Category Archives: Textiles

This category groups posts around my interest in textiles and textile design

Unearthing Henry Moore

Hooray for the Sainsbury Centre and their excellent exhibitions. I really didn’t know that Henry Moore the sculptor was also a textile designer until the brochure popped through the door. Yesterday was a day for abandoning the weeds and the studio and setting off with friends for a morning of culture. (I even vacuumed the car, how about that?!)

It was a fascinating exhibition and really opened my eyes as to the possibilities of making patterns and designs out completely unrelated ideas. Flowers and barbed wire, zigzags and safety pins, horses heads and boomerangs.

Some of the colour combinations were subtle and lovely, some were harsh and unapealing, scarlet and green with grey and black together do nasty things inside my head.

We hadn’t even known about the second exhibition, ‘Unearthed’. When we bough our tickets we were each given a small clay figure, each very individual.

We could keep them, but there would be an occasion to break them at some point. All the items on display were little figurines, not from any one particular time frame or even area, but brought together to highlight the way humans through the ages have felt the need, alongside the the daily effort of living, to make these tiny treasures.

We reached the point where we were invited to break our little figures and drop them into a perspex case as a representation of the way these things destroyed by time and then lay forgotten but we were quite unable to part with them. In fact I was tempted to reach into the case and see if I could rescue any! This brought up some interesting thoughts as to and how protective and possessive we felt about something we had only been given a short while ago.

Definitely a thought provoking exhibition and I would recommend a visit.

Accelerated Aging

I’ve just had a birthday so I don’t need any more help towards wrinkles and grey hair. Higgins however is doing his best.

I’ve been a little lax on the blogging front lately, mainly due to a lack of photography rather than a lack of material so I decided to have a little photoshoot this afternoon. I have to confess to a lack of originality for my latest project as I have been drawn back a number of times to Lucy’s technicolour blanket. The colours are just SO scrummy! I copied the list and left it at my favourite wool shop, and when a week later I had a call to say all the shades were in I dropped everything to go into Norwich to pick up my rainbow in a bag and came home to drool over the bright sugariness of the colours.

I toyed with another zigzag stripe but I’ve just made two in quick succession and I know my boredom levels are low. I decided on squares, not granny squares, too much stopping and starting and ends. Big squares, using all seventeen colours, but in a different order ever time.

This way, hopefully, all the colours will run down at about the same rate and I can experiment with different combinations and be inspired for future projects. I used my lovely blue studio sofa bed as a back drop, but despite being higher than our main sofa, Higgins’ ‘Zebedee’ springs meant that he went ‘boing’, and joined in.

It was afterwards, when I was downloading the pictures on to the computer that I heard suspicious noises from under the sofa bed. (If Higgins is behind or under something, there is always something illegal going on) There he was right at the back and out of reach, with a 2” long needle hanging out of one side of his mouth like a cigarette which meant he’d probably already swallowed the yarn threaded through it. Panic stations…my only hope was to lure him out with a bribe, but by the time I got back with the doggie treats, the needle had gone.

PANIC STATIONS! Ring the vet. It’s Sunday. Listen to the recorded message telling me the opening hours. That there is an emergency service. Where the emergency is situated. And then at last, the emergency service number. Ring the number. Recorded message explaining the function of the emergency service. That it costs £80. Eighty Pounds! That it’s for emergencies only. At last, Gemma, the vet. I’ve usefully spent the time on the phone so far hyperventilating and crying and trying to control same. Managed to explain what happened coherently. Gemma says get here as soon as possible. Right. Fine. Oh God! Can’t find the map. Can’t SEE Google maps.
I sort of know where to go, but it’s about 15 miles away, the other side of Norwich, I’m a wet mess and Tim is in the middle of the North Sea. Oblivious.

Deep breaths. I can do this. Higgins strapped into the car next to me looking bemused. Set off. I CAN do this. A hundred yards down the road, look at Higgins. Higgins looks at me. Spits out the needle…

It’s bent, the thread has gone and the eye has broken. I turn round, go home and call the vet again. She’s very pleased, we have gone from ‘Dire Emergency’ to ‘Keeping An Eye on Him’ and ‘Checking Out His Poos’.

And so here we are. On the sofa. Higgins, exhausted by my histrionics, snoring…

…and me, trying to regain my composure with a glass of wine…and another crochet square…

Lovely weather for ducks…

…and toads. I spent so long moaning about the cold during the winter I hesitate to mention the heat, but in Norfolk over the last few days it’s been hot,hot,hot… It was lovely to wake up this morning to the gentle patter of rain, and good that the dry spell didn’t break with a thunderstorm and a deluge that just runs straight off and down the drains.

Higgins has spent a lot of time lying around, too hot to get up to mischief (mostly). We tried a cooling spray of water from the hose but as far as he was concerned it was rain, and he was very put out. This morning when he barked to go out and it really was raining, he just sat and growled at it to stop. When it finally eased off enough for a quick sortie round the garden he was most intrigued to meet one of these…

I’ve not seen him wandering around the garden before, but he must have been feasting on our slugs for a while because he was really rather large. I hope by now he’s found another comfy spot for pest control duty.

I’ve been nibbling my way around the veg patch for a few weeks now, mostly salad greens and carrot thinnings. The mange tout have been tasty and the pea flowers very pretty…

… but my raised beds are not really big enough for such straggly plants. I keep finding enormous pods under the collapsed foliage which are definitely only suitable for ‘mange’ing the bits out of the middle. The beetroot are looking great though, and the little ones I thinned out were delicious. We had the first two courgettes for lunch, thumb size, and the first few beans, french and runner are beginning to show. Oh, and the potatoes I planted in two big buckets are looking really healthy. I just hope there’s something happening below soil level.

I’ve been trying to get some colour into the pots in the courtyard area by the studio to make up for the fact that my front garden is suffering from a) the dry and the heat and b) my inability to get things to flower which will take over from the spring flowers, aquilegia, poppies and all the other things currently running to seed. I’m finding the black walls of the studio a good background for bright colours. It worked well for the primulas…

…and now they are over I’ve planted a vibrant mix of dahlias and geraniums.

We actually managed to beat the blackbirds to the cherries this year, probably because we’ve had the best crop ever.

We can never get many as the trees are quite tall, and pruned to give a high canopy of shade, but Will went up and did his orangutan impression and we managed a couple of pounds of sweet dark fruit.

Trying to make the most of them I found a recipe for pickled cherries on the internet. Unfortunately not a good recipe, the amounts were all wrong so I had to improvise and won’t know if it worked for a month, but if it does I will let you know and share the recipe. Looks pretty though…

Cherry jam required stoning the fruit. Oh dear…Tim came into the kitchen to what appeared to be a blood bath…Juice on the work top, the floor, most of the utensils, my hands, arms, clothes… There was only a pound of cherries. I ended up with just a jar and half of jam which allows for testing…absolutely delicious…but by the time I had cleaned up and bleached the kitchen the project was probably not an effective use of time. Anyone getting offered cherry jam when they come to my house will know they are very special!

I’ve also finished a poignant project. A while ago I lost Jan, my much loved Aunt, a patchwork enthusiast. Her daughters-in-law passed on two works in progress along with her sewing effects, and hoped I might be able to make them into the family heirlooms Jan had intended. I was a bit stumped with the first one. It was a long strip of hand sewn hexagons, three to five pieces in width, and long enough to be the width of a double quilt. Looking at the prepared pieces, and the fabrics I had to work with, I wasn’t going to be able to complete something that size. And anyway, I really wanted to keep it as predominately Jan’s work and adding another nine tenths to it would take mean it was more my project. In the end I divided it into three pieces, and rejoined them to make a rectangle, piecing in hexagons Jan had tacked to card (old Christmas cards in fact, and rather moving to find cards from my grandfather, and other relatives now passed away amongst them) until I had something about baby quilt size.

Now I had to keep my fingers crossed for a baby! Last month, little Euan arrived. He would have been Jan’s fourth grandchild and she would have been so happy. But at least I could pass on the quilt she had made so much of, with both our names on the back, to give him a cuddle …

Presents, and keeping out of mischief…

Anyone reading my blog would think that all I do is shopping, a bit of gardening and running round after Higgins. Actually I do a lot of running round after Higgins, but despite that I have managed to fit in a bit of making . (Only today I was remaking the garden hose after someone – I wonder who? – bit twenty metres off the end. The hosepipe ban monitors are recruiting early it seems.)

Before I went to visit the family in France I had my usual panic when I realised that the thing I had been planning in my head for months has still not actually been made. At Christmas I had come home with a little cross stitch kit which had been given to my daughter-in-law. I’m afraid it flummoxed me completely, and having got to the ‘throw-it-on-the-floor-and-stamp-on-it stage I took it round to my mum, who took one look and polished it off in a couple of days. (Looking at this I now realise there will be any number of people baffled by my ineptitude but there were three different reds and life is too short…)

I really wanted to turn it into something useful for Celia, rather than something that sits and gathers dust and decided it could make a great replacement for the Yellow Plastic Bag. (The Yellow Plastic Bag has been the home of Celia’s sewing kit for quite some time and is where I rummage for needles and threads when I lose my own when on holiday – don’t ask…) Anyway, I had a big plan and all of a sudden I realised that that was all it was, a plan, and I had better get on with it. And eventually, this was it… (Spotty tablecloth courtesy of Celia) Meanwhile, Rose, Celia’s mum and the other half of the Belle Mere Mafia had already announced that on retirement she intended to knit socks so obviously a knitting bag was needed… Sewing completed, I also needed a little something to keep my hands occupied while travelling. I’ve been following Lucy at Attic 24 and her efforts to find a reasonably priced acrylic yarn with a good range of colours and she is now making a blanket in Stylecraft Special DK, priced at £1.60 a ball. I was triumphant when I found that the nice lady on Norwich Market not only carries ALL the colours in the range, but she only charges £1.49 a ball, for 100grams! What a bargain! I recently finished a UFO which had been languishing in a bag for too long, so long in fact I’ve lost the ball bands so I can’t tell you what the yarn is. It is also acrylic, beautifully soft though, but I do remember the colour range was quite limited. I really like the colours I used though, and love the zigzags so I thought I’d go for a bigger version of a snuggly blankie for winter evenings. After a happy half hour at the wool stall gathering various combinations of colours together, I eventually ended up with this… …selection of colours. I started the blanket off in the car as we travelled through the Channel Tunnel, it kept me company watching DVDs with the grandsons, and chatting in the evenings with a glass of wine (or two!) It’s coming along nicely, I’ve got to the point where it’s just about square, so I’ll have judge when the proportions are just right. The zigzag effect is so easy, and I love the slightly Missoni feel to it. If you’d like a tutorial do let me know. I haven’t written one yet but I’m happy to if it would help. It’s certainly a good project for a beginner because you don’t have all the colour changes involved with granny squares which can be a bit distracting. Crochet can be so relaxing when it just flows…
Excerpt

Rain in Rouen

It may be quite a way south of Norfolk, but Normandy seems to enjoy much the same weather as we do in Norfolk, so while the garden at home was getting nicely soaked after a long dry spell we were enjoying torential downpours and thunderstorms too. In fact, after a frantic trip outside to deal with a blocked downpipe which threatened to divert the entire deluge in through the conservatory roof rather than into the drain, Tom and Tim looked like extras from a Hornblower movie.

So, on our last day, it was entirely apt to head off to the coast to look for seasick sailors. I was determined to do this having read Thomas’ blog post here, and wasn’t going to let a bit of rain put us off.

Normandy is beautiful, and full of contrasts. High plateaus of fields and agriculture, and beautiful green valleys, leafy lanes and timbered houses. Hard to appreciate though through the steamed up windows of the car.

Our destination was a cliff top church at Varengeville sur Mer, the burial place of, among others of the artistic and literary elite, George Braque a contemporary of Picasso.

I was looking forward to seeing the inside of the church, which Thomas had described as being lit by the sun through the beautiful stained glass windows, but when I stood in the doorway on this dark and dismal day I might as well have been standing at the mouth of a cave. Below me all I could see was the Madonna lit by candles.

This was another time to be grateful for my camera, as I could actually see more on the display than in reality.

Here was the pillar I’d heard so much about…

That poor sea sick sailor…

and the woman of his dreams, the mermaid.

Outside in the church yard I was fascinated by the enormous tombs, so different from our grassy English churchyards, and the amazing china flowers decorating some of them.

Moss had added a new dimension to this one…

Monet had seen the church rather differently…

So it would be nice to go back one day in the sunshine.

I missed out on the garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll at Bois de Moutier, because of the rain. I could have happily wandered round with the trees dripping down my neck, but my companions had only just got over their soaking from the night before and obviously thought I was mad.

Back in the car, the windows even more steamed up because of our wet coats we retraced our steps back to the village where my daughter-in-law has promised me a shop I would like.

How well she knows me! The photographs I took inside are rubbish, I’m embarrassed to show them. I was far too excited about everything I could see, and I can never get over the feeling that someone is going to think I’m some sort of spy and get cross. (I know lots of other bloggers take pictures in shops. How do you get round this? What do you say ?Please let me know)

It’s a cliche to say it was like an Aladdin’s Cave. There were beads, barrels of beads and shells and little tin dishes to collect them in. Bundles of brightly colour ribbons hung from the ceiling and draped across the shelves. A huge rack of turned wooden bobbins were wound with Liberty print bindings. Baskets of trimmings and printed tapes. Necklaces and bracelets made from metal charms and glass beads. Bolts of linen, natural and dyed, striped and checks. Bales of flowery Liberty prints, baskets of fat quarters for patchwork, embroidery silks and cottons. And for those who wanted to by things readymade two rooms filled with table linens and teatowels, crafts and soaps and…and…

I usually leave these shops empty handed, overwhelmed by the choice and completely unable to make up my mind. With a supreme effort, and with the image of husband and son losing the will to life out of the corner of my eye, I chose a few little pieces.

This ribbon, blue like the flower of the linen…

Tape, perfect for Planet Penny…

Pretty, pretty flowery binding…

and a fat quarter of ballerinas.

Alas, no website, but if you happen to be 9 kilometres from Dieppe in Varengeville call in, I promise you, you’ll love it.

Post One Hundred

Happy May Day! Did anyone rise at day to wash their face in the May Day dew? It was apparently once considered a foolproof beauty treatment. Personally I decided it was far too late!

And it’s a special day too because it’s my bloggy 100th birthday. It’s hard to remember the first tentative post I wrote. I do know that I was so convinced I had nothing to write about that that was what happened for the first few months, nothing! But it’s proved a life saver. I had to make things happen, I had to make things.

So now I’m inviting you to celebrate with a present from me to you as a thank you for allowing me to ramble on.

It’s a little knitted cotton bag lined with Cath Kidsonesque fabric and I’m popping inside a knitted and felted rose corsage and a notebook, all made here on Planet Penny. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post to be entered into the draw which I will do on the 22nd of this month using the Amazing Random Number Generator and I’m happy to post anywhere which has a reasonably reliable postal service.

So, don’t be shy…I know there are lots of you who pop in and pop out quietly. This time stop and say hello, I’d love to hear from you all.

Have a lovely weekend…