Post 531Bags, Books, Birds and Braid

 

This little honeyeater has been zooming in and out of my balcony all week, attracted, it seems, mainly to the pink flowers. It spends a few seconds gathering (I assume) nectar, checks out a couple of other pots, before flying off.  I have no proof it is the same bird, but that's my working hypothesis.

There has also been a flock of white ibis feeding in the Square each day. I know they are colloquially known as bin chickens, but they have been nowhere near the bins and seem to be finding what they need in the grass.

 

WES Group on Wednesday was fabulous. Janet, who is a weaver more than an embroiderer, talked to us about Japanese braiding, backed up by an astonishing selection from her private collection of kimono, obis, silk panels and bolts as well as braids. She even brought along a marudai and demonstrated.

The box of braids on the right are some Janet has made herself.

There was a buzz in the room as people examined, commented, questioned - and tried braiding using threaded Kumihimo disks Janet had brought along, already  up. I was pleased to  grab lunch and debrief with a friend afterwards - I was on such a high. 

Back at home I had a parcel bonanza . The bags I had had printed as an experiment, using photos of the embroidered version, were waiting at the Post Office. I was delighted with them.  They are robust and clear. Interestingly, the photograph prints differently on the back and front (the white photo background is retained on the right, but not on the left). I prefer the left, but, hey, I'm not complaining. It was good enough for me to go ahead and order some for my Early Women of Books bag. I've written the project up in my embroidery blog. A second parcel is part of a gift for a friend, so remains a secret for the moment.

The third was from Shetland, a book and a Knotted Basket Kit. The book was the prompt for the order, but I couldn't resist the kit when it didn't add to the postage. I think tackling it  requires a friend and a pot of coffee! 

The bonanza continued on Thursday and Friday.  Thursday brought another book in the Early Books theme. Not to everyone's taste, I admit, but when you're on a good thing....

Friday, however, was the most exciting. The pants I had ordered as part of my ArteOtomi binge arrived. I knew when I ordered them, that I would need to alter them. They are wrap-around and I was expecting to have to let out the waist by moving buttons. I tried them on as soon as they arrived. The design is interesting, The front and back are separated above the legs. The back wraps around at the waist with long strap extensions that button in the front. The front has very long straps which wrap around the back, returning to tie in the front. To my surprise I had to move the buttons to tighten, not loosen, the waist. I could do with a bit more length from waist to crutch, but it isn't uncomfortable.

The other adjustment was leg length. I made a 7cm tuck above the embroidery - leaving the fold on the inside. I think one leg is marginally longer (or I'm lopsided!) but I'm not going to redo it. They are surprisingly comfortable, and they have pockets! However, for visiting the bathroom, I’ll take jeans any day!

Saturday zipped past catching up on some overdue proofreading for my brother. Sunday morning was Book Club in a Norwood cafe. We have been looking for a new cafe to meet in since our original one was consumed in a major redevelopment. While parking on Sunday was good,  noise levels weren’t, largely thanks to hoons in cars, so we’re back to meeting in homes. We still had a great discussion and sharing of books. I'm glad I read No 4 in the Jack Hawkesworth series, rather than No 5 which was set. Crime in reproductive medicine interests me more than crime in sport!

On Sunday evening Katherine was made a lay canon of the cathedral in a fairly simple service. Wow! I’m very proud of the title mother-of-the-canon bestowed on me by one of her local parishioners on the way into the cathedral! 

Anglican Canons are appointed to a cathedral, part of the Cathedral Chapter consisting of clergy and lay people appointed from the Cathedral and across the Diocese to foster the work of the Cathedral in its mission as the mother church of the Diocese, to provide advice to the Bishop and Dean in regard to the mission of the cathedral in the City of Adelaide, and the Province, and the State of South Australia; and to encourage support for the maintenance of the fabric of the Cathedral.

Niamh is now in Indonesia on a school trip. I do hope she is enjoying the experience, practising her Bahasa and having fun.  There was no Monday dinner at my place this week given school holidays. Veronica and I are headed up to Aptos Cruz later in the week for an adventure, but in the meantime she is studying and working.  I’ve made a huge pot of soup to keep me going.

I spent much of Monday finishing the latest Amanda Hampson, which began, I thought, slowly, but finished really well. Set in Sydney in 1965, this transported me back to the world of my adolescence.  My mother worked at the Qantas staff canteen at Mascot airport, which was eventually closed in favour of outsourced catering. I knew these women.

I'm now back to reading The Bone Chests.

I have finally finished the first 80 rows of the cardigan I am knitting and now begin repeating them. On the measurements, another 40 rows should take me to the sleeve decrease, so I am on it.

I've also cut some linen printed with flannel flowers to make two more tote bags.  I have a metre of each fabric, from Ink and Spindle. Each metre will make 4 tote bags with plain linen sides, base and lining.     

The linen is beautiful in its own right, so I’m not planning to colour it in with thread, just embroider the centres of the flowers to add texture.I wasn’t aware that one flannel flower variety has a pink tinge and pink centres. 

 They are one of my favourite flowers, but I’ve only ever seen the conventional white with green centres. I thought the pink would work well on the cinnamon colourway. I think I was right. 

I reckon it only needs one embroidered centre on each side of the cinnamon coloured bag.

Today on the way to Aquafit, I  dashed to Dymocks bookshop, a few blocks out of my way, to buy a copy of the first in a series I read about in The Guardian yesterday. The second and third are about to be released so I thought I’d test out No.1. I got the only copy in the shop and made it to AquaFit in time. Back home and showered, I sat on the back balcony with soup and began reading. The doves were idly curious, but not interested in the narrative, which, so far, is engrossing. I am at page 120 and the murder has now happened. When I post this I will keep reading.

It is the time of year when it's pleasant sitting in the sun, following it from the back to the front of the apartment. While I check the plants, they don't need the intense watering of a month or two ago. Electricity bills are down too. 

I got news today that my GP of some 20 years is retiring. As a result, the practice is merging with another and a 2009 medical graduate is taking over her patients. I like my GP, but she has the right to retire and the merger sounds positive. I'll know more after my next appointment in May.

Change is unsettling. I'll stick to my stitching and reading while observing the birds.

Post 530 Birds, bags, blooms and bedclothes.

On Wednesday I made a dash up to Stirling to Aptos Cruz. I had it in my head to buy a touch screen clock for Fionn’s birthday and I had decided to buy some water glasses for myself, to match the Champagne flutes I bought last month. (my best crystal water glasses did not respond well to being in the .dishwasher many years ago. While I still use the three that are left, they are cloudy.) I got both the clock and water glasses (and some wine glasses while I was about it).

Aptos Cruz is in an old church, and from the carpark I noticed a pair of Adelaide Rosellas, high on the building. I’ve not seen a pair before. They were not together but both, I imagine, within sight of their nest.

I watched until they flew away and was able to take quite a few photos from inside my car, some with the window down and some through the windscreen. The female is, of course, the one with muted colour.

The new Amanda Hampson, a sequel to The Tea Ladies  was released on Thursday. I ordered a copy online from BigW at the Brickworks, hoping it would be ready to pick up on my way home from Pilates but the notice came close to closing time, so I picked it up on Friday morning and did my big supermarket shop while I was there, before heading of the The White Picket  for lunch with Lorraine. The little Dulwich shopping area was abuzz. We had a good lunch and sat for a couple of hours catching up and reflecting. 

It is this time of year that Adelaide comes into its own. It is sunny without being too hot. Leaves are beginning to fall, but there are a lot of blooms and verdancy. Things still need watering, but not twice a day as they did even last week. 

Saturday was the end of daylight saving. Turning my clocks back was easier than I anticipated, in spite of the fact that the synchronise function worked on none of them (I suspect too many changes in connectors since the clocks were made). 

As it has been cooler this week, I decided to change over my quilt. Then, inspired by Fionn’s birthday present from his parents - a new bed and bed linens  - I decided to change all my bed linen from the mattress cover upwards. I can’t turn the mattress myself, nor remove the valance, but everything else came off. When I got to the linen cupboard to find replacements, I decided it was time for a sort-out. All the bed linen came out. After putting on a load of washing, putting some pillow covers in to soak and a much needed cup of coffee, I sorted the linen. 

Remembering a tip from my friend Pat years ago, I placed sets of bed linen in bags or pillowcases and labelled them. I now have three “Queen bed set”s,  one ‘king bed sheets for spare room’ and one ‘double bed top sheet’ (don’t have a double bed, so should I keep this? Probably not.) 

I found a lost king-single bottom sheet, which went to the spare room, a pretty much unused child's beach towel, set aside for charity shop. One sheet, with a note pinned on it in my handwriting " Queen sheet with 41cm removed" (I'm guessing it ripped and I cut and redeemed it, but I have only a vague memory. It is now in my stash of backing fabric). One set, bottom beige linen, top white cotton, went on the bed after the clean protectors, with the winter quilt on top. 

The linen cupboard is looking good. I admit I returned 20 or so pillowcases unexamined. 

I did two loads of washing in the afternoon, but left the pillow protectors to soak overnight, washing them the next day, along with one pillow. The pillow came out of the wash in fine shape, but with some strange brown goopy marks on the case. Foolishly, I put it back in the washing machine on the quick cycle. The result (including a few more of the brown goopy marks) went on the line, in hapless shape, dripping everywhere and has now, unfortunately, been consigned to landfill.

A more careful examination of my washing machine, revealed the brown goop around the door seal. Oh dear. How long since I cleaned my washing machine? Too long, it seems. I have now scrubbed the door seal and run the cleaning cycle. 

Is Autumn Cleaning a thing, or have I just invented it?

In between laundry drama, I have been working solidly on my Early Women of Books project. I've been switching between reading about the women, creating a summary to turn into a booklet, and stitching their names onto the bag fabric. My Quaker stitch is coming along a treat.

After the dentist this morning, cleaning this afternoon and another false fire alarm, I finished the bag late this evening and the booklet about 5 minutes ago! It will take me a few hours to write it up in my embroidery blog and publish the booklet. 

I apologise for all the jobs I have neglected while working on this over the  last few days. I have been obsessed. The trial bags printed using photos  are now on their way to me, so I should have the verdict by next week. To my astonishment, the bags were printed in China. I’ve ordered over 20 items from this company, all printed in Victoria. I think there should have been some explanation for sending this one off-shore. I’m very interested to see the result. Meanwhile, here is one side of the finished bag of Early Women of Books.

Tomorrow is WES Group so I had better get organised. There's also the Amanda Hampson to read.

Post 529 Largely Easter Largess

I've been fortunate to have great company & three meals provided by my Adelaide family over Easter, hot cross buns on Friday, dinner on Saturday & lunch on Monday. Largess, brilliantly cooked by other people.

As always, my minor contribution to our Easter Day feast was a version of the chocolate crackle nests my mother always made. This year the eggs were supplied by Veronica, from the Lolly Shop where she works. My search through several supermarkets, and Haigh’s chocolates were unsuccessful. After Veronica supplied them I did discover a Darrell Lea version. There’s nothing healthy about these. They do, however, hold precious memories.

I was also fortunate enough to be given a scarlet begonia as an Easter present. It is now bringing joy to my living room.

The weather reverted to hot again this week, so watering was a constant task. I took another trip to Bunnings on Thursday and came home with a couple of grevillea in tubes, some hyacinths and a large Dianella to fill a large empty pot.

The hyacinths were barely open but provided a glorious display in the heat. 

They don’t last long, but have new buds emerging, so I’m enjoying the sight and smell.  

Both colours have green tips.

I tackled the Dianella on Sunday morning - a messy job emptying the large pot of soil, which, from the number of peach seeds in it, had been filled with compost from my Hindmarsh home. The memory got to me, and I kept much of it, topping it up with new potting mix. I’m hoping this might thrive and provide some bushiness to my balcony garden.

Watering on the back balcony brings birds to bathe and drink in the heat. On Sunday a blackbird had a very good time in the water. A dove came to observe and stake out territory but didn't interfere.  I haven't seen a blackbird here before.

 

I completed a few tasks over the weekend. The top of the list was the two samples for my Glazig workshop later in April. Details in my embroidery blog.

I also finished reading The Gilded Page.  It has taken  a while to finish because I made notes about women  involved in the book-making industry prior to the printing press. I am hoping to embroider these on another bag of women's faces, I now have 9 names. I got out the faces fabric, which is enough for another three bags, and  began the design process.

Before I went too far, I wanted to see if I could improve on my printed bag experiment of a few weeks ago,  in response to a friend who said she wants one of these Early Women of Books bags. My first experiment was OK, but not ideal.

On the Vistaprint website I found a 'Full Custom'' bag template which promised to allow me to place a photograph over most of both sides of a tote bag. I had a go on my iPad, but it crashed at the review stage. I tried a bit later on my laptop. It timed out at the transfer-to-cart stage. At the moment I can't use Chrome on my 8 year-old laptop so was using Safari. As a  last resort I tried using Firefox on my iPad. This worked fairly smoothly. The photo is from the order courtesy of VistaPrint. The other side is similar and has an authorship statement along the left hand side, larger than I wanted, but I gave up trying to reduce it, fearing another crash.

I have ordered the result which is predicted to arrive by 17 April. It is, of course, the original bag and not the Early Women one. I'm currently waiting on a very overdue cushion from the same company, so we will see. It has given me confidence, however, to proceed with  embroidery on Early Women of Books. If the printing process works, it opens a range of possibilities (just what I needed, more possibilities!).

I caught up on a couple of more books over Easter, Dead Tide, my Book Club substitute, Body of Lies, by Sarah Bailey, and  finished Medieval Graffiti, by Matthew Champion. The latter is another that takes time because I wanted to take notes for possible later use in embroidery projects. No shortage of ideas! I am now reading Carlene O'Connor's,  Murder in an Irish Bookshop with her Murder in Galway also downloaded from the library. 

With all of this going on, and the temperature until Monday being over 30C each day, I have not met my target of finishing the first 80 lines of pattern with my knitting project. I am at line 60, 28cm, so reasonable progress. The sleeve decrease begins at 63cm, so less than two full patterns.

I’ve begun the Early Women of Books embroidery. In between Aquafit and the podiatrist today I’ve fortuitously moved on to Queen Emma. 

This book arrived today. It explores what we now know about Anglo-Saxon and Viking England based on the 2014 examination by archeologists and anthropologists of 6 chests of bones at Winchester Cathedral. The bones were collected by parishioners and stored in stone chests after  William Wallace’s men desecrated the Cathedral in 1642 and scattered bones from mortuary chests, among them the body of Queen Emma.  

I’m planning on putting together a booklet on each of the women to accompany this bag. Looks as if I need to stitch and read at the same time!  Fortunately the temperature has dropped a little today.

Post 528 as Autumn Leaves Start to Fall.

 

The sunflowers I bought in the heat are finally spent. The last two put out a lot of cheer before they graduated to compost.

Before that happened, I spent Wednesday morning at the hairdresser and in the evening went back to Noi with friends for a very early dinner. We took advantage of their Feed-me and out-by-seven options, both of which worked well for me. It was an exceptional meal, and I'll be returning.

On Thursday, before Pilates, I rushed off to BigW  to buy a copy of Foul Play by Fiona MacIntosh, a Book Club pick, but after much searching through the strange shelf organisation, with no assistant in sight, I gave up and bought Dead Tide, the next in the series ( I was, of course, late for Pilates). 

After Pilates I went to Bunnings to get plumbers tape and some potting mix for succulents. I exited with a trolley full of plants (yes, including a pot of sunflowers!).

On Friday morning the fire alarm went off as I was getting dressed after showering, around 9am. threw on my clothes, grabbed phone, handbag and, as I was leaving, my hearing aids and watch. I went down the stairs, increasingly carefully, as the stair lights were not on below my floor. When I got outside, Maureen, our pod rep, was there before me, in her dressing gown. The alarm had stopped as I reached to bottom of the stairs. A man from another pod joined us. At this point I realised my hearing aids were not in my hand. When nothing happened, we went back into the building. Maureen and the neighbour came up the stairs with me, looking for the hearing aids. I searched in my apartment and then retraced my steps once again up and down the stairs. Nothing. 

I phoned my audiologist and made an appointment to be fitted for new hearing aids before heading out to the supermarket.  As I was getting into the car, my hand brushed against my trouser pocket; there was something in it. Yes, in the stress of evacuating the building via stairs without light, I had dropped what was in my hand - watch and hearing aids - into a pocket so I could use both hands on the stair rail! I felt like an idiot, but was delighted to have found them, and to cancel the appointment for replacements!  

I’ve no idea what set off the alarms. I suspect a neighbour who did not evacuate set off a smoke alarm and managed to turned it off while I was descending the stairs. 

I ended up doing a big shop for Monday night, then spending the afternoon gardening, planting what I had bought the day before, removing spent flowers, dead plants and empty plastic pots, fertilising, watering, repotting and sweeping up. The plumbers tape made absolutely no difference to my hose fitting. It’s still a weak stream, and still leaks. It nevertheless works and is more efficient than watering cans. 

I considered going to the pub for dinner, but settled for a cheese and salami salad and a long talk to my brother before getting organised for Saturday’s certificate workshop. A tiring day. 

Saturday's workshop was a counted stitches sampler. The group was small and friendly, the task interesting and requiring thought. I worked a simple grid sampler, varying thread over 5 basic stitches, so far wool and Danish thread in a similar colour. I intend to add colour variation as I go. For the moment, however, this is parked.

Requirements for the two Guild classes I’ve booked into later in the year have arrived and I’m busy finding, cutting and preparing linens for them.

On Sunday I picked up Lorraine at midday and drove up to Mt Barker Summit for a Ploughman's Lunch and Ukaria concert, our first for the year - the Australian String Quartet with Andrea Lam. It was fabulous. We had front row seats with a good view of the pianist (thanks to Lorraine's walker and disabled booking options).  We were a bit taken aback by the number of mobility devices in the audience. We all seem to have aged substantially. 

Since all the fuss about a certain amateur photographer altering a photo, I decided to have a go with the photo I took of two doves early in the week. I didn’t like the background wall behind the dove on the right of the top photo, so I experimented (using only Apple photo tools) in removing her from the background and re-pasting her into a cropped copy of the photo. While I have removed backgrounds before, I had to learn how to insert the result into another photo (lower photo). The perspective doesn’t quite work. While one bird (presumably the male) is genuinely larger than the other, moving them even slightly closer creates too great a contrast. I haven’t worked out how to enlarge the pasted image. I’m pleased to have tried it - and I promise to always declare if I do it again! 

There were seven of us for dinner on Monday night - really good to catch up with everyone. It is a busy and potentially stressful time for both school and university students, but all seem to have it organised and more of less under control. I feel for them. I remember the stress. Does it need to be like this? While I'm sure I learned from it, I'm not sure it's a necessary part of learning. There's  surely a better way.  My educator’s itch needs scratching.

Last night was the Pascal Full Moon, the first full moon after the March equinox and the signal that next Sunday is Easter. I happened to see it rising over the hills. A privilege. 

Today I skipped Aquafit. I had a few jobs to do and didn't want to be rushed. I got organised for the cleaner, dropped a set of pearls off at a jeweller to be restrung and called at a bookshop for a  colouring book I had read about and thought might provide useful embroidery designs. I have quite a few of these, and no, I haven't made much use of them! 

The Kaffe Fassett cardigan is, however progressing. The weather is cooling and Easter has been a time for knitting since I was a teenager.

It's an interesting mind that can create this set of colours. I am now on row 42 of an 80 row pattern that then repeats approximately 3 times on the back and fronts. I'd like to make significant progress  over Easter in between the family rituals and some reading. I have a pile of hard-copy books I need to tackle while making notes, so I can develop both embroidery ideas and a couple of presentations.  There's also 2 samples to work for my Glazig workshop in April. I won't be bored.

May you be uplifted at Easter!