Spring blooms: bold colours for a grey spring day

Winter-flowering pansies, still going strong in spring

Red tulip

Daffodil

Another lovely tulip variety

Hyacinth

Silent Sunday - Ark teapot only 50p from charity shop

Silent Sunday - handmade with recycled fabric

Silent Sunday - Cambridge blues

Happy New Year

Belated greetings of Happy New Year! I have been busy doing my day job as digital copywriter so my blogs have suffered a bit of neglect.

My quest for beautiful and useful things has not been put on hold, though. I have bought lots of lovely items, especially during the sales. Here are two: one is beautiful, the other is useful...

Microwave egg cooker: 99p from Oxfam (brand new)

Beautiful marbles, luxurious nostalgia for a tiny price

Snowman collage card

Snowman collage card by Michela, aged 3

This card was made by my little girl all by herself at a local crafty/arty workshop. The only help she got was with the glue gun. Happy Xmas everybody!

Beautiful and useful

Wooden book handmade in Switzerland, inside pic

Wooden book handmade in Switzerland, closed. It was bought for less than £1 at charity bazaar

William Morris once said: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. I got to know William Morris better while working for a period home magazine back in the 1990s. Before that epiphany it was just a name in contemporary social and art history, decades after the Impressionists, which were my favourites. Finding out about Morris also coincided with my switch from Impressionism to the Pre-Raphaelite movement. I still love the Pre-Raphaelite artists and really relished the costume drama Desperate Romantics (and various books about them). 

I had the good fortune to live opposite the William Morris Gallery for a few years and was a Friend and regular visitor - until I moved out of London. Aside the beautiful tiles, furniture, books and textiles, there is Pre-Raphaelite artwork in the upstairs gallery.

Slippers made of wool with extractable insole/support. Bought from a shoe shop in Cambridge for £13 (during sales)

But back to the mundane... This is a pair of beautiful and useful slippers, more functional than the wooden book but not less attractive....