Cornflower

A perfume through the music

    If you were listening to Petroc Trelawny at 6.30 this morning you'll have heard this lovely piece, Elena Kats-Chernin's Reinvention after J.S. Bach No. 1. It was new to me, and if it's unfamiliar to you too, I hope you'll enjoy it as I did.

    In this interview the composer talks about her use of Bach's original material as a starting point, becoming "more like a perfume or memory throughout the music rather than a set of rules or boundaries".

Wise words

      For those of us who blog, Victoria gives some sound advice based on her experience over 12 years at the excellent Bois de Jasmin.

Blue paper packages

    Here is a good idea from Cambridge Imprint (whose work I've mentioned before):

"Paper can be vulnerable. So often one buys a beautiful piece, uses maybe half of it for wrapping a particularly special present, then saves the rest rolled up where it gradually accumulates dents and bumps until it isn't quite so special any more...

With this problem in mind we have created a box of coordinating Special Small Papers. There are twenty four sheets of paper in each box, all with smaller, more delicate motifs than our usual patterns. Each has the ideal dimensions for wrapping a book or other modestly-sized present. There are twelve distinct papers, two sheets of each: one to give away and one to keep. The papers come in a sheaf of coordinating colours: either a collection of very pretty reds and pinks or a set of cooler, elegant blues. The box itself is simple and sturdy, with a lining that coordinates with the colour of the papers, and ideal for storing these papers and any other precious scraps you may have lying around, waiting for a worthy project."

    You can find the papers here; they are not cheap, but then nor is conventional wrapping paper much of which, as Cambridge Imprint note, goes unused. As someone who is always giving books as presents I'd find a lot of use for a set - no prizes for guessing which colour I'd choose.

Delicate

    Allium unifolium.

Vita's iris

    "It was the intricate markings of the bearded iris - landing lights for pollinators - as well as their unusual flower shape, petal texture and their intense, spicy exotic scents which for Vita put these in an early-summer class of their own. They are definitely flowers best peered into, nose and all. As she writes, 'No adjective, however lyrical, can exaggerate the soft magnificence of the moderns [the bearded irises], rivalled only by the texture of Genoese velvet. We have to go back to the Italian Renaissance to produce a flower as soft, as rich, as some of those velvets one used to buy for next to nothing in Venice and Rome, years ago, when one was young and scraps of velvet went cheap. Only the pansy, amongst other flowers, shares this particular quality.

    'Stately in their bearing, the irises look best on either side of a flagged path. The grey of the flat stone sets off both their colour and their contrasting height ... A straight path gives an effect of regimental parade, which suits the irises, whose leaves suggest uplifted swords.' "

    From Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst: The Creation of a Garden by Sarah Raven.

After the Italian taste

    

    Giving us a tour of his cottage in the delightful A Thatched Roof, Beverley Nichols notes Bach's Italian Concerto* on top of a pile of music on his study floor and comments thus:

    "Here are the qualities of the Italian Concerto. It is completely masculine. It is as virile a chant as ever echoes through the world. It is also completely positive - it sings the glory of God; there is no negation about it, no sad sighs, no doubting passages, for Bach wrote the first movement in the same mood that Shakespeare wrote that sonnet, whose opening lines are like a flare of trumpets:

    Full many a glorious morning have I seen / Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye ...

    The Italian concerto is morning music: it flatters the mountain tops. Perhaps it is because one is so often in the valleys that one loves it, and drinks so eagerly from its eternal source."

    Here then, on a very lovely May morning, is the piece played by András Schiff -

    If you haven't time for the whole thing, the first movement (under four minutes) should set you up for the day.

 

*'The first works of Bach to be published by himself were for the keyboard. Put out in groups beginning in 1731, they were amassed under the encompassing title Clavierübung, clavier being the generic term covering all keyed instruments, including organ, übung meaning exer­cise or practice. The second part of the Clavierübung was published in 1735 and testifies to the provincial Bach’s cosmopolitan inclinations, for the title page reads: “Keyboard Practice Consisting in a Concerto after the Italian Taste and an Overture after the French Manner for a Harpsichord with Two Manuals, Composed for Music Lovers, to Refresh Their Spirits, by Johann Sebastian Bach, Kapellmeister to His Highness the Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen and Director Chori Musici Lipsiensis.” '

Read more here.

Where the bee sucks

Wildflowers & Honeycomb Socks by Olivia Villareal,

in Twisted Fintch MCN 'Skye'

for Sew Sweet Violet's 'Bee Happy Make-Along'.

Note: I didn't have any cowslips.

Lost sheep

    This is a bit of a longshot, but has anyone lost this baby blanket?

    A friend found it the other day while out walking on the coast near Ipswich in the Shotley/Holbrook area.

    If you recognise it, please just comment or email me (link in the right hand sidebar) and I'll put you in touch with the finder so that it can be returned. It looks like a nice piece of work (this pattern?)* and was clean and dry when found.

*Edited to add: I've been through all the Ravelry projects for that pattern but this one with its little black sheep doesn't seem to be there.