Beauty and the Beach

I'm lucky enough in London to live within walking distance of a fair few libraries, and I've spent many a happy weekend lost in the stacks of the fashion and costume sections.  

I'm just finished reading the excellent Vintage Swimwear: A History of Twentieth-Century Fashions by Sarah Kennedy and well, I loved this book!  From the pretty much fully clothed bathers of the 19th century to the scandalous 'topless' bikinis of the 70s and the cut-away hilarities of our modern beaches, it's all in here...

When I wasn't luxuriating in the fabulous swimsuits of Chanel, Patou and Jantzen, I started to think about what patterns from my collection might be good for the beach...wanna see what I found?

This beaut of a 1950s pattern just screams "See ya, I'm off to the beach!" (Though I think they're actually stood on a dock...), although I can't help but think that the lady in the white top is just super proud of her very wide pockets.

Playsuits! Very big hats! Gigantic earrings even on the beach!  It can only be the fabulous 50s again, and aren't they just divine?

Couldn't resist one more gorgeous pattern from the 50s, although I think this must be a very cold beach to need such substantial cover-ups!  Extra points to this pattern though for finely illustrated starfish and other rock creatures...

A cheeky stunner from the late 60s, back when The Sunday People produced patterns & each one only cost 25p to order!  I love the innovative front-tie fastening of the bikini top & those sexy high-waisted shorts to ensure absolutely no belly-button reveal!

Ah now we must be in the 70s, as everyone on this pattern has their belly button on show!  However, note how they are all classily provided with a choice of kaftan-style cover up should those itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny bikinis seem a little too brief!

Moving on finally to the lovely 80s, when you could always count on the European company Burda to provide the most exciting pattern illustrations - check out those cute beach umbrellas!  I'm also enjoying the sailor-style collars and those matching espadrilles.

So tell me, what do you wear to the beach?

I was the only swimmer in movies. Tarzan was long gone, and he couldn't have done them anyway; he could never have gotten into my bathing suit.
Esther Williams (1921 - 2013)

This post has me in stitches...

One of the first crafts I remember doing when I was a little frockdolly was embroidery, despite my frequent tendency to either stitch things to my skirt or snip holes in my trousers with my scissors.  My mum would take me on weekend courses run by the Embroider’s Guild, where I remember stitching pictures of hot air balloons and buying small bags of matching fancy fabrics to take home.

Before I was old enough to stitch anything myself, we had lived in the Far East & I remember vividly the beautiful silk embroideries that adorned the walls of our home, or that my glorious mum would stitch onto our clothes; I used to love hunting through her collection of iron-on transfers, helping to choose the next one.
  

My mum stitched this beautiful word onto a baby jacket

One of the divine Korean embroideries I grew up with, I used to stare at it for hours, lost in the stitches.

The embroidered pictures now hang on my walls, but it’s only recently that I’ve taken up the needle and thread again myself with any real dedication.  I’ve done the occasional bit of stitchery in the last 10 years, but my focus has usually been more on knitting and crochet, which of course require much bigger needles!

A satin stitch rose - probably the last time I picked up a needle & thread!

The thing is, I’ve always liked looking embroidery though (like at this recent V&A show - still my favourite museum!), and although not as frequent as my purchases of knitting books and vintage craft magazines (more on that particular…ahem… ‘obsession’ in a later post!), I can never resist a good embroidery book, especially an old one:

Love a good vintage embroidery book!

But now, to help to fully reacquaint myself with actual stitching again, I’m taking part in a project called 1 year of stitches, aiming to chronicle 2017 with one stitch (or more, or a motif) per day, a stitched journal of sorts…and given how bad at keeping a diary I’ve always been, I’m hoping that I can keep this up for the year!  The project was the brainchild of the textile artist Hannah Claire Somerville, and you can follow her stitched journey through 2016 and now 2017 on Instagram, not to mention see who else is stitching and maybe join in yourself (and yes, I'm on there too as frockdolly_handmade)

Starting on New Year’s Day with a small firework, I’ve so far stitched (amongst other things), snowflakes, a haggis, Batman and a mermaid’s tail.  I’ve learnt some new stitches; buttonhole scale filling, French knots on stalks and whipped wheels to name but a few, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year will bring! 

Some of my stitches so far this year...what will the next 330 days bring?

Now the thing is, I haven’t been able to stop there, and I’ve been experimenting with a few other techniques, including cross-stitch, which is something I haven’t done since my teenage need to create order with thread…what other crafts from my past will I re-visit this year, I wonder?

Cross-stitch...many a cross word had trying to get this right (it has been a few years!)

My absolute favourite summer flower, the nasturtium, jazzed up with thread & beads.

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

- W.S. Merwin "Separation" 1993

Jellyfish

My nieces love jellyfish, not the creatures themselves (which would probably prompt much dramatic squealing & running away along beaches), but anything else to do with them, from picture books to drawings to the time we made some from halved paper plates with yarn tentacles & left them hanging around the kitchen...

So, inspired by this super cute post, from the always interesting Buzzfeed, I thought I would give the pattern from the uber talented Chiwei over at 1dogwoof a go.

Here we have some lovely tentacles, ooh I love a spiral, don't you?

And here are some in another colour because I couldn't stop making them and I thought I might just end up with tentacles all over the sofa (my other half began to look slightly concerned too...)

Oooh, another close up of tentacles, possibly beginning to have a problem here...

But no, wait, here are the smiley duo, hanging out on the back of the sofa & getting ready for their photoshoot in the Monday sunshine, don't they look happy & relaxed?

And here they are all hanging up & funky looking, ready to head over to my nieces' house, I hope they like them!

Life is a beautiful magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish.
Charlie Chaplin (1889 - 1977)

Life's a Beach

I was born at the beach…well, I say that, but it wasn’t quite like Aphrodite coming out of the waves, more a fairly standard birth in a hospital about a mile from the peaceful coastline of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.

And since then, despite a fairly crippling fear of boats & the sea (nope, never worked out where that came from), I never seem to have strayed far from the sea’s edge.

From the rocky Caribbean island of Curaçao, (which my mum often tells me was barely 11 miles long and 3 miles wide), my home from the age of three months:

To early family holidays on the beaches of the Shetland Islands, a world away from the brilliant blue seas off South America, but no less evocative:

From family Christmases spent in Penang to escape the heat of Bangkok to group holidays (and woeful attempts to body board) off the wild shores of Cornwall, hunting for King Arthur’s crown under Tintagel castle and rock-pooling for shrimp:

And then as a grown up, my own beaches, the smooth pebbles of Brighton on weekend escapes from the big smoke, to a tragic summer job in Ibiza, the memories of which burn almost as bright as the sunsets I saw there:

And finally, full circle, back to Norfolk for a recent retreat on the very same beach nearby to which I was born, early morning seal sightings and building a line of sandcastles along the golden mile:

I’ve tried to incorporate the colours from Great Yarmouth into the latest CAL I’m working on, the lovely Last Dance on the Beach from Scheepjes in memory of the crochet designer Marinke Slump, sadly lost to depression a few years ago. 

It’s a new experience for me, working with a muted palette, but after countless hours spent matching the yarns to my most recent beach photographs, I can feel the sea in each stitch I make, and I find a measure of the solace I found on the shore itself, my toes in the sand, and the waves rippling over the pebbles.

Of course, I couldn’t be me without another side to the calm, so I’ve also been working on tiny sandcastles and beach umbrellas, in memory of the other side of Great Yarmouth; the bright lights and chirping sounds of the beachfront arcades, the smell of fish & chips in the air and the shiny hubbub of a town come to life for the season. 

Oh but we do like to be beside the seaside, we do like to be beside the sea..!

Flower Power - Part 2

I’m named after a flower, well actually, a tree: the Cassia tree.  Here I am with my namesake in Thailand, where it is the national tree:

Now, in English, the tree is sometimes known as the golden shower tree, and its primary uses are either to make laxatives or hallucinogenic drugs…so yeah, as marvelous an ice-breaker as that is, it's usually the bit I save until later! 

But anyway, flowers are a thing with me, and always have been; here I am casting a very suspicious glance at some glorious chrysanthemums in Korea:  

I remember when I saw my first English chrysanthemum I was very confused, why was it so small?  I’m still surprised now that they are such a mistreated flower, confined to petrol station forecourt bunches or dyed terrible colours, who would do such a thing to such a glorious bloom?  It amuses me no end that in the language of flowers (a Victorian trend which I follow closely), Oriental chrysanthemums mean ‘cheerfulness under adversity’, and what could be lovelier than that?

Here I am again a little older, again in the midst of colourful blossoms, aren't those snapdragons just divine?

I even wrote a blog post about flower fairies (read it here) back in my early frockdolly days, and my smallest niece recently dressed as one for World Book Day (she said ‘Fairy!’, I said ‘Flower fairy? Excellent, I have an idea already’, a win win situation!).

Spring is my favourite time of my year, not just because I share the first day of the season with my birthday (hooray!), but because of everything happening in the garden…tiny striped shirt crocuses, tall elegant daffodils and as many varieties of tulip as I can buy and stuff in pots to forget about over the winter – I like the surprise when they pop into bloom, ta dah!  And don’t these red & yellow stripy ones just look like roaring lions?

I spend my free time at the splendid Kew Gardens, their annual  orchid festival is a particular favourite, but I’m just as happy there in November, tucked up in a steamy glasshouse, searching for tropical blossoms.  When I was a wee frockdolly in Thailand, my friends and I used to collect rubbery pink banana flower petals, the ones are Kew are too high up to reach, but I live in hope they’ll drop to the floor so my 8 year old self can tuck one away in her pocket…

I also love the South London Botanical Institute, a hidden gem of South London, where the craft sessions on offer are always pleasingly floral based, which may be why we end up there most school holidays!

In my creative work, flowers are also a theme, as a brooch, on a card, scattered about the place as crochet motifs, or just impossibly huge on a cactus (I’ve seen cactus flowers, they absolutely look like mine, well maybe a little less fluffy…)

Oh so many pictures of flowery things!  I'm sure there'll be more to come as spring gets going - it's making a good effort, would you believe today I even went out without a scarf?  Brave little floral frockdolly, that's me...

Wabbits

For as long as I can remember, we had pets in our family, and usually of the tiny fluffy variety; ruffly squeaky guinea pigs, soft as butter bunny rabbits, all of whom seemed entirely mad, rats with crazy eyes and a hamster that surprised us all with its demise and subsequent resurrection (I have rarely trusted a rodent since)...even the occasional chicken, also fluffy, but much better generally at producing eggs...

I remember reading My Family and Other Animals by the lovely Gerald Durrell and thinking 'yes, I absolutely identify with that', though of course, our menagerie were hopping around being fluffy in the back garden of house in suburban Chester, slightly less dramatic (and possibly a bit more problematic for the neighbours) than Durrell's childhood home of Corfu...

Now I'm bigger, I still talk of my family and other animals, usually during weekend trips to the supermarket (if I can, I leave them in the cafe, at least then I know they won't get lost in the vegetable aisle or purchase a pony by mistake), but after the sad demise of my last rescue cat, the only animals I really keep around are of the crocheted variety.  For example, it's Easter in a few weeks, and I am currently crocheting up a veritable bundle of flopsy bunnies:

Now, if I can only get myself in hand and get my etsy shop opened (perhaps I have been eating too much soporific lettuce, just like the flopsy bunnies!), you might even be able to purchase one of these little beauties to hide a chocolate egg for your nearest and dearest this Easter...or next Easter...Easter 2018?

Until then, I'll just have to find a way to explain to my other half that that 12 pack of creme eggs in the house are for 'size reference only', and are really not for eating...wish me luck!

Colour Me Wild

I've always had a bit of a thing for bright colours, take for example, this pretty picture of me as a wee frockdolly, resplendent in my favourite Hawaiian frock, accessorised with even more colours (because yes, it so needed that) in the form of a floral lei:

Oh, how I loved that frock!  And the bracelet, if I remember right, was made up of teeny tiny green & orange pineapples, there's a definite tropical feel to my styling here...

Of course, as I got older, I was in charge of putting together my own outfits, with predictably colourful results.  Take this picture, of a slighter older frockdolly, off to some occasion or other in her brightest garb:

My older brother looks slightly alarmed by it all, my younger brother...well, he looks like a marionette, not sure what's going on there.  Incidentally, those are purple suede Kickers, and yes, they were awesome!  And also yes, my bag does match my socks, something which I felt was very important at age 12 (and still occasionally do now).

Now I'm all grown up (at least physically), I still love my bright colours, as evidenced by my recent projects; a brightly coloured surround for my nasty cheap clock and a few more rows on the EPIC stripy Kaffe Fassett inspired wrap:

I imagine myself at some point in the future, wrapped in glorious colour, gleefully clashing with the sofa (a rather tame denim blue), but toasty warm in the most vibrant way.  For now, at least, I get to admire my clock on the wall, and no longer have to listen to it ticking away, in a slightly accusatory manner, from the back of the sofa where it had been waiting for its cover for so very long!

I like bright colours in all my crafting, which has left me with a huge amount of scraps of felt,(from last Christmas' layered star baubles) & fabric (from two adorable firework costumes last autumn), and as for the buttons, well I just seem to collect those:

One day, I'll find a project to combine all of these!  Until then, I'll just use them as inspiration to get me through these last grey winter weeks, one tiny rainbow piece at a time.