An exciting Crafts Council exhibition is going on tour. Block Party showcases craft inspired by the art of the tailor, and it looks amazing. I found this 2011 film, Negative Space by Frederico Urdaneta, totally compelling; it reveals the extraordinarily subtle intimacy of the bespoke pattern-cutting process and the awesome skills of the pattern-cutter.

We don’t throw away any of the cloth. We fold up every small part that could possibly be used in the making of the rest of the garment. So even those shapes you get to know really, really well — the bit you’ve cut out of an armhole, the bit that’s left at the top of the back where you’ve cut that out — so even all of those things are part of the process. It’s not just this piece here, it’s the negative space that it creates.”

Block Party opens at Smiths Row in Bury St Edmunds tomorrow and moves on to Kilkenny in March and Leicester later in the year.

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. I don’t usually give it a huge amount of attention. 2012 is slightly more interesting though because it’s a leap year when girls are traditionally entitled to pop the question.

This set me thinking about unusual and ingenious declarations of love. Well, how about making a garland which speaks your mind? You could sneak in a secret message, hide a billet doux (‘Be Mine!’) amongst a string of pretty paper hearts. Or forge hearts out of meaningful papers: maps of where you met, for instance, or even old  - be sure they’re really expendable! – photos. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Heart garland, folded

Well, if you can get to Bath and are free on Thursday morning on 26th January, do come along to the Hearts & Garlands workshop and discover 5 different heart-themed strung decorations, all upcycled from scrap textile or paper. All materials are supplied, though do bring along any special ephemera that you’d like to include. We’ll be using a variety of  tools and materials and you’ll also get a garland kit to take home (besides whatever else you make on the day). Here’s where you can book your place. There are more details of workshops/classes on my Classes page .

Make me!

A word about the venue: Crockadoodledo is a delightful location where you can paint crockery and also find a charming selection of handpicked gifts and cards, many made locally. Parking nearby is largely unrestricted. Crockadoodledo isn’t open every day so do consult their website or give them a ring before you set out.

Twelve!

I still can’t believe it’s 2012. I should probably be conducting an annual audit of crafting done, projects tackled, targets achieved, areas for improvement. Well, I hope you’ll forgive me. As it’s Twelfth Night (the end of the 12 days of Christmas) and because I’m an incorrigible collector of trivia (and also because I’m really not in the mood for searing self-scrutiny) I would like to turn the spotlight instead on the intriguing qualities of the number twelve, just before the clock strikes midnight.

There’s something truly compelling about twelve. Would ten red roses be as pleasing? I don’t think so. How would your clock face look divided into, say, eight? Plain wrong, I say. Would you want to buy your eggs in tens or twenties? No, me neither. It has to be by the dozen. Or half-dozen.

The pull of twelve goes back a long way, all the way to our earliest myths, legends and belief systems. The pantheon of principal Greek gods, for example, numbered twelve, with Hercules performing twelve labours (some days, I think I know how he felt). The Chinese and the Western zodiacs contain twelve signs each. Twelve is sacred in the Abrahamic religions  (twelve tribes of Israel, twelve disciples of Jesus). Chief Norse god Odin had twelve sons. Twelve knights sat round King Arthur’s round table.

Twelve months form the basis of most calendrical systems.Twelve inches go into a foot, three of those making that esteemed measurement of cloth, the yard. Now, where would we all be without that? I happen to switch between metric and imperial when sewing (do you too?) but I’ll gloss over that. A dozen is a venerable old unit of trade (how many bottles in a case of wine, do you think?) and you can still purchase items in quantities of 12 x 12, termed a gross (a measurement presumably coined by a grocer… ouch!). I need hardly remind you that in Blighty’s old monetary system we used to have 12 pence in a shilling. It still mystifies me that people ever got the right change. Anyway, we can trace a lot of that 12-based counting and measuring (weights, hours etc) to the Ancient Mesopotamians. Shame we can’t ask them why.

I’ll spare you the geometrical details – decagons (12-sided polygons) and dodecahedrons (12-faced polyhedrons) –  because I’m keen to move on to some Old English etymology. Our word twelve comes from the Germanic compound ‘twalif’ – ‘two left’ – meaning that there are two left over if you subtract ten. Isn’t that neat? And more than a little strange, when you think about it: that we should be so deeply entranced by arrangements of twelve and yet define that number by ten. Go figure. Count it out on your fingers if it’ll help.

My younger son was born at the very tail end of 1999 so is almost always the same age as the year we’re in, which is handy. Last month his 12 birthday candles were arranged on his round birthday cake like a clock face – how else? My big son, who’s now studying Further Maths (a source of both mystification and pride to me because I’m relatively innumerate) long ago chanted his numbers as a typical toddler will, but with the added delight of backforming his tens from twenties, thirties etc so that  eleven became ‘onety-one’ and twelve ‘onety-two’. How beautifully logical.

Anyway, I wish you a very happy and fulfilling Twenty Onety-Two. If you’re also a maker, may the power of twelves strengthen your crafting arm and imbue you with creativity, focus,  determination, and (perhaps most importantly in these tricky economic times) all the commercial nous of a Mesopotamian grocer.

Festive kitty & cotton reel

Greetings from the 4th day of Christmas! How has Christmas been so far for you? At this point in the festivities I go into a kind of reverse-Scrooge mode and make a point of maximising Christmas, spreading it out over the full 12 days. Well, at least until New Year. I feel that I’m punching the tide, however. Yesterday I spotted my first discarded Christmas tree outside a neighbouring house. And today’s TV news trumpeted that Christmas is now entirely done and dusted and the season of sales has begun.

But why move on so fast? After all, we’ve all worked so hard just to reach Christmas, it seems a pity to ditch it quite so rapidly. I’d rather relish the muddy walks in the mid-afternoon dusk, the tedious board games, the new adaptations of Dickens, the belated-writing-of-Christmas-cards-and-round-robins, the pitter-patter of pine needles, the umpteenth pseudo-meal of Stilton & crackers, time almost slowing to a standstill.

I’m guessing that a lot of people can’t wait to leave Christmas firmly behind as too painful a time: too poignant a reminder of happier days past, hearts as yet unbroken, beloved souls not yet departed. That’s entirely understandable. My Christmas has certainly been peppered with more sadness and loss this year than I’d have liked. But before I bundle it all up and move on, losing myself in a frenzy of new-leaf-turning activity, I’m taking stock and practising some Christmas present.

Inside another old Christmas card — featuring a large reel of cotton and a needle on the front, and captioned ‘A “reel” happy Christmas’ — I found this timely message:

This reel and needle here I send

In case you have forgotten

That things that break,

and hearts that ache

Are mended oft by

Love — and Cotton!

I’m going to be making-do-and-mending with the Museum of Bath at Work this Saturday, helping them to celebrate a World War II-style Christmas. Pop by between 10am and 4pm on Saturday 17th and you’ll likely find me wreathed in brown-paper chains with a ton of darning mushrooms and other selected vintage notions, including some gorgeous Fair-Isle knitting patterns. The museum’s usual entrance fee applies, but you’re guaranteed to really get in the mood; re-enactment group the Blitz Buddies will be there, and I hear there will be music and dancing to make the experience come alive. Incidentally, this event kicks off the 70th anniversary commemorations of the Bath Blitz next year. Bath was bombed as part of the retaliatory Baedeker raids on 25th and 26th April 1942. You can find out more at the Bath Blitz Memorial Project. If you have memories of Bath during the war, the museum would be delighted if you’d come along on Saturday and share them.

The Christmas at War organisers have broken it to me gently that I’m expected to dress the part. I’ve decided to go land-girl style, sporting a Fair-Isle tank top. Fair-Isle knitting was a great way to use up stray odds and ends of yarn (one had to unpick worn-out knitted garments and re-knit) but its popularity during World War II possibly owes as much to an interesting rationing loophole: whereas knitting wool was rationed (two ounces of knitting yarn took one precious clothing coupon), mending cards not exceeding one ounce were exempt. Yarn producers cottoned on to this and duly produced mending cards in an array of colours to meet the demand. Cunning, eh?

There were, of course, five Christmases celebrated while the nation was at war. The festivities of 1939 weren’t so different from those pre-war, though new blackout restrictions ended the sight of lit Christmas trees in front windows. Rationing hadn’t kicked in yet, and people spent quite freely on gifts, in spite of the Chancellor’s injunction not to be wasteful.

1940 was the first real wartime Christmas. Britain was under siege. The Blitz had kicked off in London in September, and November had seen the devastating bombing of Coventry. Food rationing had begun in January. Practical Christmas gifts were in: gardening tools, books, bottling jars and seeds, with the most popular gift that year being soap.

Clothing and textiles were rationed from June 1941, and food rationing increased to its peak by Christmas. Petrol and manpower shortages prevented home-delivery of shop goods, so people now had to carry their purchases. Wrapping paper was very scarce, and toys were in short supply and (when they could be found) shoddily made and expensive. Home-made or renovated gifts were the thing. Yet this was an optimistic time because, with the Allies now in the war, Brits felt they would definitely beat Hitler.

By Christmas 1942, two popular gifts had succumbed to the ration: soap and sweets. In order to prepare for the festive season, food coupons had to be saved for months ahead. Homemade decorations were the order of the day; the Ministry of Food made the helpful suggestion that, though there were ‘no gay bowls of fruit’, vegetables could be used instead for their jolly colours: ‘The cheerful glow of carrots, the rich crimson of beetroot, the emerald of parsley – it looks as delightful as it tastes.’

Christmas 1943 saw shortages at their height. There was little chance of turkey, chicken or goose, or even rabbit. Much Christmas food was ‘mock’ (i.e. false): mock ‘turkey’ (made from lamb) and mock ‘cream’ and ‘marzipan’.  Make-do-and-mend presents were the order of the day; magazines printed instructions for knitted slippers and gloves, brooches made from scraps of wool, felt or plastic, and embroidered bookmarks and calendars.

Vintage mending threads

Christmas 1944 was probably the least joyful of the entire war. People had hoped it might be all over by Christmas, after the Allied Normandy invasion of June,  but mid-December saw the Ardennes Offensive with thousands killed on both sides. German air attacks (now V1 and V2 rockets) began in June, with 30 hitting England on Christmas Eve. One surprise benefit of the pilot-less doodlebugs was that blackout restrictions could be lifted, so churches lit their their stained glass windows for the first time in 4 years. DIY gifts were once again a necessity; the book Rag-Bag Toys gave instructions for making a cuddly pig from an old vest, and a doll from old stockings.

The unconfined joy of VE Day 1945 suddenly makes a lot more sense to me. I think I will be relishing my Christmas turkey and tree lights as never before this year!

The Museum of Bath at Work can be found on Julian Road (the Lansdown Hill end), tucked behind Christ Church.

Jenni Stuart-Anderson has written a sequel to her first book Rag Rug Making. More Rag Rugs is hot off the press this very week (it’s published today, in fact), and if you hurry you can get a signed copy just in time for Christmas.

Jenni Stuart-Anderson's new book is published today

Jenni really knows her rag rug techniques and was taught by one of the last-and-best traditional exponents of the craft of progging, a method of pulling small pieces of scrap textile through a hessian backing, for which you need a splendid little tool called a bodger (the sprung device featured above which Jenni also happens to sell, by the way). Well, Jenni’s first book has been selling like proverbial hotcakes over the years. I haven’t seen this new one yet but am delighted to tell you that one of my own earliest efforts (see below) is featured in the gallery section.

If you get the chance to see Jenni at work (she’s a fixture at most of the big UK textiles shows) do seek her out and watch her closely. Better still, attend one of her workshops. I went along to one earlier this year, and there’s no substitute for seeing an expert manipulating the materials in front of your eyes, and having the luxury of a whole day to pursue a project and begin to really turn your own hand to it. 

I took along some yellow & blue shirting – mostly my husband’s worn-out work shirts and PJs – which I hoped to plait into a rug, inspired by a doll’s house mat made by my Pennsylvanian grandmother some time around the early-to-mid-20th century (you can see it in that earlier post of mine). It was exciting seeing how first the plaiting and then the coiling and lacing (sewing the long plait together) altered the look of the shirtings. I don’t know if you can see, but I used both vertical and horizontal stripes to varying effect. It’s rather hard to predict how the plait will look, but I found the final peppered result pleasing.  Apologies for the dull picture quality, by the way. Can’t you tell that this was taken in a typical British summer? Only the UK in July will do this for you! [Note to self: you really must get on top of those Photoshop image-brightening tools.] Incidentally, plaiting as a rug technique appears to have originated in New England (known there as braiding), really taking off in the nineteenth century, the happy offspring of a boom in straw-bonnet-making. You learn something new every day.

Plaited rug made from striped and chequered shirtings

Late October is when I start to crave the warmth of the kitchen: spices, applesauce, cinnamon, hotwater bottles, endless cups of Lapsang Souchong…

Happily, I’ve been given a couple of bags of windfall cooking apples. And, when life hands you windfalls, what better to make than chutney? Even more happily, yesterday I realised (when autumn-cleaning my kitchen cupboard: a task long overdue) that I had all the necessary ingredients.

I followed a slightly haphazard recipe from Feast Days by Jennifer Paterson, one half of the 1990s Two Fat Ladies TV cook combo (remember them from the pre-Jamie Oliver era?) and food writer for the Spectator. The recipe, actually called ‘Patricius’s Pickle’ (on page 69, if you’re inspired to investigate) was a little light on particulars, not really giving an idea of how long to cook or quite how to know when it was done, but I occasionally find an absence of detail in cookbooks strangely liberating.

And chutney does seem to be a fairly forgiving concoction, embracing all sorts of fruit, vegetable and spice combinations, depending on your particular glut, the contents of your store cupboard, and the limits of your personal taste. The key seems to be not to stint on sugar and vinegar, the essential preserving elements; that said, you could freeze a low-vinegar, low-sugar chutney, so long as you remember to remove it from the cold a day or so before it’s to be consumed in order to mature the flavours.

I rejigged Jennifer’s ingredients a little, and here’s what went into mine:

Ingredients compiled and chopped in the preserving pan

• 3lbs cooking apples, peeled cored and chopped. The original recipe didn’t specify if this was the weight before or after peeling etc. I went heavy on the apples and opted for 3lbs finished weight.
• 1lb 6 ozs onions which was less than the original recipe (which called for 2lbs) but this was all I had, and mine were mostly red, which has no advantage but looking pretty in the “before” pictures, so use whatever you like.
• 1 quart cider vinegar instead of the white malt variety called for by the original recipe. Again, it’s just what I happened to have in the cupboard.
• 1 lb raisins
• 7 ozs haphazard mix of forgotten, back-of-cupboard dried fruit, including sultanas and bing cherries, but the recipe called for 1 lb of dates.
• 1 lb soft brown sugar
• 1 tspn cayenne pepper
• 1 dessertspoon of rock salt
• remaining spices tied in a muslin bag… 1/4 oz each peppercorns, cinnamon (I took this to be sticks of cinnamon, broken up), whole cloves.

In it all went.

Chopped apple, onion, plus dried fruit

And quite a lot of  frequent stirring (so it didn’t burn), and an hour or so later, out it came thus…

A marriage made in heaven

I’ve tasted it (someone had to!) and am happy to declare that it is stonkingly good on cheddar.

A note on when to stop cooking it: Jennifer’s advice is not to let it become too dry as it will dry out further in the jar. She also advises letting it cool completely before potting up. I gather that you can also bottle it when piping hot, but avoid doing so when somewhere in the middle (warm is bad). Mine went hot into rather utilitarian jars (scrupulously clean, of course) which Little Scraplet helpfully slapped my hastily scribbled labels onto.

Roughly labeled

But, nicely presented, these would make lovely Christmas gifts. Who could resist?

Perfect partners

Superb vintage haberdashery box

Well, lookie here! Isn’t this the most wonderful old box of thread ever?

Scintilla, as all you classical scholars are no doubt aware, is Latin for spark and – by extension – a very small shred or tiny amount, an iota. Think of the scintilla of doubt much beloved by TV defense barristers. Where the heck would courtroom drama be without it?

I have a soft spot for verbose old haberdashery packaging, especially when it uses adjectives such as superb (I think superb should be making a comeback soon – that would be superb). There’s something so charmingly innocent and earnest about the pre-soundbite era, and this box has a differently chunky piece of information on each side – take a look over on Flickr to see the rest. My guess is that this particular package dates back to the first couple of decades of the twentieth century, but if there happens to be a haberdashery-museum curator in the house (especially one who knows a lot about Clark’s), or a typography expert, would you please make yourself known to the management? It would be a joy to hear from you.

From scintilla comes scintillate, v.i. to sparkle, scintillescent, a. twinkling, scintillation, n. twinkling and the wonderful scintillometer, n. an instrument which measures the twinkling of stars.

If I had a scintillometer it wouldn’t be registering much activity, the reason being that the determined powers of darkness have conspired to extinguish most of the twinkles in the Scrapiana firmament. I’ve sent out for fresh supplies though. Watch this space.

Scintllating thread

Meanwhile, forgive my wallowing in some anthemic David Gray, won’t you? And may you shine in all you do this week.

Bonette knitting needle bracelet trio

These knitting needle bracelets seem to be hitting the spot. Several have already been purchased from my Etsy store this week. Don’t forget that I’m happy to take commissions and can make them to a specific colour scheme or even to a specific vintage knitting needle brand (Abel Morrall’s, Bonette, Beehive etc). Just try me!

Autumn shades knitting needle trio

Vintage knitting needle bracelet

I’ve just popped this onto one of the eye-level shelves in my Etsy store.

My sons call these upcycled bracelets “knit-knacks” which I think is a fantastic name for them. I’ve sold quite a few at fairs and am gearing up to making a new batch for Christmas.

Though the knitting needles need to go through a certain level of abuse to reach their final elegantly curved state, I don’t feel too bad about it because most of them are slightly wonky before I set to work on them. If I find perfect vintage needles, I do tend to sell them on intact. Well, I hope that sets things straight (as it were) with the upcycling authorities.

These ones are made from a particularly nice quality of plastic in shiny cherry-red. There are lots of other colours and thicknesses available so if you’re looking for a particular style, shade or even brand of knitting needle, do enquire and I’ll have a rootle around for you. I’m happy to combine different needles if you’d like to mix and match for a desired effect. You’ll find details of the dimensions of this particular one on the Etsy listing.