Jane Brocket's Blog, page 8

the journey begins here

I went to Manchester. So much going on.

Orlando at the still-wonderful theatre inside the enormous former exchange (with the prices of cotton etc still on the board and as they were when trading ceased). A beautiful and clever piece of theatre, although it lacked some of the deeper resonances of Woolf's novel.

The Grand Budapest Hotel which is much deeper and darker than much of the pink and purple and red confection that has been written about. It's brilliant and inventive in a maverick genius way and definitely requires another viewing with a pause button to take in all the details. It's very funny in places and Ralph Fiennes is a revelation.

A detour to Victoria Station (always my favourite in Manchester) to see this old tiled map of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway that fills a whole wall and covers the area from Hull to Liverpool. I used to come here when we dropped off my cousin who lived on the other side of the Pennines; the map and the destination names in stained-glass outside on the glass and iron canopy (which have been removed - for repair, I hope, and not permanently) always seemed incredibly romantic and exciting. Just imagine, I could get on a train in Manchester and go to Cork or Bury or Douglas or Preston or Accrington!

Or I could go east to Bremen or Leeds or the Baltic Ports or Goole or Amsterdam! 

No wonder I love train travel, stations, and maps. It all started here.

springing up

Daffodils (c1935) William Logsdail (1859-1944) in The Collection, Lincoln

Suddenly there are daffodils popping up and opening up everywhere. On roundabouts, by rivers, on verges, in gardens, by bus stops, outside schools, in window boxes and in overlooked patches of grass. How glad I am to see them, even though it does feel a litle early. They seem to be brighter, more vivid and somehow more yellow this year, but maybe that's the effect they have every spring. 

I've grown to like daffodils more as I get older. I can't believe you can get a decent size bunch for a £1 which means that you can get a real explosion of daffodils on your windowsill for £3 or £4, which seems to me to be extremely good value cheerfulness, especially when you come down in the morning to make a cup of tea and they are already exuding good humour.

 

Wild Daffodils (1968) Pamela Hardy (b 1942), in the Towner

I think I used to find daffodils simply too ordinary and predictable. But now that I have less tolerance for diva behaviour with flowers (and other things), I prize them for their simplicity, cheapness, and reliablity. They also last for a good week on the windowsill, while the daffodils outside stay a while and nod away happily for days.

Easter Monday (c1950) Winifred Nicholson (1893-19810), in Tullie House

Although they must be a popular subject, it would seem that it's not easy to paint daffodils without slipping into cliché and Easter Bunny territory. These are my favourite daffodil paintings. I like the elegance and varying heights in the William Logsdail picture, the way that daffodils work in a simple domestic interior so well in the Pamela Hardy painting, and having seen the Winifred Nicholson I can vouch for the fact that this is the purest, most intense evocation of spring and daffodils you could ever hope to see.

 

nine years

[still quilting after all these years*] 

Sometime in February this blog hit the nine year mark. I couldn't think of anything that happens in nines apart from human pregnancies so I had a quick google and it seems nine years are most closely associated with prison sentences, wars, mortgages, circles of hell, cats' lives, and the length of Robin Thicke's marriage. So, all in all, not a great number.

But there are also nine muses in Greek mythology, and I have been writing here for nine years with my own nine muses: family, home, books, art, baking, knitting, quilting, flowers and life. And mostly I've had a good time doing so. There have been a few vicissitudes but that's to be expected, and I've now stopped wondering and pondering too much and learned instead to simply get on and write, say what I want to say and enjoy doing it. I don't know what I would be doing now if I hadn't started yarnstorm in 2005, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have written all those books you see on the sidebar to the right of the screen, and I doubt I would have managed to put into words all the thoughts and ideas and opinions I have published here.

Because this is the big thing: blogging is a brilliant way to publish. In the past it would have been called 'vanity publishing', but now that it has a new name and a new image and an immediacy and connection that writers could not have dreamed of even a generation ago, it's shed many of its negative connotations and instead has become a fast, cheap and egalitarian way of publishing. When I first pressed that 'publish' button, I couldn't believe how easy it could be. I didn't need to wait to be commissioned, I didn't have to write proposals or collect rejection letters and keep them, framed, in the downstairs loo as so many writers have (allegedly) done. I didn't need to seek permission to publish, or pull strings (not that I have ever had any strings to pull) to see my words on a screen. It was and still is an amazing way to publish and that's why I haven't stopped even though I've got my name on a fair few book spines and can find my books in libraries and shops. I get a thrill every time I put up a post and I always have a look at the blog as readers see it as soon as I've published something because it's a matter of wonder that my words and pictures can be there, just as I intended them, and be viewed by whoever wishes to do so, without any mediation or charge or sales talk or blurb.

So nine years have flown by in this way, and the blog has enabled me to develop a style and it's given me the freedom to choose what I want to write about and what I don't want to write about. It's pushed me to take photographs which pushes me to look more closely. In turn, these processes make me appreciate all the things I enjoy just that little bit more, because when you write about them you have to decide what you really think rather than simply saying 'this is what I like and this is what's important to me'. All in all, it's been good and, I imagine, a lot better than being married to Robin Thicke for nine years. 

* a few of the quilts I've made in the last year or so. 

changing rooms

[the start of a quilt]

I've moved into a new office. It's a temporary arrangement while we get my normal office sorted, painted, recarpeted (I must have done a lot of rolling around on my chair for it to be so threadbare) and generally suitable for the next phase of my working life. So I'm in Tom's room which is painted a very tasteful and very pale duck egg blue, and I can't quite get used to the lack of bright colour. I'm surrounded by rugby kit and dissertation notes done in Tom's teeny tiny handwriting  and not a lot else, as he's a pretty ascetic type with very low material needs (except Nando's, coffee and a bike) and as he takes all his books out of the library, there aren't even any erudite volumes in here. He's just had some great news about his applications for postgraduate courses; he graduates this year and now has the choice of staying on where he is or moving to a different university - either way, it looks as though he's going to be writing a lot more notes in teeny tiny script for a few more years yet.

In the middle of changing rooms, I'm making a quilt with triangles of Charley Harper fabric. I don't know why I've decided to do this when I can barely find my sewing machine, but I guess I feel a little like a bird, hopping about from room to room. Plus it might be the power of suggestion as I can hear real birds singing outside, and the wonderful dusk chorus has started again in the evenings. 

PS nice post on a great blog about the recent workshop at Ray-Stitch.

 

sweet haberdashery

It can't be a coincidence that I like haberdasheries and I like sweet shops. There's a lot of overlap: tempting displays, lovely colours, little bags full of small treats and treasures, a feeling of stepping into another world.

One of my favourite haberdasheries is Mrs Moon in St Margaret's near Twickenham. Mrs Moon is run by two extremely nice sisters who would probably also run a wonderful sweetshop given half the chance, and they stock huge amounts of beautiful yarns and a very well chosen mix of haberdashery items.

Susan and Karen have just launched their very own yarn called Plump which is thick, soft, warm, cuddly and snuggly. They decided to name the fourteen shades of Plump after their favourite sweet things, which is an appealing and appetising approach because who would not want to knit with Damson Jam and Marmalade, or mix Cherry Pie with Clotted Cream, or create pretty effects with Fondant Fancy, Sugared Almond, Peppermint Cream and Bonbon? The names are evocative and spot-on: Rhubarb Crumble really is that.

Plump is a superchunky 80% merino/20% alapaca yarn which is sweetness itself. I haven't knitted for a while, but this is going to be the thing that gets me started again.  In the meantime, I've had some fun with the yarn and a bag of sweets.

haberdashery reprise

Now that we are clear on the meaning of haberdashery in the yarnstorm context, I'm happy to confirm that thriving haberdasheries do indeed exist in many places in this country.

This is a beautiful display of bias binding, a very ordinary, useful haberdashery item made to look extraordinarily interesting, colourful and desirable. It's in Darn It & Stitch which is on the colourfully named Blue Boar Street in the centre of Oxford. Jo who runs it is very helpful and enthusiastic and has some lovely stock. 

what will survive

[detail of the Arundel Tomb in Chichester Cathedral]

"Side by side, their faces blurred,   
The earl and countess lie in stone,   
Their proper habits vaguely shown   
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,   
And that faint hint of the absurd—   
The little dogs under their feet.
 

Such plainess of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand."
 
These are the first two stanzas of the poem by Philip Larkin which ends with the famous last line 'What will survive of us is love'. There's a framed copy of it hung up on a column next to the Arundel Tomb in the cathedral so you can read it standing pretty much where Larkin stood when he visited with Monica Jones.
 
I am fascinated by Larkin, his poems, his letters, his life in Hull, and in many ways he's the last person you'd expect to write this famous line (which is so often quoted out of context, and not as clear-cut as it seems). Still, it's in keeping with the complexity of his life and his poetry which both have a seemingly, outwardly simple form (unmarried provincial librarian writing short, easy to read poems) until you delve deeper. But both the sight and poetic image of the husband and wife holding hands for all eternity never fail to move.

facebook

I started a Facebook page a little while I ago. Although I took some convincing about the whole Facebook thing, I'm actually enjoying writing it and put up a photo most days so that it's now a colourful miscellany of bits and pieces. Just in case you're wondering, you don't need a Facebook account to read it as it's an 'open page'. Do take a look. You'll also find lots of people and businesses with interesting Facebook pages. I like Saidos da Concha, Retrosaria, Ancient Industries and Persephone Books.

fabric sampler

The theme of Quilt Me! is inspirational fabrics. Fabrics that shout 'quilt me!' at you when you discover them. Fabrics that immediately occupy a place in your heart and claim a place in a quilt. But they don't just have to be wonderful quilting cottons such as the Charley Harper designs or those in the collections by Lotta Jansdotter. They can be any fabric that's quiltable. In the book I use tweed, linen, silk, hand-embroidered tablecloths, cord from trousers, wool form skirts, cottons from dresses, ticking, velvet and many other extremely lovely and effective fabrics (but I avoid anything stretchy, gauzy and slippery.) 

For the most recent Ray-Stitch workshop I put together a pile of mixed fabrics to illustrate what we were going to be making. It started with a few of Simon's old shirts which appealed to me and were well past their wear-by date, then I added some wool tweeds, some tie silk left over from another quilt, and to brighten it all up I put in a few quilting cottons that have been sitting around in a drawer for a while with no home to go to. I cut them into 10" long strips and a variety of widths and demonstrated how they could be put together to make the beginnings of a quilt. Then everyone sorted, cut out, and pieced the fabrics they'd brought with them and the results were fantastic. It was a busy day, but a good one.

[works well with the walls in Alice's room]

I brought home my bits and pieces and now I've finished the top. It's a fabric sampler quilt, really, a way of showing just a few of the different fabrics you can put into a simple but interesting quilt. It's as easy as pie to make, infinitely variable and can be made in any size you like. I'll be doing another workshop at Ray-Stitch on the same theme on Sunday 13th April. I'll bring this and some other fabric sampler/wardrobe quilts to look at, then it'll be a day full of fabulous fabrics.

(I've been meaning to say that Quilt Me! will be published in the US in August this year.)

illustrating quilts

Sam Brewster was an inspired choice of illustrator for Quilt Me! (thank you, Amy). Sam creates imaginative and clever maps that remind me both of geography lessons at primary school a long time ago, and of Soviet illustrated children's books also of a certain era. They tell me all I need to know about a place, and make me smile.

 

My quilts are like maps, in a way, in that they cover a set space and guide your eye instead of your feet, but there the similarities end because they have many repeats and big areas of pattern and none of the pictorial quality of Sam's maps. And yet he managed to turn what is actually a very plain, workaday requirement - to show how a quilt looks when flat so that you can see and follow how to make it -  into lovely examples of illustrative art. 

I'm so used to seeing my own quilts that it's Sam's work that strikes me when I look at the book and they, in turn, make me look at the real quilts with a fresh eye.

All photos by Sam Brewster.

(Sam also created the Yarnstorm Press logo. He's a real whizz to work with.)