les triplettes du tour

They’re not quite as hench as the Triplettes de Belleville, although they’re trying their best. I made this trio of winning Tour de France handkerchiefs for my father’s birthday this summer, as he had the good fortune this year of sharing the day with the first day of the Tour. I really capitalised on this coincidence, so he also had a birthday card with a cyclist on, and a postcard of an elephant on a bicycle for father’s day, earlier in the month. I adapted the pattern slightly from one I found on the web (I was pushed for time and didn’t fancy inventing stitchy bicycles), and cross stitched all the maillots; jaune, vert and à pois. Here they are in their lycra glory:

Being quite a dab hand at cross stitch these days (if that’s even possible, given the lack of skill involved?), I thought I would make life difficult for myself and do away with all this waste canvas malarkey. So I set out cross stitching freestyle. First of all I tried peering at the threads in the fabric, attempting to count them. (I’m still revelling after my optician told me three years ago that my eyesight was excellent and I shouldn’t come back for at least two years, and so I take pleasure in setting myself harder and harder cross stitch challenges.) But I rapidly realised I would *actually* make myself blind that way, as they were far too small to count, even for such talented eyes as mine. So I had a go at judging the size of the crosses by eye instead, and that didn’t work either. I would have ended up with a real dog’s breakfast of a birthday present. So I resorted to waste canvas again. It made the process beautifully straightforward.

Happily, my father seemed to really appreciate the present. I met him for coffee after work a few weeks later, and he proudly produced one from his pocket, without being asked. He said he had been considering how best to subtly flaunt the hand-stitching on his hankies while blowing his nose. It’s a tricky act to perfect.

As per usual, though, I didn’t manage to finish all three handkerchiefs quite in time for my pa’s birthday, and had to finish up the last one the following day. Since I wanted to take pictures of all three finished cyclists ensemble, and I didn’t finish the third until the evening when it was too dark to take good photos, my mother kindly promised to photograph them on my behalf after I had gone. The implications of this unfortunately meant that my poor father was not allowed to use any of them for about a fortnight while my ma waited for a suitably sunny day to photograph them all on. Though in my view (and I’m sure you’ll agree) I felt it was well worth the wait, as my mother evidently took her role very seriously, and lovingly posed each one on my father’s racing bike. The perfect finishing touch to my bicycle tour de force.

the wind-up sheep in yorkshire

This is just a quick post to share something funny I discovered while on holiday last Easter. It would seem that if ever there were a competition held to establish which are the most literate sheep in the UK, Yorkshire sheep would be the winners hooves down.

I must admit, we actually took no notice of this sign whatsoever, as it was bang in the middle of a public footpath, but we did take care to talk very quietly as we passed these delicate (or perhaps merely fiercely territorial?) sheep, so as not to offend their sensitivities. I’m happy to report that there followed no stampede, nor even a single indignant bleat. I guess they may have learned to write, but they’re still the same old scaredy-sheep underneath as every other woolly mammal I’ve ever met.

baskets and other cases

The first creative thing I did in 2013 was go on a basket-making course. I’ve long had an interest in baskets, and when I ended up doing some work on a book about baskets in 2011, it only served to strengthen my interest. I had to satisfy my curiosity, and so I signed up for a one-day workshop with fantastic basket-maker Stella Harding, author of an inspiring book on basket-making techniques, and creator of many a beautiful thing (not just baskets – she puts her basketry skills to all kinds of uses, from jewellery to sculpture). It was really good fun, and the best bit is, I now have my very own handmade basket to keep wool in! It seems to me that basketry and yarn-based interests go perfectly hand-in-hand with one another. There is no end to the number of lovely baskets I could make to house my wool stash. I see it as the perfect excuse to buy more wool on the one hand, and to make more baskets on the other.

We started off by making enormous willow spiders. The more spokes we put in, the more unwieldy the things became. Fortunately there were only two of us making baskets on that occasion – myself and a colleague from work – in a large studio space, so at the end of the day we and Stella all emerged with our eyes intact. Once the spider stage was finished, we hung the huge leggy creatures on the wall to admire, and it looked as though we had just created rather nice, minimalist contemporary willow sculptures. As nice as they were, though, we soldiered on and set about turning them into usable objects.

Making a basket turned out to be an unexpectedly exhausting activity. I ached all over for days after that workshop, mostly in my arms and hands, but all over in fact. I was surprised by the degree of force required firstly to push willow rods into the base, and then to make every single weaving motion to build the base and sides. I imagine it could be a pretty effective form of exercise (or maybe just upper body building) if one made baskets on a regular basis. It certainly made me feel like a bit of a feebloid.

I admit I felt a bit foolish walking through Deptford and all the way home on the train on my own on a dark winter’s night, wielding a freshly-made basket (that still smelled strongly of damp willow). I do wonder what people thought I was up to. But here is my finished basket, back in its new home! The squares are another story (a happier one than they promised to be, given the difficulty I was having back in November in making square crochet squares), for another post. But doesn’t the basket look lovely, and doesn’t it serve its purpose well? I’m really glad I’d had the forethought to make all those squares in preparation for the basket’s arrival. Now it looks like they were made for each other. Perhaps I’ll have to leave the squares in that unjoined state forever, so that the basket always looks at home.

Then last weekend I encountered another interesting basket. This time, a Roman one that had been dug up at an archaeological site at Marcham, near Oxford. It’s so misshapen that it’s practically impossible to divine what shape it used to be originally, but thanks to a fascinating talk I went to, given by various keen local basket enthusiasts and makers, I learned that it had once been a barrel shape with upright sides, and is in fact an exceptional example of basketweaving, having been made with a very large number of exceedingly fine willow rods. What a find! So – 2013 has turned out to be the Year of the Basket so far, and I’m really quite enjoying it. I wonder where my next basket encounter will take me?

a slow start to 2013

Happy 2013! I’m sure you thought I’d given up and found newer and better forms of diversion by now, but no – I’m still lurking behind The Wind-Up Sheep. Rather aptly, I discovered the concept of slow blogging only recently. There’s slow everything else, so I don’t know why I didn’t consider the potential for the slow blog. But as someone who really pushed the concept to the max before she had even heard of it, the eventual discovery was enormously comforting. The idea, for anyone who doesn’t already know, is that contrary to the standard advice given to bloggers that one should post every day, at all costs, in order to build and maintain an audience, one can in fact hold an audience with far more infrequent but better thought-out posts.

Now this is where I differ: advocates of slow blogging recommend roughly a post every week to ten days, whereas I prefer to take a far more chilled approach than even the slowest of the slow, as I’m sure anyone who attempts to read this blog ‘regularly’ will know. But, reader(s), rest assured that you are magnificently well-treated here. I wouldn’t dream of wasting your time with superfluous posts: you only get the crème de la crème here, as you know I only blog when my inspiration crosses paths with a full moon AND the first groundhog of the season. (And yes, before you ask, groundhogs round here are exceptionally slow to wake up.)

Anyhow. Now that we understand one another, I can get back to business.

not quite hooked

Oh crochet woe is me. The night before last, since I had worked so hard all day (I know it was Sunday but I’m translating a book), I decided to treat myself to a bit of a reward. I’ve barely touched any of my many crafty toys in months, thanks to this dastardly book – no, really it’s a lovely book – so this was an extra special opportunity. I got out a big bag full of lovely wool (I bought ten or more skeins of Araucania Copihue in various shades the Christmas before last, when it was on sale, and have been planning to crochet it into a blanket ever since), a brand new glittery crochet hook, and a book of instructions on how to make every different shape of crochet motif imaginable. I think that’s where I went wrong. The book was entitled Beyond the Square: Crochet Motifs.

I settled myself down with the book on my lap, my chosen motif in my mind (#37 in case any of you are interested), the hook and wool in my hands and great eagerness to do something different. But I found that although I can make a perfectly good start in crochet – my sliding loop and first round were perfect – from the start of round two, things start to go wrong. I can hold the hook and do all the stitches (I’ve crocheted a whole manta ray and a cat with limbs, for heaven’s sake!), but I just get totally lost when it comes to knowing where to put the hook before I make the stitches. So what was initially heading towards becoming a lovely hexagon soon lost some sides in the process and ended up looking decidedly square. So much for advancing ‘beyond the square’, I thought, and ripped it all out. Although I can be quite ambitious, I am also very easily put off when things don’t go according to plan. I began to wonder if perhaps there is a reason why crochet beginners always start with squares?

At this realisation I trundled back upstairs to find another crochet book, this one more basic and completely square-focused. I opted for the ‘simple’ granny square, and started hooking. No sooner had I got past round two than my simple square had become a pentagon! No matter what I did to it, I couldn’t make a regular square of that shape, whatever it was. So out it all came again, and, despondent, I went to bed, with nothing to show for my two hours (yes that’s right) of attempted crochet. What on earth is there to do with a girl who can’t make basic shapes in crochet? I don’t know, but not a great deal, I suspect.

the sense of a beginning

I don’t know why, but today feels like the beginning of something new. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but it’s probably a combination of things. Starting afresh with a completely new website design is a very welcome change. I’ve been dissatisfied with the look of my website ever since I first created it, but have put off changing it for two reasons: (a) fear of it all going wrong, and (b) not knowing what I actually wanted. I’m very happy with this new white, minimalist look, though, and it makes me want to post more, just to see the shiny new entries come up on the front page. My only regrets are: losing my lovely sheep header (now it feels like the name of this site doesn’t make sense – though did it ever?), and a worry that my content is in no way trendy enough to deserve such a trendy design as this. But hey ho. Trendy will just have to get used to me and The Wind-Up Sheep.

Perhaps this feeling of new is also due to the fact that earlier this afternoon I walked D to the station, as he has gone for a week of communing with underground machines far away up North, and came home alone to an empty house and a full Sunday ahead of me. I think what I love most about weekends is just the promise of what I could do, more than what I actually do. What I did do was clear up the garden: I pulled up all the dead courgette plants, and collected the baby squishes that never quite made it into full-grown squash, I cleared all the yellow leaves off the netting over the cabbages, pulled up the dead tomato plants, dug up the purply beetroot plantlets that never quite got around to growing beetroots (though most of their companions did) and did some general weeding. It felt good.

Then I cleaned up the house a bit and hoovered all the nibbly crumbs off the floor after lots of people came round last night. And I think the new feeling is partly due to this as well: I don’t think I’ve seen our living room look this clean and tidy since we first moved in. Seeing this sight has had a curious effect, and it almost feels as though we have just moved in, and this is a brand new house. Of course, this feeling disappears as soon as I go into any other room, but it feels so fresh sitting in here. It’s as though there has been some large upheaval, which is now over. Or as though I’ve transitioned into some new life phase. Both of these possibilities, however, are far too grandiose to suggest with any seriousness. So I suppose it is simply a matter of lots of little things all changing at once, and giving the impression of a major alteration. Strangely cathartic.

Whatever the reason, though, I rather like this sensation, as somehow everything feels full of potential right now, and there’s not such a White Rabbit feeling of always being too late for everything, and watching it all fly past, out of reach. I guess it’s sort of like the effect of spring cleaning, but in autumn. Maybe that’s why I’m so confused…

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 last of the summer sun

This is always the saddest time of the year, when the days grow shorter and sunshine becomes a rare commodity. I know it might sound a bit late to be lamenting this in October, but when I left the house today it was so gloriously sunny that I was confused momentarily into thinking it was still summer. Until I saw the colour of the leaves on the trees and remembered. Days like this make me want to rush outside and salvage every last scrap of sunshine that I can. But instead I am sitting on a train, gazing longingly out of the window, and posting nostalgic pictures of summertime on my blog. I took this one on some friends’ allotment back in July, where the sunset made everything look radiant – even the weeds.

There are good things about this time of year, though. For instance, our efforts at vegetable growing are really beginning to pay off now. We’re in the middle of a bumper courgette crop, and the tomatoes have done pretty well, too. There are a few very promising looking rows of beetroots outside our kitchen window and, now that the caterpillars appear to have left our cabbages alone, we might actually succeed with those eventually. We’ve also got several curvy yellow proto-squish, but I don’t hold out great hopes for them achieving completeness before it starts to get frosty.

There are other good things, too. For my birthday a few weeks ago I was given not one but five tantalisingly good recipe books. My intention is now to cook my way through autumn and winter, so that we don’t notice how cold and dark it’s getting outside and are entirely contented to stay indoors. I’m planning fruity tagines, stews with dumplings, warming soups and all kinds of freshly baked goodies. Cinnamon buns and that sort of thing. Since visiting the Nordic Bakery in Soho a week ago, I’m all inspired for Scandinavian baking.

I made this berry oatcake from the Nordic Bakery cookbook this summer – it was like making porridge in cake form, as you start by mixing warm milk with porridge oats, and add honey and fruit. Unfortunately it collapsed around the edges when I tipped it out of the tin, but it tasted warm and scrummy all the same.

So I guess on reflection I’m happy enough to resign myself to autumn, and possibly even winter at this rate. I just need to keep up my culinary endeavours and enjoy the opportunity to stay indoors, serenaded by soul-warming music and surrounded by sparkly fairy lights against the dark outdoors. All of a sudden it doesn’t seem such a bad prospect after all…

travels with a hanky

OK so I didn’t quite go travelling with a hanky, but it seemed like far too good an opportunity to miss a reference to Stevenson and his donkey. What I did do was travel to Snowdonia last month, and visit all three mountains depicted on the hankies in my last post. I even climbed to the top of two of them. I did also consider climbing Tryfan (on Glyder Fawr we were so close, it wouldn’t have been that hard), but it just so happened that during this week of mountain climbing, I decided that this activity really isn’t my forte, and in fact it’s probably best to stay at the bottoms and just look up. Tryfan was thus struck off the list for being too spiky. So, first of all we climbed Snowdon. The picture below isn’t from the day of the climb – this was just an early evening constitutional down the Miners’ Track to see the sights and the sunset. (I think a lot of people who met us on their way down that night genuinely thought we were heading for the top, starting at 8pm, wandering casually along in sandals, with no provisions whatsoever. However when we did go up, and I saw the level of preparation of many walkers, this no longer surprised me so much. Think flip flops, shopping bags, multiple fluffy dogs on leads, and sandwiches when only 500m up…)

There is practical sense in staying at the bottoms of mountains: when we did get to the top of Snowdon, we couldn’t see a single thing. The whole summit was immersed in cloud. We could have been anywhere! We got a far better view of the surroundings from lower down. Although I suppose I wouldn’t have met this inquisitive sheep if I had stayed at the bottom. It’s definitely the kind of sheep that supports my favourite theory of how clouds are made (born in valleys, lambs slowly make their way up mountains, growing into sheep all the way, and, once they reach the top, drift off into the sky as fluffy white clouds). But Tryfan is definitely too spiky, no? Look at all those rocks! (From my brief experiences clambering over enormous rocks during this holiday – often as big as cars or buses – I also decided that I Definitely Do Not Enjoy Scrambling. It sounds like such a fun activity, but the reality is far from fun.)

Instead of negotiating with the guard-sheep at this point, we left Tryfan where it was and continued up and over the top of Glyder Fawr. Which was plenty pointy enough in itself, in my opinion. The top of the mountain was like this all over, just enormous shards of rock all stacked up. Kind of eerie. I realise I sound like a right spoilsport, and should probably enjoy mountains more. But when you’re halfway up a mountain and it suddenly occurs to you how much better a use of your time you could be making (knitting, sewing, reading, cooking … to name a few), climbing doesn’t seem like a very clever option.

The truth is, it turns out I do like climbing mountains, so long as there’s a good incentive. And just to be clear, getting to the top is definitely not enough. The best incentives I’ve found are pubs, dinner or the lure of adventure. On this particular trip to Snowdonia, I found myself actually running up a mountainside when the promise of what was at the top was great enough. It was while we were plodding around the remains of the slate quarry at Llanberis that enthusiasm hit. We took the steepest path for the best views, and were rewarded with all sorts of abandoned miners’ buildings, steep inclines with enormous winches and inviting tunnels cut into the mountain. (Though not too inviting of course – my keenness doesn’t translate into wanting to crawl down tiny dark holes.) I felt like a little spring chicken up there, as with so many interesting things to see, the terrain and gradient under my feet became mere minor considerations.

But if I’m going to be really honest, I reckon steam trains are probably better than any mountain, incentive or no incentive.

not to be sneezed at

Following the success of my last set of bespoke embroidered goods – the armadillo collection, last spring – I decided that personalised stitchery, when there is sufficient time for it, is the best kind of birthday present I can offer. And so, as it was coming up to my father’s birthday in the summer of last year, I pondered long and hard over how best to translate his interests into stitches. I dismissed bicycles as too fiddly, trains as too childish, football as something I wasn’t interested in, and found myself left with French writers as my only option. And given my pa’s lifelong habit of using handkerchiefs, these seemed like the most appropriate medium on which to stitch.

The next tricky bit was deciding which two of France’s seemingly infinite quantity of illustrious writers to choose from. In the end I shortlisted four: Voltaire, Rousseau, Baudelaire and Diderot, since they were the current favourites at that time, and the subject matter for most of our family mealtimes, whether we liked it or not. Since time was, as usual, limited, and since I only had two handkerchiefs to play with, I picked the first two on the list to be subjects for my embroidery. I decided to depict these characters in monochrome, cameo style, and so began by searching for appropriate images of their faces on the interwebs.

Once I had found two suitable portraits to base my designs on, I zapped them through my free stitchy software to create a very basic version of their heads in crosses. I then spent quite some time adding and erasing crosses on my computer until I was happy with the two profiles, and confident that both individuals were recognisable in cross stitch form. Satisfied with my final designs, I sewed the philosophers’ heads onto a handkerchief each, using waste canvas to ensure they didn’t turn out wonky. And hey presto! Two unique bespoke hankies for the man who has everything! I just hope he doesn’t mind blowing his nose on his heroes’ faces.

I think I set a mini trend for personalised men’s hankies last summer, as shortly after I completed my philosophers, one of my friends decided to make a set of three for her grandfather. As the recipient is a keen hillwalker and lives near the Welsh border, my friend chose Snowdonian mountains as her subject matter. She proceeded to stitch three profiles, one on each hanky, in two shades of green, with their names embroidered alongside. Here are the beautiful results: Snowdon, Glyder Fawr and Tryfan.

To finish them off, she presented her hankies neatly tied up in a matching green ribbon. (Don’t ever say we don’t do things properly around here.)

Oh sewing club, how we miss you…