Post 391 Parcels and Projects.

Last Wednesday the World Embroidery Study Group met and I gave a presentation on the embroideries of Holocaust survivor Trudy Strobel, based on the book, Stitched and Sewn by Jody Savin. It's a story worth reading and contemplating in relation to healing - as well as horror.

At the meeting Junette returned some of our Inuit embroideries which she had borrowed for a workshop. Lee didn't want to keep hers, and gave it to me to 'do what you will with it'.

It's a lovely piece of embroidery. The walrus tusks are especially good. I took up the challenge and sorted some fabric to match it, and a zip.

It is now a pouch, with a pink felt back and cotton lining.

I hope Lee likes it and has a use for it, either personally, or in one of her numerous charitable endeavours.

Sometime in the last month I lost one of these tops - made in New Zealand from Possum Merino and silk. Possum merino is merino wool spun with possum fur. Possums are Australian natives and protected here, but were unfortunately introduced to New Zealand where they have become pests. Possum merino is unbelievably warm, and I loved this  top. I rang the places where I had worn it with no success. On Tuesday night, after much soul searching, I ordered another one. When I arrived at the Guild on Wednesday morning, there was my missing top, hanging on a coat hook near the shop! 

When I got home I rang New Zealand, but the new top was already with a courier on its way. I had hesitated, when I ordered, almost ordering a purple one, but decided I loved the red. It arrived today. I could return it, but I'm happy to say one of my daughters has claimed it. 

On Thursday at Pilates my coordination had improved - a result partly due to my using the vibrating machine in between classes. On Friday, while food shopping, I bought a couple of small pots of impatiens . They look lovely on my back balcony. The flowering succulent I bought a couple of months ago is now blooming beautifully on my front balcony.

For two days in a row I was lucky with deliveries - one arriving a few minutes before I left for Pilates and the other arriving just before I left for Sit'n Stitch.

There was, however, quite a contrast in the packaging of the two. On the left is half a metre of linen that came from North Adelaide - about 3km away. On the right is the handwoven wool- just over a metre- that came from the Ukraine. It took 40 days and was absolutely beautifully packed, wrapped tightly in brown paper, in a soft cardboard box that fitted perfectly. The stranded cotton label is there to show the size of the weave. 

The wool is for a project for my Viking embroidery workshop for the Certificate Course next February. I have also ordered some finer wool twill, to reflect clothing for both workers and elites.  The linen is for Catherine de Medici embroidery, and the company does not have a retail outlet. I get so frustrated by the packaging that I've decided not to buy from them again. I have already asked them to pack in an envelope that fits through a letterbox slot.

 

At Sit'nStitch Susan finished her Margaret Light piece, Jennifer starting a new crochet project and I worked on my latest shawl.

My dove friends have become sufficiently used to me to come down each time I hang out washing or otherwise set foot on the balcony, and stay and feed if I put out seed. The seed is very close to where I stand to hang out washing. I'm careful not to step too close, but they are fairly tolerant.

On Saturday I got a bit carried away with an example in a book I was reading, in a chapter called 'Elements of the Code'.  The book was given to me by a member of the Guild Library Team.

It fits with what I found out about Bulgarian embroidery, and is potentially another topic for the World Embroidery Study Group.

Of course, I had a go at embroidering it. I had some red evenweave fabric already prepared for a potential drawstring bag. and thought it would be appropriate given the association of red with the mother goddess.  I charted it, and used a Valdani Perle 8 thread variegated in purples through to pinks.

The first attempt was over one fabric thread per square.

The second attempt, over two fabric threads, was better.

I'm now thinking of exploring embroideries of the Mother Goddess in different cultures over time.

We had 8 at Katherine's on Sunday, with a couple of friends of Katherine's coming for dinner, making us two under our current home entertainment limit. It was a lovely evening, good company and good food. 

Sunday saw me back at the Guild for the completion of Melissa Walker's Madagascan Moon Moth.

My construction went pretty well, but I hit a few problems when I went to mount it in the box I had bought. 

The moth was slightly more 3D than the display space of the box allowed.  In the end I cut a space in the mounting board around the body of the moth.

Even then, the back board supplied with the box still squashed the moth body. I slept on it, then re-lashed the piece and covered the back with black silk. This enabled me to fit it in without a back board.

It fits fairly tightly, but I have devised a system of bracing with pieces of satay sticks, coloured black, across the corners. It is perhaps not the best solution for such a 3D piece, but it is fairly secure and avoids the worst of squashing to retain it as a potentially useful object. 

I found it very difficult to photograph the top of the finished box. In the end, even using a dark photographic box, I still got some reflection on the glass. This is the best of a bad lot. 

It is a really lovely design, and Melissa has more in the pipeline. Some members of the class are planning display boards of moths. I have enjoyed making it, and I love Melissa's classes. I don't think, however, I've solved the problem of a practical display use for such a fragile object.

Today I had a hairdressing appointment. My hairdresser of more than 5 years has resigned and today her replacement cut my hair. Not surprisingly, she is another remarkable young woman with a passion for improving women's lives. I feel very fortunate to be served by such young women.

I've managed to lose a further kilo this week. I've lost 6.4 kilos since I began, 52 days ago. I'm happy with that.

Since taking the girls to netball this evening I have finished the Berehinia bag and made cords and tassels.  It's about 25cmx15cm. 

This is the front and back views.

Time to get back to my knitting.

Post 387 Deliveries - and a couple of completions.

I'm posting early this week to test whether Feedburner has ceased emails.It is not clear to me whether it stops from or after August.  I have a manual email ready to send. 

My post last Tuesday prompted calls and messages from Guild friends to tell me that the Certificate Workshop I thought had been  cancelled due to lockdown  had been changed because of the Guild's Country Conference  (which was cancelled) and was in fact scheduled for the following Saturday. Nothing lost. One good consequence of lockdown was that I didn't turn up at the Guild on the wrong Saturday morning!

I did a bit of shopping on Wednesday, to replenish my vegetables and meat, and call at Create in Stitch. I only saw one person not wearing a mask, and she looked as if she might have had breathing difficulties. 

I also finished the linen herringbone sampler I was working on and dug out fabric I thought would help turn it into a bag.

I had bought some fresh prawns while shopping, so had a prawn salad for dinner with corn chips.  

Thursday was back to Pilates. Great to be back. In the afternoon I was blessed with a visit from Katherine and a couple of the girls. Lovely to see them after 9 days absence. In between I constructed the bag. I decided not to use the Moroccan print as lining as there was just enough of the pinky linen to line it as well as complete the outside.              

This gives me four bags to put in the upcoming Guild exhibition at the Hamra Gallery.

While I had the iron out, I attended to a mending project that I dug out during lockdown. This is the batwing top that had developed tshirt holes back in March 2020. Last week I came across a motif I had saved from a piece of fabric years ago and thought it would cover those holes. I have now attached it to the top using Misty Fuse, and overstitched the edges by hand to control fraying. 

It will give a few more months of wear to a favourite top in warmer weather.

The first of my orders to arrive this week were books. Thee are background to some research I'm doing on Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Celtic embroidery. The Women of the Celts has an interesting analysis of the story of Blodeuwedd, the woman of flowers, who's story underpinned my Alan Garner embroidery.

I bought a number of George Bain's books when working in Scotland in 1972, but lent them to someone in the 80s and didn't get them back. His work is detailed and fascinating. I'm not sure I will use any of the designs, but they are really interesting - and add to several more I already have.

I was so pleased to have a message on Saturday from Paul, in Oklahoma, the brother of my dear friend Diny who died on 29 September 2019. Diny's family held a memorial for her last month at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, a location dear to Diny's heart. She took Jim and I there in November 2009. I dug out some of the photos - in memory of both Diny and Jim in a beautiful and other-worldly place.

I made a tentative start on the Anglo-Saxon Horse embroidery that arrived a couple of weeks ago., just to see how it works. The design is from  a metal piece, possibly a sword hilt,  in the Staffordshire Hoard, a find of mostly gold artifacts from the 6th and 7th centuries.,and uses 11th Century Anglo-Saxon Embroidery techniques, mostly couching and stem stitch, to create the sense of gold filigree.  It is worked in two shades of perle and some DMC metallic. I haven't attempted any of the curls yet.

The box of Northumbrian runes I ordered from Russia arrived too - beautifully and economically packed (bottom right) - tightly wrapped in foam sheeting and closely taped, then in a simple envelope - a packer after my own heart! What will I do with them, you ask. It's a good question without a clear answer. I want to learn about the use of runes in England and may use them again in my embroidery, as I did with the Icelandic bag I made.

Also related to my Viking researches, the bone lucet I had ordered from Poland also arrived. I had a quick try at using it. It is easier than Naalbinding! I also discovered, in discussion at the Guild on Saturday, that someone in the past has given a class at the Guild using lucets, and that Peter Sanderson made a number of wooden ones at the time. I must follow up.

That leaves the woven wool fabric I ordered from the Ukraine as the outstanding order for my Viking Workshop next February. 

I was very pleased in the end that I was wrong about the Certificate Course being cancelled. We had a really terrific session on Saturday. Junette had done quite a bit more research since the WES presentation and had some inspiring examples of the work of modern Inuit artists.. There was a lot of energy in the group. I got carried away applying some of the Design Online lessons and using the concept of face silhouettes from one of Junette's examples - picking up on the Inuit notion of shamanism, those who can heal, watch over, care for souls and sometimes change into animals, especially birds.  I worked on this most of Sunday and finished it in between shopping and cooking on Monday. 

Of course, I turned it into a bag/pouch, adding my first Inuit embroidery to the back, with a zip at the top.

It's 25cmx20cm.

The red explosion was meant to be the midnight sun but ended up looking more like a volcano. I decided that's OK. There are volcanos in the Canadian Arctic Circle and in any case it is a fantastic, not a literal scene. 

I really had a lot of fun with this.

For Monday's dinner I put the spiraliser to the test. I made a huge stirfry with duck, bacon, broccolini, salami, beans, bock choi, chives, capsicum and noodles, and made a small version with spiralised zucchini instead of noodles for myself. It worked a treat. Obviously the spiraliser works better with zucchini than carrots. The meal was a success. Fionn and Veronica calculated the calories and were happy, as was I.

After my Pilates class on Thursday I took the plunge and ordered a vibrating exercise machine. Martine has had me using one at Pilates since I began losing weight. I found it hard at first, but also figured that it is a form of exercise that I might get into a routine to use at home. My order said it would be delivered on Tuesday, so I cancelled a podiatrist appointment to be sure I would be home to receive it. It arrived at 8.45am on Monday. Never mind. I only had time to unpack it and make sure it worked on Monday, but am setting up a twice a day 10 minute session to start with, three times if I am at home all day. Today's three sessions went well.

To complete a week of mail arrivals, the Zenbroidery design I ordered to add to my red coat arrived today. I'm in no hurry to start it, but it will be a good, grab-and-go relaxing project with a use at the end of it. 

I was back on transport to netball practice duty today.

As of this morning, I have lost 5kg in 5 weeks and 2 days. I also had another fasting blood test on Thursday. My doctor messaged me the results on Saturday, 'stable renal function; long term glucose test ok, not high enough for diabetes, good'. That's not the end of the journey - but I'm on the way.