And still the weather continues to be beautifully warm and sunny, even though we are into the last "official" month of Autumn now. The cloudscapes behind our beautiful mountain, Te Aroha, have been spectacular and it's tempting to just sit in a comfortable chair and watch them change, some days.
I started off the weekend at Shoestring Cottage with such good intentions but somehow things conspired against me. A nasty little mouse had found its way inside and within an astonishingly short space of time the kitchen drawer with all my pretty teatowels and tablecloths needed a complete overhaul. What a long time it took to wash and dry and press everything, when my eye was wistfully travelling to the sewing room where I would much rather be, where all my pretty treasures were close to hand and looking so tempting.
And then my favourite plate broke. (To be honest, this was all my own doing because I left it close to the edge of the kitchen bench and it hurled itself off in protest, smashing into many small pieces.) So I was not feeling my sparkling best, it has to be admitted.
Eventually I did make it into the sewing room though. This week it seemed particularly difficult to lay my hand on anything useful though. For instance, quick unpicks. Where do they all to go? I can never find one when I need one when I do find one, it seemed to vanish again within a space of minutes. I need to purchase them in multiples rather than singly. And tape measure, don't get me started about them. I found four of them in various parts of the sewing room (while looking for other things) and though I hung them immediately on the special tape measure peg, they no doubt have crept away by now and secreted themselves among the mounds of doyleys and bits of wool blanket and silk ties which I can somehow never keep in an orderly fashion. But success was finally mine. I had been struggling to finish a little cross stitch on natural coloured linen and eventually had to go and buy more thread, because I had lost the original skein although I had many other shades of red.
Now that it is finished, I'm very pleased with it. I used up small pieces of pink fabric left over from other projects to frame it with, top and bottom. And a bit of left over chintz from a quilt for the sides, some natural linen also left over from something else, to back it with. And of course I still have a lot of red hexagons left over from the "Big Red" quilt, so there will be more cross stitching to follow, I'm sure.
The other thing I was determined to press on with this weekend was the quilt I have been meaning to make for the darling grandbaby. This weekend I got some more rows put onto it and it seems to have become a bit easier, for some reason.
Looking at the fabrics I still have left to use, I can see there seems to be a strong emphasis on chickens, which is my own fancy. My little grandson would much prefer diggers and trucks, so I may have to make some additions. I am not the most exact machine piecer and there are a few stars which aren't, ahem, 100% perfect. I think I might have to do a bit of careful unpicking in one place, it just is a bit too wonky to ignore. But that will have to wait for another time, when I am feeling strong and my mind isn't focusing on rodents and broken plates.
Outside it's still very pleasant to be scratching around in the earth.
The geraniums are still in bloom, what obliging and cheerful things they are.
The bees are loving this camellia. And also the birds have been paying a lot of visits to it, I think they are perhaps eating the nectar. It has a beautiful perfume, much to my surprise, and I hope that some of the seedling camellias I have will turn out to be from this plant.
And this, which I was going to remove because it doesn't fit in with my new pink and purple theme, has been so prolific and still blossoming that I feel I need to let it stay. The mango seed I was trying to raise seems to have succumbed finally and though its little shoot is still green, no leaves are forming. This has meant that Mr Shoestring has had to manfully eat his way through three more mangoes so that I can have more stones to try to propagate, but he has been very obliging about it.
