post 371

The Guild's Crewel Work group was due to meet on Thursday this week, but there is still not much interest so I worked this next section of the Aesop Frame at home. It was an interesting one to work, with Renaissance Wools as well as Appletons and a little silk.

 I think I can say that the World Embroidery Study Group meeting on Bulgarian Embroidery was a success. People were very interested in the background information and in Sheila Paine's books, but mostly they loved the chance to see a collection of genuine examples of such high quality. 

There was a lot of discussion and engagement. We rarely get the chance to see so many varied examples of what we study and members made the most of it. I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity.

After the meeting I went to the Tennyson Centre for a bone density scan, my first in eight years. I have the preliminary results which mean little to me. I will get full results when I see my doctor early in May.           

On Thursday some rain was forecast and my feathered visitor was bunkering down in a few rays of sunshine when I left just before nine to get my first Covid vaccination at a Respiratory Clinic opposite the Frewville Foodland Shopping Centre. On the advice of my doctor, I parked in the shopping centre car park and walked across the wide, busy intersection to the clinic. It was very organised and controlled. Patients are told not to arrive until 5 minutes before. Signs on the door warn not to touch the door. On cue, the door swung open, a young man appeared and called my name. Inside he inspected my Medicare card and drivers licence and put a sticker on my poncho. 

The venue was, until last year, a physiotherapy and pilates studio - part of a very large medical practice on the site. The studio has been moved out to another venue to accommodate a dedicated Covid clinic. There are 3 small injecting rooms (or, in the afternoon, testing rooms) each staffed by a nurse who asks questions, checks ID, gives information, then waits for the doctor who circulates between the three rooms. The injection is only given in her presence after she has checked and asked more questions. It was friendly, helpful, cautious and professional. On leaving the injecting room, you go to another desk in a large waiting room to be given  information about the next steps before taking your seat and waiting to be timed and called with permission to leave.

I noticed the photo board which no one was using. The assistant was only too happy to take my photo as I left - sanitising his hands before and after touching my phone. 

I went on to Officeworks to get some acid-free tissue, to Create in Stitch for a frame, North Adelaide for some fruit and lunch before going to Pilates. I got home to find the letter with my $634 fine for using my phone while driving last week. I paid it straight away - hope that is now behind me.

It wasn't until 12 hours after the injection that I felt suddenly tired, then achey and shivery. I couldn't get warm in bed, so put on socks and took a couple of Panadol. I slept well and woke up a little achey but fortunately that passed because I had arranged to meet Jennifer for lunch at Louca's Fish Restaurant two blocks away. I took this photo of the next door building work progress on the way.

We had a very nice lunch and a good catch up. Jennifer is back from a month in Queensland visiting family - and says she has come home for a rest! She is now on a roll with a book about the 

acre of land on which her family reunions take place. 

In between this activity and the Aesop I have finished  examples of Icelandic embroidery for the Certificate Course workshop in June.                       

I finished the sample of 18th Century Icelandic embroidery and removed the Sulki. It worked really well. 

I have included a counted design, although the workshop is not focusing on counted work. Some students may wish to practice long-armed cross stitch, so I worked the examples for good measure.

This workshop is now, I think, fully organised and I can pack it away until June.

I spent much of the weekend researching on two fronts, more family history and my next embroidery study on Viking embroidery. On the latter  I have begun my PowerPoint as a method of getting organised. I have quite a lot of information, but am  trying to figure out how to borrow Margarethe Hald's Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials from Flinders University library without having to drive there and navigate the sprawling, outsider-unfriendly parking. No luck so far, so I might have to plan an excursion. In the meantime I ordered this book and another on Anglo-Saxon embroidery. 

Small steps.

On the family history front, my fellow researcher Melanie and I have hit a bit of a wall in my grandmother's mystery. We  have a lot of it worked out but our newsagent ancestor seems to disappear around 1935 with no death records fitting. Melanie is still in pursuit. We've had more success with the 1820s connections of my paternal grandmother Ada. We now have numerous links between my 3xGGrandmother Sarah Attlesey and the Isaacson gang, 7 of whom were transported to either NSW or Van Diemen's Land between 1798 and 1840. Melanie is doing more of the heavy lifting on this than I, but we continue to work and share our finding in relays dictated by time zones.

I've also done some proof-reading for my brother, had dinner with family on Saturday and tonight with friends after having my hair mercifully permed this afternoon.  It has become lank and oily, needing to be washed every day. The strange stare is the result of taking a photo in the hairdresser's mirror.

 

Perhaps my biggest achievement this week has been to reduce the emails in my inbox to 25, from around 270 a fortnight ago. I've attended to overdue subscriptions, read articles waiting for a rainy day, filed useful embroidery bits, unsubscribed from numerous retail companies, replied to way-out-of-date emails and requests for family tree information. 

I read Dr Basil Willing Golden Age book by Helen McCloy for NetGalley. It's a fairly engaging read for Golden Age tragics. I also finished Campling's Devonshire Mysteries series, which I like a lot .  I'm now reading another Ann Cleeves Ramsay series mystery.

I've had notice from Feedburner, the service that manages the email distribution of these blog posts that they will be discontinuing their email service in June. As recommended, I have downloaded all the email addresses of subscribers and await information about a replacement service. I'll let you know as soon as I have more information.

Till next week.

Through the download exercise I discovered over 1000 spam subscriptions to my embroidery blog, all taken out in 2017 when I was not paying attention to it. I have deactivated all of them - one at a time! Fortunately it  has a good spam filter.

Post 370 In between family history and stitching, I do a really stupid thing and get booked

The doves have been looking after each other on my balcony, looking for lice and cleaning each other. The weather has been a lot cooler, although not as cool as Canberra this week, with regular morning temperatures below zero. Here in Adelaide we've had a few 15C mornings and most days in the low 20s. On Sunday I put my winter quilt on. The summer one is washed and put away.

lI haven't been out much this week. Much of my time was spent researching my grandmother's family story or preparing for the World Embroidery Study Group meeting tomorrow and the Certificate Course Workshop I'm giving in June.

Outings were lunch with a past neighbour after Pilates on Thursday, food shopping and dinner with family on Saturday night. Our scheduled Sit'nStitch didn't  happen on Sunday because Jennifer had returned from Queensland the night before and was self-isolating while waiting for her re-entry test results. The results were negative- and arrived so promptly we could have met - but it was too late.

I very much wish we had met. I was feeling miserable because I had done a stupid, stupid thing while driving home from the family dinner on Saturday night. My blogger brain took over.

On Saturday nights I often pass the police greys - the mounted police unit that operates in Adelaide - leaving their stables and walking to their patrol in the city. Last Saturday night they pulled  up alongside me at a red light on the corner of Hindley St- six mounted police looking splendid. Immediately, I think what a great photo this would make for my blog, take my phone from my pocket and attempt to take a photo. It was dark and glarey and I couldn't see much of the horses on the screen as one of the riders came around my car and asked me to wind down the window to ask if I had used my phone. It was only then that it hit me that taking a photo was using my phone. Totally humiliating. All I could do was apologise and cop the rap. He asked to see the photo. It hadn't taken! Did he believe me? I'm not sure - but I think the action was too stupid for me to have made it up.  He took all my details and I will receive a letter - and I expect a $600 fine. The fine is bad, but the embarrassment is worse. I can't believe I used my phone to attempt to take a photo of police! I could hear my mother saying, as she did not infrequently " For an intelligent child you can be very stupid at times"

I am somewhat, but not wholly recovered from kicking myself. And I don't even have a photo to show.

Now that is out of the way, I can write about the more productive parts of my week.

I prepared the 20 kits for the June Certificate Course workshop on Icelandic Embroidery that I wrote about two weeks ago.  The kits contain two pieces of wool flannel, one cream and one coloured, along with bundles of threads and two motifs printed onto sheets of Sulki - the printable stick-on, dissolvable paper I mentioned. The cream flannel is for a 16th century figure (pictured), the coloured for an 18th century one.

I cut the wool flannel in A4 sized pieces, printed the patterns on to the Sulki on my home printer, cut and packaged Appleton's threads and had sets of notes printed at Officeworks before packaging them up into ziplock bags.

The most time-consuming part was sorting the threads. I had a bag of sundry Appleton's wools from the Guild's trading table, supplemented by my stash of surplus Appleton's from my chair projects. I created bundles of threads in colours suitable for the projects. I want students to at least have enough to get them through the workshop.

It took the best part of two full days to get the 20 sets finished, but I was very happy to get them ready to go.

I am now working the two figures as examples. Right is the 16th Century figure, just off the hoop and with the Sulki still in place. The surplus can be cut away or dissolved in water. I used a 6" hoop and took the photo with the ring mark in to show the size. I am now working the 18th Century example - very different. 

I realise this is two months away, but the deadline for the publicity information about the workshop is this week and I wanted to have the logistics worked out before the publicity was due. I'm feeling very relieved I've prepared it all. 

These are the flowers at the cocktail evening Pat Manser threw last Thursday to celebrate the launch of her book More Than Words: the Making of the Macquarie Dictionary. I was invited, but a trip to Sydney is not on my agenda until I am vaccinated. 

It went well - and the flowers look fantastic. 

The building continues to rise next door. I took this from my back balcony. 

To add to the building activity, the installation of solar panels on the roof of our apartment building began yesterday. We already have some panels which provide solar power for shared areas. The new installation is of, I think, 170 panels whose output in power will be  allocated to individual apartments and off-set our personal electricity use. It has taken several years to negotiate and satisfy all regulations, but is finally happening. Those of us, who, like me, have apartments on the top (3rd) floor, right under the roof, will be subjected to quite a bit of installation noise over this week and next week - but it's worthwhile!

Yesterday I treated myself to very pleasant late lunch of swordfish at Mr Nick's at Frewville before doing a bit of supermarket and chemist shopping. 

The fungal nail infection I thought long cured has returned and I'm hoping to get on top of it quickly with help from my podiatrist. My GP also called me to discuss my second blood test results. I've agreed to a urine test when I see her in May and not to take any protein supplements!

Today I spent hours reducing my email backlog which has gotten out of hand in the last year. I found and paid overdue subscriptions, read things I’d saved for a rainy day, deleted expired offers and filed useful articles. I still have a way to go, but it’s progress.

A well-bred woman in the Midsomer Murders episode, Vixen, that I watched on the weekend made the comment that "Most of the best British families breed out now and then".  It made me smile.

This post has become too long to add the story that is emerging of my grandmother Nell's family mystery. I'll save it for another week, except to say that this shop today, in Cavendish St, Marylebone, London, was, for over 60 years, Noble's Newsagency, established and run by a woman who was very likely the mother of my grandmother's eldest sister. It's been a fascinating piece of detection and a very good emerging story. 

Tomorrow is the World Embroidery Study Group meeting and we are looking at the collection of Bulgarian Embroidery I have on loan from Nelly Ivanova.. My PowerPoint is ready and I’m looking forward to it. Afterwards I have a bone density scan and on Thursday my first Astra-Zeneca shot. Stories for next week.

Post 369 Easter

It has been glorious weather this week. A few degrees higher than I'd prefer at times, but for the most part a lovely breeze and sunny skies. The succulents are loving it and showing their appreciation. No sign of the Noisy Miner but I did see two yellow throated honey eaters swooping over the aloe, 

The first thing I did at the beginning of this week was to get the extra blood test my doctor ordered. I drove to a different clinic because my doctor wanted the test from a different laboratory as an additional check.  I have no result as yet. My Inspirations Magazine arrived, and I did some food shopping to avoid having to do so on Thursday before the four day break. 

I had arranged to have my air conditioner serviced on Thursday morning in preparation for cooler weather. Previously I'd had my annual service at the beginning of Summer but last year I had some trouble with heating and the serviceman suggested that it would be better serviced before Winter because of the position of the unit in the carpark where pollution can collect on the point the air is drawn in for heating. Once again I found the service efficient, helpful and informative. As the temperature this week has been between 30-32C I haven't given the heating a run!

I progressed the sampler over the week - getting quite carried away, I'm afraid. This is how it ended up - as a roll to keep embroidery flat! The details are in my embroidery blog.                       

While I was shopping on Wednesday I missed a parcel delivery so picked it up from the Post office on my way to Pilates on Thursday - some winter trousers from Ezibuy. After Pilates I called at North Adelaide Village, Metropolitan Fresh still had nectarines, which have disappeared now from most other greengrocers. I explored Romeos Organic Wholefoods shop and managed to find ecycled paper hand-towel  - I had finally run out - as well as some fabulous chocolate with honeycomb. 

When I got home there was another parcel in the letterbox - the Madagascan silk I had ordered from Dale Rollerson. 

This is treasure -  small pieces of different kinds of wild silk tor a friend and I to play with in the hope it will be of interest to the World Embroidery Study Group next year.

There was also a card to say I'd missed another delivery - to be picked up at the large PO Pick-up Centre in the CBD. When I called there on Tuesday the two women on duty did a fabulous job of data mining, working out it was the parcel I'd already picked up last week. Contractor error. 

On Friday, before going to Katherine's place for some of her delicious home-made hot cross buns (photo courtesy of Katherine),  I worked again on my family tree in response to emails waiting for me when I woke up from my fellow researcher in England. 

It's looking more and more as if my maternal grandmother's eldest sister had a different mother (and possibly father) to her siblings and that her very distinctive name came from the family of her 15 year-old biological mother. We are still following leads, but it seems as if the families stayed connected over decades, and at times exchanged surnames as well as passing on first names. There are still mysteries to unravel, but we have made real progress on what has been puzzling me for decades.

First up on Easter Saturday I made the chocolate crackle nests my mother always made at Easter. She used Arctic Mints as eggs but I haven't been able to source them for years. I've even resorted to jelly beans some years. This year the best I found were coconut covered fruit balls but Katherine found some excellent speckled eggs. I added a few of the fruit balls for good measure.

For the rest of the day I stayed hunkered down with Ancestry.com but eventually put it aside to work on the Aesop wood pigeon. I was working on the pigeon herself - using the fine Renaissance wools, which require a bit more accuracy and attention than the Appletons. Today I finished this section. The white is a bit more dominant in the photo than in the real thing.

To help me with this, my dove friends visited frequently all weekend. Getting impatient for me to put out more seed, Black Tips came right up to my door and stood next to (at one point on) the seed container.

I was sitting just inside the door. Although he could not see me through the glass he knew, I'm sure, that I was there and stared pointedly. 

His partner made herself very much at home, exploring the whole space and venturing, for the first time that I am aware, on to the vertical garden, finding edible seeds in unexpected places.

I made a collage, rather than bore you with bird pictures, or waste the shots. It's in rough sequence.

Easter Sunday was Fionn's 16th birthday and I had a really lovely afternoon, late lunch for family and friends at their place. Again the weather was perfect.

Fionn is a fine, fit and considerate young man who looked after his guests. He now towers over his mother. I'm not going to put family photos in this public domain blog, but I can share his cake. He suspended his very disciplined healthy eating regime long enough to enjoy it.

It was really lovely to be able to relax outside, enjoy conversation with family friends I don't see frequently and just hang out.

A perfect way to spend Easter Sunday.

Fionn's birthday is also the anniversary of my mother's death - now 28 years ago. I don't often mention it, as it could be a bit of a burden for a young man to carry, but I see it as renewing. She would have so loved to have known him. 

I've managed to read a couple of books over the weekend. I should have been reading A Dictionary of Lost Words but instead I binged on two of Michael Campling's books.

What's more, I downloaded the fourth in the series and I'm now part way through.

I like the relationships and the setting as well as the mysteries.

Today I had a podiatrist appointment, sorted out the parcel-notification-left-in-error and visited Create in Stitch looking for DMC 12 perle cotton no.160 or 161. No luck of course. I need it to match the linen I plan to use for an upcoming class by Christine Bishop on Fisherton-de-la-mer. I'm not going to find it in Adelaide, or indeed anywhere else. I found an overdyed variegated equivalent thread I'm going to try to substitute. 

Jennifer called today from Queensland, where, in spite of the rain, the reservoirs are not yet full. She's fine and back in Adelaide on Saturday. 

In spite of the continuing warm weather, Autumn has arrived here. The leaves are falling in the streets.  Daylight saving ended on Sunday morning - an extra hour that day.  It was great to have four days of silence on the building site next door.

Here's next week's challenge!

Post 368 The ideas, the tests and the certificates keep coming.

It's been a fairly busy week. Last night's family dinner of Chicken Maryland, Eggplant parmigiana, potatoes with bacon and Greek Salad went well. It was nearly late because Veronica interviewed me for a school project and I lost track of time. With Easter and the school holidays, Monday evening dinners are suspended for three weeks.  

After I picked up my five items from the Guild Exhibition last week I found  a spot for the Owl Service under the barometer just inside my door. I will use one or two of the bags myself and  give two or three away.

On Wednesday a couple of Guild friends and I had lunch at the Glenelg Surf Club. Junette picked me up on the corner of our apartments and I took this photo of the crane working on the building next door. It was lifting the next round of wall panels in place.  

The Surf Club is a great venue - a lovely view over the water and no pressure to leave. We stayed three hours.

You might remember last week I played with the Scheepjes wool to make a shawl. I also ordered a pattern and the Noro wool to make this shawl. It arrived while we were at lunch and I picked it up on Thursday before heading to the Guild.

I planned to go to the monthly meeting of the Guild's Crewel Work Group from 10-12.30 then on to my 1.00 pm Pilates. The Pilates class was cancelled and I was offered a 12pm class, which I refused because of Crewel. However, when I got to Crewel, the convenor had called in sick and I was the only participant/ I ended up minding the Gallery station for members to collect their Exhibition items while those on duty attended a meeting. I progressed the Aesop piece a little but not as much as I'd hoped.

It gave me a chance to talk to Christine Bishop about the requirements for her upcoming classes and also about the kit I'm putting together for the Certificate Course class I'm leading in June. This resulted in Christine bringing me 30 count Belgian linen and a metre of doctor's flannel on Saturday.                                                                                                                                      I will measure up and tack the linen at next month's Basic to Beyond but the kit for the Certificate Course workshop will take a lot more preparation. The workshop is on Icelandic Embroidery and I want the participants to work on wool, either working on a 16th Century couched figure or an 18th Century split stitch piece. The latter was usually on black. A friend has given me some very dark navy wool, which I also plan to use. 

I planned another concession to the twenty first century by using some solvi to transfer the pattern. At Create in Stitch, where I went to buy a metre of Solvi, Samela showed me a new product she has acquired but not yet tried - printable sheets of solvi that adhere to the fabric without ironing. Of course, I had to try it.

I think it is fit for my purpose. I can give students a choice of either the 16th or 18th century design already printed on the stitchable solvi sheets, or they can use regular solvi to design their own. 

My next challenge is to put together some bundles of appropriately coloured Appletons wools to get them going - and to stitch an example of each design.

While all this was occupying hours of my time, my newfound family history collaborator Melanie and I have been working on our shared family tree, examining the certificates of births, deaths and marriages we ordered last week. This week we discovered that one of Ada's brothers spent time in an asylum with significant mental health issues. From the case notes it appears this might have been related to syphilis. It also seems that at least one of his children was impacted and that his (and Ada's) father may have had similar issues. Ada was the youngest of her family. She was only 5 when her father died. There are more death certificates to come. It testifies, however, to a lot of suffering, perseverance and resilience.

It also looks as if we may be very close to solving a major mystery around my other grandmother, Nell, whose family baptised and married under one surname and used another on decades of the census. This photo of her was taken in 1917 when she was 25.

Melanie has done some extraordinary detective work to come up with a very likely explanation. We have ordered more certificates and I will report when we have some more information. 

Both my grandmothers' stories are worth telling and I am hoping to write about both of them later this year.

So far the aloe flower is too small to attract the Noisy Miner. I'm considering covering it with a net bag when it begins to open.

As a follow-up to my doctor's appointment two weeks ago I had my  fasting blood test. My GP has followed up with a phone call this morning to ask me to have another one, without fasting, to check electrolytes again. She would not be concerned, she said, if I had 2 kidneys, but since I have only one she wants to double check. So another test tomorrow.  I also have an appointment for a bone density scan and a mammogram - and, yes, my first Covid vaccination appointment on 15 April, to be followed by a flu vaccination on 5th May.

Last Saturday's Certificate Course Class was by Di Kirshner on invisible hem finishes. The instructions were to bring a piece of homespun 110cm x 25 cm. I was well out of my comfort zone - measuring, ironing, folding, ironing, tacking, ironing, then finally stitching, to create 6 pleats which we then stitched. To my horror, when I asked why the fabric piece was so long, the answer was because we might want to keep going and do more!  I thought she had rocks in her head.  

Di had brought along a steam station iron. I, who am at best an indifferent ironer, was impressed. 

I went home, finished the six examples, marked up the rest of the piece of fabric - and ordered a steam station iron! I have now finished 12 rows. The iron arrived today and I have just quickly tried it out on the piece.

I marked the names of the stitches in archival pen. I've got an idea for using the sampler. I will write this up for my embroidery blog and post a photo of the finish next week.

At Saturday's workshop I also discussed my Design Online idea with Barbara Mullan, who is running the course. I've now got an idea that relates to my Icelandic class. 

The Embellish magazine issue on Madagascar arrived. It is really inspiring. I think this will make a great study and presentation for the World Embroidery Study Group in 2022. Dale Rollison has an article on wild silk - so I ordered some for a couple of us to play with and test out. 

Finally, along with the iron, these half-metre pieces arrived from the Aboriginal Fabric Gallery in Alice Springs. They had a 15% discount offer and I thought these would come in handy.

So ideas everywhere - and not a single finish this week. Looks like a goal for next week.