Or, yet another chapter from ‘If My Daughter Dares Complain About Her Childhood, I Will Refer Her To This Blog’.
This has been a record-breakingly fabulous summer in Seattle and this weekend we headed to the beach to cook sausages and watch the sun go down.
Oh I’ve have been a very naughty blogger recently. I’ve been struggling a bit keeping all the balls in the air while the Minx has been on summer vacation and to top it all Seattle has been having a mini-heatwave this summer culminating in a record-breaking temperature of 103 degrees yesterday (that’s 39.5 degrees in real money) .
I realise this is nothing compared with what many people elsewhere in the US go through, but you have to remember that most places in Seattle, including our house, don’t have air conditioning. So we’ve been getting through it with a combination of cool baths, evening swims in the lakes, sleeping in our new tent on the roofdeck, moaning about the weather and generally finding it difficult to achieve anything.
There’s some potentially exciting stuff going on in the background though, of which more later, and I’m intending to relaunch the blog somewhat when the Minx goes into full-time education starting in September! I’m such a bad mother, but I really cannot wait…
In the meantime, here are some pictures I took of the lavender festival in Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula. Sequim (pronounced ‘Squim’) is in the rainshadow of the Olympic Mountains and has a uniquely dry micro-climate for these parts, which is apparently very similar to that of Provence and has become the centre of a burgeoning lavender production area.
Just a bit of a knitting catch up. As you’ve probably noticed I’m not afraid of a bit of colour, so I’ve become endlessly fascinated by Noro self-striping yarns from Japan. The colour changes are beautiful as they’re spun into the yarn, not just dyed into it and it’s mesmerising to watch the individual plies within the yarn change colour as the next colour comes through.
The colour combinations are also very unusual and generally contain a couple of ‘ugly’ colours, but somehow they seem to work incredibly well together – with the ugly colours somehow making the colour scheme seem more sophisticated.
Firstly, I finished my crochet project. I’m really pleased with it and it has had loads of compliments on the few occasions I’ve been able to wear it (Seattle has been ridiculously hot and sunny these last few weeks). I think I can now officially say I can crochet, which is good as I have a ludicrously large crochet project in mind.
I obviously hadn’t got the Noro completely out of my system when I finished the scarf because I immediately cast on a Gaia shawl in Noro Kureyon Sock. I’m enjoying knitting my lace wrap but it’s taking forever and is not very portable/social, so I was looking out for a quick and easy very casual wrap that I could wear up on the deck on chilly evenings. This wrap is a lot of fun as the colour changes in the yarn dictate the pattern.
This colourway (180) is incredibly garish, but I’m sort of loving it – I think it will work really well with jeans and a purple tee-shirt for a sort of ‘punk grandma’ look.
All details as before on my Ravelry page.
One of our very favourite suppliers is Scottish jeweller Abigail Percy, who makes, among other things, our very popular Sweet Horse Chestnut Earrings.
She has a wonderful blog detailing her inspirations and the creative process in her tiny studio and has recently been taking us through a project she calls ‘Hyacinth Watch’.
Together we’ve watched her hyacinths grow, seen her sketches, marvelled at the limited edition jewellery she created from the sketches of hyacinth blooms, and you can now buy her photo postcards, wrapped in a brown paper band printed from one of her hyacinth sketches.
Do yourselves a favour, wander over to her blog and see the process for yourself. Or, even better treat yourselves to a necklace or a set of postcards.
All photographs copyright Abigail Percy. Find her Flickr here.
I’m feeling very inspired today by these pictures by American photographer Laura Letinsky, who is currently exhibiting in London until May 30th.
Letinsky has put together tablescapes showing after-party disarray, with crumpled tablecloths, spilled wine, half-eaten cake, fading flowers and the dregs of drinks. Her spare compositions and pretty pastel colours give her images an inner stillness and wistful beauty but intrinsic to all is morning- afterish sense of melancholy, emptiness and decay – the party is over, the people have gone and only the washing up remains to be done.
Gorgeous.
I’m back!
Thank you so much for all your good wishes. I was quite taken aback by how badly affected I was by the shock of it all. The first couple of days I was all over the place and after that I was very, very tired – presumably as the adrenaline left my body. Fortunately the only major physical injury was to my tongue, which I managed to bite, and to my jaw, which I think was bruised by the seatbelt and which seemed slightly misaligned and made eating hugely difficult. I’ve had some bodywork though, and if you are in the Seattle area I can’t recommend my chiropractor Dr Ted, who straightened my back out, or the magic fingers of Anne the rolfer – who managed to straighten my jaw out – highly enough.
The car was a complete write-off though, so we’re currently in the market for a little practical runaround. My head tells me that I should be getting a little fuel-efficient and practical hatchback, though such things are as rare as hens’ teeth in the land of the Hummer, but my heart is telling me to get a VW Beetle. If anyone’s got any experiences, good or bad, to share then I’m all ears.
This might have to be a light week of posting, as I’ve got a lot to catch up on with mirrormirror, but here are some photos from the annual tulip festival in Skagit County that we went to the weekend before last. I’m also writing some posts over on Shelterrific if you can’t get enough of me.
The setting isn’t remotely as naturally stunning as Seattle’s and we spent much of the weekend dodging rain and hail showers, but I came back with serious case of Portland envy.
The architecture is older and therefore more charming to my European eyes, the streets are narrower and more pedestrian-friendly and it just has a cooler and funkier urban vibe, despite being much the smaller city. Just from the clothes people wear you can tell that Portland is a city of artsy types whereas Seattle is the ultimate city of geeks.
Thanks so much for the recommendations, here and on Facebook. Things we really enjoyed – apart from the hotel – include Habibi for great Lebanese food (we used to live near some great Lebanese restaurants in London and its something I really miss); Hot Lips Pizza in the Pearl District for seriously great tasting pizza; Cool Moon Icecream near Jamison Square (the perfect shelter in a hailstorm); Sushiland, also in the Pearl District, for good cheap conveyor belt sushi; Cargo for funky ethnic stuff; Knit Purl for YARN and of course Powell’s for books. The Japanese Garden in Washington Park is stunning and the rose garden must be amazing when the roses are actually out. Lots of amazing rhododendrons when we were there though. I also found the Holocaust Memorial, which we wandered into on the off-chance, very moving.
Mostly though we spent out time wandering the streets, admiring the street art, riding the trolley buses and hoping that Seattle’s urban planners will someday turn South Lake Union or Georgetown into the Pearl District with better views. Keep your fingers crossed.
This weekend the weather was utterly fabulous, so of course we spent it going to Ikea and doing loads of chores around the house and garden. We are in that in-between stage with lots of half-completed jobs and Ikea flatpack boxes lying round the house, but progress of sorts has been made.
We did take a short break on Sunday to go for lunch at the Volunteer Park Cafe and then for a stroll around Volunteer Park, stopping at the conservatory along the way.
I just happened to have my macro lens on my camera, so it was a good opportunity to get up close and personal on some of the flowers.
Yesterday we went for a walk in Seattle’s rather splendid arboretum (say what you like about this city, but it is incredibly good at trees).
It’s been a long snowy winter in Seattle terms, so the spring flowers are only just unfurling, but it was a lovely day for a walk with my newly cleaned 60mm lens, which I am very happy to have back in my arms.
I’ve been using some of these images as desktop backgrounds and if you’d like to do the same, please feel free to nab them (got to my Flickr, select the image, choose ‘All Sizes’, open the ‘Large’ size, right click on the image and select ‘set as desktop background’). Please remember that all images are my copyright.
Speaking of desktop backgrounds, check out the Kindred collaboration between Holly Becker and Heather ‘Ez’ Pudewa, who have collaborated with a number of artists to produce free artist desktop backgrounds (also downloadable notecards and gratitude notes).
FINALLY I get to pick some daffs out of the garden. It’s been a long, cold winter here in Seattle.
