monday :: read this book

Charming, idyllic, funny, full of period detail, you can almost smell the air, hear the water. Beautiful, can't believe I haven't read it before.

monday :: read this book

There are so many books I have read recently that I want to recommend to everyone I know, i've decided to space them out a bit and have myself a regular monday feature :: read this book. I'm not one for book reviews....never know quite what to say, inarticulate and all that...but I'll only ever put a book up if I loved it so much I know I'll re-read it.

First on my 'you must try this book' list then ::

Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

Michael Morpurgo

I read lots of children's books because I work in the children's department of a bookstore. I've never read any Morpurgo before, and I loved this. I think he is better known for his animal stories, but this is a biography-style book with a hefty dose of sea-faring which made my heart leap. Lovely book, good writer, gorgeous mix of line drawings and photographic illustrations on the cover, and on each chapter heading.

project development

The wedding quilt (I'm going to call it a quilt rather than a blanket because it sounds nicer) is developing, I've found lots of inspiration and decided on my square size :: 8".

I've found some beautiful crochet square designs :: flower burst square, victorian dream square and cygnus square, which may not make it as they are a bit complex, and if i worked them in my aran weight yarn, would end up as larger squares than I intend. The last one measures 12" sq when finished.

I've also found some lovely motifs :: motif 46, motif 41 and motif 118 I particularly like.

It seems that a lot of crochet squares look radically different when they are done with added colour yarns or variegated yarns. Sometimes the colour brings out the detail wonderfully, like this one, which is actually a very simple design ::

Some crochet squares are beautiful but the design can disappear when worked in one colour only. So I need to be careful choosing my square designs. I also don't want it to be too 'busy'...I want to stick to a small number of different patterns. I don't want it to be a sampler-style blanket.

I think I might add some knitted lace squares, like this tulip square, and below it the simple vine square (thanks 'vogue ultimate knitting book'...I forgive you for being so ugly, as you are so useful). Neither of these have been blocked, by the way.

read this....

Thanks awfully for your nice comments on the wedding and my dress, very blush-making.

I'm planning a post this weekend about the wedding quilt (sounds nicer than blanket) which is coming along nicely, but had to pop in and tell you all about a delicious book called 'Good Evening, Mrs Craven'.

It's published by Persephone, and contains the wartime short stories of Mollie Panter-Downes, 21 in fact, who wrote 'A Letter from London' in "The New Yorker", between 1939 and 1944. Some are a little sad, some are quite funny, all are absolutely fascinating.