sights (and yarns) of antwerp

At the end of January I spent a long weekend in Antwerp with my parents and D. It was kind of by accident that we went there, since until the night before we left we had been planning on going to Ghent, but it turned out Ghent had some kind of festival going on that weekend, which wasn’t very accommodating of our last-minute travel plans, and Lille was similarly busy, so we went to Antwerp instead. I must admit that before we went, I wasn’t full of excitement for Antwerp, as I had been once before, aged about 13, and all we saw of the city was the red light district, the sculpture park and an Indonesian restaurant. (I imagine that might give you a funny idea of the nature of our family holidays, but it’s not as bad as it sounds – we were visiting friends who just happened to live bang in the middle of the red light district. And they were friends, not ‘friends’, honest.) Although the sculpture park was nice, we didn’t see any of the centre, and so I left without a great impression of the city. But this trip succeeded in completely reversing my feelings about Antwerp: we had an excellent time there, and I would gladly go back.

Antwerp Cathedral tower

The buildings (and especially the tops of buildings) were stunning. I loved these tall, narrow guildhall buildings in the Grote Markt, with pointy tops and so many windows. I would live there in a flash. One of the buildings on the other side of the square was up for rent, and need I mention that the idea of moving to Antwerp and setting up my own yarn store on the ground floor crossed my mind? No, I thought not. But I suspect the Belgians know how lucky they are, as I balked at the prices in one estate agent’s window, and thought it safest not to look again. We were lucky with the sunshine for these pictures, as a lot of the time we were there it poured with rain, which meant there was much cause for ducking indoors – which wasn’t strictly unfortunate, since this tended to lead to coffee, and if we were really lucky, cake.

Grote Markt, Antwerp

Antwerp came out well in terms of eating and drinking; we found a real gem of a restaurant, De Reddende Engel, near the cathedral. Despite the name, it’s actually a French restaurant, or, as the patronne explained ‘Ici, nous sommes en France!’ It felt slightly fraudulent to go to Belgium and eat authentic French food (and from southwest France, at that), but the feeling of guilt was quickly erased as soon as we started eating. We had the most exquisite meal there, and the patronne was very welcoming; I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Nearby was a highly eccentric bar, Het Elfde Gebod (The Eleventh Commandment), which was jam packed full of religious statues and artefacts, including angels dangling on chains from the ceiling. It was quite a sight inside. They had a great range of Belgian beer, and delicious moules frites, so that made for another fun night. We also found a nice bar for a late-night drink: the Brasserie Berlin, which was young and trendy and suitably replete with fancy Edison light bulbs.

Rockox House, Antwerp

There were so many different museums and galleries to visit, and the ones we saw were really first class. We went to the Rubens House, and although one wing was closed for renovations, the rest was amazing: a whole seventeenth-century ‘palazzo’, much of it designed by Rubens himself, including the garden. (Though for the David Lynch fans out there, watch out for the landing half-way round the house – I was momentarily terrified when I clocked the red velvet curtains and black-and-white tiled floor. Creepy!) Then since the Royal Museum of Fine Arts was completely closed for renovation, we saw parts of their collection in a number of different venues, including the Rockox House (above). The house was worth a visit in itself, and the Golden Cabinet exhibition was excellent. Lastly, we visited the MAS (Museum aan de Stroom), a triple museum of the historical, ethnographic and maritime collections of Antwerp, near the docks (below). It’s housed in a very striking building, which only opened in 2011, and is ten storeys high, with curvy windows in a spiral around the building and an open-air viewing platform on top. Unfortunately we didn’t get there in time to see the museum itself, but we did go up to see the view from the top. It was pretty wet and blustery up there, so we didn’t stay outside for long, but while we were up there, there was a rainbow, of the kind where you can almost see the full circle. Cool, quoi! I’m keen to go back and actually explore this museum, as we bought the guide book and it looks like it would be right up my street.

MAS, Antwerp

But of course, no trip would be complete without sampling the local yarn store. Part of the plan for going to Ghent had involved an excellent-sounding yarn and fabric store that my parents visited a little while ago, and so I was all fired up for that and sadly disappointed when I heard we were going to Antwerp instead. Luckily for us, though, Antwerp also has a beautiful little shop (I say little, but in fact it’s deceptive as it has two entrances, going round a corner) that sells yarn and fabric: Julija’s Shop. (They also have a lovely blog, albeit all in Dutch, but the pictures are great and quite inspiring all on their own.) Oh the joys of Ravelry! I am so grateful to have the ability to find a yarn store in a foreign city right at my fingertips, wherever I am.

Julija's Shop, Antwerp

My ma and I hastened to pay it a visit on the Saturday afternoon, and we had great larks there, stroking things, dreaming of future knitting and sewing projects and making plans. I think it’s pretty safe to say that if we had been left to our own devices we might have spent the whole afternoon there, but sadly we were only 50% of the group and, without naming names, not everyone was quite so keen on whiling away their holiday in a yarn shop. More fool them, I say. After we left I realised I hadn’t taken any pictures, and so I had to contrive to end up back at the shop while on a late night walk (‘Oh, look where we are!’), in order to take these rather poor-quality nighttime ones. If you’re going to Antwerp, I highly recommend a visit here!

Julija's Shop, Antwerp

Below is the booty that I brought home with me: four pretty fabric remnants (including some super cool neon yellow fabric!), and three balls of yarn, which I envisage will one day be striped together in some sort of baby outfit for one of the many babies that seem to be making an appearance around this time. I can’t get enough of the grey/cream/white with yellow combination at the moment.

Yarn and fabric booty from Julija's Shop

But oh, the imaginary booty that I would have brought home if I’d had the time to think up projects for it all… maybe it’s a good thing after all that we were taken away when we were?

progress of sorts…

For a long time I have dreamed of taking a creative holiday at home; not going anywhere, just staying in and getting things done. For a serial project-starter such as myself, this has always sounded like the perfect solution to my ever increasing collection of unfinished things. Last week, since my usual partner in crime was away on a work trip to Germany, I had the perfect opportunity, and so scuttled back to my parents’ house in Oxford for an industrious week-long creative holiday with my ma, with a suitcase full of half-completed projects.

It was a very pleasant week indeed. We went for dog walks on Port Meadow (we even saw a snake, indulging in some unseasonal sunbathing); we went to the market – something I haven’t done in years – where I bought shiny pink sequins and my ma bought a spectacular matching red cape and skirt to transform into cushions (lamentably I couldn’t persuade her to just wear them as they were); we made an enormous pot of cassoulet to welcome in the cold weather; and we visited our local knitting and sewing shops (just to keep them in business, you understand) where I bought some silk to line a dress with and some wool to knit a Christmas present.

You could say that things didn’t quite work out as planned, however… My grand ambitions were foiled, and I was forced to scale down. I started the week gently (or so I thought) with an attempt to rectify my Jaywalker socks, which were coming out far too small. But when I started afresh to make them bigger, they just came out elephantine. So eventually I simply unravelled everything, and am now back to a ball of yarn with some needles in it. Ever so slightly more successful was my purple cardigan, whose tension was only mildly too tight (in spite of having done a tension square before starting). So although the end result was the same, i.e. I unravelled all the pieces, I did manage to achieve the right tension on bigger needles, so at least I know how to make it right the next time, which feels like some degree of progress.

I took two other knitting projects with me on this excursion: my Kettlewell jumper, which I finished knitting in July but haven’t had the heart to seam up, and my pink tweed shawl-collared sweater, which has been abandoned for years since I enlarged the armholes on the body and was then at a loss as to how to knit the sleeves to match. With the former, I came to a very agreeable deal with my mother in which she offered to seam my jumper if I would do her embroidery in return – which of course I did. I was feeling mighty pleased with myself for that little bit of negotiation, and was relieved to be so close to finally completing a jumper, until I came to finishing off the neck edging only to discover that the moths had got there first. So then I had to darn over a large area first, just to hold it together. Fingers crossed I’ve now put paid to those dastardly moths’ efforts to destroy my lovely jumper. Then with the latter, I haven’t actually made any physical progress, but thanks to my wise mama (who, like me, detests seaming knitting and will go to any lengths to avoid it) I have got the next move all planned out, and I think I understand how to go about knitting seamless, top-down set-in sleeves. This feels like a brave step, but easier than coming to terms with seaming in the long term.

It wasn’t a week of pure knitting, though – oh no. (I did say this was an ambitious week, didn’t I?) I also attempted to finish sewing my first ever skirt (I will have to write a separate blog post about that though, as it was an adventure all in itself), but only got as far as adding a zip (neatly – which I am extremely chuffed about about, I might add) and half of the waistband. So this is still languishing unfinished chez mes parents, awaiting my return when I can sew the other half of the waistband and hem it. Plus I also made a grand total of two lavender bags for Christmas presents before the sewing machine started acting up, and so I had to bring the rest of the material home again to finish; and the same goes for my great aunt’s needlepoint, which I had planned to turn into a cushion for her.

So at the end of the week, in spite of my best efforts and intentions, somewhat disappointingly I didn’t actually have a single finished item to show for myself. But I have made progress of sorts, even if it’s only to go back to the beginning of some projects, ready to start again (though I am unashamedly planning to re-set the start dates for those on Ravelry, to make them seem less never-ending), or to make a plan of attack for finishing others. I have all of about six inches of seaming left to do on the Kettlewell jumper now before it’s finished, which I think I can probably manage without assistance. And as for the rest, all I really need now is another creative week’s holiday!

*P.S. Any particularly astute or suspicious readers might notice that these photos of Oxford are not recent. I wholly admit that this is the case, but I was a bit stuck for visual material to accompany a whole post about not making things, since – as is to be expected – I don’t have any photos to show for that. You will have to wait for me to finish something first.

dogwalk show autumn/winter 2012

It all started when I went to New York last year. I was bowled over every time we went outside by how stylish all the New York dogs were. They were accessorised to the max, with little coats, matching leads, fancy hairdos, the whole shebang. NYC dogs lead a life of luxury, it would seem, judging from the range of readily available services across the city. From pampering dog spas on the main streets to special doggy cupcakes from snack trailers in the parks, there was no end to how a dog could treat itself. By the end of our two week stay I felt like we were positively depriving our poor dog back home, and wondered what Maud would think of her current lifestyle if she could only see how dogs on the other side of the Atlantic lived.

So one afternoon, riddled with guilt, I wandered in to one of the many trendy doggy outfitters near our hotel, and checked out the styles on offer. I ended up leaving with a very fashionable, Burberry-style waterproof number in Maud’s size, that she could wear on rainy days, since she’s so sensitive about leaving the house when it’s raining. (She was clearly born to be a fashion dog all along.) And she fitted right into it, and still wears it happily whenever it’s wet – though there are certain members of my family who refuse to be seen out with her in her raincoat, not that I’m going to name any names. Perhaps they’re just worried that she’ll show them up in their boring cagoules. But even the most sceptical of you must admit that she looks mighty smart in her new coat (this photo is of when she first tried it on – a particularly sunny day, unfortunately).

However, now I think things have got out of hand. A few days ago I received an overjoyed email from my mother, who had just finished knitting her first ever lace scarf, after much ripping out and re-knitting (it was painful to witness). But rather than sending me a photo of the scarf by itself, or even of herself, modelling said scarf, I received two photos of the dog, draped about with the finest handknitted red lace scarf. What is the world coming to? I would be surprised if even the most pampered NYC dogs were afforded this sort of luxury. (Or maybe they are, and I just wasn’t mixing in the right social circles.) Was this all my fault? Those darned New York dogs have started something unstoppable! Where will it all end?

the relative merits of craft shops

The other day, I found myself at a loose end in central London, and, catching sight of Liberty’s at the end of the street I was pottering along, I thought to myself ‘what better place to while away a spare hour?’, and headed straight for it, with a new-found sense of direction. I was in one of those moods when I felt that the whim might just take me to splash out on some extravagant home accessory, as if to give my day some kind of purpose (exactly what it lacked up to that point), and Liberty’s seemed like the kind of place where that kind of whim would most likely be satisfied. Naturally, as soon as I saw the sign to the haberdashery department, I made a beeline for it, knowing that this would be where I would find my satisfaction, and my purse its undoing.

But on the contrary, despite the unbeatable surroundings – and I really love the interior of Liberty’s – I found nothing whatsoever to tempt me. There was very little fabric to choose from, and an even tinier selection of remnants, and next to nothing in the way of what you could really call ‘creative’ or ‘craft’ materials. Everything came pre-packaged in kits, or in tiddly sample quantities of overpriced notions. None of it was aimed at people who actually make anything from scratch – it was all ready-made decorations for other ready-made items. It all just left me wondering where things went wrong, since once upon a time I have no doubt that Liberty’s really would have been the place to go to buy just about anything (and especially things of a luxury nature) for one’s haberdashery needs.

Then last weekend I went to Cambridge, and made my customary visit to the new fabric shop, CallyCo. (I still think of it as new, although it’s actually been around for nearly a year now. I guess it’s just a year I haven’t been around…) The difference was radical. Although this shop is a mere fraction of the size of Liberty’s, they have an enormous variety of fabrics, both dress and upholstery-weight, plus a selection of notions and kits that is plenty large enough, plus threads in all colours of the rainbow, and even paint! And, (what always gets me), an endlessly changing selection of remnants and fat quarters, which never fails to entice me whenever I go in. Fortunately that tends not to be more than once a month at present, but once I move back to that side of the country, there’s no knowing what might become of me (the photo above being the outcome of my latest visit).

Similarly, a visit to Oxford’s one and only dedicated (and also relatively new) haberdashery shop, Darn It & Stitch, was far more inviting than its capital city, luxury department store cousin. Although another tiny space, they really pack a lot in, and it’s always surprising how many cute or beautiful things I find in there to interest me – the bunny fabric above being a case in point. From locally-dyed wool, to vintage buttons and zips, to fat quarters and fabric by the metre, and that’s not all, by any means.

The moral of the story? There isn’t much of one, really, and I’m sure it’s been said before. But in order to find really interesting and lovely materials for crafty purposes beyond ready-packed kits, the biggest and most likely-looking stores rarely have the answer. Thank goodness little shops like these ones exist, or where would I be? (The answer? Probably a lot richer.)

market booty

I am back from my market adventure/revision break with many more spoils than I ever thought I would bring back. Usually trips to the market involve admiring lots of things but not buying any, but it seems maybe I am gradually growing into a market state of mind. Last time I went I came back with four cashmere jumpers and an assortment of mismatching cute ceramic buttons; this time I came back with lots and lots. I got a couple of large Art Deco roast chicken dishes, with Clarice Cliff-esque designs:

They were made in Stoke on Trent by A J Wilkinson potters, where Cliff used to work, but their genuine ancestry is less important than the fact that they will make excellent chicken dishes.

I also picked up a set of four little cake plates with a matching bigger one, with which I and three lucky friends (I am taking applications now) can have tea and cake parties. My mama said she didn’t like them, and I started to think I was wrong to be excited about them, but what’s not to be excited about where cake parties are involved?

On a complete tangent to all this crockery, I also found a magnifying glass with a beautiful chequered wooden handle. I don’t have any great purpose in mind that requires a magnifying glass, but I’m sure a girl is always better off with one than without one. After all, now I can solve mysteries – just think of all those mysteries I’ve had to leave unsolved until today! I’ve just been examining the fingerprints on my laptop… probably all mine.

Needless to say, the books in the photo are part of today’s booty too, though perhaps I shouldn’t admit that, given that they’re in English. Well anyway, we can all gloss over that fact. And finally, I acquired a very fine second-hand small Le Creuset saucepan. Plus all the embroidered bits and pieces that my spoils are sitting on are my mother’s booty for her curtain project-to-be. All in all, a pretty good day’s work! Except that the day’s actual work has been somewhat delayed by this adventure, so I had better get back to it now. Only two weeks to go!

driven to distraction

This week has been a bad one. With four essays to write in a week and a half, I knew it was going to be difficult and that there would be some hard times. I never imagined it would be this bad, though. As the fruits of my distraction arrive, I will document them here, one by little bad one… (My justification, by the way, is that the promise of imminent playtime ranks extremely highly on the list of incentives to write the damn essays in the first place.)

First of all I got a wool winder. I’ve wanted one of these forever, but they tend to be stupidly expensive for a useful bit of plastic that goes round and round. This one, however, was not, thanks to some sneaky ebay wangling. I’ve seen genius home-made lego wool winders with tutorials (!) and contemplated going down the same route, but in this case decided against it. Ultimately I guess I would like a swift to go with it, but again, bits of wood that go round and round are also pricey. So I’ll wait.

Next I got a parcel full of eyes! (Prize for anyone who could possibly have seen that coming.) This is purely because the postage was free if you got lots of eyes, so I did. I reasoned that eyes always come in handy (maybe not the right expression to use?) and it’s best to have some spare rather than always having to order new ones and pay postage for each pair. Now I can make googly bright-eyed creatures galore at just a moment’s notice!

Then I got a package with a freehand embroidery foot for my sewing machine, so at last I can have a go at infinite wiggly lines in all directions – something I’ve long wanted to try – and to make it worth the postage I got some useful things since needles always break and it’s best to have a replacement to hand. Plus the shiny machine embroidery thread was to try out with the new foot.

And finally, I got an Aladdin’s cave of a parcel, with some two hundred different colours of Anchor hand embroidery thread! Ooh! From ebay also, my new favourite place (apart from Flickr), as this worked out at least five times cheaper than buying threads from a shop. So now I absolutely have to become a master embroiderer. Or else.

I said it was a bad week, didn’t I?