tiny happy

I think I write about tansy this time every year – we have a plant growing beside the washing line and it's something nice to contemplate when hanging out the laundry in the morning. I also try to embroider a portrait of the flowers every summer, and you can see this year's effort in the first photo above. I never seem to tire of those feathery leaves and buds like flat yellow buttons.

In other summer plant news, I recently found some quilted cotton printed with poppies and cornflowers (an unused placemat, I believe) and made a few pouches and bags from it for my online shop… there's something about that print I really love. I suppose it's the big and beautiful poppies.

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Thanks to Teresa, who this week featured me on her blog The Broken Pie. The post is an interview we did a while back about food, where I admit I am a recipe-follower and somewhat boring ('is there enough bread and fruit for the kids to take for their school lunch?') type of food-person, which may not be what Teresa had in mind when she asked me to be part of her 'Creatives in the Kitchen' series!

In the photo above you can see a lemon loaf made from a recipe in my friend Nicola's book The Homegrown Kitchen which remains a favourite around here. 

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In book news, I've just finished the novel that follows on from Life After Life that I wrote about here. I loved Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins even more – it was one of those reading experiences where you feel bereft at the end. One warning though – if you haven't read it and would like to, don't read the Wikipedia page about it until you've finished, because it has spoilers. 

As I've had a few embroidery projects to complete, I've listened to the audiobook for Caitlin Moran's How to Build a Girl and Mindy Kaling's Why Not Me which are very different and similar at the same time and I loved them both.

Have you read anything good lately?

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