Post41: Lost and found

This afternoon my friend Jennifer, in isolation in Perth, got a positive test result for Covid19 on her second test. She had not been feeling well for a couple of days. It is very distressing news. It does, however, mean that she can move back into the room she was sharing with Susan, who also has the virus. They feel stronger and more able to fight it off together. Deo volente.


The day had begun with a treat , an email from my friend Christine in Watford. She is doing OK.  Though struggling with hay fever, she is walking every day, queuing for access to shops and watching Phillipa Turnbull's videos. So good to get her news.

I checked in on my balcony spider who has now extended her web in both horizontal and vertical directions to completely block off the base of the frangipani. I couldn't get a decent photo, because I couldn't get the light behind the web.

I spent some time looking, unsuccessfully for my reading glasses. I had them yesterday.  I hadn't taken them on my walk yesterday. They had to be in the apartment, but the spectacle fairies seemed to have visited. I almost rang my optometrist and ordered a new pair. While my multifocals work well, I couldn't imagine getting through the next 3-6 months without them. I gave myself 24 hours.

My first Coles delivery arrived. South Australia has had charges for plastic bags for many years, and I have been taking my own bags for at least 10 years. I am now accumulating a huge supply of plastic supermarket bags. Although there was parking outside the doors of our apartment block, the driver parked down the road. He will get it right next time. I have a good supply of fruit and veg for Easter.

It's a new way of shopping. The trick is to predict what I will need well in advance. I was skilled at doing this when cooking for a family of four. Since being on my own I have cultivated just-in-time cooking. I now need to predict for around 10 days, including items like milk. I think I'm heading for a routine of a food shop about every 5 days. I put in another order today, because when I added some items to my list on the Woolworths site, the next available delivery time was Saturday afternoon. I figured by then I would need more fruit and veg, so closed off another order. I am in no way complaining. I am very fortunate to have this service. It will just take a little while to hone my routine.


I spent time this morning looking more closely at the book that arrived yesterday.  I am very impressed. It is, firstly, a very beautiful production, with page after page of full page close-up colour illustrations of stitches on knitted fabric. Secondly, the text is clear, simple and explicit.



It is organised by stitches. While these are recognisable, standard embroidery stitches, here they are adapted to embroidering on knitted, particularly hand-knitted, fabric. The needle works with the individual knitted background stitch.

Once my delivery was unpacked and put away, I decided to try some out on a top I had set aside at the end of last winter to darn. It had suffered from the holes I wrote about in Day 8 of self-isolation. I had darned the holes with leaves, then embroidered the outline of a tree across the whole front. The outline was waiting to be filled in.

I couldn't find the top. I knew it was here somewhere. It had been on my sewing machine for weeks. I had tidied it away. But where? Eventually I found it under a pile of projects awaiting my attention!

Still no glasses though.
 Christoffersson uses 2 ply wool for her embroideries on wool, so I dug out some Bendigo 2 ply I have had for decades.She uses an interesting variation on couching.


 I am working, in all these examples, within the boundaries of a tree trunk I had previously outlined in stem stitch.

 Instead of laying the thread and couching it down, you first create large, fairly loose couching stitches ( the stem stitch outline was already there as the trunk of a tree),


then you put several thicknesses of wool in a needle and thread then though the stitches you have laid out.


It forms a very heavy, braided look.This works better on small, geometrically bounded areas rather  than long freely stitched designs. I suspect it is too loose for longer freehand designs. It would not react to washing in the same way as the background.

Next I tried what Christoffersonn calls Alternating (or double) stem stitch. By alternating the side on which one holds the thread for each individual stem-stitch. you create what looks like a double row of stitches. Again, a braided effect.


The final stitch I tried was a variation on Roumanian couching, where the couching stitches are in form of a cross/


The shape is a bit small, but it does give an idea of the texture required. I can see that geometric designs would be a powerful way to work a sampler, or cover a section of wear. I also think there is great potential for running classes on embroidering on knitting. We could begin with a knitting class to knit a square, or, say, a baby jacket . Once finished, we could run classes in embroidering the knitted items. There are endless possibilities. Even darning classes. My top was machine knitted, so does not lend itself to some of the stitches. I'm not rushing to finish this particular project, but it has been useful to try out some of the stitches.












I was bringing my washing in as the sun went down. Again a huge flock of birds screeched their way East, stopping briefly on the large tree on the left.  They were too quick for me to grab the camera, but the sky was worth the effort.









For dinner I used duck-stock in my freezer to create duck soup, with the additions of carrot, fresh spring onions, asparagus and noodles.

My granddaughter Veronica rang me for a chat about 9pm. The family had just finished eating the Shepherd's Pie she and Fionn had made for dinner!


I finished another section of the Parrots.


The whole piece is coming along nicely.




Oh, and on my fourth search for my reading glasses I tipped out my project bag for the Fair Isle scarf and found the glasses underneath all the skeins of wool.