yarnstorm

bouquet of thanks

I really do live a quiet life. I write, I knit, I quilt, I bake, I read. I love my tulips, my books, my films, my kitchen. I adore family life and it's what matters more to me than anything else.

But, just occasionally, things get a little more exciting and I find myself caught up in a whirlwind of new projects, opportunities, ideas. And this week has been packed with all of these. So much so that I am sitting here on a wonderfully sunny Friday afternoon amazed at how quiet life was seven days ago in comparison to how it feels today.

I'm not able to spill any beans at the moment, but if I did there would be a loud clattering. I can say that I'm going to be very busy for a while and that I am thrilled.

Thank you to everyone who has visited these pages recently. Your support and encouragement through both the quiet and the loud periods is valued as much today as it was when I was a wet-behind-the-ears novice blogger.

I'm sorry I only have yet more tulips in the bouquet of thanks for you. But, just like last week, you never know what's coming next week. It may be more tulips, or it may be something very different. 

fields of dreams

   

By the time I left the Keukenhof Gardens, it seemed like there was at least one person per bulb in the place -all seven million of them. I'd guessed it would be busy so arrived as early as I could (the gardens open refreshingly early at 8.00) so when I saw the 10 mile queue of cars headed into Lisse as I left, I felt rather pleased with myself.

So I am amazed I managed to take a few photos without a billion humans in each one. It took some doing and I would have liked to have some stepladders with me for some aerial shots and to cut out the people who spoil the views...

The Keukenhof is big enough to have a huge diversity of tulip- and general bulb-planting styles and experiments. So there are formal, linear beds of single varieties (above) which mimic the bulb-fields, and there are the multi-coloured drifts which aren't so much pick 'n' mix as mix 'n' pick in all sorts of sweet colours. This example below works so well because it keeps to one single type of tulip (lily flowered).

There are some lovely two-colour beds which throw all colour-caution to the winds and which make me think immediately of quilt pieces,

and sometimes there are three-colour patches like this one which made me want to find a fabric version immediately.

 

There are beds in full sun (below) and plantings in woodland where a delicate, dappled light is cast onto on the flowers and stops them from opening up too quickly.

like this (below).

I also liked seeing tulips near buildings - giving an idea of how they work in gardens. Mind you, I've never seen such a brilliant shed in any garden I know. And how about that for a living roof?

I even enjoyed the contrast of a more mellow setting which matches paler tulips to softer wood colours.

Just looking at all these photos again gives me frissons of excitement. I phoned Simon as I was walking around and told him it's possible to hire bikes at the Keukenhof to cycle round the bulb-fields and avoid the crowds. Suddenly he seemed interested in tulips and said he'd come with me next year. It's a date.

how many?

How many tulips does it take to make a tulipophile extremely elated?

Well, I think I know the answer.

This many.

Plus these.

And these.

And a few more.

 

These, too.

 

And especially these.

I booked my quick trip to Holland in January, and have been on tenterhooks all spring. I was taking a gamble on nature and terrified that I might have mistimed my visit. But the end of last week was the only time I could go in between school holidays, Simon's various trips abroad for work, having a Spanish exchange student to stay, and the small matter of teeth extractions for Phoebe.

This time last year, the tulips were more or less finished. But this year I was lucky; the cool and wet season which I've moaned about in other contexts has been a tulip-blessing, and it turned out that I couldn't have timed my jaunt better. There were millions of tulips in full bloom both in the fields around Leiden and at the Keukenhof Gardens - resplendent, brilliant, vibrant, tall, healthy and utterly wonderful.

It's quite something when you first come across this flat landscape streaked with long, thin lines of pure colour - yellows, oranges, pinks, purples, reds, whites. The way the growers transform the view with glorious stripes and blocks of densely planted bulbs for just a brief moment of the year is breathtaking. And when you get into a field and see the flowers both up close and in the long, long perspective of the neat rows, it's hard not to feel light-headed with elation.

I went twice; first to see the fields and get over my excitement (which, I admit, I could hardly contain), and again the next day to see tulips planted for show at the Keukenhof - all four and a half million of them. I like that number; it's a good answer to 'how many?'

Photos to come.

chic chocs

There are cheap chocolate buttons. And there are chic chocolate buttons. These fall into the second category and have been brightening my days quite considerably since I first discovered them a little while ago at Hotel Chocolat.

They come in their own dinky little button box and are very difficult to eat. It's not that they don't taste delicious (they do), but it's very hard to spoil the pretty arrangement and then when you do, to decide whether to go for a brass button or a leather button or a gentleman's blazer button, or just a simple two-hole button. 

They are also wonderful vehicles for sorting and matching and general playing. Then eating.

                                 ***

Tulip for today: late double 'Lilac Perfection'. Picked in the rain and photographed immediately.

And perfectly named.

                               ***

I'll miss my tulips for the next few days while I'm away. But there will be compensations.

Back next week.

postcard from the edge

It's funny how an image can stay with you for life. This painting by Harold Gilman has been part of my personal visual library for a long, long time. So clear are its details and associations, I can go for years without seeing it but when I do it suddenly brings home all kinds of memories.

I first saw 'The Eating House' (c. 1914) soon after I arrived at Sheffield University to train as a teacher of Russian and French after my degree. I lived in a tiny room in a tiny terraced house very close to where the Yorkshire Ripper had recently been caught (which somehow put us off late nights out). I spent most of the year avoiding doing lesson-plans by listening to the radio and knitting a cabled pink mohair Patricia Roberts sweater which I subsequently never wore. When I did go out, it was often to the virtually empty Graves Art Gallery to see the wonderful collection of paintings there. And this is where I bought the postcard which occupied pride of place on my pin-board.

In between knitting and feeling very sorry for myself, I spent hours looking at this painting. I remember wishing myself into the scene so many times that I was almost convinced that it must exist somewhere in a city like Manchester or London. I loved the colours, the view-point, the anonymity, the promise of something filling to eat like pie and chips or liver and mash served with cups of steaming tea. I always felt this must be a warm place to sit and read a newspaper - something I needed to combat the freezing Yorkshire winter outside (and inside).

It was a horrible year. I was cold, heartbroken, lost, lonely and most definitely not cut out to be a teacher. But I stuck it out and used the university 'milk round' to get a job which didn't involve caring about school uniform and staff rooms. And then I tucked the whole experience away in a mental box, and got on with the rest of my life.

So today when I saw the painting once again at the excellent Tate exhibition of the Camden Town Painters, it was like being back in that student room, dreaming of a place where I would be comfortable. It's much bigger than I remembered, and the colours are still quite brilliant and unfaded. It still makes me want to abscond immediately to a place like The Quality Chop House (which I disovered with Simon, and is the closest I have come to finding Gilman's eating house) to enjoy some black pudding or devilled kidneys.

I was almost surprised that no-one else seemed to be having the same reaction as me. Surely everyone must know how wonderful this painting is? Because even though it's something of a personal Pandora's box, it also gave me the one thing I needed more than anything - the hope that things would get better. And they did.

The postcard is up on my wall where I can see it in my office (which is uncannily similar in colour) and all the bad memories are back in their metaphorical box. Where they belong.                            

this is why i grow tulips

So that I can go out in my pyjamas on a Sunday morning before everyone else is up,

and pick a few short and stubby but incredibly bright and beautiful

late double (or peony) tulips called 'Orange Princess' (which I do not remember ordering last summer) to put in a short and stubby glass vase to make my kitchen windowsill look incredibly bright and beautiful.

So that I can also pick a gaudy mixed bunch for another windowsill.

So that I can bask in their glory for a few brief days.

So that I am reminded that I have something to look forward in the horrible, cold, miserable bulb-planting month of November.

magic

She may not make Queen Cakes, but she is undoubtedly the Queen of Cakes.

This week, Phoebe was put in charge of organising her class's fund-raising through the sales of cakes with a magic theme. So I keep finding shopping lists, lists of girls' names next to responsibilities, promotional material, and cake designs all over the house.

Although she is queen bee at school, it was this drone who did the cake-baking at home. Phoebe couldn't manage to make and decorate after school, so I was drafted in to supply the sponge while she was out. Several dozen fairy buns one day, and yesterday four separate cakes to construct the first prize in the school raffle. I loved the way Phoebe skipped off leaving me with all my instructions for the day, but then phoned from school to check that I was following them to the letter. Would I dare not?

So this is her Magical cake; vanilla sponge sandwiched with lemon buttercream and covered in a fetching shade of aqua frosting, topped with silver and blue adornments and a light sprinkling of iridescent fairy dust. It's a '12 aig cake' as the housekeeper in the Billabong series would say when boasting of how many eggs her creations contain (except her piece de resistance is a mere '10 aig cake'). 

I feel like a brickie who puts the construction together with bricks and mortar, while Queen Phoebe is the architect with all the wild ideas. Long may she reign.

                             ***

And here are some magic tulips. These are 'Daydream'; they come up yellow and then change to a beautifully attractive soft apricot orange on the outside (a colour which reminds me of butterscotch Angel Delight),

but with vividly tangerine interiors. Utterly magical.

   

i hear you, habu

All the new trends, ideas, crazes and passions in knitting are like white noise to me. I am aware of them clamouring for attention, but as they all seem to reach me on the same frequency and at the same volume, I am often unable to work out which one to listen to.

But I think that Habu Textiles must have changed frequency recently because I have become more and more aware of it within the wide spectrum of knitting noise. It started with Alison who writes so beautifully about the Habu philosophy and the sculptural quality of the yarns and, once I had picked up the sound of Habu, I started to hear it everywhere.

Then I found the book. This has been my bedside reading for quite a few weeks now. I find looking at the photos of the strange and wonderful knits taken in front of the simplest of backdrops utterly captivating and, when allied to a habit of contemplating the Japanese knitting patterns, really quite soothing and soporific, and I fall asleep thinking of unusual yarns and knitted creations which challenge my perceptions of clothing. 

I've managed to go to New York several times and miss Habu completely. So on my most recent visit, I decided it was time to make the journey to the yarn store which also challenges our ideas of what a yarn store should be. I knew I'd be on borrowed time with Alice and Phoebe in tow (I wouldn't be able to give the yarns and patterns the full thought they need with two girls sighing and rolling their eyes in the corner), so did most of my planning by email.

Habu were incredibly helpful and I pre-ordered a couple of kits to be collected on the day so that we wouldn't have to wait for the yarn to be wound onto cones and could therefore spend more time in Billy's Bakery. They discussed colour choice and let me know yarn availability in advance and made up the kits in Medium but with Large quantities of yarn to allow for my extra height.   

So when we turned up at the utterly anonymous-looking building and found ourselves in the Habu room which is just as all the photos show - small, simple, plain and devoted to the low-key (no shrill noises here - more the soft lapping of waves) -  and I wasn't taken aback, I realised I had tuned into Habu pretty well.

Habu seems to invoke a sort of calmness, a total lack of knitting hysterics, and I knew I couldn't start knitting until I had cleared my other projects. So it wasn't until this weekend that I cast on Kit 21 which is knitted with two yarns - linen paper and silk - and mine are (what a surprise) both food colours: eggplant and cocoa (sounds like a horrible taste combination, but it's looking good on the needles).

 

I wanted to go for a full-on Japanese knitting experience and use bamboo needles, but I found the yarns stick too much so I changed to the very European Addi Turbos which don't look as lovely, but do the job better for me. I haven't yet hit pattern issues as the back is straightforward and requires no shaping, but I know I have the joys of decoding the instructions to look forward to. I realise also that there may be a little squeak of anxiety around button-choice (I see that buttons are a big issue with many Habu aficionados) as I don't yet have the buttons for this jacket/cardigan. (When Tom asked me what I was knitting I wasn't sure what to say - Setsuko's designs are more for knitted pieces to wear on bodies rather than for the standard types of garments we are so used to knitting).

I've knitted a few inches of the back and am feeling my way into the experience. It really is a new tactile sensation as well as a conceptual one. And it's also auditory; when you block out all the white noise of daily life, you really can hear your knitting - the paper yarn makes little soft rustling sounds. But you need to be very quiet to hear it.

                                ***

Book details: Setsuko Torii Hand-Knit Works ISBN 895113825

I also like this knitting book with one of the most beguiling covers I've ever seen and some lovely knitting inside.

Knit ISBN 277113753

Both from Amazon Japan

on my desk

Nicola Beauman and I go back a long way. All the way back to April 1989 when I bought two copies of the 1989 Virago edition of Nicola's book A Very Great Profession - one for me and one for my Mum. For a long time, though, Nicola knew nothing of this relationship as we didn't actually meet until 2001.

In the intervening years, and ever since, this book has been a vital part of my life. Until now, I have only ever had the one copy and have always felt uncomfortable if I couldn't locate it in a nanosecond; it had to be taken down from, and put back in, exactly the same place every time I referred to it or read it. And, goodness me, I have done that so many times over the last 19 years.

There are only two people who have ever truly and deeply influenced my reading; one is Adam Roberts and the other is Nicola. Adam changed how I read, and Nicola changed what I read. It's thanks to this marvellous book that I not only discovered a huge body of women's literature, the sort of books I knew I was looking for but couldn't uncover on my own, but also a wonderful connection with all sorts of women, real and imagined, who weren't afraid to explore the details and depths of ordinary lives.

So when I read nearly ten years ago that Nicola had created Persephone Books, I was delighted, because I could see that, like an addict, I would always be able to get a fix of a good read.

And now A Very Great Profession has been reissued, and it's not a moment too soon. For a start, my first copy is looking a little ragged so I am thrilled to have a brand new one with the most inspired bookmark ever (Celia Johnson as Laura Jesson in Brief Encounter). But, just a little more importantly, this book is an absolute treasure for anyone with the slightest interest in middlebrow fiction; not only does it cover a huge number of themes and books, it also has a brilliant glossary of the most important and significant writers of such novels. I know I only have to turn to these pages to be inspired to read a previously unknown author.

I am delighted Nicola's book has been reprinted, and have to say it looks very lovely in grey.

                                   ***

On the subject of the most recent Persephone Biannually, I too have read the 'Our Readers Write' page. I laughed at the comment which refers to me and blogs in general and feel I should say that the only opinion this reflects is that of the writer. It is not my opinion and it is not Nicola's opinion.

                                   ***

And since it's that time of year, I think we should have a gratuitous photo of tulips. These are also on my desk today, freshly picked this morning.

seventies speak

Whenever I see lots and lots of beautiful apple blossom like this, I always think of the great 70s advertising slogan for Cresta (great bear, horrible product): 'it's frothy, man'.

Wisley yesterday. A vision of blossomy white loveliness,

and some pretty fantabulous tulips,

as the disc jockeys of the 1970s used to say.