Getting around to blogging after a few days off

 It's not been the warmest April day, but bright and breezy enough to put a spring in my step.  I eased myself into Saturday by tidying up and hoovering, and shoved a load of laundry in the machine.  Once that was pegged on the line I caught up with 'The Archers' while adding more quilting lines to this.  

I made this small quilt a while ago, at least the patchwork and appliqued part of it, and finally got around to adding backing fabric.  

I had very nearly enough of this soft grey floral cotton.  Just had to add a little corner piece of a similar style of material to make it large enough to back the quilt.  I tacked the layers together and the work-in-progress is currently sat on my dining table.  It's a very busy pattern, isn't it?  Hopefully the occasional section made in plain fabric allow the eye to rest on them, providing a little oasis of calm among the frenzy of dots, paisley motifs, flowers and swirls.  

I'm not convinced that I'll be able to get all the pieces to lie flat, without any lumps or bumps, but nothing we make is ever 100% perfect, is it?  If we didn't make mistakes or have difficulties, we wouldn't feel the urge to start a new project, have another go, improve our techniques.  

After that, I mooched down to the allotment and - trying to be tolerant toward the dandelions that're blooming like crazy, and providing food for the pollinators - I spent an hour relocating foxgloves from where they'd self seeded to where they needed to be.  So many foxgloves!  

There's no sign yet of the seeds I planted a week or two ago popping their heads above the ground.  But I've plenty started off at home, now living in the cold frame in the back garden.  So they'll make the journey down to my allotment plot in a month or so.

That journey's always rather fraught.  You nurture your baby squash plants and cucumber plants, coddling them, keeping them safe.  Then off they go to the wilds of allotment life.  Among the snails and slugs that might see them as a tasty feast.  

I'm not as diligent about allotmenting as some of the old boys who have plots they've maintained for years.  They're on site practically every day, come rain or shine.  

Rotivating, planting row after row of spuds and leafy greens.  Theirs is a very traditional, old-fashioned style of keeping an allotment.  Nothing wrong with it, but I favour something more haphazard.  Flowers among the soft fruit, plenty of herbs and things like borage and calendula grown purely to attract the bees.  

Once home, I re-potted various houseplants, feeling instantly guilty about how dried out I'd let them get.  The poor things!   I'd been trying to avoid over-watering them, but I think I went too far in the other direction and they've been gasping for a drink of water.  Something tells me I'm not a natural when it comes to indoor gardening.

It's early evening now, and there's nowt on the telly, so I'm re-watching series two of 'The Killing'.  The only problem with subtitled dramas is you can't sew or scroll through Twitter on your phone while you're half-watching it.  You either have to pay full attention to the TV screen, or miss something vital.  I was watching a French subtitled drama the other day, and at least with that you can pick up certain words and phrases.  But with Nordic Noir, it's such a different language, with nothing familiar about the sounds.  About all I can figure out is 'tak' for thanks.  

Well, I'm aware this hasn't been the most scintillating blog post you'll ever read, but it's been an enjoyable day all the same.  There's a lot to be said for life's small pleasures.  Being outdoors, getting dirt under your fingernails.  Appreciating the evening light.  How the days are stretching out, getting ready for the summer to come.  

  

Manic Monday? Not really

It's been a pretty good Monday actually.  Sowed more seeds (aubergine, Echinacea, white zinnias), ate two large bowlfuls of yesterday Butternut Squash Veggie Korma.  Might have scoffed a couple of chocolate bars, but we'll quickly gloss over that ... 

I got the dull household chores out of the way this morning.  Hoovering and laundry done, I resumed playing around with improv blocks of plain fabric.  I'd recently bought some calico, so decided to join the blocks with rectangles of neutral cream.  I like the contrast between the smoothness of the vividly coloured cotton and the more homely plain calico. 

They'll either get made up into a lap sized quilt, or maybe a couple of cushion covers to go in my Etsy shop.  

To give myself a break from doing that, I also entertained myself by playing around with stripes, using two contrasting colours.  Sewing strips of pink and dark blue material together in alternative rows, then splicing them and re-sewing them, ensuring the rows aren't exactly level.  

I really like the effect these fractured lines make.  That led to a thought.  I wonder what it'd look like if I trying doing this with patterned fabric?  So I made alternative stripes in reds and blues.  

Then chopped 'em up, and reassembled them. 

It occurred to me - light bulb moment! - that cutting and reassembling patterned material in this way could be used for a Colourwash effect.  You could gradually wash into one colour then another, achieving all kinds of subtle effects.  The detail of a pattern becomes less apparent and you just get the effect of the overall colour.  Am definitely going to try that.  If I got it right, it could look rather wonderful.  

Apart from sewing and sowing and the odd bit of home admin, de-heading some daffodils, nipping out to the Co-op, shivering in the late April chill and other assorted tasks, I've been catching up on some reading.  

I donated a previous book I'd started in high hopes - about Shakespeare's Dark Lady - to the supermarket charity bookshelf as I got bored with it and couldn't justify carrying on reading it.  I'm much more ruthless with books than I used to be.  One time I'd have ploughed on with it, but now I'll ditch a book that isn't floating my boat.  Off to a new owner they go.  

After that dud, I very quickly consumed Kate Summerscale's 'The Haunting of Alma Fielding'.  

It's very enjoyable and endlessly intriguing.  Set in London 1938.  Alma's a housewife and mother, creative, frustrated, seemingly beset by a poltergeist who's busy flinging china teacups and eggs around, and making a massive nuisance of itself.  There's a Hungarian refugee and ghost hunter  named Fodor who sets out to investigate Alma and this haunting.  Is it real or fraudulent?  A malevolent presence in the household or part of an elaborate illusion staged by Alma and the other residents?  

Apparently, there was a massive rise in interest about spiritualism and ghosts, mediums and seances, after the first world war - when the country was in deep mourning and shock over its horrendous losses of life - but also again in the late 1930s when they all feared history was about to repeat itself with yet another terrifying war.  

Anyway, after I finished the Kate Summerscale book, I started Bernadine Evaristo 'Girl, Woman, Other'.  Not sure about it but I haven't flung it aside yet!  That's a good sign.  As are the stickers on the front of the paperback telling me it won the Booker Prize in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020.  

Okay, I'm done for now.  Am hoping to see the Northern Lights tonight as the skies are meant to be clear, making them visible.  Let's see what darkness brings, shall we?  

Spring has gloriously sprung!

It's been the weather for long walks.  My photography skills aren't up to much, so this picture doesn't do credit to how lovely the view was from this bridle path.  Deep blue sky, masses of dandelions everywhere, cowslips, daffodils still blooming.  The sharp yellow of a field of oil seed rape.  Blossom on the trees and birds flitting about, gathering material for nest building.  

This second photo was taken at RSPB St Aidans nature reserve.  Easy to reach from my house, and ideal for an early evening stroll.  It's not only what's visible that I like about this site.  It's the sounds too.  You get the birds squarking and calling out as they swoop and dive through the air, but also the rustle of masses of reed beds and dried grasses as they sway and shiver in the breeze.  

Such pretty blossom.  

Once back indoors, I've been studiously ignoring the DIY type jobs that need doing - everytime I go into the bathroom I'm looking up at the ceiling thinking 'It'd only take me a morning to paint that' - there's even a tin of paint and a brush in the bathroom, all ready to go! - instead I've been playing about with these improv blocks.  Sewing strips together, cutting 'em up, reassembling.  Once you start, it's addictive and all kinds of patterns emerge out of the chaos.  

I'm alternating that playfulness with another task.  Quilting this backing on to my scrappy quilt.  It's made up of remnants of material, plus some orphan blocks and a couple of pieces of hexagonal patchwork that would've been made up into cushion covers, if I didn't already have way too many cushions.  I suppose some people might think it's a shame to have these handmade hexies tucked away on the reverse, out of sight, but I rather like the idea of a quilt having a hidden surprise.  

I'm looking forward to getting this quilt finished, and I think it'll end up being a favourite that I'll use for years to come.  

Waste Not Want Not

Why a picture of fruit and veg when this is predominantly a craft blog?  Well, because I snapped up one of Lidl's Waste Not boxes yesterday.  £1.50 for this lot.  I do love a bargain.  After defrosting the freezer the other week I'm gradually refilling it, so made a slow cooker veggie stew with spuds, red onions, the courgette, some parsnips and carrots.  That's been batched up and slung in the freezer.  The bananas I'm munching away on.  The cabbage, celery, spring onions and chillis are due to be stir fried, and I'll make a leek and potato soup with - predictably - the leek and rest of the potatoes.  

I'm not always lucky with my timing as regards these boxes.  Sometimes they're available, sometimes not.  So it was pure chance I got this one.  

I was mainly in the shop as I wanted bags of potting compost.  My shabby faux-Victorian conservatory (tacked on to a 1950s semi detached.  Not my choice.) is filling up nicely with seedlings all sprouting away like crazy.  Lots needed repotting, so I spent a few hours yesterday doing that.  

After an hour on the allotment today, I came home and sowed more seeds.  Three varieties of dahlias, including pom-poms.  I managed to ruin all my dahlia tubers over winter, having stored them in a damp shed and forgotten about them.  Instead of, as per previous years, bringing them into the house and storing them in the cupboard under the stairs, nice and dry.  So I'm having to start all my dahlias from seed, but luckily they're easy to grow this way.  

As well as the dahlia tubers, I also managed to ruin a lemon tree in a tub.  Leaving that outside during the worst of the snow and below freezing conditions.  Maybe it'll survive, but for now all its leaves are shrivelled and dry as dust, crumbling to the touch.  That'll teach me to take more care, won't it?  Luckily I'd bought the two mini fig trees and lemon verbena inside over winter, so they're still live and kicking.  

On the crafty front I've been making more blocks for my Colourwash style quilt, a long term project.  As I add to my fabric stash, I use some of whatever material I've acquired to make another block.  Slowly but surely the pile of blocks grows.  

Apart from that I've been playing about with wonky log cabin patterns.  

These two are hanging around on my mini design wall, and at some point in the future - when a million and one other half-completed projects are finally done and dusted - I'd like to make a quilt with vibrant wonky log cabin blocks, surrounded by white and off white plain fabric.  I've seen an image of something along those lines, and the contrast between the busy, vivid blocks and the neutral background is very pleasing to the eye.  

Tonight I'm being thoroughly and unashamedly middle-aged, catching up on episodes of Gardeners World, drinking vast quantities of tea and not moving far off the sofa.  I'm debating whether to watch the latest episode of BBC1's 'Great Expectations'.  I think, despite the mainly excellent casting and wonderful costumes, it's an appalling adaptation of a brilliant book.  However, there's something quite compulsive about watching with a kind of horrified fascination about how dreadful a mangling Mr Dickens' novel is getting.  Can I resist, or will 9.00pm see me tuning in?  Only time will tell ... 

 

The month is galloping by

It was a day of sunshine and showers.  The windy weather over the last few days has blown the petals off a few tulips, but most are intact.  I've got several varieties, mainly vibrant shades of pink, purple and orange.  Nothing too fancy as most of my bulbs - tulips, daffs and hyacinths - originally come from either Lidl or Wilko.  Everything's coming to life in the garden now, including bluebells and even some cowslips in the rectangle of dandelions, moss, clover and a few clumps of grass that I optimistically label a lawn.  

I hand-tied a quilt made for a relative's birthday present this morning, which was a task that needed doing.  However, and very annoyingly, I found a seam where I'd not caught a raw edge of a block, so had to think up a way to disguise it.  A trio of buttons has hopefully done the trick, and my mistake will go unnoticed. 

Yodel finally delivered a parcel today, an impulse purchase from eBay of 22 mens ties.  14 of them are 100% silk.  There are only a couple I'm not keen on the pattern/colour, though I'm sure I'll still find a use for them.  When I've tackled some of the mountain of still-to-be-finished projects I've got half-completed I'll start arranging the ties to make cushion covers, though I'll need to do some unpicking first.  

What else?  Oh yes, I finished 'Still Life' and have begun reading 'Dark Aemilia' by Sally O'Reilly.  It's set in 16th century London, and features Shakespeare and his so-called 'dark lady'.  I haven't got too far into it, but it's looking very promising.  

Okay, time to lounge on the sofa in pyjamas, drink tea and watch something on the iplayer.  I'm currently re-watching episodes of 'Wisting'.  Not a laugh a minute, but I do enjoy some Scandi style noir.  Reminds me of when I used to be hooked on 'The Killing'.  Sarah Lund and that distinctive jumper of hers.  Remember that?  

Have a good evening.  

Ooops! I did it again. Bought yet another book that is ...

I finished reading Ann Patchett's excellent 'The Dutch House' the other day, and started on Sarah Winman's 'Still Life'.  Which meant my To-Be-Read pile was a tiny bit smaller.  Only now it's not as I succumbed to another charity bookshelf purchase.  A lovely hardback copy of Kate Summerscale's 'The Haunting of Alma Fielding'.  I am partial to a hardback, just that bit classier than a paperback somehow.  Summerscale wrote 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' and I enjoyed that, so I've high hopes of Alma and her mysterious haunting.  

'Still Life' is one of those books that you start and immediately feel like you're in safe hands.  It's set in 1944 Italy, a meeting between Ulysses, a young British soldier, and Evelyn, a lively 64 year old art historian.  The blurb on the back of the book claims it's 'Big-hearted, sweeping and full of unforgettable characters'.  Just the ticket, eh?  

What else have I been up to today?  Lots of sewing.  The hoovering went undone, and rainfall meant I'd a valid excuse not to bother with any laundry as it couldn't be pegged out on the washing line.  But housework will always wait if there's something crafty to be getting on with.  

I added wadding and backing fabric to this -

Forgive the slightly blurry photo.  This second view of the same quilt shows the backing's made of two different materials, continuing with that mainly blue theme of the top.  

I also started working my way through this quilting book.  

Irene Roderick illustrates how she makes a series of different shapes, so I began with skinny lines.  

First off, I cut a strip of purple 3/4 of an inch wide, and used that as an insert between two pieces of my dark blue background fabric.  Making one long skinny line.  Then I made another strip of alternating pieces of purple and blue - rather fiddly to do - and sewed that as an insert.  Your eye only sees the skinny purple rectangles as the blue melt into the background.  

The next insert is about half and half purple and blue.  

After that, I sewed stripes that were angled, varying the width of the inserts, giving a sort of fan shape.  

I'm going to try various techniques from the book, mainly using these two colours, and hopefully at the end I'll arrange the odd sized blocks into some kind of overall design.  Or at least have a jumping off point for a design.  

Sunday into Monday

 

I meant to post this yesterday, but got distracted, so I'm sat here on the sofa with a cuppa and a few minutes to spare.  Well, it's April already and today is a fine, dry day.  Yesterday was partly spent on the allotment.  Planting spring onion and spinach seeds, plus moving self seeded foxgloves from the random spaces they'd grown into where I'd prefer them to be. The hyacinths are still blooming like crazy, providing welcome splashes of pink, white and vivid blue, and wonderful scent.  The wallflowers are looking pretty too, just a little more demure than the showy-off hyacinths who're very much 'hey! look at me!'  

Apart from that, I did a few hours of hand stitching, working on extra Chris English style scrappy blocks.  Then sorted some fabric to back the Terry Rowland style Colourwash lap quilt I'm making.  I was going to add a fleecy blanket backing to that, but not sure I've a piece of fleece large enough.  So instead I'll probably add wadding and a regular backing fabric, and I'll use the method of tying to quilt the 'sandwich' together.  Probably use buttons too as they'll disguise my slightly dodgy seams where I've not been 100% accurate in joining squares together.  

I've come to the conclusion that it's beyond me to cut fabric precisely!  Even using a ruler and rotary cutter I struggle with total accuracy.  I think accuracy in piecing is easier when it's the English paper piecing method, and that's what I'm more familiar with.  But practise makes perfect, so I'll persist.  

This week, I've got an eBay delivery arriving in a couple of days.  I did some late night browsing, buying a job lot of 22 mens ties.  (I really need to stay off shopping sites in an evening!  Too tempting.)  I know some ties will be silk, others polyester and cotton.  I'm thinking of washing them (obvs), then unpicking them and arranging them into a cushion cover.  I already bought a couple of silk ties the other day, and unpicking those was interesting in terms of seeing how they're assembled.  There's some nifty sewing in something as seemingly simple as a necktie.  

What else can I tell you?  Oh, I've made myself a small design board.  It's simply an old poster clip frame that I'd kept after I'd accidentally broken the glass.  I'd previously used the board for blocking needlepoint on.  I'd stretch the completed piece of needlepoint on the board and use drawing pins to keep it in place, so the board's now peppered with little holes like it's got wormwood.  Anyway, I stretched an offcut of fleece over the board, and simply used duct tape to secure it.  Basic DIY design, but useful all the same.  

Okay, the cup of tea's drunk and I need to complete some chores.  Bed linen wants changing, so I'll be wrestling with an unruly duvet, trying to cram it into a duvet cover.  Only slightly easier than trying to cram a bad tempered cat into a cat-carrier.  

As sunlight's pouring through the windows, I can see every smear on them, so they need cleaning.  Maybe at some point I'll get round to something crafty.  This is a corner of my sitting room, lots of creative clutter awaiting my attention.  

There're various bags and baskets lurking under the table, and on the shelves of a nearby bookcase.  I've got several collars from shirts that I've cut up for the fabric.  The collars are going to - if I can work out how - be sewn to the edge of a quilt.  They're joined button to buttonhole to make what looks like bunting.  

Above are those couple of unpicked ties.  

Also, waiting for future use are squares of denim, along with pockets from cut-up jeans.  I like the shape of the pockets, also what seems like the shadow of the pocket once it's unpicked from its original position.  I want to collect lots of pockets to assemble into something quirky.  More trips to the charity shop are called for!  

Okay, that's it for now.  Have a good day.