A Bit of Work and a Lot of Roses

Those of you who despaired of me ever publishing another pattern will be glad to hear that I've started working again. I'm only doing about half an hour at a time but it's a start. All this week I've been writing up my pattern for a lace version of the Ten Stitch Blanket.

It's hard going as a) I knitted it a while ago so it's not fresh in my mind, b) my notes for it are scattered all over my current notebook and c) it took me a while to remember how to use my pattern writing software. I've got as far as the garter stitch I cord edging now though so the end of the first draft is in sight.

I've also just started work on a new bunting pattern to go with my Spring, Autumn and Christmas bunting patterns (no links for these as they messed up my formatting). This one will be inspired by Summer and, so far, I've sorted out the colours I'm going to use and knitted the first of the twelve flags.

I used my cross stitch Summer sampler from Little Dove Designs to find the colours for this one as they're probably going to be displayed together.

This is a straightforward project at the moment as I can just copy my pattern for the flags from the other patterns. The tricky part will come when I have to design little knitted motifs to represent Summer. So far, I've though of an ice cream but I can't decide whether it should be an ice lolly or a 99 cornet. For the non-British, this is a vanilla ice cream with a chocolate flake stuck in it. Personally, I would never touch the whippy sort of ice cream often used for these which is the work of the devil. 

While I'm on the subject of ice cream, you might like to try my late Mother-in law's lemon ice cream which has got to be the easiest recipe ever. You take equal quantities of lemon curd and double cream (I use a 300g jar of the curd and 300 ml of cream), whisk them together until they're well mixed, pour into a container and freeze. That's all there is to it. You don't need to take it out of the freezer in advance as the spoon goes into it straight away and it's very, very tasty. The amounts I use fill one of these square 750 ml boxes.

Now for a rose update. No sooner had the first one flowered than all the rest decided to get their acts together and join the race. I give you ...

Kew Gardens

Buff Beauty

and the wonderfully named Tottering-by-Gently

As you can see, this last one is in the front garden by the railings, showing off to passers by. Just along from it is The Poet's Wife which isn't in flower yet but is absolutely full of buds.

Meanwhile, the first rose of this year has got lots more flowers on the way.

Lady of Shalott

I love my roses but I'm also fond of the common flowers that some call weeds. The grass out the back is getting long and tatty now but it can't be cut before the ox-eye-daisies have flowered and they're very nearly there, along with some woodland buttercups. Any day now ...

Pretty Things

Progress on my  new craft room has been rather slow for most of this month - a combination of me not being well enough to do much and waiting for my IKEA order to arrive. Actually, it was mostly waiting for everything to be in stock ... Anyway, I now have a house full of large, heavy boxes. 

Just room to walk down the hall (there are more boxes lining the back hall and another pile in the front room).

To backtrack though ... while waiting for the furniture, I turned my mind to prettying things up a bit. Having evicted my sheet music from a tall set of basket shelves, it was moved upstairs to be home to my Stylecraft Special which, as many of you will know, is my basic go-to yarn when it comes to designing. The idea was to put a different colour in each of the baskets, a plan which turned out to be trickier than you'd think.

There are yellowy greens, bluey greens, bluey purples ... you get the idea. I ended up with nine baskets of bright colours and two half boxes left over. These are going to hold the neutral and pastel shades with space on top for multiples (mostly for works in progress).

Then of course I wanted colourful labels for the baskets and decided that the obvious thing was to knit them using the yarn itself.

I used the six stitch stars from my Stacking Stars pattern and added a button to the middle of each. It took me longer to choose the buttons than the yarn (of course it did). The little red suitcase on the top of the baskets holds my Stylecraft colour pegs.

It's been tricky planning designs with most of my yarn inaccessible so having the Stylecraft sorted has been a great help. At the moment I'm knitting a series of little rainbow coloured gnomes which I'm hoping to get published in time for Christmas.

I made the mistake of designing and knitting this first one all in one day, something I used to do easily but which is definitely not a good idea now I'm ill. I kept thinking "I'll just sort out this bit of shaping and then stop", something I regretted when I was awake half the night with a temperature! I'm rather pleased with my little gnome though.

As well as playing with my Stylecraft, I've also been painting the top of  my old kitchen table which had become rather tatty over the years.

Doesn't it look nice? The plan is for this to be in the middle of the room but, at the moment, it's squeezed up against the fireplace so as to leave plenty of room for furniture building. Which leads me neatly on to the next pretty thing ...

Two sets of LED lights with the white battery packs hidden behind scrunched up black bin bags. It was quite a fiddle to arrange them so that I could still get at the on / off switches but I'm really pleased with the effect. They make the room seem more cosy straight away; I can almost forget I'm wearing three jumpers to keep the cold at bay.

While I think of it, do you remember me telling you about the old lamp that I restored earlier this year? It was one of my parents' wedding presents; you can read about its history in this post. They had it on top of my Mum's old workbox, made for her by her father out of old packing cases.

Now that those basket shelves have been moved, there's room for the workbox and lamp in the front room. It lights up that corner beautifully.

It's standing on a crochet mat I made when I was about 16 - yes, I was a very cool teenager - which is a bit stained; has anyone got any tips on cleaning it? I tried the gel version of Vanish on it but to no effect.

I've got a couple more things to show you in the craft room, one small and the other not so small. The small thing is my new craft trolley from Hobbycraft.

I'm very impressed with this. It's sturdy, easy to put together and has nice deep shelves. It's also very reasonably priced. You can buy all sorts of add-ons for it too but I'm resisting the temptation to do that until I know what will be most useful.

The other thing I've achieved - just over the last week or so - is to fill that great big IKEA Kallax unit that my son and daughter moved upstairs for me. The arrival of piles of Kuggis boxes with my new furniture meant that I could finally start moving the rest of my knitting stuff into its new home.

Excuse the blurry photo; I'd changed the focus setting on my camera inadvertently.

These boxes are brilliant. They come in different sizes, all with set in lids so that you can stack them together; on the top of one of the big ones you can fit two medium sized ones or four small ones. I've also found that the lids can be used as trays - very handy. I think these are going to be really useful for all sorts of craft bits and bobs but, so far, I've been using them for yarn. 

Isn't that an exciting photo? If you like, I could do a shelf by shelf tour of it next time. Basically, the yarn that the moths like is in strong plastic zipped bags in the white boxes. I've also made little lavender sachets using mini organza bags to put in each bag as an added deterrent. The acrylic yarn is in the big baskets and the red fabric bins. The shelves also hold all my crochet books and hooks and quite a few of my knitting books. It was nice to be able to go through them and decide which ones needed to be where.

You can see another new thing in that photo too, my new little white table. This is the smallest of the  IKEA Lack tables and cost all of £7! At the other side of the photo you can just see my yellow bag hanging on the door handle. Now that I regularly plod up and down two flights of steep stairs, this is essential for carrying all sorts of stuff so that I still have a hand free to hold on with. Carrying things makes me breathless, even if they're not heavy but it's better if they're in a bag. 

If I've got on to minutiae like my going upstairs bag, it's probably time to stop but I just want to show you one last thing. As you know, I've been enjoying decorating my bedroom mantelpiece each season with my seasonal cross stitch samplers at the centre. Yesterday, I laced and framed the last one but then realised that I couldn't get at any of the suitably wintry decorations to go with it. So, for the time being, it sits in glorious isolation on the craft room mantelpiece.

Winter Sampler

Autumn Mantelpiece

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.

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.

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.

Embroidery Old and New

As part of the ongoing process of sorting my late Mum's house and re-configuring mine, I've been having fun rescuing my collection of old magazines from the damp cellar. This is a slow process, involving the de-humidifier and a certain amount of mould removal (I'll spare you the details) but I'm making progress. As ever, I've got help from my trusty companion Tolly, seen here doing his best rectangle impersonation. 

These are the magazines I'm most excited about finding again ...

Does anyone else remember these? 'Needlecraft' magazine was published from the early 1990s for more than ten years and featured a wide range of needlecraft techniques. There was lots of cross stitch but also needlepoint, bobbin lace, stumpwork, embroidery ... and more. They had very good articles on the history of various forms of needlework too. The earliest issue I've got is number 4 which came out in October 1991and the latest one is Issue 63 from April 2004. I've been trying to find out when it ceased publication but with no luck so far. If anyone can help me with this, I'd be very grateful. It would be nice to fill in the gaps.

Anyway, while waiting for the latest batch to dry out, I fished out some of my old needlework magazines from the 1930s onwards to browse through.

Those yellow 'Good Needlework and Knitting' magazines from the 1930s are particularly nice. They were a somewhat eclectic mixture of embroidery, knitting and crochet with handy household hints and recipes thrown in for good measure. They also featured long, serial stories. Unlike craft magazines of today, patterns for the embroidery designs weren't included, instead you were given tips on working from selected transfers which you could then order.

I was looking at an issue from November 1937 the other day when my eye was caught by this picture on the front cover.

Unusually, this was a free gift in the form of a pre-printed handkerchief sachet, all ready to embroider with your own threads. Free transfers were often included with magazines of this date but I hadn't come across an actual item like this before. I'm rather fond of old handkerchief sachets, probably because I'm one of the few remaining people (according to my children) who still uses proper hankies. These are hard to find new nowadays but you can pick up lots of pretty ones from antique stalls quite cheaply; this is where most of mine have come from.

Somehow, this picture was ringing a faint bell and, after a quick look along a shelf on the middle landing, I realised why.

Knowing my love for old embroideries, my daughter bought me this one years ago and there it was, one of the original sachets, embroidered by a reader of the magazine more than eighty years ago. Here are the instructions from the magazine ...

As well as this sachet, readers got a free transfer for a companion piece called 'The Lily-Pool' so that the two designs could be stitched as complementary pictures.

You can see this second picture better here ...

Now, amongst the many craft-related things that I collect, are old embroidery transfers. So I thought it would be worth fishing them out to have a look through.

And look what I found - not one, but two copies of the original transfer given away with 'Good Needlework'.

Something tells me I shall have to embroider this one some day to stand alongside my other one. 

Anyway, back to the more modern magazines. There I was, browsing through the latest batch a few days later, when guess what I spotted in a magazine from 2003?

Does that embroidered picture on the right of the cover look familiar? That's right, it's the original design from the free gift in 1937.

The editor of 'Needledcraft' at the time, Debora Bradley, found an original picture like mine in the attic of her parents' house. It had been embroidered by her brother's Godmother, Beatrice Walker.  Here you can see her work.

'Needlecraft' commissioned a graduate of the Royal School of Needlework, Zoe Patching, to re-create the original design. Her pattern is very faithful to the original but uses paler shades and some beads to give added texture. Of course, the original stitchers would have used their own threads; exact shades were not specified as they would be now, just general guidelines for colours.

That's my embroidery on the left and Beatrice's on the right.

All this made me think it would be interesting to compare the two magazines, published 86 years apart.

Although both magazines have colourful front covers, the modern one is obviously much more colourful inside as you would expect. The other thing that first struck me was the adverts. There are lots of these in 'Good Needlework', reflecting the different pastimes of the day - everything from piano music ...

... to dance lessons.

There are also, of course, lots of needlework related adverts like the one on this page for linen to embroider. 

Although there where quite a lot of adverts in the early issues of 'Needlecraft', the advent of the internet and more subtle forms of advertising had drastically reduced their number by the new century. This 2003 issue had very few obvious adverts, most were hidden in short pieces about new kits and products. Advertising is much more subtle nowadays. There were, however, a few pages of small ads. These were quite wide ranging, including some for Patchwork fabrics as the popularity of American style Patchwork was already growing.

Interestingly though, there were still a few ads for linens which wouldn't have been out of place in a magazine from the thirties.

Sadly, it was something of a last hurrah though as Copeland Linens had closed earlier that year. I'm guessing that they were selling off their stock here. 

The two main publishers of embroidery transfers in the thirties were Deightons and William Briggs, both of whom had been in existence since Victorian times. Deightons is still going but now supplies painted needlepoint canvases painted to order. Briggs has ceased trading but you can pick up original transfers from both companies fairly cheaply online. You can also download the 1880 book of designs in which Briggs sought to patent the transfer technique in 1880. You can save the book as a pdf which enables you to print off pages and trace them with a Transfer Pencil, should you want to work any of the lovely designs. Dover Books are one of several publishers who produce books of embroidery transfers nowadays and many of their out of print titles are available secondhand. Try searching for iron on transfers or designs and you'll find lots of inspiration, both vintage and modern. One book that looks like a nice combination of the two is Lorna Bateman's 'Embroidered Country Gardens'.

Where was I? Oh yes, comparing the magazines. As the title shows, 'Good Needlework and Knitting' also featured knitting patterns, many of which are stylish and technically quite complicated. They assumed a high level of knitting knowledge in their readers.

I'm constantly amazed by how small the sizes are in old knitting patterns ... unless, of course, you were classified as a 'matron'.

She doesn't look best pleased, does she?

There are virtually no knitting patterns in my 'Needlework' patterns; indeed, several early issues contain complaints that there are no UK knitting magazines and wishes for a knitting revival. It's easy to forget that, not so many years ago, knitting was still considered a dying art.

Both 'Good Needlework' and 'Needlecraft' feature different types of needlework, although the older magazine has mostly embroidery and the newer one cross stitch. 

There's a cutwork table set in 'Good Needlework' ...

and some embroidered napkins and a tray cloth.

'Needlework' had a range of embroidery and cross stitch designs but also this pattern for a stumpwork sunflower ...

... and a patchwork teddy bear.

Interestingly, they had another design that harked back to the past with this picture in Berlin Woolwork which was very popular in Victorian times.

I think they had a bit of a historical theme with this issue as there was also an article on historical samplers.

Earlier issues of 'Needlecraft' had pages of technical tips and answers to letters, although I don't remember anyone ever worrying about their lingerie seams as one correspondent did in 'Good Needlework'.

'Good Needlework' also featured fashion pages which were normally in colour and pointed reader towards fashionable dressmaking patterns, including lots of lingerie designs.

There were also suggestions for children's clothes. I'm guessing that these frocks would have gone out of fashion very quickly with the advent of war against Germany.

To our modern eyes, the inclusion of a long serial story, taking up many pages seems a little out of place but many 1930s women would have relied on printed stories in magazines for a bit of escapism - very few would have had television and radio drama in the UK was rather high brow until after the war.

I have quite a lot of old embroideries around the house, some that I've bought and some worked by my Mum; I even have a firescreen embroidered by my Great Grandmother somewhere. Here's one that I bought a few years ago from an antique shop in Honiton.

It was the last day of our holiday and, with four adults in a small car, I'd decreed that nobody was to buy anything else ... and then I saw this. Needless to say, it travelled home with us, squashed into the back with my passengers.

And here is the newest piece of needlework in my house - my finished Summer Sampler. Which, now I come to think of it, is a nice combination of new and old as samplers are such a traditional form of embroidery.

All that remains is to frame all four samplers and I shall be able to admire them in turn throughout the coming year. I've enjoyed working all of them but I think perhaps this one was my favourite. The colours are beautiful and there was such a lot of variety to keep it interesting.