Lovely stitchers

Thanks to all who wrote to me yesterday and I am so excited to send you out the first samples to be worked. This will make a huge difference to this project and I am looking forward to this new stage with you alongside! The results of your labour (well, I hope it will be fun for you too!) will be posted here along with credits and acknowledgements!


Now that the rain seems to have abated, these photos of the marsh near to me seem unreal. But the grassy flats by the River Rother were completely under water with waves lapping at the "shore line" ... It has been remarkable to look out of my bedroom window in the mornings recently and see the encroaching grey green water ever rising and shimmering in the near distance ... now the birds seem to be defiantly shouting out their spring songs, almost belligerently, and there is no stopping spring now ...

5 minutes from my cottage the waters rose and rose ... all this is usually green with sheep grazing there

Giant Puff Ball

Sliced just after picking

preparation with good butter salt and pepper

Frying with the bacon

Consumption ... satisfaction

I found these photos on the camera today ... completely forgot to post them though the event was quite spectacular! We almost fell over this giant on a walk down a familiar route one weekend in late September. It was as big, no bigger than a football and weirdly attached to the soil by the smallest of stalks. looking rather like it had been blown up from the earth ... I was very excited to scoop it up and made a sling for it out of my jumper, which smelt heavenly all the way home. It squeaks when it is cut like cutting polystyrene ... and the aroma is indescribably delicious. Butter, bacon, salt and pepper great slices of it on good bread ... we had risotto too, and stuffed a squash with it. It was handed out to friends and kept me in food for a week. A huge soft cloud of a thing. Delicious.

David Pye bowl, more fungus, cake and thread ...

Sarah winding threads for kits

Field mushrooms and Parasols

Field mushrooms in David Pye bowl

Harvest

Autumn sunshine took Sarah and I outside to wind thread for the kits, drink tea and eat some delicious shop bought custard tarts, the best possible indulgence. As fast as she makes the thread bundles for the kits, they seem to disappear. The Christmas orders are coming in and we are going full pelt. Also a photo of some field mushrooms picked that morning locally, with one or two parasol mushroom thrown in too. They are rather artistically placed in a wonderful hand carved wooden bowl made by David Pye

which he gave to my parents back in RCA days. He was Prof of Furniture Design from 1964-1974 and I remember his collection of moths and butterflies in beautiful museum drawers when we went to visit him at his home in Wadhurst. Loved drawers ever since. The bowl reflects the radiating gills of the mushroom so beautifully ... here is another bowl very similar to it. I treasure this bowl, much loved, much used. The dressing when using it for a hearty salad runs obligingly down the ridges, easy to scoop again for another dousing ...

Details of the day ...

 The fence at the bottom of the garden has rotted over the years and we have had to take it down and replace the panels that are gone. There is a Sleeping Beauty style thicket of 30 years worth of brambles to cut back before we can even get to the fence. Jo and his brother are doing the manly stuff. But in cutting back the brambles we found this beautiful nest with three eggs in, one broken and they were stone cold. There was bound to be one but I am certain it had been left before we started. But how perfect it is. I brought it down to the back door to photograph, the blue against this little golden privet bush is such a lovely contrast.

Song Thrush eggs

 On my daily walk to get away from the work for a bit, we went out to one of our favorite walks to the river to stretch the eyes and breath in some good lungfuls of airs before getting on again. So much to see, it changes so rapidly at this time of year, but the wind was biting and raced across the flats nearly blowing Biddy over.

Roman snail on dandelion flower

Dandelion clock