pining for home

In addition to the requisite dogwoods and magnolias, the area round my mum's house boasts some mighty pines. And this time of year, the ground is littered with needles.

Their spikiness is misleading: where they pile up, they create the most wonderfully soft and squashy carpet. And then there are the pine cones, each so delightfully knobbly...

as well as mathematically correct. Remember the Fibonacci sequence?

While packing the real thing would've resulted in a crunchy mess, I'm sure, this pine cone reached England in perfect condition, ready to hang in the living room...

to remind me of my home-away-from-home.

Wool pine cone designed and made by Stephanie Congdon Barnes. Post inspired by Pebbledash.

mount vernon morning

Glowing white walls,

red shakes,

russet brick,

and a brilliant blue sky.

But none as dramatic as the vivid verdigris decor in the dining room! Apparently George Washington was fearless not only in battle but in home decorating. Alas no photos were allowed inside the mansion house, but that green inside, combined with the glorious weather outside, made for a very memorable Mount Vernon morning.

getting crafty

On Friday, we Metro-ed into the city for the 22nd annual Washington Craft Show, a juried exhibition and sale of contemporary fine craft. The show featured 195 artists, and we visited every booth, ooohing and aaahing so many times I lost count!

I especially loved the quilts by Brooklyn-based textile artist Erin Wilson:

Erin dyes her own fabrics, then makes the small squares one at a time, adding strips of fabric as she goes (without any preset plan) to form each perfectly composed block.

I also fell head-over-heels for Connie Verrusio's jewelry, all made from or inspired by pieces she's found in antique shops and hardware stores. My favorite was a silver cuff bracelet engraved to resemble a dressmaker's tape--a slightly more elegant version of the ring below:

I wonder if wearing it would improve my sewing abilities. With my current project, I need all the help I can get!

home comforts

Happiness is a pair of the coziest felt slippers, new Amy Butler Lounge Pants,

and an old friend:

The comforts of home.

journeying

Very excited about my new English Journeys collection from Penguin Books:

While journeying cross-country on a side saddle sounds rather uncomfortable,

I reckon a walk in the wheat fields would be quite pleasant,

especially if there's a picnic hamper involved (game pie, anyone?)...

and a garden visit or two along the way:

But must put my (virtual) English journeys aside, as I'm headed off on a (real) American journey tomorrow. Then again, I'm sure I could fit just a few volumes in my hand luggage...

postcard teas

When presented with a tea menu, my response until now has been to stare completely dumbfounded, then (embarrassed by my own incompetence) order 'ordinary black tea.'

I suppose I could be forgiven, coming from American, coffee-drinking stock. But after so many years in London, it was time for a change. So I enrolled in the Tea School at Postcard Teas:

The shop is in an 18th-century building just off New Bond Street. Elegantly minimalist, the white walls and single wooden table provide the perfect backdrop for the caddies...

and pouches of tea,

as well as the Tea Mail,

by which you can send a pouch of tea anywhere in the world.

The Tea School is actually a series of four tastings led by the owner, Timothy d'Offay. Tim travels throughout Asia, working with and buying from the world's finest small-scale, family tea producers.

While the first session was a general introduction, the second focused on white and black teas. The most surprising was the Pu-erh tea: extremely earthy, with definite notes of hay, leather, and stable yard...not one I'll be ordering from the tea menu!

The third session covered green teas. I'd always thought all green teas were the same, so this was a revelation: six very different flavors from three different countries.

The next session (when Tim returns from Japan) will be on oolongs. I'm particularly excited about this one, as these were my favorites in the first tasting.

I was a bit nervous at the start, but I didn't need to be. While Tim is incredibly knowledgeable, he's also very friendly and down-to-earth. Definitely the most fun I've ever had in school!

daylesford day, part four

On Friday, we drove out to Daylesford for our last course this term: Introduction to Cider and Apple Juice Making. When he's not managing the Market Garden at Daylesford, Jez runs his own artisan cider business using apples collected locally in the Vale of Evesham.

We started the day with crates of apples...

and Jez' own Heath Robinson-esque equipment, into which his assistants gamely fed apples for milling...

and pressing:

Jez talked us through the process step-by-step, then led us in a tasting of juices and ciders made from dessert, culinary, and cider apples. The juices had been pressed outside in the yard just minutes before, and the ciders came from Jez' own 'cider cellar' at home.

I was particularly excited by the bright flavors of the freshly pressed, unpasteurized juices. My favorite was Blenheim Orange, with Newton Wonder a close second.

After the tasting, we had lunch in the Daylesford Kitchen Garden, then piled into minivans for the short journey to Stow Cider, another artisan producer.

Here we experienced the process from start to finish. We shook the orchard trees to bring down a rain of apples,

used long poles to pull off the remaining apples, then gathered them into bags,

which we hefted back to base, where our apples were combined with apples of different varieties to produce the perfect blend:

We worked the mill and press in teams, filling the hopper with washed apples, scooping up the pomace, building the 'cheeses' (wrapping layers of pomace in cloth and sandwiching them between boards), pressing the cheeses, and dismantling the pressed cheeses.

In the end, we each took home 25 liters of juice to ferment into cider. And if you've never seen a 25-liter barrel, that's a LOT of cider!