Cornflower

Outside broadcast

I´m struggling with an unfamiliar computer and a strange keyboard, but just wanted to say hello from Switzerland.
Snow is falling here and the weather closing in so I can´t give you a view of the mountains just now, but I hope for good pictures soon.

Pins and needles

     Yarn features often on these pages, but needles tend to get only a brief mention in passing. A visit to my parents today has yielded a bag full of knitting needles which belonged to my grandmother. Pictured here is a tiny fraction of the haul which, nowadays, would merit the "vintage" label and which I'm delighted to have brought home and hope to put to use again.

     There are so many that I've yet to sort them all out, but here are just a few sets of dpns and an Aero needle and tension gauge - they all have that byegone era feel about them!

     I still have a tiny cardigan Granny Andy knitted for me when I was born, and coincidentally, I chose the very same pattern to make for our first baby before she arrived. Both garments are safely stowed away and I wouldn't dream of parting with them.

Playing with the camera

      After using the camera daily for eighteen months, I've just discovered it can take black and white pictures.

 

What do you think about that, Mollie?

Reading Daphne backwards

   

     The suggestion Twyla Tharp makes in her book The Creative Habit about reading an author's work in reverse chronological order is one that interests me, so I've decided to try it. I had to find someone whose books appealed and whom I hadn't read and I've chosen Daphne du Maurier.

    According to her entry on Wikipedia, Daphne wrote fifteen novels and several collections of short stories. I have read Margaret Forster's biography Daphne Du Maurier, and The "Rebecca" Notebook: And Other Memories, which I may revisit, then there's Justine Picardie's novel Daphne, and others - if I want to read around a bit - (and do visit Justine's new blog, by the way), but Daphne's novels themselves ended with Rule Britannia in 1972 which I note got very mixed reviews and which in quality is not representative of her work as a whole.

     The idea is a slow discovery, not a rapid race-through, with the aim of identifying themes, philosophy and style, but seen from the point of view of the "finished article" rather than beginning with the comparatively unformed hand. An experiment, then, and for no reason other than it might be worth trying to see if Ms. Tharp is on to something, but one which could yield interesting results. Simon's going to have a go, too, so we shall be comparing notes, and if anyone can think of a catchier title for this exercise, please let me know!

Tey-time

     My introduction to the crime novels of Josephine Tey has been an excellent and highly satisfying one. The Franchise Affair is tightly-plotted and elegantly written with a sharp eye for social observation and here and there a sharpish tongue for comment, too!

     Its hero is Robert Blair, small town solicitor of delightfully old-fashioned habits ("Miss Tuff came in with her notebook and her dazzling white peter-pan collar, and Robert's normal day had begun"), who finds himself in the role of amateur sleuth when two local ladies are accused of the abduction and mistreatment of a young girl. The girl's statement consists of an accurate description of the women's house, The Franchise, but Mrs. and Miss Sharpe maintain it is a complete fabrication and they have never set eyes on the girl before. When a rag of a newspaper takes up the case, the "trial by tabloid" changes the situation dramatically and the power of the press is seen in its worst light.

    Josephine Tey is skilled at seasoning the settled routine of comfortable domesticity and unhurried business with the bitter herb of the ill-intentioned and the malicious. From Robert, who believes in "the ultimate triumph of Good", to others who are less than wholesome, she creates a piquant mixture which holds the reader's attention throughout. Her 1940s middle-England world is fully realised and seductively simple, so that when what is portrayed as a 'natural order' is threatened by those with baser motives, the result is a keen sympathy for the wronged and a desire for justice to be done. Happily, Miss Tey does not disappoint, and I shall definitely be reading more of her.

Freshly minted

     

     Further to the recent post about newly-launched Capuchin Classics, Simon has an interview with Emma Howard, the lady behind these mint green books, which you can read here.

Annal-ysing

     One of the great benefits of having this website - from a purely personal point of view - is the ability to revisit what I was doing on any given date. A glance at the kitchen calendar or a note in a diary tells a certain amount and reminds me of events, but having a fairly comprehensive and usually illustrated record of the everyday such as what I was cooking, making or reading, what was in flower in the garden, and so on is very valuable to me.

     Here, for example, is a picture taken this morning: our massive camellia just beginning to bloom. A quick browse through the archives tells me that last year it was around three weeks earlier (you can see it here), while a jump back to today's date in 2007 shows me how taken I was with a quite delightful book.

    I don't need anything other than my memory to tell me that today is my parents' wedding anniversary, so congratulations, Mum and Dad!

Willow pattern socks

     You may remember a few months ago I tried my hand at devising a sock pattern; the prototype was pictured here and the beginnings of 'the real thing' in this post. At last it's done, so here is the Willow Pattern Sock (click for details, which I hope are clear).   

     I shall try to get some better pictures later - the light is no good today to show the colours accurately, but these manage to give the general idea.   

The cuff is slightly deeper than in the original, and the willow leaf pattern recurs three times in the round, being repeated eight times down the front of the sock and four times at the sides.

I made the heel (Dutch or Horseshoe) and toe (Pointed) with reference to Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks, and the yarn is Posh Yarn Lucia (merino/cashmere) colour "Alto" - one skein would make longer socks than these if desired.

Larkin' about

     What better way is there to spend a bank holiday than reorganising the book collection?! This task was long overdue as things have been getting out of hand, bookwise. We have piles on the floor, hundreds double-stacked, and can't find what we want. Extra shelves are needed - another headache - but for now we are sorting what is already housed and reasonably well-organised, sending a load to the charity shop and consolidating a few things to make space elsewhere.

    Any gaps are purely temporary as we bring books from other parts of the house and arrange alphabetically within subjects. We've done essays, plays and poetry so far and our work has yielded one or two surprises.

     You may remember a post a while ago when we discussed bookmarks, and Mr. C. confessed that in extremis he had used an oatcake to keep his place. Baked goods and bus tickets are the least of it: as I was dusting his copy of Philip Larkin's Collected Poems I discovered his missing credit card. Appropriately, it was marking the page of a poem on age. 'Nuff said.

Quick note

      Just to follow up on the comments in the previous post, I can thoroughly recommend Can Any Mother Help Me? which I read last year and wrote about here. It's a fascinating book.

Good things

     To the left of me a dog lies sleeping - and I shall not disturb her - while to the right is this basket of delights which will most certainly be picked up and played with this afternoon. Three knitting projects, all ongoing and a pleasure to work, and two novels to be begun with great anticipation.

     I wish you a similarly enjoyable Easter afternoon - come to think of it, all mine lacks is chocolate!

Reading backwards

     I'm well on with Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit and enjoying it immensely. More on the book as a whole when I'm finished it, but for now an interesting idea:

Ms. Tharp is an extremely well read lady with a mind which is wide open to inspiration and finds links, patterns and connections everywhere, whether they occur in music, art, anthropology, myth, history, literature or her immediate surroundings. When she is creating a dance she looks to any and all of these for her themes or starting points, but once she has an idea she explores it thoroughly and one of the ways in which she does this is, as she calls it, "reading archaeologically". She reads backwards in time, starting with a contemporary work or an author's latest book and going on to something which predates it, and so on back to the earliest or original text.

    She says: "A lot of people read chronologically...They want to read along as the author grows from youth to maturity. I do it the other way, as if I'm conducting a dig. I start with where the author ended and finish where he started....I feel like a detective solving the mystery of how the writer got that way, not how the writer ended up....The surest method for finding a path through a maze is to start at the end and work your way back to the beginning."

    She has a number of other reading habits, e.g. "competitively", "for growth", "reading fat" (i.e. around a subject or a writer) and she has an addiction to the OED, but of reading 'backwards' she suggests applying this to a novelist's body of work and "you'll learn just as much about the author's recurring themes, philosophy and style... but you'll see them from an entirely different point of view."

     Anyone tempted ? I am - I'll just have to choose an author.

Signs of Spring

     Hawthorn at Tyninghame.

Sacred music

    Our recording of Bach's St. Matthew Passion features the wonderful Kathleen Ferrier. I'd hoped to find a link to her singing the aria "If my tears be unavailing", but could not. You can hear Julia Hamari's less distinctive recording of the piece here, or listen to Kathleen Ferrier herself sing "Have mercy, Lord, on me" from the Passion in this clip.

Filling up nicely

       Do you remember those school maths problems along the lines of: if it takes one hour to fill a bath with water running at x gallons per minute, how long would it take to fill the bath if the water ran at y gallons and the plug was only half in? My TBR pile could be the subject of a similar sum, in other words as fast as I can read them, more books arrive to augment the list so the net total remains the same, or even increases slightly (she said sotto voce). Recently arrived to cause an overflow are :

(from the left) The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp (to follow on from what we were talking about on this post). This book sounds fascinating and is for anyone, not just those who write or paint, etc., and typically of a dancer, Twyla Tharp's practical/creative methods are soundly based on discipline and preparation.

     Next - and my thanks to Orion for this - is a debut novel about fractured family relationships in modern Sri Lanka. V.V. Ganeshananthan's Love Marriage is "lyrical, passionate and wise" and uncovers one family's secrets through their country's unsettled history.

     To continue my "Dance" with Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones moves on Nick's story from where Casanova's Chinese Restaurant left it, and this volume marks the halfway point in the series.

     Lastly, a novel by Josephine Tey whose books I haven't read before, but as Becca has been speaking so highly of them I was keen to give them a try. Becca suggested beginning with The Franchise Affair and I've taken her advice. On page one we meet Robert Blair, solicitor, a man of highly civilised habits: "...it was typical of Blair, Hayward and Bennet that tea was no affair of a japanned tin tray and a kitchen cup. At 3.50 exactly on every working day Miss Tuff bore into his office a lacquered tray covered with a fair white cloth and bearing a cup of tea in blue-patterned china, and, on a plate to match, two biscuits; petit-beurre Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, digestive Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays."

    Much to look forward to with all these. This evening, however, it won't be a book I am glued to; it will be this!