Thrifty Thinking.

The Christmas making season is upon us. I do quite a bit of making for friends for Christmas and I have made a start.

A friend who likes little Marks and Spencers boxes of Champagne Truffles gave me a box the other month - she knows what a boxophile I am. She followed it up with a very thoughtful present of a filled box of truffles and so Iended up with TWO boxes.

I immediately knew what I would do with them as they were crying out to be used a homes for silk corsage flowers or pomanders, being of a round disposition, you understand. ;)

I took off the labels, leaving the bottom of the box with its dark brown almost black finish. I cut a circle in a matching paper, ( all the papers I've used are Stampin' Up. They are such good quality and never tear or wrinkle when gluing them. I'm sure you could find some good papers in your collection). Then I glued that to the bottom to disguise the shop label.

Next I took a LONG piece of paper ( still not quite long enough I had to join it ), and glued that to the side.
If you make sure you have a decent overlap on both top and bottom, you'll be able to bend it over the top of the box and onto the bottom-  which is of course the top. IN other words, bend the paper into the cavity of the box and glue it and then over the flat top.
It helps if you snip the paper first down to the level of the box.

Whilst this is drying you can create your flower. For the second box, I used a very pretty lining silk in cerise interspersed with an embroidered net which I picked up at the Kensington Dollshouse Festival a while ago. This is finished with a tiny sprig of 1950's gold net, a couple of toning ribbons folded and glued ( for the top rose ) and some unusual tiny bobble trim, I got from an old scarf, in cream. A gold button decorates the top flower middle and two buttons are placed one on top of another in the corsage flower. A brass one and a mother of pearl in a dark red. To disguise the holes in the top button, I squeezed a little pearl drops in gold into them.

Then it was all mounted onto black stiff net and a clip was attached. If you want a tutorial on how to make them GO HERE> Then I mounted the flower on toning card and stuck it into the centre of the box lid.

The  first box was created in exactly the same way in a sophisticated colour palette of black, gold and cream.

I used a  paper edge punch to make a decoration for the box top and used a lovely textured off white Bazzil paper.

The pomander was made in the same way as HERE>

Never throw any of your parcel ribbon away. The black wired ribbon came on a box of cosmetics I had for Xmas, one year. SO useful in small amounts.


The flowers are made from cream lining silk and gold tissue ( which doesn't, I have to say, crinkle well with heat, but I persevered.) Again in the middle, is a gold button and a little rosette of the 1950's gold net.

Never throw boxes like this away...if you are crafty!

You never know when you might need them :)

What's more...apart from being a present chosen with care and a lot of thought for the recipient... you would never buy something like this in the shops. Or if you could, you'd pay and arm and a leg.

And who amongst us in these straitened times, has that to give?

What WOULD we craft with ;) ?

The Birds and the Bees.

Many of you will know that, in my younger days, I was part of a Morris dancing side. The kit we wore then, was a white blouse, with a white embroidered in white skirt, knickerbockers with broderie lace on them and a pale blue tunic which went over the head and was secured at the waist by a band. Red socks, red shoes and of course, bells completed the outfit.

After a while, I began to be a bit bored with our ordinary Kit!

As I was a musician half the time and a dancer the rest, I spent much of the time with my back to the audience. How much nicer I thought, if the audience had something to look at, on my boring blue
back.

So I took out my needle and embroidery threads and, with the help of some books on Roumanian embroidery, I stitched some pretty flowery patterns.

How boring was the front of my kit now!

So I stitched  two little fellows from the Lindisfarne Gospels whom I called Bill and Ben.

Bill and Ben began to get a bit lonely on the front. So I added a couple of birds and snakes also from the Lindisfarne Gospels - a beautiful Mediaeval illuminated manuscript I much admired.

Of course...there was just a little space to squeeze in a few more flowers.
Then I added two Dorset Buttons I'd picked up at the Wimborne Folk festival, in Dorset, naturally.

So now, everyone front and back had something to look at. Except me. I couldn't see any of it.

So I began a running design along the hem.

The last bit was one of the birds I had already stitched for my final City and Guilds exam piece as I liked him so much. He's a Mandarin Duck.

And the final bird on the hem was a Wren.

There wasn't much else to stitch onto!

But I found a corner!

Right where the buttons did up at the sides.

And I had started a trend. Others in the side decided they too wanted to have embroidery on their kit which reflected their personality. My dancing partner, Trish embroidered a huge Dragon on the back of her pinafore. Hmm....What did that say about her I wonder ;)

I no longer use the kit. But I take it out now and again and look at it. I might be tempted to add just a weeny bit more.
:)

Remember, Remember....

High winds and lashing rain have taken a toll on the garden.
Not to worry - it's only 80 days to Christmas! :)

But before that, naturally, we have to take in Halloween and Firework Night, November 5th.

The first, of course, is left over from our primeval past- All Hallows Eve, when ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in your nighty, are allowed to roam the earth. When the boundary between the living and the dead thins for a night and we can all, so it's said, feel the presence of the otherworld more keenly.

Harvington Hall..a place where ghosties and ghoulies might be found.

No sooner do we get this over and done with than we have Bonfire Night.

Now I am not a killjoy. I am all for people having fun. But not at others' expense. November the fifth, and it seems, two weeks either side of it are just plain hell for some. Especially for our four legged friends. There are also a few people who, heedless of the inconvenience to others, will let off their fireworks at an ungodly hour of the night. There is a rule that it all has to be over by 10p.m. but some will just flout the rule.

I do not like November 5th.
I dislike it for the reason given above and I hate it because it glorifies an incident in our National History which I think it's best, if not forgotten then properly understood..

History is not considered relevant to modern life! Children in school in the U.K. learn tiny pockets of sugar coated history which are divorced from each other and as a result they have no concept of where they themselves, appear in the grand scheme of things, nor of the continuity of National life and why the today we experience is 'how it is' and how it came to be so.

Peacock Butterfly in the grounds of Coughton Manor

How many people celebrating Bonfire Night know what they are actually doing? Under half I expect. And those will be of a certain age. < Ahem >.

I cannot in all honesty celebrate, with a smile and a toffee apple, an event so steeped in blood and so fundamentally nasty as The Gunpowder plot.

Not that I am with the Plotters. Though my sentiments I have to say steer that way, today in the cold light of the 21st century. And its politicians. :)

Coughton Manor one of the Recusant family homes

My friend Valerie Drew and I are avid history buffs. We love the 17th century. An age when all those elements of life we take for granted ( good and bad ) in our own age, began to coalesce and form into institutions, ideas and inventions which shaped not only little old England but the rest of the world too. The century, to our mind, when everything started to become more modern.

And because we are 17th century enthusiasts ( with a smidgeon of the late 16th century thrown in ) we are great studiers of the 'Gunpowder Plot.'

Over the next year or so we are making it our business to go to every place associated with the plot, the people and the places.
And many still exist.

Coughton Court. To this house the plotters escaped but rode on.

For those who may be reading this who are not familiar with The Plot - here is a potted version.

Henry VIII  in about 1533 wanted a new wife...the old one was too old to give him a male heir.

Henry got his way by divorcing ( unheard of !) his old wife Katharine of Aragon and marrying a young bit of floosie Anne Boleyn.

The Pope who was boss of everybody- and soul, excommunicated him..ie: told him that he was a very naughty boy and he would never go to Heaven.

Henry retaliated by forming his own Church with himself at the head. Effectively he was an English Pope. He rejected a lot of the mumbo jumbo of the Catholic church ( his words not mine ), and made up a lot of new mumbo jumbo to replace it. Many of his courtiers followed suit, many didn't.

A lot got their heads cut off, a lot more lost money and lands.
Henry got rid of the Monasteries - think of all that lovely money he could release - and did.

Things jog along a while. Anne Boleyn is beheaded - Henry still hasn't got a male heir. At least he gets one with Jane Seymour his third wife ( who dies ) and, after a few more wives Henry dies happy. His heir Edward is only a boy. But he is a very Protestant boy with big ideas about the New Church of England. He comes down pretty hard on all the Catholics left high and dry with no church to complain to, here in England.

Oh dearie me.... Edward dies too. His sister ( daughter of Katharine of Aragon ) becomes Queen and  is Catholic -ALL CHANGE!
Back comes the original church and all the Protestants are now in deep water or more likely Fire!
She wasn't called Bloody Mary for nothing.

Mary too kicks the bucket. Now it gets really interesting. Waiting in the wings is Elizabeth 1st - Good Queen Bess, ( daughter of Anne Boleyn ). She too is Protestant- ALL CHANGE. Now the Catholics are in for it again.

Elizabeth doesn't want to rock the boat too much. She thinks it might be ok to be a Catholic if you keep quiet about it but some of her courtiers have other ideas. " But Madam! The plots..the Catholics are so good at fomenting plots..they want you off the throne and they want Catholic Mary Queen of Scots' little bum on the seat instead!"

After a while and a few plots, Elizabeth tightens up on Catholics.
And the Catholics, as they would, pull up their chausibles, brandish their rosaries, take a deep breath and...plot.

By the end of Elizabeth's reign ( end of the 1500's ) there is real trouble brewing. A lot of Catholic men have been sent abroad to study.....how to be secret priests. They come back to England and fan out to minister to the scattered flock of what is left of England's Catholics. Elizabeth's cronies hunt them down one by one. But more come. People welcome them into their homes, they build priest holes for them to hide in when houses are searched. Some are found, other aren't. All very clever and well...Romantic isn't it?

Elizabeth dies. James 1st comes down from Scotland. ( Son of Mary Queen of Scots ).But unlike his Mum he is Protestant too - with a capital P. He carries on the work, chasing Catholics.

It's getting rather too hot for Catholics now. They can't DO anything. Anything at all. They get promises of this and that but nothing ever happens.
And so, one day a few of them get together and they...yes...they PLOT!

Enter ( shall we call him ) Guy Fawkes. It may not have been his real name and he had lots of names but history knows him best as this. He and few friends get this idea that it would be a fine thing to blow up the houses of Parliament ( not the one that is there now, that is 19th century ) - with all the courtiers, bishops and archbishops and members of Parliament in it. VLADA BA BOOM. NO more Government. AT ALL.

So they manage to get together a lot of gunpowder and a few armaments and they hide them in the cellars of the Wesminster Building.
Poor deluded fools. They are a bit naive, actually they are INCREDIBLY naive and truly they don't have a workable plan at all. I mean...would you dry out sopping wet gunpowder in front of a roaring fire?
Oh yes they did.

They had no real plan of what might happen afterwards, no idea how to escape should it all go tits up.

Inevitably they were betrayed.
Hunted down.
Caught.
Tortured.
And executed in one of the foulest ways possible. ( No I won't go there...look it up ).

SO that is why I cannot celebrate November 5th.
Part of me says...what a pity they didn't succeed...I wonder what it might have been like now as a result?
Part of me says - the destruction would have been colossal. Not just Parliament but ordinary homes,  plenty of innocent people would have perished too, men,women, children and don't forget the dogs. There were a lot of dogs in London then ;) How awful.

But mostly I just think of the state of mind of these poor people driven to such an act by desperation. Naive yes, but brave, single minded, honest, devoted people who just wanted to be left alone with their religious conscience, to run their lives.

I have no religion. No faith, no creed at all.
But when I go to the places where these people plotted, walked, hid themselves in absolute fear and terror of being caught and eventually died.....I am totally in awe of them and of their conviction, their total commitment - come what may, their tenacity and their sheer bravery.

Val and I went to Harvington Hall and Coughton Manor both places associated with Catholic families in or around the PLOT.

Harvington Hall. Here are to be found some of the finest priest holes to have been made by Nicholas Owen

Lovely idyllic places filled with flower gardens.
So it's not ALL horrible :)

The courtyard at Harvington.

ALL photos courtesy of Valerie Drew.

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?