Here’s a quick note about tomorrow’s Pick N Mix Makers’ Market being held tomorrow in Holt, Norfolk. It’s organised by Teena of Kitschen Pink and Lisa of Bobobun and I will be having a stall. I believe it’s been mentioned in Selvedge magazine! There will be a vintage-style cafe with cake (the cake is new). There are vintage finds, a huge range of hand-sewn treasures and my silverwork, including the teeny tiny bird pictured above.

Tweet.

Hope to see you there. Right, back to the pliers…

I’m a messy gardener. I like a jumble of flowers in a border and when I spy a seedling I don’t recognise I give it a chance to grow. Usually they’re not skunk cabbages, which is nice.

My first ever cow parsley plant popped up this year. I didn’t sow it, it just appeared. I was really really happy about this. It’s finished flowering so I’m showing you a self-seeded Cerinthe purpurescens instead.

This red valerian sowed itself in a crack at the back door. Increasingly we need to fight our way past it but still, it’s magic.

The jumbly, jungly flower beds scare me sometimes and remind me of my hair. Some mornings I wake up and both can be completely out of hand: huge, tangled and alarming. One needs product, the other some loppers. I also have ground elder - eeech. This is the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the weed world and is the downside of the let-live attitude.

Still, it has its definite upsides, the main one being posies. All the flowers in this jar are self-seeded. They grew by themselves and didn’t cost a penny. I like a bargain, me.

This posy is for Lynn - it’s her birthday today.

Enamelled meadow pendant

I’ve been trying to enamel for nearly two years, on the cooker hob. Sometimes it worked. Mostly it didn’t.

I’ve just learned to do it properly.

Viola

All of a sudden there is colour stuck to my silver. It has that liquid quality I’ve never achieved before.  It reminds me of when Dorothy opened the door after the tornado, although it’s rather less bright and there are fewer squashed witches.

Me, grinding things

Viburnum berries

Lynne taught me how. It’s all about grinding and rinsing and tiny brushes and very high temperatures. She granted me my wish of making little flowers and leaves from melty glass. She is the good fairy of the enamels..

…with a kiln instead of a wand.

Thankyou Lynne. I’m overjoyed.

I have received things through the post. Beautiful things made by fellow bloggers:

The thing pictured above is a hairband from heaven. Truly. Marie Antoinette might have worn this. It is encrusted with vintage porcelain (porcelain!) flowers, exquisite beadwork and heaven knows what other prettiness. I have plans to wear it in the garden whilst pretending to be Elizabeth Bennet. It is the only bit of me that will fulfill this dream mind you - I don’t have a lot of Empire-line sprigged muslin kicking about.  Someone, who is four, is in such rapture about it that she can barely contain herself, although I worry that it is a little too precious for small people.  It was nearly ruined though. Mr postie, in his wisdom, poked the jiffy bag behind our recycling bin down the side passage. Mr P found it just before a thunderstorm. Imagine! Viv, you are a woman of quite mind-boggling skill and kindness and I hope you’re enjoying your necklace. Thankyou.

I was extremely excited to win Cathy’s giveaway. Cathy’s blog, One Pink Goose,  is a weekly introduction to new artists and sculptors, most of whose work I will not be able to get out and see until the little ones have grown a bit. It’s a visual feast and an education, but the best part is her own work - colourful and stunning digital art. Her blog is like a gallery. She sent me a pointilism print of a sheep. I adore it - look at that face, created by Cathy from miniscule dots of pencil.

Accompanying the sheep were several of her beautiful cards with such wistful, dreamy ladies on them that it makes me want to don a pretty dress and sit under a tree. This is such amazing work Cathy - thankyou so much.

Let me talk to you about ticking. It’s tough, it’s stripy and it’s my favourite and my best. It is deckchairs, windbreaks and lovely settees in magazines. It is also fish. I could not resist Kirsty’s lavender-filled ticking ones. They are are stroke of seasidey genius. Kirsty also sent me Mr Pipefish, a very very precious find from her local beach. It will be installed with great pride in the beach hut in time for my Open Studios. You can be sure that he’ll look right at home next to the silver pebble necklaces I plan to make. One day I will treat myself to one of Kirsty’s driftwood boats made from her beachcombing treasures. Kirsty you are a woman after my own heart.

My real live phonecall, using an actual phone and my voice, with Lynn, from Speechless Mostly, who lives over the water in America, was also a beautiful thing. Lynn, you made a cold Sunday evening brilliant. This picture is for you - it’s eldest pebble’s latest all-singing all-dancing stickle brick vehicle with trailer and passengers. The trailer is attached using one of Val’s hand-made crochet hairbands. Do not be alarmed by the ghastly bug-eyed butterfly. It is a narabug from Waybuloo and does yoga.

Blogland is quite fabulous. It gives my grumpy old cynicism a stern telling off.

If we ever get round to stripping and repainting the porch (see the cracked paint) we will have to hack at the clematis. What to do?

I have now attempted to crochet a flower four times over the last two years. I have not succeeded. However, if some tiny bald-chinned gnomes came to the house they would be sorted for beautifully-coloured party beards. This thought prompted me to Google ‘yarn beards’. There is a whole world out there for you to enjoy.

Monda pointed out that the shorts from my Toast bikini look like undies that Jim Royle might wear. I realise (a) she is right and (b) I was the victim of a Jedi mind trick: ‘These ARE the clothes you’re looking for.’

Whilst reading stories to the little ones I realised that in the year I was born Roger Hargreaves appears to have predicted our current political situation:

Mr Tidy and Mr Neat, friends of Mr Messy

P.S. Not two but three bloggers’ work have arrived in recent days to our delight. More on this story later.

I like Toast catalogues. The images are beautifully shot, the destinations aspirational, the clothes covetable. The only slight downside are the Toast ladies, who frankly look as though they’re very, very bored at the thought of being on a whitewashed Moroccan terrace in some slubby khadi trousers with the prospect of souks and tagines later.

The prices are high. I have rarely bought anything and if I did it was right at the end of the sale. Since the challenge of the utmost kind though, new clothes are out of bounds, but a year or two ago the Spring catalogue plopped through the letterbox. There were the Toast ladies, this time posing round a pool and strolling up sandy paths in towelling fifties-style bikinis. I think there were sunbeams, and soda siphons, and raffia baskets. I bought a bikini in size 14 on sale .

It arrived. The colour was ‘donkey’ or perhaps ‘putty’. I could pretend to be a Toast lady, at least for a few minutes at home, but I was determined to be cheerful at the thought of farmers’ markets and some nice fish and chips.

I tried it on in the bathroom. The shorts fitted. I tried on the top. It was two tiny triangles of fabric. This piece of clothing was not built for purpose. It was made for a woman with a normal lower but a miniscule upper half. It was clear I could not go to the swimming baths dressed like this.

Wooden fried egg, Plan Toys

I squirrelled it away in a cupboard and hoped that nature might smile upon me, and that as time went on eventually I might fit into my bikini. It never happened. I admitted defeat and went to Debenhams.  £12 bought me adequate support and fifties polka dots. It also saved the public from a view of my late thirties midriff. I believe they also sell soda siphons.

LIke a fair few of us I was fascinated with tiny things as a child. I wanted the accessories for dolls’ houses more than I wanted the houses or the dolls. Teeny candlesticks and chairs had me sighing. The cutlery was the most exciting though - the miniature spoons especially. When eldest P has a session with her Sylvanian families I secretly covet the little scissors and plastic pastel ice lollies.

Tiny antique flower basket embroidery - each flower is around 1cm across

My parents were huge fans of junk shops when I was little. Lots of rummaging went on. I soon discovered that I could enjoy them myself - there was usually a ‘bits basket’ with discarded  items that were either given away for free or sold for a few pocket money pennies. I have a box of childhood treasures from bits baskets round the country. The tiny flower basket embroidery was free from a Pembrokeshire antique shop in about 1982. I’m not sure how old it is but the stitching is minute.

The little glass dice (5mm across) and measuring cylinder were found on the same holiday and the tiny silver compass was given to me by my Granny’s best friend, Aunty Mabel. She carried it around in her purse along with other tantalising treasures - buttons, beads and charms.

A neighbour gave me this wonderful silver sewing machine charm to make a necklace with. It is 2cm long and has sentimental value for her. The wheel moves around and the needle shuttles up and down. It’s the stuff of little girl dreams really. I wanted to make a little silver charm to pair with it on the necklace.

This is what I came up with - a little silver cotton reel around 7mm high. It’s not quite perfect but it looks OK once I’ve wound the cotton onto it. The forget-me-nots give an idea of scale. I’ve been making charms to launch the design-your-own jewellery page on my website or perhaps in a silverpebble etsy shop. I might offer tiny cotton reel charms - what do you think?

EDIT: I have been incredibly lucky to receive two bloggers’ stunning work this week. I’ll blog them soon. Also hop over to Kirsty’s blog, Sixty One A - she’s giving away a wonderful birdcage.

Recently Mr P and I left the tots at Nanna P’s for a night and had a tiny minibreak in Whitby - our first night away from them in four and a half years. We had fish and chips and went to Whitby museum. Here’s what your intrepid reporters found out for you:

A couple of hundred years ago the men of Whitby wore footwear not dissimilar to those on the current pages of Grazia. To be fair I think this was true of men of fashion throughout the country.

Jet is fossilised monkey puzzle trees. I didn’t know this.

Who needs John Kettley when the people of Whitby had the ‘Tempest Prognosticator’. A dozen leeches in jars would crawl upwards and cause bells to ring when electrical storms approached. Apparently it was extremely accurate, unlike poor old Michael Fish.

A while back it wasn’t so safe to take a dip.

Thankyou to Janet who gave us a lovely welcome and the best cooked breakfast I’ve had in years. Thanks also to Matilda the piranha who entertained us during said breakfast (in her tank), and big thanks to Nanna Pebble.

EDIT: This post reminded me of this song, which is an indulgent walk down memory lane for me: