St John the Baptist, Felixstowe, Suffolk St John the Baptist, East Anglia's finest 19th century church, demonstrating Felixstowe's unlikely and infamous kink in the Earth's curvature. With one consuming roar along the shingle The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down To where its backwash and the next wave mingle, A mounting arch of water weedy-brown Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow. Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe. In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller Than those of summer, all their cold unload Full on the gimcrack attic of the villa Where I am lodging off the Orwell Road, I put my final shilling in the meter And only make my loneliness completer. In eighteen ninety-four when we were founded, Counting our Reverend Mother we were six, How full of hope we were and prayer-surrounded "The Little Sisters of the Hanging Pyx". We built our orphanage. We built our school. Now only I am left to keep the rule. Here in the gardens of the Spa Pavillion Warm in the whisper of the summer sea, The cushioned scabious, a deep vermillion, With white pins stuck in it, looks up at me A sun-lit kingdom touched by butterflies And so my memory of the winter dies. Across the grass the poplar shades grow longer And louder clang the waves along the coast. The band packs up. The evening breeze is stronger And all the world goes home to tea and toast. I hurry past a cakeshop's tempting scones Bound for the red brick twilight of St.John's. "Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising" Here where the white light burns with steady glow Safe from the vain world's silly sympathising, Safe with the love I was born to know, Safe from the surging of the lonely sea My heart finds rest, my heart finds rest in Thee. John Betjeman - Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order Much as we go to Long Melford to find out about the 15th century, so future historians will come to St John the Baptist to chart the course of the century just ended. For this church is the definitive statement in Suffolk of the liturgy and practice of 20th century High Church Anglicanism. Neither as eclectic as Spooner's Ipswich St Bartholomew, or as provincial as Phipson's Ipswich St Mary le Tower, this mighty church, the last work of the great Sir Arthur Blomfield, is the nearest thing Suffolk has to the grand and uncompromising High Church temples of west London. It has an unparalleled collection of 20th century stained glass; the best of this consists of a range of saints, spanning the century, from St Etheldreda in her high Victorian camp, to the modern Sts Hilda and Bede, both illustrative of the current Celtic revival in Anglican spirituality. Also worthy of note among them are the Arts and Crafts influenced James, Peter and John, the Lady Chapel glass east window of the Suffolk triumverate of Edmund, Felix and Fursey, and, as recently as 1982, St Thomas More, who exists elsewhere in a Suffolk Anglican Church at the extremis of Kettlebaston. Father James Mather informs me that More is at last recognised in the Anglican calendar in the new Common Worship lectionary, but this was not the case in 1982. As the foundations of Anglicanism were bought at the cost of More's life, it is bold indeed that this window commemorates More's martyrdom. Much of the glass is by Powell and co., and forms a document of that studio's work as well. But I am getting ahead of myself. Felixstowe is the nearest thing Suffolk has got to a traditional seaside town, albeit not as brash as Walton-on-the-Naze and Clacton across the river in Essex, or Yarmouth over the Norfolk border. The town separates naturally into a number of areas, each with its own main churches: Felixstowe Ferry, Old Felixstowe, Felixstowe Town, Felixstowe West End, and Felixstowe Docks. Suburbs include the medieval parishes (and medieval churches) of Walton and the two Trimleys, but only Old Felixstowe has a medieval parish church in the town itself. As the town expanded westwards at the turn of the century, the West End grew as an area of substantial red-brick town houses, some of them hotels and guesthouses, some sanitoriums, but the whole piece grander than anything else in urban Suffolk outside of Southwold or the Christchurch Park area of Ipswich. Nestled into this very comfortable area, St John the Baptist on Orwell Road is a beacon, the town's tallest building, a landmark from land and sea alike. It was also the only Suffolk church enshrined in verse by John Betjeman, in his poem Felixstowe, or the last of her order; not surprisingly, since it would be quite at home among the London churches he loved. Edwardian Felixstowe lost its holiday industry long ago. It is now but the favourite destination for daytrippers from Ipswich, the urban sprawl of which lies a bare six miles from the edge of Felixstowe's. But this area still has a holiday town atmosphere. There is a steep descent down the wonderfully named Convales

I’m so excited to present this series of semi-solid colourways for the SweetGeorgia sock yarns as a dye-to-order series. Available in the Superwash Sock or the slightly thicker, Superwash Sport, we’ll be dyeing as many skeins of these colours as you like. Over time, I’m looking to expand the series and also add back our more variegated colourways. I know that knitters want what they want when they want it, so I’m hoping to provide this option to many of you. From left to right: China Doll, Raspberry, Pistachio, Saffron, Tourmaline, Orchid, Boysenberry.