The day are getting longer ...

 

The days are getting longer, and there are snowdrops in the garden.  I'm on day 13 of the Ann Wood stitchbook challenge, and still enjoying myself.

I try to get my minimum of 15 minutes sewing done after breakfast, while I'm full of porridge and feeling optimistic about the day ahead.  I'm also still trying, and not particularly succeeding with making mini collages.  

I did remember I'd got a stack of printing stamps and ink pads, which has helped.  My problem with crafty supplies is that if I put 'em away in the drawer or cupboard, I forget about them.  Out of sight, out of mind. So those stamps and ink pads went right out of my head for ages, until that doh! moment when I thought, 'Yup, they'd be useful for a collage'.  In fact, I got so enthusiastic about stamping I used them on fabric too.  

Before Christmas I'd bought about a dozen white cotton napkins from my local charity shop, and used one to print on.  I don't know how practical using this kind of ink is on cotton, but I liked the idea of embroidering over these designs.  I've made a start, but this'll be a slow project, done here and there when the mood takes me.  

They're meant to be stylised flower and leaves, and I'll add insects and all kinds of craziness, intending to make the fabric dense with stitching and very colourful.  Of course, this is yet another work-in-progress to add to my towering stack of started-but-not-completed craft projects.  Never mind, they'll all get finished at some point.  Probably.  Possibly.  Maybe.  

I've sewn together a couple more patches of this denim throw.  Don't you love that shadow pocket?  Or is that me being weird?  Probably.  Possibly.  Almost certainly!  

I did actually start and finish something.  This fabric basket.  Ages ago I'd made a number of fabric postcards, and keep several of those I particularly liked.  But I hadn't known what to do with them, so they sat on a shelf and gathered dust.  Then I realised I could use three of them to make the sides of a fabric basket.  So I sewed them together, lined them with red felt, cut out a circle of cardboard and lined that on both sides, then added that base to the basket.  

These are handy for keeping spools of thread in or scraps of material, and they're sturdy because of the cardboard in the base and the layers of quilted fabric that form the postcards, along with the felt lining. 

Underneath the basket here are one book I've recently read, and one I've recently started.  'The New Wilderness' keeps you guessing right up until the end, and there were lots of time during the story that I feared for the central characters safety and was perplexed, sometimes angered by their actions.  It's a terrific read, so I'd recommend it.  'Home Going' is another one I picked up from a charity bookshelf, and might not have come across otherwise.  It's the story of two sisters.  One's sold into slavery, the other is a slave trader's wife, and the book looks at how the fate of those women reverberates down the generations.  I've not read a huge amount yet, but Effia Otcher has been sold for an upfront fee of £30 to a British officer who's stationed at a castle on the Gold Coast of Africa.  She's horrified to realise enslaved people are kept in the dungeons below the castle, ready to be shipped out.  Effia is supposedly married to the soldier - a priest even performed a ceremony of sorts - but he already has a wife and children in England.  She and other women like her at the castle are known as 'wenches'.  Out of curiosity, I looked up the word 'wench' in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary.  It states a young woman or girl, a female servant, a girl or woman of a low social class.  It also has an archaic meaning of a lewd or promiscuous woman or a prostitute.  I'm already wondering what happened to those real 'wenches' when their husbands - owners, in reality - either tired of them or wanted a younger woman or their duty overseas came to an end and they returned home.  Were the African women pensioned off?  Simply discarded?  Or added to the numbers on the slave ships?  

That's a depressing way to end a blog post, but it's a good book and I'll tackle a few more chapters today.  Hope you day's going well, and thanks for stopping by.