July 21, 2012

Sometimes the wild goddess calls you

 You might not be listening at that moment
so she calls a little louder
 Will you listen? Will you ignore her?
 Will your heart sing and your joy spring forth at her call?
 Does she reach the inner you? the child within?
 What will you do with the call and its message?
 The first pictures above are a half of this years lavender crop in the front border, ripe already. I left the rest for the bees:) Then this picture is some part of our tomato and pepper growing in the conservatory. We have had our first tomatoes from them.
 The back border shows some colour and is growing so well with the wet warm weather we have had.

 The lush flowers in the vases were a thank you gift from friends who are moving. We went to lend a hand packing. The flowers are now fully out and truly stunning.
 I have decided to give spindling another go and I love the trindle I got from a friends destash. The batt I am spinning is also from a destash and a change from my usual bright colours. It does however have some sparkle in it.
 Then another friend persuaded me to have a go at knitting a swirl jacket. I had lots of part balls of yarn left over from the Elsewhere jackets I knit so decided to use those. The jackets are an unusual construction, you cast on almost 600 stitches in a circle using long tail cast on. I'd never done that before and that was an exercise in patience. Also made my thumbs exceedingly sore. I knit several rounds and was sure that I'd not twisted the join but I had:(
A  friend who was staying took pity on me and when I had pulled back the many rows I'd done she cast on for me. Thanks Sam:) We did go to the Tynedale Gathering over on the north east  and while speaking to one of the other people there I heard of a great idea for joining circles. This lady pins out the circle on her ironing board, checks it is straight then joins in situ. What do you know it works much better than crossing fingers and hoping.
 The jacket is very bright as you can see and I love it. The sleeves are too long but I'm not worried. I will stitch the cuffs back on it,.
 Then I did mention my sewing ?
This is my little featherweight machine, isn't it lovely?

July 20, 2012

Did you miss me?

I hadn't realised how long it had been since my last blog post. Sorry. It has been hectic but in a good way . Mr Mog is doing really well on his drug trial and they are very pleased with him at oncology . His numbers are down and apart from a spell of horrendous hot sweats he hasn't had any side effects up to now. This is the 4th month of the trial and we are still on 4 weekly appointments . One month it is ECG ,bloods and consultant and the alternate month is bone scan, ct scan, bloods and consultant. Those months are long appointments because one of the scans has to be 2-3 hours after the injection . But a small price to pay for the results:) what else has been happening? We went to Woolfest and really enjoyed it as usual. We stayed in the Travelodge across from the venue and that helped a lot especially as it was yet another wet festival . Lots of flooding around and about but it didn't stop the fun:) we met up with lots of friends from across the country and across the world. I have unearthed my Bernina and have a fancy to do some machine embroidery and mixed media stuff. I organised a days tuition with one of my favourite tutors and really enjoyed it. We did various techniques and it was a chance to reacquaint myself with stitching. It was also an exceedingly good value day for one to one. I acquired an old singer hand crank machine which Mr Mog cleaned up and serviced and I love it. It only does straight stitch but sometimes that is all you want. But:- We saw an old featherweight singer sewing machine at woolfest on the Yarnyard stand and both fell in love with it. I said I would love one of those and decided to look for one after Woolfest. Imagine my surprise when I got home to a phone message from a local charity shop saying they had a sewing machine for me. I had asked if they ever got old machines in as I wanted a hand crank and had forgotten to get in touch to say I had got one. We went in on the Monday and they couldn't see a machine. The girl rang the manager who told her where it was. We saw a lovely old case, looked like the kind you used to carry Lps around in. When Mr Mog opened it there was a mint 221k featherweight inside. Perfect in every way :) the Goddess must have been listening I think. I found out that the 222k featherweight actually drops its feed dogs and is ideal for FME (free machine embroidery) and has the added advantage of being easy to carry around. Guess what I am looking for now? Mr Mogs birthday is coming up shortly and I am trying to organise something to celebrate. I don't want to put anything on the blog as he sometimes reads it, but if you want to know more message me via comments. There is probably lots more I haven't said but hopefully won't be as long to next post. Thank you for reading

Poetry for Brigid Imbolc

  The Lake Isle of Innisfree BY  WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay a...