly, you will have a wonderful time.

 

 

 

 

 

Under the Tump - Sketches of Real Life on the Welsh Borders ~ Oliver Balch

One of the things that beating the bounds around us here on a daily basis has made me increasingly aware of is the fact that our footprint now extends back over the last twenty-two years. We moved in on a sweltering August day in 1994 with three pre-teenaged children, a dog (dear old Border Collie Ben ) a cat (Corky who sadly succumbed to feline leukaemia) two guinea pigs (Clover and Parsley) and twelve chickens (too many to name). I suspect H.E.Bates would most definitely have recognised us as a version of the Larkins that summer as we settled in, put a table in the garden and ate outside, dispatched children off on bikes to 'explore' and got used to the whole idea of not running out of milk because the nearest supermarket was six miles away.

Meanwhile the spring water supply had sprung a leak somewhere en route across the fields to our house, so we had to pipe water from a nearby cattle trough and boil it while we had a bore hole drilled, the telephone line and burglar alarm were struck by lightning. If we had a power cut the darkness was darker than dark, velvet black and we still have torches by the bed, and we knew that at some stage we were going to have to renovate the house around us, but we smiled on through, went to work and school and just got on with it because we had always wanted to live in the country.

It had started the minute we discovered a book in a junk shop in about 1977. Published in 1944, A Little Place in the Country by Marjorie Hessell Tiltman spoke to us. The writing is of its day, but the illustrations by Gwenda Morgan were our dream personified as we sat in our little flat in Plymouth hunched over the three-bar electric fire and wondering what the future might hold for us.


Bookhound carefully cut out and placed the 'dream' into a frame we found at the tip...

...thereby desecrating the book, but the picture still hangs on our wall as a homage to our vision and a reminder of how we finally got here.

This is all by way of a meander into Under the Tump by Oliver Balch and this is an unusual book. Everything (especially the cover) suggesting another 'nature' tome, but far from it. Returning from a sojourn in Beunos Aires, Oliver Balch decides that it is time, with his wife and young family, to put down some roots and settle into a community. Argentina had been about cherry-picking the life he had wanted with no social, cultural or personal ties, but sensing that he wanted 'to be a thread or stitch in the social fabric,' Oliver Balch set about searching for a 'genuinely enmeshed community.'

It all sounds a bit idealistic on the surface but aligning his own journey with that of diarist Francis Kilvert, Oliver Balch decides on the village of Clyro on the Welsh-English border and soon starts to dissect the superficial layer of the rural idyll, along with the tribulations of trying to anchor yourself within a community. With the motivation engendered by new beginnings and horizons, along with the chance to reshape his life, Oliver braves, among other things, the pub as well as venturing along to Young Farmers to see what the local youths gets up to.

Of course just a few miles away is Hay-on-Wye and with that comes the annual (this very week) influx of 100,000 visitors. There are complexities to an influx. We feel it keenly down here in the Tamar Valley too. There is really no point in heading far into Cornwall during July and August, we can't park and just get annoyed with ourselves for even thinking about going anywhere. But it is that influx that helps sustain the West Country for the rest of the year and likewise Hay-on-Wye with its unassailable reputation as the country's most prolific bookshop town.

As Oliver Balch discovers, the back story to a community can't be invented or experienced by the incomer, in many ways perhaps you have to sit it out for long enough until you become part of that back-story, until you suddenly feel that sense of security that comes from being part of it. Keeping your own counsel is often a good plan too because, as we discovered, there are more ways to put your foot in it than you can ever know existed, and I suspect we have tested them all. Juxtaposed with Oliver Balch's endeavours are the entries in Kilvert's diary demonstrating that in many ways the community was ever thus, but it makes interesting reading to compare then and now. I'd give my eye teeth to read a diarist's entries for our little corner of the Shire, lucky Oliver Balch to have Kilvert.

And as if the lack of a Victorian diarist isn't deprivation enough, just look who has retired...



Jim the Postie and we are bereft of all the local gossip news. No longer can we say 'Jim will know, we'll ask him,' in response to every inquisitive query we have. It seemed fitting to present Jim with a cutting from the climbing rose that wanders over our veranda and which he has fought his way through for the last twenty-two years of delivering hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books to our front door. We truly do wish him a long, happy and healthy retirement.

So now that we've lived here for twenty-two years I read Oliver Balch's book with an understanding borne of our own experience of which I was unaware and which suddenly morphed into a true sense of real belonging. They say it takes a lifetime to become a local, and though I was born in Devon so have a fraction of a head-start, it still takes an age.  And whilst I don't like to suggest that longevity in one place offers a sense of superiority, maybe confidence is a better word, but when some recent tenants for the large holiday let along the lane (£2000 a week) stopped at our gate recently I did have a bit of a moment...

'We're looking for the farmhouse,' said a rather clipped and authoritative voice before a woman jumped out of her Chelsea Tractor (un-muddy, unscathed) and approached the gate brandishing her mobile phone.

'The map says this house is it,' she said, 'did you know that the Ordnance Survey map is wrong ?'

I was a bit taken aback. I mean I've been beating the bounds map in hand, I know it intimately and I couldn't quite stop myself. It was out of my mouth before I knew it...

'Don't tell me we've been living in the wrong house for twenty-two years...' before going on to explain that the sat nav brings you to our gate but that we share the postcode with two other properties and she wants the one about half a mile further along the lane.

'But the Ordnance Survey map is WRONG', insisted She Who Had Never Been Here Before.

We quickly ascertained that shrinking down the phone screen solved the problem, there was the farmhouse next to the name, clear as day.

'Oh...' she muttered and we all heaved a sigh or relief.

' Easy mistake to make ' I offered. 'Anyway, good news that I've been living in the right house, you have a lovely holiday,' and off they went, a bit red-faced I suspect.

Ultimately Oliver Balch's life project seems to have succeeded..

'We talk of 'putting down roots' as though the work is entirely of our own doing. Us cementing our place. Us anchoring ourselves in. Yet if the ground is stony or the earth is barren, such efforts will be in vain. If anyone is to stay and grow and weather the years, the place itself must welcome them, must nourish them, must allow them to flourish...'

Having weathered the years our roots have gone a long way down and I now see how intrinsic that is to our day to day life here in the Tamar Valley. It's elusive to pin down but reading Under the Tump has most certainly helped me to appreciate that sense of an anchor.

I wonder if you have that sense of belonging wherever you are too...

Or may have known it in the past and had to uproot and start over...

And please do scroll down for gifts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prize Draw copies of Under the Tump ~ Oliver Balch

Hello Chums, Magnus in camouflage here...



Shall we have a little sing-song first...how about The Happy Wanderer, and let's give it some wellie on the chorus...

I love to go a-wandering,
Along the mountain track,
And as I go, I love to sing,
My knapsack on my back.

Chorus:
Val-deri,Val-dera,
Val-deri,
Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-deri,Val-dera.
My knapsack on my back.

I love to wander by the stream
That dances in the sun,
So joyously it calls to me,
"Come! Join my happy song!"

I wave my hat to all I meet,
And they wave back to me,
And blackbirds call so loud and sweet
From ev'ry green wood tree.

High overhead, the skylarks wing,
They never rest at home
But just like me, they love to sing,
As o'er the world we roam.

Oh, may I go a-wandering
Until the day I die!
Oh, may I always laugh and sing,
Beneath God's clear blue sky!

There...wasn't that lovely and I am actually writing this in absentia, as it were, having wandered off again and telling them not to send out a search party until I have been gone at least sixteen days as per last time...

As to where I go...

Or who feeds me...

Well that's for me to know and everyone else to guess, but it's that time of year...the great outdoors calls.

Anyway names in comments for the chance to win one of five prize draw copies of Under the Tump by Oliver Balch, a book in which there seems to be nil mention of a cat whatsoever and which surely has to be a glaring omission.

Do people not realise how a cat can ease your way into a new community so graciously??

Digging up the neighbour's seed beds and leaving gifts...

Catching those nuisance birds on the bird table...

Leaving headless rabbits on doorsteps...

Fending off all the local cats that trespass...

Nipping in their cat flaps to say hello and help eat the Sheba which is infinitely preferable to my Whiskas...

Back soon, but meanwhile go to it in comments for the books Chums xxx

 

 

 

The Poorly Bernina...

It was state of the art when I got it for Christmas 2002 and we still use the empty box for the Christmas deccies.

The Bernina Virtuosa 153 Quilter's Edition with stitches that you could programme in from a computer. It seemed to be all-singing, bells-and-whistles and I have loved it dearly for fourteen years. Except that about ten years ago I reprogrammed the stitches and then last year inadvertently ditched my very first Dell laptop, the only one now compatible with un-programming them. 

And I wanted my blanket stitch back.

After a fruitless evening spent trying to load old software discs onto new computers and unearthing the oldest laptop we could find whilst bemoaning the fact that this whole internet thing is going to implode one day, I finally caved and booked the machine in for a hospital visit to The Bernina Doctor (yes, really).

'When was it last serviced?' he asked.

'Ah well, now here's the thing, doesn't time fly and aren't Bernina's just the most reliable things,old workhorses. Neverhaditserviced.' I said really quickly.

What about oiling it?

'No, I was told not to, Bernina's never need oiling.'

'Hmm, they changed that advice a few years ago now.'

'I do brush out the feed dogs and things,' I pleaded,' And I did take out the shuttle race to clean it once, but I needed to watch a youtube video to put it back together so I haven't tried that again.'

And that dear friends is how I was parted from my machine for ten days and felt bereft.

Who knew that I used it so much, or would feel like there was a gaping hole in my sewing room. Suddenly everything I wanted to make involved a sewing machine and there was Bernina Corner, empty.

It turns out that my machine was very poorly. Much more wrong with it than was right apparently.

'Have you been having trouble threading it,' the doctor asked when, having heard no news, I rang to inquire after the health of the patient.

Now funnily enough I had, from day one and when I rang the dealer on December 27th 2002 to say so they were more than a little brisk with me. It was fine when it left the shop so it must be something I had done, and ever after I have had to coax the thread around the take-up arm rather than just twitch my finger and it would be done.

'And does the thread keep breaking?' 

Now funnily enough it does, but doesn't everyone's.

Apparently not, because not everyone has a crack in the take-up arm which could have been a manufacturing fault given it happened on Day One.

Don't ask this numpty why I never persisted with my complaint, or took up the Bernina five year guarantees.

Anyway by now my Virtuosa 153 Quilter's Edition is seeming vintage. No spare parts to be had so the crack was smoothed out until one turned up and even better I no longer seem to have a chinook helicopter roaring through the room, it's as quiet as a ...as a.... Bernina is supposed to be.

The doctor then phoned to say that the take-up arm replacement had been located and ordered and the surgery could be done as a day case for which I was most grateful. I don't want to upgrade to a newer one, this one does quite enough for my needs and we've had some very happy times together. It would be like getting rid of a friend.

So tell me, do you have your sewing machine serviced every one thousand miles or so...

Do you ever oil it...

Do you feel as attached to it as I am to mine...

Are there some real workhorses out there still going strong...

Can we find the oldest still-in-working-order machine amongst us...

Though I still use the cabinet, I'd love to have my mum's old Singer that went with it. It all reminds me of this wonderful poem by Henry Shukman, included in his collection Archangel , wherein he recounts his Jewish grandfather's deportation from the East End of London in 1917 where he had worked as a tailor. Ostensibly he was to fight on the Eastern Front but caught up in the Revolution it would be four years before he was able to return to his wife and family.

The Singer

The day they got the Singer
my grandmother wouldn't touch it.
The clacking of its single tooth
terrified her, and the way it opened,
tipping over its hinge
so the bobbins, spikes and belts
of the gold and black carapace
almost fell in her lap.
She said it was the quality --
not like her own cross-stithc.
But Israel, my grandfather,
carried it up to the giant table
in the workshop where he'd sat
cross-legged like a buddha
for the past quarter-century,
and soon the others followed,
heaving Fristers, Rossmans
and more Singers up the narrow stairs
until the room clattered like a factory.

And I'm sure they didn't have to go through all this servicing and surgical palaver either.

Anyway the patient came through the take-up arm replacement surgery very well and the verdict seemed to be that the crack could only have happened deliberately and from within the machine (which has never been apart since I've had it) so all is mystery. But never mind, I'm over it now and me and my Bernina are ready for the next thousand miles or so.

 

 

 

 

 

The Outrun on Kindle...

Heads up for you on a recent favourite read...

Amy Liptrot's book The Outrun is the Daily Deal today in case anyone fancies a vicarious trip to Orkney.

Posted on the move...

Reward For Winter ~ Di Slaney

It has been a while since I have read a poetry collection cover to cover, but when Reward for Winter by Di Slaney arrived from Valley Press, a Scarborough-based independent publisher, several planets of current interest aligned and it jumped to the top of the reading pile.

Having abandoned her urban existence Di Slaney becomes 'the custodian' of an ancient farmhouse in Nottinghamshire taking in150 animals along the way..

'Reward for Winter tells the story on three levels: the earthy triumphs and tribulations of a novice smallholder; the history of Bilsthorpe from Viking settlement through Civil War to coal mining in the 1920s; and the quirky and affecting biography of one of the farm's chickens.'

With its exploration of hidden histories, lost landmarks, a concealed Cavalier king and seventeenth century adultery Di Slaney creates something really remarkable and very readable. Described as 'an escape hatch to the country and a lungful of bracing air' I found Reward For Winter equally exhilarating even though I live there already.

I'm not a poet so it is thrilling to find someone else who is, and who gives voice to so much that I imagine. We have a glorious 360 degree view from the vantage point of our garden high up in the Tamar Valley. We look west to Bodmin moor, south to Cornwall, east to Dartmoor, north to Devon; a view so vast and generally so unchanged that it's not difficult to throw yourself back in time like this..

'Drawn to the window every night
I stand and stare at the same view
that people four hundred years ago might
have seen, admired, when things were new.'

I like moments to stop and stare and reflect when reading poetry and Reward For Winter offers plenty of those. There are fleeting moments of understanding on a first reading which consolidate with second and third visits and I like this too. It feels right, a slow dawning, the meaning unfurling and quietly revealing itself, as did life back in the day. Giving up its secrets slowly, as does the land and the home that Di Slaney is describing.

Five windows and a door (extract)

The first stares east, to the sun rising
and the dead. They watch me without
judgement, neighbours outside time.

The second points the north wind
nose on, shines shapes on glass
downhill to the field at sunset.

This third flanks west like a charm,
hens always in sight, green and blue giving rise to everything new in me...

And all manner of thoughts stirred in my mind.

That they may face the rising sun and the tradition of east-facing burial for the resurrection, unless you were the parson in which case you faced west and would be leading your congregation on the great day...

And the fact that we have very few west-facing windows. Our cottage was built with none, nor west-facing doors and we wondered why. Wondered until we put in a west-facing door thinking how useful it would around that side of the house, only to find it took the full brunt of the sou-westerlies, swelled in the frame and couldn't be opened from October to April.

But to stand outside that door, facing west into the setting sun, is 'like a charm.'

It is exactly like a charm, no better word.

The deeper I have delved the more I have unearthed. One poem in particular has allowed for more and more unravelling of rhyme and rhythm and line repetition, along with a clever and subtle change of words within the repetitions...

Restored (extract)

Drawn to the window every night,
I stand and stare at the same view
that people four hundred years ago might
have seen, admired, when things were new.

I stand and stare at the same view.
The dead look back and stare at me -
some were alive when things were new,
now graves in moonlight are all I see.

The dead stare back and look at me.
Breath steams on glass and blurs reflection.
The silvered graves now hard to see,
my mind turns inward, seeks direction.

Breath steams on glass, distorts reflection,
old wooden beams sigh in and out.
My mind turns inward, misdirection,
undermined by grief and doubt.

Dark wooden beams breathe in and out,
tell tales of ships far out to sea.
Overwhelmed by fear and doubt,
I feel a weight, full history.

And there's more, it gets better and better. Looking closely, reading Restored over and again and I could feel myself being drawn further and further into the depths of the poem...'tis a rare and special thing.

There are historical notes at the back of the book; brief commentaries that flesh out the poems with more meaning. More pennies drop and I turn back and re-read and read again and stare out of my own windows...

'Those people all those years ago might
have shared my quiet, now at rest,
drawn to this window every night.'

And I haven't even told you about the biography of the chicken, a series of poems charting a chicken's life...

Shedding feathers (extract)

At first I hardly feel that small
light tug and silent fall
that lies, unnoticed, underfoot.

It's years since we have kept chickens. We brought our Tavistock town girls with us when we moved here twenty-two years ago (the ark on the roof rack, the chickens in a box) and they loved it. Then we took in George, a bantam cockerel who was the lonely dawn scourge of a local village. He was the perfect gent and we let them all free range until we got spaniels and realised we couldn't do that anymore, and then the rats moved into the chicken run and we surrendered. But how well I remember it and how readily this poem paints the girls so vividly again in my mind...

Chicken

I am invisible, I am divisible, I am the way
of thousands of feet, taptapping beaks,
dust baths in the sun, squawking flap runs,
skirts hitched to waistlines, wings
beating high-fives, eggs rolled in dirt,
girls born to work, dusk ambles home,
their right to roam.

So if you are in the mood for some poetry, and a collection that will keep you coming back for more whilst allowing you to see new and previously unseen moments on every visit, well check out Reward For Winter  by Di Slaney.

I would dearly love to see this collection on some poetry prize lists, it deserves to be.

 

Book buying confessions...

I don't really need to ask permission to buy books, but just occasionally, when I feel like I've bought quite a few, I might casually say to Bookhound...

'Tell me to buy this book that I really really want and the fact that the gas lorry is about to deliver a hugely expensive tank full doesn't really matter at all....'

And he looks at me as if I've spoken in a new foreign language.

Anyway I had a bit of a blitz-book-buying day when really I was supposed to be on line looking for a new iron because yet another of these all-singing all-dancing steam things had gone kaput. If, while we are on the subject, anyone can recommend a good iron that gets hot and flattens things and lasts longer than two years then I would be very grateful,because I'm not having much luck with them.

Three books in fact.

The first, well I'd been sort of hoisted by my own petard.

Having succumbed to a really great deal to get The Times newspaper on line for three months for £12, I then email all sorts of interesting things to interested friends from behind the paywall. I had been sending Fran HB countless reviews and plaudits for  a book by Ann Wroe Six Facets of Light because it was ostensibly about Fran's patch and paths across the South Downs, except the more I read the more I wanted the book too.

"Goethe claimed to know what light was. Galileo and Einstein both confessed they didn’t. On the essential nature of light, and how it operates, the scientific jury is still out. There is still time, therefore, to listen to painters and poets on the subject. They, after all, spend their lives pursuing light and trying to tie it down.

Six Facets of Light is a series of meditations on this most elusive and alluring feature of human life. Set mostly on the Downs and coastline of East Sussex, the most luminous part of England, it interweaves a walker’s experiences of light in Nature with the observations, jottings and thoughts of a dozen writers and painters – and some scientists – who have wrestled to define and understand light. From Hopkins to Turner, Coleridge to Whitman, Fra Angelico to Newton, Ravilious to Dante, the mystery of light is teased out and pondered on. Some of the results are surprising.

By using mostly notebooks and sketchbooks, this book becomes a portrait of the transitoriness, randomness, swiftness, frustrations and quicksilver beauty that are the essence of light. It is a work to be enjoyed, pondered over, engaged with, provoked by; to be packed in the rucksack of every walker heading for the sea or the hills, or to be opened to bring that outside radiance within four dark town walls."

I have made a start. Fresh out of Landskipping I was bound to love it and I am.

The trouble is you check out one book and it flags up a whole heap more of You Might Also Enjoy.

Well of course I would.

'I am spending half my life walking to the woods at the moment because it is bluebell time and it is looking gorgeous, so when I read this about The Wood For the Trees - The Long View of Nature From a Small Wood by Richard Fortey I was sold, or rather it was sold to me...

'From one of our greatest science writers, this biography of a beech-and-bluebell wood through diverse moods and changing seasons combines stunning natural history with the ancient history of the countryside to tell the full story of the British landscape.

‘The woods are the great beauty of this country… A fine forest-like beech wood far more beautiful than anything else which we have seen in its vicinity’ is how John Stuart Mill described a small patch of beech-and bluebell woodland, buried deeply in the Chiltern Hills and now owned by Richard Fortey. Drawing upon a lifetime of scientific expertise and abiding love of nature, Fortey uses his small wood to tell a wider story of the ever-changing British landscape, human influence on the countryside over many centuries and the vital interactions between flora, fauna and fungi.

The trees provide a majestic stage for woodland animals and plants to reveal their own stories. Fortey presents his wood as an interwoven collection of different habitats rich in species. His attention ranges from the beech and cherry trees that dominate the wood to the flints underfoot; the red kites and woodpeckers that soar overhead; the lichens, mosses and liverworts decorating the branches as well as the myriad species of spiders, moths, beetles and crane-flies. The 300 species of fungi identified in the wood capture his attention as much as familiar deer, shrews and dormice.

Fortey is a naturalist who believes that all organisms are as interesting as human beings – and certainly more important than the observer. So this book is a close examination of nature and human history. He proves that poetic writing is compatible with scientific precision. The book is filled with details of living animals and plants, charting the passage of the seasons, visits by fellow enthusiasts; the play of light between branches; the influence of geology; and how woodland influences history, architecture and industry. On every page he shows how an intimate study of one small wood can reveal so much about the natural world and demonstrates his relish for the incomparable pleasures of discovery.'

How could I not...

Finally, and fearing bankruptcy if I didn't stop this book-buyng flurry it seemed folly not to order the newest book from John Lewis Stempel, The Running Hare- The Secret Life of Farmland. In fact in happy retaliation Fran sent me a link to a review of the book not five minutes after I had read this and pressed the button...

"Traditional ploughland is disappearing. Seven cornfield flowers have become extinct in the last twenty years. Once abundant, the corn bunting and the lapwing are on the Red List. The corncrake is all but extinct in England. And the hare is running for its life.

Written in exquisite prose, The Running Hare tells the story of the wild animals and plants that live in and under our ploughland, from the labouring microbes to the patrolling kestrel above the corn, from the linnet pecking at seeds to the seven-spot ladybird that eats the aphids that eat the crop. It recalls an era before open-roofed factories and silent, empty fields, recording the ongoing destruction of the unique, fragile, glorious ploughland that exists just down the village lane.

But it is also the story of ploughland through the eyes of man who took on a field and husbanded it in a natural, traditional way, restoring its fertility and wildlife, bringing back the old farmland flowers and animals. John Lewis Stempel demonstrates that it is still possible to create a place where the hare can rest safe."

I loved Meadowland, John Lewis- Stempel's first book so how could I not...


It might help my cause if you could all confirm in comments that you do this book-buying-frenzy thing very occasionally too...

And do any of these take your fancy..

Any similar reads to suggest...

Ones that I might have missed...

Bought any good books lately...

 

 

 

Tex-Tithing...the Method

I can't begin to describe just how much I have enjoyed creating this first map in the Textithe project and while we are on the subject here's my method.

Firstly all the background research and then drawing up my pattern, so from this...


...to this... 

Then I had to think about a means and with apologies to those who Don't Need to Know This, please just scroll on throug

I sat down with a huge pile of fabrics in earth, field and land colours and designs, including quite a few that I had unwittingly collected pending a project like this whilst not knowing what it might be.

This is what a stash is all about.

On the point of tracing, cutting, laying and tacking this jigsaw into place before fixing it to the background with the bias strips I suddenly opted for double-sided, fusible interfacing on the reverse of my fabric pieces. This meant I could then fix each one down more firmly.

This is something else that happens... a change of plan.

Next the bias strip that I planned to use for the hedgerows.

I make my own using a bias strip maker. These come in all sizes and having cut strips of fabric on the bias they then feed through under the iron and hey presto miles of lovely flexible bias that curves like a dream and with neatly folded edges.

Except in the olden days it would all unfold itself again and need hundreds of pins to hold it in place while I stitched.

Bring on the fusible bias tape, and if using 6mm width then I now discover the patience of a saint is required. The packet really should carry a health warning....

'Hold on tight because when you eventually fight your way into this sealed and lethally sharp plastic packaging the whole lot is going to fly out at once'. 

It's a paper tape that has a gossamer-fine, almost invisible fusible backing. Iron onto the reverse of the bias, peel off the paper and then you can iron the bias onto something else. Magic until the whole reel unravels...


But I think you can get the gist...




Honestly, someone's invented something for everything these days, I'm doing a lot of catching up on the latest.

I spent a happy afternoon or two listening to the audio book of Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News (splendid) whilst laying down my hedgerows and the lane and the green lane. It now transpires that one of the best tools I ever bought years and years ago and never really used was this...

It's a miniature iron made by Clover and it is now constantly at my right hand. Perfect for pressing tiny pieces. There was a small crisis over a missing orchard, and at one point I had the lower green lane routed through completely the wrong field towards the stream that marks the southern boundary of the parish.

Easily sorted...spot the difference

And also, at the last minute, I decided to add some flowery hedgerows to the lane...

So it's starting to take shape now, I have love discovering all the little orchards (long gone) and I have to say I am currently Very Pleased. 

The next big decision is whether to completely hand stitch the bias strips in place with an invisible hemming stitch, or do I go all out and machine embroider along them, given that this piece, with all its fusible interfacing, is now quite stiff and certainly won't hand quilt...what thinkest all of thee.

It's at that point where it could all be spoiled but I'm also quite keen to finish and move onto the next one which I will construct differently and will be able to hand quilt.

And I also want to do a sort of indexed version, no patterned fabric, just hedgerows on a plain background and then write in the field names.

Decisions, decisions but all very exciting.

And in response to comments on the last post, yes, I think this method would translate into all sorts of aerial views. I was thinking about Australia and my loooooong flight across and the colours, what a treat for delving into the stash that would be.

Another tip...

If you use Picasa for photo editing (free to download) and haven't yet explored the editing tools, then seek out 'pencil sketch' once you have clicked 'view and edit' on a picture. Top left side of the screen, five tabs, click the end brush on the right.

It gave me this for my tithe map which helped enormously. Once I have figured out how to enlarge from A4/A3 to Much Bigger my next one is going to be even more accurate.


 

And when we did the same with the view as it is today on Google Earth...


Well it's all endlessly fascinating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tithe Walking...

I feel like that should be a Bee Gees song and I should be throwing a few disco moves but no, it's been on with the boots and some sedate striding (landskipping no less) around our corner of the Parish. 



If I'm honest there was an upside to the cat going missing. I suddenly felt empowered to walk where I might not usually', whilst ready on my lips should I be apprehended (unlikely) were the words 'Looking for the cat.' Not trespassing exactly, and there were miles and miles of fields to be covered and empty old barns to peek into...

There is planning permission pending on this one for conversion into a luxury home...

I have been completely engrossed in the Tithe Map and the Apportionments and trying to overlay 1841 on 2016 and find the names and the boundaries, and who owned what where and how as I work on my textile tithe mapping project, henceforth to be known as Textithe

I still get slightly overawed that this document, from 1841, is about this very place here.



Whilst Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads continued to capture my imagination (I'm about halfway) and Anna Pavord's Landskipping has delighted me, I eschewed other reading for The Tithe Surveys of England and Wales by Kain & Prince and Tithes, Maps Apportionments and the 1836 Act by Eric Evans. It was heavy going but I wanted to try and make some sense of the whole thing as well as understanding why it was all necessary.

Basically, as I see it, someone has to stump up the parson's wages but as far as I can make out the system of tithes as payment was in disarray and the source of much acrimonious dispute. A new payment system based on the acreage of productive land worked and the average price of certain crops over a seven year period seemed to be the plan.

Gone were the days when...

'the incumbent of the parish made tithing tours to collect the tenth sheaf of corn, the tenth pig, sheep or cow and even the tenth pail of milk...'

Apparently all fraught with difficulty and you can only imagine the parsonage in chaos when it all arrived, nor how much time it must have taken to collect. Ours is a large sprawling parish and the incumbent of the day, Reverend St Vincent Love Hammick, would have had his work cut out doing his rounds to collect said  sheaves, pigs etc while his wife Mary stayed home and minded the ten remaining of their twelve children.

Incidentally the children were born as follows

1838,1839,1840,1842,1843,1846,1848,1850,1851,1852,1854,1855.

Obviously, Revd Hammick had some leisure time too.

I'm sure the tithe reforms were all much more complex than this, but you know me and a bit of history...dangerous, please do correct the glaring errors because if this is your specialist subject my skating over the surface will be infuriating.

But what a massive undertaking the mapping must have been, a complete survey of every inch of the country (almost) and with no laser beams to measure distance (is that what they do now?) or Google Earth to double check, well how on earth did they measure out all those rods and perches and then produce maps of such accuracy. But what a treasure trove of recorded history it has given us.
 
Fired with enthusiasm I accessed the online catalogue for the Devon County Records Office in Exeter, now called the Devon Heritage Centre, booked out some documents and papers for us to peruse and off we went. We were thinking that this might just take a couple of hours until we saw that my list had translated into a trolley piled high with boxes and bundles bound with tape, and little calico bags for the older documents to protect the wax seals and boxes of photographs and news clippings, so it was a good thing that there was a cafe on site.

We settled ourselves down at a big table and set too, my what a treat.

Letters and deeds and wills from the 1600s, documents releasing the dower and legal judgements for our little corner of the Shire  written in mostly illegible (to me) script or unintelligible Latin, though once I got my eye in I could make sense of some of them, but best of all names that I recognised from other searches.

These some of our photocopies.

As the years progressed things got a lot easier, and there were maps galore, and letters from farmers paying their rent and declarations about lost deeds, change of tenants and landowners, catalogues of sale, and before we knew it it was closing time.

Throughout the day, we ordered photocopies and marvelled at the whole set up. Access is free, searching is free and the staff couldn't have been more helpful. 'We'll be back,' we said as we left and couldn't decide whether they might all have gone round the corner and mopped their brows before imbibing a swift gin and tonic.

We did see the original tithe map too. It is huge, and on another visit, we (as in Bookhound, the draughtsman) will pay the £5 for a day's photography licence but also trace off our patch, which you are allowed to do via the piece of transparent plastic that is provided for you to lean on. Working from the online pdf is fine but I have spent hours and hours with a magnifying glass trying to read the field numbers and then corroborate those with the written lists. Safe to say I am now starting to really know the shape and location of the fields intimately and in a way that walking them hadn't quite given me in the past.

I have been scouring the census returns too, accessible for free at the library, and that has added even more information about the people as well as revealing that our house, thought to have been built in the late 1800s, was in fact all present and correct and inhabited in 1851, so half a century added on to its age.

This doubtless explains the damp seeping in via the windowsill in the laundry room...

The chimney that won't draw when the wind blows from the North...

The vast amounts of broken china we find in the garden, shards of the past. I love them.

We can only wonder what John and Betsy Geake and their son William and daughters Alice and Ann, and Mr. and Mrs. Hendy and their son Richard must have thought about it.

Fascinating to discover as well, that whilst now just ten people live in our immediate environs and we hardly ever see them, in 1851 there were forty-five.

The place must have been heaving.

Lots more to discover, I'm on a roll.

And I wonder...

Do you know anything about the history or the previous occupants of your home...

Has anything interesting emerged...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Landskipping - Painters, Ploughmen and Places ~ Anna Pavord

'Time is stitched into this landscape,' notes Anna Pavord in her latest book Landskipping - Painters, Ploughmen and Places, and I knew in an instant what she meant.

And this piece of advice, from artist Samuel Palmer in 1850, also seemed very pertinent indeed..

'We must take the trouble to map out and paint with different local colours arable land and garden which comes in every variety of rows and patterns.'

Here is a little corner of what has become fondly known as The TexTithe Project.

An approximation of the fields, meadows and orchards, the lane and the green lane around us here; a first attempt at translating the 1841 tithe map into fabric (more about it soon) and with Anna Pavord's suggestion that, where landscape is concerned, you need to be hooked rather than force fed came a real affinity with a book that slowly builds a landscape of its own and which I have relished. There could have been no better book for me to have been reading right now. Beating the Bounds is a project constantly in progress and I find myself looking in minute detail at a landscape whose basic shape has barely changed in hundreds of years ...except by me, who found and then lost a fabric orchard and routed the bias strip of green lane across a field by mistake.

I had already been thinking about the impact of the 1750-1850 Enclosure Acts, when common land available to all suddenly became the property of one person. As Anna Pavord elaborates, 4.5 million acres of open field was suddenly boundaried and interlaced with straight roads replacing centuries of old familiar tracks and trails. Freedoms were curtailed, livelihoods destroyed, old ways dismissed as irrelevant, traditions dismissed and dispersed and perhaps one of the legacies is this...

Tantalising isn't it, especially when you know it leads to one of the Duke of Bedford's old carriage drives created around the Endsleigh estate for his beloved Duchess Georgiana (she who lusted after the artist Landseer) in the early 1800s. This used to be the site of an old corn mill, if I climb up the bank I can just see the remains of the old mill ponds.. 

Now only used by 4x4s carrying 'guns' who have paid a lot of money to shoot pheasant, it half kills me not to leap over that gate I can tell you.

But imagine the impact of enclosure. Your familiar world disappears...not unlike the sense I had of a shifting landscape post-earthquake as we drove through Lyttleton and Sumner in New Zealand back in January. Little wonder everyone headed for the towns and cities in the England of the 1850s.

Rather than a big old resume of the book, I suspect I will be incorporating my thoughts on Landskipping into quite a few posts here, much as I did with Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways, because its themes have inspired me in all sorts of directions. My thinking has been gently marshalled and affirmed on what I like in 'landscape' and why, and how different we all are and that difference is fine, there is plenty to go round after all. I am definitely a rolling hills and valleys girl, maybe some mountains too.Send me to live by the sea and I might not like it... to begin with at least.

Anna Pavord outlines some fascinating history on our perceptions of landscape as mediated through painting and writing and I have emerged with a very long list of names to follow up in more depth. Some of the artists well-known to many of us... John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough but some less known (to me) John R Cozens, Thomas Girton and Richard Wilson, and likewise with the writers. I have a long list of reading to seek out.

But Anna Pavord talks about the stop-and-stare views too and it made me think about mine; the known landscapes that stir something deep and almost inexplicable.

Apart from the views from the bedroom window looking across the Tamar Valley on a chilly December morning...

Or the view from the windows of the summer house...



...there is one view that never fails to catch my breath. It is the glimpse of the valley as I reach the brow of the hill (usually in the car) before descending the other side and turning into our lane. It creeps up on me, no sign of it until suddenly there it is and I stopped purposely last week to take it all in.



As the land is worked so the fields take on a different emphasis throughout the year, currently it looks as if we have man-made lakes everywhere but no, 'tis the new-fangled bio-degradable plastic to encourage earlier germination. Disconcerting for a month or so..

With its emphasis on watching, and gleaning understanding from what is there, there is no pre-requirement to live in the countryside, or somewhere Very Landscapy and Picturesque to appreciate Landskipping. Living near a park or Common, or any open space, will be enough to trigger the thinking about what may have gone before and, if you live anywhere in the UK then I can highly recommend looking at the tithe map for your patch. I discover that original field names are often preserved in the street names and there I was thinking they pulled these odd names out of a hat.

So much more about Landskipping to come I am sure, but in the meantime as always, if you have read it I would love to know your thoughts...

And what about the landscape around you...

Does it reveal its past in unusual ways...

Do you have that Stop-and-Stare view ...

Does a Private-Keep-Out-No-Entry sign make you want to leap over a gate too..

 

 

 

The Thwaites Wainwright Prize 2016 ~ Longlist @wainwrightprize

I'm not quite sure how this one passed me by, but the long list has been announced for one of my favourite book prizes, the Thwaites Wainwright. 

"The Wainwright Prize seeks to reward the best writing on the outdoors, nature and UK-based travel writing and is sponsored by Wainwright Golden Beer.

The prize will be awarded to the work which best reflects Wainwright’s core values of Great British writing & culture and a celebration of the Outdoors."

I have written my thoughts on several of these already, have a few pending and, if I can get hold of them will hopefully be checking out the rest before the short list is announced on June 30th. (click to enlarge for a clearer image...maybe)

Just my/our sort of books...

Being a Beast by Charles Foster (Profile Books)

Coastlines: The Story of Our Shore by Patrick Barkham (Granta)

Common Ground by Rob Cowen (Penguin Random House)

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Random House)

Landskipping by Anna Pavord (Bloomsbury)

Rain by Melissa Harrison (Faber & Faber)

Raptor: A Journey Through Birds by James Macdonald Lockhart (HarperCollins)

The Fish Ladder by Katharine Norbury (Bloomsbury)

The Moth Snowstorm by Michael McCarthy (John Murray)

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot (Canongate)

The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks (Penguin Random House)

Weatherland: Writers & Artists Under English Skies by Alexandra Harris (Thames & Hudson) 

Any on this list that you have read and your thoughts most welcome.

 

Tulips

I can't claim to be an expert on the tulip, in fact I really only planted my first batch about two years ago. There is something tragic to me about spending all that money on good bulbs only to get one decent showing and then nothing more. I know you can get repeat flowerers but presumably not in the interesting varieties. And I quickly gave up planting tulips in the garden. One storm and the petals were scattered to four corners and all I had was a stem, so this year I confined myself to two crowded tubs and two varieties. Carol (Norton...thank you Carol x) very kindly sent me some Belle Epoque which I have coveted for ages from her pictures, and I added in Black Parrot (all from Peter Nyssen) which I loved last year.

Imogen, Jake and Katie raged and I just picked up my tubs, tucked them in somewhere sheltered and waited, hoping that they would both flower together.

I've had to be quite patient.

Belle Epoque unfurled first.

A colour that it is quite difficult to describe...a sort of coral/salmon. I even turned to the Farrow & Ball paint chart for assistance. If you've painted a room in Fowler Pink with streaks of Porphyry Pink then congratulations, your room is very Belle Epoque.

As the days have passed (and they have been in flower for two long weeks now) the shades have mellowed to Hound Lemon and Cinder Rose. Isn't it amazing how a flower can put two colours together and make them work in a way that I might never consider.

It's been touch and go because the Black Parrot only emerged this week. But bless the Belles for hanging on...

Then I have a dilemma about whether to pick them or not. In the end, I treated myself to three Parrots because they look so fabulous in their little bottles in the kitchen...

And they unfurl with real style..

If we are talking Farrow & Ball again think Brinjal.

I am really enjoying Landskipping by Anna Pavord (thank you or the recommends in comments, more soon) and can't believe that I haven't yet read The Tulip, so that is next on my list.

And any other interesting Tulip-y books to recommend.

And what about my crowd-tubbing for next year, I might even make it four, but which varieties do you suggest...

 

 

 

 

Dear Canada...

...we have been following the devastating fire on the news and are thinking of you and hoping you are all safe.

Please do let us know how things are if you can.

Posted on the move...

Wholecloth Quilt Inspiration

For those who might be unaware, a wholecloth quilt is traditionally one that is quilted on plain fabric, no piecing involved and a chance for quilters like me to revel in the flow of hand quilting without the interruption of seams. Traditionally made in South Wales and the North of England, especially around County Durham and among the mining communities in the early to mid twentieth century, many of these quilts were made by women working in their own homes to earn some extra money. As Janet Rae suggests in her book The Quilts of the British Isles, this makes the standard of work all the more remarkable given what must have been a constant battle with dust and dirt. The quilts were elaborate and decorative and many would be completed in two weeks before being sold for 10/- each (50p in new money).

Nowadays, of course,wholecloth quilts can be machine quilted too. I took this picture at Festival of Quilts at the NEC last year and I think it might be one of Sandy Chandler's, a local long-arm machine quilter.

You will know that in days gone by I have not been over-enamoured with machine quilting per se. I feel the quilts often seem stiff and lifeless, almost too perfect, and I wail endlessly about the lack of hand quilting at all the exhibitions these days, and the fact that if there are any they are invariably judged in the same categories as the machine quilted ones which seems like a very unlevel playing field to me. But having been to a talk given by Sandy recently, and seen this quilt and many more, and heard how hard she works on them and how long they take (no computer involved, her own designs and a free-arm machine) I am much more impressed.

Mistakes still happen and twenty minutes machine quilting can take two hours to unpick...Mr Sandy helps as well.

But back in the day it was some laborious marking up of the traditional feather designs, adding filling and backing before maybe fixing the quilt onto a rigid frame and setting to work with the thread and the nine stitches to the inch. 

I have been to all sorts of inspirational quilty things recently and a few weeks ago it was a talk on Wholecloth Quilts by Jenny Brewer that sent me home surprisingly enthused. Jenny was an early member of The Quilter's Guild who quickly realised that piecing was not for her, but quilting most definitely was, and having been fortunate enough to know the great Amy Emms, Jenny could have had no better mentor. Amy Emms an eminent quilter, teacher and exponent of wholecloth quilting (click that link and just look at that wedding dress) and though she had no Amy Originals to share with us, Jenny Brewer had brought along a large collection of quilts for the Show & Tell.

Gosh how us quilters love a good Show & Tell. There were plenty of oohs and aahs as Jenny pointed out the designs (who knew that so many were drawn around the soleplate of an iron) and the foibles of each quilt...the backing and the lining (in one case tweed) and the indelible characteristics of each quilter. The defining moment of the evening might have been when Jenny, seeing us all aghast at the idea of where to begin with hand-marking a quilt top, folded up a paper bag and proceeded to hand cut a perfectly good and usable quilt stencil.

Now, many years ago I made a small wholecloth wall-hanging from a pre-printed kit..

My lasting recollection every time I look at it is that this Cana Lily design was that it was wonderful to stitch, relaxing and trouble-free. Once I got my eye in with the hand quilting it just flowed and to my surprise was finished all too quickly. One dunk in the bath and the stencil marks disappeared and hey presto, wholecloth.

It's been through the mill a bit since and in various guises. In and out of the washing machine and a fast spin...a tablecloth, a blanket box cover, a throw but it lives on.

And it felt like time to make another one. 

As usual, I have far too many projects on the go for my own good...the indigo, the shibori, the embroidered garden, but I like that sense of being able to work on different things according to my mood. So with no hand quilting to get my teeth into I settled down to an afternoon at the big table, sorted out my stencils and design books, found some calico, and some lovely fine cotton lawn fabric for the backing in the dressmaking stash (this will now no longer be available for a skirt)  and marked up a small wholecloth piece...

Bearing in mind that back in the day they used blue pencils, not these bright turquoise water-soluble pens (whose marks often have a habit of returning like boomerangs) I did an experiment on scrap fabric with crayons and pencils various to find the most washable ones before I made the first mark. I then jiggled and ruled and generally made it up as I went along...



One of Jenny Brewer's suggestions was the use of 2oz polyester wadding for finer, more even hand quilting stitches and using a No 10 Sharps needle.

I tend to use a small Quilting Between needle so will try a Sharps No 10, but I haven't used polyester wadding in years. Along came all the wool and cotton and heirloom stuff, increasingly expensive and I was seduced by the idea of using the best quality, and not spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar etc, except that I think much of it is now made for machine quilting and is not quite so readily stitched by hand. Blue Moon had a shocking (now I think about it) £60 worth of wool wadding within and that was bought fifteen years ago, probably a year's wages for a mining family.

Here I am cutting £10's worth of it away...

Whatever happened to thrift?

Guilty as charged here, quilting is now very big business and sadly I have been a sucker for all of it in my time.

I looked back at my old quilts, some now thirty years old, faded, worn and very well-washed, but (though I say so myself) with their beautifully even stitches...



and seemingly none the worse for their polyester wadding.

And thought if I could stitch like that then, even with the onset of glasses, I should still be able to do it now, so went and bought three metres of double width polyester wadding for the princely sum of £6. It feels light and fluffy and bouncy and I couldn't wait to do my first stitch. But if there is a final labour before that first quilting stitch it is the tacking together of the three layers. I have used the new-fangled spray adhesive for smaller projects recently but find it glues up my needle something chronic, so I set to and tacked over an evening and was soon on my way...

Another suggestion from Jenny, and I have really taken this one to heart, was not to (always) make for exhibition...make for pleasure and don't be hamstrung by those aspirations after perfection for fear of comments from WI judges. I will admit I have done a lot of that in the past and it is true, so this one won't be going anywhere near a village show.

Does anyone else enjoy good old-fashioned plain hand quilting...

Or perhaps does your own particular handicraft have its own old-fashioned methods...

Those tried and trusted ways that never fail...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Millenium Quilt

The Silk Roads on Kindle today....

Thank you for all the mentions of the TV programmes about the silk route, hopefully all recorded and ready to watch this end, but this is just to let you know that The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan is £2.89 on Kindle Daily Deal today.

Posted on the move...

St Kilda : The Last and Outmost Isle ~ Angela Gannon and George Geddes

I really hadn't meant to be distracted from projects in hand...

The tithe mapping...

The whole cloth quilting...oh I haven't told you about that yet...

The Silk Roads journey...

The garden and the burgeoning greenhouse...

But I just came across this book on Amazon and it was a Must Have.

My photo sadly doesn't do justice to the deeper than deep blue cover, or the islands up there top left, it really is a stunner and I don't even know how I found the book unless Amazon, with its mind-reading capabilities, knew of my strange attraction to the island of St Kilda. Or maybe they had drilled down and analysed my purchasing of books with blue covers or something, but it was love at first sight for me and St Kilda : The Last and Outmost Isle by Angela Gannon and George Geddes.

If you are a St Kilda obsessive than it may be pointless to resist this one so get it on the wish list.

Published IN 2015 by The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland this is a hefty fully referenced tome. Over 300 pages and production values are high with good quality paper along with excellent and copious images, including some previously unpublished photographs of the island and people. But this might also be the definitive book on the four islands of Hirta, Boreray, Soay and Dun, the one that successfully demythologises and provides a new context for the St Kilda story. Misunderstandings abound about life on what seemed like the edge of the world and I freely admit to buying into all of them in the past....here and here for starters.

St Kilda's is a popular story that focuses more often on the evacuation of the last remaining islanders in the 1930s from this remote and mysterious place whilst neglecting that the islands were steeped in a history that extends far back beyond that poignant moment. Connecting the islands to a 'network of communities scattered across the north-western seaboard and the Highlands of Scotland, The Last and Outmost Isle proceeds to explore and explain in depth.

It is in depth too and I have used every ounce of concentration whilst reading the early chapters on the archaeology and the landscape which is littered with evidence of ancient settlements, altars and much more. The research is rigorous and detailed and the chapter headings alone reveal that breadth and depth...

Antiquaries and Archaeologists
First visitors - 10,000 BC to AD 400
Clerics, Clans and Cultivars AD 400 TO 1600
From Chiefs to Landlords - 1700-1780
The Making of the Crofting Community - 1780 to 1930
Rockets Galore - 1930 to the present day

Apologies for skating over the academic content because I am still reading it but this is one of those books that repays the financial investment many times over. The images (130 pages of them) convey a real sense of island life, and I will get a great deal of pleasure from looking at these over and again...take this picture of the schoolchildren with their teacher (Photographer : Norman Macleod -1886) 

The girls are looking deadly serious and somehow older than their years, like miniature versions of their mothers with the low foreheads and the severe centre parting in the hair, thick clothes, layers, and layers of them, shawls knotted tightly around their necks, the boys looking solemn. I'm tempted to say 'As well they might,' or ' How do they ever keep warm,' but this was their life, they knew no other and I can only begin to imagine what the freedoms and the great outdoors might have held for them when it is all too easy to focus on the deprivations. More pictures of more children, reveal bare feet impish grins and mischief in the eyes and I think 'That's more like it.' 

Countless pictures which include women show them knitting and this has always been one of my favourites...

The climbing rope laying on the ground...

What are they about to do with that I wonder...

And what are they talking about...

If it was me it would be The Archers for sure (it might be time we all had another Archers Conversation actually).

The upshot of this book was that my thoughts suddenly flew north to the Scottish islands and you will be pleased to know that we do now have that Ruby Wedding Anniversary trip back to Orkney planned for September, so to the Northern Isles we will be bound though probably not St Kilda.

One day.

Meanwhile any more St Kilda obsessives out there...

Anyone else fancy knitting on a cliff...