Blueberry sunday

Smitonius:

Visited two Scandinavian Xmas fairs yesterday in south London: the elegant Norwegian fair held at St Olav's, where many women in traditional costume can be spotted. This church was built for Norwegian seamen in 1927, and has a lovely wood panel interior, which was crammed full of seasonal 'Nisse' ornaments: a type of gnome. When I was a teenager, there was a book by Wil Huygen and illustrated by Poortvliet that I loved... does anyone remember that one?

I resisted walking out with armfuls of the little creatures, though did find some presents (shhhh) and treated myself to salty licorice (not for everyone, but I do like it!).

Then I popped down the road to the Finnish fair held on the same day at the Finnish Church (if you are in London, it is on next week also!). This one is not as pretty but it is worth going to for the food alone: a nice bottle of Lapin Kulta beer with home smoked hot salmon, mash and sour cream for lunch followed by more retail. Stocked up on Moomin parafernalia, Finnish yarn, and treats (like Raspberry and Blueberry Jaffa cakes!). In fact, there was a fine young Fin doing a barrow boy impersonation and selling 1 kilo of frozen blueberries for £1. Guess what I spent this morning doing?

Blueberry jam (a 'Summer' variety following this recipe by Purplegirl plus a 'Christmas' version sort of inspired by the vague instruction in this recipe: Hendrick's cocktail) AND Blueberry vodka... not inky blue, but a velvety red I would say!

Three Bean Stew and the BeeGees .

Sonata:

You find yourself doing the oddest things sometimes . Kneeling on a concrete floor , pumping up and down on some limbless plastic doll's chest while singing "Staying Alive ", for instance . Mind you , I sincerely hope that , if I do ever have to reanimate someone , no one tries to help by counting along ....in Dutch . The seemingly backwards counting after 20 ( Eenentwintig , tweeentwintig , drieentwintig ....) kept on making me lose the thread . Never mind trying to ignore someone on the other side counting in Arabic .

No one had better look peaky round me for a while . Thanks to our employer's desire for no one to drop dead prematurely on our premises , I have every eventuality covered now from the Heimlich manoeuvre to making a sling . My pre-war Newnes Household Encyclopaedia , on the other hand , went straight from Fire-Kindlers to Fish . First Aid didn't seem to exist in the 1920s.
Nor , I suspect , did the supper kindly provided afterwards . 3 Bean Stew with Chili Peppers and Pineapple . It was probably chosen because it couldn't offend anyone , be they Muslim , Hindi or vegetarian . It made me long for toast and Marmite ....so , after I'd pedalled home through the rain , that's just what I ate .

But that damn song just goes on and on .....

My fairy name and embroidery download

Smitonius:

If you go on into the (internet) woods today, you may find out your fairy name... Fairy Name Generator

Apparently, I am:

Your fairy is called Tangle Elffrost

She is a cheerful sprite.

She lives at the bottom of tangled gardens and in hedgerows.

She is only seen during the first snow of winter.

She wears tangled dresses of multicoloured petals. She has delicate green wings like a cicada.

Tangle is the operative word in relation to my appearance today! I most certainly do not look like the following damsel:
Now I am trying to experiment with creating some embroidery PDFs for the etsy shop, and who better to offer a free download to than the occasional blog reader in the hope for feedback! I have several copies of an early twentieth century embroidery magazine called 'El Consultor de los Bordados' published in Barcelona which is now out of copyright. I have scanned them and cleaned up the images to create a series of themed editions based on such things as fairy tales or geishas and so on. This free download is titled 'yesterdays children'.

Embroidery Free Edition Smitonius

I hope you like it!

Lanterns , Sweets And Silly Songs

Sonata :

Here I am , all ready for lanterns and silly songs .

The evening of St Martin's feast day is celebrated here by children who go round their neighbourhood with lanterns they've made at school .

There's giggling and shuffling feet outside and it usually begins with

"Sint Maarten , Sint Maarten , de koeien hebben staarten ,

De meisjes hebben rokjes aan , de jongens hebben sokjes aan

Heir komt Sint Martinus aan ."

Open the door and there's a circle of bright little faces , wobbly lanterns and optimistically big bags . If you're lucky , you get another silly song after you've handed over the loot . Meanies who hand over apples or mandarins , the healthy alternative , presumably get a raspberry once they've closed the door .

Lantern designs vary wildly from windmills or toadstools to goldfish . This year our playschool made these . I hope it earns them a surfeit of brightly coloured sugar and lots of praise .

P.S. The words of the song translate as

"St Martin , St Martin , the cows have tails ,

the girls have skirts on , the boys have socks on ,

here comes St Martin ."

Yes . It does sound better in Dutch ....at least it rhymes !

But I'm not sure what it has to do with a Roman soldier who ripped his cloak in two to give half to a beggar .

Remembrance Sunday

Smitonius:

Perhaps this will be too somber a post.... but I thought I would share a sad little family history story on this day of remembrance.

On both of my parent's sides there have been soldiers who found themselves caught up in WWI and, also, WWII. Some women also played their part in WWII, as one of my grandmother's was in the WAAF and the other volunteered in a military hospital whilst an army wife in Rawalpindi (now Pakistan).

My mother's grandfather survived WWI to have to go and do it all again in WWII (and he survived that too!), but some men on my father's side did not come back from France. I already knew about Major William Ernest Watson DSO (6th Dragoon Guards) who went missing in action in November 1914. His family, in hope, put a notice in The Times in February 1915 requesting information, but it was eventually concluded that he died in the Battle of Messines on 31 October 1914. William left a wife and two girls. His name is engraved on the Menin Gate. This is his portrait:

But yesterday I was reconstructing another family branch, the Beckett family (Hindon, Wiltshire), and I kept coming up against a brick wall for a Philip Arthur Beckett (born 1892). Most of the rest of the family emigrated to America in 1910, but Philip did not go with them. I checked through various photocopies that my father had sent me, and then saw a note that said a certain Arthur had been shot by a sniper as soon as he reached France.

So I checked various websites, and then all the pieces began to fit together. Philip Arthur had stayed behind because he had managed to get a place at Clare College, Cambridge. He completed his education, but in November of 1915 arrived in France with the Royal West Kent Regiment. He rose in rank from private to 2/Lieutenant and was attached to the 7th batallion by the start of 1917. I then found that C T Atkinson's history of the regiment was available online, and it states what happened on the 14th of February 1917. The batallion had had two months of respite after hard fighting in Ancre, and they then returned to the front line. Trenches, I found out, had names then: they had control of 'Desire' Trench but where trying to recapture 'Grandcourt' trench. 2/Lieutenant Beckett and another one called Dix commanded the lead platoons. Unfortunately, it all appears to have gone horribly wrong in the dark, and the casualties were 'deplorably heavy'. Although he was never found, Philip Arthur's name appears on the Thiepval memorial.

Sad, and such a waste.

I Could Be On A Winning Streak ....

Sonata:

I suspect I'm still five years old at heart. One of the local supermarket chains has a promotion ....for every 15 Euros you spend you get a little shiny bag , containing one of the characters from Snow White ....only 2"high ( or smaller , obviously , for Dopey etc. ) .

Now , I'm not five and I know that tiny bits of plastic are a Bad Thing environmentally and I promise not to accept anymore . But .... I had to look just once .... and I got Snow White !!

And now she's supervising my latest quilt for Hitty . And for anyone who was thinking , "I wouldn't have put those colours together ", before this is finished I'll have sewn around 400 of these together . It all works out in the end , you'll see .

But if I'm on this sort of lucky streak , perhaps I should have listened to the overexcited chap who's just called from "Zurich ....Switzerland ", to tell me that I'm in the final draw for a Major Prize . I might have won , who knows ? But , since I'm not five years old , I put the phone down on whats'isname from "Zurich .... Switzerland " , while wondering why he had a local accent .

Woolly All Over

Sonata:

It was 3 degrees Celsius this morning . A chill mist enveloped everything , me included , as I pedalled along the river bank to work . Perhaps it's time to embrace head-to-toe wool

and a brave face ?

or an alluring balaclava ?

My grandmother was of the opinion that one could never look one's best when one was cold so , at the very least , I ought to buy 12 balls of Sunbeam Cilicia and get cracking .