What Do Charles Perrault, Miss Clara And Embroidery Have In Common? A Giveaway!

Dear readers,

On February 15th we celebrated Tristan's birthday for which I baked the grand sum of 45 cakes (some large some small) all inspired by the colours of this work from our artist in residence.  

I simply love the fact my one and only son was born the night after Valentine's Day and because at the grand age of eight he is already a romantic I am gifting him this treasure entitled The Birds' Wedding Day created by Celia Hart of Purple Podded Peas.  (He also got a shiny, new bicycle.) I have also decided to take heed of Monty Don who claims February 15th - his wife Sarah's birthday - to be the first day of Spring whatever the weather.  (For his beautifully penned words on this date please refer to The Ivington Diaries.)

I have drawn inspiration from this book (I was certain I would).

The yarn is Koigu KPPPM

and have drawn lessons from my children on the fabulous art of delaying tactics while I should have been embracing the challenge of casting on My Rosebud Cinnamon Girl instead.

The yarn is Madelinetosh DK in Sugar Plum

I have gently told myself that part of my delaying devices were pardonable as they were working towards my Very Exciting Project which will be unveiled on the first day of Spring and which you will all be awaiting with bated breath, right? 

All these Spring colours have made me hungry for more and so I turn to eighteenth-century Versailles fashion.  I have succumbed finally to acquiring this book which relates the life and work of Rose Bertin, Marie Antoinette's dressmaker. I wonder if somone knows of English publications on this fascinating lady?

I have also been concocting a giveaway for you.

There are so many treasures I would like to gift you but I think it is time to celebrate my French origins. Merci Maman! 

As a child I was raised on the seventeenth-century writer Charles Perrault's fairy tales and decades later had the immense joy of weaving some of his texts into my thesis writing.  (What a privilege to be able to touch and scour through his original manuscripts!)  Some of you may remember my post last year on the artist Miss Clara's version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen.  Many of you expressed your enthusiasm for her work and for this reason I have decided to offer you Perrault's disconcerting story Peau d'âne - Donkey Skin - illustrated by Miss Clara herself. (Click on the link and you will find a fascinating short clip of the artist in her atelier.  It's in French!)

Her illustrations are exquisite.

Of course not all of you may feel the urge to read this tale in French so I am also offering this recent translation of Charles Perrault's Fairy Tales which I find rather good.

My third gift moves into the realm of embroidery but also remains French in essence.  Are you familiar with the shop Les Brodeuses parisiennes?  It specialises in embroidery and cross stitch designs capturing the beauty of gardens, Paris and the aesthetic pleasures of French patisserie.  I have chosen for you a vintage style linen tea towel with a joyful parade of cakes and 1950's Parisian ladies to cross stitch (please note that the DMC embroidery thread references are provided but not the threads themselves).

So if you would like to win these gifts simply leave a comment choosing either the two Perrault books or the embroidery.  What a delicious dilemma!  Do not feel obliged to become a follower of Millefeuilles unless you want to.  Should you kindly add a beautiful and splendid link to this giveaway on your blog you will get two chances to win.  Just leave me another comment to let me know you have done so.  The Giveaway will close on March 3rd.

Bonne chance à tous!

Stephanie

ps Great news!  Mademoiselle Toadstool arrived in one piece at her destination!

Topiary And Mademoiselle Toadstool

A warm hello to you all!

Thank you so much for greeting Gaspard our new puppy with so much enthusiasm.  He is rather delicious, isn't he?  We are all in adoration of him - very proper for a puppy named after one of the Magi - but we are learning to handle him with a gentle but firm hand.  I cannot help feeling I am now a mother of four.  Is that normal?

Le Bal des Ifs, Charles Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790)

Isn't this painting beautiful? What do you make of those strange green shapes?

Box and yew topiary served as ornamentation in the gardens of Versailles and inspired the costumes worn for royal festivities for many years.   On February 25th 1745 during a particulary icy spell the wedding of the dauphin was celebrated by a masked ball named Le Bal des Ifs (The Yew Tree Ball).  The bridegroom was metamorphosed into a gardener, his wife into a flower seller.  Eight yews (as seen in the painting above and below), clipped to enhance the natural beauty of the trees and tailored to grace the human form, appeared from the frosty gardens, one of which was no less than Louis XV.  This sumptuous ball, which started at 11.30pm, also marked the beginning of a long, passionate affair between Louis XV and the future Marquise de Pompadour.

Topiary shapes in the gardens of Versailles during Louix XIV's reign

 

I love the art of trimming evergreens into geometric or fantastical shapes. Topiary is stunning with a powdering of frost as seen in the picture below or on a moonlit night when its silhouettes cast beautiful shadows over lawn and paths.
To my mind there is a similarity between the slow trimming and clipping of topiary with shears and knitting.  Both art forms produce three-dimensional structures which require patience and time to create.  A little clip of the shaggy box is synonymous with a small knit stitch.  Many stitches and clips later one may stand back and admire one's handiwork. 

The big freeze and blue skies have continued all week long.  The dazzling sun has cast curious shadows on our snow-blanketed garden.

Here is the shadow's owner.

 Mademoiselle Toadstool.

This little rabbit is evidently also fond of topiary balls.

She owns two skirts and sports an embroidered toadstool on her ankle.

Miss Toadstool is winging her way as I write to the Czech Republic to the magical home of the adorable little Eliska, the daughter of Tracy who is undoubtedly a wonderful woman.  How I wish she lived close-by!  In exchange for this rabbit Tracy is creating one of her amazing dolls for Angélique.  I cannot wait to show her to you all when I receive her!

I am very slightly pleased with this creature as she has been put together after a lot of mulling over with my very own pattern.  I hope she finds favour with Tracy and Eliska who I am certain will look after her splendidly.


Bon voyage Mademoiselle Toadstool.  I wish I could creep into your suitcase and travel with you!


Stephanie

ps  I think it is only fair to let you know that the next post will involve my second giveaway!  

Sweet Juxtaposition

 "What excitement we feel on looking out on to the garden in the snow.  It is one of the only sensations of our childhood that is not blunted by maturity.  Still we want to leave our mark on any smooth expanse of snow, to ruffle it, to jump about on it.  However sedate we may grow, we never emerge from the childish longing to write our names on the whitened lawn."  

Clare Leighton, Four Hedges

My wish has come true this week after a beautifully peaceful birthday weekend for Angélique made all the more special thanks to your wonderfully kind messages. Following a powdering of snow, icy temperatures and brilliant blue skies this week the absolute silence without this morning heralded the bliss of a whitened world. 

Like the vast majority of people we have problems which reside uncomfortably side by side with us day in day out.  Some moments, when spooning tea leaves into the pot for instance, I feel their weight.  Most days however I am determined to stop and smell the roses.  Life is amazing and this week I revel in the juxtaposition of present reality and dreams of spring vegetation.

Pastel colours against winter snow.

What do you think these tiny knits portend?

 They are the beginning of a sweet and exiting project which has generously been sent my way.  More on that at a later date.

 The uneven stitches on these doll-sized jackets bring me joy for they eloquently relate my everyday existence.  Knitting needles are picked up and rows grow in snatched moments between the organised chaos in our collective lives.  They are a reminder that despite it ALL projects are conjured up and completed.  What a comforting message that is.

 The white on black of gnarled vine stumps blanketed today with snow will burst forth fronds and unfurling bright green leaves in March.

Smelling the roses in the snow?  Almost everything is possible!

My week has been filled with administering dozens of homeopathic granules, wiping noses, keeping it together, letting it out.  Yes indeed; our little Angélique, an angel in name and mostly in reality, metamorphoses into a demon when very poorly.  I am thankful she is not ill too often!

 Great comfort has been found in books.  This one has found favour with Angélique and myself. Mother Earth And Her Children: A Quilted Fairy Tale is a remarkable interpretation of Sibylle Von Olfers orignal tale published in 1906: the whole story has been sewn into an enormous quilt by Sieglinde Schoen Smith. Every stitch speaks of the love for her son who tragically passed away in 2002.

 By keeping her hands and mind busy this artist has created great beauty.

And the greatest joy of our week?  The arrival of our very own magus.

This is Gaspard (silent 'd' en français).  Our wise man, our sweet puppy, our Cavalier King Charles.  Black on white: the most beautiful juxtaposition of our week.  Please note dear dog lovers Gaspard is only allowed out for a minute or two every hour in the snow.  We are very protective of him.

I hope you find plenty of pockets of joy this week.

With warmest wishes,

Stephanie

ps I'm just wondering whether anyone has read Beverly Nichols Down The Garden Path? 

How Does Your Mansfield Garden Party Grow?

One look at this book and I was smitten.

I fell for the undeniable charms of the pattern "Cinnamon Girl" and the yarn "Rosebud" from Juno.  I simply had to have these treasures to love and to cherish. Loop Knitting delivered the goods swiftly.  Cheerily I skipped off to Ravelry and organised a knit along of "Cinnamon Girl" with a fellow knitter starting today.

And then my pink bubble burst.  

Experienced knitters feel free to cackle and hoot at my naivety.  I saw the complexity of the pattern and I grew fearful.  I know little of provisional cast-ons and the rest of the mumbo jumbo which ensues.

Am I ready for this?  Or is this a case of 'marry in haste, repent at leisure'? 

Is there a benevolent soul out there willing to hold my hand through this daunting ordeal, please? 

***************

Today is my youngest's second birthday.  I love this special date of hers.  She had the good grace of arriving a few days earlier than expected.  MInutes after she was born the midwife cheerily asked me which name we had chosen for our baby.  "Angélique", I blearily replied.  "How wonderful", she exclaimed with a broad smile: "today is Saint Angélique's name day!"  How wonderful indeed I thought.  You chose your day wisely, dear child.

(If the sight of variagated yarns make you come out in a rash this is the time to avert your gaze.)

There is no doubt that January 27th falls in winter and for those who are beginning to know me you will understand that this fact delights me. The end of January however is on the cusp of change.  If you remain still you may hear spring quietly urging you to be patient for just a little while longer.  We celebrate Angélique's birthday with one foot firmly planted in winter's domain and in the knowledge that spring will soon tune up the dawn chorus, lay down a mossy welcome mat, and unlatch her ornate green doors.  And if our gardens are mostly barren (not so much the case this year, I hear you say) I am determined to celebrate this important day by bringing flowers into this simple home of ours.

So today I fill my youngest daughter's arms with cut hyacinths to herald the glorious months to follow.

Please forgive the blurred picture; it must be the heightened emotions getting in the way!

And if a wreath of hydrangeas seems a strange gift for such a little girl I should add with a big beaming grin that it is a lasting treasure to celebrate a charming soul who has become my very own garden muse.

Some of you may recall the Madelinetosh Fairy generously delivering some Mansfield Garden Party yarn in the cabbage patch last summer.  Knitting up a Tiny Tea Leaves for my birthday girl was the perfect occasion to use this yarn.  Let me just remind you of the description in Katherine Mansfield's short story The Garden Party which inspired the creation of this colourway:

"And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, moving the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels."

To be honest when I look at this cardigan I see snowdrops, muddy earth, pink and blue hyacinths.  I must confess that I like the fact this variagated yarn makes my cardigan look rather homespun... or should that be gardenspun?  Angélique certainly loves it in a hopping, skipping kind of way and it suits her beautifully.  Tiny Tea Leaves will be taking second position in my Ravelry 12 Sweaters in 2012 project and you can see it on my Ravelry profile.

So in answer to the question: 'How does you Mansfield Garden Party Grow?'  My answer is 'quite splendidly, thank you'.

Happy Birthday my dear child.  You have made us all very joyful these past two years.  Be mindful however for you are still, I believe, under guarantee!

I am deeply grateful to Lori for this adorable rabbit she gifted us as part of her giveaway.  Angélique sleeps, eats, and reads with her each and every day.  She has been named... "Eek" by her owner Angélieek!  Please pop over and visit Lori's pretty blog which is bursting with creative talent.  I am certain you will be impressed! 

Wishing you a peaceful, joyful weekend.


Stephanie

Winter Flowerbeds And Lace

Dearest dog lovers I am so grateful for the time you took to write down your thoughts on which breed we should take.  Every comment has been carefully read and we are still mulling over this big decision.  Thank you so very much! I never cease to be touched by the kindness and patience of those who stop by this space of mine.

The title-page of John Taylor's embroidery and lace design book, first published in 1624, depicts an elaborate garden with raised flowerbeds and ornamental flower pots and vases.  In the foreground of this garden scene three alegorical female figures are clad in high-fashion costume.  Wisdom, in a brocade gown and high ruff, reads a devotional or moralising manual while Industrie works on a cushion, having completed the undergarment to her right.  Follie is empty-handed. 

The Needle's Excellency, 3rd edition (London: James Boler, 1631)

If such embroidery books represented high-ranking women, whose virtue could be displayed in their artistic needlework, the great majority of gardening manuals targeted high-society men.  The visual impact of needlework and gardening is important but whereas men clothed their pleasure gardens outside, women clothed their households and garments. Male/female divide aside, there exist many similarities between gardening and needlework handbooks.  For example, whilst seventeenth-century writers of women's manuals recommended hand-worked clothing as a public sign of a woman's skill and virtue, contemporary horticultural publication claimed that to tend one's garden was good for one's soul.  On the other hand moralising handbooks frequently considered fashion and flower gardens to be both vehicles of vanity and ephemeral pleasures.  One thing is for sure; the aesthetic characteristics of gardens were thankfully well preserved over the centuries in the embroidery and lace design books which depicted many floral and garden parterre motifs - this distinctive genre of seventeenth-century French formal gardening which can be seen in the examples below - suitable for repeating as borders on the edge of various garments.

Théâtre d'Agriculture et Mesnage des Champs, Olivier de Serres, 2nd edition (Paris: 1616)



Gardeners sought similar effects to embroiderers in the colours and differing textures they used in their parterre designs.  Yellow hued sands, crushed red and brown stones, dark grey metals together with flowers, and plants were mixed to set off the vivid green of the frequently used box tree.  According to the Victoria & Albert exhibition on The Needle's Excellency the most popular colours for embroidery were various shades of green, yellow, orange, brown and red.

 

Lace was a ubiquitous part of both aristocratic men and women's clothing.  The title-page of the French version of Federico Vinciolo's pattern book, from which the lace patterns above and below are taken, depicts garlands of lace which reveal a close resemblance to sixteenth-century parterre designs.  

Les Singuliers et nouveaux pourtraicts du Seigneur Federic de Vincolio Venitien 
(Paris: Jean Le Clerc, 1606) 

Since gardening treatises frequently recommended that ornamental flowerbeds should be clearly visible from the house it is most natural that young women at court who embroidered would model their designs on the parterres they saw through the window. In winter, after a severe frost or a snowfall, in contrast with the dark earth beneath, these flowerbeds would have looked like the crisp white geometry of the laces which were so fashionable among the gentry and at the royal court.

Picture taken from William Christie's house in Thiré

Beautiful, don't you think?

For those of you who are interested in contemporary lace design pop over to Claire at Paint Drops Keep Falling to see details of her visit to the "Lost In Lace" exhibition at Birmingham.

Someone in this parts will be turning two on Friday so I will, hopefully, be posting before then on a truly insane challenge I have set myself AND a beautiful giveaway Angélique was offered by talented Lori over at Hippywitch Crafts.  My little girl will not be separated from her at all these days!

See you very soon and have a peaceful Sunday.

Stephanie

Lichen, Moss, and Tea Leaves

Dear readers,

First, I need your help.  The die is cast here.  My recent visit to a specialist has revealed I am asthmatic - I had strongly suspect this since my bronchitis in October - and that consequently it would be unwise to replace our dear Sakura with another cat.  There have been tears from younger members of the family but I believe good must come from this disappointment. My instinct is veering strongly towards owning a dog and my doctor has agreed to this possibility.  So please, any advice from you canine lovers would be simply wonderful.  Which breed do you love?  I have a soft spot for King Charles Spaniel because I know they are gentle with children but my husband Mickaël needs a little convincing!

Second, I received a truly inspirational gift while I was away on holiday. Wonderful Annie's amazing giveaway present arrived against the odds just before Christmas and was smuggled in our present stash and transported to our winter destination.   I should add that I knew nothing about the aforementionned arrival and smuggling so when I ripped open the Knitsofacto parcel on Christmas Day I was heard making a number of highpitched noises denoting both astonishment and pleasure.  Yes indeed.  These days the book, Vintage Flowers by Vic Brotherson, has not left the sofa and I marvel at it each and every day.  I have decided to use it as a regular inspiration prop here in this space of mine as I would very much like to share its colour celebration with you all.  So relish the few pictures below and rest assured there will be more to follow soon with a creative theme woven in. Thank you so much Annie for filling my winter with colour. 

Now all those who know Knitsofacto will agree it is an inspiring blog indeed.  When Annie decided to commit to a Ravelry project to knit twelve shawls in 2012 it got me thinking.  I do not have Annie's knitting experience but I felt all fired up.  The result?  I am now part of the 12 Sweaters in 2012 on Ravelry.  If any of you would like to join I would be thrilled to see you there! Let me know, ok?

Last but not least, I would like to thank Louise from Tea At Weasel's 

for generously offering Millefeuilles a Liebster Blog Award.  It has really touched me and I will be mulling over who I should be passing this special award on to.  

Our Holidays

I think some of you will be disappointed to learn we did not opt for the fairytale roulotte in the snow scene.  I am so sorry Melissa!  Will you forgive me?  We have merely postponed the dream to more clement springtime. Yippee!  This family of ours is becoming more earnest about owning our own gipsy caravan when we will finally have a house of our own; a project I hope to share with you on this blog in the future.

We spent a week in Le Cantal, near Salers, a dramatic, austere region which is both stunningly beautiful and isolated.  Most villages are filled with houses with firmly closed shutters.  Many of these are family homes which are now seldom visited for this region does not boast a high employment rate.  The thing which struck me the most - and I hope I have conveyed this in the pictures below - is the perfect harmony between the natural landscape and the local architecture.

Take a look:

Browns, greys, and greens were the stars of the show in the valley...

with a generous sprinkling of snow on the mountain.

This region is a walker's paradise regardless of the season.

One thing I learned to do here was to look at vegetation in detail particularly growing on the stone walls.

  I LOVE the varied colours of lichen and moss and could quite happily knit in these shades for a long, long time.

According to Katherine Swift in a January extract of The Morville Year, "lichens are extremely sensitive indictators of environmental pollution: a rich bloom of lichen means clean air.  They also grow infinitesimally slowly - half a millimetre a year is fast - so lichen growth is also an inicator of age.  Many lichens will be as old as the tombstones and walls on which they live".

The trees, knotted and gnarled and somewhat reminiscent of Arthur Rackham's fairytale illustrations, were also coated with lichen and moss.

Yes indeed, Mrs Swift; judging from the lichens I saw the air in Le Cantal is very pure indeed.

Speaking of walls, moss, and browns ...

Here is my eldest daughter, Héloïse wearing her Tea Leaves for the very first time.

She's a wonderful girl...

and willing to pander to our strange whims.

Thank you Héloïse!

This Tea Leaves will be the first cardigan to join the 12 Sweater in 2012 over on Ravelry!  I'll be putting up the details on my profile Ornamentation.

Thank you so much for bearing with me in this green, brown, grey, and white post.

I wish you a beautiful week.

Stephanie

ps There is a giveaway being planned here so watch this space.