Tags: christmas, roses, pink, winter, bulbs, garden

Tags: purecolour, summer, simpleliving , cake, homemade, linen, cotton, garden

Tags: purple, lime green, purestylecolour, summer, baking, chocolate, garden

In between summer showers  I take a  comfortable seating option with arms into the garden to read a book in.  It sounds middle aged but deckchairs annoy the backs of my legs, and lying flat on the grass invites the dog to drop a constant supply of stones by my face thus getting no further than one or two paragraphs. 

The chair here is an Ikea upholstered model that I bought a couple of years ago with the intention of making a simple loose cover to jolly it up. And so, as with many of my  bright ideas , it sat in my office  unadorned for month upon month.

 What I needed was an incentive, which came my way in the autumn with sewing classes run by Tessa Brown. There`s something about working in a group of people  that is more fun  and less intense than when it is just you and a pair of scissors.  The biscuits were delicious, the chat good,  and Tessa showed me how to make my very own couture chair cover from scratch.




The fabric is Ian Mankin   cotton ticking which I pre washed and pre shrunk. Very useful  for dealing with mud paw prints  now that the dog and cat are making moves to hijack my comfortable chair.

Tags: ticking, stripes, blue, summer, garden

 The rain has taken a bank holiday. New year, new sky so blue, a  sense of optimism in the lst January air.  I trek across the sparkling park and the view is hyper clear. A crow’s eye vision of London: swooping  past the  glowing needle points of the Shard, and onwards to the hills of northern Thameslink land.  

 

My Christmas was as over indulgent and wine embellished as usual. From rolling out sweet pastry for mince pies and tending slow roast pork, we were never away for long from kitchen activities.  Highlights were my sister’s hens’ eggs with glorious yellow yolks and the sweet baby leeks she pulled, mud caked, from the garden on Christmas morning.

No seasonal frost,  more a nuclear winter grey to accompany the cloudbursts and floods.  And the mud persisted.  Should have  treated myself to  those shortie Hunter wellies ). There was constant hosing down of the-dog-from–the- trenches and my housewifely mopping of floors decorated with paw mud prints . More than timely, though, was the  recent purchase of a  retro wooden airer with rope and pulleys.  Draped over the wood slats  like an aerial souk  the washing actually gets a chance to dry like toast.

A relief to come across some colour, see lichen on Somerset tree trunk below




And  hens` eggs:  pure, white (decorated with mud) and simple.

Plans, and  more plans for the months ahead: to grow a rambling scented jasmine in Portugal, to get my Colour Bands out there and on your walls, to paint pictures in bold washes of colour,  to cook more paellas, to rein in daydreaming at my desk.

PS I hope that I’ve ironed out all the new website   stuff. The comments page is up and running again. I look forward to hearing from you all in 2013. J
 

Tags: winter, home cooking, garden