Wednesday 10th July

 Cardoons! They have been flowering in my garden for a week or so now;

They are much bigger and better than last year. The tallest ones must be getting on for eight feet tall! In the jumble of plants further back are a dark purple clematis, verbena which is also heading for over six feet tall and a yellow jasmine.

My current Commonplace Book is nearly full, so I've found a book that I vegan doing art in back in 2021 and am making a quick, as yet unembellished cover for it. I just need to sew the top and bottom edges and it will be as done as it is going to be.

Meanwhile I've also been giving consideration to next year's One Book To Rule Them All. I've bought a notebook with very fine but high quality Japanese Tomoe River paper.  The paper is thin, but extraordinarily opaque, considering how light it is, and lovely to write on.

I was testing the back page with various inks and pens, and also watercolours, to see how well it would stand up.

I think it's going to be good enough for what I want. The writing hardly comes through, but it's clearly struggling with Very wet  colours!

I've started ruling up the diary section, getting ready for 2025. 

Tuesday 9th July

 A 'finishing things off' sort of day. With the weather so cold and wet there was really no incentive to go out. So I spent the morning sewing.

While mending a hole in one of my older Seasalt tops, I discovered two or three more. Another one that I bought at the same time has also gone into holes. 

I reckon that I bought them as useful music teaching tops over fifteen years ago, and have worn them pretty much non-stop ever since. So they owe me no favours; if they were a bit pricey when I bought them say £40 each at a guess, then if I  spread that cost over 15 years then they were definitely worth the outlay! So they are 'finished off', at least as clothes. It remains to be seen whether they are downgraded to pyjama tops or not.

I have completed my book cover;

Front

and back. 

I did the final bits while watching the Sinner - Medvedev tennis match. Sadly I missed the last 2 sets as I had to teach some piano lessons, and then when I got back to the tennis Paul was losing his natch to Alcaraz. Ah well.

I found time to stick the paper with the 'rules' for the new collaboration between Ang and me in the newly covered project book, and then tuck my paper templates inside the front cover. 

The collaboration is called 'Cover Story'. Ang and I will add a patch to the foundation fabric, and embellish it with 'slow stitching'. No buttons or beads, though, as they would make it harder to put the finished A5 notebook into a bookshelf,

I love the effects you get from adding carbon black ink to a plain wash of water.

I was thinking of adding watercolour tomorrow, but I'm actually going to knave the bottom picture well alone. I'm not so enamoured of the top picture so I won't mind if I spoil it.

Now, I need to finish off my step counts to reach my daily target, and there's even a possibility that I'll finish side 1 of poncho number 2 tonight. 

Monday 8th July

 Good evening!

I've discovered a new source of suitable easy listening for the wee small hours when I'm not asleep;

It's Private Passions, on BBCSounds, hosted by Michael Berkley. If choose the episodes carefully the voices are calm and soothing, and the music (mostly) the sort of thing I enjoy... each episode is 30 mins long and I'm usually asleep by half way through.

Just as well; I've had two or three restless nights in a row. But last night and the night before  I got back to sleep more quickly thanks to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Phillipa Perry. And also Olivia Laing, all most interesting guests, but not too interesting! 

I didn't get round to doing anything on the blank page of my 'One Book To Rule Them All' diary, a great A4 tome I constructed last year from a watercolour sketchbook. I can't bear a blank page, so I did an idea I've been mulling over for a while but not had the energy to try.

It's just cobalt blue, prussian blue and violet watercolour on a very wet page, and then blank fountain pen ink.

The question is  'which is the right way up!'

I painted it this way up;

But this looks pretty good too...

No, I prefer it the first way.

Sunday 7th July

 Our homegroup's verse to ponder this week is

....'you are a forgiving God,

gracious and compassionate, 

slow to anger

and abounding in love...'

It's from Nehemiah chapter 9, the second part of verse 17

Now if we could all be like God...

I shall also be praying  that our MPs of all parties will be 

gracious and compassionate, 

abounding in love, 

wise and upright, 

avoiding petty political point scoring and tribalism...

Saturday 6th July

 It's nice enough outside now to go out somewhere... but it's already 5pm. Too late for open gardens, and just walking round the block doesn't appeal. So I'll write the blog post early instead.

But I have almost nothing to say...

I have a couple of books which I have started, but I'm not sure I'm going to finish them. So they are languishing half read on my kindle, and a vague feeling of guilt prevents me from reading anything at all while these books are unread. I should just rem9ve the downloads and find an easy-read favourite!

I've finished listening to 'The Man in the Queue' on audible. I was very restless last night so listened to it on and off into the wee small hours. A couple of times I forgot to set the sleep timer, so dozed off and found myself lost when I rejoined it some time later. Who was Danny Williams? And Sonny? I'll find out best time around.

I expect I'll sleep better tonight, but I'll still set up another book ready for listening to if I'm wakeful again.

Otherwise sewing and tennis and tennis and sewing was the order of the day.

Friday 5th July

 Lovely wet morning. We didn't water the garden as I had meant to, so I really was pleased to see proper rain when I woke up. I appreciate that not everyone would have been so happy about it!

This morning was tennis and sewing... I'm making steady progress on this month's patch (there's a clue!) for the Cover Story collaboration (there's another clue).

I finished the patching for the cover for my project book this evening. I've used six charm squares which I've then added embroidery to. The pale patch isn't finished, but I  won't do that until I see how it lies against the spine of the book.

I'm going to have to finish the left and right edges somehow. I'll probably sew a lining for the inside front and back covers which will deal with all the raw edges.

We went out to investigate a farm shop/cafe which I've had my eye on for a while. It began as a trailer in the farmyard selling cheese toasties and drinks to walkers and cyclists using the Downs Link path linking the North and South Downs. Now it is a proper cafe and shop, with plenty of outside seating on the raised deck.

I had an idea of doing a short exploration of the path. As it is on the course of a disused railway it should be pretty flat, always a plus in my view! But as you can see the weather wasn't promising so we spent rather too much money on locally made Sussex  Charmer cheese, Horsham Gingerbread and Montezuma chocolate, and came home through the lanes.

The flowers in the baskets were worth the trip on their own.