My Embroidered Holiday Diary

My holiday diary, my drawing with stitches, is back from the framers! I have no idea where we'll hang it, but I'm happy just to have it propped on the mantelpiece and enjoy looking at it for now. 

I thought I'd show you how the project started, and then how it took shape over the holiday. It began when, having seen Jennie Maizels' holiday diary on Instagram, I thought I'd like to try one of my own, but I'd draw with thread rather than pens or pencils. It was all very last minute and spontaneous, and I didn't plan it much beyond selecting a piece of good quality white linen and working out that I'd want to draw an image per day, so seven in total. After sketching the text, I drew around a glass seven times to give me areas in which I'd put my pictures, mainly so that it wasn't all wonky.

This is a really terrible photo, I am sorry. I took it on my phone as my big camera must've been packed. 

So, armed with my piece of fabric and bag of embroidery threads, I was ready to start. I never knew what I was going to sew until the end of each day and in the evening I'd choose my image and draw it freehand onto the piece of white fabric with a fading ink pen*. It took shape slowly throughout the week. I've put together some collages below, showing the original inspiration in a photo, then the snap I took during week of the work in progress, and the final image on the right is the finished work.

Day 1: Our holiday home, rented for the week. It had such a symmetrical, pleasing shape, like a child's drawing of what a house should look like. Ok, my version is a little off, but I know what it represents and that's the main thing.

Day 2: Our day in St Ives (and a browse around the Poppy Treffry shop) inspired this fishing boat.

Day 3: A cream tea at Kynance Cove. I was relieved to note afterwards that I had drawn my cream tea the "right" way, ie the Cornish way, with jam first and cream second. In Devon it's the other way round, I believe. The tea didn't come in Cornishware mugs, sadly, but I felt there was room for some of that classic crockery in my picture.

Day 4: Godrevy Lighthouse.  How I loved doing all those little French knots for the grass, rocks and sea. They made me very happy.

Day 5: That really cheeky, tame seagull which stalked our fish and chips on the beach at Marazion. That was the only image I didn't draw free hand - I sketched it onto paper first then traced it. I'm not very good at animals or birds.

Day 6: A sandcastle, to represent our happy times at Gwithian beach. The little Cornish flag on top was an extra detail of mine. It seemed appropriate. The cross stiched flag could be neater, but that is my own fault for doing it in electric light, rather than waiting until the next day. I find I have no problem embroidering in electric light unless it's cross stitch and for that, I need daylight or I make mistakes.

 Day 7: An ice cream, eaten at Penzance on our last day. Honestly, we ate ice creams every day, some from tubs and some from cones. Salted caramel quickly became my favourite flavour but they were all very, very good indeed.

I finished it shortly after we came home. It was so hard to find the time to complete it once we were back to normality, and this was definitely a holiday project. Here it is before and after it saw the iron:

I ironed it very, very gently, so as not to flatten the stitches. You can still see some of the fading pen here. I opted to have it framed without the glass front. This is purely personal preference on my part, but I always think the reflections on the glass get in the way and I like the way you can see and touch the texture of the stitches. Like the satin stitch on the cream tea...

and the French knots around the light house.

I had in the back of my mind throughout this project the memory of these tea towels my Grandma used to collect and bring back from her holidays. They used to say things like "Wild Flowers of Jersey" or "Birds of Great Britain", that sort of thing. Informative and useful. Some would have a recipe for something like a scone on them. Something about my holiday project reminds me of the vintage design of those tea towels.

I'm really happy with how it turned out. No, I'm delighted. Every time I look at it I remember a different day, a different part of our holiday. It's nice, during this cold, wet, abrupt end to summer, to remember sun kissed afternoons on the beach and how deep-down happy the sound of seagulls makes me.

*****

*I used one similar to this. You can also buy pens which fade when ironed, but I don't like ironing too much on the embroidered parts of fabric in case it flattens the stitches.

Cornwall, Part 2

Some more holiday highlights, this time from the second half of our stay in West Cornwall, for your delectation.

Our fourth day was spent at St Michael's Mount and Marazion. The Mount looked splendid and mysterious all at once, perched on it's rock.

We enjoyed a brief (but still terribly exciting to the children) boat trip to the mount.

On arrival, Angus asked, "Is it from the olden days?"

We teased John mercilessly that he'd dressed like a Boden catalogue model. It was the deck shoes that did it, I think.

We finally persuaded him to strike a pose.

We left the mount at low tide and watched the long line of people snaking across the causeway.

Lunch was fish and chips on the beach, eaten with our fingers. Some "friendly" seagulls entertained us, getting nearer and nearer, until being shooed away. I spent ages trying to get a photo of one in flight. Later that afternoon we sampled some of the locally made Moomaid ice cream. It was all one delicious, sunny, beautiful day, that one.

We spent the final two days of our holiday exploring local towns in the morning then heading down to our nearest beach at Gwithian in the afternoon, a perfect way to round off each day. I could easily have spent another week in this fashion; wandering around like a tourist in the morning, playing on the beach later in the day.

On one particular day (I think it was Wednesday, our fifth day) the sun had well and truly disappeared by the time we got down to the beach. The sky was purplish and gloomy but, being British, we made the best of it. 

It was still warm and we were on holiday, after all, in a stunning spot with views of Godrevy lighthouse. Slightly bleak, forbidding views, but still. I love lighthouses.

We built sand castles...

and paddled...

and paddled some more. Yes, my tan lines are ridiculous. But I like to think they are the sign of a summer well spent.

I swam in the sea, the first time I'd done it in years. I'd forgotten how gloriously exhilarating jumping around in the surf could be. Then, without me really noticing at first, the bank of clouds started to roll back from the horizon.

And by the time we'd packed up our beach things, at about 6 pm, it had turned into the most beautiful, sparkling, luminous summer's evening. You could see the sunlight reflecting off windows in the distance.

Our view of the lighthouse was welcoming and friendly now,

and the beach was laid out before us, showing off in the sun.

One last photo from the car park before we headed home to put the children to bed and open ice cold bottles of beer. All that paddling worked up a thirst.

Cornwall, Part 1

I would really like to share some of my favourite moments from our recent week in West Cornwall.  For us, holidays like this come once a year and are special - much anticipated before and savoured afterwards. I'll limit myself to two posts, with three days in each, and apologise now for the number of photos. In my defence it really is the most stunning corner of our country, wild and remote but buzzing with people and culture at the same time.

*****

Saturday: St Ives

The view as we walked from the station (we'd chosen to use the park and ride as parking is a nightmare) down into St Ives. It was an overcast, warm, hazy sort of day. You could tell it was going to be hot later.

Our visit to Tate St Ives, which happily coincided with a rain shower and made us feel smug about our (accidental) good timing. It's an excellent gallery, incredibly child friendly and small enough for us to feel we'd seen it properly without spending too long inside. 

A very nice lunch in the gallery cafe (a delicious crab salad open sandwich for me) and drinking beer at lunchtime which is allowed when you're on holiday.

Emerging from the gallery into bright sunshine and views of English summertime.

The way the palm trees and white sand made me feel as though we were really, properly, On Holiday.

Good shopping and massive, aggressive seagulls. I was constantly going back and forth between thinking how much I love the sound of seagulls, and how they are really a bloody menace.

*****

Sunday: Kynance Cove

I absolutely loved this information sign at the start of the path down to the beach, carved from wood. It was wonderfully warm and tactile, and was clearly designed to be touched as well as read.

The walk from the car park down to the beach. You can see the cafe there, nestled into the rock. Views everywhere you look.

We were glad we arrived at the cove so early, when it was relatively quiet because, by midday, you could not move. There was barely room to put down a towel or groundsheet. Kynance is certainly not a local secret anymore, but it's no less beautiful for that.

Watching these two chase the waves. Not quite brave enough to swim in the cold surf, they were instead content to spend most of the day running back and forth between shallows and shore, splashing and shrieking. 

*****

Monday: Godrevy Lighthouse and Trevaskis Farm

The wildness of the coastline here - just incredibly, bleakly beautiful, even on a grey day.

I love a lighthouse. There's just something about them.

 Rocks and pools and excellent rock pooling.

Angus insisting that he would wear socks with his Crocs, even though we were clearly on a beach. Strange, stubborn boy. Watching the kids enjoy being on the beach doing the exact same things that I did when I was a child.

Watching these two wade out into the water when is was frankly pretty nippy. Mad or brave, I'm not sure. Then making it back to the car just as the heavens opened and it absolutely poured with rain. We were again smug about our (accidental) good timing.

Lunch and a sunny afternoon at a really nice local farm. I was reminded again at how simple children's needs often are. After a morning spent peering in rock pools and drawing in the sand, they were content to spend the afternoon looking at animals. And I admired the sweet peas.

We picked strawberries that grew from those waist-high planters, a first for us.

Our local strawberry PYO is a squat in the field kind of get up, nothing like this. I think I'd rather be out in the open air than in a polytunnel though. 

They were very nice strawberries though. We had Eton Mess for pudding that night, and quite a few went in the Pimms.