Old Roses in Books and in Reality

There are so many books in this house that they tend to migrate all over the place, and there are even a few in the bathroom. The book propped up here is all about Victorian gardens. I love this picture of old roses. I have something similar in my own garden and here they are, in a little vase, echoing the picture behind. I'm not sure what the deep pink rose is - one of David Austen's wonderful scented old roses whose name I now forget -  but the beautiful white rose (also scented) is from a cutting, given to me by my next-door-neighbour, and she calls it the Jacobite Rose - a very old Scottish rose, very hardy and prolific. Far from minding our last cold winter, this one seems to have loved the weather, and is full of gorgeous blooms this year.

Old Crochet Lace from Ireland

I've blogged about traditional Irish Crochet before, but from time to time, another form of Irish crochet lace comes along, usually in a box of old linens, bought at auction. The very pretty tea tablecloth on the left is one such, consisting of a small Irish linen centre, with a deep and dense trim of what looks, at first glance, like old needlelace. It is, in fact, incredibly neat and beautiful crochet, and I suspect that like many of the linens I find here in the West of Scotland, this one may have originated in Ireland, or at least may have been made by somebody working in an Irish tradition. People migrated to Scotland, and brought these wonderful skills with them. Often women were taught to do this kind of work in convents, or at school, where they may have been taught by nuns. This latest batch of linens, a huge boxful, were in very grubby condition. I think they had been stored away in an attic, perhaps in an old chest. Fortunately, the moths hadn't got to them, but they smelled stale, not so much dirty as just incredibly dusty. It's a joy to wash linens like this, since it transforms them in every way and their true beauty shines through. They are not particularly valued or appreciated here in Scotland, although when you consider the amount of hard work and skill which went into the making of them, you have to wonder why, but I sometimes think it's just that the skills of women are consistently underrated. Fortunately, there's a wider market out there, and it's a joy to 'rehome' some of these fabulous old pieces with an appreciative new owner.

Making Old Fashioned Pot Pourri.

Today, I've been gathering old fashioned scented rose petals and spreading them out to dry in our conservatory, so that I can make pot pourri for the winter months  - it's like preserving a little bit of summer. If I can make enough, I'll give some as gifts, too. Our problem here in Scotland has been the rain - really you need a dry, sunny day to pick your flower petals to make pot pourri, but I'm persevering! 

There's no great mystery to making this traditional mixture for scenting a room, and you can add whatever you like to it, experimenting with different herb leaves and scented flowers. I favour a very old fashioned mixture of various rose petals and a few tiny rosebuds which look very pretty, with dried lavender and - this year, because they are so prolific and so heavily scented - some sweet peas as well. I leave them on a tray to dry in the sunshine, and hope to carry on gathering the flowers for some weeks yet. I buy orris root powder in small quantities on eBay, which I use as a fixative, to stop the pot pourri from getting damp, and also to carry the scent. I mix a small amount of this with my dried petals, and a little rose and lavender essential oil, both of which have a wonderfully calming and cheering effect - another reason why home made pot pourri is so much better than the synthetic bought kind!

Once the dried petals, oils and orris root have been combined, I've found that the most effective way of 'curing'the pot pourri is to put it in an old fashioned paper bag, shake it up gently, and leave it for a few days to mature. Avoid plastic, which encourages mould. After that, you can use your imagination in finding a container for your pot pourri. My own favourite is a big, antique Mason's Ironstone bowl that used to belong to my mother. It seems like the perfect container, and you'll certainly see bowls like this containing pot pourri in country houses. But in fact you can use any bowl or dish, ornate or simple. If you're short of antique or vintage dishes, your local charity shop or car boot sale will usually have a good selection at bargain prices! Even the odd crack or chip doesn't really matter. Those single, fragile Victorian or Edwardian china cups you sometimes find, make excellent little containers for pot pourri. If you want to give your pot pourri as a gift, you can package it prettily in small cellophane bags, tied with ribbon and sealed with flower stickers - or even assemble a little collection of vintage cups and dishes and give them ready filled with your pot pourri.

Although I generally favour rose and lavender pot pourri, it's interesting to experiment. I've got so many different varieties of mint in pots this year that I'm thinking of trying a herb pot pourri with pineapple and spearmints, marjoram flowers, and maybe some scented geraniums.I've made a successful 'seaside' pot pourri in the past, with lots of little shells and pebbles, and those tiny white pieces of driftwood you sometimes find on the beach. ('The bones of a Goddess', as one of my artist friends calls them!) There are some lovely, astringent 'seaside' type oil mixtures on the market, but you could also try coconut - anyone who lives close to the sea will know that when the gorse bushes are in full bloom (or whins as they are called in Scotland) they smell very strongly and sweetly of coconut and for me, at least, it's a scent that always reminds me of the West of Scotland and one that I've used in the past to evoke that particular landscape in a novel. I've often had ideas of trying gorse flowers in a a seaside pot pourri, but the spines have usually deterred me!

 Cones, large and small, are good carriers for pine or cinammon scented oil, and can be mixed with dried leaves and seed heads to make a spicy winter pot pourri. I still bring out an old Christmas pot pourri I made some years ago, with dried orange slices, little fir cones, shiny brown horse chestnuts, cloves and cinammon sticks along with the spicy essential oils (a mixture of cinammon and orange is particularly good) which most shops stock around Christmas time. That - mercifully - is a long way off at the moment but you could bear it in mind if you see any pretty seed heads that could be dried and added to the mix. 

Finally, pot pourri keeps for a very long time. The only thing that spoils it is dust and damp but if the scent fades, as it will, over time, you can simply refresh it with a few drops of whatever oils you prefer.  

A Little Snippet of Gigha, Willie McSporran, and a memory of Vie Tulloch

Here's a little snippet of the wilderness at the north end of the Isle of Gigha - we were there last weekend, staying with our friends Willie and Ann McSporran for a couple of nights. If you listen carefully, you can just catch the plaintive note of the oystercatcher down on the shore. The weather was wet and windy when we arrived and stayed showery all weekend, but it didn't matter too much. We still made our usual pilgimage the length of the island, and also visited the grave of another old friend, woodcarver Vie Tulloch, who died earlier this year. I left a little posy of wild flowers there, which seemed a suitable offering.
Vie was a wonderful, vibrant, astringent personality, and what she didn't know about the flora and fauna of this little island wasn't worth knowing. We miss her still, miss those lovely long lunches down at her tiny cottage at Gallochoille, her seashore garden, her gorgeous dog - a whippet - (I vividly remember him stealing and eating a half pound pack of butter, which didn't seem to phase her at all!) her spinning wheel, her fabulous paintings, and her even more wonderful carvings. The cottage was simply furnished, tumbledown, by no means luxurious, and yet it seemed to suit Vie to a tee. She always reminded me of the Lady Artist, in Marie Hedderwick's Katie Morag books.
She was still carving well into her eighties, and she and my woodcarver husband, Alan, used to enjoy talking about the intricacies of the craft. Her eyesight and strength were gradually failing - but you would never have known it. Her mind was sharp, and you would still arrive to find her yomping over the heather with some seashore find to show you. She once astonished us by producing a collection of the wings of the birds of Gigha, garnered from the seashore over the years - wings and dried bones which she would examine in order to lend accuracy to her amazing wooden sculptures - I later used the scene in a novel called The Curiosity Cabinet.
Vie had lived on Gigha for many years and she will be sadly missed on the island. Never afraid to speak her mind, she had many loyal friends, was present at every community occasion, every celebration, dancing, laughing, always forthright but never intentionally unkind.
Meanwhile, last weekend, we had time to listen to the incomparable storytelling of the redoubtable Willie McSporran MBE, (below) many of whose accounts of life on the island in the old days, I have included in another book, a piece of non-fiction this time, God's Islanders, my history of the people of Gigha. There is nobody who can relate a story quite like Willie McSporran - long may he continue to tell them!

Flowers From My Garden

It's a lovely time of year for cutting flowers from our cottage garden - lupins, peonies, an old rose, some philadelphus and I think there's a bit of salvia lurking at the back. The combined scent of these is absolutely gorgeous. I don't think people always consider lupins as good cut flowers but they last reasonably well, and the peppery scent mixes nicely with other things. Also, if you cut off the blooms before they start to die, the plant can carry on flowering for a surprisingly long time, well into the summer. I really ought to make pot pourri and sometimes I do, but it depends upon the weather and whether I can find the time to cut roses and other flowers when it's nice and dry. Scotland, this year, has been very wet.  

I'm always rather sad when the spring flowers are over, the daffodils and narcissi and hyacinths and tulips, but the early summer flowers are just as attractive in their own way. This garden posy reminds me of one of the brightly coloured embroidered tablecloths which are so popular with my customers!

Kirkmichael Community Shop and Jock's Cafe

If you're looking for somewhere to spend a few tranquil hours, you could do worse than visit the Ayrshire conservation village of Kirkmichael, have lunch and browse in the not-for-profit shop and cafe there. This became a community-run concern just over a year ago, when the proprietor of the shop and restaurant decided to retire, which would have left the village effectively without a shop. With the help of grants and loans from the local community, from the Plunkett Foundation, the Leader Fund and the Co-op bank and with a great deal of hard work and energy on the part of many volunteers, both shop and cafe have grown in popularity.

 The cafe is pretty, cosy, and inviting. It serves simple but excellent country cooking, and truly scrumptious home baking which can also be bought  to take away. There are cafetieres of good quality coffee and freshly baked croissants, for those who want to linger over a newspaper or magazine (or select a book from the little Book Exchange, and leave a donation). There are various teas, and a full range of soft drinks. There are freshly baked croissants and scones and home-made soups as well as sandwiches with locally sourced meat and salads. The shop has a nice line in local produce, including fresh fruit and vegetables (luscious Ayrshire tatties are in at the momen, Epicures from Dowhill near Girvan!) jams, local honey, meats, and free range eggs.

You can see Jock in the picture above - he was the village blacksmith and handyman, and the cafe is situated in the building which was once his workshop. He knew everything there was to know about all the old houses in the village, and there are some who say that he's still around, keeping an eye on things! 

Kirkmichael itself is a fascinating old Carrick village, a picturesque conservation village nestling at the foot of the Galloway Forest Park, with many of the houses dating from the eighteenth century, and a few buildings even older than that. The Kirk in particular is believed to stand on the site of a 13th century building and there are many archaeological remains round about. The current church has a fine Arts and Crafts window by Christopher Whitworth Whall. There is a famous Coventanters Grave, in the idyllic kirkyard, and an intriguing story to go with it. The Kirkmichael Village Renaissance group is currently working on a series of 'walks' to encourage people to explore the beautiful countryside round about, and a history leaflet is being written, which will allow visitors to walk around the centre of the village and learn a little about the place as they go. The Kirkmichael Arms pub, closed for some years, is undergoing extensive renovations and is due to open later on this year (2011), while the village has just got the go ahead for an eco friendly new school, which will be built over the next few years.

A Himalayan Rose in One of the Village's Amazing Back Gardens.

The very active Three Village Garden Club (Kirkmichael, Crosshill and Straiton) has managed to secure funding for a new art project which will allow a major artist to work with village children in the near future to design and install a set of unique and intriguing signs for each of the villages. The garden club is also responsible for planting and maintaining the pretty flowering tubs which adorn the village, summer and winter alike, and a special community garden is planned for the new school. Last year, (2010) Kirkmichael hosted a hugely enjoyable 'Garden Snoop' (much less formal than an open gardens event) to allow visitors to have a special peek inside the variety of stunning back gardens which lie hidden behind so many of these cottages. The event was so successful that it will be repeated every second year, with a big Garden Bring and Buy sale planned for later this year. Watch this space for more news - Kirkmichael is certainly going places! And meanwhile, please visit and 'like' the shop's page on Facebook for lots more information, updated on a regular basis.

 A view from the bridge over the picturesque Dyrock Burn which runs through the village

A Village Kirkyard, Carved Stones and Running Water

There's something quite magical about an ancient village graveyard, and I spent a little while walking round ours with some visiting friends last week. There has been a church on this site for many years - our eighteenth century building was by no means the first and many of the gravestones predate the present building, including - I think - the one below, which follows the old custom of carved emblems to tell us something about the deceased. There's a wheel, on this one, which looks like a mill wheel, and there were certainly plenty of mills of one kind or another in this area, but I'm not sure what the other symbols represent. It's a deeply impressive piece of art, though.

Meanwhile, as we wandered about the kirkyard, I took the photograph below of the burn that runs through the village. For some reason, I've never taken a picture from this angle, nor even peered over the wall at this point in the kirkyard - probably too busy looking at inscriptions - but the view over the old wall is very beautiful and very soothing - a little piece of woodland which probably hasn't changed for many years.

Fine Art Prints from Alan's Pictures - Saint Patrick and Turnberry

We're just in the process of having some lovely fine art prints made from a small range of Alan's pictures including this one of Saint Patrick, which I've posted on here before. He's work a second look! Also, Alan's charming depiction of golfers at Turnberry with Ailsa Craig in the background.

Initially, they will be available from The Scottish Home, on eBay. These will be signed prints. We haven't come to any firm decision about limited editions, yet, although with some of his future paintings, we'll definitely be going this way. But at the moment, we plan to hang onto this original of Patrick (unless somebody makes us an offer we can't refuse!) and sell the prints, which are very beautiful. Smaller than the original, but made with care by a company called Splitting Images, here in Ayrshire. Watch this space, since we're planning a few other interesting additions to The Scottish Home over the coming months.

Storms and Tempests

As I write this, it is blowing what is generally known as a 'hoolie' out there, even though this is normally quite a sheltered little village. The house feels, in the words of poet Ted Hughes, as if it was 'far out at sea.'  We've had a terrible May - normally a wonderful month for us. In fact, I don't think there has been a single day without rain in this part of the world, and very few without wind, all while friends in the South of England have been complaining about drought and too much sunshine, as they packed up yet another picnic. I wish things were a little more evenly distributed!

One thing we're not short of up here is water. Not right now, anyway. And wind.  Friends all over Scotland are posting messages on Facebook about trees and branches blowing down, rubbish bowling along the streets, and bits falling off roofs. Here too. And the wind chill is making it feel very cold.  Between the Icelandic volcano sending ash in our direction, and springtime gales sending all kinds of other things in our direction,, it would be rather nice if things calmed down - and heated up - a bit!

Cath Kidston, a Triumph of Vintage Desirability

I visited the new Cath Kidston shop, in Glasgow, recently and was deeply impressed - what a triumph! Just about everything in the shop looks hugely desirable. The place was busy, and sales looked brisk, especially among foreign tourists, who were gathering up small but gorgeous retro fabric covered items, like there was no tomorrow. The shop itself is welcoming, with strategically placed vintage items adding to the overall luscious look - I particularly liked the old bread and butter and cake plates, with a miscellany of pretty patterns, displayed on the walls. Given a purse full of cash, I would have wanted to buy up half the stock, but especially the very beautiful embroidered canvas messenger bags at £55.00. Would love one of those!

Of course, if you want this 'look' - and it is a wonderful, warm, cheerful, nostalgic look - at budget prices, you could do worse than visit eBay, especially my shop, The Scottish Home, where I generally sell a variety of hand embroidered linen cloths from the 1950s or 60s. There's a nice little selection on there this week! Not only can these be used for tea tables or picnic cloths - they are very forgiving and easy to launder - but if you don't mind cutting them up (I don't recommend it, but I'm aware that people DO it!) you could easily make yourself some fabulous cushions or even bags in the Kidston mould. Watch out too, for old pieces of fabric, chintzes, tartans, or even gorgeous old tweeds, which can also be made into cushion covers and other interior pieces. But if you're in central Glasgow, do go and have a browse around Kidston's lovely inspirational shop.

Angelica at the Bottom of our Scottish Garden

When we had our village 'Garden Snoop' last summer, which was a sort of Open Gardens event, but without the added pressure of having to get everything just perfect, the plant on the left caused a bit of consternation. Lots of our visitors seemed to think that it was Giant Hogweed, which is a beautiful plant, but one which has its dangers, with sap which can cause skin to blister and become photosensitive. This, however, is both safe and edible - it's a cultivated angelica and - in my opinion - one of the most lovely plants in my garden. A friend gave me a plant many years ago and now it self seeds every year. It starts early, grows tremendously tall, with great big flower heads and lasts just about all summer long. Even in the autumn, when the seed heads are drying on their stems, it looks amazing. The whole plant smells wonderful too, even when you're cutting back the dead heads. It does, however, need a lot of space, since it's very tall - one for the back of a border. Mine grows at the bottom of our cottage garden, at the back of my little rose bed, but the roses are all species roses, which I tend to leave to 'get on with it' so it fits in pretty well. I'm by no means a precise gardener - this is verging on a wild garden, but - so long as you don't look too closely, at the ground elder and mare's tail - it is very beautiful, and absolutely full of wildlife: bumble bees, hedgehogs, birds of all kinds. I always intend to candy some of the angelica stems so that I can use them in my Christmas cake - but somehow I never quite get round to it. It has to be done with young, fresh stems and I always seem to be too busy, and before I know it, the plant has become too monumental to use. I believe the seeds can be used to flavour alcoholic drinks. I remember bringing  a bottle of Angelica Schnapps back from a trip to Iceland, many years ago - so perhaps that's something I can plan for this year!

Ne'er Cast a Clout till May be Out

The may blossom - i.e. hawthorn - is well and truly out in this part of the world. That's the meaning of the old rhyme - not that you have to wait till the end of May, to 'cast' your winter woollies, but that you have to wait till the may blossom blooms - except that, sadly, and although April was warm enough for us to cast any number of clouts, May itself is proving to be so chilly, here in the West of Scotland, that I'm sitting here wearing several layers, with a heater on, and looking out at my shivering plants. But all the same, the house martins are nesting and the may blossom is blooming, dazzling creamy white in all the hedgerows, and the scent of it, blown on the considerable breeze, is absolutely gorgeous, sweet and heady and powerful. I love this time of year and always want to drag my feet a bit, to slow time down!

Apple Tree Follow Up - Golden Noble

Many thanks to Nigel Deacon, with his amazing Sutton Elms website and his knowledge of apples, for identifying our old apple tree as a Golden Noble and here's the link to the page .  One of the excellent uses of Facebook, of course - contacting people in the know. The apple turns from green to a lovely golden colour - the golden apples of the sun, indeed! Nigel knows all there is to know, not just about apples, but about radio drama as well, which you'll also find on his fascinating website, among much else. But I've wondered for years what variety our apple tree is, and now I know. It's a wonderful fruit, full of flavour, sweet enough to eat without cooking, fabulous in pies and crumbles. It's a very old variety, and - although it isn't a good 'keeper' - when you can do as we do, blanche it, or puree it and freeze it, it is still a very useful and delicious apple. When our son was a baby, we used to puree the fruit for him, and he loved it - it was one of the first 'solid' foods he ate, and it didn't really need any sweetening.

May Day and Apple Blossom in our Cottage Garden

The weather continues to be warm and dry here in the West of Scotland - and our ancient apple tree is in full bloom at the bottom of the garden. It's so old, that it is essentially on a two year cycle. It takes a rest every second year and only produces a few pounds of apples, but on alternate years, we have a glut, and it looks as though this is going to be a good apple year! I've no idea what variety this is - all I know is that it's very old, and that it produces a good sized greeny-gold cooking apple, which is sweet enough to be cooked without sugar, but just tart enough to make wonderful pies and crumbles. Every year, I resolve to take some fruit to Culzean Castle's annual 'apple day' to try to find out exactly what it is - but I've never yet managed to do it!
Meanwhile, the garden is full of birds as well as blossom. There's a young female blackbird who loves to rummage in the pond weed that Alan skims off the top - here she is - quite tame.

She managed to toss most of the weed back into the pond, as she rooted for insects and other tasty morsels!

Old Crochet, Tatting and Embroidery Pattern Books

My mum taught me to knit and crochet when I was young. And back in the late sixties, early seventies crochet because a useful craft, because crocheted dresses and smocks were very much in fashion. Somewhere among my vast quantities of books (every room in this house has books in it!) there are my mum's old Stitchcraft Pattern Books - she used to buy the magazine, and had them bound together. Just glancing at them takes me back to a more innocent but - for me, anyway - very happy time. My mum could knit, embroider, sew and crochet and the clothes she made for me back then, some of which I still have tucked away, were the envy of all my friends. In fact I wore the pink crocheted smock (below) which she made for me back in the very early 70s, to a 1960s party only a couple of years ago!

 

Sometimes, I'll find a bundle of old pattern books at the bottom of a box of vintage linens and I'm currently listing some of these in three lots, in The Scottish Home on eBay. Some of them are instructions for tatting, which I find very pretty, but still don't know how to do. Many of them are for crochet doilies, edgings, gorgeous filet crochet trims for tablecloths - I recognise some of the patterns from various items of old linen and lace which I have listed over the years. And some of them are wonderful survivals from the 1930s,  paper transfers for all kinds of embroideries, including instructions for Mountmellick embroidery.

The ads at the back of these booklets are fabulous. 'Every lady knows the pleasure derived from the making of dainty underwear, the embroidery of which is enhanced by using Briggs Trousseau Pure Silk, for fine embroidery on underclothing,' says one. How times have changed! There are ads for Old Bleach linens from Ireland, 'bleached by the sun' and for wool from Templeton's Mill in Ayr, sadly long gone.

I love ephemera such as these - they are the kind of things that transport you straight back to the past. You can read as many history books as you like, but nothing beats the immediacy of these booklets that recreate so vividly a world we have lost.
 

House Martins

I've been looking out for them for a little while now, although it's still quite early, for Scotland. We said goodbye to the house martins that congregated in the village, way back in September. It's always a sad day when the last one leaves, because it's a sure sign that winter is on its way. And then we forgot about them, and fed the robins and sparrows and most of all the jackdaws that populate our chimneys right through the winter. I love these birds - they seem to be such characters, such individuals, as I watch them out of my bathroom window! Perhaps they appreciate the central heating. Smoke doesn't seem to bother them, and they have been replenishing their nests for some months now. But round about now, we generally remember the swallows and the house martins and hope they make it back again. Then a friend said that the swallows and martins were on Arran and I thought it wouldn't be too long before they were back here, too.

Sitting out in the garden tonight, drinking a glass of wine with relatives, we saw the first of them, three or four, those characteristic shapes silhouetted against the sky. More will come. And soon. There is the remains of last year's nest, on our gable end, and the fiery little sparrows have not yet commandeered it. So we're hoping that the house martins hurry up, that soon we'll see them swooping past, that they will build here again. They're lucky birds, you see. Or that's what we believe. It's a lucky house that shelters them. And we're always glad when they choose our house for their summer season!

Our Cottage Garden - Angelica and Rhubarb Fool.



Have spent the week struggling to divide my time between work and gardening. Not that gardening isn't work - just that it isn't paid work, or even potentially paid work. But our large cottage garden is just at that point in the year where it all suddenly starts to get away from us- and since were away last week, it's doubly urgent to try to get on top of the ground elder (hollow laugh) before it gets on top of everything else.
It's the time of year when the angelica starts to grow with a vengeance. It's also the time of year when I promise myself that I will candy some stems before they get too 'woody' - but so far, I haven't done it. Maybe this will be the year. I'm a bit haphazard in my country pursuits. I love making things, but the need to earn a living does rather get in the way of my attempts to float about the garden with sunhat and trug, looking elegant and gathering my own produce in the manner of those illustrated magazine articles or television programmes that make country life seem so enticing.
You can see the fresh green leaves in among the tulips and hyacinths, and a fair mixture of weeds, in the picture. A friend from England gave me an angelica plant a few years ago, and now it self seeds at the bottom of the garden. I let it grow where it wants, just pulling up the odd plant when it gets too prolific. It smells wonderful, good enough to eat, and forms a very beautiful plant - tall and stately with enormous seed heads which I cut and use in flower displays. Last summer, when we had our village 'open gardens' event, it was the big talking point among the steady stream of visitors - hardly anyone knew what it was, which makes me think it might not be very common up here in Scotland. It certainly likes our garden though.
The big clump of rhubarb alongside the angelica is also growing at a rate of knots. I made a luscious rhubarb fool yesterday, cooking the rhubarb in the slow cooker with brown sugar and some chunks of crystallised ginger, draining off most of the juice and making it into extra syrup, with a bit more sugar, (Nigella suggests adding this to champagne. I may give it a go with Prosecco since we don't quite run to champagne yet) and then folding the fruit and ginger through a mixture of whipped cream and Greek yoghurt. You have to chill it, preferably overnight. Not exactly low calorie, but delicious!
Whenever my late mum served up something from the garden, even if it was only one vegetable in a whole meal, my dear late dad, who loved his garden, loved to grow fruit and vegetables of all kinds, would heave a sigh of satisfaction and say 'Everything home grown then?'
This lunch time, my husband ate a mouthful of rhubarb fool.
'Mmm,' he said. 'Everything home grown then?'

An Old North Country - English - Home (just for a change!)

Just back from a week in England, reminding myself of how many of my roots are still firmly embedded in the North Country. We had a couple of nights in very comfortable self catering accommodation in a small and highly picturesque Cumbrian village called Orton, but it was when we were walking through the village that we saw the above fascinating house and barn. The first time we saw it was at twilight on a misty, murky night, and it looked exceedingly ghostly. The next morning, however, the sun came out, and I could take some pictures. The date above the door reads 1604, but the house looks Elizabethan and I suspect that the date records some kind of rebuilding or alteration. This is Orton Old Hall, (as opposed to the Jacobean Orton Hall, which was where we were staying) better known as Petty Hall, after one of the families which fell heir to it, some time in the 1600s. The building is stunningly beautiful - even the glass in the windows looks as if it might date from 1604 or earlier!

Later that day, we discovered this waterfall, about mid way between Appleby and Orton. Driving across open moorland, between the two places, we paused to breathe in fresh air. The sky above the moorland was loud with skylarks - a bird I don't hear too often these days, even in the part of rural Scotland where we live. It reminded me of all those days with my mum and dad, when I was a little girl, spent walking and picnicking on the Yorkshire moors, not a million miles from this place. If I could ever bring myself to leave Scotland, I think it would only be to go back to Yorkshire or somewhere nearby. Somehow, the North Country always feels like home.

A Wonderful Victorian Beaded Crinoline Shawl

I'm about to list this wonderful Victorian 'crinoline' shawl in my eBay shop, The Scottish Home, but it's been a joy to have it in my possession for a little while - and yet again a learning experience for somebody with an interest in textiles. It's a huge shawl, but the pattern is designed to be folded in half, and then made into a triangle, so that it looks lovely when worn and the two areas of dense embroidery and beading show up to best advantage. (For some reason, the fringe doesn't quite fit in with this, or perhaps I'm folding it wrongly!)
The fabric is fine, soft wool, dense black, although it looks a little grey in these pictures. The embroidery is exquisite, and looks like the fine Chinese embroidery you get on those wonderful Cantonese shawls, which may well be the case - perhaps made for the export market. And among the embroidery is lots of beautiful black beading, jet beads? That's what they look like, but I can't be sure.
I assumed at first that this was a 'mourning' shawl, since the Victorians wore their mourning for a very long time after bereavement - but in fact, black itself was fashionable in Victorian times, so this may simply have been viewed as the very classy and expensive shawl it undoubtedly is. The fashion for black in part originated with Queen Victoria who spent most of her long life in mourning for poor Albert, but the knock on effect of this was that ladies wanted to imitate her!
This is a beautiful textile though and -  apart from a small scattering of moth holes in one little area - it is in almost perfect condition. You could wear it on any fashionable evening occasion and guarantee that nobody else will have one like it!

Vintage Textiles for Spring and Summer

Yesterday, here in South West Scotland, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and my washing line was festooned with nice, white, newly laundered damask tablecloths and napkins. Today there are great soft lumps of snow falling in a steady stream, it's cold, wet, dark and spring seems a long way off. Typical of Scotland, at this time of year.

However, yesterday gave me a bit of a push - after a February hiatus, while I worked away steadily at a final draft of a novel called The Amber Heart, which is finally with my agent, and which you can read a bit about here - and I reactivated my eBay Shop, the Scottish Home, and revamped it for spring. My plan is to add linens, in particular, pretty steadily now - I've been stockpiling them a bit and have some lovely tablecloths and napkins waiting to be listed.

All of which has made me think about spring, summer and picnics. Our lovely friends, John and Brenda Kevan, who are - among many other talents - wedding photographers, always have wonderfully civilized picnics. Brenda is a designer with flair, and she loves to 'set the scene' with textiles and brightly coloured picnic ware. In summer, weather permitting, she serves meals in a gorgeous 'outdoor room', a little courtyard at the back of her period house, and again, she manages to mix old textiles and antique and vintage dining ware with modern pieces and with candles and candle lamps, to create a truly enchanting atmosphere.

I often think that some of my antique and vintage textiles are very suitable for outdoor living - brightly embroidered linen tablecloths from the 1950s, vivid checks on linen and cotton from the 1960s, or even older linen supper tablecloths - all of them are reasonably priced, easily laundered, very forgiving, and excellent for picnics or al fresco lunches. Somehow, dressing the picnic table or the outdoor dining room  in this way seems to make the food taste even better.