Blog Hols

I'm going into hospital on Friday for an operation.
It shouldn't be too long an affair.
I may not feel like posting for a while though, so I thought I'd tell you that I shall be taking a Blog Holiday.

On the other hand...you might find I have so much time because I'm not allowed to do anything for 6 to 8 weeks and I feel so much better, that I post all the time.

Warning you either way! ;)

'Tis the Last Rose of Summer

It's official. The first day of Autumn is 22nd September.

Tell that to my roses who are blooming their little hearts out. I have several once a year flowerers, which, after a little judicial pruning from an experienced hand ( not mine, Stephen's ), earlier in the year, will flower again in the late Summer early Autumn.

Nay... in fact they will go on till Christmas!

My Madame Isaac Pereire is going great guns ( if one can say this about such a delicate creature ).

It certainly felt like Autumn this morning. There was a decidedly chilly edge here in rural Northants. Right on cue, the Robin is singing his Autumn song - slightly more melancholy than his Spring/ Summer one and this year's baby Sparrows, who use our garden and all it's differing levels as an avian playground, are bobbing around like little round fluffballs. Oh how cute they are!

Never mind the dog....Spot the Sparrow

This year we have had a bumper crop of baby birds. The Sparrows which nest in the eaves of the house opposite have had their usual three clutches and many of them have survived - much to the glee of the local Sparrowhawk. He likes to circle around and keep a beady eye out. But the Sparrows are always it seems, one step ahead and are masters of disguise.
They are extremely hard to pick out against the gravel and from in amongst the foliage of the shrubs and trees, so well camouflaged are they. Now and again the baby Dunnock, pretends to be a Sparrow and hangs around with the flock. He ( or she ) is a real cutie. And very hard to distinguish from the herd. For a good reason in our house, the females are all called Maud and the males, all Crim. ( They are named after characters in a Medieval whodunnit. Well...why ever not?

I've noticed that, this year, most of the babies are female. There are some males but out of our thirty or so surviving chicks we have only about four males. I wonder what this means? Who says that garden birds are declining. Not in this garden they aren't. The curly hazel tree ( left - Corylus contorta ) is to our birds what a bouncy castle is to a three years old. They love it and spend hours a day hopping in and out, sitting nestled amongst the leaves, preening and stretching. I can lose quite a lot of time at my washing up, by standing at the kitchen sink, watching them, chuckling to myself. They are as good as a funny joke any day, for a jolly good laugh.

One by one, they dive over to the pond and take a bath on our little trickle stone, put there specially for the small birds. Back they come bedraggled and darker in colour and one by one they begin their odd little ritual of stretching and waving, preening and primping. Passer domesticus Pilates, I dubbed it! There is, however, always ONE on the lookout for trouble, always one who stays till last, constantly scanning the skies for 'you know who' and who waits until the rest have done their thing, before she too plunges into her bath.
What would these last days of Summer be without my little friends?

Or without the last flowering of the late plants who give a final splurge of colour before the real Autumn display.

Our Sedum - Autumn Joy

I shall try to capture some of this colour in my latest project. I've acquired another embroidery pattern and will work on it in conjunction with my Tapestry stamp piece I spoke of in the last post. This one is MUCH bigger and so requires a very different array of stitches, or the same type of stitch worked in a different way. It's a long time since I did anything so large.

I can do them both together - little and large. This is how far I have got with the tiny one - tiny in that the designs are small.

And this is the beginnings of the larger one. There are some large flowers on here- a Roseworks pattern. Go HERE for the link to their page.

So, I'll try to prolong Summer as long as I can, by embroidering my own flowery season and, when my babies have all grown their adult plumage and have ceased to be quite so cute, I'll look forward to the new batch next Spring!
If you want to listen to the title song of this post....
The Last rose of Summer. 
with Renee Fleming. A little slow but that I think gives it the pathos it has.

"Are you Sitting Comfortably?"

.....Then we'll begin...as they used to say in my youth whilst sitting listening to the radio and Listen With Mother on the BBC.

I shall be doing rather a lot of sitting and lying down shortly after my op. And listening. I'm vowed to listen to lots of soothing cd's that I haven't opened in a long while. While I'm doing this, I shall
need a project that I might, as they say, get my teeth into. Not literally, of course.....food will probably be the last thing on my mind. On the other hand occupying myself will be of paramount consideration.

My friends tell me they will keep me company. Good. But sometimes one needs just to sit quietly occupying one's hands. I don't do television - we haven't had one since the early 80's.....and can well live without one.

So I got out my Tapestry Stamps ( and got very excited about my new sets - below! ) and created a pattern, on some calico, starting in the middle of a circle with a dandelion bloom.

I branched out and out....and out, using as many stamps as I could realistically get into a design - for the moment ;) It may grow even bigger - depends how it goes.

I am going to embroider all the leaves and flowers I have stamped. I used the stamps that would be the easiest to transfer to stitches, though I might add a few more later which are not so easy....just to see.
I've oodles of embroidery threads and can send my perfect and willing husband out for any I run out of. I'm so organised! :)

I do hope that with handling the design will stay put, but if not I'll have to re-stamp but I'll do a bit at a time. I used a brown ink which I thought would blend into most of the colours I'm going to use in the work.

So now, all there is to do is begin in the middle and work outwards. I shall start it before I get to hospital, that way, it won't look as if I don't know what I'm doing. ;)

I'll keep you posted.
But only if you'll sit quietly like good children. :)

< Sigh> Those were the days!

The Whole Duty Of Children

"A child should always say what's true
And speak when he is spoken to,

And behave mannerly at table;

At least as far as he is able."

-Robert Louis Stevenson

 

With New Eyes

If there is one thing I would like in life, it's to be able to restore the sight I had even just a few years ago.
Yes, I know I can buy glasses. I can use a magnifier; I can even pay a lot of money to see if lasers will do the trick. However, being able to see everything clearly without any help would be really nice.
I am looking at embroidery with new eyes.


When I was in my early 40's I did a five year City and Guilds course in free embroidery. That is the kind of embroidery which sits on the surface of your material and follows sinuous lines...not like say, tapestry or cross stitch, which are part of the body of the material and are regimented by the holes in a canvas.

The course covered all sorts of things. Starting at design......and that is a fairly important chunk of knowledge, we began with simple things like lino cutting to make patterns to embroider later. I have to say I found those bits a trifle boring. But they were soon over.  Then we got to play with silk floss, cottons, silks and crewel ( wool embroidery), which I loved.

I learned an amazing amount of stitches. We all know a back stitch when we see it and we have all sewn on a button a few times, but how about Roumanian stitch or Ladderback stitch?

 Roumanian stitch

Then there was the course on Stumpwork! Oh how I loved that. The Raised Embroidery so beloved of those hard pressed folk of the 17th century. I haven't done nearly enough of that since.

 This casket is at Sudeley Castle in Glos. U.K. and dates from about 1660.

Or Goldwork.... Heavens...Goldwork... so incredibly slow and painstaking but so beautiful.

This work is by Tracy Franklin

http://www.tracyafranklin.com/goldwork.asp

Now this was all done in the days when I could see...without any external help.

So when today, I came across a photo of the panel which was my final piece for my City and Guilds examination, ( I sold the original RATS...why did I do that? ) whilst looking for something else entirely ( as you do ), I wondered...could I do that now a days?
Probably not without a great deal of help.
I based it on a curtain for a bed hanging from some Stately Home or other. This one is in silks with a few bits of Goldwork thrown in but the original is in Crewel and I think it's in Cothele Manor in Cornwall. Hard to remember all that time ago.

A panel of silk on cotton by me made in about 1997. It took me three months.

To think...I used to have a memory too....Tempus Fugit!
I wonder if there is a gadget like glasses to help you with your failing memory?

A Perfumed Pomander

I'm starting to think about new items for my Christmas stands at shows. Yes I know, it's still summer but we have to be on to it now or it will be too late and to make matters more urgent, I am about to undergo an operation which might leave me out of the creative sphere for some time.

So seize the day. Carpe diem as those Romans would say! ;)

I'd like to show you how to make a very simple little pomander. Simple but incredibly effective and I'm sure that, perhaps apart from the pot pourri you need, you will already have most of the items needed to finish this project, in your sewing stash.

YOU WILL NEED
Silk material ( or poly-silk )
Lace or some pretty edging
Sewing thread and a needle ( preferably strong thread )
Ribbon
Stuffing or wadding
pot pourri of your choice.
Some decorative buttons or bits and bobs which you might like to use to prettify your creation.
( optional ) Some pretty flowers which I'll show you how to make over on BoxCleva.
Candle
Scissors
Glue gun

FIRSTLY
You will need to cut out a circle in your chosen material.
A dinner plate or tea plate is a good size to use. I cut mine with pinking shears as it helps the edge stay neat.

Onto this edge sew your lace or other pretty ribbon or edging. Make sure the pinked edge is inside.

Then about an inch from the top of your circle sew a line of running threads and leave BOTH ends free so that you can pull hard and tie them off when you have completed the stuffing.

Gather up a bit of wadding and into the centre place some pot pourri...not too much -not too little and make a pocket of it.

The pot pourri doesn't have to be the pretty kind as you won't see it. However, it does have to be fairly fine. If it isn't, try mashing it up in a pestle and mortar or bashing it, folded into an old towel, with a hammer! That's a fun bit!


With a little more wadding covering the pot pourri, push this into your circle and then pull up the threads. Tie it off and thread with a needle the two ends to be sure it's secure. Cut off the excess thread.

Now you are ready to add the pretty rose flower.

If you haven't done this before........ then go HERE for the tutorial on how to make silk roses.

Now you will have a sweet rose you can put into the top of your pomander.

You can make these as fluffy as you like, meaning that you can have a many layered flower or not as you wish. However, full flowers are more difficult to locate into the space in the pomander top- so be aware. Six petals are about right as you are going to push the flower in to the top of the pomander and so it will close up nicely.

In my latest creation I used a pretty pink pearl button for the centre but you could use what ever you think looks right.


Now before you attach the flower cut a small amount of ribbon, double it over and stick it ( I use the glue gun but if you wish you could sew it ) to the inside of the trim at the top. Make sure it's long enough to hang it.

You could now run a piece of ribbon around the top and tie a bow or you could, like I have done add some little flowers.

I'll show you how to make those another time.

You will just have to curb your impatience! :)
Oh well alright then ( I did promise I would do it on BoxCleva )...so HERE WE ARE....

Lorem Ipsum..... Cicero.

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, is a poem about seizing the moment...enjoying the present, doing what you can to make the life you have NOW matter to you. It's the exact opposite of - put off today what you can do tomorrow, no matter how silly small and insignificant it seems now.

None of us know how long we will be able to, as the Romans used to say- Carpe Diem...seize the day, none of us know how long we have to enjoy those things we value, those people we care about, those pets who bring us such joy and those places we yearn for when we aren't able to be there.

Above: one of the places I miss terribly...the Wiltshire Ridgeway and Downs.

Daily life gets in the way, I know. But even those things can be a source of joy if we allow them to be. Even when hanging out the washing ( as I have just done ),  I can smile to myself at the beautiful Agapanthus swaying gently under the washing line....and I hang my towels out length ways to prevent the plants getting a bashing. A little thing.

Likewise, I've just dusted the sitting room and picked up every little folderol that means something to me, dusted it and put it back and thought...what a lucky girl I am to have such lovely things around me. Even dusting can be full of memories and fun...who gave me this, where did I buy that, what was this bought to commemorate?

A beautiful early 19th century Coalport compote with applied decoration. An anniversary present from my husband.

I think this state of affairs has been brought home to me more this past 4 months than at any other part of my life. I have been quite poorly. And, along with feeling rotten, I lost the will to be creative. I have a room full of goodies to play with and none of them really made me want to pick them up and use them to make something.
Never in my whole life have I been like this.

The one thing that is usually my solace, one of the reasons for my being, nay the centre of my being, my biggest joy besides my husband and Delphi dog, is music.
Amazingly, that too, went by the by.
I have a huge collection of CD's - all of them of Classical Music and good two thirds of them Early music, which is my passion.
There they sat in our Canterbury....forlorn and untouched. Stephen has put music on over the past few months...but I haven't. I haven't picked up either of my instruments to play, not a note.

I MUST have been bad.

So it was quite a surprise to find that, along with a bit more energy and less pain, I felt like listening to some music this weekend. And I felt like getting into my studio and messing about with material. My brain has cleared a bit and I have had some new ideas which I will be exploring over the next few weeks....as long as the feeling lasts.

And more than anything, I feel like going out into the world at last and seizing it by the throat and shaking it.
I think it also has something to do with the fact the the Olympics are over ( oh joy! ) It's a real trial to those of us who feel it's been a consummate waste of money, a distraction ( by the Government ) from the realities of life under their neglect and inattention. I'm so glad I don't have a telly.....I might have been tempted to watch the opening and closing ceremonies....and of course, critisice and moan about it.  My friends however have been telling me about the ceremonies and I have to say my reaction was " oh dear how kitsch ".
The sport? Goodness me never....I'd be bored rigid.

And now we find that the Government are going to spend Millions of Pounds in schools ( millions we do not have for the Health Service nor the roads...nor a thousand other things which annoy us all when they are underfunded,) to promote sport.

But they don't fund music. Oh how glad I am that I am not at school now.
I did music beyond A level. I didn't have to do sport. I gave it up when I was about 8. I found it pointless, brainless ( mostly ) and unfeminine. Team games bored me. I am not and never have been a team player. I have also never been interested in the sensations of movement necessary for pushing my body to do something it doesn't really want to do. I am much happier creating something...having something to show for the time and effort, expended, be that a thing or a sound as in music. I am, I suppose a cerebral person, not a physical one.
There must be millions like me.
And now they are going to force them all to do something they don't want to do because we have had an OLYMPICS in Britain and they tell us that there's a feel good factor associated with it.
Another distraction technique I think!

Dearie me.... why can't they concentrate on Education. Those that would like to go and kick a ball around, throw a spear at something, beat someone else's face to a pulp, mess about in or on the water can do that when they have learned to READ and WRITE, have absorbed some general knowledge ( sadly lacking at the moment I fear), have learned how to go out into the world and be a good employee or a good boss. We are constantly hearing about how the present young ( in particular ) workforce is unfit for public consumption. We have all had, I'm sure examples of this right under I nose as we go about our life.

So if Britain were ever to win the Eurovision song contest. :) Would music be bumped up the curriculum...would we see everyone being compulsorily channelled into playing the Tuba or learning to read music?

I know that crafts are still taught in schools and as we know, there is a huge upsurge in people making things at home today, as evinced by the proliferation of Craft magazines on the shelves. Everything from making models with matchsticks to macrame. Thank Heavens for that creative cultivation.
Long may it reign.

I was asked a while back by a muscled young man in his early twenties, if would like to enrol in his gym. If I'd like to spend money ( which frankly I don't have ), to have him put me through my paces on this machine and that.

My answer....and I told him, I am lady of a certain age...and I stress the LADY who wouldn't be seen dead in a gym.
My answer..... So you train your body to its ultimate pitch. Do you also train your mind? Do you read, do you discover, for example, culture, history ( for as far as I am concerned without history, we cannot know where we are now and cannot avoid the pratfalls our ancestors made. ( I think Sir Winston Churchill said something profound on this subject ). Then, when...like me, your body develops something nasty which you couldn't have avoided by being 'sporty', active and trained in a gym,  and you only have your mind to fall back on,.......then what are you going to do with yourself?

Too little...too late.

So I shall grab it whilst I can.
For none of us knows........

Wonderful Weather for Weeds!

I have been away as you know and then almost immediately upon my return, I went into hospital for a small op.
Two weeks and a bit away and the garden has 'jungled'! There is no other word for it.
Good job I have my very own tame gardener ( in the shape of my husband Stephen, whom you may or may not know, is a professional gardener.)

The roses are over but, although they are supposed to be the once a year type flowerers, are budding again.
All the trees which have finished flowering are sending up huge extension growths.
We have four hydrangeas of varying sorts and they are doing marvelously.

Stephen will have to cut back the Erodium and the Phuopsis which will spring again in the late summer.

The glory of the moment is the Hollyhocks and the Agapanthus. They are magnificent. The Hollyhocks aren't quite as tall as we have had them but they are full of flower and we have many colours, including the hard to grow ( or rather hard to re-grow ), yellow ones.

In between we have Linaria in three colours, Valerian in four colours and the ubiquitous field poppy whose bright red is a welcome foil for the softer colours of the lower plants.


Pale pink Anemones are scattered here and there. The flowers are smaller than in previous years but they have had to struggle to get above some of the other plants including the Penstemons and the Pinks.

Now this all sounds rather idyllic I'm sure and I do love a full garden where there is hardly a centimetre of soil showing.
But in amongst the flowers which are intended to be there are a lot which aren't.
WEEDS.

You can almost hear them straining to squeeze themselves up through the soil and then wriggle upwards through the other plants, towards the light.
I think they just poke out their heads....look carefully to see if there is anyone about - and they KNOW when you have gone away, oh yes they DO, I'm sure, before muscling their way in.

Haha! < wicked gleam in the eye > They haven't contended with my super duper eagle eyed husband who knows his weeds from his Wisteria.

This afternoon ( if it doesn't rain...again), he will be out there wending his way through the jungle...machete in hand, topi on head and Jungle formula insect repellent on skin, to attack the little blighters and bring the garden to order.

Then he will tie in the Hollyhocks, chop down the dead, disentangle the Lathyrus ( Sweet pea ) from the Laburnum and the garden will once more be tamed.

All this whilst waiting for our new oven to be delivered.

Then he will cook the dinner in it. ( We hope ).

And what will I be doing?
Well I'm not allowed to do much but I do have a very serious role to play.


I will be supervising and making sure things go smoothly!

Ah.....no perhaps I won't..... I think that job falls to another! :)