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.

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!

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!

Sweet Paprika in Cold Canada

A bit of back-blogging here... This time two weeks ago I was in Montreal for an academic conference. It was actually my second but the first where I've given a paper. I'm glad to say that my presentation went down really well, thanks in no small part I'm sure to Mr Boogie Woogie Piggy Wiggy, the handsome little fellow you can see examining my notes in the photo. He has been a work mascot since around 2002 so he definitely had to come to witness such an important professional occasion. Since I'm 26 not 6, he did stay in the hotel room rather than coming in my pocket to the conference floor, but he was with me in spirit!

After a couple of days in Montreal I travelled down to Ottawa with my friend Elizabeth. We meet a few years ago at the Foyles knitting group, and Elizabeth, ever the demon knitter is now taking her crafting to a new level. Not only is she pattern editing professionally but she and her sisters have also launched Sweet Paprika Designs.

They have a range of patterns and kits but my favourite bit is the lovely hand dyed yarn. I passed a happy 10 minutes on the Sunday morning photographing some of their stock. This is the 100% merino range called Messa di Voce.

This is the silk and merino blend, Dolce. I think the rich colours are just gorgeous.

And finally hand dyed, self-striping sock yarn!

Unfortunately the light wasn't great and the colours look a bit dull (you can see truer colours on their website). I've tended to avoid buying self-patterning sock yarn because I'm not keen on the jacquard look that most of them have, but this yarn is properly self-striping. This is a close up of the sample sock Elizabeth was working on.

And, as if seeing my friends and being fed lovely home cooked meals wasn't enough, Elizabeth kindy gave me two skeins as a birthday present! I chose the purple colorway of the sock yarn and here they are back at home with me.

Thanks again to Elizabeth, Paul and her sisters and cousin for such a lovely stay! I can't wait to go back when it's cold enough to ice skate!

Bread & Fire

One thing I wish I was better at is bread making. All my previous attempts have been middling to poor, the problems generally boiling down to heavy, unrisen, yeasty smelling bread. Not to be defeated when I saw this book on sale at Foyles last week I was wooed by the step-by-step photography and snapped it up. The first loaf I made turned out beautifully. It was a Nutty Yogurt quick bread - perfect for me as there was no getting your hands sticky or waiting for it to rise, just mix everything together in the bowl and then put it straight in the tin and on into the oven. One hour later, voila!

It was very gratifying to hear Miles walk into the kitchen and exclaim, "It looks like proper bread!". And it tasted proper too. I'm looking forward to working my way through the book and to overcoming my bread demons.

Finally, a little historical tidbit.

Miles and I spent the weekend with his parents at their house in Winchester. Along the road that runs from their house to the centre of town are these old cottages (I'm not sure of the date, but given that a bit further along the same road there is a building from the 15th century I think we can safely say they are pretty old!).

The detail I love are the little plaques you can see on two of them.

They are fire insurance marks: before municipal fire brigades, insurance companies ran their own private brigades. In the event of a fire the firemen would check for a plaque to see if the building belonged to their scheme before setting about tackling the blaze!

I Only Have Eyes for You

Having agreed, due to wedding savings, to keep birthday and Christmas presents on the small side this year, I decided to make a gift for Miles' birthday. He recently got contact lenses for the first time so he needs to carry his glasses around along with spare lenses and eye drops. In honour of this, I came up with the eyechart pouch which I thought could take any combination of these.

I found a vintage eyechart online which I printed out on a transfer sheet (but of course there was the obligatory wasting of the first sheet before I remembered to flip the image!).

Having ironed the image onto white cotton I made it up into a pouch using a lovely reproduction 30s fabric which I bought in the fabulously surreal Branson, Missouri last year. (It's a sort of Christian, middle-American Las Vegas. Here is the 'Hollywood Exhibition' venue.

Who exactly are the figures meant to represent, because, frankly, it's a little hard to tell?!)

I used Anna's excellent tutorial for making a pouch but modified it to include batting behind the front layer. I quilted these two layers together around the square frame on the front and along the vertical lines of the pattern on the back.

This was a really fun piece to make and reminded me of all the iron-on transfer possibilities. Maybe I can include some of this in my Christmas present thinking...