Post 272 crewel and birthday dinner

Today's major stitching achievement was finishing the hillock underneath the Oak Apple Tree, which I achieved at the Guild's Crewel Special Interest Group. The two of us who were there joined forces with the Thursday Come and Stitch day Group - six of us altogether, socially distanced in the back room of the Guild House. The aircon worked, everyone stitched away and chatted from time to time.  Very pleasant.

Warm again when I woke this morning, but pleasant on the balcony with the light hitting the wall garden. There is still quite a bit of the black plastic containers showing towards the bottom, but the upper part has good coverage. You get a variety of views depending on angle. It isn't easy to get a holistic view with a camera.       

This panoramic view of course, distorts the angles to give a false curve, but it does give some idea.

Lori's Sashiko bag yesterday got me thinking. I dug out the various printed Sashiko pieces I have been hoarding. The black piece is quite long and the best candidate for a bag. The white ones will make more 'desk covers' - or napkins for me to use to cover my table at the Guild when I'm there for lunch. The red one is a series of small squares (roughly 6") for which I'm beginning to get an idea.

A couple of people contacted me following yesterday's  post, with further examples of names used backwards. Judith told me of a dress shop in Kingston Tasmania  called Yeltour - Routley backwards. I checked the name, and on the 1891 census the majority of those named Routley were in Somerset, but a fair number were in Scotland. When my late husband and I taught in Scotland in 1972 Senga was a common girl’s name, often in families where there was a mother or grandmother named Agnes. Given the Scottish link with the name my brother was researching yesterday, I wonder if this practice is more common in Scotland than elsewhere? Such reversals have a name - they are, apparently, ananyms.

I almost forgot to pick up the parcel from the Post Office this morning. Fortunately I had left the notice of failure to deliver on the seat of my car and saw it when I got in. As I had figured, it was a copy of the Anchor Manual of Needlework, which I had ordered after the Deruta stitch workshop as this was the major reference. It is 497 pages of information about stitches. It has a lot of information about various Italian embroidery stitches, less about Scandinavian. It has 75 knitting patterns and diagrams for macrame, but no entry on Crewel or Opus Anglicanum. Despite the omissions, it is going to be very useful. 

I spent a very relaxed and enjoyable evening with 3 friends at a birthday dinner for one of them. It's my idea of a good time.

Tomorrow's forecast temperature has been reduced from 41C to 40C, and Saturday's from 40 to 38. I'm grateful for small mercies.

This is where I am now up to with the Oak Apple tree. Progress is slower than I had anticipated, but the result much better.