Thursday 29th October - through the deluge

It absolutely tipped it down with rain all day today. Those rather dreary backgrounds I made yesterday, each one about the size of a large postage stamp, were exactly right...

We went to Guildford cathedral this morning to see the 'Threads - through the Cross' exhibition.  It's a series of 14 large, huge, panels, created using appliqué silk fabrics and depicting the life of Jesus from his birth, through his death, to the day of Pentecost. 

This is a selection of panels taken from the website. Well worth zooming in.

The artist is Jacquie Parkinson; you can find out more here. Several of my friends have seen the 'Threads - through Creation' exhibition that toured the country several years ago, so I was pleased to have the opportunity to see it for myself. But - this is a different exhibition by the same artist! She has a third series, on the book of Revelation and I think they could be combined in the future. 

Each panel, as well as depicting a scene, also incorporates a small frame with a different bird, relevant to the scene. For example, bottom left, there is a magpie - 'one for sorrow'.

I would have liked to have spent longer... we won't be able to go back as sadly it closes on Sunday.

Tuesday 28th October - at sixes and sevens

 Literally...

I've been itching to knit this hat since I found the pattern in a book LindaG sent me last year.

It's the top-down 'Swatch-less Watch cap', with the ribbing starting right at the top. That means that the lines of ribbing subdivide as you increase the number of stitches, and you have to follow the pattern very closely as each line is different! Aargh... at one point you add a marker every six stitches, and in theory the number of stitches in each section should always hatch. The trouble started when I checked a few rounds later and discovered that some sections had six stitches and others had seven. Half an hour's tedious 'tinking' and knitting later and order was more or less restored.

This is the book;

all the patterns, even the teddy bear, are knitted in one piece... mind-boggling. The Swatchless Watchcap is the simplest.

The sock pattern starts at the heel and sort of grows into a sock shape. Mind-boggling. I know, I've already said that. But it is.

Now, what is this mucky page of watercolour destined to become?

The bobs of colour have been created (?) Perhaps 'applied' is a better word, by adding water to the painty mess on my watercolour palette and blobbing it on the page. It's the wrong sort of paper too. Oh well. It's just a play a doodling. Not important. 

Here's a clue;

this is a monochrome experiment on my kindle scribe. Lucia Leyfield, the artist who offers the free 'winter trees' video was more 'intentional' in her tree doodling than I was. When I add the trees to the blobs above I'll try and be more 'intentional' too! The results are surprisingly satisfactory for such little time and deliberation.

So sad to hear that Prunella Scales has died*. I loved her as Miss Mapp in the first Mapp and Lucia series. She was so good; if she had read the telephone directory she would have been enthralling. 

* (I have a deep-rooted loathing of the phrase 'passed away', and even when it is abbreviated to 'passed'.)

Sunday 26th October - 'time waits for no man'

Except perhaps today, when the clocks go back and we have an hour to catch up...

I've read a couple of amusing blogpost, here (cyber-coenobites) and here (jabblog, hope you don't mind ...)

Both posts are along the same kind of musings I was indulging in... what happens during that hour? If, like me, you enjoy fantasy fiction especially stories involving parallel worlds, then this non-hour is full of potential. (I love the 'Rivers of London' series by Ben Aaronovitch)

None of the above is what I had in mind to post today!

This morning, when I did get up, I stood by the bedroom window and looked out to see a clear pale sky, and a completely still, calm day. Nothing appeared to be moving. 

As I waited there I began to notice the birds; gulls, from the sea or more likely from the landfill site a few miles away, and small groups of fluttering starlings flying apparently aimlessly hither and thither. A pigeon waddling around in the middle of the road. A few puffs of smoke from a fire or central heating boiler. A thin white streak way up high from a plane travelling west... 

In spite of all this activity it was still very peaceful, quiet, calm out there. A scene to store along with the others in my mental photo album;

from the Poetry by Heart website;

by Roger Robinson. I first encountered it in 'More Poems on the Underground, and rediscovered it today - in one of my Commonplace Books!

Saturday 25th October - pages from my Commonplace Book

 Yesterday was busy (apart from arranging things on the shelves of my new little table). Today was... not busy... so here are some pages from.my last Commonplace Book instead of regaling you with the entirely uninteresting details of the day.

I'd noticed a lot of '3 ingredient cake' recipes or ssimilar, and when I looked, they all seemed to involve 'bisquick' or 'a box of white cake mix'... ingredients that I had no knowledge or experience of. So I researched... 

The next photo is something shared by a good friend. I don't know the original source.

I'm slowly reading 'Meditations for Mortals' by Oliver Burkeman;

This was a card from my son from a few years ago. Inside, the cat says 'is there anything you need pushed off a table or counter top you?'

Random quotes;

Random recipe (I haven't tried it) and a quote from a stitching blog I rate highly 

I've been writing in Commonplace Books off and on for a number of years, collecting all sorts scraps, and sometimes adding my own thoughts and opinions. I find it fascinating going through the old ones as it brings back memories of what I was reading and doing at the time.

Friday 24th October - my new table

 I could pretend that ordering a little flat-pack table was solely so that BB, who likes assembling kits like booknooks

and complex wooden models

(this is a u-gears kit, when you turn the big wheel a secret compartment is revealed)

was an act of kindness, giving him a larger scale kit to 'play' with. I'm afraid it was nothing of the sort; I've been turning over ideas to help resolve the chaos occupying half the settee where I usually sit. BB made short work of putting the pieces together, and now I have a neat little table beside the settee with three shelves underneath;

I've still got a small stack of books and bits at the end of the settee but it's nothing like as big as it was.

Not only that, but lookee lookee;

The top swivels! I can bring my sewing basket / tea tray / whatever I like over to me, within reach.

I think this will be a solution...

Thursday 23rd October - painting out the doldrums

 This morning I was wandering around the house from one room to another, not settling to anything, not doing anything. Rather like a child, (or the cat?) I kept looking out of the front windows and then the back windows but the weather was the same at both sides of the house. Cold, grey, damp, and did I say cold? It's worth saying twice. English cold. Seeping cold. I stuck my nose outside and withdrew it again.

The last few leaves on my little witch hazel tree hung like limp dirty rags.

I had twenty minutes before I was due to teach a piano lesson. 

There was a jar of cleanish, well, only slightly murky, water on my craft table, so I sat down and splodged neat  autumn colours onto a page in an open notebook. Weirdly, I could feel my mood lifting as the colours merged and changed where they met...

The piano lesson,  as always with this lady, was fun! We both prefer to learn through 'play' rather than slog. Half term next week, and like all teaching staff everywhere, she's done. It's been a tricky and difficult half and, as is so often the case, the break has arrived not a day too soon. So we played!

After lunch I added the leaves;

That's worked out OK. I might add some more leaves and squiggles tomorrow. 

(The day ran away with me yesterday, hence no post)