Higgledy-Piggledy

Dear readers,

 

Goodness me, I have had a spring in my step this week. Good news does that to you, I'm sure you will agree, together with the warmth of human kindness.  Your generous, supportive comments have touched me more than I can say. Writing 'thank you' to each and every one of you seems a little inadequate, I'm afraid, but these two words are truly heartfelt.

 

With the glorious sunny weather we have had during the latter part of this week you would have spotted me out and about our hilly village prancing around like a not so

young colt and dancing on my tiptoes.  Excuse me if I raise my voice here but just look at my NEW SHOES!

 Every autumn I relish the ritual of purchasing a pair of Fairysteps handmade shoes.  Oh, the joy of choosing which whimsical shoes will become my favourite walking companions each year!  There is something so intrinsically "Elves and the Shoemaker" about Ren and her artistic talent; even her blog has a fairytale aura about it.  She is a hard-working lady too.  I have sometimes wondered if the little folk have gifted her with the ability to thrive on no sleep for she is always busy stitching her beautiful leather in those jewel-like colours, sitting cross-legged on her workbench, perhaps, and when the last stitch is in place she adorns some with a beautiful organza or silk ribbon.  Perfection.  Not only are they exquisitely made but they are blissful to wear. As light as a feather and as soft as kid gloves. Now I am saving up my coins to buy some boots for this coming winter.

 Sticking to my heels most glorious days is Angélique my other faithful walking companion.  Actually like most two year olds she prefers to hop, skip, and jump instead of walking.  She has taken to wearing this beaded beret I recently knitted for her all the time.  I made it pale blue with ice-coloured glass beads to remind me that she is my winter daughter.  I love this feisty child so very much who now claims she is no longer a baby but a little girl.  Sigh.

 

I am all higgledy-piggledy this week and a little bit excited about the new hare orders I am receiving.  I, like Angélique, am hopping and skipping between the seasons as I stitch (and prepare to stitch) a spring Hare with a touch of Easter, my third Mademoiselle Bloom (with a fourth in the pipeline), a small family of autumnal hares, and, dare I whisper, some Christmas creatures with silvery stars and snowflakes.  My imagination is having a ball.

 

A few weeks ago I finally got organised enough to set up a facebook page for my teeny tiny business Madame Millefeuilles. So if you are on facebook it would make me so happy if you headed over there and 'liked' me.  If you come and join me I will be sharing regular snippets of inspiration with you. Thank you so much!

 

Edit: would any of you be interested in a special edition autumnal hare giveaway, I wonder?

 

A shorter than usual post this time. A relief for some perhaps? ;-)

 

A bientôt,

 

Stephanie



Sweet Relief

Dear Autumn,

I think this year you must have sensed my reluctance to let go of summer. I needed to continue to feel the sun on my skin and to play my favourite game of Wishful Thinking.  The thought of facing up to reality was a little hard to bear, you see.

 

You are also called "fall", from the Old English faellan, to fall down, which leads back through time to the Indo-European phol, to fall.  Fall is the time of course when leaves drop from the trees. But there is that other fall, the one in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve hid their nakedness with a fig leaf, remember?  Flurrying leaves and the Harlequin beauty of your trees help us forget about passing time and the temporary death which winter brings.  With the arrival of each autumn I feel we slip and slide as though on wet leaves down a steep hill towards the winter solstice.  Time seems to accelerate.  Breathing becomes shorter and sharper. Winter, however, brings its fair share of beauty and enchantment.  Thankfully.

 

Now, I am at peace with you.  I have gorged myself on late summer's brilliant blue skies, bleached cornfields and blazing, glossy rose-hips. I have smiled like a lighthearted child at september's generous warmth and confetti-coloured wildflowers.  I have marvelled at the seedpods which decorate our countryside and the Clematis vitalba - or Old Man's Beard - with its trailing silver seed-heads draping our surrounding hedges.  I am no longer afraid to welcome you.

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Today is autumn.  Today my husband received the good news we were almost too afraid to hope for. Some of you may remember how I shared the frustration of our two-and-a-half year wait here; a lingering legal case of unfair dismissal which threatened to linger a lot longer than we could bear after his ex-boss decided to appeal the court's original verdict in favour of Mickaël.  I am so relieved to share with you the fact that he has won for the second time and, dare I whisper, has been awarded twice as much financial compensation this time round.  Such sweet relief as you can all imagine. So now we may face autumn with lighter hearts.

 

To celebrate I leave you with these images of Mademoiselle September Meadow created for a truly lovely lady who lives in an old steading deep in the Aberdeenshire countryside. She won me over with her descriptions of surrounding meadows filled with ox-eye daisies in summer and blushing rose-hips now. 

This little creature wears the same garb as my summer hares but with distinct autumn colours.  She marks the transition towards the different styled autumn hares I am currently working on.  Some will be adorned with these beautiful hand dyed silk ribbons.  By the way, if you're reading Madelief, Susan, and Jeanne; you will be receiving your long-eared orders soon;  I promise!

A final picture taken by Tristan of my husband MIckaël photographing Héloïse at the Chaumont Garden Festival in August. He may be a stubborn, overly dynamic Breton but my goodness he is wonderful.

Please cross your fingers if you have the time on Sunday.  Héloïse will be auditioning at the regional academy of music and theatre where she hopes to study acting outside school hours. 

I wish each and every one of you a wonderful autumn.

 

Stephanie

 

 

A New Leaf

Hello there!

I don't know if I'll be keeping this new Millefeuilles banner for long. I know this little rosehip bearing rabbit wove some potent magic upon me as I found myself, as if bewitched, stitching a combination of colours which do not usually find favour with me.  But on reflection these are the colours of early autumn, surely; butter-yellow, vivid scarlet and plum jostling for attention against the still predominant green pigment of chorophyll.  What do you think?

Mother Nature has been drawing us out each and every day.  That special september sunlight is too precious to ignore.  We cycle along the Loire river banks - the only level ground around our hilly parts - we tread familiar bridle paths through the vineyards and embrace new secret trails, picking blackberries and trailing our hands through brittle long grasses.  The leaves on the vines are beginning to turn but the green grapes have a few sun-drenched weeks of respite before hoards of grape gatherers descend upon the regular rows sending pheasants and roe deer scuttling away.

Our glorious countryside, more bleached than green now after weeks of heat, inspired me to knit the leafy shawl you can see above.  Cedar Leaf Shawlette is the work of Alana Dakos. The Madelinetosh DK yarn in the Filigree colourway lends itself beautifully to the drape of this crescent-shaped shawl worked in short rows with the leaf border added sideways once the main body is finished.  It is a pleasure to observe the leaves unfold gently as you knit; the repetitive pattern is never tedious.  Simply perfect to welcome in early autumn, don't you think?  For those who are interested my Ravelry notes are to be found here.

On a sultry day two weeks ago we headed off to the Chaumont-sur-Loire Garden Festival.  This year the theme - "Gardens Of Delight, Gardens Of Delirium" - promised to be both enticing and intriguing.

As we eagerly traipsed around the twenty-six show gardens we were gently pulled into an enchanted world where fairy tales and culinary delights reigned supreme.  One garden set the stage for Antonin Carême's elaborate marzipan cakes displayed in his eighteenth-century Parisian pâtisserie window and modelled on the ideas he would take from his passion for architectural history books.  Another, poetically named after the legend of Sleeping Beauty, was composed of thorny white Climbing Iceberg rose bushes and giant purple thistles to symbolize the hedge of thorns which surrounded the princess's slumbering castle. In another garden a fairy, wearing a brightly-patterned pinny, ruled over her magical vegetable patch in which dozens of mouth-watering recipes dangled from tree branches above magic pumpkins and giant artichokes. The Garden Of Sensual Delights was an orchard of closely planted fruit trees with a four-poster bed set on a base of red roses.  Most enchanting. I would be tempted to confess that sometimes the written descriptions, displayed at the entrance of each garden, were much more evocative and exciting than the gardens themselves.  I thought at the time this might have something to do with the fact that I chiefly garden with words and that I enjoy reading about gardens in particular.  My husband and Héloïse, however, agreed that they too had been more seduced by the words.  If any of you have also visited Chaumont this year I would love to read your impressions.

 Before I leave you for now I would like to tell you that I am busy making up, alongside some lovely custom orders, a family of autumnal hares dressed in jewel colours gleefully ready to face the turn of the season.  I have also put up a couple of limited edition hares on my Gallery of Hares page (you will find it just under my Millefeuilles banner) which were made for two lovely ladies a little while back.  I also intend to post here a little more frequently.  I am looking forward to that enormously. 

A bientôt, lovely readers,

Stephanie

Bubble

Dearest readers,

 When Mickaël proposed to me nine and a half years ago just four months after we had first met there were many good reasons which urged me to beam and nod my acceptance.  Perhaps I would put in my top three reasons his blue eyes, dark curls and the simple fact he was born and bred in southern Brittany on the verge of the Guérande Peninsula with its windswept salt marshes and glittering quartz flecked rocky coastline. 

 

 On our last evening in Brittany this year we headed to the dunes and restless waves of the Pen Bron beach situated near La Turballe.  It is a magical place which leaves your feet sparkling with pale sand and powdered quartz and your hair tangled and sticky with brine.  As we made our way home along the twisting lanes through the flat marshes, where grey coarse salt and the more refined fleur de sel have been harvested since Roman times, even the youngest member of our family was unusually quiet as if under the spell of the landscape which surrounded us.

 

If I love Brittany it is also because its people are generally considered to be spirited, dynamic, and bold in the face of change.  And this, dear readers, truthfully, is the trait I most admire in my husband.  I am also aware that Angélique, our two year old, has inherited his determination and drive.  She is of course half Breton and I witnessed with joy how naturally she slipped into her coastline environment this summer.

A few weeks ago I fell hook, line, and sinker for this version of the French pattern Bulle.

Bulle means bubble and I simply knew I would have to knit this pattern in blue by the sea in Brittany for my blue-eyed Angélique.

I chose to knit it in Quince & Co. Lark in Delft blue which is a much deeper blue in reality.

 I loved every stitch of this pattern which can be purchased in French and English.  It is delightfully simple and fun too and also exists for grown-up girls and ladies too. Héloïse is hankering after one of her own.

I decided not to make the side pockets incorporated into the original design for I think the simpler line of this knitted tunic is more flattering for my slightly chubby two-year-old!

The white mother-of-pearl buttons,which remind me of the sea spray on that restless  sea, were found in my dear mother-in-law's rusty button tin.

My Ravelry notes are to be found here.

 

It's lovely to be back and now I am gleefully off to visit you all!

 

A bientôt,

 

Stephanie

 

 



Two Elegant Ladies

1. and 2. Hydrangeas (it is impossible to capture their true colours).

3. Our eleventh-century parish church.

4. Zephyr in La Guirlande de Julie by Nicolas Robert.

Dearest readers,

How can I thank you for your kindness and generosity regarding my newly-fledged shop and hares (sorry, Amanda, I know you would prefer to call them rabbits or 'liebres')?  I have been so touched by your enthusiasm and encouragement that I have spent a good part of this past summer week stitching, stitching, stitching - I have a few special orders to honour too - but try as I might I cannot sew quickly enough to put all my ideas into shape.  I am so very happy though as these little friends are providing the perfect balance between inspiration and meditation.  They cannot be hurried and my children are learning the art of taking one's time to create something. 

In the meantime summer continues to spread its glory and we continue to savour every moment she flings at us.  Tomorrow will find us sitting by our friends' swimming pool and eating delicious local produce from our favourite village shop.  In a few days we will pack our bags and head west to southern Brittany; my husband's part of the world. 

Before we leave I would like to share with you my recently stitched hares (which are available for purchase). Of course I am a little nervous still but I will endeavour to stride forth with a confident smile so you won't suspect a thing ;-)  I will use the beautifully penned words of Katherine Swift's The Morville Year to set the scene, starting with the paragraph at the bottom of the page below: "There are two very elegant ladies in my garden".

I am quite enchanted by the image conveyed of a rose and clematis intertwined and growing in the plum tree.  The colours (and scents) are rich and so evocative: blue-purple, cream, and apricot.  Thanks to Swift's inspiration this is what a came up with in rabbit-form:

Mademoiselle Versailles

Mademoiselle Versailles is a sweet soul who enjoys afternoon tea served in the garden with a silver fork and flowery plates.   She is made from the finest ivory linen. Her right ear and ankle are embroidered with fanciful French patisseries - named religeuses - in blues and pinks. On her left ankle is an ornate cake stand. Her dress is made of fine French vintage cotton (circa. 1930s) with delicate pink flowers on an ivory background. Her pantaloons are cut out of a vintage French sheet and trimmed with early twentieth-century ivory lace and cream contemporary lace on her collar. Her ears are lined with soft blue dotted cotton. 

And here is her companion:

Mademoiselle Bluebird

I named her Mademoiselle Bluebird because of the joyful bird in flight on her ear. She was stitched in the height of summer surrounded by the vibrant shades of our violet star Clematis, the hardy lavender bushes crowned with bumble bees, and the glorious mauves and blues of our neighbour's hydrangea - see the petals at Mademoiselle's feet? - which I tried to capture in her clothes together with the softest of pale pink Ronsard roses. She is the second hare to have been inspired by Madelief's beautiful garden.  Her dress is made of fine French lavender cotton and is trimmed with ivory early twentieth-century French lace, cream broderie anglaise and a fushia pink satin ribbon. Her pantaloons are cut out of Liberty cotton with delicate flowers.

And breathe... And go and cook dinner.

I will return in a few days, hopefully, between trips to Brittany for a short visit for I have other matters to share with you.  I would also like to add how much fun I am having visiting you now that I have a little more time.  Such inspiration to be found out there.

A bientôt,

Stephanie

All gone to wonderful homes.  Farewell dear Mademoiselles!