The C Word is just going to take a short break from posh gallery craft to get back to a bit of the other sort of craft, home craft, which in my view, is the basis for all of this anyway. This is the C Word’s very own flower show. I have great ambitions about organising, or finding someone else to organise, Tottenham flower and produce show, but for now, it will have to be a private affair.
So welcome to the garden as it was about 3 weeks ago. This was one of its most abundantly flowery, sun-filled moments. Then it went dry and overgrown, and now, hurray for rain, its being replenished I hope.
We should really have a discussion here about ‘gallery craft’, ‘home craft’, ‘fine craft’ and maybe even craft blogs, but I’m going to pass these matters over to others for now. Take a look at an excellent craft blog called Messy Tuesdays, which has links to its host blog, I think it is, called Knitwit, which has numerous links to other knitting and sewing blogs, and the venerable F Word, here discussing the Messy Tuesdays concept. In honour of the MTs, I wanted to include the less than perfect pictures, but then I wanted you to see my roses at their best. So, the gaudy front garden picture is the messiest its going to get for this post, unless I tell you about the truly disgusting antics of my resident black birds when they eat slugs, (yes, I’m delighted about that bit), but then they smear the slug slime of which there is a surfeit, all over the path outside my back door. Then it rains, and reconstitutes itself as a soup of slug slime, then I go out in my bare feet to empty the tea pot over my strawberry bed and tread in the said slime and then it takes about 20 minutes of soap and scrubbing to find the soles my feet again, under a thick layer of slime. Surely there is some good use for this loathsome stuff – anyone?
The great thing about MTs and all those related interlinked blogs is that they talk craft in the domestic context, the home-made; that fine line between domestic comfort (or not) and oppressive ideal-home aspirations, in the presence of the empty tea-cups and the unwashed saucepans. I also want to talk village flower show craft, the village hall vs the art gallery. My village, Wootton by Woodstock, will host its annual flower and produce show at the end of august, so prepare to meet tea cosies to die for and a patchwork quilted allotment, as long as I can find the woman who makes these things and persuade her to let me photograph them. Meanwhile, enjoy the roses, and send in your slug slime recipes, but not too many, please.
