Winter Time - It Had To Happen I Suppose

We have had such a long warm summer and autumn that it's hard not to feel aggrieved that winter has arrived with a vengeance.  At Shoestring Cottage this morning the bird bath was frozen solid and it was a pretty miserable start to the day.  But the frosty start always means a beautiful sunny day afterwards, fortunately. 

This weekend was a long weekend (Queen's Birthday, even though her actual birthday is in April, go figure) and we were very pleased to see that every single op shop in town was open, a rare occurrence indeed.  What a lot of treasures we found.  This very softly coloured water colour will look pretty in the bathroom beside a slightly similar one I bought a couple of years ago.  The frame was so dirty that it took a while to clean it up, but it's in place now and looking much better for a bit of a polish. 

And this very curiously shaped old tin will be just the thing for putting a stitching project into, for travelling.  (I don't actually stitch while driving, you will be pleased to know, only when a passenger.  Once when in an embroidery shop I overheard a customer enthusing over how much a person could get done while at the traffic lights and idly wondered how many cycles of lights she had stitched through in her time, no doubt to the frustration and annoyance of other motorists.)  I was somewhat perplexed to see that the view of Auckland was on the back of the tin, while the view of Wellington was on the front, a grave error in my opinion, being an Aucklander born and bred.  Though I know The Dancing Queen, who comes from Wellington, would beg to differ, saying that Wellington is The Riviera Of The South.)

This pretty bird cushion (why am I so partial to anything bird themed I cannot fathom, but it seems to be an enduring passion) will be just the thing for the outdoor furniture next spring, which can't be that far off now, surely.  

There were several large plates which will look great on the pink wall.  Actually we have accumulated a collection of them, waiting to be hung, but we need scaffolding to put them up, having reached so high up the wall already.  

This embroidery is on a perfect tablecloth, and it has the most pretty hand tatted edging.  I was going to cut it up for one of my crazy quilts, but I can't bring myself to do it since it is in perfect condition.  It will be useful for the dining table instead.  I am a person who actually rather enjoys ironing and laundering these linens, even the damask table napkins. so it won't be a hardship.  

I particularly liked this one.  I was hoping to find other "days of the week" to complete the set, but had to be content with Church On Sunday.  

These three are to be used as hand towels and I have sewn tags onto each of them so they can easily hang on a hook.  I am embarrassed to admit that I was deconstructing silk ties for a crazy quilt and used the little loops off the back as tags for the the hand towels.  In coordinating shades, naturally.  Getting just a bit too particular, perhaps.  

These artist easel earrings are "clip ons", which I cannot understand anybody ever having worn.  I have tried once or twice and after about half an hour end up with ear lobes painfully throbbing and a powerful headache as well.  Luckily for me, Mr Shoestring is a dab hand at converting clip ons to pierced ear variety and is very obliging about doing so.  I think these would look just the thing at Art Deco weekend for a person who had artistic pretensions, and wore long strings of jet beads and clattering carnelian bracelets, just the sort of individual I plan on being one day next summer in Napier. 

Things in the garden are looking surprisingly cheerful.  Even a few roses blooming, and the pansies are putting on a show. 

In a fit of impatience or optimism I put some sweet pea seeds in a while ago and I'm very surprised to see that they seem to be coping with the colder weather very well, having germinated well and now scrambling up their trellis already.  Maybe in future I will rely on autumn plantings of them, since they (so far) don't object.  

The most gratifying thing this week though was that Madame Canuck, who is becoming quite the talented painter, offered a while ago to "paint out" the people and tractor on an op shop painting I had bought.  I had always detested the tractor and people gathering up stooks, and went so far as to put a picnic hamper in front of that part of the painting, so as to conceal that part of it.  When Madame Canuck took the painting away I didn't dwell on the possibility of a priceless work of art being desecrated, having supreme confidence in her abilities, but I was absolutely thrilled when she returned the painting this weekend.  No trace of humans or machinery, and she had also converted the foreground into a waterway, and put in some trees for good measure.  The whole thing looked so much better, I was very grateful and full of admiration.  

You Can't Always Get What You Want

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.   

Deconstruction

Recently Mr Shoestring and I had a mini holiday.  It so happened that with various holidays including Easter Friday, Easter Monday and ANZAC Day, a forward thinking individual could apply for three days' leave and obtain 10 whole days off work!  We are usually a bit slow off the mark and fail to notice in time, but this year we got in our leave applications and so have been congratulating ourselves for being clever. 

The weather has been great for the time of year and we have had some wonderful times, including going for a flight in a seaplane, which has been a dream of mine for a few years.  We saw our city on a most beautiful day and the knowledgeable pilot told us all sorts of interesting facts and figures about De Haviland seaplanes and their history.  I had pictured the seaplane as being somewhat akin to one of those huge old romantic Catalinas and was a bit startled to see our craft bobbing along on the surface of the harbour, looking a bit like a dragonfly.  When on the water the seaplane has to obey the rules of the sea, and then once in the air it must obey the rules of the sky and it was strange to be driving along over the water's surface as though we were in a car.  But a wonderful experience and something I will always remember fondly. 

Of course with all that leave we had to make the most of our chances to visit opportunity shops and we have had some wonderful finds.  The latest art work to join my collection of priceless treasures is this oil painting, which set me back $5.  (I love the way different people put different values on these paintings.  Some opp shops try to fleece you for hundreds of dollars for an indifferent daub, while in other shops the assistants apologetically suggest, "Say, $5?" in a very hesitant tone as though expecting you will laugh out loud and tell them they are trying to rob innocent member of the public.)  The thing I love most about these paintings is that somebody has gone to all the trouble and effort to paint something which presumably is very important and affecting to them.  It seems sad that they or their family end up tossing them out for charity stores. 

We also found a few hats to remodel and my sister, who has really taken up the cause for me in searching for all things royal, gave me these two wonderful tin plates to go in the picnic hamper she donated formerly. 

 (HRH The Queen seems to have a strangely disapproving expression, for some reason.)

The Duke of Edinburgh is remarkably pleased with himself, on the other hand.  He may have some secret joke he is sharing with himself and himself alone.  

When she handed them over my sister remarked that the Queen had some dribbles down her and that she had refrained from trying to remove them, and would leave it to me in case the plate was damaged beyond repair.  Which was a bit naughty of her, since the marks would not wash off and I couldn't resist having a little pick at them, thus taking off a couple of patches of paint.  Mr Shoestring tut tutted at me and he seems to think he will be able to clean them with car polish, but I'm not so sure and I'm a bit worried I may end up with two silver coloured discs.  Never mind, we can only hope for the best.  My sister also gave me another medal to commemorate the royal visit in 1954, and when I reminded her she had already given me one she remarked kindly that I have two now, one for each bosom.  By a strange coincidence, on my op shopping rounds I had come across a set of six napkin rings commemorating the birth of Prince Harry in 1984 which I felt compelled to add to my collection.  I must say that I was somewhat perplexed as to why anybody would feel the need to have six identical napkin rings, even if they did commemorate the birth of Prince Harry.  Did they have whole sets for each notable person they admired?  They made a pretty and much more highly polished addition to my napkin ring collection, anyway.

Now, when we set forth on our next picnic we can take our napkin rings as well as our medals (I could be generous and let Mr Shoestring wear one on his bosom, rather than wearing two myself) and tin plates.  As long as there is no squabbling over who get to use the plate with the Queen, of course. And my sister thoughtfully packed the hamper with pewter goblets, so as to avoid the possibility of breakages. 

We had a very interesting discussion about gardening, my sister and I.  I showed her the mango seed I have been trying to grow into a houseplant and explained how I despaired of its survival, as it seems to have succumbed to some kind of die back because of being too damp and cool while it was germinating.  I also pressed on to her a mandevillea seedling which I have been nurturing, and as she left with a tummy full of soup thrown together from leftovers, (but made delicious with the addition of about half a kilo of Parmesan cheese), she pointed out that the puffball fungus growing on the front lawn was supposedly edible.  When I tried to give it to her so that she could eat it, she demurred and declared that she would not eat it, but would take it home to her garden so that the spores could spread and next year she would have a bumper crop.  I wondered if perhaps she was not quite so sure of its edible nature as she declared herself to be.

The other thing which has been occupying a lot of my time has been trying to use up bits and pieces left over from other projects, such as making a "book" for my needles and other crazy quilting supplies, from a block which was lost when I finished my last quilt.

Complete with colour coordinated pins!

 Mind you, there are still three more to use up and I can't really think of a purpose for them as yet.  And quite a few blocks left over from a red themed quilt which I'm going to pad out with some cross stitch and other patchwork bits and pieces, to make pillows.  Sometimes it can get very tiresome, trying to use up every last bit.

Thinking about all the chaos in my crazy quilting bag, where the bits of cotton, silk and ribbon all seem to wrap themselves into a hideous ball which it is impossible to untangle, I got out my trusty glue pen and made a whole lot of thread winders which are so pretty.

Then things got a bit out of hand and I kept on trying to coordinate the threads to the colour of the thread winder they were going to be wrapped around.  Just a bit too much organisation.  A person could end up spending all their time on the arranging of their materials and never have a moment to spare for the actual stitching, at the rate I was working. 

This book, which is designed for children of approximately 15 years old, was the most wonderful treasure I found this week.  (Apart from the oil painting and maybe one or two other things which were on an equal footing, the napkin rings for instance.)  It is very clear and practical and explains all kinds of complex (to my mind, anyway) techniques such as French seams and bound buttonholes, in a way which is easy to understand.  Plus which, it also finally gives me an idea of how to wash my kid gloves without them turning into tortured and shrivelled, stiffened objects which resemble the corpses of small animals.  A winner all round!

As a reward for all this good behaviour I allowed myself to deconstruct some of the kimonos I want to use for art deco dresses.  When you first look at a kimono you feel you are going to be spoilt for choice, as there seems to be a huge amount of fabric in each one.  This breaks down into the "outer" shell, which is the most sumptuous fabric with a gorgeous pattern woven into it or printed onto it.  Then there is a complementing plain coloured silk for some of the lining, and the third piece which is usually plain cream silk.  Once you start to carefully unpick the kimono though, it becomes evident just how beautifully made they all are.  They seem to be hand stitched with a sort of small running stitch, using silk thread.  The attention to detail is beautiful and each piece of silk is woven on a loom which is only 14 inches (35.5cm) wide.  If you want to be careful not to damage the fabric, and to retain as much as possible for using, it becomes a very laborious and time consuming process, and because of the width of the silk it is not useful for anything needing large pieces of fabric, for instance bias cut dresses, but all the same it is well worth taking the pieces all apart to reuse.  Maybe. 

In the pretty china department I was thrilled when these darling little salt and peppers were still in the op shop I revisited, having passed them over last time as being a bit costly.  When I returned the lady behind the counter said, "$4 each that must be a mistake!"  At which point my heart sank, but then she exclaimed, "It must mean $4 for the pair."  I hastily paid and dashed out before she could change her mind.  

And my collection of mismatched crockery for dining is pretty much complete now.  Well, more than complete really, I could host a banquet.  In fact, I must stop.  This is probably my favourite plate and I try to use it whenever we are having a meal, so it has risen to the top of the pile and there it will stay until the day I break it.  

And here's wishing you many happy feasts with your loved ones, and success in finding whatever treasure you seek.