Family, friends and fun

The start of the bluebells

I’ve (we’ve) had a lovely week, both of us have had birthdays. I now have a golden oldie for a husband, but he reckons 78 r.p.m. is far too fast for him! And I’m now sweet 16, the sweet is pushing it a bit! Not something I’ve ever been!

Lots of long walks in the woods for me, whatever the weather, what you have to do with a dog (see below!). Sitting outside in the sunshine with friends bringing birthday presents, luckily the first one brought cake, so there was cake to share with the impromptu visitors. Yes, it was cold, but we were well wrapped up and it was well worth it to see them all.

We’ve had the first proper meal with our son and his wife since Christmas Day. We’ve missed their craziness and banter. After we’d eaten, I was told that my / our present was in the back of the car. I was handed a dog lead with a little shaggy dog attached, and told her name was Nelly (our Golden Retriever was called Nellie). My response was ‘you’re joking’. Miles has been trying to persuade us to have another dog for a dozen or so years, even before we lost Truffle, our black Labrador, that we’d decided was our last dog.

It hasn’t stopped him trying to change our minds over the years, coming up with lots of arguments for, and tying me in knots about what he reckoned were illogical or not valid reasons that I’d responded with. I did think I was being wound up and that it was theirs. Many times he’s asked ‘what percentage of a dog do we want?’ in the hope of having one himself, and us looking after it when he was away, either for work or on holiday. Zero, has always been my answer.

They had only collected her that morning, but he said they had met her several times. She got out of the car a little apprehensively and slightly nervous. She was a lockdown puppy, and there had also been a little terrier who had tried to bite him, so they didn’t choose that one. She was not really used to being on a lead, where she was from she didn’t need one and she would stay with her owner, but she needed to be on a lead until she was familiar with us all and to know the places where she was being walked.

We needed to be patient and go at her speed to walk along the pavement and get to the woods, and she was not sure about the traffic and the pedestrians, but seemed quite happy, calm and well-behaved. No obvious reason for anyone to want to give her up.

While we were walking I quizzed him about where she had come from, why she needed rescuing, who had had her, why they wanted / needed to get rid of her, etc. Several times I was aware he couldn’t give me an answer, or evaded the question, or changed the subject, all of which made me suspicious. If she was theirs I felt sure he would have wanted the information to the things I was asking.

I’d insisted that he held her lead, she was at least a little used to him, but did hold it myself for a short time, once she was more comfortable and confident with us all. It was a lovely, bright afternoon if very cold, and good to walk in the woods with them.

She was quite happy with Colin when we got back, going to him for fuss and attention. Neither of us was really convinced that she was for us. Miles knows that a dog is not just for Christmas or birthdays, and is a long-term, serious commitment. He knows we don’t want the tie of another dog, but kept repeating that she wasn’t theirs.

We were both very relieved at the end of the day to find that she was one of his colleagues’ dog, and that they were in on the joke. Cruel on the dog, no. Miles and Lera will look after her when the friends go away, and it will be better for her in the long term if she knows them and feels safe and secure with them.

Wound up? A little, we were both very relieved to see her go, and would have enjoyed her more if we’d known she was only a visitor! He assured me at the end of the day that he’d not lied to us, just evaded the truth and been very careful about what he’d said. A couple of friends suggested we should have called his bluff and pretended that we wanted to keep her, but that would only have given him reason to think he really could present us with a dog. Bluff and double bluff.

It will no doubt become another of the stories of crazy presents from him and now them: Lera is just as bad as him!

I haven’t done much stitching, but have finally finished ‘Nanna and me’. It’s been on the arm of my chair ever since. It feels nice, very tactile as textiles often are, often difficult not to touch them at exhibitions etc., so I tend to walk round them with my hands in my pockets to remind myself not to touch, quilts especially.

Finished at last

I’ve scanned a load of photos from our 1999 trip to America, relatively few to choose from as it was before we had a digital camera, but plenty picked out anyway. So the quilt is progressing, just nothing more to see yet.

Below is a lovely quiet, still place for a drink on one of our less regular walks. The birds were singing away, and coming down very close for a drink. I love the reflections in the water. This walk was also when I saw the first bluebells of the year.

And I saw these incredible bracket fungi, the centre of which looks like the inside of bones, or coral. Stitch project? Crochet? Lace?

Bracket fungi on the top of a tree stump

This was on the side of the same stump

My little fix of green on the kitchen table is coming out, a beech branch broken off in the wind a week or two ago. The one from a month ago is still not showing any green, but the buds are still getting fatter. The leaves are so delicate and fine, they look like pleated silk. Yes, there are two tiny wooden eggs peaking through from the back. But Lera’s Russian Easter is not until the 2 May, so I’m leaving them out until then.

Easter and Grasby lockdown challenge #9

My first quilt

There have been a few challenges this week. The first was to myself, to finish my green redwork, and I managed to finish stitching the last egg late last night. Well, the ‘shells’ were finished last week, so it was a case of ‘decorating’ them. Only one was finished (French knots), two were partly done (tiny seeding and cross stitches), and both were a challenge to find matching thread. That leaves two to finish and five whole ones to do.

It is a very different beast from what I would do now. I have learnt so much since I started it, but I didn’t want to unpick my earlier work. It’s interesting to see the progress I have made. Firstly the French knots and the cross stitches don’t show up well on the beige linen background, and unfortunately they are next to each other, so I couldn’t balance them across the piece. I didn’t want to do the others so light, to contrast better with the background, having used stronger, brighter greens.

I’ve added tiny triangles, basically three little running stitches, single chain stitches, lazy daisy flowers, bigger seeding and straight stitch ‘flowers’. The partly finished ones, I think I have matched the thread or pretty close. Note to self, do not take all the thread for another project! Or make a note of what it is, brand and number, and how many strands of thread were used!

Finished, apart from needing a wash and press.

I’ll wash and press it before I put it away with the Easter decorations. For now, it’s on the kitchen table with a broken-off branch of beech I picked up in the woods nearly two weeks ago. I put it in a little vase and kept it topped up with water. The buds are fattening nicely, and before they open much more I need to put the tiny painted wooden eggs on it.

Fattening beech buds

The vase sits just right in the centre of the eggs.

The Grasby Easter lockdown challenge #9 nearly didn’t get done. The Grasby group hopefully will have an exhibition this year, we were all working on it for last year, but of course it didn’t happen.

We had a deadline of the 31st March to finish our final piece, so I have been working away at that, which is now finished. Phew! Lots of experimentation and working out how I was going to execute it, but got there with a day or two to spare. The pieces we do for Grasby are not shown until they are exhibited, so watch this space for details. This took precedence over the lockdown challenge.

We had all had #9 in a pretty envelope which arrived towards the end of February, with a tiny fretwork egg on a mauve ribbon and the request to create something, anything on the theme of Easter – Pagan or Religious, using the colour of the ribbon. I opened it and read the instructions several times, but put it away not wanting to get side-tracked from my main piece. I had a few big ideas for the challenge, but not time to do them by the time the main piece was due.

But after last week’s painted ‘Fun-ky chickens’, and as I looked at the instructions yet again, it suddenly occurred that I could do a stitched ‘Fun-ky chicken’. I had the perfect little white plastic oval frame, nearly egg shaped, and the right size complimentary yellow piece of felt for the background. I couldn’t find the googly eyes that were my first thought (found them since!), but think the beads work better anyway: a handful of mauve and purple threads and I was off.

It was a quick piece, but at least I have managed to do all of the Grasby challenges. And Colin came up with the perfect title for it “Which came first?” (chicken or egg).

“Which came first?”

The lockdown challenges are all on Facebook under Grasby Embroiderers and some earlier work that has been exhibited too.

The final challenge(s) is one by a friend. Earlier in the week when the sun shone and it was warm and sunny, and we could finally meet up in gardens, I was showing Sally, a non-stitching friend, how she could make a patchwork cushion. I’d got out my quilt book, with photos of my work and how I’ve tackled some of my quilts. The first job (another one!) is to up-date it, photos need finding and printing, fabric samples and sketches, ideas gathering…… it is a useful resource and record of some of my work.

The second is to finish ‘my first quilt’. It was started in 1999, a memory quilt of an Easter visit to our dear late American friend Dottie in Tucson, Arizona. The sixteen patterned fabrics were chosen and bought in Michael’s, an art and craft hypermarket unlike anything we had in England at the time. A bigger, better Hobbycraft-style shop. Dottie’s niece Ginny took Miles and myself there, having dropped Colin at a ‘record shop’. We were there for literally hours, and I still felt I’d only scratched the surface of the place. I spent quite a lot too, but was sure Colin would have spent just as much or more in the record shop! I was not wrong.

We had nearly finished our shopping when I spotted a memory quilt hanging from the ceiling. I didn’t like quilts at this time, could see no point in cutting fabric into pieces and then stitching them back together! Most of what I had seen before this was a mish-mash of fabrics, hexagons hand-stitched together, and I was not impressed. But this memory quilt was done in beautiful, brightly patterned fabrics, carefully selected to make a coherent whole.

I was blown away by the idea of making one to commemorate our holiday of a life-time in America. We had fun choosing the fabrics to represent various aspects of the holiday; lots of Mexican food, including chillis, a trip to Old Tucson, Easter eggs, humming-birds, flowers, saguaro cacti, road signs, medical instruments (Dottie ended up in hospital for a couple of days with pneumonia while we were there), iguanas (we saw lots, and Ginny loved them), frogs to represent a friend of Dottie’s who also took us out for the day.

I bought eight plain brightly coloured fabrics to go with the patterns once we were home, and spent many hours playing with pieces of coloured paper working out which to put together, to make what I later found were traditional 9 square blocks. If only I’d known, I would have saved myself a lot of time. I even did triangles and have no idea how I worked out how to make them the right size to fit with the squares. Trial and error, probably.

I eventually finished the blocks and wanted sashing to represent the landscape, desert and saguaro cacti growing everywhere like we have trees here. So the sashing was a dull beige, with saguaros on the squares to make the intersections.

I then made one inch squares to make the lettering to say TUCSON at the top, and EASTER 1999 at the bottom, all paper-pieced together, with triangles to make the ‘R’s’.

I did blog about it long, long ago before the lettering was all stitched down, but I haven’t touched it since. Sally’s challenge to me is to finish it, having asked how long it would take me. But I’m not going to commit myself to the time scale!

‘My first quilt’ started in 1999.

I couldn’t get at it to show her, but have now managed to get it out. Now I need to find the fabric to do the saguaros on the corners.

Happy Easter to you all, green eggs have less calories than chocolate ones!

Fun-ky chickens and other crazy birds

Test piece in sketch book

My art classes this week were just what we all need at the moment, a bit of fun. In normal times we meet once a week. Mags used to do three classes each week, but since November these have become two Zoom classes, which you can dip into and out of, and some folk are juggling them around work. They are usually in blocks of six, basically following the academic year, and week six is a less formal session. We have fun and play with something new or different.

Most weeks I have done both sessions, which has been good as it has meant I’ve painted and drawn more. This week it’s meant two sessions of fun, and in the second one the outcomes were more successful. We were painting colourful, fun-ky chickens, working with clean, bright colours, lots of water and very loosely, letting the paint move freely on the paper.

It was a good chance to try colour combinations that you don’t usually use, experimenting and exploring how they work together, pushing your comfort zone.

The only bit that was drawn in first was the beak and eyes, the rest flicking a rigour brush with lots of paint on, then adding more water so the colours mingle. Fun.

In the first session the first one looked almost demonic (self portrait?); lockdown craziness, and mad hair days; the third one, done in the second session, is more composed and the collar almost elegant!

Left to right in order of attempts

It’s the eyes that make a big difference, definitely something to work on, but practice will help. I love the ruff on this one, would certainly keep your neck warm!

Love the collar!

I also did an orange ostrich, back to my comfort zone colour-wise, with yellows and oranges. I did do a quick pencil outline of the basic shapes on this one. The proportions, and head and legs aren’t right, but the brush strokes on the body are improving.

Crazy ostrich

This is a technique that I can see other uses for; it could be used for a crazy hat in a fashion illustration, a flower head, fun to play with the brush strokes and colour combinations.

Upside down ostrich body

I’ve had several long walks this week, trying to fill my craving for green. It’s certainly coming, and there has been less wind, and a bit more warmth for a few days. I’ve noticed on several trees that the moss has dried out, and is separating almost into layers, gaps in it where you can see the tree trunk, no sign of it on the ground around. Has it blown away, or are the birds taking it to line their nests?

Moss drying out into layers

Detail of moss layers

Another bit of fun I’ve had this week coming back from my walk, is a quick go on the swing that has been attached to the big, old weeping beech near the entrance to the woods. It feels like a bit of freedom with the wind in your hair.

What wasn’t funny was finding the broken-off miniature daffodils that the Broughton Women’s Institute planted to celebrate its Centenary, carefully in the shape of “2018”. They have been a lovely show for several weeks as you come into the village or walk past. Some had been picked the length of the stem and just strewn across the grass, not even taken home to enjoy. But even worse was the load that had been pinched off at the top of the stem and scattered around. I ended up walking back to them, picking a handful of the ground and bringing them home to float on a rose bowl of water. Some are slightly damaged but have been a lovely splash of colour on the kitchen table for a few days.

Broken-off miniature daffodils

Miniature daffodils in rose bowl on kitchen table

On a more positive note I have finished the outlines of the eggs on my green Redwork. It is at least useable now, even if the eggs still need decorating. I have got out (but not yet put up) our Easter decorations. We often spend Easter with our German or Spanish friends and they celebrate from Palm Sunday through to Easter Sunday, rather than the long Easter weekend that we have here. Lots of happy memories of fun, friends and food tied up with these decorations.

WIP, but the eggs are all outlined now.

Where next?

From the left, silk?, silk velvet?, cotton velvet, heavier cotton velvet

I was looking for these sumptuous fabrics: velvets, silk, and fine cotton; the purple velvet, fine silk, I think; the red’s velvet; in the middle, fine cotton, the one on the right slightly heavier. Now I’ve found them, I’m doing a little procrastinating about them for the moment, not sure which colour to opt for, nor quite how to execute my ideas. The ideas are percolating for a while.

I found a few other projects at various stages of completion while I was looking. We did the Bayeux stitch project at Scunthorpe Embroiderers Guild several years ago. Predictably, I went off piste and used my own design, a simple wave pattern. It has been loosened on the frame after working on it each time. The purple wool could be just the thread if I opt for the purple velvet, but the box of yarns for it seems to have disappeared into the black hole!

Bayeux stitch

The project itself isn’t really grabbing me at the moment, but it would be useful to find the wool. It was the first time I’d done Bayeux stitch and I did enjoy doing it, so could happily continue sometime. I can picture the box it’s in, but can’t spot it around.

Close-up of Bayeux stitch

This made me wonder where the tambouring wave design on a long frame could be. This was far too big to lose, but I’ve not spotted it while tidying and organising my sewing stash. Reassuringly, I found it immediately, stacked with other large frames near the CD collection on the corridor bit of the landing, not my domain, in fact actively discouraged from going down there.

A small group of us did a workshop on tambouring with Alison Larkin, a couple of years ago, a completely new technique to all of us. The section on the bottom right shows my first attempts. I really enjoyed doing it. Chain stitch is one of my go-to stitches, and this gives the same effect but much quicker, once you’ve got the hang of it. The wave design below the red headed pin was practising curves. I’m not sure if this was the first drawing of it, directly on to the fabric with a water soluble pen, or whether it was a sketch or doodle on paper before this. Whichever, I liked it, and have used it since.

Tambouring

The frame had originally been made for painting silk scarves, but has been re-purposed for stretching the length of fine cotton lawn to use the same wave design. The lawn has been zig-zag stitched on to strips of old cotton sheeting to make it fit the frame, but also to be able to pull it drum-tight on the frame. The waves were drawn on a larger scale, directly on to the lawn with water soluble pen, but it’s been hidden away for so long that it’s disappeared. I need to re-draw it before I can continue, probably just as well, because I also need to re-familiarise myself with the technique.

Line of tambouring

Specifically for this piece, I bought a music stand like Alison’s for my Christmas present to myself in 2018, but it remained in the box until a couple of weeks ago when I did the knitted lace cushion. It’s set up in a sunny spot in front of the lounge window to encourage me to use it for larger projects. On this lawn the shadows are distracting, but could have some interesting results.

Distracting shadows

I also found a nearly finished redwork project, again from Scunthorpe Guild many, many years ago. No, your eyes are not deceiving you, I did mine in green to go in our dining room, but so often we have been away in Barcelona at Easter with our Spanish friend, or Langen with our German ones, that it has never got finished. We’ll be at home this year, so I really will get it done. The first step on this is the fun bit of choosing colours, the threads are no longer with it. The light is good enough to do it now!

Redwork!

Happy Easter

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Lincoln Embroiderers Guild Christmas Present Kit

I’ve still not done any stitching yet. But did manage to cut a thread and put it through the needle left handed while holding the needle in my right. Progress.The toothbrush technique I mentioned last week didn’t work for me.

The Easter bunnies were a Christmas present kit from Lincoln Embroiderers Guild. The coats of mine seemed more spring colours than Christmassy to me, which was just as well as they weren’t finished for Christmas. They’re not quite finished now, they need noses and whiskers but don’t think the others will notice.

The Easter egg mat is a very old PHD from Scunthorpe Embroiderers Guild I came across earlier in the year when I sorted all (well lots) of my PHD’s in to plastic A4 wallets – theoretically with everything I need to finish the stitching aspect of it together to pick up and go. It’s something I started a few years ago, in the main it works quite well, but occasionally things get ‘borrowed’ for new projects and often when a project does get finished the remaining fabrics and threads don’t get returned to the appropriate place. This is problematic when I need a particular colour or type of thread or fabric and results in frantic last minute searching for a requirement list for a workshop or class. Some things I know I have, calico and bond-a-web come to mind, just disappear in to a black hole. One day I will find yards and yards (sorry, metres and metres) of them.

I had when I found the egg mat intended to finish it for this Easter, but it’s not going to happen now. Next year when we can hopefully do the usual Easter long drawn out meal with friends! 

This year we were supposed to be in Germany with our dear friends for Easter and both of our birthdays, the three don’t often fall so neatly together, but the best we can do is to remotely eat together – 5 families round different tables. Fingers crossed it works, otherwise we’ll speak to them all individually.

My blog post and some of the links from last week inspired a dear friend in Aberdeen to have a go at stitching. So I’ve sent her some of my stash, I really wanted it to be a surprise, but thought it more useful to find out what she needed and her favourite colours – pink, orange and blue. Plenty of orange, but couldn’t find much, must be in places I can’t get to easily one handed. The yellow sunflower scrap is from a quilt I made for her years ago for her friends baby.

Inspiration pack. Do yo recognise the sunflower?

Pinks and purples I only tend to use when I am pushing my comfort zone colour wise or making something for somebody else. But managed to find some.

Pinks and purples

Blues I do use, sea and beach projects but much less in my stash than earthy and autumnal colours. It was fun and felt creative sorting things to put together. And helped with coordinating in the opposite way to normal, I can now move my finger and thumb together without pain, not for long or it makes  my forearm ache later. Patience.

The seahorse fabric was in my Regional Day raffle prize from last year.
Thank you Hull Branch for the lovely hexagonal box and goodies.

Looking forward to seeing what these inspiration packs generate by a very talented young lady.

Keep safe and well.