another continuity announcement

This is probably not the most beautiful or original thing I have ever made - a canvaswork cushion cover worked in wool in tent stitch, but like so much needlework it is replete with memories.

My father moved into a nursing home in 2001. The house was an old priory and there was a pleasant garden to sit in. I thought that if I had a bit of simple needlework I could sit in the garden with him having desultory conversation or companionable silence as the fancy took us, which is when I bought the initial materials for this. In the event it was not many months before Dad's dementia meant that he moved to the top floor of the nursing home into the EMI (elderly mentally infirm) unit and we didn't get to spend that much time in the garden, though I did carry on stitching from time to time when I visited him in his room. The stitching was incomplete when he died in 1984 and I've only picked it up occasionally since. Suddenly, around Easter this year, it was finished and set aside to be rediscovered when I had my workshop clear-out. It was very distorted by stitching and took a LOT of blocking to get it back to a square enough shape to be turned into a cushion. Now it's done - on a chair in the sitting room and full of happy/sad memories of my father and a difficult time in our lives.

Edited postscript. Obviously (as Alice has pointed out in her comment) he died in 2004, not 1984 - don't know how that got in there!

they're joking, right?

I bought some buttons on Saturday afternoon. Nothing special, just squarish wooden buttons for the cardigan that I have almost finished. I sewed two of them in place and then noticed the warning on the back of the card:The idea that I might remove these buttons and sew them back on each time I wash the cardigan is just so far from the way I live my life that I just laughed.

here's one I made earlier

This was finished some time ago – just in time for H’s birthday in August in fact, but I didn’t have time to photograph it before giving it to her. Finally got round to standing her in the garden and taking some pics last weekend – though they’re still not exactly brilliant photographs. The pattern is Central Park Hoodie and seems to be one of the most popular patterns on the KnittingDaily website. H chose the wool, which is Rowan Pure Wool Aran. It was lovely to knit with and I enjoyed the interest of the fairly simple cable. I even managed to continue the central back cables up the back of the hood.
I’ve got a ball of wool left over and I’m planning to make this for myself.

woad 3

Well finally my woad was ready for harvesting and I made a special trip to the allotment with my secateurs.
I’d been chatting to another woadie in Frome, who had told me that rather than going through the very lengthy process of extracting the pigment, I could in fact use the fresh woad leaves to make a more delicate shade of dye. It gives subtle spearmint shades rather than the blue normally associated with indigo. I had seen a description of this process being applied to fresh indigo leaves, so decided to give it a go.

Even this process was fairly slow and time consuming:
chopping leaves,

heating water and steeping the leaves (careful not to let it get too hot), adding soda ash and sodium hydrosulphate, whisking for ages and ages as the froth turned blue and then back to green again, but finally the dye bath was ready to use. I dipped my prepared cloth and watched the magic process of pulling the cloth out of the bath a greeny/yellow colour and watching as the exposure to air turned it blue-ish.

Unfortunately there wasn’t really enough dye to make repeated dippings to get more intensity of colour, but I hung them all out to dry anyway.
Sadly by the time they had dried they were much paler and by the time they had been properly washed and rinsed they just look like whites that got into the wrong wash…
Oh well, it was fun to try, but probably not something I’m going to make into a regular activity.

plastered

I had to vacuum the soles of my feet today! That’s a first for me.
I’ve been clearing out my workshop (it seems like months I’ve been working on it). There was a shallow plastic box on a shelf just above my head with lots of "stuff" in it. I lifted it down to sort through it all and an unopened bag of plaster of paris fell to the floor and split. Powder everywhere - in things, around things, behind things, everywhere! First the dustpan and brush, then the vacuum cleaner were pressed into service. But then I noticed that as fast as I cleaned one bit, I was leaving footprints everywhere else. Vacuuming the soles of my feet was really the only solution.

woad 2

I thought I was going to have to call this post "oh woad is me" (and it may come to that eventually). After sowing the seeds in great excitement and watching them germinate and sprout, they just seemed to stop and enter a period of stasis. After a few weeks the leaves started to get a bit bigger, but the little stems didn’t get any bigger and don’t look strong enough to hold up the plants.
Anyway, Stu and I decided we just had to go for it. We went up to the allotment and took the plastic sheeting off a patch of earth. We dug over the top layer and pulled out the couch grass and raked and levelled and then planted the little seedlings. (When I say "we", it was mostly Stu doing the heavy stuff and me getting to do the fun bits – but Iris helped as well).
The plastic collars are supposed to give them some protection from slugs, but really they’ve just got to take their chances – after all it was a weed originally!

continuity

Whenever I have a workshop clear-out I come across this.



It's a canvas-work rug that my mother started in the sixties. She spent quite a lot of time on it, but never finished it. When she died in 1992 I took it on, intending to finish it myself. Clearly, this hasn't yet happened. I have done some work on it, but the wool is very fibrous and makes my eyes itch. It's never going to be a rug now as one of the wool colours has virtually run out, but I think I could just about even off the ends and turn it into a big fat floor cushion. One day!