Cornflower

Some sewing

    I mentioned I'd bought fabric the other day, and now I've turned some of it into a sleeve/cover for my iPad. I made this up as I went along, and while it has worked well and I'm pleased with the finished object, I might modify it slightly another time.



    I used navy linen for the outside, thin cotton wadding for the middle layer to give it some padding, and Liberty Tana Lawn in William Morris's Lodden design for the lining and the trim.



    As you see, it opens flat and has a central strip of fabric to hold the iPad in place, then the sides are folded in and it is secured with a button and loop.



    It was great fun to make, especially as I was winging it and I haven't sewn in ages (it's been so long that I needed the manual to remind me how to thread the machine), and the lawn is lovely to work with. On to the next project!

Books and cakes - 59

    Food to go with The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim's charming 1922 novel which the Cornflower Book Group have been reading and are talking about here - well, there's Mellersh's apricot tart, the nuts over which Mrs. Fisher is inclined to sit long at the dinner table, and there's always pasta:

    "Francesca from the sideboard watched Mrs. Fisher's way with maccaroni gloomily, and her gloom deepened when she saw her at last take her knife to it and chop it small.

    Mrs. Fisher really did not know how else to get hold of the stuff .... Years of practice, she reflected, chopping it up, years of actual living in Italy, would be necessary to learn the exact trick. Browning managed maccaroni wonderfully. She remembered watching him one day when he came to lunch with her father, and a dish of it had been ordered as a compliment to his connection with Italy. Fascinating, the way it went in. No chasing round the plate, no slidings off the fork, no subsequent protrusions of loose ends - just one dig, one whisk, one thrust, one gulp, and lo, yet another poet had been nourished."

    The book's setting has inspired the choice of baked goods this month, as San Salvatore, the castle in which the ladies spend their enchanted April, is in fact Castello Brown in Portofino in the Italian province of Genoa, the castle being a fort which was bought in 1867 by Montague Yeats Brown (then English consul in Genoa) who turned it into a delightful villa, and so I've made a Genoese sponge.

    The recipe I used comes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Every Day and is also to be found here, but instead of fruit, I've filled it with ricotta beaten with caster sugar and lemon zest. I hope Lotty and her friends would approve.

Portrait of a cornflower

    The cornflower tile from the panel Flora's Retinue (a.k.a. Flora's Train) by Walter Crane, made c. 1900. You can see the other tiles here.

    Around the same time, William de Morgan was also putting cornflowers on tiles, but I much prefer Crane's, and then a few years later C.F.A Voysey - whose work I love - used the cornflower in a textile design (pity about the crow).

Blame the Bee

    Thanks to the Sewing Bee*, I seem to have acquired a couple of modest-sized pieces of fabric with small projects from this book in mind, though I suspect this is a slippery slope for the more I look, the more I fancy ....

*Very glad to hear there is to be another series and that it will run over six episodes rather than four, and if you haven't seen the programme but would like a quick rundown, Simon has an entertaining one here.

Sleeveless

    Progress on our panel of the Great Tapestry of Scotland: when last I had it this is how it looked, and now as you see here Flora's jacket is almost complete with just the one sleeve to do.

    Details of the rocks and of Sandy's jacket stitched by other members of our group:

Kaffe on needlepoint

    Another video with Kaffe Fassett to accompany the current exhibition of his work in London, and this new one from Ehrman Tapestry is about his needlepoint, particularly some of his larger commissions.

    Above is Kaffe's design Silky the Cow, stitched by me, and hanging slightly lopsidedly on our kitchen wall.

The late show

    The first of the camellias has just come into flower. I thought this was the latest they have ever been, but 2010 seems to hold the record.



    By the way, have you heard about this experiment to see what type of music makes plants thrive?

Textile trail

    This Liberty Tana Lawn design, Midnight Floral Eve*, caught my eye when used to make humble potholders over at the Purl Bee a couple of months ago. I can't seem to find it on Liberty's own site, but what they do list is what inspired it. Click here and scroll right down to the bottom and you'll see it mentioned in the Botanical Garden collection. It comes from a large botanical painting, The Herbarium Specimen, by Rachel Pedder-Smith which "brought together art and science, depicting one specimen to represent each flowering plant family painted in the order of a contemporary DNA-based classification system". You can see details of Rachel's exquisite work here (and buy postcards!).

*It also comes in an equally pretty more summery version.

Mice at work

    Since we're talking about sewing, here are one or two of the beautiful illustrations from Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester, a favourite of mine,

and if you've never seen the excellent animated version, the first part - with links to subsequent parts - is here, and let the story be a lesson to us not to entrust the shopping to a cat!

    Above: cornflowers on the mayor's wedding waistcoat, but "no more twist".

Sewing off

    The Seamstress, Stanley Reed, 1941.

    Anyone watching The Great British Sewing Bee? (I love Patrick's suit.)

Harking back

    With today's sad news from the world of music it seems appropriate to hark back to this post.

Roast and toast

   

    I made red pepper and rosemary spread (recipe here*), to have with toasted sourdough bread at lunch - it is very good indeed, and I'll certainly make it again, next time with a spot of olive oil added and maybe a tiny bit more salt.



*To roast the peppers I give them about five minutes, skin side down on the Aga boiling plate, and they are ready to peel straightaway - easily done with a sharp knife, and no need for plastic bags, etc.

From country church to Edward Cullen

    This is Abercorn Parish Church, tucked away to the west of Edinburgh near the Firth of Forth, and here you'll find a summary of the beautiful little church's history.



    This blocked up south doorway dates from around 1100, but the site is believed to have been sacred ground since the late 400s, later becoming a monastery and bishop's residence (mentioned by the Venerable Bede) thought to have been founded by the monks of Lindisfarne.



    The Norman arch has been echoed in this Victorian version over the west door (the carving is very crisp).


    In the tiny museum adjacent to the church are these stones, evidence of its history.



    The wheel cross-stone with twelve-petalled flower is believed to have been the cover for a burial casket for an important personage (12th. century). Above it, top right, is a Viking hog back burial stone of the same period. The cross-shaft fragment, top left, dates from the 7th. century.                                                    

    A note in the museum tells us: "After the synod of Whitby in 664, Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed Trumwin bishop of the Picts at Abercorn. After the battle of Nectanesmere near Forfar in 685, where Brude the king of the Picts defeated the Angles, Bede records that Trumwin and his monks fled south to Whitby."

    Coincidentally, after visiting the church yesterday I watched the BBC Four series Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places, episode one of which - Ruins - features Whitby Abbey and traces the cultural chain which links this 7th. century Benedictine house to .... Twilight (go on, listen to a bit of Muse, why don't you?)!

I have never begun a novel with more misgiving ...

    "... If I call it a novel it is only because I don't know what else to call it. I have little story to tell and I end neither with a death nor a marriage. Death ends all things and so is the comprehensive conclusion of a story, but marriage finishes it very properly too and the sophisticated are ill-advised to sneer at what is by convention termed a happy ending. It is a sound instinct of the common people which persuades them that with this all that needs to be said is said... But I leave my reader in the air. This book consists of my recollections of a man with whom I was thrown into close contact only at long intervals, and I have little knowledge of what happened to him in between. I suppose that by the exercise of invention I could fill the gaps plausibly enough and so make my narrative more coherent; but I have no wish to do that. I only want to set down what I know of my own knowledge."

    That is the opening of our book group's May book. All the details are here, and I hope you'll join us to read and talk about it.

(The image is from the cover and is a detail from The Miramar at Cannes fashion plate by Leon Benigni from Femina, 1928.)

Stormy blues and waterwitches

    Winding a skein of yarn for the next round of the scarf, I stopped to see if I could capture the range of colours and shades - reds, purples and turquoise fleck the blues - which go to make Storm Petrel. My picture doesn't really do it justice, so have a look here instead and click on 'story' for what's behind the name. There are more beautiful pictures of yarns and the natural landscape which inspired them here.