Post 242 Adaptation

 

It was a high activity, but low photography day. This is part of the pot of sunflowers I bought last week. There are lot of buds coming out - provided I can keep up the water. It's in a 20 cm pot but is incredibly thirsty. It droops as soon as it is not damp. I'm watering it twice a day at the moment. It's not even hot at the moment. The plant is lush and laden with buds. It just seems to need lots of water.

Turtle put in a couple of appearances, finishing off yesterday's feed. I didn't have opportunity to observe bird behaviour. It was Basics to Beyond today and I wanted to get there to get some advice on the hem of the Deruta project from Saturday's workshop. I knew Gay would be able to help. 

However, I also wanted to get the pasta bake for tonight's dinner made before I left.  I had made the ragu but needed to cook the pasta, add the ragu and cover in cheese, ready to put in the oven this evening. I got it all done by 10 am and got to B2B around 10.45. 

There were only 4 students, plus Gay. After she attended to the other students (the ones actually in the Basic course!) Gay spent about an hour helping me figure out the instructions for the hem. Gay was also in the class on Saturday, so figuring it out will eventually help her too.

The linen provided has a thread drawn on all four sides. The solution to the problem became obvious once we worked out the hem is worked inside the drawn thread border, not outside it. I might have eventually worked this out by myself but was struggling. Two heads are definitely better than one.                                                                                          Brigid is home studying for final exams so I had offered to transport the dinner and the younger children to their place tonight. She was getting so much done at home on her own that we decided to feed everyone else at my place and send hers home with them. This seemed to work well. It was a relaxed meal with interesting conversation.

I've got quite a long way to go around the edge, but I completed a few centimetres in order to  see what it looked like when completed. It will take me a few hours, but I now get it. 

I have postponed my hairdressing appointment tomorrow. I don't think my hair needs cutting, or even trimming, for at least a couple more weeks. This gives me a whole day to either finish this border, or stitch the feathers on to the chair. And there is still my tax to organise. And the photo scanning.

For now I'll sleep on it.

Post 240 Plants and stitches.

I managed to get up and organised for the Certificate workshop this morning - thermos of coffee, lunch, the required thread and usual scissors, needles. Fortunately Christine Bishop was taking the workshop, on Deruta embroidery, and supplying the linen on which we were to work. There were 16 of us there - pretty much back to pre-Covid level.

Deruta embroidery derives from the town of the same name in Italy. There are three styles, or techniques, two antique, one developed between the two World Wars. We were working on one of the antique forms, a counted technique worked on 18 count linen in  a neutral colour.

Christine had a couple of physical examples to show us, as well as some on the screen and notes which outlined the technique and some motifs to be worked into a sample.  

We began with a simple rectangle in the basic stitch, then attempted an L shaped design with a tricky component and then on to a couple of others without the trickiness. 

                                                                                     

 I plan to finish the sampler, but it's not a style I see myself using to create projects.

The greatest excitement of the day for me was this bag of cuttings brought for me by Margaret. Margaret reads this blog and told me on Thursday that she has a number of scented geraniums in her garden, as well as red, white and pink pig face. Today she brought me a generous sample of all of them. It is really generous of her. She did not have a lot of spare time yesterday but managed to gather this bonanza for me.

As soon as I got home, I found pots, some empty and some with space behind other plants, divided them into cuttings and planted them. There is another group that I have placed in water to root. There are rose, lemon rose, nutmeg and pineapple geraniums.  If even half of them grow my garden will be blessed.  A thousand thanks, Margaret.

I spent the evening at Katherine and Anthony's as usual. Very delicious lamb cooked on the barbecue with potatoes, carrots, parsnips and broccolini. Brigid's last day at school went well as did the primary girls' Bookweek celebrations.  Brigid's secret outfit, made from one of her uniforms, was a pair of shorts and a waistcoat. The shorts were cut from the lower part of the uniform and the waistcoat from the top part, with sleeves removed and buttons opened up down the front. It worked really well. Again, since this blog is in the public domain, I am not going to post a photo.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                             This evening I worked a fourth sample from today's workshop.   Unfortunately I did not position the third example well and had to undo part of it to fit in the arrow. If I wish to add the hem (which I do) I will need to redo both motifs before I block it in order to accommodate the hem.    That's not a job for tonight.  

Tomorrow I have book club in the morning and Sit'n Stitch in the afternoon. In the meantime - sleep.