Dreaming Spirals

On Saturday I had a fun day!  DS1 and 2 had a reunion for one of their summer camps in Uxbridge, so we all drove down for the day.  DH did a tour of some airfields and DS3 and I got the tube into London.  It was lovely being back there - I lived there from 1984 to 1989 and although I was glad to move at the time because I was fed up with big cities and the rush and bustle, I do enjoy going back for short visits.  We got the tube to Holborn and went to My Old Dutch, which does the hugest pancakes on enormous blue and white Dutch plates.  

We then went to Blade Rubber Stamps (via a model shop and a hifi shop to keep DS3 happy), which sells gorgeous arty stamps.  I bought one of those cube shaped rubber stamps which has four stamps in one:

I plan to make some Christmas cards with this one.  I’ve already been trying it out!

This is on some of the tissue paper I painted a few weeks ago.

I also bought:

Those screw things at the top are for making books - I think they’re called Chicago screws and they attach pages together.  I got those at the next shop, Falkiners, which is a bookbinding supply shop.  It has the most gorgeous handmade paper.  I bought a sheet of Japanese lace paper as well as a couple of other pieces.

The bottom two are smaller scraps which they were selling cheaply.

I love going to London for the way you keep coming across little squares and parks in the middle of built up areas.  Here was one in the middle of Bloomsbury:

We paid a quick visit to the British Museum islamic art section (VERY quick - DS3 kept complaining he was bored…).  I loved the animal motifs and was struck by how like medieval European art they looked - especially like the mille fleurs tapestries.   Then we walked up Tottenham Court Road - which looks much smarter than when I lived in London - and saw this arty mural on the side of a house:

Sorry it is a bit blurred but I was in the middle of the road at the time!! I think the picture makes it look a bit eery and surreal, especially with the tree in front of it.

We also saw the Post Office Tower (now the BT Tower I think) which my brothers clamoured to go up every time we visited London when I was growing up.

And I love the way the light reflects off these glass office buildings:

And to Great Portland Street tube where we collapsed thankfully on the train back to Uxbridge (where, incidentally, I found a yummy art shop selling Golden fluid acrylics….mmmmm).

I never appreciated London half so much when I lived there.

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I love this gladioli.  It came up suddenly last year after we had lived in this house for 9 years. 

We had a blustery day and it got blown over and the stem broke so I had to bring it in and put it in a vase.  Oh well…. silver linings and all that!

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When we went to France in the summer, because we were in the Loire Valley we visited a lot of chateaux.  Unsurprisingly, after a few days of this the kids (and I) began to get chateauitis.  So we started to find ways that DH could indulge his passion for looking round them while entertaining the kids in other ways.

At Chaumont there was a brilliant garden festival in the grounds.  The kids were a bit dubious as to the entertainment value, but they soon decided it was worth it.   The grounds were divided into several different sections, like small rooms and each had been made into an original garden by a sponsor.   The Garden Festival website has a link to each garden with an English version.

The entrance to the festival interested me especially.  It had sculptures made from rusty poles.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you will not be surprised to hear that I wanted to enhance it with some fabric!

They especially liked the one sponsored by the French railway company, SNCF, called Just Move It.  It had tubs and sections on bits of railway line which you could push and pull about to rearrange it to suit the way you wanted it.

Another noteworthy garden had lots of planters up in the air suspended by wires:

And yet another made the garden look bigger using mirrors:

They also had an interesting garden where you could move various ’screens’ to frame the flowers planted behind.  This made me think of the use of aperture cards to find interesting portions of a design which we learnt about at City & Guilds.

I also liked this garden where they had painted tree trunks blue to make a very sculptural, and rather eery set of figures…

They marched off across this lake as well:

They had a graffiti garden, too!

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We stayed near Tours while we were on holiday and while DH looked at the old houses I spotted some manhole covers.

I like this wavy design.

But the best by far was this one which we saw in the old town in Le Mans.

Truly a king among manhole covers.

My kids thought I was mad.  Taking photographs of manhole covers and garlic! 

On the Thursday there was a garlic and basil fair/market.  I had never seen so much garlic and basil in one place!

There was white garlic, purple garlic and pink garlic.  With some onions and shallots thrown in for good measure.

These are all pots of basil.

Not just green, but purple as well.

I like French markets.

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Here we go with the answers. I’ll repost the photos to remind you of what they are:

Number 1: The kids have got a turtle-shaped Little Tykes sandpit in the garden. They have grown out of it, really, but they still won’t let me get rid of it! The lid keeps blowing off and when it rains it fills with water. This is the lid with sand in the indentations in the turtle pattern, and filled with rainwater. Sorry, that was a bit difficult… Elizabet’s answer was the closest, I think! Good texture though, eh?

This is the lid rightside up!

And this is what the base of the sandpit looks like now! Yukky, isn’t it? Maybe I should dig a hole in the garden and use it as the base of a pond….

Number 2: This is the mould growing on the top of my dyepot after it has been soaking and forgotten for a few weeks! So, Fiona, you guessed this one more or less correctly, though it was in the back garden rather than the fridge….

Number 3: This is an enamel plate on which baked sausages have been cooked and then soaked in water. I thought the colours and patterns were interesting.

Number 4: A Pyrex bowl with jelly and raspberries in it, viewed from above. Well done, Elizabet and Mags!

Number 5: The lid of my dyeing stockpot sitting in my studio with the reflection of the plastic crates in which I store my fabric. Again, top marks Elizabet and Mags!

Finally, number 6. This one has been on my blog but a long time ago so let’s see if anyone finds or guesses it! Well done, Mags, you guessed it - London from the London Eye.

And just to prove to Fiona that she is not the only one with interesting things growing in her fridge, here is a photo of something I threw out just before going on holiday!

I thought the range of colours in the mould was quite intriguing! DS2 was the culprit here - he had to draw the contents of a can of food spilling on to a plate, for his art homework. He chose baked beans, put said baked beans into a tupperware instead of eating them for his lunch, left them in the fridge and forgot them!

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While we were at Avon Valley Country Park, I saw this amazing tree trunk:

As you can see, it’s the one the obliging angora goat was hiding in:

Here is a photo of the whole thing:

I wonder if it had been coppiced in the past. What an inspiration!

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I thought it was time for a bit of visual relief so I took the camera for a walk in the garden this afternoon and turned the macro setting on.  

Not sure what this flower is but it is on a very long stem and looks a bit like a harebell.   We got lots of free packets of wild flowers at a Springwatch ‘Breathing Places’ open day last year in Newport and I think this is one of them.  In fact it is the only new wild flower I have noticed growing in the garden and I’ve scattered a lot of seeds around!

This is herb robert but it is pinker than the photo shows.

Don’t know what this is but it is one of those weeds that you mean to pull up and then it flowers and you change your mind!

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