Flaming like shook foil

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

In memoriam Alfred, Lord Tennyson (6 August 1809-6 October 1892)

Nature's bounty

One of the things that I love about August is the productiveness of the kitchen garden. In a temperate climate such as ours, with a quite a short growing season, it seems ages to wait for all those glorious Mediterranean vegetables. I eagerly anticipate tomatoes in June, and become impatient in July, but with an unheated greenhouse and polytunnel, and the early cold snap just at sowing time, it is unrealistic to expect a copious crop until quite late in the summer.

But late summer has arrived, and look at today’s harvest: Discovery apples, to be eaten quickly, for they don’t keep or store, courgettes, patty pans, runner beans, French beans, and tomatoes in all shapes and sizes. We bought all sorts of interestingly-named varieties such as Amish Paste, Latah and Rose de Berne from the Real Seed Company this year, and the mixture of colours and shapes adds to the sense of profusion when we pick them.


There is basil with large leaves:


and small:


and still we have lettuces, red:


and green.


I love this time when the nights begin to draw in noticeably and make one think of autumn, yet the days are still full of sunshine, we are overcome with nature’s bounty in the form of frantically ripening crops, there are flowers yet in the garden, and I can hear the distant hum of the combine harvesters from morning until late at night, as they march majestically across the fields of golden corn. Now I am thankful that there is no rain – it is important to get the harvest in, and the Ploughboy is working fifteen hour days to that end.

This year some of my sunflowers have grown so tall that I can’t even see if they have blooms – I had to reach up to photograph this one – and it's one of the shorter ones.



Elderberries and brambles are ripening in the hedgerows, we can start to pick the Bramley apples, and it is the season for thinking about gathering and storing for the long winter.


One morning soon we will wake up and feel a certain chill in the air in spite of the sunshine, and see a heavy dew; someone will say that it is a real hop-picking morning, and then I will know that autumn is on its way, but for now I will enjoy the sunshine and the tomatoes, sitting outside every evening, drinking pink Discovery apple juice, and pretending that it can go on forever.

Making light of lavender

You may remember that a little while ago I picked sheaves of the lavender that I have growing in my garden, carefully bagged them and hung them up to dry here. They were all hanging in the covered area by the back door, but when the Head Chef started wielding a hose in a fit of enthusiasm for jetting out the gutters during the only rainstorm we have had for months, I decided that it was time to bring the lavender inside. Even with a slight dampening, and without any heat, they dried off nicely, and then I was faced with the task of removing the lavender heads from the stalks.


Although I had only picked half of the flowers so that I would leave plenty for the bees, I had bags and bags of lavender to process, and I was not making much progress on my own. The Head Chef and number one son, the Ploughboy, did very kindly watch me as I did one bag, and I then swapped a trip to the station for some volunteer labour, but still the mountain of lavender loomed.


And all of these store stump tasks are like that – the harvesting and the processing of mountains of produce in that short window of time between readiness and rot. Yet to be truly sustainable and self-sufficient, and to survive throughout the year on the fairly minimal monetary income that a smallholding will provide, means that these tasks are necessary. Although humans have lived in this way for most of history, and in many parts of the world still do, this is something that we lose sight of in a world of supermarkets and seven day a week shopping.

And the difference nowadays for those of us who make the choice to try and live like this is that we are the exception to the rule, so we face these mountains of produce on our own. In the past, much of this work was done on a communal and sociable basis, and thus much of the lonely laboriousness was mitigated.


And the solution for me, too, was a bit of communal work – the dear Seaside Landlady and her daughters provided the many hands that made light work. What had been a solitary and seemingly endless burden for me on my own was despatched in a trice by a few helping hands. D H Lawrence wrote that if work ‘doesn’t absorb you / if it’s never any fun / don’t do it’, which is very fine and dandy, but I would say if it’s not fun, then find someone to help, and it will be done in a twinkling.


Lawrence does go on to talk about the value of creativity: doing what you love, making things for yourself, and ‘smash the machines’, but he also writes ‘When a man goes out into his work …’ (my italics), and I somehow feel that he hasn’t really engaged with the concept of the monotony of housework. As we all know, it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Anyone fancy helping me with that?

Silver linings

It has, as they say, been a bit of a day from start to finish. So I suppose I am just touting for sympathy. It has been the sort of day when I have to remind my myself that you have to laugh or, well, I’m not sure what. Men in white coats, perhaps?


But we have had a lovely weekend to fortify us, and I thought I would share with you some Kidstonly cheer. By now, dear readers, I am sure you will have gathered how much I like presents – just look at my list of post categories in case that fact had passed you by. For reasons both agricultural and financial, we won’t be going away on holiday, and what with all the animals and permaculture and self-sufficiency, and all the commitment that goes with it, we don’t get out much, but who needs holidays and outings when you have a holiday sofa and lots of lovely people to stay? And lovely people who bring you lots of lovely presents! Including cake (cake in the plural chocolate form) – but I can’t show you pictures of that because it has all been gobbled up.

My dear sister-in-law, the Seaside Landlady, and the Head Chef’s brother, Bob the Builder, came to stay with all their darling children, Isis, Osiris and Bob Junior. And if you would like to stay at their stylish, bijou seaside residence, built by Bob with his own hands, just click here.

The Seaside Landlady, who is a woman after my own heart, not only came armed with cakes and ale, but also some charming little souvenirs from the temple of the great Cath. How well she knows me! And here they are in all their beauty and domesticity. I don’t think I will let the Head Chef use the oven gloves – he is sure to make a mess of them with gravy stains or cherry juice or the like.


And I have had a hankering after this pincushion ever since I saw it in the catalogue, but felt that thrifty wives don’t indulge themselves in such frippery.


So we have had a jolly weekend with family who understand the complications involved in the permaculture life, and are kind enough to come to the mountain. The holiday sofa has been overflowing with occupants – I think I might even have to acquire another one to be the party sofa, in order to avoid arguments and forcible evictions when we have company present.

The new Cath Kidston bedlinen in the bed-and-breakfast rooms has been reviewed and found satisfactory by the adults, and we have had some outdoor sleepers as well. The more intrepid ones amongst the youthful members of the party slept outside, with my second son, the General, ensconced under a basha in the garden (for those who don’t know, that is a sort of camouflage lid with no walls and doors), keeping guard over the younger and softer ones cosied up in a proper zip-up tent. The Head Chef’s other brother, the Media Mogul, also graced us with his presence, and my other dear sister-in-law brought a nice chocolatey present, too. Chocolate is always given a very warm welcome in this house.



So although, among other things, the day started with taking this naughty dog to the vet (and she has already chewed off her bandage, so I think we will be going back again quite shortly), and has finished with some other slightly distressing slings and arrows, I have the means to comfort myself. I can go and play with my pincushion, think where to hang my oven gloves to best advantage, and munch on a few chocolates. Like the tea towels say, keep calm and carry on!

Gazing at the cloths of heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

'He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven', WB Yeats (1865-1939)

Yarn perfection

It has certainly been my lucky week – I can’t quite believe how the blessings have come my way, and it has certainly put paid to my lifelong feeling that I was definitely not born under a lucky star. Up until my adventures in blogland I had never won anything that depended on chance: I have never even bought a lottery ticket because I thought that, given my previous record, there was certainly more chance of my being hit by an asteroid than winning untold millions, and the mere fact of buying a lottery ticket might just precipitate some sort of meteor shower in my little corner of England.

Actually, I did once come close to winning something: many years back I bought four or five tickets for an arts festival lottery and gave one to each member of my family. And my father won the first prize of a holiday in Florida (now he is the lucky sort, often winning raffle prizes). He and my mother were consumed with angst, because they didn’t want a holiday in Florida, and they couldn’t palm it off on me, because I was so heavily pregnant that I couldn’t possibly have undertaken the trip. Luckily for them, my sister decided to get married, so they were able to send her to Florida for her honeymoon – what a relief.

But luck has come my way: knock me down with a feather, I have had a little run of giveaway presents, and am feeling quite a changed person, almost optimistic about life. Although perhaps my most recent present could be put down to my skill as a wordsmith: the Skein Queen ran a competition to choose a suitably majestic name for a new colour of her absolutely scrumptious hand-dyed yarn, and wonder of wonders, she rather liked my suggestion. And so she sent me two skeins of this – Tudor Rose.


Isn’t it the most heavenly colour? In fact, this yarn is so beautiful that at the moment I am just enjoying it in all its wonderful soft skeindom. This is the sort of yarn that is so soft, so tactile, and so generally pleasing in its rosy shading, that I am quite happy to caress and admire it for a while, before I knit it into something special. I also received a pattern with the yarn, for Alabama Whirly’s Ripple gloves, and in a bout of lucky serendipity I also received from Alabama Whirly her Alfredo glove pattern in her holiday giveaway. So I have an embarrassment of riches.



And there is more: the last part of my lovely present from the Skein Queen was these exquisite stitch markers, which came in a sweet little box. I have always hankered after some special beaded stitch markers, and had secretly hoped to be given some but, of course, only a knitter would appreciate their beauty and utility, and those who do give me presents are not knitters. These are a delightful little treasure to be kept in my knitting bag, and I certainly do treasure them greatly.


And if any of you out there are thinking of making a present to a knitter, then look no further. If you want a knitter to love you forever, I can assure you that the present I have just received is perfection itself, and guaranteed to gain you the everlasting affection of the woolly-minded.



A postscript: thank you so much to all of you who have commented and emailed, and become followers. I am very appreciative of your interest - it has made me feel quite wanted! I do visit your blogs, and comment if I can, but my dear old ageing Mac, which runs an unsupported version of Firefox, won't allow me to comment if the box is embedded below the post. It only seems to work on pop-up comment boxes - so I am not ignoring you, and will come and say hello whenever I am somewhere the technology allows it!

More calorie-free cupcakes

Not only am I in the lucky position of being able to make cupcakes from felt thanks to the generosity of Sarah from Paper-and-String, but now I can also satisfy my passion for cake using my knitting needles, and once again at no cost to my waistline.

I have just received the most beautifully-wrapped parcel from Jennyflower – it’s so much more fun to use fabric rather than paper.


Contained within was this book, Knitted Cakes by Susan Penny. The Head Chef shook his head in disbelief when he saw it: I think he prefers the edible variety (of anything), but then he does not worry about becoming pear-shaped with age.




For my part, I am rather taken with the knitted doughnuts – I have not eaten the iced sort for years because they promise so much, yet generally taste so sugary, but a nice woolly one is far more my kind of thing.

In fact, I think I might take to wearing knitted cupcakes on my cardi, or possibly in my hair. It’s the sort of thing that many of my acquaintances expect of me, and why disappoint them?



So thank you, Jennyflower, for being so kind. And if you are familiar with her blog, you will see that she is great organizer. Her latest event is a picnic for crafty Kent bloggers on 30 August, so for those of you who hail from these parts, do pop on over and sign up. It’s sure to be a very jolly occasion, and the cupcakes will most definitely be edible.

Ill-knit by candlelight

It has been so warm here in the evenings that I have been sitting out on my holiday sofa by the back door until quite late, and last night I decided to carry on knitting as the light faded.

I lit some candles and thought of my old friend, the anonymous author of the Handbook of Plain and Fancy Needlework, published in 1882, and her comforting advice. She (I think it must be she) writes:

“Every woman ought to learn to knit, just as every man ought to be taught to swim. The latter accomplishment may save the man’s life. The former may save the woman from the kind of torpor that seizes the unoccupied, should any misfortune deprive her of sight, or should she live to an age at which other than purely mechanical works is labour and sorrow.”

Her gendered prescription is, shall we say, interesting, and I shall come on to the torpor in a moment, but my eyes aren’t what they used to be, the light was not too good outside, and I am not as young as I was. However, armed with the thought that knitting is what you can do when you are ageing, unoccupied and losing your sight, I set to with my needles with a will.


If you are tempted to do the same, all I can say to you is ‘Don’t bother!’ Unless, of course, you are a really skilled knitter, who can knit without ever looking at your work, and can feel your way along the rows. Unfortunately I am not. Candlelight flickers, and creates wonderful shadows, but I was doing moss stitch, and kept forgetting which stitch I had done last, and then couldn’t see which should be done next. So all those nineteenth-century writers (and the lady above is not the only one), who recommend knitting as a suitable occupation not only for invalids, the blind and those in the decline of life, but also for anyone who happens to be sitting in the gloaming, are completely wrong.

Possibly the yarn did not help – I was using Sirdar’s Luxury Soft DK Cotton, which does knit up into a beautifully soft fabric (I have knitted Princess Bunchy a couple of cardigans in it before), but it is spun with a very loose twist from very fine strands. So if you don’t keep your wits about you, it is very easy to split the stitches.



And this morning when I looked at my work I found I had done just that, even though I been wearing a super-magnifying pair of glasses, which normally make my eyes hurt just to look at them, in order to supplement the light of the candles. Proof that I am well on the way to being aged, sightless and torpid. So all that I had knit by candlelight, I had to unravel by sunlight.


And torpid I was this afternoon, as well. Here in the far, sunny south the heat was positively oppressive. Feeling those waves of torpor approaching, I sat down on the sofa to ensure that I was occupied with some knitting, but to no avail. Within minutes I was nodding over my needles, and nodded right off.

But you will be glad to hear this was not for long: we have a very dear Border Collie, who became alarmed by all this torpidity, and very kindly woke me up with a damp snout and dog breath in my face.

Possibly she had been reading the Handbook of Plain and Fancy Needlework, and was anxious that I seemed unoccupied. Or maybe she was expressing concern that I was wasting the hours of daylight. Whatever it was, a damp snout proved no real deterrent; torpor overcame me once more, I rolled over, and slept sweetly on the sofa. How was your day?

The stuff of fables

I have been 'tagged' by the very charming Sophie of Chez Sophie. I am new to the arcane mysteries of the blogoverse but she has most kindly bestowed upon me the 'Freakin' Fabulous Blog Award'. It seems an honour too great for a humble cottager, but I understand that there are conditions attached as follows:

The rules of this award are:

•List five current obsessions.

•Pass the award on to five more fabulous blogs.

•On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them.

•When you post your five winners, make sure you link them as well. Don't forget to let your winners know they won an award from you by leaving a comment on their blog.

Five current obsessions (in no particular order) are knitting, needlework, subversion, procrastination and self-sufficiency. Actually, I think procrastination is probably first, with knitting as a useful displacement activity second.

Now 'freakin' is not really a word that is part of my lexicon, but being a gentle soul and eager to please, I am happy to pass the flaming torch onto five other entertainingly fabulous blogs, and I have taken a little picture for them, because buttons and logos and curlicue text are a bit beyond my technological skills at the moment. I even wrote a little tag.


So with a fanfare of trumpets and a rumbling drum roll, I propose the following blogs for the award:

The Duchess of Tea at Rose Tea Cottage
for services to tea

The Two Scrumptious Ladies at The Big Stove Year
for services to cake and other comestibles

Menopausal Musing
for proving that there is life and creativity beyond hot flushes

Happy Loves Rosie
for services to caravans

Sal's Snippets
for a world of colour and jolly pictures

I hope that all you dear creatures will be happy to receive the award and I hope that all you dear readers will go and congratulate them graciously.

And I hope that I have ticked all the boxes and linked all the links and tagged all the tags, and will stand corrected if not. Normal service will resume shortly.

The blessings of a good thick vest and other sale bargains

One of the most memorable book titles that I have come across is The Blessings of a Good Thick Skirt by Mary Russell: it is about female explorers and travellers, and I just love the concept of the protective qualities of sensible clothing. So I thought that I would tell you about some very sensible clothing that I acquired over the weekend.


The Head Chef and I had occasion to venture up to the Great Wen to fetch the much-missed Princess Bunchy from Marylebone Station. Taking my cue from that canny shopper, dear Hen at Henhouse Homemade, and being tempted by her pictures of her expedition in that direction, I decided that a little side excursion to Marylebone High Street was in order. The little princess was not due into the station until mid-afternoon, but I persuaded the Head Chef that it was essential to allow plenty of time to get there, in case of traffic jams, parking difficulties, asteroid strikes, etc. But we had a fair wind and so we found ourselves right outside the great Cath’s emporium before lunch: I was eager to enter the shrine right away, but with the Head Chef food must come first, so I had to watch him eat a very large pizza before I was allowed through the shop door. He knew he was in for a long haul if visiting a Cath Kidston store at sale time.

But the sales assistants are charming, and very eager to engage a chap with a knitting bag in conversation (he was holding it for me whilst I rummaged through the shelves, and he only spilled the contents once). And the Head Chef really was very helpful to me: I tried on a checked frock which I had been eyeing in the catalogue, and when I emerged from the changing room he offered the opinion that it resembled ‘one of those things they put you in before you have an operation.’ So that saved me some money. And his benign and hovering presence, so sweetly confident in the thriftiness of his better half, prevented me from buying yet more knitting needles just because I liked the look of the case, or even from buying another knitting bag to go with the one that he was clutching so loyally.



So, dear readers, I bought some very sensible clothing. Two flowery vests, to keep me warm in winter. The savings on the oil bill will be enormous – buying Cath Kidston vests will ensure that once again we don’t have to turn on the heating, however cold it snaps. The more you buy the more you save. And flowery pinnies keep you warm, too, especially when you have more than one of them.


And as the Head Chef chatted away to the lovely assistants I received the ultimate accolade: the Cath Kidston employees complimented me on both of my bags, one of which I made, and one of which I chose: so reinforcing my aura of general skill, thriftiness and perfect taste on the bag front. Here is the one I made earlier.



This bag started its life as a reversible dirndl skirt for Princess Bunchy – and when she grew out of it I turned it into a bag, which is just right for my knitting and other shopping. If anything hangs around my little cottage for too long, I feel the urge to turn it into a bag.


And this beautiful bag, which is the sort of bag that I can only aspire to make, is from the very clever Helen at Angharad Handmade, and it was very much admired by Cath Kidston's employees. I was totally honest when they asked if I had made it myself, but I did bask in a glow of reflected admiration by association.


And, although I say it myself, it is not the first time that one of my bags has been a subject of appreciative comment by one of the great Cath’s acolytes. This was the first bag that I ever broke a needle on, made from left-over Laura Ashley and Cath Kidston fabric, and a record of my changing taste in interior design. Or perhaps not: I seem to have been lodged in a retro, floral ghetto for much of my adult life.


Yet there is one small question which presents itself: do you think this is part of the CK staff manual? Are they trained to spot likely customers with homemade-looking bags, and compliment them to give them a warm glow of brand loyalty? Oh, surely not!


Have you ever had a homemade bag admired in a Cath Kidston shop? Do put me out of my misery and tell me the awful truth!

The glad game

I don’t know if you are familiar with the book Pollyanna by Eleanor H Porter – it is generally sold as a children’s book, but as with all the best books for children there is plenty for adult readers to think about, and it still makes me sob every time I read it. And not just at the end – I am usually in tears as soon as Pollyanna arrives on the scene. But then I have always been a bit of a bleeding heart – actually, no, not always – only since I have had children. I was quite carefree up until then, but it seems that those emotional hormones that were switched on by pregnancy were never switched off again.


However, I am digressing, as usual. I will try not to. Pollyanna is an orphaned clergyman’s daughter, but with (heartbreaking) prescience her dear, departed papa taught her the glad game before he died, and as Pollyanna tells us, ‘the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about – no matter what ‘twas.’ And Pollyanna manages to find something to be glad about, however dreadful the situation: she is heartbreaking and hilarious at one and the same time.


So taking a lesson from Pollyanna I decided to look once again at my rather jaded, rather messy, late summer cottage garden, which looks like paradise on earth for the first two weeks in June, and then seems to slide downhill ever after. I always tell myself that all the flowers have gone by August – and yet, when I looked more closely, I found all sorts of beautiful blooms all around me. Maybe that mass of blowsy perfection has departed, but there are still many small pockets of exquisiteness. It is just a matter of taking the time to look and to find something to be glad about.


So in the spirit of the glad game, here are some glads for you – I have always told myself that I don’t like gladioli. There is the name, for a start, rather ugly, and hinting at pretentiousness. And I always have an image of stiff blooms in harsh colours. Yet these gladioli counter all my irrational prejudices: the colours are so pretty, ice-creamlike in their pinkness. A couple of stems bunched together with purple lavender make a lovely present for a hostess (and you know how much I like presents!). And these are bonus glads – Princess Bunchy planted the corms last year, having bought them from a pick and mix display in the nursery. They flowered last year, and have come up again this year, in spite of a regime of benign neglect.


Like Ophelia, I come larded with sweet flowers and can list my blooms for you, but I can quite sensibly tell you that they are all very pretty and so easy (and cheap) to grow.


And the fact that they are flowering so well now is a function of my lackadaisicalness – I was far too preoccupied with my vegetables in early spring, so I didn’t sow the cornflowers and love-in-the-mist until quite late, and I put them directly into the soil.


The marigolds and nicotiana were sown in trays and potted on, but again I did not get round to planting them out until they were quite large and pot-bound – but it does not seem to have troubled them too much. Nicotiana flowers open towards the end of the day, and their scent is sweet and strong at night - plant them near where you sit in the evening, or under a window, so that you don't miss out on their ethereal nocturnal beauty. They shine out so whitely in the dark, and look so luminous.


And if I’m not too enthusiastic with my weeding over the winter and spring the marigolds will most certainly reseed themselves all over the garden, and save me some work next year.


The clarkia was sown into a tray and was then forgotten about behind the polytunnel – by the time that I planted it out it was half-dead from lack of water, but clarkia is such a toughie it has recovered completely and now stands pink and robust as you can see.


The feverfew started from one plant many years ago, and has been travelling round and round the garden since. If you make sandwiches from the leaves, it will apparently cure migraine - but I am not sure if any old feverfew will do. I think medical advice would be advisable on that one!


I am not sure of the name of the pink one, possibly soapwort, but this was originally a little slip from my grandmother’s garden. It spreads invasively by runners and I curse it every spring, and forgive it every August.


The sea holly was a plant that I bought rather than grew from seed, but this is a longlasting late-summer charmer, too – I love its sculptural quality, and it provides a good framework plant in flower arrangements.


And to make a good end, my wonderful lavender is still going strong, and keeping my friends the bees very busy. So there are more than glads to be glad about, and I hope you have plenty of gladness in your garden, too.