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?