NEEDLEPOINT BOOKS TO INSPIRE:
Needlepoint books tend to be glossy and good looking, but can come with a hefty price tag. That’s if they’re new, of course. Most of my selection below are old enough to be readily available via Amazon’s second hand sellers or ebay, and many libraries would stock them too.
My first recommendations are two excellent books by Mary Norden. Her ‘Needlepoint Folk Art’ book and ‘Ethnic Needlepoint’ (published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson) are great both in terms of their photography and pattern illustrations. The projects are varied, have a crispness and bold design, and show Mary Norden’s distinctive colour sense. They’re ideal books for needlepoint novices, but would be welcomed by experienced stitchers too. Many of her designs could fit equally well in traditional homes as well as modern minimalist ones. (If you want to spend several minutes gazing longingly at fabulous, colour drenched photographs of interiors try her website at www.marynorden.com It’s stunning.)
No needlepoint discussion would be complete without mentioning – tah da! – Kaffe Fassett. His knitting, needlepoint, mosaics, patchwork and fabric design have made him renowned in the textile world, and if you ever get the chance to see him give a lecture or workshop – make sure you go! I love his passion for colour, and how his books and TV shows enthused countless numbers of knitters and needlepointers to become more daring, to take a creative leap.
His needlepoint books shouldn’t be difficult to get – ‘Glorious Needlepoint’ has sections on fruit & veg designs, fish & fowl, flowers & foliage, faces & fans, finishing up with china jugs & geometrics. Projects include tablemats, tote bags and plenty of cushions including duck shaped ones!
Sometimes exhibited alongside Kaffe Fassett’s work is that of Candace Bahouth. (See the ‘Inspiring Videos’ section for a link to a charming video about her life and work.) Her needlepoint books cover a range of topics from ‘Medieval Needlepoint’ with its dragons, unicorns and heraldry to ‘Romantic Needlepoint’ with its symbols of love.
BOOKS TO INSPIRE: BEING THRIFTY & FRUGAL:
If you want to save money and be Green-minded, but don’t want to be known as a miserable git who’ll never buy a round of drinks in the pub, there’re plenty of resources to help. For general advice about saving money on grocery shopping and eating well on the cheap, www.frugalqueen.co.uk is good, and delivered in a bracing no-nonsense tone. Jack Monroe’s website www.agirlcalledjack.com has lots of recipes, with the occasional dollop of politics, and I’d definitely recommend her cookbook ‘A Girl Called Jack’. Even though not all recipes are vegetarian, it was still worth the money. Lots of recipes with cheap beans and pulses, and enough cakey, bready treats to satisfy the craving for something sweet in between the fruit & veg, pasta & rice.
For a very readable all-round ‘how can I be greener’ guide, which doesn’t assume you’ve got pots of money to throw around, try Anna Shepard’s ‘How green are my wellies?’ With chapters divided into months of the years, it’s good for food, cleaning and homemade beauty recipes. Plus ideas about keeping your home warm in the winter, acquiring a wormery, having clothes swaps and a December chapter on ‘stepping off the seasonal treadmill’. It’s easy to see how small changes can be cost effective as well as having environmental benefits.
BOOKS TO INSPIRE: CRAFTS IN GENERAL:
A good all-round craft book is ‘The Crafter Culture Handbook’ by Amy Spencer. It’s a nice, chunky A5 sized book with sections on sewing, electro crafts, homemade beauty, paper and print. There are lots of short interviews with crafters who sell online and plenty of ‘makes’. Whether you want to make a camisole top, a button necklace, a microphone or a fruity body scrub, you’ll find something of interest here.
‘Making Stuff – an alternative craft book’, published by Black Dog publishing, is a book I like, but with reservations. The print is tiny. I mean, tiny! Even with my reading glasses on I’m peering at it. That said, there’re some good projects featured. A change purse made out of charity shop ties (the funkier and wider that Seventies tie is, the better!), a pair of beady-eyed lizards and a retro style sausage dog shaped draught excluder. The origami fairy light shades defeated me, despite having written instructions plus diagrams, but there are plenty of child friendly things to do including kite and puppet making.
SHORT STORIES TO INSPIRE:
Too busy to read novels? Then maybe find 10 minutes in your day to read a fantastic short story. Here’s a selection to tempt you:
It’s such a shame that the writer Elizabeth Taylor’s name has to inevitably be followed by ‘no, not that Liz Taylor!’ If you’ve heard of the film star but not the author, then you’re in for a treat. Virago published ‘Dangerous Calm’, an anthology of her short stories, in 1995 and it’s still a stunner. Turn to ‘A Dedicated Man’ for a wonderful and oh-so-English little slice of life with its petty snobbishness and disappointments.
If you’re looking for a very English setting, try the wartime stories of MOLLIE PANTER-DOWNES. Published in a very tactile paperback by Persephone Books, with a cover painting by Evelyn Dunbar, this anthology contains 21 stories written between 1939 and 1944. They evoke that period, the uncertainty and shortages, the excitement or boredom. They’re like a black & white film on a Sunday afternoon, a world that seems as familiar as it appears distant.
The strange and peculiar stories of Judy Budnitz can unsettle you. They can be sly and sinister, and there are echoes of fairy stories (the European folk tale variety not the plastic Disney versions.) ‘Flying Leap’ and ‘Nice Big American Baby’ are two titles to look out for.
I’m not sure how easy this collection of stories is to find, but also worth a read is Mary O’Connell’s ‘Living with Saints’. Female saints such as Dyphna and Ursula feature in the lives of modern American girls. Sometimes magical, sometimes laugh out loud funny, at other times poignant, you don’t have to be Catholic, or even religious, to find these tales engaging.
Other writers you overlook at your peril are Daphne Du Maurier, Jean Rhys and the superb Alice Munro.
Needlepoint books tend to be glossy and good looking, but can come with a hefty price tag. That’s if they’re new, of course. Most of my selection below are old enough to be readily available via Amazon’s second hand sellers or ebay, and many libraries would stock them too.
My first recommendations are two excellent books by Mary Norden. Her ‘Needlepoint Folk Art’ book and ‘Ethnic Needlepoint’ (published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson) are great both in terms of their photography and pattern illustrations. The projects are varied, have a crispness and bold design, and show Mary Norden’s distinctive colour sense. They’re ideal books for needlepoint novices, but would be welcomed by experienced stitchers too. Many of her designs could fit equally well in traditional homes as well as modern minimalist ones. (If you want to spend several minutes gazing longingly at fabulous, colour drenched photographs of interiors try her website at www.marynorden.com It’s stunning.)
No needlepoint discussion would be complete without mentioning – tah da! – Kaffe Fassett. His knitting, needlepoint, mosaics, patchwork and fabric design have made him renowned in the textile world, and if you ever get the chance to see him give a lecture or workshop – make sure you go! I love his passion for colour, and how his books and TV shows enthused countless numbers of knitters and needlepointers to become more daring, to take a creative leap.
His needlepoint books shouldn’t be difficult to get – ‘Glorious Needlepoint’ has sections on fruit & veg designs, fish & fowl, flowers & foliage, faces & fans, finishing up with china jugs & geometrics. Projects include tablemats, tote bags and plenty of cushions including duck shaped ones!
Sometimes exhibited alongside Kaffe Fassett’s work is that of Candace Bahouth. (See the ‘Inspiring Videos’ section for a link to a charming video about her life and work.) Her needlepoint books cover a range of topics from ‘Medieval Needlepoint’ with its dragons, unicorns and heraldry to ‘Romantic Needlepoint’ with its symbols of love.
BOOKS TO INSPIRE: BEING THRIFTY & FRUGAL:
If you want to save money and be Green-minded, but don’t want to be known as a miserable git who’ll never buy a round of drinks in the pub, there’re plenty of resources to help. For general advice about saving money on grocery shopping and eating well on the cheap, www.frugalqueen.co.uk is good, and delivered in a bracing no-nonsense tone. Jack Monroe’s website www.agirlcalledjack.com has lots of recipes, with the occasional dollop of politics, and I’d definitely recommend her cookbook ‘A Girl Called Jack’. Even though not all recipes are vegetarian, it was still worth the money. Lots of recipes with cheap beans and pulses, and enough cakey, bready treats to satisfy the craving for something sweet in between the fruit & veg, pasta & rice.
For a very readable all-round ‘how can I be greener’ guide, which doesn’t assume you’ve got pots of money to throw around, try Anna Shepard’s ‘How green are my wellies?’ With chapters divided into months of the years, it’s good for food, cleaning and homemade beauty recipes. Plus ideas about keeping your home warm in the winter, acquiring a wormery, having clothes swaps and a December chapter on ‘stepping off the seasonal treadmill’. It’s easy to see how small changes can be cost effective as well as having environmental benefits.
BOOKS TO INSPIRE: CRAFTS IN GENERAL:
A good all-round craft book is ‘The Crafter Culture Handbook’ by Amy Spencer. It’s a nice, chunky A5 sized book with sections on sewing, electro crafts, homemade beauty, paper and print. There are lots of short interviews with crafters who sell online and plenty of ‘makes’. Whether you want to make a camisole top, a button necklace, a microphone or a fruity body scrub, you’ll find something of interest here.
‘Making Stuff – an alternative craft book’, published by Black Dog publishing, is a book I like, but with reservations. The print is tiny. I mean, tiny! Even with my reading glasses on I’m peering at it. That said, there’re some good projects featured. A change purse made out of charity shop ties (the funkier and wider that Seventies tie is, the better!), a pair of beady-eyed lizards and a retro style sausage dog shaped draught excluder. The origami fairy light shades defeated me, despite having written instructions plus diagrams, but there are plenty of child friendly things to do including kite and puppet making.
SHORT STORIES TO INSPIRE:
Too busy to read novels? Then maybe find 10 minutes in your day to read a fantastic short story. Here’s a selection to tempt you:
It’s such a shame that the writer Elizabeth Taylor’s name has to inevitably be followed by ‘no, not that Liz Taylor!’ If you’ve heard of the film star but not the author, then you’re in for a treat. Virago published ‘Dangerous Calm’, an anthology of her short stories, in 1995 and it’s still a stunner. Turn to ‘A Dedicated Man’ for a wonderful and oh-so-English little slice of life with its petty snobbishness and disappointments.
If you’re looking for a very English setting, try the wartime stories of MOLLIE PANTER-DOWNES. Published in a very tactile paperback by Persephone Books, with a cover painting by Evelyn Dunbar, this anthology contains 21 stories written between 1939 and 1944. They evoke that period, the uncertainty and shortages, the excitement or boredom. They’re like a black & white film on a Sunday afternoon, a world that seems as familiar as it appears distant.
The strange and peculiar stories of Judy Budnitz can unsettle you. They can be sly and sinister, and there are echoes of fairy stories (the European folk tale variety not the plastic Disney versions.) ‘Flying Leap’ and ‘Nice Big American Baby’ are two titles to look out for.
I’m not sure how easy this collection of stories is to find, but also worth a read is Mary O’Connell’s ‘Living with Saints’. Female saints such as Dyphna and Ursula feature in the lives of modern American girls. Sometimes magical, sometimes laugh out loud funny, at other times poignant, you don’t have to be Catholic, or even religious, to find these tales engaging.
Other writers you overlook at your peril are Daphne Du Maurier, Jean Rhys and the superb Alice Munro.