Post 518 Adventuring

I posted last week from Adelaide Airport while waiting to board my plane to Canberra, the first flight I've made since March 2020. It was a smooth and pleasant flight, taking off over the sea, then swinging around over fairly bare terrain and cloud for most of the flight. I used to fly to Canberra fairly regularly, and had forgotten the regular pleasure of descending through clouds to the unexpected vista of lakes and land that surround the city.

It's lovely - and a large part of (for me) the attraction of our National Capital.

Creeks and roads wind through the hills, eventually revealing isolated farms, and then the lakes emerge in the background, with a glimpse of carefully located wind farms.

I had forgotten the joy of it.

The best part, of course was being there, spending time with Alison and Karl, catching up with a couple of friends. I have quite a few friends in Canberra and I'm glad I decided not try to see them all. I want to do things mindfully. There'll be other times.

Canberra does wildlife fairly well. There were bird sounds from dawn to dusk, currawongs, miners, and plenty of sulphur-crested cockatoos.

I spent a few hours meeting friends in the Botanic Gardens where we shared deck space with this Eastern Water Dragon (Intellagama lesueurii). 

 The flowering gums along the path to the carpark were doing a fine job of attracting the bees.

I also visited The Crafty Frog, to spend the voucher Alison and Karl gave me for Christmas. They have an enormous selection of wools (which I avoided) and an excellent selection of threads I needed.  I came away with a treasure trove (right).

The book on Brioche knitting is a find. I've wanted to try this, but without a focus. This has very clear instructions, including how to cast on and rib for Brioche, how to work it in the round, tips for finishing, and, surprisingly, a section on developing ideas and designs.  It looks as if I won't be reducing my knitting projects any time soon!

The best find, however, was the ebony needles. I have been pretty committed to bamboo needles, which are much kinder on my hands than plastic or steel. at The .Crafty Frog had about half a dozen sets and I was intrigued so bought 2 sets in a size I could use on the project I had with me. It took about 10 minutes for me to decide these were the best needles ever.

They are hand made in India, smooth and silky to the touch. I want to use them always, and within 24 hours of being home, had found a supplier of interchangeable sets and ordered them. They are not easy to find. I suspect they are not being made in any quantity, if at all. If you are a knitter, and stumble across them, buy them!

We went to Pollen, a bit out of town, for lunch on my birthday, which was also my last day in Canberra. It was a delicious, leisured meal in lovely surroundings.

The flight home was a bit bumpy, but without drama. Our entry into Adelaide at sunset provided - in contrast to our Canberra entry 3 days previously- cloudless views of the city. Although both flights descend over hills, Adelaide is drier, more heavily populated, and jammed between the sea and the hills.

And of course there's the Oval.

I had forgotten the routine and pleasure of air travel. I had expected, but didn't experience, disruption and hassle. 

Security checks at Canberra on the way home did pick up two doubtful items in my luggage, a credit-card size steel all-purpose opener-of-everything piece of merchandise I had slipped into my handbag because I didn't know what else to do with it, (great idea if you are not flying anywhere!), 

and a bag of cotton reels that had belonged to my mother, passed to Alison and are now coming to me. As commonplace as these may be to some of my generation, it is hardly surprising that current airport security staff want to examine a 'bag of cylinder-like objects' showing up on their computer screen!

Since arriving home, I've caught up on sleep, been to my Book Club, had coffee with Panayoula and managed to get to Aquafit today. 

I've made quite a bit of progress on the prayer shawl, ordered some more bookmarks (yes, I know) using the photos above of the cockatoo, the lizard and the bees, and finished the tote bag of native plants. Detail in my embroidery blog.

The Duftin Tote Bag kit was waiting in my letterbox. I'm a little daunted by the punch needle component in cotton, not wool, but a piece of test fabric is included, so if I don't like the test piece I will embroider instead. 

As I predicted last week, the frangipani was blooming to welcome me home on Friday night and has further opened in the hot weather we have had since. It is a hybrid of the pink and white varieties and does have scent!

Temperature here is a bit warmer than I prefer, but it would be churlish to complain in what has been a simply fabulous week. 

Now I'd better get back to researching Mexican embroidery!  🙏

Post 517 Food, family, friends - and a flight!

 Another busy week, on way or another. On Thursday morning I had a morning tea/brunch for Adelaide family and partners before they set off on a family holiday adventure. It was a happy time, with lots of laughter and stories. I hope they are all enjoying their time away. I had lots of food left over, so didn't do much cooking until Sunday, when friends who have been travelling  came for lunch and I tried out a new recipe - Chicken Maryland with haloumi, honey, and lemon. It was a success and will join my Monday night repertoire. It’s lovely to have the friends back in Adelaide for a while and the hours sped by.

I had primed myself to take photos of the table for both meals, but, as always, when I get into a social situation, photography fades from my consciousness. It seems it is a solitary preoccupation. Saturday night's sunset will have to do as a lead photo.

I worked pretty steadily on a couple of tote bags, finishing Women's Voices ( as usual detail in my embroidery blog) and starting on Botanica in Rust - a remnant I bought from Ink and Spindle. It is a beautiful heavyweight Belgian linen dyed and printed in Melbourne.  The Australian native flowers printed on it are bold enough to embroider and the remnant will cover both sides of a tote.   

My idea is to embroider just one, or at most, two flowers on each side, that way emphasising rather than colouring in, the work of the designer.  The Waratah lends itself easily this treatment, using bullion knots.

So whereas last week was a Quaker stitch  binge, the current binge is bullion knots!

I finished this side last night. I don't want to do more to this piece. It is a work of art in itself. I am taking the second piece (the other side of the bag) with me to maybe work a grevillea on the plane. Yes, by the time this is posted I will be in Canberra for a few days, my first trip outside Adelaide since March 2020.

I spent much of yesterday thoroughly watering all my balcony plants in preparation for the rising heat in the three days I’ll be away. One of my balcony frangipanis is about to bloom. None of them bloomed last year, so this is an event. It is not the highly scented white with yellow centre, but I’ll settle for the beauty of this one.  I'm guessing it might be open when I return on Friday night. 

It has taken a bit to orient myself again to preparing to fly. Once I did this on autopilot. I've had to focus to remember, and check, luggage allowance, what I need (all those chargers), what I can't take, what I need to turn off at home, how I will post his blog. I figured I had time to swim today before going to the airport, but abandoned the idea in favour of triple checking my preparation.             

 A few months ago I saw this book advertised and was interested, but decided against it as it was expensive,  I have a pile of unread books and have again run out of bookshelf. Last week it came up in a listing in The Book Grocer at $20 and I bought a copy. I'm guessing it was remaindered stock, as they have multiple copies. It arrived yesterday and I began reading straight away. It has me hooked. It has the irresistible element of uncovered detail that shifts accepted viewpoints - and includes women who wrote, or scribed or made parchment. It has already given me another idea for the next women's faces bag.

Pat Manser, you might want a copy! 

I am, however, intrigued that the author either published the same book under a different title with a different publisher, or wrote something very related in the same year under the title of Hidden Hands. 

I made time during the week to improve on the display of my mother’s unfinished horse embroidery. The transfer pattern and stitching instructions were with it, so I have stored them underneath the embroidery. One of the linen mats Vivienne gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago makes a nice frame and I’ve turned it lengthwise.

 Now it does justice.

Hopefully my plan for posting this from my iPad at the airport will work. It will be a bit earlier than usual and next week I can report on my Canberra adventure.                            

Post 516 Into 2024.

The bats have been out in force each evening this week. Presumably the figs are ripe and there is an end-of-year bat fig festival happening in the trees around the city. This was their last flight to the fig tree in 2023

I've enjoyed a quiet week. My cleaner came on Thursday for the first time in a month. He has come up with a better arrangement for 2024, moving to Tuesday afternoons, so I don't need to worry about clashes with WES Group. 

Later in the afternoon I made another batch of corn and zucchini muffins, this time using the feta recipe without the cumin, which I didn't have. This is becoming my go-to recipe.

I have been busy reading and building a presentation on Mexican embroidery for our February WES meeting. I knew very little about Mexican history other than the names of Montezuma, Cortez, and Diego de Riviera, and not much about embroidery except bright red flowers. The 1976 The Embroidery of Mexico and Guatemala by Frances Schaill Goodman is very helpful.

I've now got enough to share - and to know there's more to learn. I've also ordered a blouse from ArteOtomi.

The V&A have a Mexican collection and a lot of information, including a free pattern for a bag sampling Mexican motifs. I might give it a go. 

On the other hand, my original pink mandevilla is blooming again,  and the photo would make a very decent imitation of Mexican floral embroidery......

In the meantime, I've cut out a couple of tote bags to embroider and construct. I try to keep a couple in stock as gifts and exhausted my supply over Christmas. I'm very much looking forward to working some new ones. I began stitching one of them on Monday. I wanted to begin 2024 with embroidery, so I set the knitting aside for a few days. This is the fabric I ordered from Tessuti back in September. I have pencilled in some quotes and I am getting a lot of practice in my Quaker stitch!  I hope to have it finished by next week. 

When I had the cabinet made for some of my embroidery gear in 2022, I requested a glass top so that I could put an unfinished piece of mother's embroidery on top.

My mother began this when I was about 6 or 7. She worked it with great care but found it challenging. She would pick it up from time to time, but never finished it. I considered finishing it, but decided to keep it as it is. When the cabinet arrived I couldn't find the embroidery. I searched everywhere but in the end stopped looking, hoping it would turn up one day. 

Yesterday it turned up, tucked into a bag in a drawer of spare bags I was rifling through. Another plus for 2024!

I have progressed the prayer shawl I mentioned last week. It took a couple of false starts before I settled on one I was happy with. Attempt 1 used a fine 1ply mohair but after a couple of inches I realised I had cast on too tightly and it would never block straight. I undid it back to the cast-on, but decided my friend would be better off with something more solid, so switched to  a long green wrap that is coming along nicely. 

Unfortunately Aquafit was cancelled this morning as the instructor was sick. I set out to do some shopping but the carpark door was jammed, having, it seems, previously hit a wheelie bin on the way down. It was fixed around 4pm so I dashed out and stocked up. The supermarket shelves were somewhat depleted but it was easy to park. 

This is the moon rising at one minute after midnight on New Year's Day. I was trying to capture fireworks but much prefer Luna rising on 2024.  

The Mayans and Aztecs, like the Romans, saw the moon as a goddess. 

Post 515 Quite a week

It's hard to know where to start in a week with so much happening. The highlight, of course was Christmas Day, which I spent with Katherine's family - a fabulously happy time with lots of laughing, connection and love. 

 

I am loathe to post photos of people's faces so will make do with our deserts - Carol's Yule Log in the foreground and Katherine's pavlova at the back. Both were delicious, and it will take me a day or two to lose the extra 0.4kg they added!

The hats went down a treat and the bonbons added to the laughter.

I got a lot of interest and joy from the numerous messages received from friends during the week. I am more than ever convinced of the importance of this annual effort to stay in touch.                                                 

I also had a couple of lunches with friends. Jennifer and I had several months of news to catch up on Wednesday. The Christmas biscuits she made with nieces were demolished pretty quickly on Saturday night at Katherine's place.

On Friday Lorraine and I wore our Frida Kahlo outfits to lunch at The Flying Pan. This was Lorraine's idea, and she had excitedly prepared flower bouquets for our hair, a purple one for me, a white one for her.  

I managed to convince her that it would be impossible to anchor these (right)  with either the bobby pins or the scarves she had brought along, and that we should use a couple of the florets rather than the bouquets. 

Hers was bolder and better than mine. Her dress was also a better choice (helps to try it on, rather than buying online on a good-idea impulse!). I might wear mine once more, for my Mexican Embroidery presentation, but that's it. It is a most unflattering shape for my figure. Be that as it may, we had a great lunch, after which I dashed off to the dentist for a filling. At their request I got there early, only to find my dentist had an emergency, and was running an hour late. I got away 2 hours later with the filling done and a referral to an odontist, which, of course, can't be followed up until mid-January. This is no one's fault. It is great that the emergency was dealt with. The woman concerned was unnecessarily apologetic. One day it could be me. 

On Thursday, prior to Pilates, I finally had my one hour appointment with the orofacial pain dentist. She was terrific. It turns out I have a displaced disc in my left jaw. More than 30% of people apparently have this without knowing. The jaw locking I experienced back in June occurs when the disc slips completely out of position as opposed to being misaligned. There is no cure but a range of management techniques, several of which she taught me.The first message is 'don't panic', which is, of course, what I did back in June! Understanding what is happening is half the battle.  I've been practising, and can feel the difference. 

Encouraged by the dental works, I made myself another batch of corn and zucchini muffins for lunch on Saturday, this time trying a recipe that uses buttermilk. It is a pretty good result, although I still prefer the last batch I made using feta.

One of the best thing about these, when you live on your own, is that they are good for a couple of days, either cold, or reheated.

I spent much of Saturday embroidering the wings of felt doves I had bought from the Leprosy Shop, another slightly mad project covered off in my embroidery blog. 

After picking up my grab-and-go bag of crocheted squares as I left on Saturday for dinner, when I got home I thought it time I sorted out the squares to see where I was up to with the intended baby blanket. I then spent Sunday joining and filling in. 

I now have 19 squares to go, plus the edge. I will probably continue to use it as a grab-and-go project, but now more purposefully. This was designed to use up my surplus of 4 ply cotton. It has made inroads, but there's a way to go. 

In the meantime, I have two friends about to have major operations and I'm hoping to knit prayer shawls for them. I also have fabric to make more tote bags.

The angels and mages have watched over various sunsets this week, and also, it seems, over me. There were plenty of storm clouds and gloom, but also colour, light and beauty. 

I have been blessed many times over and I am grateful. 

 

Post 514 Just about organised...

Our final WES meeting for the year was full of friendship, shared experiences, engagement and interest. Several people brought along things they, or their mothers, had knitted. The non-knitters were just as engaged, with memories and stories. Margaret and I shared some background in Shetland knitting and a good number stayed for shared food. We also agreed on our 2024 program.

The angel was a gift from Lee. It is about 7cm tall and looks lovely in the light.

The NZ fantail continues to shine.

On Thursday, after Pilates, I made a batch of gingerbread biscuits, using Anthony’s honey, which worked brilliantly. I gave most of the biscuits away before taking a photo, so these are the seconds I kept for myself. I had almost run out of ginger, so they are a bit light on, but nicely crisp with a bit of a kick.

Following the plan I devised with my doctor, I have been a bit abstemious in what I eat, but I have at least tried a tree of two.

By Friday the rain had stopped, so I did two loads of washing, the first in 15 days. I hung one load out and the second on Saturday. I only have line space for one load. 

Before going out to buy more ginger,  I prepared and posted the last packages I’m hoping will be delivered by Christmas and, on a bit of a roll, put together the Christmas crackers, using the reusable cloths and cardboard rolls from last year. Each has a snap, a couple of jokes and a small gift. The hats don’t fit in the crackers, so are separate.

Still on a roll on Saturday morning, I booked a return flight to Canberra for a few days in January, went to Norwood to pick up an art work, to the Jam Factory to pick up something a daughter had ordered, then back home to organise all my Christmas presents, make a couple of extra bags and check my list. 

On Sunday  I made a set of small bags for the hats. So both the crackers and the hats are a lucky dip. The fabrics have memories. A couple are from a shirt of Jim's - he would want to be part of it- and a number were liberty fabrics given to me by my cousin David and his partner Susan for my birthday in 2017. A connection.

That is pretty much me organised. 

Nevertheless, I indulged in an experiment to convert Santas into trees.  I discussed some  improvements to the design with Niamh and Veronica, and have now started work on version 2.  Then I'll stop  knitting hats for a while.

Fionn was working but Riley took his place at our last Monday dinner for the year, before he and Brigid took the girls to Lobethal to see the lights. Peking flavoured duck was easy with help from LuvADuck. The fried rice took a bit more time and effort to make, but makes it an easy meal rounded off with ice creams and gingerbread.

The wool for my blanket indulgence arrived, along with the second book I ordered on the Evil Eye. The wool is lovely (photographed here through a plastic bag). I've vowed to return to a couple of embroidery projects before I indulge. I now have a discouraging pile of books to read. My plan is to prioritise Mexican embroidery for the February WES meeting. We'll see.

Today was swimming, I picked up my new orthotics, the last print run of my Christmas cards (these with no printed news inside) arrived along with a fairly strange knitting book I had ordered from the Quaker shop in Kendal in the Lake District - out of curiosity more than anything.  

I was pretty unimpressed when I first opened it. The jokey and, to my mind, somewhat smart-alecky style, put me off. However, a closer look raised my interest. The first pattern, called The Body Snatcher, by Casey Rich and Alice O Beltran, explains how to measure for, and make, a cowl-neck tunic, adjusting for your personal tension, and size. It is very clever. The book has a lot of stuff that doesn't interest me, but I do want to try the tunic. It also has a useful explanation of how to design and knit a beanie which might have helped a few weeks ago. I would like to know what my granddaughters think of the writing style.

The orthotics feel really good, with a little more support on the inner arch. The orthotic moulds are in the bottom of my wardrobe, where they will stay for when next needed. There, I've put it in writing!

It's lovely to be getting a steady stream of cards and email messages from friends, watched over by the angels and Magi on my fly screen.

I still have a couple of lunches, Pilates and two medical appointments this week, so Christmas still seems a bit distant.  My next post, however, will be on Boxing Day, so  I wish all readers a safe,  peaceful and happy Christmas. 

I hope the angels sing for you.