The Last Apple Tree

Well, of course it’s not the actual Last Apple Tree, thank goodness, although there’s a fable lurking in that title somewhere. No, yesterday I went out walking with Father and Eldest daughter, late afternoon, and out of the grey, in the old orchard, there shone out one tree, bare of leaf, but with apples hanging on – they looked like baubles on a frosty bit of twig, as if decorated for Christmas, half unreal, half magical. I hadn’t got my camera with me, but vowed to head off out this morning early, while the frost was still around to photograph this tree…

…and so I did. Which was all a bit of a palaver, because I had to rush out as the kids were eating breakfast, with the frost still thick on the ground (cats waterbowl frozen over). My little car wouldn’t start first time (gasp). And a friendly neighbour offered me some warm water to help de-ice the thing. And now I know why people don’t recommend using warm water to defrost cold cars. Because the ice melts, then forms again, but this time as a thick shiny sheet. Which you have to pick off with your fingernails. It was like driving through a magic landscape, though, and when I got to the woods they looked beautiful. And when I excitedly reached the old orchard – well, as is the way of these things, the treasure had diminished somewhat. The light was different? The day was different? I don’t know, but although I do quite like some of the images I came home with, I was slightly disappointed by the tree ones. There is always photoshop to reckon with, though. If time, space allows, I’ll see if I can catch it again. I tried slightly today, but I’m never sure whether these things work or not. See below and make up your own mind.

 

 

Was it worth my fingers hurting from the cold? I think so. There’s always other treasure, if not the ones you initially expect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the feeling of coming home to an enamel coffeepot on the stove, with proper coffee, in a warm kitchen. That was gorgeous.

Cordially yours

The evenings are longer, and tomorrow I will be picking elderflowers, for cordial which I make every year. It’s gorgeous – lemony and refreshing, with a delicate flavour. I make my first batch next week, and for those who are interested, the recipe can be found on the recipe pages . It’s ever so easy, and freezes well – my Mum, who has a huge freezer, freezes it in ice cube trays, and thus keeps her household going in refreshing drinks through summer. The other nice drink is lemon balm tea – just pick the leaves from the plant, rinse, and infuse them. It’s refreshing in warm weather – uplifting rather than zingy. I’d add a slice of real lemon to the infusion, too.

I have busy tidying up the end of one job, and starting the other with proper energies. Ludlow Assembly Rooms, gorgeous though it is, has had to be relinquished. That isn’t because I don’t love art curating, but simply the paid hours in Ludlow are far too small to make the job worthwhile. And the school where I’m working truly does look after its children, and so it’s rewarding working there, properly rewarding, in the sense that you feel what you do makes a small difference.

Anyway my last weekend at Ludlow was spent organising the private view of Patrick Semple, and his work looks gorgeous. I loved it, anyway – his collaged pictures. It’s a combination of found objects and interesting things arranged so as to make one stop and take a philosophical breath, wondering on purpose and tradition. I truly could spend hours looking at them, on a visual and thoughtful basis. The man himself is nice, too.

What else? Well, despite the love of walking, I have learned to drive. And bought a car. This is not without regret, since ecologically it sucks, but three miles a day is too much for me to walk in all weathers easily, and the three miles is added to a train journey. I like this Hereford job, and it fits round my children (and my own work), so car seemed inevitable.

Car is burgundy and small. I drive it badly, and probably shall continue to drive badly around the good roads of Herefordshire, pissing off its road-worthy citizens, for some time to come. I am doing my best, and it is not a fast automobile. Sixty miles per hour is as fast as I can go, and that is with a favourable wind. My children, however, are very proud of me, and remained so even when I reversed into eldest daughters best-friends-mothers-gatepost yesterday night (I did not hit her dog, or her new car, however).

The pictures are of my back garden, with its row of painted jampots holding tealights (I love that it is warm enough to stay out in the dark, in the evenings, wrapped in a blanket, with a small fire, and the lights twinkling and glimmering), and of the view from Offas Dyke footpath, just before Kington. There are advantages to driving, after all. It’s my favourite stretch of the path, with gorse, hills, trees, sheep, and quiet. I saw a rabbit hole, used and furred up where they bolt down it each night. Lots of lambs, and the hills swooping away to valleys without roads in them.

Sometimes, feelings creep up on one. Buried in busy-ness, I find myself tired and sometimes sad underneath. My own work has ground to a halt, slightly (which is a double shame because LAR has made me some useful contacts). But the other good thing about the teaching post is that I will not have to worry about drawing work to sell for prints all the time. I can make things with more leisure, more thought, more lazily, with time to edit and rework. And so I have ordered five metres of fine silk, and fished out my frame and dyes, and will make some banners, for despite the tiredness and the sadness I feel the old familiar feeling creeping up from my toes, a need to make, make, make. And so I shall, but bigger and less saleable, and with more of the old sense about it, of making to communicate, in some way, and making, if I can, something which could (like in the fairytale) be shaken out of a golden pear, all coloured silken yards of it, a banner and a story combined.

Bristol with cantinas and falafel

Well, it’s been a busy half-term, what with getting a new job (exhibitions curator at the Ludlow Assembly Rooms) and having the children around, with two exhibitions to put up and take down within a week of starting the job.

But I did eventually remember to collect my children from Mother, and we’ve managed to squeeze in a brilliant couple of days in Bristol, just at the centre of things, before I go back to researching new artists and (more prosaically) trying to find a local supplier for foam board so I can mount information properly.

I’ll write about Bristol, and then take a look at the artists in the assembly rooms, and then, right at the very end, there’s a surprise find of a book review site which is really rather shiny bright and lovely.

Bristol was brilliant. We stayed in the Youth Hostel (see pictures above), as we do. Why? Because it’s cheap as anything (fifty pounds for a family room with en-suite, shower and breakfast included), right in the heart of the nice harbourside area, about a two minute walk from @bristol and pretty much next door to the Arnolfini and the Architecture centre. And of course there’s The Trumpet Bridge, which isn’t called the Trumpet Bridge, I’m sure, but the Millennium Bridge or something. But we call it the Trumpet Bridge just the same.

I do love Youth Hostels, but they do vary. Bristol seems well-staffed (I expect people love volunteering for it because it’s all urban gorgeousness), and although still slightly tatty, tatty in the sense of ‘perhaps you should have got the polyfilla out before you painted that’ rather than ‘oops, plaster’s coming off the wall’. I thought, at one point, how my life does seem to revolve around places that are a bit like that. Co-operative-like, and full of goodwill and volunteers, but still there’s something always peeling off somewhere, and clean is one thing but smartly polished another. And then I thought how much I prefer that kind of thing to the travel lodge culture, and the posh hotels, which have resentful unhappy staff who might, or might not, spit in your tea. So I’m probably quite lucky, really. And that’s a thought I had before I even GOT to the canteen at Spike Island, which is an entirely gorgeous story of cous-cous salads, leafy greens, falafel and roasted vegetables. More of that later, too.

One nice and not-often-reported on thing about Youth Hostels, is that the people in them Read. In the Bristol one there is the advantage of huge comfy sofas and books, but equally at breakfast everyone seemed to be reading. Mainly papers (of the Guardian and Times variety), some guidebooks, some more heavyweight looking stuff, and a biography of Richard Hammond, but still all reading. S’good. Another nice thing about the Bristol one is that the Breakfast (included) is nice. Lot of muesli-type things, a big bowl of natural yoghurt, cold meats, grapefruit, croissantish stuff, or the bacon/sausage/tomato thing. Coffee. Hot Chocolate. Orange juice. All relaxing and filling, and it’s improved since the last time, too.

But anyway, on the first day, we headed up to Clifton, to Look at the Bridge, and take in the view through the curious, Victorian and round Camera Obscura. I like Camera Obscura, or at least the three I’ve been to, and this one reminded me greatly of the one at Aberystwyth. Same kind of slightly Victorian, peeling round the edges, Scientifically Spectacular interest. And a hand-painted sign for the Attraction that surely must have been penned and painted in 1931. Underneath (yes, that’s underneath) the Camera Obscura, was the Giants Cave, which nicely proved that yes, there are still some parts of England that the Health and Safety Stazi have not yet reached.

With a cheery wave (handpainted notice recommended that under fours shouldn’t venture down there) the manatthedesk (biscuit tin of money, none of this fancy ‘till’ nonsense) told us to watch our heads as we issued down. And we did. Down, down into a never-ending tunnel of spiral stone steps, culminating in a sheer metal staircase, culminating in a small, uneventful… err, cave. With a hint of light at the right hand side. So, following the light, we issued out…pretty much straight into the gorge. Yes there were railings, Yes there was the kind of metal see-through planking so beloved of National Trust properties. But my Mother, quite seriously, would have wet herself. Well, she would have wet herself if she had been foolish enough to vanish orff willingly down numerous steps into the darkness of the rock. Which she wouldn’t have done. So, I suppose, there you go.

Right, so Bristol was fantabulously fantabulous. I can heartily recommend the SS Great Britain (I thought it was going to be very dull. How wrong I was), and the National Galleries touring ‘Love’ exhibition (much more interesting than it sounds, and at the Museum of Bristol, which also has a big Egypt exhibition, and the most amazing wooden/polished brass/pull chain Victorian Ladies Toilets – working ones, too). I can also recommend the Arnolfini, of course and…a find for me…Spike Island, which was a factory of some sort, and which, by some kind of magical transformation, is the home of many fine artists (it grew out of a Bristol Co-operative that I had heard of, from when I was in touch with such things), and, in the canteen, the most gorgeously cheap-but-nice food that you sometimes are lucky enough to find in towns. Salad, of the help-yourself variety, but nice salad, with nice bowls, not the gloop and ick stuff you get in Various Chains. Falafel. Hummous. Yoghurt. Joy. Oh, and a lovely lentil quiche with sweet pepper sauce, too, and all for about four pounds each. Wow. And if you’re thinking ‘you heathen, not to mention the shows’, well, they were on change-over, and I’m going back to see them, so I am faintly vindicated. And I want to get tickets for some of the Festival of Ideas things at the Arnolfini, if I can.

Oh, but joy, and lots of interesting people-watching to do, mainly of people lugging canvases around, but some women with babies, one holding a large pink parcel tied with Blue String. Also some Older (I think they were mature students) Women with Lots of Books, and a very quiet, eminently gorgeous artist at the next table, who I would have made moony eyes over, only I was intent on feeding myself, and trying to convince R that chilli cous-cous really is a good idea (she preferred the chips, because she is five, and she just did). Anyway, with New Job I will get to go to Views there, since I boldly announced myself at the desk, and so hopefully will get to know the place better, which’ll be something to look forward to.

We did other stuff too, but travelogues get boring when written by amateurs, and besides, I’ve a lot to get through, this post. In fact, I might split it, and do a separate account of Ludlow Artists, and The Bookbag. In fact, I will.

Sticks, stones, rainbows over the beach

Well. So where have I been. All over the place, pulled through a hedge backwards (I have the drawings to prove it) and then to the sea, with pictures to prove that, too. It would be nice to say that I’ve been following a caravan of camels through the silk routes, bartering in bazaars, or flying a magic carpet over Norweigan granite, but Norfolk will have to do. Hey, it’s got windmills. What more do you want? A kiss-me-quick hat and economic renovation?

First to the hedges. This is really two blog posts rolled together expertly for your blithe delectations. I went for a walk on a very unsalubrious morning a couple of weeks ago, and the hedges had just been chopped by big machinery – their natural patterns throttled and twisted from the very force of it, but still apparent beneath the massacre. Half of it was black fairy-tale, half of it the promise of Spring beneath structured branch. I took a series of photographs, now pinned to my workspace board, and I’m drawing hard, hoping to finish off with a series of proper pictures based on this idea. Two I have finished:

and two of the photograps from which the series will be based.

Then, whilst running with that at the back of my head, I took myself off from the Herefordshire countryside to the sea. I love the sea, but it’s a treat – a place I don’t know like the back of my hand – a place which when I dream about feels like flying, rather than the comfort of the usual, but it has an odd comfort to it, all of it’s own – that knowledge that we are very small, and forces beyond us move us along in ways that aren’t really controllable, though we try. But we’re pushed from behind in the crook of our back, regardless.

So. All those ‘big’ things, and yet they’re echoed in the small visual things, too. I think the carefully engineered windmills are beautiful, fragile things – the patterns in the sea are so big, so vast that they make me want to weep, and the pebbles, buried in the sand, or patterned by spray are small paradigms of this vast and gorgeous loveliness. And then some lichen, reminding me of Herefordshire, and found by a particularly stolid and porridgey bit of cement step.

Hedgerow, muted. With a choice of Fancy Cakes.

You’ll be pleased to know (I’m thrilled) that my seasonally mimsy self-reflection has ground to a merciful halt, and I’m back to my usual state of calm-amid-chaos. The resolutions have been made, the cake is back in the tin, and at least this year I have managed not to dye my hair bright orange in an urge to appear more interesting , but have left it it’s natural colour, which will just have to be interesting enough All By Itself.

I’ve been reading about Whistler, and his deliberate choice of muted palettes. I’ve never-ever been one for Muted Palettes. I like bright rich blues, and reds, and gorgeous silky greens. I like Kandinsky and Chagall and Frida Kahlo, with their peacock colours. But I also like Whistler, and his Nocturnes, Harmonies and Symphonies. With their muted, faded palettes, but gorgeous still.

Today was a muted day. There was not heavy frost, nor bright sunshine, but I went out and took the camera anyway (partly to see the overflowing river-water on the fields, partly to grab some special time with my eldest daughter). And I think I came back with some treasure. The photographs aren’t as immediately pretty as the frosty ones, but they’re interesting, and I’m fascinated by the colours in the seed-head one. So there we go. A muted hedgerow, but still interesting.

I spent much of yesterday in Ludlow, in the rain. We went first to DeGrey’s Tearoom, the children and I, and then to the castle. The tearoom is what you would think a DeGrey’s tearoom should be like. It has waitresses with little aprons (it must employ half the teenage girls in Ludlow on a Holiday basis), and real china. The tea is leaf tea, and comes with a little pot of water. And the cakes (you get a choice of ‘Cream Tea’ or ‘Afternoon Tea’) come on a little three-tiered stand, with aplomb. The building is Tudor, and the whole experience like going back to the 1930’s. The sandwiches (I chose salmon and cucumber) come beautifully arranged, as if they had been dressed by an old-fashioned couturier. It is a rather gold-plated experience, but one we cope with it by the children sharing the sandwiches and scones, and my not having a choice of fancy cake (yes, they are called ‘Fancy Cakes’). And it’s worth it, just for the sheer fun of the small ceremonial of it all.

Ludlow castle, if you ever get the chance, is well worth a look around. It’s not too large to be scarily imposing, and there’s plenty of room for children to run around. There are many tall winding staircases to spooky towers, and an ice-house under the moat which doubles as a skeleton-rattling dungeon. The views are suitably viewish, although the experience does lack the terrifying thrill I’ve experienced in some Cadw properties, which seem to specialise in surprising twists like unmarked 200ft drops to the waiting sea. I can only deduce that the Welsh do not believe in Fencing Children In. Or they are conducting some experiment to do with natural selection.

Drawing in the gap

I never know quite what to make of the gap between Christmas and New Year, and this year is no exception. Yesterday I was tired and fretful, and glad to be done with the hurly-burly hustle of a family Christmas. Today I’m bored and faintly restless – on the edge of something, but I’m not sure what. So I’m drawing, while the children play with their toys. I would like to be grand, and to make a thing each day, until the holidays are over. However the drawing today took a bit of a while, and I want to do more on it, or collage it, or embroider it, or something . We shall see. I don’t know yet whether I think that the sketch can come to anything any good or not.

Things you should know about my Christmas:

On Christmas Eve, Rosie decided to attack her hair with the paper scissors, just as my Mother was coming in for Mulled Wine and Polite Conversation. It was so hacked that I sat her (Rosie, not Mother) on the table and gave her an impromptu pudding basin ‘trim’. She looks a little strange, but given the ‘before’, it’s a distinct improvement.

Eleanor then (to be nice), wanted her hair cut short, too. So she has a bob, which suits her. Father, in his wisdom, collared me just as I was sweeping up the copious hairiness, and took the hair away in a bag, because, according to him (and he should know), it’s ideal for simulating Thatched Roofs on his guage of Model Railway. A slightly surreal moment, but it passed, thankfully.

On Christmas Day, I was woken at precisely Half-past Three, and didn’t get back to sleep. There is a picture of me, all dressed up, at my parent’s house (I did the cooking, but their house is bigger), but no-one will ever, ever, see it.

Eleanor’s favourite present is a whoopee cushion with a picture of a football on it.

Rosie’s favourite present is paper and new shiny felt-tip pens.

My favourite present is a Book Token. I am, officially, a dull girl. But a dull girl who loves bookshops, which has to be better than a dull girl who loves, say, Asda Meat Pies, or Bargain Hunting in Matalan. I may take the children into Hereford tomorrow, and we shall spend our tokens with happy abandon. I am considering taking the children to a Youth Hostel somewhere, because that really would be fun, and good for us all to get away for a night or two.

My Parent’s house is set in really beautiful countryside – a remote valley. It’s lovely – so quiet and beautiful. I managed to sneak out for a walk, early on Boxing Day morning. The views were splendid over the valley, and the river full and beautiful. I walked from Kinsham to Wapley Hill Fort, and then had to rush back for drinks and Aunties.

The pictures which are not of the drawing are of my Mince Pies, which I enjoyed making, and we are enjoying eating, and our cake, which the children decorated. I make my own mincemeat – it’s easy as easy and nicer than the boughten variety by far. The cake is a Dundee Cake, rather than a Traditional Christmas Cake, because I find the Dundee kind get eaten, rather than sitting around in the tin until November next year.

It is a bit early to wonder what 2008 will bring, but I am thinking about resolutions, and wondering anyway.

Oh, the piney wilderness of it all.

This will (unless something really noteworthy, like an earthquake, or thunderbolts happens) almost certainly be the Last Blog Entry Before Christmas. I may, if not horizontal on the carpet at my long-suffering Mother’s House, post one between Christmas and New Year. I may, with luck, decide that my New Year’s Resolution is to join a peculiar branch of a peculiar tree-worshipping sect, and eschew the computer for leafy branches and delightful shadow patterns. But it’s unlikely.

I have few nice new pictures to show people, which is rather mizz. It’s because I’ve been busy being Mama, and having a Rather Nasty Cold, which sentence will be causing stressed Mamas all over the world to nod knowingly in time with me, whilst wading through seas of paper and sellotape, and blowing their noses in synchopated rhythms. We should start a band. Really we should.

However, I can show you the more landscape oriented pictures of the frosty morning walk (and I shall – it is unashamed padding). And some pictures of the glassy, classy baubles on my Christmas Tree, some of which are finds foraged from junk shops and are relicts of chandeliers, and under which people have probably danced, and cried, and looked at for many years. Very Jane Austen, the chandeliers, and the landscape, I think, and that feeling of watching people dancing. Although, to be fair, they did not have telephone wires in Jane’s day. Or cameras, apart from the obscura kind.

Terracotta, Orange, Cassia and Cedarwood

This week has been a frantic rush, with everything, seemingly, close to near-disaster. Things have broken down, animals have cut themselves on glass, children are tired and race for the crayons and the paper when they get home to unwind from all that Christmas Fun, which is so headlong that we get no chance to stand and look at anything.

I miss looking at things when the pace is such that I cannot. I miss looking at my favourite four trees on the walk I take to the supermarket. I miss snail shells and lichen – because it’s hard to see them for all the giant Father Christmasses and twinkly lights. Who knows.

But I do like it when I finally get my children home for christmas, and all the cooking is done, and the Last Big Shop has been shopped. (The Last Big Shop is on Thursday. Last Christmas I forgot coal and milk, this Christmas I am hoping the forgetting has already been done, since I turned up dutifully at our bus stop to collect my children, having forgotten they were watching Snow White with the school and were not returning for another two hours).

I have been making gifts for teachers, and some to sell. They defy description, really. Dangly nick-nacks is perhaps the best I can do, and I make them every year. Last year I made them with Suffolk Puffs, lots of bay leaves, and raffia. The year before that I made them with coarse brown string, bay leaves and vintage buttons. This year I made them with terracotta stars, and dried orange slices, cinnamon sticks and dried chillis. And bay leaves, of course. I used wire to thread them, which made things easier, although I missed the twineyness of the string, and I added some brownish glass beads, because I found some in my box, and they gleamed nicely at me.

One of the advantages of making things year on year is that you can troubleshoot. I’ve always left these to dry in a box with orris root before, and used cloves and star anise somewhere in the mixture to give them a warm, herby scent. This year I used Cedarwood and Orange Essential oils on the terracotta stars, and this worked beautifully with the slight smell of Bay.

Now they are waiting to be packaged and wrapped and given, and I can take care of the first two by the fire, tonight. Tomorrow there are two dundee cakes and some fudge to be made.

Fairytale hedges and brrrrrry burrs.

Today was cold. I sleep under two duvets since the log fire doesn’t warm at night. Incidentally, one of these is a vintage duck-down beautiful cherry-red quilt, and is the warmest coverlet you could imagine (as well as making me feel rather like the princess in ‘Princess and the Pea’). But this morning was so cold that I carried it downstairs with me to make the three bears some porridge.

Then, rather than crafting boldly on with teacher’s gifts and pulled candy making, I sneakily went for a really long walk. Which was icy cold and as much a fairytale as you could imagine, with pools of frozen flood water in the valley, and pine trees appearing from the mist.

I took pictures, of course, although I’m not a very good photographer, and at some point I’m going to do some line drawings – very simple I think – just pen and ink – of some of the pictures, and some liney tangled embroideries with wafty white silk strands, and silver thread, of other. Blogging may be useful for reminding myself of these grand schemes, too.

It was very cold in the valley. However, luckily I am the proud possessor of a secondhand sheepskin coat that I bought from a charity shop last year. I am confidently assured by friends that I don’t look like a football manager when wearing it, but I certainly look like a lass that you wouldn’t want to tangle with at night, rather than a fairytale princess. But it is a very beautifully warm coat, and besides, a fairytale princess would never be able to wear woolly hats with any kind of aplomb. Not that I do, particularly, but they are better than tiaras for keeping ones head nice and warm.

I came home just before lunch and drank hot chocolate. Then I got on with my current make, which, alas is not a hat or funky mittens, but Gifts for Teachers, as they do deserve gifts, and I do not want to rush out and line Mr Cadbury’s pocket through buying six boxes of Milk Tray Chocolates. What we are doing instead is threading bayleaves, dried orange slices, vintage beads and buttons, bits of saved ribbon, and rosemary sprigs onto wire, and adding a terracotta star at the end (the star will be scented with variously cinnamonish essential oils). The children can help me do these, and they look pretty when finished. I’ll post pictures and the technique when I’ve made them all.

Now, thankfully, it is nice and warm by the fire. And the Christmas Tree looks pretty.

Introducing the Semolina Twins…

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No, not Vanilla and Oatmeal, of course - Cous-cous and Halva. But we’ll come to them later. They should be first, but the picture of the Halva isn’t as nice as the ones of the soap, and I couldn’t ask my five-year old to wait before eating it until Natural Light Came Out.

So, moving swiftly forward, as well as the lovely Semolina, I also flirted with her cereally sister, Oatmeal, making Vanilla and Oatmeal soap to give as Christmas Presents. Soap-making the easy way is fun. For this, I used opaque pure soap base, melted in a double boiler, and added cocoa butter, apricot kernel oil, vanilla extract and oatmeal. The yellow bits are calendula (that’s English Marigold to thee and me) petals – purely for show in this instance. If you’ve got dry skin, then this soap is really rich and moisturising. I use it as a face soap – it lathers beautifully, and it smells gorgeously wholesome but warm, too.

Now for that Semolina shout-out. Cous-cous is one of our teatime staples, but Halva I tried tonight for the first time – in search of a starchy pudding to warm up the children after a hard day at school and a long walk from the bus. It was a resounding success. A bit over-sweet and cloying for my taste – next time I’ll cut down on the sugar a bit – but the rosewater and cinnamon stick provided a really delicate combination of flavours which complimented each other perfectly. I may try popping a Vanilla pod in with the cinnamon stick next time.

The recipe, should you so desire to make Halva (it is very easy, and requires little more than sugar, milk, semolina and butter), I shall include on the recipes page (which is going to get awfully long, but I shall try to think of an alternative – I’m still building my website, but I could always stick the recipes up there in a ‘holding’ capacity, perhaps?)

The rest of my travails have been reasonably successful, too, which makes me sound like Ms McSmuggery Horrid, but usually at least 1 in every 10 of my travails ends in disaster, so be reassured. To the left is a sneaky peek of a work-in-progress – Christmas Stockings.

Unsurprisingly I make a lot of these at this time of year, but I’m particularly pleased with these two. I’ll post proper pictures of my latest batch when I’ve trimmed them with vintage buttons and shiny satin ribbons. I’m taking orders for next year, would you believe?

Also the Turkish Delight, although not perfect (have you ever tried whisking boiling sugar syrup into stiff cornflour-paste mixture?), is at least an approximation of delightful. And very pink. I shall blog about it when I’ve photographed it, and decided where to put all these recipes. Which people are reading. I know this because WordPress, in all its wisdom, has a Useful Stats Page. Aha.