Toadstool house hunt

If you visited my blog on Wednesday you might remember I was looking for a certain something to inspire a knitted picture I'd planned. I spent an hour or more working my way through all manner of children's story books with little success. Then I found 'Winkie in Toadstool Town' and hoped my search was over. You see I'd been looking for fairy toadstools; the kind I remember reading about when I was a child. There seems to be great enthusiasm for all things toadstool at the moment have you noticed?

Unfortunately the cute little toadstool town in this book wasn't quite what I was looking for.

But the toadstool on the cover of this book for Brownies was just right, red with white spots.

What I wanted to find was a fairy house, a toadstool with a door and windows. So my search took me to the book I mentioned last week. 'Come Follow Me' by Gyo Fujikawa. Full of wonderful pictures of fairy folk I felt sure I'd have success. But no! The only toadstools in the book were on the cover. These were being used as garden furniture by the tiny lady who resides in a grassy bank, you can just see her emerging from her grassy house in the bottom right-hand corner. My search continued.

Then I remembered the ultimate toadstool Des Res.....Big-Ears' house. Thank you Enid Blyton, I knew you wouldn't let me down. A sweet little door with a lamp over it and tiny lattice window, perfect. And just look at those inquisitive beetles at the bottom of the picture.

In this second picture you can actually see inside the house. Those stairs look a bit close to the front door wouldn't you say? They wouldn't pass the planning regulations in our human world. By the way, that isn't smoke coming from the window, its steam; in the story Big-Ears is doing his washing.

I was not hopeful of finding any more toadstool homes when I picked up my old 'Pookie' book. You need a hankie for this story, its a real tear jerker. I opened the book.....

....and what a wonderful little toadstool village met my eyes. Traditional red with white spots, lattice windows and chimneys, the lot. And in between were the sweetest tree trunk homes with steps leading to front doors that were hidden between twisted tree roots. What a delightful place to live!

Having found illustrations of fairy toadstools I decided to search for toadstool shaped objects around the house. Surely I must have something! But I'm afraid the result of my searching was this rather pathetic group of three, one made of glass, one of made wood and the third, a well used cake decoration dating from the 1960s.

I almost forgot to include my mother's wooden darning mushroom. Everyone had a darning mushroom in 'the old days' and it was in constant use. I still use it from time to time.

So what about the real thing? Autumn is supposed to be a good time for fungi so I was certain I'd find plenty of examples around the garden and in the wood. After much searching I found two lonely toadstools on a pile of wood chippings.

I've never seen a red and white spotted toadstool in the flesh. Sadly it has the rather ugly name 'Fly Agaric' because it was once used for poisoning flies. It is indeed very poisonous which is a shame because its such a beauty.

You can probably tell that I enjoyed my search for fairy toadstools as it brought back many childhood memories. In the end I decided to knit simple red and white fairy toadstools that would be small enough to fit on children's hats and scarves or something really tiny like a mobile phone or iPod cover. No windows, doors or chimneys in my knitted toadstools I'm afraid, there wasn't room! For added magic I've added a row of dancing fairies.

I've left the background white so that you can see the grid clearly.

Owls, logs and lanterns

Today there's a bitter wind blowing off the nearby mountains and I'm quite surprised the highest peaks haven't got a covering of snow. With such a bracing wind what better way to keep warm than a morning spent cutting logs ready for the winter days ahead. My husband loves his chainsaw and everything to do with cutting wood. I think he might have been a coppicer or charcoal burner had he lived 100 years ago. His enthusiasm and hard work thankfully will provide us with log fires until next spring when the process will begin all over again.

 We are surrounded by woodland so fallen branches are plentiful.

You have to know which wood burns quickly or slowly, gives good heat or doesn't. Its all a mystery to me.

The leaves are only just beginning to change colour but the old crab apple tree outside our back door is always ahead of the game and is now shedding its leaves quite quickly. Festooned with blossom in spring and glowing gold in autumn it gives real value for money. I'm always amazed at how many different shaped leaves it has. The ones in the picture above all come from this tree.

The woods are quieter than they were in spring and summer. The sound of birds foraging in the leaf litter alternates with the delicate tap-tapping of falling acorns as they bounce off branches on their descent to the ground. The occasional hoot of a tawny owl is not uncommon. We see this bird quite often around the garden during the day. This little tawny was photographed on our windowsill at midday.

When I was a child my story books always seemed to feature wise old owls like the one pictured above. It is from one of my first books, 'Baba' by Betty Larom. Owls always wore specs and often carried a book under one wing to reinforce their wisdom.

When she was very small my daughter was given a wonderful book entitled 'Come Follow Me' by Gyo Fujikawa. All about the secret world of elves, fairies, gnomes and trolls, the illustrations are really endearing and not at all frightening for a young child. The picture above is attached to a poem about Halloween in which three little witches dance with a black cat amongst the pumpkins. Two haughty owls watch the dancing and frown. No books and no mention of wisdom!

Ted is ready for Halloween but is looking a bit glum wouldn't you say?  A woolly jumper could be just what he needs. With this in mind I have two patterns for you this week. The first features Jack-o'-Lantern and the second little owls.

 

Repeating every 12 stitches, the lanterns are easy to knit and I rather like the idea of knitting a row of smiling ones with just a single frowning one somewhere in the row.

Using bright yellow for the features adds to the effect and really does make the lantern look as if it has a candle inside. To achieve this effect use yellow yarn for the features when knitting or do as I have done and embroider the yellow on later.

 

  

The owl repeats every 12 stitches

 

Both Jack-o-Lantern and the owl would be great for Halloween themed knitwear. You have just a month to complete a project. Have fun!

Ameliaranne and knitted elephants

Aren't these illustrations just wonderful? They can be found in the book 'Ameliaranne at the Circus'. The first Ameliaranne story was published way back in 1920 in the days when families like hers were very often large and very often poor. Over the years the stories were penned by a variety of authors but the wonderful illustrations were always produced by Susan B Pearce. (This book was written by Margaret Gilmour)

 
 

1). In this story Ameliaranne finds a runaway elephant with a sore trunk and takes the injured animal home.
2). At the sight of a wild animal at the door her poor overworked mother cries "Mercy me, it's an ephelunt! We shall all be trampled to death!" and with that she snatches up an armful of children and rushes indoors for safety.
3). Mother has to sit down and fan herself but after gaining her composure she suggests the elephant's trunk could be bandaged with a dish-cloth.
4). With a bandaged trunk the gentle elephant allows the children to ride on its back. It is, of course, an animal that has escaped from a travelling circus and for their kindness Ameliaranne and her family receive free tickets for the next performance. Wonderful!

This little elephant pattern is easy to knit. Each one is just 12 stitches wide and can be knitted as a repeat pattern or as an individual motif.

You could make each elephant a different colour if you wish or, if you're not a knitter, then why not try using the graph for cross stitch. I'll be posting another pattern in a few days. Have fun!

Nice weather for ducks

This summer's constant rain has caused large puddles in our road, a nuicance for car drivers but a great playground for the local duck population. You should have seen cars trying to steer carefully round them. On the whole the ducks won the day!
These ducklings look really cute on kids sweaters and the pattern is easy to knit. It repeats every 12 rows but you can spread the ducklings out by making the spaces between them wider or mayble knit just one duckling as a motif. The choice is yours.

 

Life after binca

Reading Kim's Ragged Roses blog and her subsequent comments it would seems a lot of mums in blogland are very much in 'back to school' mode at the moment. I dropped in on Kitchen Pink this morning and admired the binca stitching done by three generations of her family. I was immediately transported back to my early infant days. Amazingly I still have the little binca 'mat' that I made when I was six (below). Lapses in concentration are obvious (I was no doubt gossipping as usual). Looking at my little mat I immediately recalled the smell of the well used infant plasticine that pervaded the classroom; horrible stuff, always marbled green and brown and totally uninspiring.

 

They say 'give me a child until he's seven and I'll give you the man' and, true enough, decades later I'm still stitching. Here are a few stitched pics I've made since my binca days.

This is entitled 'Three Birds' and is a design by the very talented needlewoman Elizabeth Bradley. Her kits are available on line.

 

Elizabeth Bradley's needlework books are an inspiration. I have three titles, 'Animals', 'Antique Flowers' and 'Decorative Victorian Needlework'.

Each book is superbly illustrated and contains a number of graphs in full colour which enable you to create your own stitched masterpieces. The sample pages below can be found in 'Decorative Victorian Needlework'.

I'm not certain if the books are still in print but they are all readily available from secondhand book sellers and of course Ebay.
Early American needlework was my inspiration for the sampler below. Apologies for the poor reproduction but I had to stand on a wobbly chair to photograph it. The sampler is in a heavy frame and hangs above my dining room fireplace where it complements my blue and white china on the shelf below.

I enjoy counted thread-work but have also done quite a bit of freestyle work over the years. I used vegetable dyes to colour the all threads used in the picture below.

I love antique needlework and have collected some nice examples over the years. The finely stitched picture below must have been a popular subject as I have seen it on two or three occasions since acquiring this one. It dates from the second half of the 19th century.

Mary Clements stitched this sampler in 1836 and I can't help but wonder what became of her.

Needlework talk and browsing through Elizabeth Bradley's books has put me in the mood to begin a new piece of stitching, sadly though I have other projects on the go at the moment so must resist the temptation. Such a pity!