Post 200 : Dove stories, scanning and Catherine de Medici

I knew this morning that the whipping I had done on the Caterina project last night was not right. The instructions had not been very clear. So this morning I found a couple of YouTube videos that made it clear that the stitch was a double running always worked with a diagonal stitch, forming a cross under each existing running stitch. When I checked back with the project instructions, I found two pages of stitch description that I had missed. Mea culpa. I undid the whipping and started again with the double running.

Bird Episode 1.

As I was sorting this out, Turtle appeared, took a walk around and sampled the water in my bowl of stones and shells.

Within minutes there was a fluttering of wings and Myrtle arrived. It's unusual for either of them to fly to the balcony like this. They usually sit on the rail and drop to the floor.

They then fed very companionably on the seed before flying off together.

Bird Episode 2. Don’t you dare!
Some half an hour later there was a loud repeated dove call - three notes, the last one slightly higher.  It soon became clear it was coming from one of  two doves moving along the slats on the roof of my Vergola.






As they dropped to the balcony rail, I realised it was Turtle and the young adolescent bird. Turtle was the source of the three note message which continued

as they dropped to the floor, the young bird walking around, trying to peck at the seed, closely followed by Turtle.

The call sounded for all the world like "Don't you dare!"



The young bird eventually flew away and Turtle spent some time scanning the scene from the rail.

It was extraordinary behaviour. Both on the roof and the floor, Turtle followed the young bird on foot, repeating the three notes. He was not aggressive, didn't fly at the young bird or attack in any way, just followed on foot, repeating the message.

I read a bit more of The Bird Way  this morning. So far nothing explains this kind of behaviour. The next section, however, is on parenting, so that might help me understand.

In between preparing the ragu and pasta for tomorrow night's dinner I set up the scanner and scanned a few more photos. The difficult bit is working out how to save, store and share them, It is also greedy both of laptop battery and bandwidth. I managed to scan and save another 32 photos. It's a fairly slow process - and I have a few thousand photos to go.



While recharging my laptop battery I progressed the double running. This form of embroidery is Catherine de Medici Embroidery, or Punto Madama, ( short for Punto Madama Caterina de Medici).

The second round, once you have the rhythm, is easier than the first and pleasant to work.

I still like the open lacy look of the single running stitch, but this look is also attractive - and I want to learn the stitch.

I've completed one quarter of it in the double running.