Baby Birthdays - part 1; or Items from the Archive

Quite amazingly it transpires that my niece, Clarissa, is 1.  I'm really not entirely sure what happened to the last year, particularly as I haven't yet got round to blogging about the sampler that I made for her as a birth gift.  So, in honour of her 1st birthday, here is the sampler, a year late.

This was my first cross stitch project in a long time and my first ever sampler (there's an unfinished Beatrix Potter squirrel cross stitch lurking somewhere at my parents' house, disgarded about 15 years ago.  I'd happily finish it, if it ever surfaced).  This pattern came from Moira Blackburn who has a really lovely collection of classic sampler patterns.  The historical goon in me appreciates the fact that old samplers often missed the letter 'I' because 'I' and 'J' were interchangeable.  The sampler that I did for Clarissa follows that rule - I wonder if she will ever notice!

I enjoyed working on the project.  It did take months and months to do, though.  And, in the process, it became very well travelled, visiting Hawaii and New York with me during the spring and summer of 08.  I got lots done while staying in NYC as I tried to keep out of my host's way in the evening so worked on the sampler in my room whilst watching endless 'Law and Order: SVU' (very addictive and a good contrast to days spent in the library).  I'd love to try a larger sampler at some point but it has become increasingly clear to me that the reason my grandmother was such an embroidery/tapestry goddess was that she didn't work and had all the time in the world!  I hope she'd be a little bit proud of my efforts, though.

Summer fruits

Some recent fruits of the garden...

'Black Beauty' aubergine

Brandywine tomato with assorted (smaller) others behind

 

A cat 'growing' in an empty bit of vegetable bed (can't you just see the vitamin D production underway?)

Soggy Early August

Despite the best efforts of the British summer, the garden has done some growing. The view above is the one that greets us as we come down our back stairs and open the garden door. The weather was very overcast when I took these this morning but the flowers still manage to shine. And the wet weather goes some way to explain the untrimmed grass!

The flowerbed at the back is looking very bright. I'm looking forward to the clematis which I've grown around the tree stump coming into flower, although that may not happen until next year. Amongst the flowers are 3 small 'Tophat' blueberry plants. These have not exactly yielded a bumper crop. The five solitary blueberries still look lovely, though! I'm going to re-pot them over the winter and move them to the other end of the garden as I suspect they need more sun.The veg bed is doing well. From this view you can see runner beans with butternut squash and a small courgette plant in front of it. Some cabbages, giant purple sprouting broccoli, then beyond that tomatoes. There are also chard and leeks which you can't see, plus lots of salad and french beans in pots near the house.
The runner beans are 'Liberty' and I think the red against the green looks wonderful, even in such flat light. Hope they taste as good!
The new neighbours have been nice, and very impressed by the work we did in the garden. One of the women lived here a few years ago, so knows what it looked like before! She has grown some tomatoes on her side (you can see some of them in the far left of the picture at the top of this post). Apparently, they have amazing beans in Bulgaria and she has promised to bring me some for next year (although, given the quick turnover of people in the downstairs flat, who knows how long she'll stick around, but I hope she does - it's great to have someone take an interest).

Come in to the garden

For a joyous 4 months at the beginning of this year we were blessed with an empty ground floor flat. This meant that, apart from not being disturbed by noisy neighbours, we also had the garden to ourselves.

To recap, this is what we found when we bought the house in 2007:

After some cutting and clearing last year, the addition of a new fence and the introduction of a raised bed, things began to look much better.

However, I had been unsure how much work to do on the garden since it is technically shared by the downstairs flat as well. Our last neighbours took no interest in it at all. Thus, whilst we had it to ourselves I decided to try and improve it to the point that we could take pride in it and, when we come to sell, it might not actually put people off! Plus, I thought if we made a show of caring for the garden the new neighbours might too.

So in January Miles and I with stoic help from my Dad pulled down all the overhanging creeping vine and chopped down as much as we could of the dead tree. Which left us with this:

We then spent a couple of weeks burning that giant pile in our new incinerator bin - very exciting!

Then this spring I've been adding in more flowers and introduced a container garden on the raised shelf at the back (it is filled with soggy gravel from its previous life as a pond/bog so I thought it was probably easier to put things on top rather than to try and clear it out. Miles lugged 3 enormous paving slabs up and down the stairs then across the garden which are what the middle pots are now sitting on). This is how it's looking this morning in the sunshine that followed the rain.

There is now much-needed colour in the garden which makes a huge difference. I'm planning to add more pots and plants throughout the year. The azalea and pansies are the stars at the moment:

Like every other gardener out there, I'm keen to get going with the major vegetable planting. Salads etc are doing well but I'm waiting to let my collection of triffids (or should that be tomato plants?) outside. Currently they are on our dining table wondering if the humans will make a good dinner...

Cardie conundrum

I am really excited about my Buttony cardie. The yarn is lovely, the fit is good and it's going to be great for the kind of proper wintery weather we've been having lately. All was going well until, half-way down the second arm I ran out of yarn. I am really baffled by this as I KNOW I had enough yarn. I originally bought 7 skeins (700g) of this yarn and the sweater only just weighs 500g so problem one - where are the other skeins??

I turned my yarn storage boxes upside down at New Year and couldn't see hide nor hair of them. So, I did what any sensible person would do, I ordered 2 more skeins. The yarn is from handpaintedyarn.com so has to come all the way from Uruguay. This took a few weeks, then, on Tuesday morning the package finally arrived, so I wound myself a ball and started up knitting again.

Now, the moral of the story so far is two-fold: 1) don't lose your yarn in the first place and 2) don't assume hand-dyed yarn from September 2007 will match the same colour-way dyed in late 2008, plus, don't knit half a sleeve, sitting on the sofa in bad light watching telly as it may well be days before you notice this little problem!

So I find myself here:
with a half a sleeve (on the right) darker and less varigated. This flash-bleached picture gives you an idea of how much the two different dye-lots contrast.
The problem is too pronounced to just let it go, so my question is, what do I do?

Do I have yet another look for the original skeins? (Did that this morning. Result: no skeins, but I did find the docking wire for my Zen and my mobile phone holder!)
Or, do I shorten both sleeves and make them 3/4 length? (I'm sure this would look fine but it makes the jumper much less practical)
Or, do I rip back both sleeves (boo hoo) and knit them again, doing one round with the original yarn and one round with the new yarn and trust that they'll blend together (and not look too odd next to the colour of the body)?
Or, do I email the suppliers and see if they'll dye some more for me (and thus give up on wearing the jumper this year since I'll have to wait ages for the delivery)?

Any advice greatly appreciated!

Puff Daddy in da House

For my friend Noel's birthday present I made a lovely, quick gift - the Puff Daddy. It is a little scarf which fastens by passing a large pompom through a keyhole opening.
I made it with two strands held together, one of Colinette Graffiti in Velvet Plum and one a very boring purple 100% wool aran weight yarn that I had lurking in the stash. The scarf is very warm as, thanks to the giant i-cord construction, it comes out double thickness. Noel seems very pleased with it and has even modeled it for her office! Thanks Noel for the pictures.

I can't wait to do another one: I think I can improve upon it by using some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran for the second strand, which would make the scarf softer overall. I also saw an excellent mega version on Ravelry, where the size had been increased to make a large neck warmer rather than a scarflet.

Picture by Yarnzillaonline.

This is a great project for this time of year - you can make it in one sitting so it will keep you warm as near to instantaneously as knitting will allow!

Happy New Year!

The New Year, full of promises... Like finishing this Buttony jumper, and posting 4 months of backlogged projects...

I blame having to go to an office everyday for the chronic disruption to blogging service.

Anyway, a Happy New Year to all from me and my sleepy cat.

Handkerchief Corners Quilt

I realised that I've been keeping this blog for just over a year, so happy blogging birthday to me! I started last year with the quilt I made for Dominic and Carolyn's wedding. It was the first, and so far, only, full-sized quilt I've made (despite many good intentions!). I had, however, made a lap quilt beforehand. Thinking back, it came to me that I'd never photographed it so here we have, well over a year late, my Handkerchief Corners quilt.
It was initially going to be full-size but I thought I'd better learn how to bind and quilt somehow before embarking on the quilt for Dominic and Carolyn so I stopped at lap size in order to get it finished. It now measures 106cm square.
I took these pictures in the garden on a very bright day, just before I went to New York. In actuality the colours are a little richer than they appear here - a combination of the sun and my bog-standard camera conspired to bleach them. I love the backing fabric. I'm not sure what it's called - I bought it with lots of other retro 30s fabrics in Branson, Missouri two years ago.
As you can see, Emily appreciates the burrowing potential of a folded quilt! She deserves a special mention today for having been a brave kitty and making it through her neutering operation with minimum fuss. She is back home, and, having got past the wobbly stage, is now in fully-fledged-chemical-madness-stage which involves knocking over all food and water bowls and then marching repeatedly over your humans, purring all the time but never settling down. It doesn't help that she isn't allowed to go out for a while - the vet said to keep her in for EIGHT days. I don't think the carpets (or the cat, or the humans) will be able to stand that! At least the madness is packaged in such cuteness:Going back to the topic of weddings - I heard today that my wonderful bridesmaid Abby is getting married (about time too!). I'm so thrilled for her and Misha. I wonder if this means more commemorative quilting is called for...

Wonderful Town!

I made it back from New York in one rather sweaty piece and am subsequently delighted with the Typical British Summer we have been experiencing for the past week! Since most of my time in New York was spent at various libraries I didn't manage nearly as many cultural activities as I would have liked.

I do have a couple of good recommendations, though: on the museum front, the Merchant's House Museum is worth a visit. A preserved 19th century home with recreated interiors and an especially good kitchen - water pump, a full cooking range and a pie-safe (pictured below) - I love all that stuff!

Also the Folk Art Museum was excellent - very varied and interesting. This detail is from an incredible papercut, made by a prisoner in the 1830s.

If you can catch it before 14th September, the Asa Ames sculpture exhibition at the Folk Art is really remarkable too, displaying amazing wooden portrait sculptures (good pictures on their website to give you a feel). Also, if you're in New York, definitely stop at Blossom in Chelsea, an excellent gourmet vegetarian restaurant (or it's sister branch, Cafe Blossom uptown): I took my very carnivorous host and she was impressed!

I stocked up on lots of ideas for the next visit as well - Governor's Island, the Cloisters, Morris Jumel Mansion, the Rockefeller observation deck, Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the Highline Park (once it's finished) etc etc... Oh, and obviously, many more trips to Moo Shoes (they have live-in cats!) and Purl (where, just as everyone would have you believe, you DO feel like you've died and gone to tasteful-craft heaven). Can't wait to get back with Miles for a proper holiday, maybe 'autumn in New York' next time to avoid the heat, though!

A Man Named Pearl

I'm currently in New York doing some research at the Schomburg Center. And it is HOT. The Center is actually quite cool, but outside it is boiling. It was 29C at 10.30PM last night: yes, it was basically as hot as the hottest we ever get in London AT NIGHT! Crazy weather. However, I've not seen kids playing with fire hydrants yet, but I'm keeping an eye out!

I'm staying with my friend Janet in Brooklyn and last night, at the insistence of her sister, we went to see A Man Named Pearl. It's a lovely little film about a self-taught topiary artist, Pearl Fryar, from a tiny town in South Carolina. We got a chance to meet him before the screening and he was very charming and interesting. His work is incredibly elegant and beautiful, and a true testament to the value of finding what you do well and having fun with it. Also, it's amazing to learn that most of the plants in his garden were salvaged from the dump behind his local garden centre. It made me think of all those crafts people out there producing beautiful work in so many mediums. There's a nice post here about a visit to the gardens and some great pictures. If you get a chance to see the movie I recommend it - a real one-off.

A Fishy Tale

So, on Friday night I was walking home from the tube station about 11.15 - I rounded the corner into our road and something caught my eye on the street. It was a small fish tank with one dead goldfish and one live one. It seemed that someone had just dumped the tank (maybe because they freaked out at the dead fish?). Anyway, I couldn't leave the poor surviving one, so I enlisted Miles' help, and he carried the tank home. We flushed the dead one down the toilet (the appropriate funeral method for goldfish, I believe) and cleaned out the tank for the remaining chap. We had no fish food (obviously) but I found out online that fish are meant to like lettuce so I tried some nice organic stuff but did not meet with success. Fish food from B&Q on Saturday morning proved more popular. I had been thinking of contacting the RSPCA but Miles had the inspired thought that our sister-in-law, Carolyn, had mentioned that she'd like to get a goldfish. And that if she had a fish she'd have to call him 'Ramesses', because a small fish could walk/swim taller with such a grand name! Anyway, we asked, and she and Dominic said they would take 'Ram O'Seas' (as Dominic excellently renamed him). Unfortunatley they couldn't come till today so we had to hide the fish from Emily for a while. I ended up putting him on our chest of drawers in the bedroom as Emily isn't normally allowed in there, but, given the tank had no filter, the water began to smell really quickly! Well, we managed to keep Emily at bay, although she'd worked out something fishy (sorry!) was going on by today (in an unguarded moment I found her sitting on Miles' pillow, smacking her lips...). Dominic and Carolyn bought a spiffing new tank for Ram O'Seas and came to collect him this evening. So there is a happy end to the story of the rescue fish, and here he is in his new home playing with his own reflection.

Kitchen Cloths

After some experimentation I think I've found a fool-proof kitchen cloth pattern. Over the last couple of years I've made a selection of cloths for my mother and she has declared this pattern the most effective - and Mum's cloths take lots of punishment so if she says they do their stuff, they do!

I made this pair of green and pink cloths as a gift for a friend.

And this pink cloth for my kitchen. The pattern lends itself well to stripes and the pink cloth is made from a varigated and a solid pink yarn in alternating 2-row stripes. All the cloths are made from Peaches and Cream cotton.

I found the stitch pattern in my Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework.

Woven Stitch - Double crochet stitches worked in single chain spaces.

Unit of 3 ch plus 3

Row 1: miss 2 ch, 1 dc, *1 ch, miss 1 ch, 1 dc*, 2 ch, turn

Row 2: *1 dc in ch sp of previous row, 1 ch*, 1 dc in the turning ch sp, 2 ch, turn

Rep rom Row 2

Happy crocheting and happy cleaning!

Digging for Victory

This was our garden in March. Neater and tidier but still suffering from the broken fence problem. Having finally plucked up the courage to speak to our neighbour on the right, Sandee, I discovered that she'd been thinking about getting her Dad to repair the fence anyway. And repair it he did - he made a fantastic job of it, a million times better than Miles and I would have managed on our own. And they refused to accept any money from us! Sweet, lovely people.

The installing of the new fence meant I could finally start my vegetable plot. After much sweat and toil I managed to make a very rudimentary raised bed and felt, frankly, very pleased with myself! So here we have the veg plot and new fence at the beginning of this month.
After a halcyon period during which I convinced myself that some pellets from the garden centre would be enough to deter the cats, I gave in and installed some more forceful defences. Thank you, chicken wire.I have planted a few different things: (working backwards from the foreground) various salad, tomatoes, beetroot, peas, perpetual spinach, one pumpkin and two courgettes (under the cloches), pak choi and radishes. My containers of herbs and salad are doing well, with the mint and rocket trying to out-do each other. The little cat on the doormat is Belle, Emily's friend from downstairs and one of the many local cats who think that my raised bed is a giant toilet!
I'm also trying some chillies and aubergine but they're not looking very impressive. I planted them as plugs nearly two months ago and this is as far as they've got. Oh well, at least the cats leave them alone so maybe there's hope yet!

Emily Entertainment

After a request for some Emily updates here we have a selection of illustrative portraits (which I am finally able to load having found my camera cable. Hurrah!).

As a growing cat, Emily divides her time between attacking things

and sleeping.

The purple cushion is her joint-favourite spot (the other is on Miles' desk, tucked behind the curtain). She is also good at helping me work. Here she is sitting in a surprisingly human position and looking rather sleepy .

This pose, with the crossed paws, reminds me of those primary school portraits they make you have. She should be leaning on a prop pillar!

The Ginger Giant or Kitty Kapers - part 2

Not much has been going on here apart from work, work, work. Now punctuated by sickness. Boo.

One of my many recent work things was an academic conference at which I had the excellent fortune to meet Maura of Paper Bluebird. After hearing rumours that she and a colleague were looking for fabric shopping opportunities in London, I felt like the bat logo (or pincushion logo, I guess) had been flashed on the sky and jumped to their aid! Once we got down to talking fabric I discovered that, apart from being a fascinating scholar with an interest in Victorian suburbia, she was a craft blogger who follows many of my favourite crafters too. Ah, serendipity. So lovely to make a new friend who straddles two worlds!

Away from the internet and back home, having Emily the kitten is making everything brighter. She is currently helping me mark A-level scripts by eating my biro. Being so cat focused recently, Miles pointed out that I really should share with the world the truth about Pip, my parents' ginger cat. He has been the cute kitten in the photo on my blog banner since I started writing lechatlunatique last year.




However, he is no longer a pip. He is, in fact, the Ginger Giant! Seen here with my father as a point of comparison!



He has truly become one of the biggest cats I have ever seen! Despite being the size of a small dog he is still utterly gorgeous and one of the most sweet-natured cats you will ever, ever meet. He continues to be devoted to his sister and her daughters, and takes his uncle role very seriously. He can be seen here with Emily's sister, Primrose. It's all too cute!

Kitty Kapers

Please say hello to our new four-legged friend, Emily.

Our big excitement on getting back from holiday was adopting one of Agnes' kittens, so last Sunday Miles and I went over to my parents' house and collected little Emily. She was good as gold on her tube and bus journeys, even going to sleep (I've never known any cat to do that in a carry basket!).

This week she has made herself thoroughly at home, and then this weekend she's started to explore the garden too. Although, like any kitten she spends most of her time bouncing around, scrambling up furniture and pouncing on anything that moves, she has also shown a propensity for curling up next to me while I'm reading on the sofa. Too cute!

Aloha from Hawaii

Ok, so we've actually been back from Hawaii for over a week, it's just taken me a ridiculously long time to do any posting. The island of Oahu was incredibly beautiful - just like all those pictures and movies would have you believe. We were very fortunate to be staying near what had to be the loveliest beach on the island, Kailua Beach, pictured top. From Kailua the bus took us into Honolulu in about 45 minutes. These shots are just a few from around Honolulu and Waikiki.

The flora and fauna were incredible - as just one little example, the plumeria flowers look and smell wonderful, and locals really do wear them in their hair!

A shop in Chinatown selling fresh leis.

On the craft front, there were a few examples of Hawaiian quilts in the art museum we visited.

The top fabric is cut like a paper snowflake then appliqued onto the base fabric. Typically the quilts are in bold, two-tone colours, with shapes often representing natural forms. The quilting is done in tiny, closely packed rows which echo the cut-out design. One description I came across pointed out that Hawaiian clothing did not generate scraps in the same way that 19th century American clothing design did, hence the Hawaiians did not develop comparable patchwork techniques. The echo quilting technique is incredibly time-consuming, with some designs taking up to a year to do. A possible explanation for this is that the quilts are only ever decorative - the crafts people did not have the pressing deadline of a snowy New England winter to work towards and thus could afford to take as much time as they liked!

One of my top recommendations would be Shangri-La, a breathtaking house built in the 1930s near Diamond Head by Doris Duke, an American heiress, as a home for her collection of Islamic art. This picture above just shows the pool house!

Looking at that view everyday wouldn't be difficult! If only I had a magnate's fortune!

Married!

The wedding was beautiful! In the end it went by in a flash. Wish we could do it all again.

One of the most impressive elements were the beautiful bouquets and buttonholes produced by the bridal party under the tutleage of chief bridesmaid Becca. Close ups on the bridal bouquet and one of the bridesmaids' posies:

We bought the flowers from the New Covent Garden Flower Market on the Friday morning then made them up into bouquets on the Saturday. The making was so much fun and made the flowers feel so personal. And they smelled amazing! It's a shame there aren't more opportunities in life for playing with lovely flowers!

Happy Belgian Easter

I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend. These pictures are from my trip to Bruges last weekend (to buy booze for the wedding, which is now only 5 days away!). Obviously the Belgians are all about good Easter chocolate!

Bruges itself is best described as 'chocolate box' - very picturesque but also lived in (you can see a child's sandpit in the left-hand corner of this picture).

We visited Ypres and some of the WW1 sites as part of the weekend too - as you'd imagine, it was all incredibly poignant. This is Tyne Cot Cemetery.

And this is the Menin Gate in Ypres.

I didn't spot much of crafting interested except lots of impressive lace. A few things that did catch my eye, though: this great fabric used to cover a shop window undergoing a revamp (it's called 'Gourmandise' by Pierre Frey),

this lovely Pinocchio tape measure my Mum purchased;

and this excellent little storage chest.

What is it with European haberdasheries and lingerie in the same store? I've noticed that in France too - not very welcoming for any stray male crafters!

Flowers from the Estate

I am disproportionately excited about these daffodils because they are the first blooms from the Rodway-Eady estate. Ok, so, the term 'estate' is a little grand for our garden but I'm aiming for big things. This was how the garden stood last November when I spent about 3 hours clearing a makeshift flowerbed (with only hand-tools, I hasten to add):




The extent of the plant growth over the rest of the garden gives you a feel of what I'm up against! We share our tiny urban garden with our neighbours on the ground floor - the sink which you can glimpse in the far left hand corner is theirs. Lovely. They only use the garden for hanging their washing and sitting outside to smoke in the summer. Given that they clearly have no designs on garden design (as it were), I feel more than entitled to plant whatever I like. I'm sticking to our side for the time being, though. At the moment this is the best view.




I've installed a compost bin at the end, under the tree, and have daffodils and irises in the flower patch (there should be crocuses too, but the squirrel has munched them down to nothing!). Nearest the camera is a planter with parsley, thyme and rosemary. As you can see, the major problem is the broken fence. The plan is to replace this once we get back from Hawaii at the end of next month, and to raise the bed so I can plant vegetables to see us through the summer. I have ordered some shade-loving plants to put in the built-up concrete bed at the back which will hopefully give the garden a little more shape. For now, I'm enjoying the amazing smell from the daffodils - so much stronger than any shop-bought ones. I feel positively green-fingered!

Kitten update

The kittens have been coming on in leaps and bounds (well, mostly wobbly crawls and whines at the moment!). Here they are on 24th February:


and again on 6th March:

Obviously, they're still doing much the same things - feeding and sleeping in a kitten pile, but they have got much bigger and have opened their eyes. They'll be bouncing out of that box in no time. We have reviewed the gender situation and discovered that my original readings were wrong - in fact there is one boy and three girls (my career as a veterinarian crashes and burns before it's even started!). In the picture above, the boy is second from the right - he is the darkest and biggest. Since discovering that it is a brother and three sisters, the names coming into consideration are, obviously, Branwell, Charlotte, Emily and Anne (after the Brontës), or Chekhov's three sisters, Olga, Masha and Irina (the brother is generally called Prozorov - more a dog name than a cat name, I feel!). My current vote is for the Brontës but we shall wait and see.

Pip is still rather wary of them but is happy that Agnes occasionally wants to come out of the box and play with him in the garden - they're only really kittens themselves (Agnes turned one yesterday and Pip's birthday will be on Good Friday). Here they are on Thursday evening, back to one of their favourite positions - lounging on the breakfast bar (with Pip merrily disregarding the presence of Mum's laptop):


I'm trying to picture the poor old breakfast bar when 6 cats want to get on it!

Clever Cat

The beautiful and very clever Agnes had her kittens last Saturday! There are four, two boys and two girls. Three are dark with assorted markings, but seem to be getting a little lighter already, while one looks very much like her mother. The names are still a work in progress. At the moment Dickens is offering some inspiration, as he has done for Thornton Rodway cats for many years, although the second source, Brambly Hedge books, are coming in a strong second.

Pip seems to be somewhat confused by the whole process, understandably. However, he's not eaten the kittens so far, so at least that's a good sign!