Post 571 The Eyes Have It.

 

It’s been a week of relentless heat, at least 35C every day and 40C yesterday as the girls made  their way here on foot  from school and working in the city. Troopers. 

The city provided inspirational light to those still out when the sun set around 8.45pm.

I’ve spent most of the week inside, reading, researching, stitching or writing without the use of my right index finger. I shopped a couple of times, and spent Saturday making a pasta bake for Monday, because my big adventure was lunch at friends’ house on Sunday. It was great to catch up in their cool house and feast on gazpacho and seafood.

I cancelled Pilates on Thursday after a lot of thought. It's important exercise for me, but even exercises on legs and torso usually involve gripping something, and I really don’t want to knock or stress my recovering finger.

 Yesterday the 8 stitches were removed. One bled, so I had a dressing on it until midday today. The routine is now pressure bandage overnight for about 6 weeks to disperse fluid and, from Thursday, twice-daily massages of wound to ensure scar tissue doesn’t harden, plus regular mild bending (beware overuse!). It’s a bit sore around the wound.

My main focus has been on stitching the third Evil Eye mandala, which I finished yesterday. Details, of course, in my embroidery blog. 

Inevitably, as I stitched it, I was thinking about history and meaning for my presentation later in the year, so while the bolognese sauce was simmering on Saturday I got out my books and worked on the it. The PowerPoint is now almost prepared. There’s another embroidery I want to do, but fundamentally it’s there. 

On Friday I had a fasting blood test. Foolishly, I had it in my left arm, as usual. The vein seemed to have recovered from the cannula for the finger operation, but by the time I got home it was bleeding messily, so I applied pressure and sat for half an hour. It is still bruised, but OK. I get the results tomorrow.🤞🏼

Progress on the Certificate Course Aida project has been much slower. I'm discovering the limitations of Aida as an embroidery medium - which may, of course, be the point of the exercise. More to come. Before I progress it, I'm trying to make the last two tassels for the Aquile, which, if I succeed, will also go in the Guild Exhibition. I seem to be managing the knots without my index finger.  240 down, 720 to go! I'm on desk duty at the Guild tomorrow, so maybe I'll get some more done.

The kit I ordered from Tanya Bentham arrived today. At the moment working in wool is not attractive, although the design is.

While I have made inroads in my book pile, I haven't eliminated it and another book arrived today. After the knots, it might be time to redress the reading/stitching balance.

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.