meadwinter

(dawn on mead mountain)

To say this was the most exciting Christmas morning I’ve had since I was around six years old is no exaggeration. We arose at first light and walked all the way across Edinburgh — to ascend Mead Mountain. The streets were quiet, the air was still, and the whole city felt hushed with anticipation. After reaching the summit, we located where we had buried our treat with no problems, and Tom began to dig. There was a brief worried moment when we wondered whether the mead would actually still be there but then, as Tom dug just a little deeper, we uncovered the lovely bottle, still safe in the ground. BINGO!

We cleaned that baby up and then . . .

. . . it was time to taste it!

Slainte!

This picture cannot suggest to you just how bloody good the mead is. This is the first time we’d tasted it, and we were both seriously impressed. This stuff is not sweet or syrupy or any of the things you imagine mead to be. It is dry, fizzy, and fragrant. Containing raspberries, ginger, and lemongrass, it tastes like a sort of light botanical champagne! We really, really enjoyed it.

Now, you’d think things couldn’t get much better than a belly full of home-brewed mead and a heart full of seasonal good cheer — but then they did!

The Mule recently bought Tom some floating balloon-lanterns for his birthday. It being an unusually still and mild morning, we decided to fire one up. We lit the wick, the thing expanded rapidly and then it went . . .
UP . . .

Up . . .

. . . and away!

It was a truly beautiful sight to see our wee balloon floating gracefully high above the city.

For a while, we thought it might make it all the way across to Fife!

(crappy digital zoom)

But then we saw that the flame had gone out, and the balloon started to descend somewhere over Leith. Perhaps it was trying to get home. So we followed it back on foot, to see if we could find it. We didn’t, unfortunately, but as these balloons are flimsy, and biodegradable tissue paper things, I don’t feel too bad about it.
Thanks for the lanterns, Mule!

I’m going to take a break now until after the New Year, and I wanted to thank all of you who have stopped by during 2008. I always enjoy your comments, and have been blown away by the debates, exchanges and, in some instances, friendships, that have arisen from conversations here. I also particularly want to thank those of you who sent us messages of support after Belle’s death and Tom’s accident — it really meant a lot to us. Seasonal joy to you all. And a very happy new year.

trees!

can you tell I’m having fun today?

a feast . . .

. . .has arrived!

I have just become very excited opening a big box of edible treats. Thankyou, lovely people at the Port of Lancaster Smokehouse.

nessie

Just time to show you one more sort-of hand made gift. This is a calendar I’ve had made up for a few family members who like my photos. I am quite pleased with it — the whole thing looks much nicer than those wee pictures give a sense of. Some of you may recognise that picture of Jesus, which appeared here back in February. And if you are wondering what on earth is going on in the first picture (which accompanies the month of May) – that is Tom, gleefully astride a hideous effigy of the Loch Ness Monster. We happened across it last Spring and I recall I was laughing so hard I could barely take the picture. Loch Ness really has to be the cheesiest place in the whole of Scotland . . .

oi!

No peeking! Yes you! You know who you are! You said you wouldn’t look! . . .

Actually, those who I’ve placed under a three-day blog embargo are good at keeping their promises, and if I don’t blog this now I probably never will.

The seasonal craft wagon trundles ever onwards. Very soon, it will grind to a halt, and so, my dears, shall I. For I have been making gift-stuff for what seems like an aeon. Ties! mittens! hats! cowls! You know the drill: every year I promise myself that I won’t get in this situation. I will begin in June, or I will just turn out fewer things. But somehow, whatever plans I make, these days toward the end of December always end up as variations on a theme. How well I remember the horror of arising before dawn one Christmas morning to seam up a man-cardigan. What seasonal fun ensued when when we realised it was a garment only Mr Tickle would have been proud to wear. A monumental cardigan! ho ho ho! This year there will be no knitting disasters, but I may well start to dream in cushion.

In this endless parade of log-cabin thingumabobs, I seem to have devised my very own version of Psyche’s tasks. Can I stop making them now? Please? Can I? Anyway, if you are female, or under 10, and in some way related to me, one of these babies will appear in your stocking. Unless, that is, I perpetrate a grim and unseasonal act of anti-cushion violence. I can’t actually rule this out. . . .

toys

This in response to Colleen’s post. I’ve been enjoying her advent calendar immensely, and today she writes very evocatively about the toys behind advent calendar doors; the promise they contain; and the associations of such objects with domesticity — that is, the way toys act as a sort of preparation for one’s adult life in the domestic interior. “There may even,” she writes of her childhood toys, “have been a sewing machine.” I am intrigued by the way that non-functional toys suggest adult functionality, and so was Walter Benjamin, who collected many of them while he was in Moscow in 1927. So here for Colleen (a door within a door of her advent calendar, if she’ll permit me) is Walter Benjamin’s toy sewing machine.

Walter Benjamin’s Archive © (Verso, 2007).
Benjamin’s caption, preserved on the card in his archive, reads: “Wooden model of a sewing machine. If one turns the wheel the needle goes up and down and as it strikes it makes a clattering sound that suggests to the child the rhythm of a sewing machine. Peasant handicraft.”

Benjamin eventually wrote about the Russian toys he collected in a short essay published in 1930. I think he had a lot more to say about them than he did in that essay. I would like to say something about them too — his sewing machine, in particular, really gets me for reasons I daren’t go into now for fear of descending into a vein of sentiment that may also have something to do with the season. But one day I want to write more about Benjamin’s toys. I’ll leave you with another one that really kills me.

Walter Benjamin’s Archive © (Verso, 2007).
The card caption reads: “Old wooden horsey from the governorate of Vladimir.”

ties

from Neckclothitania, (1818)

Most of my evenings this week have been given over to cutting, folding, and carefully stitching neckties. Young or old, smart or casual, all the blokes in my family this year will be receiving a handmade tie. I can share this information with you because with one exception (my Dad) these blokes do not read this blog, and Ma has promised to keep Dad from having a sneaky peek.

There is more to making a tie than you may imagine. If you look at the construction of a well-made one, you’ll see what I mean. They are usually formed of three pieced sections, all cut on the bias to allow the fabric to lie and hang correctly. Ties are rolled and folded in quite a specific and complicated way, and their back seams are invisibly closed with an even slip stitch. I’ve not done much research on the history of the necktie, but from what I can find out, the basic shape of what we now know as the modern tie originated with a late-nineteenth century British haberdasher named Tremlett; three piece bias-cutting was the 1926 innovation of a New-York tailor called Jesse Langsdorf; and Richard Atkinson of Belfast introduced the even slip-stitch in the late 1920s.

You can find a few online tutorials for making ties (for example, here and here). There are also paper patterns available, but I used the instructions in the 1938 edition of the Odham’s Pictorial Guide to Modern Home Needlecraft as my starting point. (I absolutely love this book — it includes straightforward instructions for all sorts of pattern cutting, tailoring, and garment construction. Everything you need is there!) Because my ties are made out of narrow lengths of tweedy fabric, I had to cut and piece them in two sections rather than just cutting one long 36″ length suggested here.

I worked out the angles with a protractor, drew the design on paper, then cut out lengths of tweed and liberty tana lawn for the lining (two very different but equally pleasing types of fabric. Wot a treat!) I then lined both tie-tips, machine-sewed a narrow seam on each long side, and then folded the tie into shape. This bit required lots of steam and pressing action; the use of an old tie as a guide; and a degree of care and concentration. In fact, I think my one piece of advice when tie-making is to spend a lot of time over this folding and pressing part. It really pays off. So after pressing the folds ruler-straight, I pinned them, and, over a few evenings, hand-stitched all my ties closed using the even slip-stitch method (it really is invisible!).

The tweed is substantial enough not to need interlining, and, after pressing, these ties look pretty good, (even though I do say so myself). Because a couple of them are made with very narrow waste lengths of tweed picked up at Hinnigan, I was unable to cut them completely on the bias. But the hang of the fabric still seems OK, and they passed the Tom test anyway, which can be quite exacting.

In this instance, the shirt and the ties aren’t a particularly good match, but the model had Christmas brewing to do, and was not keen on changing his clothes several times on the grounds of tasteful colour coordination. . .

. . .but you get the idea anyway.
So, ’tis the season to wear a festive tweedy tie. Yes it is. Listen up, O ye assorted brothers-in-law. . .

hairy

It is Tom’s birthday. We both have the afternoon off so I took him out for lunch to Kitchin. What a treat! (for me as well as him). The food was fantastic, as it always is there, and it is the kind of superbly prepared, seasonal, Scottish fare Tom really likes. In fact, the whole lunch experience was so damn fine in every way that I really wanted to take a photo or two. But the lighting in the restaurant is rather sepulchral, and I did not fancy disrupting the subdued and tasteful atmos by whipping out my gorillapod, attempting to adjust the white balance, and getting the camera into macro-cuisine mode. . . So then we went to the Whisky Society for coffee (and whiskies). We sat by the fire, and admired their beautifully decorated tree. Here, again, were birthday photo opportunities a-plenty, but things are Really Very Civilised at the whiskysoc, and cameras are not permitted in the members rooms.

But I wasn’t coming home without a photograph. And so, I here present a picture of a slightly sinister, and quite suggestive sign Tom spotted through a frosted window in Leith on our way home. And no, it wasn’t that kind of frosted Leith window. . . well, it didn’t seem to be anyway . . . I’m really not sure where or who the referents of this sign are, nor do I have any sense of its context or meaning. Probably best not to investigate any further. . .

PS I am very much enjoying reading your children’s literature suggestions. Thankyou!

nostalgic

I am looking forward to the Christmas holiday immensely. It seems to be the only time when both of us actually entirely stop working. This year, part of that lovely non-work time will be spent on Islay. Hurrah! There will be walking! Wild, wintry landscapes! Roaring fires! Last time we had a holiday, we really enjoyed reading each other’s books — by which I mean the work of authors one of us hadn’t read, and the other had recommended. I earmarked George Eliot and Josephine Tey for Tom, and he suggested Boris Akunin to me. This was fun. We thought we’d do this again, but this time with the books we’d read as children instead. I am excited about this swap; have been preparing a small selected list, and have begun to order second-hand copies of the books.

Edward Ardizzone, self portrait (1952) © Tate Gallery.

This list needs thought. The selection must be appropriate. For as well as being books one was fond of, one must also be able to imagine the other person being fond of them as well. For example, I devoured the work of Jean Webster, and Pamela Brown, but I unfortunately can’t imagine Tom being gripped by either Daddy Long Legs or The Bridesmaids. (Um, did that come out wrong?) There are other books I loved as a child — Noel Streatfield’s Tennis Shoes, for example — that I think would be very likely to get on my wick if I read them now. I was also a voracious, secret reader of my Ma’s Georgette Heyer novels, but these are emphatically not appropriate Tom-reading, nor do they really count as kids books (however formative they were for me).

I had a granddad who was not only very keen on libraries, but on sales of library books. Many of the books I read as a kid were picked up by him at sales at Rochdale, Heywood, and Bury. I grew up surrounded by wonderful, worn copies of 1950s hardbacks, and loved so many of the books he gave me, with “removed from circulation” stamped inside. Paul Gallico’s Jennie is one of these. In fact, I think Rochdale Central Library must have got rid of all their old Paul Gallicos in one go, as I read and adored most of his books — The Man who Was Magic being another favourite. Jennie’s feisty, Scottish, feline heroine is the exponent of a very grown-up exploration of autonomy and dependence, and I remember Peter’s fight with the enormous yellow-toothed rat as one of the most thrilling and terrifying things I ever read. Thinking about it now, I am sure there is probably something suspicious about Gallico’s writing about relationships in Jennie, as much as in his deeply disturbing Love of Seven Dolls (which I was also very fond of), but, like many people, I have managed to maintain a largely uncritical take on the books I really loved as a child. I wonder if this will change in Gallico’s case if I read him again . . . hmm.

Philosophising cats appear again in another of my ex-library favourites: Eleanor Estes’ Pinky Pye, which also features ornithology, a Very Small Owl, and the marvelous illustrations of Edward Ardizzone.

Ardizzone’s illustration of Mr Bish reunited with his little owl. Eleanor Estes, Pinky Pye, (1958)

Much of my best childhood reading seems to have been illustrated by Ardizzone: his wonderful drawings really brought my copy of Stig of the Dump to life. I remember being fascinated by the American setting of Pinky Pye, and finding the sandy, summer landscape of Fire Island incredibly exotic.

One kid’s book I can’t imagine ever not liking, and which has to be at the top of Tom’s list, is Michael Ende’s Momo. I was given this book as a gift from my auntie Anne, and I think my copy must have been the 1984 English translation. My memories of Cassiopeia, Beppo, and the grim men in grey are very vivid indeed. Its a quarter of a century since I first came across it (gulp) and I am really looking forward to reading it again as well as to seeing what Tom makes of it.

This process of selection is interesting: I am picking books that I think Tom would like, but also the books that I think I would still like too. These books retain a certain spooky staying power, while the majority of things I read (and loved) then do not. What works of children’s literature have staying power for you? What would be on your list?

stamping

Since I made these butterfly thingies a while ago, I have become interested in the whole process of printing, and creating block designs for printing. I treated myself to a couple of nice practical books on the subject: Lena Corwin’s Printing by Hand and Lotta Jandsotter’s Lotta Prints. I really enjoyed both: Corwin and Jandsotter have quite different design aesthetics, but both these books are real treats for the eyes. I would say, though, that Corwin’s book probably had the edge for me, in terms of straightforward, in-depth instructions; a super range of projects; and the real care that has clearly gone into putting her book together. Whereas Lotta Prints tends, at some points, to edge toward being just a visual celebration of the author’s style, theres much more substance to Corwin’s writing — and a real generosity of approach as well. It is very clear, very practical, and veryuseable book: ideal for a beginner like me. Produced under Melanie Falick’s imprint, it of course looks very nice too. I found myself foolishly drawn to this jolly chest of drawers.

Lena Corwin, “Dressed up Dresser,” Printing by Hand (2008).

I’ve since had a bit of a go at designing and cutting a lino block, and I don’t mind admitting that my first attempts have been bloody awful. I definitely need practice. But in the meantime, I’ve really been enjoying printing with blocks that other people have designed. . .

. . . these being my current favourites. Everything about these stamps is satisfying: I love the shapes of the blocks in their hand-finished box; I love the pared-down feel of the designs. I find there is a very evocative pleasure in just getting the blocks out of the box, looking at them, rearranging them, and closing the lid again. It is a childlike pleasure, and one can feel the same sort of thing messing around in one’s button box, but here you get to make marks with these things too! Fun! Anyway, I’ve recently been using the Yellow Owl blocks, together with a block of some cranes I got here to stamp up some seasonal cards.

Yes, I know the shot is a bit blurry, and the festive lights in the background are cheesy, but I care not — I rather enjoy getting in a seasonal sort of mood. I’ve been sitting by the newly-decorated tree and stamping away at my cards, in between shovelling in several mince pies and some festive booze. Fill up that glass, Tom! Keep that stamping hand steady! Ho ho ho!