Almost Feels Like Spring

I haven't been near Shoestring Cottage for the past few weeks, having been struck down by a horrible ailment and needing to stay on my sick bed to try to recover.  So it was doubly good to be back there this weekend and to find that the garden and in fact the whole place had survived remarkably well without me there to oversee things - almost a bit of a slap in the face, really!  It was feeling as if spring might be on its way and in the garden the bees were working furiously, with their pollen bags full to bursting on their legs.  They were so intent on what they were doing that they were almost oblivious to my presence and seemed unconcerned about my close proximity.

Even the old berries on the melia tree looked beautiful silhouetted against the blue sky and the magnolias and michelias are full to bursting with buds.  I'm sure that in the next few days the blossoms will be bursting from the buds and we will be in for a beautiful show. 

Seedling primulas have been coming up in the cracks in the paths and everything feels as though it's going to be putting on a bumper show for the spring season.  

The first year I was at Shoestring Cottage I planted a borage plant, wanting to reap the benefits they were supposed to provide, but it grew so enormous that it took over the entire front garden and suffocated all the other seedlings and plants nearby so I eventually had to take it out.  I was rather concerned to notice this weekend that it has come back again, whether from a seed or a piece of root left in place I'm not sure, but it looked so fluffily full of promise with its first flower buds forming that I have given it the benefit of the doubt and left it there ... for now.  But once it begins again on its campaign for world domination we will have a difference of opinion, I know. 

As I've been so badly under the weather I allowed myself a weekend off the blue swallows quilt and took out my old favourite, the Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses.  This is a lot more of a complicated undertaking than it first appears, as I tend to work in a frenzy of enthusiasm and excitement, cutting up numerous patches which then all somehow become jumbled up together and entangled, so that when you need four, or eight, or twelve pieces all identical you can only ever find three, five or seven of them.  I spread them all out over the floor and tried to impose some order out of chaos.  Mr and Mrs Peaceable Kingdom probably thought I spent a serene weekend just happily sitting by the fire when they called around, but this is only because I had advance warning of their planned arrival and scooped up all the half way matched up pieces, tossed them into a bag and put them out of sight.  Mission half accomplished and I feel sure I will be much more easily able to lay my hands on the pieces I need now that they are at least put into ziplock plastic bags with some kind of colour code imposed on them, and some are even pinned together.

It will be great fun deciding what colour to use for the piecing squares but that's a long way off yet, no need to start thinking about that for quite some time, possibly years.

After putting some flowers from the garden in a makeshift container for the bathroom I realised I have the makings of yet another collection coming on.  

I found the Valium Roche pot in a second hand shop somewhere and liked it for its rich colours of lettering and decoration.  It's sitting with a blue eye wash thingy and a little medicine measurer from an old pharmacy, also a couple of Victorian shaving mugs in pretty blue shades.  Kind of a pharmaceutical theme under way perhaps?  Something to think about, anyway.  Possibly something to avoid also!

Mr Shoestring - Paragon of Virtue

Now just before I get started, let me say that Mr Shoestring is an all round excellent person and a shining example to us all.  I say this because he found in the space of half a day my lost camera (the loss of which had prevented me from writing blogs about Shoestring Cottage for quite a long time now) and also my best Little Black Dress, the one I go to automatically on Monday mornings when I have an early start at work and which is a life saver in the wardrobe department.  So, well done Mr Shoestring and long may you continue in this manner.

Winter art deco weekend in Napier has rolled around again and it was a great success.  This year we initiated Mr and Mrs Canuck into the mysteries of this heavenly festival and they proved to be easily up to the task.  For one thing, Mrs Canuck made herself the most creative costumes including a spectator coat and matching hat, and she decked the uncomplaining Mr Canuck out in wonderfully colourful art deco raiment.  Also they were both excellent travelling companions, by which I mean that they never balked at the prospect of stopping at every op shop along the road and even returning to them again on the return journey.  When it comes to op shops I'm a bit like a dog who remembers once finding a bone at a certain spot and will always return to the scene of past op shopping triumphs in the confident expectation of a repeat performance.  Once when we left Napier I found a beautiful landscape painting to add to my ever growing collection of masterpieces, but my little car was so full that even when I opened the top I couldn't fit the painting in, so sadly had to leave it behind. You can see that she is only a diminutive thing and once she had all the furs, hats, costumes and accessories two decophiles needed for a weekend of fun and frolics loaded into her she was loaded up to the roof and I had to try to slip the painting in by opening up the roof, but even that wasn't going to work.

When we revisited the shop after winter deco I told Mrs Canuck about this sad near-miss and had a look through the paintings but could find nothing to take my fancy.  Lo and behold, Mrs Canuck found this wonderful treasure for me and made me very happy.  (Luckily she is not interested in priceless artworks, concentrating more on items for her budding art deco wardrobe.)

My new landscape fits in with the theme of these ones, but it can't be hung with them as there is no wall space left so it has to go nearby.  Still looks pretty damned fabulous all the same though!

Every time we return from art deco weekend I'm fired up with enthusiasm for making better costumes for next time.  This time the gauntlet was well and truly thrown down by Mrs Canuck (and her a novice too!) and rather than run out of steam as I usually do I resolved to get started before the enthusiometer started to run down.  I have one hat which I adore and which has no costume to go with it, the poor thing.  Esme agreed to model it for me, but you can see that she wasn't happy about it.

I think the fruits and the net are so cheerful and optimistic and I love the way the crown and brim are different colours too.  

This weekend I cast about in the overstuffed art deco costumes wardrobe and came up with this dress which I think has the same cheerful optimistic outlook as the hat.

  I think I will change the buttons and take off the plain black ones, and perhaps use these old glass ones, keeping to the theme of the more colour, the better.  

Another great find which Esme reluctantly agreed to model for me was this boater.  (It is a bit large for her, that might explain her less than enthusiastic expression.) 

 It has a school crest on the front and it's beautifully woven, a bit the worse for wear but I was really interested to find an old newspaper inside the crown.  It must have been a tad large for its original wearer also.

When I visited The Duchess of Ringloes while we were at winter deco she gave me this most wonderful old cardboard box.  You can only imagine how I wished my bosom pointed skywards in the manner of this fortunate young woman.  I'm using it (the box, not the bosom), to store all the hexagons for my swallows quilt (which is growing at a woefully slow rate, and of which I am becoming heartily tired).  I hope that having this beautiful container will imbue me with a new sense of purpose and that I will race through the finishing stages of the swallows quilt, but somehow I suspect I will continue on in the same ramshackle and lackadaisical fashion.  I have a terrible craving to get back to some more crazy quilting and do some cross stitch and make the Lucy Boston quilt but I have imposed this restriction upon myself that first things first, finish what you have started, no more projects until then, blah blah blah, very boring but virtuous.  Sigh.

And The Dancing Queen also gave me a beautiful gift, the green depression glass box on the left which I think I will store my old glass buttons in.  I have never seen one like this before, I love the unusual shape and all the ridges on its lid and underneath as well.  More of an incentive to keep the sewing room tidy - a place for everything and everything in its place.  Or close to its place.  Or within reach.  Or at least knowing where the thing you want is, that's always a good thing.

Happy days, happy days, and we only have one more month of winter to go now before spring is well and truly with us.  

Tidy But Curiously Frustrating

Having spent so long last weekend making things tidy at Shoestring Cottage in the sewing room, and in the whole place in general, I was determined that never again would things get into such a mess.  I sat about for a while in my favourite chair surveying things in all their tidiness.

The dish with the serviettes was full to overflowing with nicely pressed napkins, awaiting use.  The bowl with the napkin rings was neatly placed beside it, similarly ready to be pressed into service.  

 The china on the mantelpiece was standing in an an orderly fashion with not too much dust about

 and even the doggy salt and pepper shakers seemed to be alert and poised expectantly, not slouching or lounging

 

The bed was neatly made and the cushions maintaining an orderly arrangement

The needlepoint project was awaiting attention but I didn't dare interfere with the wools and spread them all about the place

Eventually I could stand it no longer and dragged forth the quilt which is still needing completion but never seems to get anywhere near the final stitches. 

It did make a bit of a mess but a contained mess with just a few reels of quilting thread, some scissors and my favourite needle.  I beavered away and got a few more squares quilted

but I think that this might be my last quilt with a lot of hand quilting because I am such a slow quilter.  I read of people who can take seven stitches onto their needle at one time and despair, for me one stitch is the norm, two good and three excellent.  It will be worth finishing this one off but after that I may have to abandon my grandiose plans for an armoir full of heavily quilted works of art for the sake of just completing what's started and maybe even moving on to some of the projects swirling around inside my mind.  

Mr Shoestring has been very busy this weekend raking up the leaves from the grass and also was very kind and hung up this brass rack for me, which we bought months ago (possibly years ago) at the op shop and which has been languishing ever since.  I am thrilled with it and of course I won't use its existence as a reason to buy yet more books, oh no no no no.  

The lemon tree which went in as a tiny seedling has yielded up its first fruits, cause for great excitement.  I feel sure that the liberal doses of compost and coffee grounds which have been lavished upon it have contributed to its flourishing and eagerly await the day when there is a glut of fruit and we are casting about for more things to do with lemons.  Lemons would have to be my all time favouite ingredient, there are so many things which are enhanced with lemons from savoury to sweet and they are such a cheerful looking fruit was well.