Modest Flower And Giveaway Winners

We have become spectators to "the endless ballet of the weather", as the poet George Mackay Brown put it.  There have been severe frosts, boisterous winds, generous spatters of rain, racing clouds and - the show stealer - warm sunshine and a big, blue sky.  We are on the cusp of spring.

Every year in those early days of timid budding and unfurling when the spring garden wakes slowly like a sleeping village I feel myself becoming jittery and a little anxious.  I am entoxicated by the POTENTIAL of spring.  As new plants raise their colours every day an uncontrollable urge to create overcomes me.  I don't question it.  I lived in Greece for two years and experienced almost helplessly the potent impact of the sap rising in warmer climes.  There is little one can do to resist! 

If I allow myself to yield to the desire to pay tribute to the glorious pagent our gardens stage for us in my articles on gardening aesthetics and with my very modest crafting skills I am mindful of the need to maintain a (fragile) sense of equilibrium. On the best of days my husband and children watch me run around like a headless chicken between sewing baskets, teetering piles of yarn, and my treasured reference books during every moment set apart from the daily management of our family life.  I talk to them of my ever growing catalogue of projects in my head and they nod and smile and offer wise advice. Mostly they understand me and for that I am hugely grateful.

 But as spring jumps at me I must be mindful of remaining focused or I run the risk of spreading myself too thin.  My focus must be on important projects alone and most importantly my family for their desires and plans are worthy of great respect too and an ear capable of truly listening. There is also Gaspard our puppy who is growing beautifully and at three months needs a constant eye and to be trained not to jump onto people.  Any advice on that?

It is a mixed blessing that we rent our present house.  While its garden is perfectly lovely with its cherry trees and silver birches and ideal for children to run around in we cannot invest energy in putting our horticultural dreams into fruition here.  All we need to do is to trim hedges, cut back the profuse lavender bushes and eat cherries in May.  We must wait patiently for our own garden.  Frustrating?  Yes. However I am grateful in a sense for this year I simply wouldn't have the time to do it all.  In the meantime I garden with words.

One Tiny Tea Leaves simply is not enough and so I made this second one, named Viola, for Angelique.  It is a little longer in length than her first so that she may wear it for longer in time.  

Also this Madelinetosh DK in Sugar Plum (has anyone every actually eaten a sugar plum?) seems softer and more delectable than all other skeins I have purchased previously so knitting a bigger Tea Leaves made the pleasure last!

For those who are interested the details are on Ravelry.

Angélique's new cardigan goes beautifully with her new rainboots purchased on the same day as the Viola above in our local gardening centre.  Most satisfying.

At this time of year you will also see me bent double over the damp earth under our garden trees looking for Viola odorata. It's like finding coins in the grass only better.  The violets captured here are Violettes de Toulouse purchased on a whim at the wonderful flower market in Tours which stretches along one of the main avenues two days a week.  Heaven.

I have already promised Angélique we will walk alongside the vines and orchards in search of tiny wild violets.*  Why these flowers with their heart-shaped leaves are referred to as modest or humble escapes me.  They are quite simply beautiful and their elusive scent on a fresh spring morning could charm away the most malevolent of spirits.

Some spring days I would like to replace our grass with a flowery mead, the carpet of tiny flowers you find in Medieval and fifteenth-century paintings.  Cultivated meadows were filled with small blooms: viola, violets, periwinkle, lily of the valley, columbine, birdsfoot trefoil and cowslip were some of the flowers to be planted.

I have sprinkled a few of our favourite violet sweets onto one of my cherished books; Les Fleurs animées by J.J. Grandville.  Are you familiar with this book?  This last work of the author - published the year of his death 1847 - contains fifty-two engravings of high society fashion on the eve of the Second Empire.  Flora's court is dressed in floral haute couture and displays the sentimental romanticism of the epoque.  The flowers portrayed in this book could be set against the magical stage design of the romantic ballet genre.  Small garden creatures - crickets, butterflies, and caterpillers - play second role to the enchanting flower personae.  This book is a delight and if you wish to purchase a copy click here 
although I own this version.

But where are my manners? I almost forgot to give you the names of my two giveaway winners.

Vanessa from Coco Rose Diaries and... oh dear, can you not read the second name there?

Dear Elizabeth and  Vanessa congratulations!  I will be sending you the Perrault books and embroidery respectively.  Please send me your postal addresses via e-mail when you have a spare moment.

I will be taking a step away from my space here for a while.  It's all about focus, remember? ;-)  I will not be able to resist the temptation of visiting your blogs though from time to time and I will return in the first official days of spring to show you what I have been concentrating and working on recently.  My modest tribute to glorious spring.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to visit this humble blog of mine.

A bientôt,

Stephanie 

*  We have just returned from a long walk and discovered countless clumps of wild violets growing along the main path leading to the vineyards.  We may have picked a small bunch ;-)

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