Jane Brocket's Blog, page 5

instagram

Thought I'd give Instagram a whirl (there's a new link at the top the side-bar). I got a quick how-to lesson as we walked along the Southbank to the Globe Theatre last night. It's not difficult, but some people turn it into an art.

(Poor Antony was indisposed and, as there is no understudy for this production, last night's last-minute Antony had to read from a script - tricky when you're putting on armour or dying in Cleopatra's arms.) 

strippy quilt

A copy editor once corrected 'strippy' to 'stripey' in one of my books (not a quilt book), and I had to change it back again. I realise she probably wasn't a quilter, but it amused me that it looked to her like a typo rather than a quasi-technical term. 

I am very keen on strippy quilts. So easy to make, so many possibilities, so many variations. This one is in Quilt Me! and was extremely enjoyable to put together. It's made with Lotta Jansdotter fabrics and really, when you've got so much interesting colour and pattern to work with, you don't need anything more complicated than a few strips to make the whole thing work. This quilt turned out to be pretty big which is an indication of how easy it was to make. If something's going well, I often carry on until I run out of fabric rather than steam, and that's what happened here. I called it the 'Collection Quilt' because it's made with fabrics from a single collection, and I'd gladly make another happy, strippy quilt like this.

testing time

trying to cram all this...

Never mind love, it's stress that is in the air. It's exam time. We have one who has already finished, one in the middle, and one who is yet to start.

...into this...

Tom's final exams ended last week. It's hard to believe that his undergraduate degree is all over, bar the results. We've come to realise that a university year is really only half a year of two terms of just ten weeks' teaching each; it seems the more you pay, the more the students borrow, the less you and they get. But this isn't the end of Tom's university career. Oh no, he likes it so much he's staying on for another four years, only this time without any debt or loans because he has got full funding for an MSc and a PhD. We had no idea that anyone these days was prepared to give out money like this, so it's all been a bit of surprise. Tom's delighted, we are incredibly proud of him, and it's going to be good watching him progress to becoming Dr Brocket. 

...and this...

Alice has second-year exams (she took a gap year so is a year behind Tom) which are tough because with her subject, Psychology, there are no options until the third year - everything this year is compulsory. Meanwhile, at home we are living with 'Ant & Cleo', incest, plate tectonics, the French Revolution, and lots of weather. 

...and this, then being tested on it...

The joy of having older offspring is that there's not a great deal you can do apart from support, listen and offer useless advice. It suddenly becomes an advantage to know very little, if anything, about earthquakes or fisheries or personality or Italian Unification or Othello. It's a testing time for them and thankfully not for us.

...is definitely

(The mosaic-covered 'Buddha' by Niki de Saint Phalle and the head by Elisabeth Frink are both at the amazing Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and the two pieces of street art are in Shoreditch. The bookshop is in Preston.)

now and then

Now

[my photo, May 2014]

I imagine some people and publishers think they're naff, but I like the Then and Now books, the ones that show you how street scenes, landmarks, housing and townscapes once looked and how they look now. If you know a place, it's fascinating to see what was there when you were young or long before you were born, and to see what has survived, what's been demolished and what has appeared since. They are among the first books I look at when I'm visiting somewhere new (local libraries have them), and they are always on the bookshelf in a Landmark Trust so I end up knowing far more than I need to about how a canal or village pub or town square or cooling tower or row of shops has altered.

Then

[View of Chichester Cathedral from the Deanery (1975) John Piper]

Now and then, the then looks almost exactly as it does now. I'd been wondering where John Piper stood or sat to paint this wonderful view of Chichester Cathedral (currently on display at Pallant House and now I've found the spot which links the beautiful 1725 Deanery to the cathedral and see it's hardly changed in nearly forty years, although I imagine that in fact it's been a lot longer since any great alterations have been made. The only differences are double yellow lines (really, are they necessary?) and a lamp. Otherwise it's all still as grand and elegant - and what a view from home to workplace. It's more than can be said of many locations which, as the Then and Now books show, haven't emerged as unscathed. 

scissors and paper

Snow Flowers (1941) Henri Matisse 

The 7.50 train to London is quiet on a Saturday. I discovered this when I got up early to be at Tate Modern for the  Members' hour at 9am. I'd hummed and haahed about whether or not to bother, but my goodness I'm pleased I did. As soon as I got into the exhibition I could feel my heart rate increasing and emotions rising, and they didn't abate for a long time after I left.

It's beautiful. It's joyous, serious, playful, controlled, exuberant, intense, simple and colourful. And it's hard to suppress a whoop of delight, a loud cheer, a skip and a twirl as you walk through. Matisse may not have been the first to experiment with paper cut-outs, but he's the one who turned them into an art-form. The way he cut, the way he produced waves and movement and fronds and tendrils and abstract organic shapes and put them together on a plain white background is astonishing. With time, the cut-outs get bigger and bolder and more and more assured until they fill whole walls like wonderful wallpaper and almost envelop you. 

The Sheaf (1953) Henri Matisse (Tate)

Photos of the cut-outs do not fully convey their complexity and depth; they make them look flat and matt whereas in fact there are gradations and brush marks on the painted pieces which reveal many pin pricks from being moved around and repositioned, and close up you can see where what often looks like a single cut out piece is actually made up of several smaller pieces. In fact, it's possible to see exactly how Matisse worked, which probably makes many people think, 'pah! I could do that'.

This quality of course, is both the wonder and the appeal of the cut-outs. They look so simple and, as we all have access to scissors and paper, can all cut out and glue bits together, it can take some time before you realise just how masterful is with his own scissors and painted paper. At the same time, there's an immediate appeal because they are the product of a familiar skill, and there's a connection that isn't there for most people when they look at oil paintings and watercolours, sculpture and ceramics. 

The exhibition also makes you realise just how much Matisse influenced so many aspects of design. His work has been ripped off over the years, but nothing can touch the originals.  The cut-outs are great. I'm going back. 

piece by piece

I made a 'half crazy' cushion for The Gentle Art of Stitching which took the idea of using lots of different fabrics (velvet, silk, cotton etc) and fancy hand-stitching but instead of piecing crazy shapes in the traditional way, I used regular rectangles. This, I reckoned, appropriated half of the basic principle but the process didn't drive me mad (which is what a fully crazy approach would have done).

I liked the mix of stitching and fabrics so much, I made a small quilt with many favourite fabrics  - I love the Kokka ladybird design I bought from The Eternal Maker and the glorious leaves print by . I keep coming back to it, thinking it's time to make a bigger version of a half crazy quilt, but at the moment it's more important to get on with what I should be doing, piece by piece and without more distractions. But distractions can be so nice...

greengrocer's socks

This is a case of a yarn looking nicer as a ball than as a knitted pair of socks. It's Schoppel Wolle Zauberball 'Papagei' (bought at the excellent Purl City Yarns in Manchester and I was entirely responsible for making the choice) and it looked to me as though it had all the makings of a good sock yarn. But now that the socks are done, I'm not so keen on the wide colour bands and slightly wishy-washy  bits in between, although I like the way the colours match the fruit and veg I bought yesterday. These are definitely a greengrocer's socks with stripes of asparagus green, tomato red, and lemon yellow - and if you really were a greengrocer, I don't think you'd care what colour changes your socks have when you're outdoors on a chilly weekend and just need to keep your feet warm. 

a thousand words

I don't know if my picture is worth a thousand words - a thousand calories, more like.

Thank you for the excellent suggestions about swimming culture. I really want to swim in London Fields Lido despite the shiver-inducing photos in the book mentioned, and I really want to see the Hockney exhibition before it closes, and I shall listen to Midweek. I once tried to read The Swimming Pool Library but didn't enjoy it - maybe I should try again.

swimmingly

 

swimmimg books on my swimming pool quilt

What a nice word swimmingly is. Such a polite and apt way of saying things are going well, thank you, provided your image of swimming is of someone gliding gently through water in the slow and medium lanes, and not thrashing and splashing in the fast lane. I like swimming, I like it when things are going swimmingly, and I like reading about swimming. Some of my most read and most referred-to books are on pools and water, and they are always soothing and gentle - plashing is another good watery word that springs to mind - as well as inspirational.

I've been rereading parts of Waterlog again. I bring it out every time I swim somewhere that's mentioned in the book. This time it was Ironmonger Row Baths which I recently visited for the first time. Although it's had £16m spent on it since Roger Deakin wrote about it, it's still recognisable. It has wonderful Turkish baths (very streamlined and spartan style with lots of marble) and swimming in the lovely, clean, simple, pale blue and white pool is a treat (and very good value). 

I've also just read Swimming London which is a brilliant little book about well, swimming in London. I already had a list of pools to visit in London but it's just grown massively. I'd love to be hardy enough to swim in the huge unheated London lidos but I'd need one of those foil hypothermia blankets in my bag with my towel and goggles. I'm all for outdoor pools but with some heat, so Hampton and the Oasis pool are more my kind of thing.

While I'm on the pool theme, there are several other books I'd recommend, although I've a feeling I may have already mentioned one or two before (eg Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton, the sad memoir Swimming the Channel by Sally Friedman, and the classic Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson). When I want to wallow in local swimming baths and lido history (and discover many good places that are still open), I refer to the two English Heritage books, Great Lengths and Liquid Assets, which are both packed with great photos, old and recent. I also like Kate Rew's book although I'm not sure outdoor swimming in rivers and lakes etc is really 'wild' but rather a way of rebranding it for a more anxious, 'health and safety' era. And the big book to read by the pool in summer or by the fire in winter is The Story of Swimming by Susie Parr which is a beautifully illustrated history of swimming with bits of memoir and many brilliantly downbeat and deapan photos by her husband Martin Parr.

My new cossie will be put to good use. I'm excited, in a gentle, slow to medium lane breaststroke sort of way.

apple socks

It's been a long time since we had a sock shoot here. Me and my sock model, messing about on the wide windowsill with feet and props and cameras at awkward angles. I can't even remember when I finished the first sock now - all I know is that it's been sitting for ages by the side of the settee reminding me that it needs a twin.

I've had a break from knitting, and when a break comes, it just comes, even if you are part way through a second sock as I was. Not to worry, Phoebe is past the age of having feet that grow and had a good supply of hand-knitted socks to keep her warm while we waited for my enthusiasm for knitting to reheat. 

This is a great self-striping yarn with just two colours that work brilliantly together: apple green and steel grey. They reminded me of when I was doing wine exams and cramming in as much information about grapes and wine as I could. I can still recall Oz Clarke's description of drinking a fresh, clean, lowish alcohol German wine made with Riesling on s summer's afternoon and how it made him think of a cold stainless steel knife cutting through a crisp, Granny Smith apple. 

This is just what these socks made me think of, and every time I picked them up I fancied a glass of Dr Loosen or something similar. I'm now thinking how good a whole series of wine tasting socks would be...

[The yarn is Silver Star by Stray Cat Yarns.]