In a vase on Monday: looking for a hook

 

It was far too cold to linger in the garden on my way back from the compost bin this morning so no snippets from the garden today. But from the top there is a glimpse of snowdrops picked from the garden last week in front of another charity shop find for the cottage. I really like this painting by Malk, I like the colours, the loose brush strokes and the composition and the fact that whoever framed it (Malk him/herself) chose the finest linen weave mounting board from Daler Rowney. But I didn’t like the orange of the frame so I gave it a quick wash using Farrow &Ball’s Charleston Grey, waxed it and we now have a piece of artwork for the cottage walls.

The hooks are a bit out of place in a vase on Monday post but I wanted to share a piece of hand forged Welsh iron that I found in Dorking last week. We have a little recess in the hall of the cottage and these will be fixed there for an odd coat or anything else that needs hanging up.

Ah yes, my dried flowers. This was all picked from the garden last year and includes Hydrangea Heinrich Seidel, Allium Christophii, Panicum, poppies and Nigella seedheads. The vase, sadly no longer water tight, was the very first present I gave to my husband In the 1980s and was bought from a florist in Hampton Hill. It was made at Perran Porth in Cornwall (scratched into the clay on the base) and I liked it so much I went back and bought myself a similar vase in the shape of a ginger jar, also no longer water tight alas.

Finally there is a little posy of anemones from the allotment (don’t look too closely they are very tatty and I’ve just removed the worst), another pretty watercolour this time of a pelargonium bought on Saturday for one of the cottage bedrooms, and some ongoing brain-calming therapy in the form of English Paper Piecing. I started piecing over a year ago using my grandmother’s templates (I have no recollection of my mother ever doing patchwork so I’m assuming they belonged to my grandmother) but I’ve decided it’s quicker and more accurate to print one inch hexagons from the Internet and carefully cut out the paper shapes.

I’m joining in with Cathy on this freezing February Monday with my vases and paintings and hooks. Let’s go over to Cathy’s blog Rambling in the garden to see what she has found to surprise us with this week.

It’s 10 to five and just look at the sky.