Runaway May

The apple blossom fell.

A dear friend visited from far away.

Younger son knows London better than I do

and sat me in front of this lovely Thames view.

The alliums began to open.

I made a tiny summer dress out of a

Sanderson curtain fabric dating from the 1940s.

The sky was blue one day.

The Libertia flowered.

The irises bowed and snapped under the weight of the rain.

The lambs are decidedly chunky.

Their mothers look long-suffering while they are being head-butted

and sometimes run away.

The tadpoles I rescued from the ex-pond are doing well.

Their mothers are indifferent to their fates.

But mysteriously all the fox cubs have vanished.

Their mother looks rather lost.

In which I say 'Fie' to the makers of iphone sleeves*

Take one (sadly) felted sock.

Cut toe off and close with blanket stitch.

* I'll still need a case though.
I haven't dropped it yet,
but it's only a matter of time.

Work in progress

Looks like you're trying to make a quilt Lucille.

Need any help?

No thank you. I have read all the blogs.

I have the rotary cutter and the special ruler and the self-healing board.

I have the fat quarters and the pins.

What can possibly go wrong?

Do not click to enlarge to see the mismatched corners.

I said don't.

Anyway, look at this.

I've washed an old tablecloth to use as 

the backing material.

It's bleaching in the sun.

It will look as though I have hand embroidered the back.

If the child asks one day,

'Granny did you embroider the back?'

I will have to say,

'My dear, it was all I could do

to make the squares line up properly.

But I did it as carefully as I could

on a very hot day in July 2014 while we were waiting

for you to arrive.'

Fifties Find

I've been looking for some curtain material.

I had an idea I wanted splashy yellow roses 

on a grey background.

I could picture it, but I couldn't find it.

All the usual avenues having been exhausted

and prices per metre being shockingly high

for anything I quite liked,

I turned to a well known auction site.

And sitting there on the haberdasher's counter

 was a bolt of 7 yards 16 inches of unused

1950s Bevis fabric made for Simpson and Godlee.

Priced at £1 6s 11d per yard when new,

this would have cost me the equivalent of almost £200.

There was one other customer, eyeing it speculatively.

I turned out my purse for sixpences, threepenny bits,

florins and half crowns.

I opened my wallet for blue fivers, brown ten bob notes

 and green pounds.

I thought I might have enough.

The auction ended this afternoon.

Mine for £25. Happy me.

I'll have it sent. It's quite heavy.

But will I dare cut into it?

Dressing gowns

I was not cut out for a life in academe.

My pathetic clutch of 'O' and 'A' levels saw to that.

And neither was I suited to a career in haute couture,

as my present wardrobe will testify,

but in the programme for the degree awards' ceremony

I found a perfect collision of the two worlds:

a description of the academical gowns

for each of the degrees.

So should I wish to,

I could imagine a  collection of jackets
and dresses

fashioned from some of these
delightful combinations.

Scarlet cloth lined with dove-coloured silk,

that is silk of a turquoise-blue shot with rose pink.

Doctor of Divinity

Scarlet cloth lined with light cherry silk.

Doctor of Law

Scarlet cloth lined with pink silk shot with light blue.

Doctor of Science

Cream damask, lined with dark cherry satin.

Doctor of Music

Black corded silk lined with bronze silk,

the hood part-lined with scarlet cloth.

Doctor of Engineering

Black cloth lined with scarlet silk.

Master of Letters

Black cloth lined with slate blue silk.

Master of Mathematics

Black cloth lined with dark plum silk.

Master of Research

Black corded silk lined with yellow silk.

Master of Studies

Black cloth lined with blue silk.

Master of Philosophy

Black cloth lined with dark green silk.

Black cloth lined with light green silk.

Master of Finance

The sartorialista and her sister

Handsome isn't he?

My mother bought this sewing machine back in the 1960s

and started making all our clothes.
No frock was too floral, too bright,
or too short.

Pretty soon I was using it too.

I remember the thrill of leafing through the huge pattern books

produced by Simplicity and Butterick, McCalls and Vogue

and coming home with a fat envelope of

flimsy folded patterns which had to be accurately

laid out and pinned to the fabric.

But if I didn't find what I wanted, I improvised

with old sheets, tie-dyeing them with those tiny tins of Dylon, 
(so impossible to open without liberally spotting everything 
pink and purple, orange and green,)

and then slicing holes for my head and arms.

I also customised my jeans by ripping up the outside seams

and inserting flowery panels to make them more flared.

Paired with chokers and belts made from a huge bag of 
leather and suede offcuts,

I was very well pleased with the overall effect.

Today I hauled it out to make some curtains,

but I was half tempted to make the curtains

into a tunic...

Getting dressed is just so boring these days.

LIfted directly from Wikipedia; Husqvarna was 

originally a military arsenal founded in 1869 to produce

muskets for the Swedish army. 

The company Husqvarna has since grown,

and its production has changed from weapons, sewing machines,

kitchen equipment, bicycles and motorcycles

to lawnmowers, chainsaws and construction products. 

The Sewing Case

Of the household objects that have always been there,

unremarkable, unsung,

this,

a little sewing case belonging to my mother,

is perhaps the most modest.

I don't know who made it.

It might even have been a child's handwork.

I had an older sister who died before I was born,

when she was ten, in November 1951.

Perhaps she made it at school. I was never told.

I have never even wondered until now.

Inside there were neatly sewn compartments.

One for scissors. One for thimbles.

One for a needle case.

That was not homemade.

It has a tiny label saying,

Romney series,

Newton Mill, England.

I still use it,

but it is very fragile.

I decided to make a new one

using a scrap of fabric from my mother's ottoman

and some marbled paper from my first trip to Florence.

 And then I made another,
from old curtain material,

 and another from perishing fabric 

wrapped round a coat hanger

 and another,

and just one more.

 Which is why I haven't been

here very much.

Crab apple dusk

Sometimes a little scrap of fabric sits in a drawer

waiting for its moment in the sun.

Sunflowers

Self-sown sunflower.

Self- sewn cushion covers.

Self-satisfied me.

Thank you letter

Thank you for all my

useful and beautiful presents.

I have not included the diatoms

for the organic control of garden pests

because they are in three large plastic buckets and

would have been hard to 'style' tastefully,

but I am full of hope for the garden now.

Someone who probably could transform a plastic bucket 

into a desirable accessory,

is my friend Maddy's daughter Lydia.

It was she who made this beautiful cushion -

also a birthday present -

front

back

and now she has a shop called Lydia Lucy

which I thought some of you might like to visit.

Coming Home

Mrs Miniver Comes Home.

It was lovely, thought Mrs Miniver, 

nodding good-bye to the flower-woman 

and carrying her big sheaf of chrysanthemums down the street 

with a kind of ceremonious joy, as though it were a cornucopia; 

it was lovely, this settling down again, 

this tidying away of summer into its box, 

this taking up of the thread of one's life where the holidays 

(irrelevant interlude) had made one drop it.

Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther,

who was talking about October, but for me

the thread has always been taken up in

September.

It's the month for coming home.

It's the month for sharpening pencils,

cleaning paintboxes,

and new projects:

some small,

some large.

Here is the beginning of a small one.

Two small pieces of vintage linen

found in Hay on Wye

exactly the right size for a cushion cover,

possibly with a crocheted edge using a ball of

shimmery hand dyed ribbon 

if I can follow the instructions in my Ladybird book

Learning to Crochet.

The big project

is in a delicate and precarious state

and cannot be talked about yet

for fear of jinxing it.

Swatches

I have just realised that

these pictures from the holiday album

must have had 

a subliminal effect on my

colour choice for new stripy curtains.

A foray at the V & A

What a wonderful labrynthine treasure trove

the Victoria and Albert Museum is.

I spent a while familiarising myself

with the floor plan.

And then set off in search of James Leman

and his influences -

specifically tulips.

Might he have seen this bottle?

or this dish with tulips and roses from 1575?

Might he have admired these tiles from 

the mosque of Piyale Pasha north of Istanbul?

I saw so many beautiful things,

but sadly the camera didn't cope well with the low light levels

so I can't show you the Ottoman hanging

with silk embroidered flowers and serrated leaves,

or the Turkey kemha silk with gold tulips and pomegranates 

on a green ground

scattered with red and blue rosebuds .

There were chintzes from the coast of Coromandel

(where lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo)

and pull out frames of medieval tapestries and

William Morris's own take on 

Tulips in 1875.

I reached the Prints and Drawings Study Room

just too late to request sight of the fifty or so boxes

of James Leman's designs,

but they are mine for the asking next time.

By then

I was ready to assume the horizontal

and rather envied these folks

their cool marble bed.