Snapdragon's garden

Zoe takes to sewing

Zoe, my 10 year old daughter, has always found sewing to be a bit of a chore - she is left handed and her attempts at hand sewing have been a series of wails about the needle coming unthreaded, the stitches snagging and buttons falling off.

It doesn't help that her little sister finds hand sewing quite easy.

This weekend the house has been full of Euan's friends here to watch various rugby matches - so yesterday evening, while everyone else drank beer  and shouted at the telly, I introduced Zoe to the new sewing machine.

The Bernina has a great speed regulator so she was able to start off really slowly.

And this was a result - a tote bag designed and made by Zoe completely on her own.  All I had to do was get the materials down from the shelf and show her how to keep the fabric straight in the machine.

I think that it is fantastic - very smart and strong with a proper lining.

Knitted coat - by request

A week or so ago I posted a comment on Tif's site - she had been complaining about the less than clear instructions in Rowan's knitting patterns and I mentioned an unwearable coat that I had made in the 1980s inspired by a Kaffe Fasset photo.

Since then I have had a large number of emails requesting a photo - so I dug out my poor stored moth tempting coat and took a few snaps.

After my Dad and Euan, Kaffe Fasset has been the most influential man in my life . . .At school I was completely hopeless at any kind of needlework - I laboured and laboured at gingham pinnies and shoebags, pinning, tacking, sewing, seam-ripping, pinning . . .and so on.  While girls around me made elaborate gored skirts and boned bodices I trapped my fingers in the sewing machine and bled on the bias binding.  It took me an entire year to cross stich a placemat.

Knitting was just as bad - my poor knitted teddy was obviously ahead of its time, "bearing" a distinct resemblance to the scruffier alien softies in Japanese craft books.

My mother despaired - we did a lot of crafting at home but apart from finger mice and elaborate glued peg dolls I was pretty rubbish.

Then in 1985 Mum brought back Kaffe Fasset's Glorious Knitting back from the library.  I can still remember the smell of the newly minted book and it still

makes my heart skip.
Here was a book where accuracy mattered less than just getting on and doing it, where anyone could knit, where it was all about colour.

I began my first jumper that evening  - a stripey batwing - and finished it by the weekend.  It was about an inch thick with trailing wool and I'm not sure I wore it much as the arms were a bit stiff, but I was hooked and spent the next 5 years acquiring wool from a nearby mill and knitting ridiculously complicated garments.

This coat was based on - well copied from would be more accurate - a photograph in another Kaffe fasset book, possibly Glorious Inspirations, though mine is blue and the original was red.

In theory I love it but now I look like a prize fighter in it - the sleeves are too puffy at the top.

Actually now that I have gone to the bother of unearthing it I may take it to pieces and see if I can alter the sleeve caps to something a bit more flattering.  Then it will merely look pretentious.

Now I am actually a pretty good knitter technically - I had a job as a museum caretaker for a few summers during University days and I had to amble round the museum making sure that no-one was vandalising the stuffed seagulls.  I wore cardigans with large pockets and invested in circular needles knitting as I walked, it was very therapeutic, I had no boss on site and I learned to do elaborate cabling and fair isle with the ends properly tied in.  Don't mention this to East Lothian Council.

But I have not knitted in years - I did fantastical Oilily coloured jumpsuits in cottons for the girls when they were small and baby hats were churned out by the dozen for friend's children but somehow knitting for myself was put aside.

We are going to Parisnext week (9 hours on a train) and I am over at my Mum's house (home of my wool cone collection) on Wednesday - I can feel a jumper coming on.

Dumbarton flower festival

Yesterday was a new experience - I had been asked by a friend to do a flower arrangement in memory of her parents for Dumbarton Flower festival.

I have always steered clear of flower festivals - the ambitious structures of wire and oasis seem technically very daunting and a mile away from my brand of flowers.

The space I was given was enormous and in front of a very beautiful modern stained glass window based on the biblical text about the burning bush.

I picked everything in the garden that  had survived the frost and put them together in a large copper pot - rust coloured heleniums at the centre to echo the centre of the burning bush in the window with gladioli, crocosmia seedheads and aconites providing the white, yellow and blue flames at the edges.

I had been a bit apprehensive about how my flowers would fit in with the whole but in the end it was great fun and a fitting end to the season.

The festival is at Riverside church, Dumbarton this weekend.

Bulbs as gifts

I got an email today telling me off - at least I think that it was telling me off.  It was an order for spring bulbs from a customer who had ordered some last week, complaining that I should have mentioned that the bulbs I sell come packaged in hessian bags with planting instructions and can therefore be given as presents.  I was firmly told that if I had posted proper photos of the packaging she would have ordered more the first time and not had to pay double postage.
So here we are - a photo of our bulb packaging - and yes they do make good presents - we have tulips and amaryllis and from next week we will have narcissi paperwhites as well.  And to Mrs White - yes I shall refund your postage!
On Friday Snapdragon shall be at 2 Macmillan Coffee Mornings - I shall be in Bridge of Allan and Sally will be at Gartloaning in Gartmore.  We shall have lots of these ever so beautifully packaged bulbs along with garden tools and some potted bulbs as well.

Moving on

The year has turned.  The equinox found us in quiet contemplation, an evening cosied up reading and chatting by the woodburning stove, candles lit, red wine poured.  We are ready to move into the second part of the year.

This is my favourite time of year - I am more at home in a woolly jumper than a floaty sundress and I love the range of bleeding colours that a cold snap brings to the garden.  This euphorbia, leaves smudged orange-red, the dogwoods bruised purples, the birch in the glen beginning to glow yellow.  It is a melancholy beauty perhaps - a sliding into the mud that will grip us from November to March - but with a low sun shining it is a glorious sight.

Yesterday I planted eucalyptus trees and alliums in what was the potato patch.  They are such beautiful bulbs, pearly and smooth, slightly wobbly. There is something about them that reminds me of teeth bumping through babies gums.  In May I hope that they will be waving deep dark purple globes amongst the silver leaves of the gum trees (which will be coppiced)

Euan has been pressing on with the shed - it is now watertight and he has begun to fit out the inside.  we decided to see whether pure unadulterated "straight off the sheep" fleeces work as insulation so bought all the fleeces from our friend Peter's organic flock. 
This sounds extravagant but the reality is that fleeces of  common or garden sheep are of such a low value that the farmer barely recoups the cost of shearing. It is cheaper than buying the equivalent amount of insulation roll from B&Q and certainly miles cheaper than anything eco-friendly on the market.

The fleeces have been stuffed into the cavity between the corrugated iron shell and the plywood lining. They will fill in above the ceiling when that goes up.

I have to admit that the result smells a bit "sheepy" at the moment - and I hope that the whiff will go - but it is certainly cosy and the sound insulation is great.

Untitled

This has been a sad and stressful week.  The pall of Lisa's death last Friday hangs over the whole community who find that they are unable to talk without cliches.  Lisa's funeral is tomorrow. I have been asked by parents who can't go themselves, if I will keep a watching eye on a couple of her classmates, it is going to be a difficult day.

We, as a family, have a number of stressful things rumbling on in the background, all of which seem to be at crucial points this week.

To top it all we had a sudden frost on Monday night which killed all the flowers in the garden and brought the season to an abrupt and unexpected close.  Just in time for a photography session on Tuesday!

In amidst of all this is has been the week where everything has arrived, things that have been planned for months - First the bulbs

to sort and plant and dispatch.

Then my wonderful new sewing machine


which is even better than I expected and which is not getting enough attention.

And then, finally at 7.30 this morning,

My new workroom . . . .

It needs a bit of work.

What a difference a day makes

All the people who were upset by the chaos of my workroom picture on Snapdragon's chat will be pleased to see that I have tidied up.

I folded the materials into beautifully colour coded piles,

Blue

 

and Red

I swept the floor and moved in another desk

All in anticipation . . .

Of this.

I have been stalking this machine for months - reading reviews here and here, saving up my pennies until finally, yesterday I went to the Bernina shop for a demo and officially ordered it.

It has just arrived - and I don't know why I am doing a blogpost - that is just too, too sad.  I am off to play.

Dismal and dreech.

It has been a dismal weekend - wall to wall rain - a reflection of everyone's mood.  the only good thing was that it was curry night on Friday - once a month we get together with another 4 families from the road and order takeaway curry.  It is always a noisy, relaxed, fairly boozy evening with masses of children milling round and stealing popodoms.  We are very lucky in having such great friends so near, even though we live in the back of beyond.

The girls had friends round to play on Saturday so I got on with the spirit sapping chore of updating the website.

There are now photos on the events pages, new products in mail order and the tulip bulbs have arrived.

The photo here is of the bouquet that the lace cuff went with,

On Snapdragon's chat I am confessing to chaos and looking forward to focussing.

Waste

I had been going to blog about all sorts today - the glorious weather, the beautiful bride, plans for next year.
I can't.  Everything is trivial.
Today we have been reminded of the horror that haunts parents of teenagers in rural areas like ours.  The young woman who babysits for my children was killed in a car accident on her way into Glasgow this morning.  She was a wry, witty girl, fantastic with our children, incredibly vital, generous and involved in everything locally fom the pantomime to the village newspaper.  It is impossible to imagine the village without her
I saw her on Wednesday evening when I dropped Zoe off at Guides - waving frantically and laughing hysterically at my abysmal attempts to parallel park on the hill outside the village hall.
In the 4 years that we have lived here two of the young women from our village have died on the roads - both shortly after passing their driving tests.  Every day I am overtaken by fools on blind summits and steep corners.
It makes me weep for the waste.

Wedding bouquets - getting personal.

I think that the reason that I particularly love arranging flowers for  weddings is that, as ideas develop over a few months, there is time to create something that is truly special - and very personal to the bride.
This week I am working on bouquets for a woman that I have never met, she doesn't live locally and our proposed meeting earlier in the year had to be put off when her schedule got too busy.  We have corresponded by e-mail and I have talked at length to her mother who is arranging the flowers for the church.
It was during one of these phonecalls that her mother mentioned the wedding dress and how her daughter had designed it herself - this amazing embroidered work of art in pale greens and blues.  In her modesty the bride had mentioned the colours and shape but not let on that it was her own design.   It made me think about how we could tie the bouquets into that in some way. The colours and textures of the bouquets were already going to fit in well as we had discussed them at length, they will be sea holly and sedums with  berries but I wanted to be able to do something that would lift them out of the ordinary, make them really special.
And then I remembered, in my box of special scraps I have a small length of C19th hand made Broderie Anglais, salvaged at some point from an underskirt.  It is a beautiful piece of embroidery, you can see how much painstaking work has gone into the piece - I like to think that it was part of a trousseau, cared for and treasured through the years.
There is just enough to make into cuffs to wrap round the stems of the 3 bouquets so today I shall tack the old pieces onto some vintage linen, ready to be used on Saturday.
I have no qualms about this treasure being passed on, I know that it will be appreciated and incorporated into something new, a memory of a different wedding a century or so on.