Summer Mantelpiece

It's been decidedly un-summery weather here lately but it's the start of June so I decided it was time to decorate my Summer mantelpiece.

I know, that windmill looks ridiculously out of proportion but I couldn't resist it. I do love my windmills. I had to suspend it from the picture rail (picture rails are so useful) to get it to stay there.

Pride of place, as before, goes to my cross stitch sampler, Summer Blooms. I'm framing my samplers as I go along this year; next year I shall just have to swap them over.

What else is on the mantelpiece? Bits and bobs and lots of yellow. There was a lot of yellow on my Spring mantelpiece too; it's my favourite colour. 

I do like my craft tools to be pretty. Here we have my set of colourful Tunisian crochet hooks and my normal Clover Amour hooks. Each size is a different colour which makes it easy to grab the one you want and they are so comfortable to use. I'm currently using the pink one to crochet these squares ...

... and the orange and yellow ones have come in very handy for weaving samples on my new Fine Sett Tiny Weaver Looms from Hazel Rose Looms.

The knitted pot holding the crochet hooks is one of a set called 'Pretty Pots' (obviously), all knitted with one 100g ball of chunky yarn and various colours of DK for the linings. I've been writing the pattern up for nearly two weeks and I still haven't finished the first draft. Before being ill, I could probably have written it in a day or two. In my defence though, there are a lot of tables and drawing up tables makes my head hurt.

Back to the mantelpiece. Next to the crochet hooks are two of my very favourite things, both of which used to be my Mum's.

These little dishes were made by Jo Lester from Studio Pottery on the Isle of Wight and Mum bought them on one of our first holidays as a family back in the early 1960s. My earliest memory is of being carried up open steps into a little house amongst trees which I later found out would have been the caravan we stayed in. 

You can see my pushchair folded up, underneath the caravan.

Mum always had these dishes on display and there were such a familiar part of home as I was growing up.

Further along the mantelpiece there are some more recent ornaments, both associated with my daughter.

I bought the lambanana - and yes, that is a thing - when I went to stay with Rose in Liverpool when she was doing her Archivist training at the University there. It's a wonderful city. She made me the felt knitting cat too, although I did give her the kit, together with a very broad hint that I might like the finished thing! I collected the little white shells on holiday in Weymouth with my late Stepfather.

We've got to the other end of the mantelpiece now and yet more yellow things.

The china is some of my Mum and Dad's wedding china from the 1950s ... or it may be some that I've bought in recent years. I tend to pick up matching pieces whenever I see it. Again, this is closely tied up with memories of home as a child. Here it is being used at my seventh birthday party.

I'm the one on the right in the headband and I would appear to be singing 'Happy Birthday' to myself.

And last but not least we have my little yellow duck. He's not just a common or garden duck though but was once one of the stars of a Radio 4 programme called Invasion of the Yellow Ducks. This tells the story of how a container of toy ducks, washed off the deck of a ship during a storm helped to chart the movement of the oceans. As well as this programme in which my duck and his friends got to bob around for a bit in - I think - the sea off Southampton, this real life story also inspired a book by Donovan Hohn called Moby-Duck and several picture books including  Ducks Overboard! by Markus Motum. My duck is now living in quiet retirement, complete with knitted shawl.

Dad

David Brown

17th May 1934 - 19th May 2022

Fresh Air

I learnt a lot from reading The Secret Garden as the child. For a start, it's the best introduction to gardening you can find anywhere. Mary knows nothing about gardening when she discovers the overgrown garden, she clears space for the plants to grow and is rewarded with flowers. The childrens' enthusiasm for the natural world is infectious and stays with you for years. It's also a great example of the physical and psychological benefits of fresh air and exercise - add in the creativity of making a garden and you've got everything you need for happiness.

Here's Mary, when she first starts to run outdoors, just to keep warm ...

'the big breaths of fresh air blown over the heather filled her lungs with something which was good for her whole thin body and whipped some red colour into her cheeks and brightened her dull eyes when she did not know anything about it'

Suffice to say, I'm a great believer in fresh air. This has been something of a problem since I've been ill. For the last two years, the long country walks that were a regular part of my life have not been possible and I miss them, probably more than anything else. I can now walk a bit further than before, as long as I take regular rests and don't carry anything heavy. This meant that, at the end of March, to mark Mother's Day, my son and I managed a proper walk and picnic.

We couldn't get as far as actual countryside* but we walked a little way along the canal and met this heron on the way.

We were just starting to think he was a plastic heron when he lumbered into the air and flew away. We came back through Spiceball Park which is a big park right in the middle of Banbury, between the canal and the river. Sitting on a bench by the river for me to catch my breath, we spotted a kingfisher skimming along above the water. As they keep to the same stretch of river, I shall now look out for it every time I go there.

Walks aside though, I am very lucky to have a garden and spend as much time in it as I can. It's one of those long, thin gardens, typical of Victorian terraced houses and backs on to lots of similar sized ones so the whole thing creates a huge green area with lots of trees and wildlife. Here's the view looking up the garden ...

... and this is what it looks like from the top, facing towards the house ...

It looks wider than it is in real life. If you look at the houses, mine goes from the windows to the left of the small white building (my kitchen and scullery) to the chimney pots above it. 

As with all gardens, it's a work in progress and full of mess and memories. As you can see, I have a fine crop of dandelions; I leave the grass to grow long at this time of year so that the wild flowers get a chance - soon it will be full of Ox-Eye Daisies. It also encourages all the insects and pollinators and I often get dragonflies too. Then there are the newts in the bath ... yes, I did say bath.

When the people who lived here before me replaced the modern bath with a freestanding, iron one, the old one ended up in the garden to be used as a pond. It's not the most attractive thing but the frogs and newts seem to like it. The old wooden panelling that I had round it has rotted away so it's going to be supported by its own little brick wall soon. Then I have plans to cover the top edges with some sort of mosaic tiles.

A more attractive addition to the garden is the old sundial and bird bath that came down to me from my Grandmother and which looks as if it's been here forever. Here it is, complete with some bluebells. Can you see there's also a white bell there? I get quite a few of those.

A new and very exciting addition to the garden is my little greenhouse which was a Christmas present from my daughter and her partner. It just fits against the side wall by the house and is already filling up nicely.

There are propagators in front of various windows in the house and lots of seeds in the queue waiting to be sown. The trouble with old houses like mine is that they don't have windowsills. Well, they do but they're too narrow to put anything on. They are deep windows though so I can improvise with tables and, in this case, a trolley parked in front of them.

It's always nice when you can combine your hobbies and I've recently learnt how to make origami pots out of newspaper to use as seed pots. Not only do these use up the bits of my Saturday paper (the only one I buy) that I don't read, but the seedlings can be potted on in their newspaper pots so the roots don't get disturbed.

They look a lot less nice than this once they're full of compost and have been watered a bit but they do the job. It's very satisfying to re-use stuff like this. The seedlings then go into plastic pots but these can be washed and re-used umpteen times so I'm happy with that.

More new additions - this time in the form of plant supports ...

I had both Jack and Rose here this last weekend and, with their help, we got a huge amount done. Did you know that two healthy young adults can carry 110 kg of compost back from the shop in one go? While she was out fetching lots of heavy ceramic garden pots from my Mum's old house (yes, she really is quite strong, I put it down to all that practice pushing her partner's wheelchair), Jack and I put a few things together.

He rescued me from this eight foot tall obelisk and it's now in place in the garden. The soil here is heavy clay and it was very hard work getting its legs in far enough. We had to make the holes first by hammering in a garden cane.

It's there to support the climbing rose inside it which is about a foot tall at the moment but should grow to the top in time. It's a beautiful rose called The Pilgrim (after Chaucer's pilgrim in 'The Canterbury Tales') and has full yellow flowers, shading to cream. I only planted it last autumn as a bare root but it's got some buds so I can't wait to see them open.

In the meantime, I got a clematis to share the obelisk with the rose and encourage it to greater things.

The picture doesn't do it justice. That deep pink is a really vivid colour in real life. It's called Westerplatte and I made the mistake of looking it up online, only to find that it's named after a heroic stand by the Polish forces against the Germans in 1939. The colour is meant to represent the drops of fallen blood ... I shall try not to think of that when I look at the beautiful flowers.

Do you see those very business-like looking bean sticks next to the obelisk? Don't be fooled, I haven't actually planted the runner beans yet (they're in the seed queue). The wall that they're against used to be covered with Irish ivy (which I've just discovered is also called Poet's Ivy). Much as I love it, I decided it didn't need to cover every inch of the wall so, earlier in the Spring, I went into battle with it. You'll be glad to know I won.

Similarly, I've been demolishing the Winter Jasmine that dominated the side wall need the house ...

Those sticks against the wall are all that's left - oh and the bits that have rooted between the bricks higher up. I've told it that it can stay if it promises not to get carried away again. 

I did have an ulterior motive for this lot of drastic pruning as that wall has to be propped up to stop it falling over. It's been there for over a hundred years and is definitely leaning. As you can see, it needs a lot of re-pointing too. That's going to be done soon so then I shall be able to plant things on that side of the garden again. It's the wall that gets the sun and I've got 16 sunflowers waiting in the greenhouse ...

I hope you've enjoyed this little look at my garden; I'll try to update you on its progress later on. I enjoy writing blog posts but they do take a lot out of me so, as with everything, I have to pace  myself. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a photo of my favourite flower in the garden - the humble Cowslip.

* Since I wrote the first part of this post, Rose and I have been on another canal walk and we got a bit further - as far as the first lock on the way to Cropedy. I was very pleased with myself.

Bramble Yarn

 I have a new favourite yarn and have got totally carried away with its possibilities.

King Cole Bramble DK is a variegated yarn with a long colour run - oh how I love a long colour run - and it comes in these ten lovely shades. From left to right on the top row there's Mixed Berries, Heather, Loganberry, Chestnut and Raspberry (aren't the names nice?) On the bottom row there's Earth, Blueberry, Goldenberry, Gorse and Haze. I had to  look up Goldenberry which is, apparently, a rather exotic looking fruit. 

Bramble is a 100% Acrylic yarn - a joy to those of us plagued by moths - and, with 290 m per 100g knits to a standard DK tension. I'm starting to sound like an advert, aren't I? The only faults that I could find with this yarn were the knots which appeared from time to time, sometimes breaking the colour run. 

It would be a good yarn for my Ten Stitch patterns and no, I'm not planning to design another one of those any time soon. So, do you want to see what I've been using my Bramble yarn for?

First of all, I'm crocheting a shawl, using Loganberry which is probably my favourite of the colours.

It's nearly big enough but I have plans to add a collar, buttons and possibly pompoms, all of which require thinking and decision making, things that are difficult for me now so I keep putting it off.

In the meantime, I've been playing with the possibilities of combining slip stitch and two shades of Bramble. 

First I made a couple of cowls using two similar shades so that the colours blended together. I've just published this pattern and you can download it from my Ravelry store Obviously, it's called Bramble Cowl.

This one uses Loganberry and Chestnut.

Then I decided to use contrasting shades - this time Raspberry and Earth - to make a scarf. I thought I would make it more interesting by working it diagonally which had the lucky effect of making the stitch pattern much simpler too. I rather like both sides of this pattern.

It's now much longer than in these pictures and, again, is waiting for me to work out how to finish it. I'm going to sew the ends together so that it can be looped round the neck; I just need to get round to doing it ... and taking the photos.

I've also been experimenting with using Bramble for weaving. The colours work out beautifully in these 6" pin loom squares.

This set of squares are all from a ball of Loganberry and I didn't plan them at all; they're just how they came from the ball. The next set are more subdued but equally pleasing I think. This time the shade is Goldenberry.

I'm using one of the newer shades of Stylecraft Special DK, A Hint of Silver to edge my squares which I'm finding sets off all the colours very well. I'm probably going to weave four more sets of squares from different shaders and then turn them into a blanket.

Yet more Loganberry, this time woven into tiny hexagons.

I'm using my little Penny Loom from Turtle Looms to weave these. As each hexagon is so small, they come out a solid colour so I'm sorting them into pile of six and then turning them into flowers. Maybe one day it'll be a doll sized Granmother's Flower Garden blanket. I don't know if I shall stick to the Loganberry or use other colours too. The joy of this sort of yarn is that all the shades go together well.

People often end this sort of post by saying that they were given the yarn to review etc etc ... well, I wasn't. I bought it myself and I love it!

Spring Mantelpiece

Today is the first day of Spring, meteorologically speaking, so I thought you might like to see my newly decorated Spring mantelpiece.

The star of the show is my cross stitch sampler which I framed last week. Many of you will remember my daughter and I working on this series of samplers last year. I thoroughly enjoyed these projects, from the first stitches for each season ...

... to the last ...

It took me ages to decide on the mount and frame for each sampler but so far it's looking good.

I'm really pleased with that mount - I think we used to call that colour mauve.

Hanging above the mantelpiece is my Springtime Wreath from 2014. I had to re-attach one of the knitted chicks this year but, other than that, it's wearing well.

The rest of the ornaments are a combination of pretty things and little treasures. I'm a big fan of windmills (the toy variety, although I have no objection to working ones); these are probably the smallest ones I've got.

They're standing in one of my old green bottles. I'm trying to collect ten (obviously), each one different. They were displayed along the sash of the kitchen window ... until Tolly the cat knocked one off and broke it. He is a bad cat.

On the other side of the sampler is one of my little Polish Peg Dolls - another one of my collections. I thought her outfit looked particularly Spring-like.

Next to her there's another one of my little green bottles with a few random things on sticks that used to be my Mum's. She was partial to decorations on sticks; here we have a chick, a cat and a hen on a nest.

The yellow teapot has been retired from use after I broke the spout off. It has sentimental value and I don't want to risk breaking it further. My kitchen floor is tiled with old stone tiles - anything dropped on it breaks - so now the teapot just looks pretty. Next to it is a very pretty little coffee cup from the 1930s. I have a somewhat eclectic collection of pretty china cups, all of which get used. I thought the flowers on this one were especially nice.

I was going to round this post off with a photo of some of the Spring flowers in my garden but ... it's raining. Of course it is.

New Lamp for Old

Recently my Dad gave me a dirty, cracked and definitely not working wooden lamp base. Now you might think this wasn't the most thoughtful of presents but I was very pleased with it. You only have to look at this photograph from the early 1960s to see why.

That's Mum and Dad and behind them is the lamp in its youth. It was a wedding present from the Midland Bank where Mum worked before they married in 1956. How do I know that? Because I still have Mum's wedding present list, presumably made to help her in writing thank-you letters.

As you can see, Mum's colleagues also gave them a wooden fruit bowl which my brother now has. The lamp base is shaped like a wine glass and the drum shade was a wine red to match it.

So, back to the present. I didn't think to take a photo before I cleaned it up but here it is, crack mended and polished. The wood was really pale and dry and responded well to lots of polish and elbow grease.

The next thing to do was to replace the cable and bulb holder as it still had the original fittings which were standard in the UK before 1970. Does anyone else remember the days when you could do your ironing by plugging an adaptor into the bulb holder on the ceiling light? Here's a link to more information about plugs than anyone could want - except perhaps Mr Weasley.

I found a very good website called Lamp Spares which had everything I wanted and the lamp was soon fitted with a new lead and bulb holder, complete with safety switch. What a good invention these are; it's impossible to turn the switch on unless a bulb is in the holder - I remember getting a nasty electric shock from a bedside lamp many years ago and it's not an experience I'd like to repeat.

The trickiest part was replacing the green baize on the bottom of the base which had long since perished. I had one piece of green felt that was big enough but the new flex is thicker than the old one so the groove in the base wasn't deep enough for it. Rather than try to make the groove deeper I built up the felt with two layers of thick interfacing so that the lamp would stand flat.

All it needed now was a lampshade and I wanted a big dark red drum shade to match its original one. Luckily, my local branch of B & Q had just what I wanted and they even had a sale on. My son walked there with me to carry things (I can't breath, walk and carry something, however light it is) and to remind me how to pay with my debit card. I think it's the first time I've done that for two years.

And here is my new lamp. It's not a very good photo but the best I could manage.

The colours are much richer in real life but you get the general idea. Do you see what the lamp is sitting on? That's my Mum's old workbox which is even older than the lamp; her Dad made it for her out of old packing boxes, along with the little bookcase that I talked about some time ago in this blog post. If you look back at the black and white picture at the start of today's post, you'll see that the lamp was sitting on the workbox then as well. And that's where it's going to live in its new life too.