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.