It was all about chairs this week at Ardingly – the best antiques fair it runs every other month – great also for cornish pasties, bumping in to the likes of Anthropologie, a favourite Retrouvious and Mc Cully Crane.

I came home with several Mrs Tiggywinkle pails, giant glass Victorian sweet jars, crates and 1920’s bovril cups…all packed in to Mabel alongside Antlers horns and wonky shelving. It’s on in two months….go, you must.

xxx

My fetish for Agatha now has me in custody for murdering our Mac. This could also be aherm, cat food, oasis dust or just plain chubby Murder She Wrote type writing movements. However, until O rocks up on a white horse to pay bail…there’ll be not much key thumping or blogging. Well maybe a little bit…can you bear it?

Until then here’s the picture…a week of Ardingly with some lovely boys and Mabel heaving with junk and ‘antiqua’ down country lanes. Sourcing swans for our pop up shop, feeding Tims dog hip bones ( tsk bloody tsk) – a clinking glass drinks party and autumn plans.

More soon

xxx

There aren’t many today except to say that I’m taking a lot of tea breaks and rejoicing that tulips are back on the scene.

Loving Irving Penn and can not wait to see this show next spring but can’t work out who fares better, frauleins or flowers?

Tonight I’m planning a dinner with fellow florists to talk cool finds and camelias – but can I keep it low rent? With roses and rhubarb, probably not.

And a weekend ahead of dog god mother duties, having lovely O at home, machiato’s, marketing machinations, mews and mother in laws.

xxx

My trotters are cold…Boat Iife. I think we must have forgotton just how nippy it was this time last year, or maybe it was because I worked an 11 hour day outside that entering any indoor space would feel like St Tropez…but jeeps, now it’s October it’s getting really cold on the boat. Goodbye chilled wine, hello hot brews.

No more dashing about in frocks and bare feet making feasts to eat outside, this is the time we have layering competitons, shovel naughtie comfort food, stock up on mittens, whack the heating on for quarter of an hour stints (it’s run on diesel) and put the electric blanket on a romantic pillowtalking ten mins before dodo.

For these occasions I own more pairs of velour pantaloons than a girl with a smidgen of fashion style should admit to. You see me walking the croisette now do you? The glamour has gone…and will not be returning to the boat until late march.

All may not be lost I tell myself as I pour in to another knitted affair and arrange my winter hyacinths. There is a garment that has not yet entered the fray. I bid a fashionista sigh as I introduce the lovely cozy looking union suit.

‘A close-fitting, knitted undergarment combining shirt and drawers in one piece and often having a drop seat.’ They even come with feet.

I’m ordering a winter version of these in red and will let you know how the Hudson Day romance pans out…surely better than playing hopskotch across an icerink every morning?

xx

There’s something funny about limping into a studio full of gorgeous people.

Apart from the frocks and faces…you are carrying in the other prettiest things.

Flowers for Burberry, with hot autumn columbian roses adorning looked rather fab.

Then there are the thank you’s, Mabel and Hermione. An all star cast.

xxx

It’s been a few days of flu, flowers for fashion and boat stuff. In the meantime, three things I heart today – there’s something very Grannie and Grandad and where’s my spacehopper about these, but don’t you just love polaroids?

xxx

Themes on the boat this week: A dash of dancing, and upholstery courses.

The flowery wallpaper dilemma and a request for a care sheet for a favourite flower
(peonies of course) from Sarah. I hope the below covers your pot ponderings.

We’ve also been doing a lot of snooping for furniture and bits and bobs – is it really too early for the Christmas present hunt? The owl and the pussycat say no.

Dear Sarah,

I had to look this up for as much as I love peonies mine have always been in the ground, in my hat or bobbing their heads through dutch buckets on Nine Elms Lane.

So…aparament, keyword is composting in to large pots with a loam based compost. Make sure it’s watered and give it liquid feed – replant if it’s getting too big between October and March. They also like to be propped up as their flower heads get heavy – a bit like sweetpea or bean frames!

Hope that’s helpful.

Tammy xx

Maybe it’s all those pumpkin seed bracelets my ma used to make me instead of buying me a pippa doll – or a week of bright orange child catchers nose shaped gourds getting to me, but I have a yen for a pair of orange juice jones shoes.

Spurred on by running in to my friend donning a pair in Sainsburys in (that neon – I bought satsumas) and an early morning trip to the flower market for the last of the orange dahlias I now, stand before you contemplating tangerine trotters.

Rather fun, but could we should we? Wonderings for a wednesday.

xxx

My day has mostly involved pumpkins, heavy ones, autumn hydrangeas, crispy ones and red red virginia creepers being twisted around swings. More on that fun soon.

Blackberries. We have a plethora of these buggers on the towpath and I’ve so far been stuck as what to do with them, apart from munch mid pick, twirl in to posies (too obvious but pretty hey?) and then do something fancy with them and Venison.

But really what could be sweeter than a cup of tea, creme fraiche, a raid of O’s Jazz and odd sock collection (orange, pink, and cozy please), and these?

It’s just one of those nights… Autumn fun xxx

We’re always cooking up feasts on the boat but generally it gets shovelled before we can either write down the recipe or take pictures. And that would be be a bad habit to get into anyway…this blog would never end.

Food photography really is a tricky one and I’ve yet to have seen it done as hip as this…and starring four of my favourite things.

xxx