Beach Hares

Bless this weather! I took some sewing to do on the beach after the school run this morning - here is a new 'Pocho' Provence lavender hare under construction. The tiny hares are popular just now and I'm busy restocking the Etsy shop and making extra bunnies for the weekend markets, so that nests around the King Edward's Bay area must be stuffed with little scraps and threads of Nani Iro cotton.

The Bay is peaceful early mornings: a few swimmers, sometimes a treasure-hunter with a metal detector, and this morning a fishing boat close to the shore:

It's almost high tide, very still, and the only surfer in sight yet is a child's blue inflatable ring:

Sea Lavender, Mist

Mist and cloud have descended this a.m. and there's an excuse to desert the beach and make preparations for the Fish Quay Fair, North Shields, this weekend.

I haven't found sea lavender (also known as sea rosemary) growing on this part of the coast, so have decided to grow some from seed for the garden. The beautiful white sea lavender above is from the Yorkshire coast.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/156132441/sea-lavender-botanical-glass-bottle

Heritage Skills at Tynemouth Station

We had a wonderful time at this year's Heritage Skills Festival - new this year were these wonderful coracles:

We also enjoyed meeting again some of last year's exhibitors, trying green woodworking, raku glazing and stone masonry,  as well as learning more about ancient pottery and boat-building techniques, and took away a hand-carved gypsy rose, our own raku fairy door, and a sun plaque to shine on the Sea Witch garden:

Today as I passed by the station again I saw this:

- a peony skillfully self-seeded onto the rubble left from the station refurbishments.

Zam Pollum, Brambles, Bees, Rock Roses...

An afternoon spent in the glorious fragrance of honeycomb, rolling up a fresh batch of 'Zam Pollum' candles (Zam Pollum is the bee queen in Leonora Carrington's novel, 'The Hearing Trumpet'). I make the candles with wax from a supplier in Lincolnshire, whose sales support the charity Bees For Development. More on their work here:

http://www.beesfordevelopment.org

We had a hot, sunny morning here and I walked around the Haven to the Market Garden on Oxford Street, the air busy with swallows, brambles beginning to flower under the goat willow:

I picked some alexanders on the way (buttercups and alexanders were so abundant this year we called it a 'yellow spring', cold as it was) for an experimental soup:

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Then a flower from the market garden, which I didn't realise was the Rock Rose of the Bach Flower Remedies ('Rock Rose became full of terror' Dr Edward Bach, 1934), or a pinkier helianthemum cousin:

It's living under the Buddha Tree by my front door now.

African Queen - A Storm At Sea

https://www.etsy.com/listing/154808330/african-queen-chalk-turquoise-and-wood

Stormy weather on the weekend of the Super Moon, waves beaten back by rain. I've been busy making earrings, including these 'African Queen' chalk turquoise drops, made from the same recycled African beads as the 'African Queen Bracelet' which was so popular last year:

Lily Pearl Earrings

Summer is here - the lifeguards are back on the beaches and today I saw the first wild roses (sheltering behind the supermarket, the cliff-top ones will take a little longer).

To celebrate, here are some pearl and silver earrings, going to the Sea Witch Folksy Shop.

(Also seen: Star of Bethlehem, Pyrenean Lily, Chives, Fritillary.)

http://folksy.com/items/4387785-Lily-Pearl-Earrings

Doves, Rivermouth, Wishes

Collared doves coo-ing in the excellent acoustic of the ironwork under the glass roof of Tynemouth Station this a.m.:

They're relative newcomers from Asia, the first breeding pair in the UK spotted in the 1950's, now very common in towns and gardens, and often to be found sunning themselves under the station roof. Village-next-door Cullercoats is thought to derive its name from their native cousins, the Old English 'culver', kept in 'cotes': little houses for animals or birds. In 1908 the Dove Marine Laboratory on Cullercoats Bay was so named for Eleanor Dove, ancestor of geologist Wilfred Hudleston who financed the construction of the new building after the 19th century original was burned down.

In a mysterious box waiting for me at the Post Office, a glass fishing float marked with the kanji for 'rivermouth', from Hokkaido, Japan, via Alaska.

Wishing bottles and lockets, filled with tiny bits of sea glass found at Prior's Haven. Some of these pieces of glass are so small they're almost sand again.