No 1 plan, to send my August Cross Country Collaboration off to Ang hasn't worked out. It's partly because having hummed and hah-ed I have decided that I DO want to fill in the white space between the motifs - and having missed the post today there's no chance of Ang getting it before Monday. Ho hum.
One serendipitous discovery is that having started filling in the white space (Yes, it was the correct decision) is that there was one line that needed a border stitched, but this would have impinged on Ang's 'Bless this Home' piece. But, hurrah, close inspection and careful counting revealed that her picture is off-centre by a whole row!
The picture above doesn't show the full space, but to the left of the border there are 5 squares, and to the right of the border there are 6 squares. So I have encroached by one square, making Ang' piece exactly central.
Filling in the white space is going quite quickly, I'm glad to say, just using one colour (well, two thread from different skeins) so I can track up and down the rows doing all crisses and then all crosses. No thinking required. Or not much.
So, Ang, if you are thinking about September already, firstly my apologies for delaying your start, and secondly, at least you know that I am filling the bottom right corner!
Secondly, I was going to post a photograph of Ang's lovely piece of stitching for August here. She must be a real high-speed stitcher because she appears to have all the stitching over the weekend! I'm happy to manage 50-70 stitches per hour if I am reading a chart, and can reach 100 per hour if I'm just doing large blocks of colour.
I still haven't got me, my phone and the sewing all together, so I am 'borrowing' Ang's photo from her post; (hope you don't mind) and I really recommend you follow the link as she has written in detail all about the inspiration(s) and why she chose shades of purple.
the writing is 'tenui filo magnum texitur opus', the original motto of the company which is now DMC threads and means 'from a single thread comes great work'.
Yes indeed.
Other news - I don't know. Is slugging news? We went out again, and I took a bigger pot, and we collected at least another 20 slugs and snails.
I'm hankering to get back to the pen and ink stuff I was doing - I've tried an idea or two but not started the next topics in the work book yet.
Books; Oh how I have been reading books this past week!
I finished
'How to run your home without help' by Kay Shrubsall, a Persephone book I have read before. This time I read it with increasing horror; daily dusting, sweeping, brushing and vacuuming carpets, washing and polishing floors, the labour of laundry ('first assemble everything you will need; soap, jelly soap, soda, buckets, brushes, bowls, make sure you have arranged plenty of hot water and set the boiler to heat, fetch in the mangle'). She fills every moment of the day with unrelenting cooking, cleaning, shopping and house work, and the evening with knitting, sewing, ironing and mending.
and
'Cotillion' by Georgette Heyer - I snapped it up for 99p on kindle as my own copy is a well-thumbed paperback from my teenage days. I had completely forgotten the plot, which is oneof her more complicated ones. But the right people paired off in the end (as if it were ever in doubt...)
I'm still moseying through Isabella Bird's 'A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains'; an account of this intrepid lady's travels in the 1870s. Fantastic adventures and descriptive writing, but not light-weight.
and 'Coot Club' by Arthur Ransome. Rattling good yarns, which I have been reading every few decades all my life.
Lovely books, I do remember in the 60s there was such an emphasis on HOUSEWORK, I think you would need to start at around 5am to complete all the jobs especially the mangling (is that a word?) But it was, apparently, the route to being a 'good wife', because of course, nothing was more important than housework.
ReplyDeleteI was a little sad to see that the addition of 'baby' to the household was mainly discussed in terms of how to slot the poor little mite into the routine without dropping your standards too much!
DeleteI remember my mum's mangle. She washed on a Monday and the mangle was in a covered area outside the back door. Everything had all the water squeezed out before being pegged on the line. In order to make sure I was safe whilst she did the mangling, I had to sit still on the doorstep. I was given a piece of bread, spread with margarine and sprinkled with white sugar. This was a real treat! I was 4, it was before I started school.
ReplyDeleteWe had a couple of battered old mangles outside the school outdoor swimming pool when I was at boarding school. We swam several times a week in summer regardless of weather except thunderstorms. After the lesson we mangled our costumes and hung them, with the towel, from hooks in the roof of a open sided drying shed where they remained damp and clammy until the next lesson. Ugh!
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DeleteCotillion is a great GH book! I really like that one (and These old shades or something like that !)
ReplyDeleteYES, Slugging is news! 20 is great! I very much like your purple text!
The purple text is Ang's, not mine, isn't it great! I'm always on the lookout for favourite books reduced to 99p on kindle so I was delighted to find the GH.
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