Tuesday 24th January - what happened yesterday?

 Well, when we had reached the end of the scheduled events for Monday at around 7pm, we sat down and did nothing. Until the book club meeting at 7.30. 

A couple of us joined by zoom, and the book under discussion was The Twyford  Chronicle, by Janice Hallett. It is a thriller (with quite a bit crime), and so many twists in the narrative and plot that I almost gave up. I finished it this morning over breakfast and I think I've vaguely worked out what happened...

We are now reading 'Unsettled Ground' by Clare Fuller. 

It's going to be my turn to choose; we have moved to a system where we take turns to suggest three or books before the next meeting and people suggest, comment, and choose which they prefer. Scary... some of the group like more 'challenging' books  whereas I make a point of avoiding anything with the words 'searing', 'tragic', 'heart-rending' 'terrifying' or similar in the blurb.

(Blurbs for 'Unsettled Ground' use words like 'powerful,searing...' oh me oh my)

Which reminds me, 'blurb' was a solution to Wordle the other day. Is 'blurb' a proper word these days?

Here's a really terrifying sight;

Look at the size of this! The stitching area will be 19.5 inches by 9.5 inches. Ang bought the fabric, 11-count Aida, and I am working out the overall design;

Measure twice, sew once? Once it has been divided into smaller spaces it might look less daunting.

Saturday 21st January - Right Way, Wrong Way

 There are two ends to every skein of embroidery thread. In my experience they both take some searching out. The obvious end, near the outside of the skein, is actually the wrong end and you get an almighty tangle if you pull it.

Like this.

 The right end is buried further into the depths of threads, and everything works smoothly when you pull that one. Now I know, and so do you.

I expect there's a metaphor for life in there somewhere.

Sunday 20th November - Brocante

 

This photo was taken several years ago from the top of a street in Honfleur, in France Brocante means ''bric a brac", or maybe, more optimistically, antiques. Collectibles.

In the background you might be able to make out the suspension cables for the new bridge across the River Seine called the Pont de Normandie.

This is all by way of introduction to day's random paragraphs. It's been a random sort of day.

This book arrived yesterday.  I chose it by luck and by guess to be a source for embroidery ideas for the Postcard Project and at first glance it's looking like a 'good'un'. 

I really ought to be getting on with the current picture but am getting very distracted by other ideas at the moment. Still, 10 days to go and I'm more or less two thirds through.

You know that thing where your phone decides to show you pictures from today's date but several years ago? Today I had pictures of our Advent calendars, prepped and ready well in advance! 

Buying the chocolates to go in the drawers is tricky as there aren't that many delicious ones that will fit.  We have, after many years, developed a system for storing pre Christmas items, like cards, wrapping paper, and Advent calendars in a chest downstairs rather than in the dark recesses of the loft.

This evening, just before it got dark, there was a sudden shower of hail. I looked out of the French windows to see the hailstones bouncing at least three feet high. 

I opened the kitchen door for the photograph below. The hailstones were still falling out of the sky - hurling themselves down like missiles from above with a noise like lead shot being rolled around on a tin tray. 

Then, as abruptly as it started, the shower stopped.

Wednesday 31st August - Last day of the Summer holidays

Well, not for me. The schools go back tomorrow, but I'm not planning to get going with the full teaching schedule until Monday 12th September. There's too much shuffling of timetables and changing of lesson dates to be wrangled before then, as the students change schools, clubs and classes.

It has been feeling quite Autumnal the last few evenings and mornings, and there's definitely a change in the weather, even though it is still warm and sunny.

A seed catalogue arrived in the post and I have spent several mornings perusing the pictures, and adding page markers... I have a fancy to grow cauliflowers in pots - it seems you can only fit one plant into a 12 inch pot though. Maybe if I buy the dwarf variety?

This is last week's Johanna Basford picture in the last year's journal, all in French, that I bought so cheaply. I decided NOT to use green, and I've come to the conclusion that I am missing a touch of green here or there. I'm not a great butterflies and fairies person, but it was a useful experiment.

I've at last decided what to record - books, as I start and finish them, with maybe a comment. Or maybe not.

I've also made a start on this week's picture. I found about five leaves I had missed after I took the photograph. The picture might be on its side. Or it might not. It is certainly an education seeing how she manages to ring the changes for designs in order to provide 52 different pictures.

Drawings - I've got a bit further on with August's picture since I drew this, but it is still not ready to post Ang posted her card a few days ago, but it hasn't arrived yet. The Postal strike and Bank Holiday weekend does not make for a speedy service!

Do you want a clue for this month's embroidery picture from me? Oh, alright. I've just bought this on Kindle; I suspect I have (as usual) let myself in for more than I bargained for, but will muddle on through.

I didn't do any stitching at all on the postcard on Sunday, as we went round to our next door neighbour's for an hour or so in the afternoon, and after wine and crisps I thought I'd better not pick up a needle!

That's meant to be one of our cats, Leo. She drags her ancient body up the stairs most mornings to spend ten minutes or so with me. Highly inconvenient if I have just decided to get up, because I hate to disappoint her after she has made such an effort. So I go back to bed and read my book for a little while... and another chapter.... and to find out what happened next.....

and before I know it, another half hour or so has disappeared.

I'm managing to hit my daily step target of 2750 steps, sometimes even getting more than 3000. However, there are uncertainties in the gadget's discrimination between activities. I now take it off when I practice the piano, (and then get very annoyed if I forget to put it back on). Today I gained about 100 steps just changing all the pillowcases on our bed - 12 pillowcases in all, three 'top' pillowcases and three 'under' pillowcases, and we both have three pillows; two for sleeping on and another for sitting up in bed reading. Then there were a number of pillows in the two other bedrooms so I stripped them off too. I am forever trying to match up pillowcases, sheets and duvet covers in colour-coordinated sets, but continually thwarted. I reckon in a few washes' time I might have nailed it. 

Thursday 4th August - The other postcard has arrived

 Here it is! The counterpart to the 'postcard' that I sent off at the beginning of the week arrived this morning.

I had an inkling of what Ang might have been doing as her contribution for July, as she has been making Memory Bears all through July. I reckon she must be an expert after the number she has made over the years.

And here's her embroidery; and applique version of a memory bear! I wonder, if I unpicked the patch, would I find that the bear had a little knapsack on his back, like the 'real'  bears? I'm not going to try and find out!

She also included these book marks - very welcome, as I have been reading 'read' books as well as e-books recently. I'm fascinated by the patterns, and will do a bit of research in due course. 

I can also show you my design for June that I forgot to photograph before I sent it; a selection of some patterns on antique Delft tiles.

The next challenge will be to decide what this month's design will be. I am determined to choose an idea and get started in time to post it BEFORE the end of the month this time! 

Tuesday 24th May - Full Schedule

Yesterday, we took 5 hours to travel 62 miles; 60 miles in the car, and 2 miles on foot.

We drove up to London (now I really understand why the train is so much easier, but we are still not venturing on public transport at the moment), parked in a pre-booked space in Sloane Square car park, and walked across to the Royal Brompton Hospital a scant mile, for my routine lung function appointment. My average walking speed is around one mile per hour these days, especially is it is even slightly uphill. Wearing any kind of mask also slows me down. That accounts for two of the miles, and two of the hours. 

But I did enjoy the walk. It is such a pretty part of London, and as it was the day before the opening of the Chelsea Flower show, there was plenty to see. Many of the shops, even in the back streets, had exuberant floral decorations spilling out onto the pavement.

 I shall find out more about the results when I speak to someone at the clinic (over zoom) next week, but the lovely man who was operating the machine talked me through the figures in outline, and they were pretty reassuring. I'm always such a doom-merchant as the time for the tests draws near, and usually discover that I have been worrying over nothing.

The drive is only 30 miles each way, but once you get anywhere close to London the the speed of travel slows dramatically!

Both of us were pretty well zombified by the day - it is the most public outing we have been on since March 2020, even including the two trips to the Royal Free Hospital last year, once for routine tests, once for a 'right heart catheter', a procedure like an angiogram, but on the other side, to measure internal blood pressures in the heart. I find myself having these every five years or so, to see how things are progressing ( so far the results have been stable, which is good).

Today I did my experimental sewing for the postcard project. I've bought some stuff called 'magic paper'. According to the information, you can draw on the paper (what kind of pen, I would like to know??), cut out your design, peel it off the backing and stick it on the fabric. Then embroider, using stranded cotton or perle embroidery cotton. Finally you dissolve the magic paper with cool water. 

So I did all that today;

I used a frixion pen to draw the picture. The magic paper sticks nicely to the linen, giving it a satisfactory stiffness which makes it easier to sew. I used some black perle cotton.

The finished embroidery - as usual things changed as I went along...

And when I dunked the sewing in a bowl of cool water, the paper turned into a sticky goo within seconds. I shall know tomorrow when the fabric has dried whether all the goo has come off.

 I'm very pleased with how simple it was to use.

So now you know the theme for my picture this month...

 

Thursday 24th March - A Little Light Lifting

 The weights have arrived - a small heavy parcel.

I was slightly alarmed, but of course ALL the weights for BOTH ankles were in the one parcel, a total of 10 pounds, or rather nearly 10 pounds. It's not entirely clear to me what the unit of measurement is - does it matter? Nah, not really.

Each anklet has five little pockets, and each pocket has a little packet of some kind of heavy sand, and each packet of sand weighs around fifteen and a half ounces, or whatever that is in kilos. Or grams.

So I have removed four packets from each anklet, and tomorrow (or the next day) I shall have a go at strength training, starting at below level 1., as then I'm more likely to succeed. Never set yourself up for failure - aim low, and you will taste success, as I tell my piano pupils. It blows their mind after all the years of inspirational, challenge yourself, must try harder, gubbins they get all day at school.

They whole lot is stored in a stout canvas shopping bag at floor level, as advised in the book.

Low target setting is why my step count target at the moment is only 1250. I'm much happier reaching my step count most days, even without going for a walk, than missing it every day. I've got 1000 steps or so already, (it is 6pm) from pottering around in the garden all day, and should be able to get the rest by bedtime. I have been known to pace up and down the landing for five or ten minutes just to reach the magic number.

Noah's Ark

Yesterday; Bees. The book of Sirach is not one I've encountered; before. It is in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bible, but Anglicans keep it in a separate section called the apocrypha. I'm not going into all that... although I did encounter another book in the apocrypha in the novel 'Miss Garnett's Angel' by Sally Rooney, which references the story of Tobias and the angel.

anyway, Sirach 11:3 is 

"The bee is small among flying creatures,

    but what it produces is the best of sweet things."

Today; Song of Songs 2:15 is a fox;

Catch for us the foxes,
    the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
    our vineyards that are in bloom

 We used to have a problem with foxes, the little foxes, that ruined our milk, delivered by the milkman. They would pick up the plastic bottles and run around the garden with them, piecing the plastic with their teeth. We fixed that by putting out a milk protector, an upturned bucket with a half brick screwed to the top to act as a handle. Our usual milkman is used to the way that the bucket comes too when he lifts the brick, but I wonder what temporary milkmen think.

Sewing;

I can reveal what Ang sent me (if you haven't already seen it on her blogpost) She gives the details of how she made each motif in the post

These are on the cloth that has her name and address on it, and are her mementoes of her month of March.

The embroidery I sent to Ang is less topical as concerns current affairs; I sewed a picture devised from a selection of my favourite prints, and also celebrating my new developing skill of making a reasonable fist of satin stitch (aim low!) I also enjoyed using the variegated threads I bought,

and also learning how to start and finish bits of stitching without leaving knots. Of course, the cat is on the cloth with my name and address - but, do I end up with the cloth with Ang's name or mine? Either would be appropriate!  

Now I am starting to think about what I sew onto Ang's cloth for April - Easter is an obvious theme... and I need to create the 'postage stamp'. But I think I know what I am doing for that - I just have to practice drawing it a couple of times until I have learned the shapes.

Piano teaching has had its moments this week; you need a surprisingly mathematical head to work out how to play the first movement of Mozart's sonata K331. We've been working on the ornaments variation 5, the slow one; (I can spot the error in my notation now, but it gives the general idea. For perfection, there should be 4 horizontal beams joining notes grouped under each bracketed 3...oooops) 

I think we got there; my student had sort of crammed the notes in together in a flurry of activity, very similar in result to tidying a room by shoving everything under your bed.

Here's Daniel Barenboim demonstrating how 'easy' it is. The slow variation starts at 7'58", but listen to it all; it is divine! I haven't heard my student play any of this except the slow variation - she says she has already learned it, which makes me a little worried as to HOW she has learned it! There was a time I could play it, after a fashion... 

Friday 11th March - End of the Week

 Getting the blog written yesterday was quite a challenge. A whole load of windows updates went through, and Blogger was cranky for a while; photographs on my main page not loaded, and the icons all disappeared on the 'new post' page so there was a fair bit of guesswork and a number of deep sighs.

Reloading the pages seemed to work, without my losing anything I had already types in, so all ended well and without tears.

Today - everything seems normal - what passes for normal - maybe I shouldn't speak/type too soon.

After yesterday's full day, with almost everything getting done, today, as I rather thought it would be - was a rather different story!  

First thing, the weather looked promising, but even as I looked out of the window the clouds rolled in, the temperature dropped, and a sharp draught found its way through the windows on the North edge of the bay.

I put away all thoughts of going out!

It was an opportunity to catch up with my 'Commonplace Book'

I've been keeping these for some years now, and every so often go back and discover what was attracting my interest back then.

  I haven't made a good job of copying Harry the Cat's tail; it looks more like he is sitting on an earthworm. It will be enough of a clue.

I tend to take screenshots of things I trip across on the internet, and then transfer them to notebooks.

I opened today's Noah's Ark window. I have at last sorted out the connection between the scripture quotation revealed in the window, and the Biblical commentary in the booklet. It's quite simple - there isn't one.  Luke chapter 18 v 25 is about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The commentary was about Abraham. I can't remember if Abraham had an camels; I remember the sheep and goats and donkeys.

I've made progress on the felted tea cosy; I was delighted to find that the cut edges showed no desire to fray. Even so, I thought a line of blanket stitch would not come amiss   

Which is when I discovered that the blue embroidery thread was a skein that had no paper loops to hold it in shape, and showed every desire to unravel into a horrid tangle. That was soon sorted.

I've only done one side; the tea pot was carried off to the kitchen before I could check the other side before cutting the slit. I'm not sorry - it can be a job for another day.

I've started a trial on the cat embroidery on a spare piece of fabric. Then I had a panic - what if Ang hates cats? Then a remembered, this is MY piece, so I get to keep the cat! Sewing with pale grey thread on pale cream fabric is definitely an eye-watering activity. I've also decided to make the whole picture a bit smaller, and do some practice tulip embroideries. Satin stitch is SO not a strong point! 

My beautiful variegated threads arrived. I have a feeling that each one will need to be wound on to a piece of card before I use them.

The first Lent resolution has been - bent? Can I call it a greenstick fracture rather than a break? Quite a few 'older ladies', and I suspect I fall into that category every so slightly, are following a course in a book called 'Strong women stay young'. Exercising every day is one of my Lent activities, and I have bought a copy to get more ideas.

I shall have to make good by keeping to the resolution.

Finally, Ukraine. If you would like to join in, a prayer collective is organising that, as in World War 2, we stop whatever we are doing for one minute tor 

pray for world peace, for an end to conflict and for the restoration of tranquillity to all people on the earth, and for families to look to God for their safety and to see their salvation.  

The time for the United Kingdom is 8pm. Just one minute. Peace on Earth, and Goodwill to all peoples.

Friday 25th February - I'm on a roll

 Don't get toooooo used to daily blog posts from me.... 

Today I have made, or rather, started, a hot-cross-bun flavoured no-knead loaf. I have read various posts about taking no-knead-bread and turning it into bread rolls or iced cinnamon buns or whatever, but that's adding complexity to what is supposed to be a simple process.

I have not taken a picture, as at this stage it looks just like the olive bread - a bowl full of unlikely looking bread dough with bits in it. Once you've seen one, surely you've seen plenty? 

It will be more interesting tomorrow, when I have painted the cross on (a sort of slip made of clay flour and water, I believe; briefly got confused with the Pottery Throw Down Programme there) and baked it.

Don't ask for the recipe - it was the same as the olive bread, with salt this time, and 'some' brown sugar and 'some' mixed spice and 'some' mixed raisins - probably around 3/4 pint, on account of I have decided (I know this isn't quite right, but it is easier) that half a pint is roughly a cup.

I measure out the ingredients in a measuring jug - very easy, when butter isn't involved in the measuring.

The daffodil embroidery is finished; once again looking much better in the photograph, probably because the fuzzy focus does such a good job of hiding the irregularities. 

   Maybe I should sew a (protective) covering of fine gauze over all my efforts? To cover up the errors?

It's rather like when I am performing a piano piece, especially Chopin; the direction to vary the speed (rubato) ever so slightly to help make the melody more expressive can be used to delicately slow down on the approach to a tricky bit to make time to get your fingers around it, and then a careful almost imperceptible speeding up again afterwards. Ah, so poetic! Such expression!

A friend who is a gardener has started working in our garden on a regular basis from this morning. Wonderful! In an hour and a half she has given our border the 'spring chop', including the salvia Armistead plants which grew to an astonishing 7 feet tall last year. I have had to admit defeat as regards digging and weeding and all the 'bend-and-stretch' movements that gardening involves. I shall continue with my vegetable 'hobby plot'; because everything is growing in large tubs and I can sit down to work on them, or at least only bend half-way to the ground. 

We are mulling over a small extension at the front of the house to add a downstairs loo; I've had a conversation with a builder a few houses away who it currently engaged on doing just this. Unfortunately, it turns out that he is passionate about never wearing a mask, anywhere, ever; they are just for people who are ridiculously neurotic about germs and such like, and masks are totally unnecessary.

So he won't be getting the job, it we decide to go ahead. I'm still shielding, still taking precautions, still keeping my distance, still clinically vulnerable to any disease that would directly attack my respiratory system. For the past ten years I've known that catching 'flu would be worrying; catching covid would be a whole new level of concern and consequence. 

At the same time, I am glad for people who can feel more relaxed about the covid situation with the vaccinations and better treatments available; unfortunately the threat levels are not yet low enough for people of all ages in my situation - whether it's down to weakened immune systems, auto-immune disease or respiratory diseases.     

Hey ho. Whatever is going on here, it is nothing compared to what other people are enduring all over the world.

Tiny Joy of today; seeing both the the moon and the morning star through my bedroom window when I woke up!