Post 367 Birds, Building, Blooms and Bag-

This has been a  bit of an Embroiderers' Guild week. I spent two half days on duty at the Exhibition, took Niamh to JEMS on Saturday, worked with a friend to finalise the Guild's Child Safe Environments policy, called out to drop in my enrolment forms for three of Christine Bishop's classes later this year and today called in to pick up my pieces from the Exhibition which was demounted yesterday. I haven't heard the final attendance figures but I think they were down on previous years but respectable.

In between times I finished Sienna's squirrel (bar a few highlights to come later) and moved my hoop on to the next section, the wood pigeon.I've decided to move clockwise around the frame.

I spent a bit of time getting my threads in order, using double-sided tape to put them in number order on card. It has made it much easier to work.

On Thursday I dropped Ken's mended trousers in at their place, as they were off on a road trip on Friday. I happened to arrive at the same time as a magpie taking advantage of their birdbath.

On Friday, after Sit'n Stitch at my friend's place at Grange, I stopped at the Jetty Cafe  before heading home. It was a lovely evening and I watched the birds returning across the water while eating my Seafood Medley.

It really was a lovely evening. I was conscious of how fortunate I was to be able to sit there at this time. 

Our Covid vaccination program is meant to move into Stage 1b this week - over 70s and those who are vulnerable. It will be, however, several weeks before sufficient doses arrive and switchboards were jammed in the practices nominated to deliver the injections. My doctor, who I saw on Wednesday, has suggested I have my flu vaccination early in April, then try to organise a Covid vaccination 2-3 weeks later. I am now organising a bone density scan, a mammogram and a blood test.

To continue the bird theme, the dove pair have been daily visitors, soaking up the heat in the tiles, 

spreading seed around 

sharing amiably

and providing interesting silhouettes. 

They appear unaffected by the continuous upthrust of the building next door, which is now up to six storeys. My neighbours are fed up with the noise and dust. I haven't noticed the dust. The panels arrive by crane and are bolted on. The motor of the crane required to lift them into place is noisy but the construction process itself is much less so.

Before long I won't be able to see the top of the panels from my balcony - no bad thing. 

I'm still feeling it will be OK when built and the scaffold removed.

On the front balcony, the frangipani have continued to bloom in their small way. It's lovely to see the flowers emerging. Hopefully, they will continue to grow and bloom next year. My friend Vivienne has posted a link to a Frangipani Growers Australia, a group on FB. I've considered joining, but there were 22 posts to the group today and 812 in the last month. I'm not sure I can cope with that volume.

Yesterday I shopped at Frewville and took a photo of their wall garden. This density of cover is what I'm hoping to achieve with mine. They do have a watering system, whereas I water by hand.

As I predicted last week, the aloe flower disappeared during the week. Reckon I had a raid by the Noisy Miner.

I did finish the Turkmen Pouch. Detail of the finish can be found in my embroidery blog.

I've also been playing with the box of Scheepjes yarn that Jennifer bought for herself, Susan and I . I've been playing with a shawl pattern Susan found, just to see how it might be managed. It's promising. Today Susan and I discussed how it might work. There is a challenge carrying the yarn from row to row when the rows are so short at the beginning. I'm going to keep experimenting.

The book of the last 85 days of my daily blog arrived late last week. I had inadvertently ordered it in black and white, which is a shame, but I won't reorder.

I've spent hours and hours this week exploring further my grandmother Ada's family tree. I've now ordered some birth and death certificates. I expect it will be a while before I get them, even by email. I'm on one of those obsessive rolls that come when you find someone else working on the same bit of family as you are. It pushes discoveries forward.  

There will be more. 

The days have been warm. The floods in the Eastern states and historic sexual assault claims in Parliament House have dominated this week's news. As they should.  These stories are also far from over.

Post 366 Stitching, family history, blooms and sunsets

This week began with a morning of duty at the Guild Exhibition. The photos shows a small part of it. There are just under 300 exhibits spread over the gallery and the house. You can just see my bags on the back wall. We were quite busy on Wednesday morning with a group from the country driving up together to visit. We had plenty of helpers.

I did another three hours on Sunday, which was much quieter. This is the small garden between the house and Gallery. Helpers had time to sit and talk.

The exhibition was planned for last year. Numbers of both exhibitors and attendees are down on previous years, but still respectable.  Exhibition regulars came and clearly get joy out of  the work. Some go away quite excited, with an idea or two. There are also a few visitors who are new and also get excited. On Wednesday I met a young woman from Brazil who has an Art business in Adelaide and is interested in the World Embroidery Study Group.

I've been working steadily on the Turkman pouch. It's almost finished. The corner tassels are not yet done. I'm playing with using some gum nuts I've gilded a little, (resting there in the photos). I'm not convinced. I'll publish the story and result in my embroidery blog in the next couple of days.

Sunday morning was our Book Club meeting with lots of good discussion and ideas. I had chosen the books - Aaron Elkins' Gideon Oliver series and Sujarta Massey's Murder at Malabar Hill. Everyone liked the latter, and most liked Aaron Elkins.

The weather has been quite variable, 31C one day, but down to 19C and 20C on others. I'm not complaining. 31 is far more tolerable when followed by the low 20s. We had one night of rain so the plants have needed regular watering. The dove pair, especially Black Tips, have spent a lot of time visiting, even when I haven't put out seed - although no doubt the hope is still there!

Like me, they now indulge in a lot of sitting!

There's a new flower on the aloe, so I'm keeping an eye out for the Noisy Miner, who seems to have a grapevine that notifies of this bloom.                                                                   This Schlumbergia is also blooming, I think for the first time. So far there is only one flower but  a couple more coming.

The marigolds are going great guns and very cheering. I like to watch the buds form and open - such a contrast to the extravagance of the flowers.

On the front balcony I have two frangipani blooming, the red one for the first time. Unfortunately neither of them are scented but I'm still pleased to have them.  Hopefully the one I added a month ago will bloom with scent next year.

The building continues its steady upward rise. It is now, I think, probably 5 storeys high (four more to go).The white strip of wall close to the scaffold is the new building, the darker wall is my balcony.  There's a bit of noise, but still not enough to distress me. I avoid my living area when there is a concrete pour or the crane lifting panels into place. I can no longer see the work from my balcony except for a very rare instance of a worker climbing the scaffold.

I've spent a lot of time this week sorting out the the family history conundrums presented by the work of Melanie, whose contact I mentioned last week.It's amazing (and quite exciting) what can be achieved when we pool our work. Most importantly, Melanie has been able to visit archives and obtain documents not available online. It now appears that my paternal 3xGGrandmother, Sarah Attesley, was the sister of John and Henry Attesley who were convicted of larceny in the Cambridge Assizes in 1821, and sentenced to 7 years transportation. Sarah had two children out of wedlock, one of whom was my 2x GGrandmother.

By this morning we worked out that the two brothers were never actually transported. They appear to have served their sentences on the hulk Leviathan, Henry serving the full 7 years and John released on parole after 4 years. Their gaolers gave them reports of good behaviour which may have been the reason they were never transported. The UK Hulk Registers and Letter Books 1802-1847 for Henry and John Attersley show a few others with similar outcome. I did not know some sentenced convicts stayed on the hulks. It's a bit of a toss-up whether they were better off.

This is my grandmother, Ada whose ancestors these were. It now looks as if her line can be traced back through the Attesley's to Philip Attesley (1541-1572) and his wife Alyce Drawton (1542-1579). I have very little information about their lives except that two of their seven children survived to adulthood and by the 18th century their descendants were small-hold farmers. At no point in time does it look like an easy life.

Last night I cooked another variation of the tray-baked pork sausages . Once again, it was successful. Brigid had a 7pm netball committee meeting, so the kids and I ate just after 6. Katherine and Anthony picked them up in time to drop Brigid at her meeting and took the small cooked dish home to eat. I still didn't remember to photograph the cooked version! 

Yesterday was also the day of International Women's Day marches around Australia, focused on 'Enough is Enough' a version of 'Me too' triggered by some recent prominent cases here. I decided it was too difficult to go to the local march today but my spirit was there.

Last night's dark and brooding sunset seemed appropriate to the day.

I have changed my mind about using the Bushfire project for my Design Online project. I think it's too ambitious for the course, so I''m working on doing something with one of these linen pieces from Ink and Spindle. Not sure what yet, but using the river motif.

The post today included two books from separate sources. Each was packaged neatly in a padded paper bag that fits in the letterbox! Bravo!  One is, of course, the paper copy of Pat's book which I have already read on Kindle. I wanted a copy I can lend to people. The other is another of Shiela Payne's books. I haven't had a chance to browse carefully but it does have numerous index references to Bulgaria.

Finally, I did a repair job this morning for a friend. I have repaired these before - favourite orange trousers bought in Indonesia that split. Last week Ken sent this photo (left) of another disaster to befall them, above a previous patch. 

I stitched the tear to a piece of batik on the inside then stitched another batik patch over the top. 

They will soon be more patch than original - but that's OK.  I come from a long line of repairers! 

Later this year the World Embroidery Group is having a couple of sessions on Mend and Make Do. I might borrow them back to take along!

Until next week.

Posr 365 A long weekend, birds, and research.

It was a bit of a bird week. These were all taken just after sunset, the top two of birds returning to roost in the many trees in the city parks and gardens. From their flight direction I suspect they were headed to the Botanical Gardens. The lower two were lorikeets descending on the Square to have a final feed before nightfall. They made a lot of noise and fought each other for the best positions to get the opening seed pods.  

This was Sunday's sunset (right)

and this Monday's. Monday was a public holiday in South Australia - for the running of the Adelaide Cup, which went ahead with 5000 attendees, rather than the usual 14,000.

The Embroiderers Guild Exhibition is now running. I visited on Saturday. It looks good. There are some stunning entries, but photography isn't allowed. I am on duty there tomorrow, so will try to get a general shot or two of the room to show include next week.

There was a bit more development on the Bulgarian Embroidery front. 

Genevieve sent me a link to a really interesting article published in French on the National Bulgarian Radio website.about martenitsi -  tokens given on 1 March, the first day of Spring, or Baba Marta Day, signifying renewal. This photo (left) of embroidered martenitsi is from the article.I found photos of these tassel figures,  which are  traditionally given in pairs, one male, one female.

Nelly dropped in the embroidered clothes she had found in her wardrobe, including this dress. I can't wait to show the World Embroidery Study Group  .

On Friday the Sheila Paine book on Amulets arrived. I have browsed a little but not read it as yet. It's going to be really interesting. While there are several referenccs to Bulgaria, the main interest for me will be much wider.

One of my three frangipani trees is blooming. It is lovely to see. Regretably, it doesn't have a strong scent. I will need to wait another year or so for the latest one I bought to bloom for the scent.

In a moment of madness in January, I enrolled in an online design course being run for the Guild by Barbara Mullan. It is the first online course the Guild has run. It trialled last year. I think it's a great idea and wanted to support it, so I enrolled. The second assignment arrived last week - and I hadn't done the first, which focused on beginning to think about a design. I dug out the project I began a year ago - to produce a narrative embroidery about the Bushfires we were experiencing - before Covid hit. I had sketched a design and purchased a hand-woven scarf to use as a canvas and sourced a good range of Australian-produced threads (not easy). As 2020 progressed, the project seemed less and less appropriate. I have now revived it as the basis of my project for this online course. I want to simplify it. The course should provide me with a framework.

The major achievement this week was the completion of the new edge on my winter hexie quilt. The detail on how I got to this point is covered in my embroidery blog.

A couple of family history puzzles occupied me for a number of hours over the long weekend.  One was a straightforward request for information I had about the marriage of one set of my paternal 3x GGrandparents, both of whom made their separate ways to London from Ireland during the famine. It's a while since I researched this, so it took time to refreshing my memory.  I had concluded that they either did not marry, or married in a London Catholic Church whose records have not been digitised. Probably the former. The enquirer turned out to be an Australian currently in the UK researching and hoping to visit Ireland to follow up on research. Pretty amazing. I hope she succeeds. 

I also spent a number of hours following up on the enquiry I received last week. Melanie, the researcher who contacted me has come up with an alternative ancestry for a shared ancestor in the 1820s. We either have a 2x GGmother who was the sister of 2 convicts transported for larceny, or a 3xGGmother who had 2 children by one of those convicts. I had traced the line to the latter, but after hours of checking and digging, I think Melanie might be right.  I need to do more work and then spend time adjusting my tree.

I have begun a Turkman pouch. This is the one I cut out a couple of years ago, because Jennifer was wanting to make one and I was going to help by working one alongside her. She didn't need my help and is now helping a group in her apartment block to make theirs. I've agreed to meet with them to help with stitches, so thought I should revive mine.        I'm making good progress. The pattern calls for button-holed circles in the marked squares, but given my lining I thought I'd do Ghiordes Knots.  It seems to be working.  

Also over the long weekend, I did an early proof-read of a chapter of my brother's next book. Always interesting.

I've also done all the usual things - shopping, mostly for fruit, Sit'n Stitch last Friday, dinner at Katherine's on Saturday. Niamh had a friend to sleep over. There was lots of animated discussion of school activity and interactions. Katherine's front garden is beginning to look terrific.

Today I picked up a parcel of books from the Post Office. These are from Can Do Books. I couldn't resist these small handbooks of textile patterns from the V&A. So many beautiful patterns. I don't have any immediate practical use for them, but they are lovely to hold and to browse.

This one might prove very useful when considering the 3 drawers of wool I have to use up.

Jennifer is flying to Queensland tomorrow night for 4 weeks, visiting her family and attending an annual family reunion, so we had an extra Sit'n Stitch today. I still haven't photographed Susan's Margaret Light square. It is beautifully fine. Jennifer is taking her Sophie's World with her to work on in Queensland. It is amazingly textured - crocheted stumpwork!

This is where I finished up today on the pouch. 9 more Ghiords knots to go.                    

Finally, the wall next door rose by one more panel this morning. It was great to have a break from building work over the long weekend.

It hasn't deterred the doves.