AT EASTER TIME:

I like Easter.  I like that it doesn't seem so over-wrought and over-hyped as Christmas.  I like Easter egg hunts.  I like that it is four whole days off and I even like that there is a sombre day and a happy day, with an ordinary day in between.  I loved Easter hymns as a child for some reason and, as a crafty mother got very excited about Easter Bonnet Parades!  

Like Christmas, Easter is a time of rich symbolism - much of it dating back to pre-Christian festivals, but today overlaid with rampant commercialism. The main symbols are of eggs and bunnies. Eggs have always been a fertility symbol, and as the earth - in the Northern Hemisphere at least - springs back to life at this time of year, its not hard to understand why eggs were given as gifts - often coloured and decorated - and now, of course, made of chocolate. Rabbits - or strictly speaking, hares - seem to date back to16th Century Lutheran Germany with stories that depicted hares bringing baskets of coloured eggs to good children. Its not absolutely clear why, except that, as the winter recedes and rabbits start to breed (prolifically) they are another obvious symbol of re-birth and spring.

Where there is a symbol, there is also a rich collection of fabric prints - and so, leaving aside the sickly sweet, here is my Easter selection:

Barneby Gates have morphed mad Boxing Hares - here in gold on natural linen - into a florentine trellis.

Gabi Bolton, of Original Little Bird, manages to avoid the sweet and sickly by giving her fabrics a quirky faded vintage feel.  This one is called Bunny Scrapbook.  

Thornback and Peel make large scale and detailed prints on linen.  This one is called Rabbit and Cabbage and takes me straight back to Mr MacGregor's garden.  Here's a close-up:

Peony and Sage make this hand-drawn print called Mr Hare on Flax with Red Dots (I love how specific that name is!)

Peony and Sage also make this pretty print called Feather and Egg.  

Here's another Feather and Egg print - this time from Vanessa Arbuthnott - printed in duckegg and denim on linen.  

HAVE A HAPPY EASTER!

12 MAKES OF CHRISTMAS NO.5

THE COOKER ROLLER TOWEL

I have to say I like this idea: no more flapping about with wet hands looking for a tea towel. This linen hand towel is buttoned into place on your oven door, never to slide off onto the floor, or be distractedly mis-placed around a busy kitchen.

I used a linen print from the wonderful and witty Thornback & Peel - sardine tins screenprinted into a rhythmic design that inspires culinary endeavour.

Cut a strip of fabric the width of your oven handle.  Finish the sides with a narrow machine-stitched hem.  Add some popper tape at each end and popper in place (popper tape is surprisingly expensive - I happened to have a small strip leftover from another job - but you could just as easily use velcro or even buttons).

The perfect present for a keen cook!

FISHY BUSINESS

Earlier this summer, I found myself briefly washed ashore a sultry coral island with powder white sand and limpid blue water.  To entertain myself all day long, all I had to do was dip my head below the sea's surface to slip effortlessly into another underwater universe alive with vivid tropical fish, darting and rippling, all different, all a thousand electric hues.   

Home again on another, more concrete, side of the world, I think about that watery underworld a lot.  And in commemoration of my brief swim with the fishes, I've searched for some fishy fabrics which I present below:

Lewis and Wood's unique underwater toile is called Lamorna Cove, after a beautiful hidden part of Cornwall.  I love this diver's eye view of fish, crabs, seals and seaweed.

Designer, Alice Thompson's Imperial Goldfish from Mitas and Co

captures the undulating motion of fish perfectly - 

Thornback and Peel's Goldfish and Coral on ivory linen has sadly been discontinued...

But their witty Sardine Tins belongs to a new design category I like to think of as Abstract Realism!

Scion's lino cut fish print Samaki in Ink is just pleasingly simple.