Oranges, satsumas, clementines, tangerines - whichever you like, juicy oranges are a necessity to counter all that rich food at Christmas. In my family the one non-negotiable part of the Christmas stocking is the little orange in the toe. My Granny was an exception; she loved big oranges and so, when she came to visit, she had a normal sized orange in her stocking.
These little knitted oranges add a bit of colour to the Christmas Cheer wreath and don't take long to knit. It's harder than you think to find references to Christmas oranges in books but I have two to share with you.
The first is another Shirley Hughes book, this time Out and About.
This is a collection of seasonal poems about a Katie and her little brother Olly who first appeared in the wonderful Nursery Collection which we have as individual little books, sadly now out of print.
You may be able to find secondhand copies of these or of the collected version The Nursery Collection which is more recent. I think that several of the poems are also in the The Shirley Hughes Treasury.
Anyway, back to Out and About. The poem that caught my eye is 'Hoping' which in just a few lines conjures up all the magic of Christmas for small children. The accompanying illustrations are pitch perfect too.
As well as the tangerines, there are mince pies, biscuits ... lots of lovely treats.
My other choice is also a poem, this time from the classic Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne with illustrations by E.H. Shepard.
Both this book and its companion When We Were Very Young should be in every home, with or without children. There are so many poems that you find yourself reciting for the rest of your life. there's 'Disobedience', featuring James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree who 'took great care of his mother, though he was only three', 'The King's Breakfast' where the king tries very hard to get some butter for his bread or how about 'Lines and Squares' which explains just what will happen to you if you tread on the cracks in the pavement?
But for a poem about Christmas that's hard to beat, there's 'King John's Christmas'. We learn right at the start that 'King John was not a good man, And no good friends had he,' but he still thinks it would be nice if Father Christmas brought him a stocking on Christmas morning. So, he writes a detailed list of all the things he would like and props it up by the chimney.
Here are the things he asks for: crackers and candy, a box of chocolates ... "I don't mind oranges, I do like nuts! And I SHOULD like a pocket-knife that really cuts' ... but what King John wants most of all is a 'big red india-rubber ball!' Sadly, his stocking is empty on Christmas morning but, in case you think this is a very sad poem, there's a twist at the end which leaves you smiling. My son who is a primary school teacher reads this poem to his class every Christmas.
Whether it's mulled wine, cider or ale, a warm and spicy drink is a delicious part of the festive season. My personal favourite was mulled cider but Long Covid wouldn't mix well with alcohol so it's non-alcoholic mulled drinks for me now.
The third set of decorations for my Christmas Cheer are some little bundles of cinnamon sticks with some spices embroidered on using french knots. These are very quick to knit as they're just ... well, knitted sticks.
I knew the book I wanted to use to illustrate mulled drinks straight away, a picture book of one of my favourite parts of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows.
Mole's Christmas has beautiful illustrations by the artist Beverley Gooding. I see she illustrated two other picture books from The Wind in the Willows, The Open Road and Wayfarers All which would be worth looking for. All three books are now out of print.
Anyway, as Christmas nears Mole grows homesick for his old home and he and Rat are there when they hear carol singers outside. The ever resourceful Rat invites them in to sit by the fire and goes off in search of beer to mull. "I perceive this to be Old Burton," he remarked approvingly ... The very thing!"
‘soon every field-mouse was sipping and coughing and choking (for a
little mulled ale goes a long way) and wiping his eyes and laughing
and forgetting he had ever been cold in all his life.’
It makes you fell warm and cosy just to look at the pictures, doesn't it?
I like autumn. It always feels like a new beginning to me. Summer is all very well but, by September, it's starting to look a bit frayed round the edges and I'm ready for the deep colours of the new season.
I've been enjoying decorating my bedroom mantelpiece to match the seasons this year, prompted by the series of cross stitch samplers that my daughter and I started stitching two years ago. I've just been through and added the label 'Sampler' to all the old blog posts that mention these samplers so, if you click on 'Sampler' under the list of categories on the sidebar, you can read all about them.
Anyway, back to my autumn mantelpiece ...
I think this is my favourite so far. Shall we have a closer look? I'm especially pleased with my new knitted bunting. I designed some Spring Bunting earlier this year and always had it in mind to knit versions for the other seasons too.
The problem with hanging bunting made up of eleven flags like this is that it's very long - far too long for my chimney breast which is really where I wanted to put it. I ended up having to tape the picture hooks to the picture rail for the Spring Bunting and it still fell down eventually.
So, after a re-think, I decided to split the new bunting into two lines and hang them together. All it took was a couple of lengths of thin dowel and some yarn to tie the dowels together.
Next year I'm going to hang my Spring Bunting like this too. I'm in the middle of writing up the pattern for the new bunting (18 pages and counting) and I'll show it to you properly once I'm ready to publish it. And yes, next year I'm hoping to complete the set with bunting for summer and winter too.
Back to my cross stitch sampler. The autumn designs were the first we stitched and I really like the finished picture. I'm particularly fond of the spider hanging from his web and that row of creatures and plants near the bottom.
In front of the cross stitch are a few little ornaments. Two wooden toadstools, one carved for me by my daughter and a pair of knitted hedgehogs (from the Autumn Bunting pattern).
On the other side is my conker made out of resin which I've had for years and a wooden vase of wooden flowers, bought from the Dansel Gallery in Abbotsbury on one of our holidays in Dorset.
Next to the flowers is a little red squirrel cross stitch picture by my daughter. It's actually a birthday card, framed just as it was. One of the many lovely designs from Textile Heritage.
And at the end of the mantelpiece is a glass picture of autumnal trees that my son brought back for me from the Lake District earlier this year.
There's nothing on it saying who made it but I think it might be from Borrowdale Glass.
At the other end of the mantelpiece is some of my lovely old Cottage Ware china. My late stepfather, Bob started me off with this by buying me the teapot and I'm gradually adding other pieces as I find them (or I was, until I became housebound).
One day I'm going to design a cottage tea cosy to go over that teapot. This china brings back memories of my Granny's house when I was little as she had some of it. I remember sitting at her table playing with the fringe on the dark red chenille tablecloth. These were very common in the 1960s; Granny's was put on top of a protective plastic covered cotton tablecloth which I think we called American cloth at the time. There was a white tablecloth too which I think went on top of the red one. Does anyone else remember tables being covered like this? I don't think it was just her.
I've recently had a new order of the little cards I use as notelets and I thought you might like to see them.
They are from Furzedown Gallery and are printed from original watercolours by the artist Kitty Herridge. Her subjects range from animals and flowers to dragons and gnomes - all set amongst beautiful countryside. You can buy the cards in various sizes but I always go for the smallest.
Ten of this size card are £10 and postage is free within the UK. This time I bought two sets of ten, including a set of snowy ones which I thought would be appropriate to send during the winter. Here are the non snowy ones ...
If you click on the picture above you can see the cards in more detail. Aren't they beautiful? I love them all; they're nostalgic without being too cute, if you know what I mean. As you can see, there are two cards with donkeys on. These will be sent to my daughter's partner who is particularly fond of donkeys. There is one called Clover who lives at Hackney City Farm, near where they live in London and, when he is well enough, they visit her and the other donkeys there.
Clover is the donkey at the back of this photo.
I haven't bought any of the snowy cards before; they'd make lovely Christmas cards, wouldn't they?
Only one donkey in this batch but Hedwig makes an appearance. I especially like the one with the red tractor; the artist lives on her family farm and tractors often appear on the cards.
I was pleased to discover that Furzedown Gallery is based on a farm of the same name near Kings Somborne in Hampshire. As a child I lived in Longstock which is in the same part of the world. I went to school in Stockbridge and my Dad's family come from (and still live in) Broughton. It's particularly nice to be able to support and recommend a local artist.
In other news, I have started painting what will be my new craft room, although I'm tempted to call it the Room of Requirement as it can whatever I need it to be. Also, the cats aren't entirely sure that it exists as the door has been kept closed for years. When I go up there, they think I've left the house (I know this because they tend to stay indoors when I'm out and only venture out to the garden once they know I'm back).
Anyway, before being ill, I would have done a coat of paint on a room easily each day. Now I have to pace myself and can just manage one coat on one wall. So far, I've finished the ceiling and done the first coat on two of the walls.
The ceiling only needed two coats, despite the fact that the colour I painted it before turned out to be much darker than I remembered.
I suspect that those red walls will need three coats though. I shall get there in the end.
I love advent calendars. Home made ones, edible ones, craft ones ... there's always a risk that I will spend most of every day in December opening them. I hadn't got round to sorting one out this year, what with getting through each day being more than enough to think about. Luckily for me, other people came to my rescue.
First my daughter sent me this beautiful calendar.
It's a 3D Toy Shop, designed by Emily Sutton, one of my favourite artists. It's in pride of place on the bureau in my bedroom where I'm hoping the cats won't be able to get to it. I have a soft spot for picture advent calendars as that's what I had as a child. I remember sharing one with my brother. What I don't remember though is having trouble finding the numbers. Nowadays it takes me ages to find the number each day. Today's little door was on the back of the shop in the basket of a bicycle.
Rose and I compare notes on the pictures on our calendars each day which is nice too. Hers was a fox on skis today (of course it was).
The big excitement this advent though has been this intriguing parcel which arrived a few weeks ago.
As instructed, I opened it yesterday and look what I found ...
A very kind friend on ravelry has sent me a yarn advent calendar from Henny Penny Makes. Do you want to see inside?
24 little striped sweet shop bags, each with a skein of hand dyed 4 ply yarn. I hadn't heard of this dyer before so I'm very excited to discover her. Oh the excitement when I opened the first bag this morning ...
Each mini skein weights 10g and the colours are all inspired by pantomimes. This one - a lovely blend of silvery grey with a dusting of pink - is called 'Glass Slipper'. I think I might punch a hole in the little cards and thread a length of each colour through so that they will serve as a shade card.
Can you see the little stitch marker at the bottom of the picture? That was a lovely surprise. I had two with the original parcel but wasn't expecting more. This one is a bauble with multi-coloured star confetti inside. Here it is with the other two.
I think these are too nice just to use as stitch markers so I shall probably turn them into jewellery. What do you think?
Of course, I couldn't resist playing with my new yarn as soon as I'd got it so I wound it into a ball and crocheted a little square.
I liked the idea of using each day's yarn but didn't want to commit myself to anything too time consuming. So, that little square is only 6 cm across - I can make more on days when I'm up to it and just one when I'm not. No idea what I shall turn the little squares into yet but I'm sure an idea will evolve as I go along.
As well as all this new advent treasure, I've also fished out my old Advent Stars to hang up each day. These are a really easy calendar as I just hook them over the rails above my scullery windows and they're done. Here's the first one in a truly dreadful photo.
Here are all the stars in a much better light.
This evening I shall light the first of my advent candles too. I used to buy those special marked candles where you burn so much each day but they proved too traumatic for me. I was always burning two days at once by mistake (or missing days). Now I just use tealights. One lasts just about the right amount of time and it doesn't matter if I miss a day.
I wonder if I should go and crochet another square ...
I don't know if it's got something to do with living on an island (even if it is a big one) but I do feel a strong link to the sea and get fidgety if I haven't seen it for a long time. I suspect I'm not alone in feeling like this; you only have to look at the special place The Shipping Forecast has in our hearts. Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth ...' - it sounds like a poem, doesn't it? What with that and 'Sailing By' (which is the music played before the last Shipping Forecast of the day on Radio 4), is it any wonder that, as a nation, we love the sea?
This music takes me back thirty years to the many nights when I listened to it while trying to get my first baby to sleep. You'd think it would have made a good lullaby but it never seemed to work.
Anyway, fast forward a few decades and that baby and I, together with his little sister, have just had a wonderful week's holiday down in Dorset. We used to go there regularly for holidays in autumn half term (when it was cheaper) and decided to go again this year (still in half term as my son is a teacher). I hadn't had a holiday for years so this was very special.
Now the British seaside in the last week of October is never going to be hot ... or dry ... and you can't even count on the cliffs staying where they were last time you looked. Here's the sign that welcomes you to Charmouth beach.
Don't get me wrong, we love Charmouth. The fact that it's rugged and rough appeals to us. You never know what the beach is going to be like from one day to another; it can be sandy, stony or a combination of both, depending on the weather. The walking is great, there are fossils to find and the sea is never boring.
This was the sea on our first night; the waves were crashing a very long way up and, as you can see from the stones, this wasn't even high tide.
This was the view across to Lyme, about half an hour later ...
This sea was as nothing to the one on the day we left, a week later. Gale force winds were blowing throughout the South West and the sea was huge. The beach huts are set back from the sea at Charmouth for obvious reasons and the wind had managed to blow one completely over.
We were lucky in that those two days, at the start and end of our holiday, saw the worst of the weather so we managed to fit in quite a few good walks on the days in between.
You can walk along the beach from Charmouth to Lyme at low tide but, for some reason, we'd never done this before. It's an easy walk and oh, so beautiful.
The beach varied from big stones to pebbles to sand, with lots of rock pools too.
In this part of the world, the stones themselves often hide surprises ...
We thought the group of people we passed as we reached Lyme were admiring an exciting fossil find but no, it turned out to be an old grenade - apparently they turn up quite regularly
We collected lots of lovely sea glass on this walk, it seemed to be everywhere. We found out later in the week that the sea uncovered an old rubbish dump here a while ago so that would probably explain all the glass.
The Tuesday of our week was my birthday and we'd planned a coast walk for that day. Rain was forecast but we decided to go anyway and just turn back if it got too bad. In the event, although the wind got up and it threatened to rain all day, we only had a few showers and the walk was lovely.
You can't say I dont know how to celebrate my birthday in style.
We started at West Bay and followed the coast path through Eype and Seatown and up Golden Cap. A digression here - have you noticed how all those links take you to pictures of sunny beaches and people in light dresses? Needless to say, they're nothing like that in winter. Mind you, the chips at West Bay harbour are the best I've tasted and the countryside is stunning all year round. See that note on the Golden Cap link about Gabriel's Steps being closed? They were a steep flight of muddy steps up the cliff that was part of one of our favourite walks. The last time we tried to do it they'd collapsed and we had to pick our way over huge boulders at low tide to get round to Seatown.
Anyway, back to our walk. It was steep and muddy and cold but we were sustained by chocolate rations and regular stops. We came across this lovely old stone watering place where we stopped for a breather ...
.. and a surpise birthday cake! I thought my daughter was taking a long time rooting some biscuits out of the rucksack and then she produced this ...
One large piece of Dorset apple cake, complete with candelabra and candles. It was too windy to get the candles to light but I pretended to blow them out anyway.
We've re-named that place 'Birthday Cake Well' now. We do that a lot (yes, we are big Arthur Ransome fans); we also stopped at 'Cow Pat Bench' later on this walk.
By the time we got near the top of Golden Cap, the wind was really picking up. You only have to look at the trees to see how rough it can get here.
Those trees look like they're walking up the cliff, don't they? From the top we came back down to the sea at Seatown for a cold picnic by the sea and then took a different (and very muddy) route back to West Bay. We were walking for about five hours all together and the light was just starting to fade by the end of it but it was a wonderful walk.
There was more mud and rain on the Friday when my son and I did the last walk of the holiday (my daughter had to go back home for work on Thursday). We parked on the cliff above Beer and walked along the coast path to Branscombe and back.
That's the view back to Beer which is a beautiful fishing village; there were great views along the coast all the way. Coming in to Branscombe, we had to go down this flight of very steep, very muddy steps ...
We managed these all right but then, at the bottom of them, was a steep slope of slippery mud. It must have taken us ten minutes to make our way very slowly down that particular stretch of the path. Needless to say, we decided to find a route inland back to Beer which was still muddy and steep but not quite so bad.
Beer is a lovely village, with its sheltered harbour and interesting buildings. This row of houses was on the road back up to the car.
I lived in a brick and flint house as a child so I have a particular fondness for them. Here's our old house (in Longstock in Hampshire).
Are you still with me? This is a long post but I've got a few more things I want to share with you from my holiday.
My birthday, for example. There were other excitements, as well as our walk. We started the day with a picnic breakfast on the beach - Jurassic Foot Bread (a date bread), fig rolls and chocolate - plus a cup of tea for me).
I had my presents in the evening - lots of lovely things but I'll just show you one of the more unusual and exciting ones; it's from my daughter.
It's a cross stitch Advent Calendar! There are 24 numbered envelopes and each one has part of the chart in. I stick the chart over the shape on the plan with the matching number and stitch just that part each day. I have no idea what the finished picture is going to be and, as you can see, it only uses one colour. I can't wait to get started on this. I wonder how long it will take me to guess what its going to be. Please don't tell me if you think you know what it might be as I want to work it out for myself. I'll show you how it's going next month.
We had a birthday curry and the candelabra and candles made another appearance, this time fully lit.
I think I look like my Granny in this picture; my children think I just look very small.
I spent quite a bit of money on my holiday, mostly in secondhand bookshops. We went to two of our favourites: Bridport Old Books and Chapter House Books in Sherborne. Funnily enough, both places also have really good bakeries - Leakers in Bridport and Reeve in Sherborne. That seems to me a perfect combination - good books and lovely bread and cakes.
I'll just show you a couple of my purchases; firstly a nice old knitting book (obviously) ...
This is an Odhams book but in a bigger format than normal (and yes, I think that's interesting). I also got some more Puffin Picture Books to add to my growing collection, and this was one of several new / old music books I found.
In a secondhand bookshop in Honiton - Graham York Rare Books they sell paper ephemera as well as books and I got these lovely old cards.
As you can see, these are children's birthday cards but I got some others too.
I can't decide whether to frame them, scan them to use the images in craft projects or actually use them as cards. I'll probably do a bit of everything.
There was a bit of knitting related shopping too. I got some new yarn ...
... and lots of lovely old knitting patterns.
We visited a small art gallery in Beer (Marine House at Beer) where we discovered the work of a new (to us) artist, Adrian Sykes. I was very taken by his paintings which are full of colour and stories. I bought the catalogue of his 2018 exhibition which has pictures of more than twenty of his works.
You can open it at any page and find a treasure.
This is one of my favourites; it's called 'Where the Mountains meet the Sea' and, if you look closely, you can see that the people are playing violins.
Finally, on our journey home, I got two nice pieces of china, both in Crewkerne. This little fruit bowl was in a charity shop; I love this sort of old-fashioned country cottage pattern.
And then, in an antiques shop, I found this beautiful little trio by Beswick.
Perhaps best known for their china animals and Beatrix Potter figures, this was part of a 1950s tea service called 'Dancing Days'. It is even prettier in real life; The pink is a very delicate shade and the saucer and plate have lovely, wavy edges. I'm using this set a lot at the moment.
Speaking of which, it's time for me to stop talking and go and put the kettle on. I hope you've enjoyed this little diary of my holiday. I'm off again next week, this time to stay with a friend in Cornwall so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for kind weather again.
