Cornflower

Friday flowers - from our London correspondent

    Rose paid a visit to the Chelsea Flower Show last week and most kindly sent me some photographs for us all to enjoy. While the show is now over for another year, there are many images still available online, but this personal selection should brighten up what is - in this neck of the woods at least - a dull day.

    The cornflowers in the top picture come from Jekka McVicar's stand, as does this herb and flower petal tea - more cornflowers there!

    Speaking of tea, above is part of the floral display at the entrance to the tea marquee, while below you can see the tomatoes on the Waitrose/NFU stand in the Great Pavilion:

    Lastly, the Viking Cruises Norse Garden by Sadie May Stowell, and Rose vouches for the cornflowers in the planting there,

and here is the designer with her wonderful Viking ship.

    Rose tells me that among her show highlights were Charlotte Rowe's garden, No Man's Land, for ABF: The Soldiers' Charity, The Laurent Perrier Garden which one the award for Best Show Garden, and from the artisan gardens category, The Potter's Garden and the Japanese Togenkyo, A Paradise on Earth.

    Thank you, Rose!

Lit. knit

    Another of Jane Brocket's literary hot water bottle covers from The Gentle Art of Knitting   (details of the first, the one on the right, are here). This one has been made with four balls of grey-blue Rowan All Seasons Cotton - a gift with a Rowan subscription ages ago. It has turned out a little bigger than the Cashmerino Aran version but still fits fine.

    I've paired the covers with some suitable comfort reading, Mary Stewart's Airs Above the Ground, one of the favourites listed here.

    This is such a simple, relaxing knit that I'm very happy to have had requests for a couple more of the covers, and I'll be reverting to the Debbie Bliss yarn for both.

 

Edited to add: as I write, What Ewe Need have the Cashmerino Aran at 25% off the usual retail price.

Of hoolets and forestairs

Click to enlarge

    In St. Andrews yesterday I came upon The Gruffalo in Scots,

stone 'hoolets' peering down from their South Street perch,

and a forestair in North Street - if you've read Shirley McKay's Hue & Cry you'll have seen references to the forestair at the cloth merchant's shop.

Friday flowers ...

    ... for a wedding anniversary!

    Thank you, Mr. C., you know my taste so well,

and thank you Rogue Flowers

for a lovely bouquet.

What's on

   

    Another post in the occasional and informal Cornflower Guide to What's On, and this one is for music buffs:

    At Edinburgh's Queen's Hall on the 25th. of June, Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach - Sir John Eliot Gardiner in conversation with Professor John Butt.

    Click on the first link above and scroll down for a short video by Sir John Eliot on the glories of Bach, and if you'd like to know about his 'other' life as an organic farmer, read this article.

Dog star

    The Agatha Christie biography I'm reading is fascinating all round, but one of the aspects of the author's character which comes out strongly is her love of dogs - she adored them "for their goodness and loyalty, the qualities she valued above all others", and they were her steadfast companions throughout her life and a source of inspiration, as this video by Dame Agatha's grandson, Mathew Prichard, shows.

    If you're interested, there's a great deal more to discover on the Agatha Christie website.

PS And see also: A saint among animals.

To the point

    Do you have a preference regarding knitting needles: make, material, type? I ask this because the more things I knit the more discerning/fussy I seem to become, and as with pens (about which I am extremely particular) and kitchen knives, say, the more I find the right tools enhance the making process.

    For both the kerchief and the hot water bottle cover (that's a second one under way above) I've bought Addi lace needles because I wanted sharp points, and I'm liking them very much, similarly the Karbonz I used for a recent pair of socks.

    I notice that knitting podcasts often discuss needles as a topic of great interest and definite personal preference - for most podcasters, it seems, it's not a case of nipping into John Lewis or the equivalent and picking up a pair of grey aluminium needles in the appropriate size, it's now a matter of cable 'memory', optimum joins, ratio of tapered part to needle tip, length of tip and degree of sharpness, so I'm hearing hitherto unknown names such as Signature, ChiaoGoo, DyakCraft and HiyaHiya, and even becoming aware of the difference needle material makes to gauge and thus the dimensions of the finished garment.

    Are you choosy about your needles? Do you always resort to tried and trusted types, or is getting the right circumference the only thing which matters to you?

Cosy crime

    Four years ago I was knitting a cabled hot water bottle cover. Despite being beyond the half way mark, I put it down for some reason and didn't pick it up again until recently when I took a hard look and decided I should have gone up a needle size or two for it seemed to be on the scrimp side.

    Noticing that Jane Brocket's Literary Hotties pattern in The Gentle Art of Knitting calls for the very yarn I was using (Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran), I decided to unravel my work and start again, and I'm glad I did for the results are much, much better.

    Simple garter stitch with the yarn held double makes for a very soft and snuggly cover and a quick and straightforward knit; I diverged from the pattern only at the neck where I worked fewer rows than prescribed but still sufficient for ample coverage.

    Jane explains in the book how her covers come to have literary associations, hence the picture of mine with my current reading, Laura Thompson's biography Agatha Christie: An English Mystery. Very cosy crime!

 

    (Click here for a lovely quote from Dame Agatha herself on what one might call 'the gentle art of becoming the best-selling novelist of all time'.)

Friday flowers

    Wild garlic and the perennial cornflower.

An opera of colour

    Let's brighten the mood and watch this short film about the Kaffe Fassett exhibition currently on at The American Museum, Bath.

    You'll need your sunglasses!

(Kaffe 2014: The Colourful World of Kaffe Fassett from Animated Magic on Vimeo.)

    Readers in Scotland may like to know that KF's work is going to be on show in Aberdeen over the summer.

The world is a poorer place today

    R.I.P. Stephen.

Full steam ahead

    The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief, coming along nicely.

Well put, well said

    - Alice's "floating back on the next tide".

    - William Nicholson on 'catching' spring.

    - Lucille's "social qualities of flowers".

    - Stephen Hough on practising for lovers.

    - Annie's "orchards invisible".

Cabin socks - the second pair

    My second pair of Cabin Socks is finished. The first pair - you can find them here - were made with DK yarn, which is what the pattern specifies, but for these I used sock-weight yarn (Yarn Yard 'Clan', 100% merino) and upped the stitch count from 48 to 60 accordingly.

    This is a super pattern - it's from Clara Parkes' The Knitter's Book of Wool - and I am very pleased with the results in both yarn weights; the thick alpaca is so soft and comfy, and the finer merino has produced a nicely dense fabric with plenty of body.

    I mentioned before that there is one point in the pattern where you have to be careful if you've changed the stitch count, and I've added that note to my Ravelry project page in the hope that it's helpful to other knitters.

The bluebird of happiness

    A little bit fiddly but fun to make, and fragrant now that it's finished as I used dried lavender along with some fibre for the stuffing.

    You'll find the pattern here.