At the moment I am obsessed with blues and greens. I lie in bed thinking about blues and greens. I go into the garden and drink in all the blues and greens that I see there. I take photos of different blues and greens; of weather, of leaves, of clouds, of the sea. I plan colourways I’ll never dye with imaginary names like ‘seedling,’ ‘seastorm’ and ‘grass.’ When I lie in bed it is blue and green knitting projects that I am planning, and blue and green things that I want to sew. When I go outside, all I want to do is marvel at all the blues and greens that are currently out there. It’s all about the blues and greens. This is Alkanet. It grows in a rosette like Woad, but the leaves have pointier ends and the whole plant is much fuzzier.

I am extremely excited about all the seedlings that are coming up in my garden. Many have been sent by my good friend Caroline who did an organic farming course last year in Ireland; some are seeds saved by me from wildflowers or last year’s flowers and some are from the wonderful Chiltern Seeds company or John Chambers, whose British wildflower seed catalogue is second to none. I have Woad and Wallflower growing for blue and green dyes respectively and Alkanet for purple/pinks. Here is the Woad. Around it you can see the anti cat-crapping slate henge that I made. The neighbour’s cat no longer craps in my dye bed!

I’m still waiting for Coreopsis and Dyer’s Chamomile to germinate, and I also have some Soapwort on the go for making a wool wash. My garden is messy and I spend a lot of time pulling bindweed off other things, but I am in love with the unfolding process of spring and all the beautiful, bright greens and vibrant shoots of things growing everywhere fills me with joy. I really understand where Jane Brocket got the inspiration for her allotment quilt, and I have to confess that hoarding fabrics featuring food-related or growing-themed prints is one of my guilty pleasures in life. Most of my fabric stash is comprised of old clothes I plan to turn into something else, pieces of tweed that my Godmother bestowed upon me and offcuts from things I bought for making The Missability Radio Show fabric components but over the last few years I have been slowly amassing green and blue fabrics featuring food which I expect will soon become a skirt. The lovely cherries fabric and the green one with brown and black dotty sections were both posted to me in recent crafty swaps; thanks to Karen for the cherries and gogoringo for this joy.

My main pleasure with patchwork comes from looking at all the different colours and patterns. I figure that the way for me to get maximum mileage out of all the fabrics I have been squirreling away over the past few years is to wear them. I know patchwork clothes are a kind of outlandish, hippyish no-no, but I don’t really care. I just know that driving anywhere, catching sight of my skirt in a window or sitting with my knitting in my lap upon aforementioned fabrics will be like having a portable case of ideas with me. So all that needs to happen now is some pattern-making. The only certainty I have at this point is that my skirt shall have many pockets.

In other blue and green news, while I was writing up my post yesterday about knitting in films, I found myself transported back to the coastal landscapes that feature in The Shipping News and Ladies in Lavender. Both films employ very different cinematic approaches to the sea; The Shipping News uses overall a much darker, stormier pallette than the one seen in Ladies in Lavender, but both films contain a great deal of blue and green. My favourite coastal landscape for colours is Portland Bill, around where The Man grew up. I find the steely blues of the ocean, the blue greys of the Portland stone and the raw greens of the tough vegetation all excitingly abrasive and vibrant. The air is raw and salty, the colours somehow tough and strong. It’s like the place is made of rope, rock, seaweed and stone. Everytime I look at my skeins of Lorna’s Laces in seaside colourway, I think of Portland Bill and everytime I look at Portland Bill, I think of my Lorna’s Laces. I have decided to knit up the Jaywalker socks in this yarn because the zigzags show off the colours really well. I’ve had this skein for ages and tried knitting it into several sock patterns. I think that Jaywalker works the best though, and a enjoying the way the colours are looking so far.

Other water-related green joy seen this weekend includes this boat, spotted whilst propelling myself along the towpath of the Basingstoke canal on my crutches:

I believe it belongs to The Accessible Boating Company which is an excellent idea. I’m so happy to note that my passion for the English waterways will never have to be forfeited because of disability.

The final pieces of green and blue joy come in the form of some mini projects. The first is a forray into linen-stitch, which will be the subject of tomorrow’s post:

The second is some mysterious blue beads that have a secret destination:

And the final bit of green involves the germination of the sunflower seeds that came in last year’s Manifest exhibition invites. For our graduating exhibition, our MA year decided to make up our own seed-packets to send as invitations to people. I decided to sow the seeds that were in mine to represent the continuation of ideas explored on the MA programme. This time last year was an incredible time for everyone on the MA; we were busy planning our show, sharing our ideas, making our work and talking through the exhibition. It was a truly remarkable group of people and I learnt a lot from the experience of putting on Manifest. I hope everyone’s work is continuing to flourish and mature; people made a lot of good work on that course.

It is lovely to see how all these seeds and all these greens and blues connect to so many other areas of my life… to creative swaps, to friends’ gardens, to art college colleagues, to previous gardens and to cherished landscapes. I hope everyone is getting as much enjoyment out of the Spring as I am right now.