Jane Brocket's Blog, page 9

emily patrick

[Rosehips and White Tulips (2011) Emily Patrick]

If I could buy a painting by a living artist, I'd buy one by Emily Patrick. I've known about her for years, have seen her work at one of her exhibitions, have several catalogues of her work and postcards, and I included one of her paintings in The Gentle Art of Domesticity, but alas I don't have a real painting. I did however happen to come across her last summer while she was painting in the middle of a beautiful meadow which wasn't such a surprise given that she paints wonderful landscapes.

[Book Bowl Tulips and Feathers (2012) Emily Patrick]

She also paints all the sorts of things I love: flowers (many tulips), plants, books, china and jugs, fruits and vegetables, domestic scenes and gardens, snatches of everyday life, tables covered in cotton reels, paperbacks, postcards and bowls, none of which are perfectly set out or regimented or stiff or tidy.

[Anemones and Blue Wall (2010) Emily Patrick]

Instead, there's a tremendous naturalness and an incredibly light touch. The colours are fresh and pure - the oranges, aquas, turquoises, greens, pinks and magentas are particularly wonderful.

Emily has a comprehensive website which makes for great browsing; you can look at all the prints of the paintings that feature the same yellow jug or all the variations on the theme of interior. I know this because I've spent far too much time doing exactly that.

uncommon sight

We did the snowdrop walk at Welford Park yesterday. We got excited by the numbers of clumps of snowdrops on the verges in the hamlet as we drove in, thinking this was what we were going to see. It was only when we started the walk that we realised just how many snowdrops there are: millions. Not just in clumps, either, but in rugs, carpets, swathes or whatever sort of ground cover you care to evoke.

Apart from a few patches of cultivars near the house, these are all the common snowdrop Galanthus nivalis, but in very uncommon quantities. 

Our favourite part of the walk was the Snowdrop Beech Woods (in these photos) which sounds like something out of Winnie the Pooh, but a polar version. I didn't know that snowdrops have a light, sweet scent (akin to that of daffodils and hyacinths so very springlike rather than perfumed) and this wafted through the woods which looked very Russian in a way, with the tall, thin beech trees (instead of birches) and a snowy covering (flowers rather than snow).

Then there are paths, and bridges, and the beautifully clear Lambourn river and its tributaries, and clumps and groups and patches of snowdrops everywhere. There are also some aconites, the best of which are close to the house (below).

Talking of the house itself, it's straight out of a Jane Austen novel. (Just down the road is the village of Wickham and as this is all close to the Hampshire that Jane Austen knew, I think there must sure be some connection.) Just behind it is the beautiful flint church with a very unusual C12 round tower topped with C13 spire, the kind of place you should really visit on a bicycle in summer on a tour of churches to collect brass rubbings (there's a fine brass inside).

Finally, there's the tea tent with the estate's own sausages in baps, hot soup, good cake, and a cup of tea to be enjoyed in the old laundry, should you wish. You can also buy a pot of two of snowdrops in the green, but we came home with the floral version of snow blindness and no snowdrops as six or twelve snowdrops would look very sad and sparse in comparison to what we'd just seen.

linked up, loved up

[Alice's cake] 

It took me ages to stop reading LinkedIn as Linkled-in (but I am still reading miniseries incorrectly, like some version of medieval ministrations to the poor rather than mini then series), so I couldn't call this post  'linked in' because it would be too difficult for me to read. Plus, linked up sounds more like loved up, which is what I am today.

The Gentle Art of Domesticity e-book is now on sale in several places, and is about to appear on more (Nook, Blackwells, Foyles and others), but I thought it would be useful to give links here to the pages as it seems it's a little difficult to find the book on iTunes and Kobo at the moment.

Kobo

iTunes

Amazon UK

Amazon US

As it's a love-in day, I'm giving away six iTunes vouchers for The Gentle Art of Domesticity which means six people will be able to read the book on an iPad for free. If you'd like a copy of the ebook, just leave a comment below with your email letting me know your favourite birthday/Valentine's cake. I'll email six people on Wednesday with codes for vouchers that will need to be redeemed by 12 March.

Now I'm going back to the kitchen to carry on baking two birthday cakes. Tom and Alice are 21 today, so it's a chocolate cake for him to be decorated wildly by Phoebe who has made a wonderful Instagram photo collage for Alice, and a Red Velvet cake for her (both recipes are in Vintage Cakes).

...Tom's cake

bright spot

I saw this lovely box arrangement in Shoreditch yesterday and it's the first time I've ever seen a true grown-up version of the Playmobil vegetables and crates which Tom, Alice and Phoebe (and I) all loved when they were little. I was so pleased to come across it and took a photo of it to put here because it's a much-needed distraction and flash of colour amidst rain, dark clouds, more rain, high winds, rain, floods, houses standing in dark, cold, brown water, rain, making detours because of closed roads, stepping over hoses and pumps emptying water out of houses, avoiding cars parked on roundabouts and main roads because the owners can't drive as far as their houses, rain, and unwanted creatures taking shelter at night in the loft. 

Our house is still in a dry spot, but every day we are checking the river, looking at water levels around people's houses, finding out from the BBC news what's happening close by. I don't know what the solution is, but the soldiers need to get their wellies on and David Cameron needs to stop saying 'we will do everything it takes to sort this out' and start saying what will be done. I feel so sorry for everyone whose property has been affected here and in other wet parts of the UK. Looking out of the window as I write, it's clear this enormous flooding problem is not going to go away quickly.

bits and pieces

[bits and pieces for a quilt]

Bit and pieces from the last couple of weeks.

Thank you for your contributions to the haberdashery discussion. It's such a wonderful word in every context and the reason I asked is because I'd really like to use it in a book title, but have been told that it would cause problems. I'm not sure I agree and think the comments show just how much interest unusual words can generate even where there are multiple meanings. Anyway, if the creative world can accommodate  Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes , 'haberdashery' can't really be that fraught with danger.

I am very unsuggestible. If someone tells me I should read The Last Runaway, it's the last thing I'll read. I might know that it has quilts and Quakers in it and is right up my street, but I won't read it until all pressure to read it is off. Which is why I read it covertly a couple of weeks ago and couldn't put it down until I'd finished it. It's a fine read, and I loved the way quilts and methods of quilting are described, put together and used as metaphors. 

I also read How to be a Heroine (probably because no-0ne told me I should). I'm a Jane Eyre person and simply can't stand Cathy in Wuthering Heights, so I start out on the opposite side of the Jane/Cathy heroine debate to Samantha Ellis. I enjoyed this book, but what I admired most were her readings of so many classics which were fresh, clever and perceptive. I liked the element of looking for a heroine role-model less, especially in the matter of love, and wondered why SE pursued the idea of looking for one for so long (way into her thirties) instead of learning to trust her intellect and instincts.

I taught a quilting workshop at Ray Stitch yesterday, hence the cutting out of bits and pieces of fabric on Saturday. It was a very productive and enjoyable day. There's another one coming up on Sunday 13 April. If you want to get moving with your quilts and/or want to experiment with different fabrics, do have a look at the details. I can promise a good time with fabric and machines.

[I can't write 'bits and pieces' without singing and thinking of the Dave Clark Five. ]

the gentle art of republishing

Today's the day that The Gentle Art of Domesticity becomes widely and easily available via Amazon, Kobo, Nook and e-book stores. This is after a number of years of the hardback being expensive and difficult to find, and several publishing problems which were frustrating to watch from the position of author.

But now the book is mine again, and I am the publisher this time. It sounds grand, it feels grand, and I'm very happy to see it back on the bookshelf, even if that bookshelf is virtual. It would be very costly to reprint and I'd need to know there's a big demand for it to make that option worthwhile. While I appreciate many people love the feel and look of this title as a real book, I think it's better to republish it as an e-book and get it out into the world again rather than hold onto the idea of a physical book and have it hidden from view.

And I have to say I am pleased with the way it looks on a reading screen. I've worked with Acorn Digital Press who have done all the technical work, and from the start we agreed that the e-book had to look as good technically possible - with the added bonus of being able to adjust the font size to make reading even easier. As for the photos, they really shine and work well in this format as, of course, they were digital in the first place.

Although some authors might take the opportunity to edit when they are preparing a book for republication, I decided that the book needed to stay exactly as it was when it first came out. I have, however, taken the opportunity to make a few necessary corrections  (typos etc) and add an index, but otherwise it's the original, UK edition.* (The book was 'americanized' for the US edition, unecessarily I thought, as I was and remain quite sure that US readers are more than capable of reading books by English authors exactly as they were written, but I didn't have a say in the matter.)

The e-book has a new introduction, the full original text, much-used and frequently requested recipes for rock buns, flapjacks, biscuits and more, an index and a search function so that you can easily look up, say, 'buttons' or 'quilts' or 'tulips', and an updated resources section with details of shops, books, websites, and sources of inspiration.

I'm so pleased that technology has made the publication of this book possible. It's a book with a history and a back-story of its own, and I know from what many people have told me that it has changed lives which is a pretty incredible thing for me to grasp. I'm delighted to republish it.

* there is only one edition of the e-book and this is the original, UK edition, so no matter where in the world you buy it, it will be the same edition, same text, same everything.

good reviews

These days I prefer to read reviews after I've seen a film or read a book. This way I'm not predisposed or prejudiced in some way, and I have to make an effort to decide what I think - not whether someone else was right, wrong or the writer/director's best friend. I decide what to see or read by scanning column inches and headlines, by recommendations, and by hearing bits and pieces on the radio. Obviously, I'm not completely in the dark about what I'm about to see or read, but I'm pretty sketchy.

I went to see Inside Llewyn Davis yesterday. We'd just watched The Man Who Wasn't There at the weekend so I was ready for more Coen Brothers' melancholy and dark humour and brilliant cinematography. Well, this has all of those things. It has great music, brilliant performances, and every frame is beautifully composed, lit and coloured. It's an intelligent film full of classical allusions and references, many patterns and plenty of subtext and it's also, I thought, incredibly sad. 

But what's fantastic is that it has given rise to some seriously good, well-written reviews. I imagine film critics have to go through the motions so often (what do you say about the nth Harry Potter film?) that they must wonder if they'll ever be able to flex their writing muscles. Well, Inside Llewyn Davis has clearly given critics an opportunity to show just what they can do, and has allowed them to share depths of knowledge and analysis that many films don't inspire - or warrant. My favourite reviews for insight are  in the Guardian, the Telegraph and the FT. I'm not saying read them now, but perhaps after seeing the film.

(Inside Llewyn Davis should really be seen by anyone who saw and enjoyed Frances Ha. Lots to compare and contrast there.]

haberdashery

[change of image as I got round to taking some photos]

Quick question. In this country and many others a haberdashery is a shop or department selling all the stuff you need for sewing and needlework: needes, threads, pins, scissors, fabrics, tape measures, ribbons, buttons, trimmings etc.. In the US, however, a haberdashery is traditionally a shop or department selling mens' accessories such as gloves, hats, ties, belts etc.. I'm wondering if that's still strictly the case, and whether these days crafters and quilters and dressmakers in the US understand a haberdashery to be a store or website that carries the goods they need?

Basically, I'd really like to know if there's a problem with the word 'haberdashery' in the context of making and crafting, particularly where the word is historically associated with menswear? I'd be very grateful for any thoughts on the matter. Thank you.

monday morning

[Morning by Amy Katherine Browning, in Luton Culture collection, purchased from the artist in 1955)

This bright, light Monday morning I put this bright, light morning painting on my Facebook page then wished I'd put it here where I can see it better without all the Facebook clutter. It's still morning in San Francisco, so I feel justified in posting it this late in the day. 

retracing steps

[Crowther Street, Stockport - rebuilt since Lowry painted it]

I must have known that Stockport is full of steps when I was growing up there, but I'd never fully realised what a multi-level town it is. 

[split level town]

There are steep steps, wide steps, narrow steps, stone steps, cobbled steps. Steps with specific names, steps with handrails, pavements that become steps, vast steps up the to art gallery, magnificent steps up to the town hall, tall steps up to the market, winding steps down to pubs and fish and chips shops, and red brick steps with a plaque down to the bus station. Even the hospital is called Stepping Hill.

[Town Hall steps]

Many parts of Stockport were wrecked in the 1960s, but thankfully the steps in the centre remained. They are vital links between the old bits - the market, the shops, the churches, the pubs - and create a sense of connection. Unfortunately though these links and connections no longer extend beyond small area that covers the old centre perched on a hill and the newer shopping areas below.

 [Art Gallery/War Memorial steps]

So unless you make a real effort to get to them, you'd never know that Stockport has some wonderfully interesting and historically significant buildings not so far form the epicentre of the market and Merseyway, just a short walk up more hills and slopes to the parts that were mostly demolished and erased, then either filled with busy roads and anonymous buildings or simply left to rot.

[Mealhouse Brow,Stockport]

There's an amazing Grade I listed Waterloo/Commissioners' church which was designed by the architect responsible for the Fitzwilliam Museum. There's an immensely forbidding, soot-covered late C19/Arts and Crafts church with a tremendously tall, dark spire which always gave me the shivers but which is actually far more pink and far less sombre close up. There's a 1925 Art Gallery and War Memorial (with not a single painting from the council-owned collection on display), many vast and beautiful red-brick mills dotted about as reminders of the town's cotton and hat-making heritage, and a madly ornate town hall that was admired by John Betjeman and contrasts wildly with the severely classical 1830s infirmary opposite. Then there are pink brick mill-owners' houses, fiery red brick schools, several pubs with important interiors, and even two listed tram shelters.

I spent a couple of hours on Friday wandering around Stockport with a map and my list of things to look for and at, and in retracing my own earlier footsteps (and those of Lowry who painted various Stockport steps) I discovered much more in the hills, mills, steps and brows than I'd ever seen before.