I’m glad to say

that today has been a bit better than yesterday – although the weather has been worse.

We had an unexpected visit from Cheese Major – which is rare and always nice, but meant that nothing got done. I was going to finish off the purple book but I think it will have to wait until Friday now.

So no books or embroidery to show you – you will have to be content with this. That isn’t a grave stone in front of it, it is a concrete edging to what used to be the vegetable bed. When the snails got more of the veg than we did, I gave up growing veg!

No-one in the family likes rhubarb except me, so over the years several overt and covert attempts have been made to kill this plant, which was in the garden when we moved here. Cutting it down, digging it up, weed killer – you name it, my sons tried it.

The sons have moved on – but the rhubarb is still here, bigger than ever. Trouble is, it is not visible from the house and I forget about it until the rhubarb season is over.

Now my mind is running on rhubarb and ginger crumble …

Could you break a CD?

Me neither. But someone at ‘The People’s Post Office’* can.

Babybel’s mum and dad sent us a CD of Babybel. In a jiffy bag, which tends to suggest that the contents need a little TLC.

Someone seems to have folded the jiffy bag. And the CD. Possibly our postie when he put it in the letter box.

Monetary value of a home-burned CD that can be replaced? Pennies.

Emotional value? Enormous. It feels like they have hurt Babybel.

* Note to non-Brits – ‘The People’s Post Office’ is the ‘re-branding’ of what used to be called the Royal Mail. I’m no royalist but since the service was established by Charles 1 in 1635 [ah, the wonders of Wikipedia!] I see no need to bugger around with the name, even if you have buggered around with the service.

Of course my mood is not helped by the weather. This is today’s photo, from about the same place as this one, taken just a week ago. [I didn't lie on the grass to take this one – I'm not completely mad.]

Is it possible to have SAD in the summer as well as the winter?

After a brief flurry of excitement

before we got up, it has been a very boring day.

The excitement occurred when QC decided to try to get into our bedroom through a small fanlight window. [Bad people had closed the big window – we ought to know she likes to come in that way, then straight out of the door and downstairs to see if breakfast has appeared. She has a cat flap, which is much closer to the feeding bowl, but that would be too easy.]

She has looked longingly at the fanlight before, stretching up and mewing piteously, but has never tried to get through it. This morning she made a leap for it and discovered:

1. that it was too small for her to get through and
2. it opens upwards so she couldn't stand on the window frame. [I have mentioned before that she isn’t very bright.]

She ended up hanging by her front paws from the frame, back paws scrabbling at the window below. Then one paw. Then no paws. It looked like she was auditioning for Tom and Jerry. Unfortunately I don’t keep my camera in the bedroom, - although I might start because she is quite stupid enough to try it again.

It was actually scary at the time. Fortunately she landed safely on the window sill, and could only have fallen as far as the conservatory roof underneath – which is how she gets to the bedroom window.

So on to letter ‘E’ – an egg in English patchwork – by which I mean that it was done over papers. Yes, even the egg – which is probably the only bit that was easier done that way than machining it. Ah, the lengths I go to to fulfil my mission.

More bits and bobs

I spent the day doing bits of finishing off – like this

 

 

 

 

 

and this – with its inspiration.

 

 

 

 

I got the idea for the sewing from the booklet by Betsey Palmer Eldridge shown bottom left. Thanks to the Green Chair Press blog for the link to the Guild of Book Workers site where you can print off your own copy. Then you can probably do it better than I did!

I’ve also done a bit more arashi – yesterday I discharged the pieces I dyed earlier. And in one case I wish I  hadn’t bothered …  Can you guess which? The piece dyed with a mixture of Procion dyes gives much more subtle results than the one dyed with Dylon, – and the discharged blobs are too big. I prefer subtle.

Perhaps it needs overdyeing …

Today we reach the letter ‘D’, a drawn thread work dragonfly. Bit difficult to make a curved letter with a linear embroidery style, so please forgive the cheating!

What I found in my scrap box

Number One

I realise that I never showed you this while It was a work in progress – not sure why! 

Under all those stitches are a couple of experiments. I stamped paper with masking fluid [yuck] and then painted the paper with transfer paints. When it was dry I rubbed off the masking fluid and transferred the colour to needlepoint canvas – as suggested by Jill Carter in her book ‘New Canvas Work’. It shouldn't work because the canvas is cotton – but it does, perhaps because of the dressing on the canvas.

I made a second transfer onto some mauve-with-silver-bits sizoflor. And then I forgot about it, until my last tidy-up, when I decided to sort–of-Bargello it, with the sizoflor layered on top of the canvas. I’m rather pleased with it, especially as it also used up several skeins of embroidery floss, which I rarely use. [So why have I got so much?].

And it’s purple.

Guess what? It’s going to be a book cover.

Number Two

And so is this. This was made for a challenge on a new group I joined, ‘Dye-Art-Group’. The topic was ‘New Beginnings’.

After I took the photo of the daisies I showed you a few days ago I began to think about the way they keep coming back no matter how often we mow the bit of chalk downland we call a lawn – which seemed appropriate for the challenge. The background is a piece I made years ago, experimenting with layered fabric, Xpandaprint and acrylic paint, which ended up in the scrap box because it was so bright.

I stamped it with my little flower-shaped eraser and  added some French knots, using some hand */999 –[additional input from Quality Control walking over the keyboard] as I was saying, using some hand-dyed thread that was supposed to be variegated but ended up lemon yellow with very occasional spots of orange.

It is now  waiting to have some pages added.

I feel very economical.

Today's alphabet photo is C for canvas work – and assistant typists.

Canvas work was my first love in embroidery but I rarely do it any more – somehow it feels too easy, which is a stupid way to think. Especially as I inherited the stashes of two other needle pointers and bought what looks like most of  a bolt of canvas in a charity shop for £5. Got to love charity shops.

P.S.

I just saw that the great Sharon Boggon has included me in her list of blogs.

Fame at last!

Thank you Sharon!

I live such an exciting life

that nothing worth telling you about happened today. Well – I have finished the quilt for ‘Art Quilts Around the World’ but I can’t reveal that till the end of the month.

And I didn’t take any exciting photos – or indeed any photos at all.

So here is the second letter of the embroidered alphabet. 

A blackwork B(ee). One of my favourites.

Let’s hope things get a bit more interesting tomorrow.