Category Archives: crafty stuff

Crocheting, knitting, embroidery and all that jazz

Here I am …

and here I’m STAYING! The umpteenth incarnation and a url I can live with, but hopefully this time totally anon to all who aren’t my friends.

Expect plenty of ‘blog frock’ changes. After all, a girl must wear frocks that reflect her mood, n’est-ce pas? And I have so  many pretty frocks it would be a pity not to air them occasionally …

Last week was a BAD week. I rocked up at the medical imaging place for my mammogram and ultrasound only to find that I should have been there the day before. Promptly dissolved into tears, but thankfully Anne was there to ‘lean on’. I was so nervous beforehand I took a valium and was half off my face. What a mess. So now, I have to wait until April27 to go back and have them done … for real this time.

But, Easter has come and gone, and with it the feeling of a brand new week … ‘renewal and replenishment’ and all of that cliched happy stuff. Yesterday I spent making big scrapbook-sized ‘signs’ for my bedroom walls … inspirational, affirmation and orders like DON’T DO IT! I lie. One ‘affirmation’ and the rest are orders/reminders. Where’s my hair shirt? haha! It helps that the sun is finally shining again, as much as I adore the rain and the cool and the froggies creaking outside my bedroom window.  I’ve kind of strayed off the mindfulness/meditation path, but am placing myself back on track.

Here’s one of the things I’ve been working on lately:

It’s a petit point of John William Waterhouse’s “The Soul of a Rose”. I know, it seems awfully tacky doing this from a beautiful painting, but I saw it, had to do it, and I really do believe it will be absolutely beautiful when it’s finished. I started doing it while I was away having radiotherapy. It’s going to take a LONG time to finish. The stitches are tiny, and nearly the entire canvas is to be covered (I have to wear magnifying glasses to work on it … oh my GOD I’m turning into an old lady). A close up of detail:

(This is about the same size as the original I am working on, but I have sharpened it,
and in close-up it looks a lot courser than it really is).

The original painting:

John William Waterhouse – “The Soul of a Rose” 1908

The big highlight of today is taking Liam and myself off to get a haircut. This will be my second haircut since chemo. You would not BELIEVE the curls I am sporting. They’re impossible to work with! School hols … two weeks of trying to entertain Liam … oi.

Or … better … my leather-bound Poe might be delivered today!

good things

Last night I won something on ebay which totally made me squee. An unusual and beautiful thing–a perfect present for someone. Something that should have cost four or five times the amount it did. I’m over the moon. A hardback copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, c1918, with 12 tipped-in colour plates, with tissue guards–illustrations by Edmund Dulac.

 This is the actual book I won. It’s generally worth $130-$150 USD. I got it for approx $40 USD. Bargain. There is another version of around the same date with 20 illustration plates but it’s worth $600-700.

The illustrations are here. Edmund Dulac is one of the illustrators from the Golden Age of Illustration along with Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen (oh how beautiful his are) and others.

This is going to be hard to gift I tell you 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I’m feeling the urge to use my hands again in ‘feminine pastimes’. It might be shocking (*gasp*) for some people here to learn that I actually do things like knitting, and embroidery. And making jewellery – I particularly like wire wrapping (google it). For all I say I’m not girly. This time last year I started work on a bag I just HAD to make, even though I am very much a novice knitter (you see–here’s another girly admission–I have a TOTAL handbag fetish). The picture below is how it is supposed to look when it’s finished lol. It’s made out of denim cotton with hundreds of glass beads, which have to be pre-strung onto each ball of cotton before you start knitting. It’s not as bad as it looks really–it just entails lots of careful counting (sigh). I’m thinking it’s time I finished the thing off.

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“We thought of life via an analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get at that end — success or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead.

But, we missed the point the whole way along….

It was a musical thing — and you were supposed to sing, or dance, while the music was being played.”

~ Alan Watts

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And of course the Daily Nin:

“I stand before each new world, new person, new country, hesitant, unsure, hating new obstacles, new mysteries, new possibilities of pain, of blunders from lack of courage. Fear, lack of confidence, has narrowed my world, limited the people I have known intimately. The difficulty of communion. Je vous présente mes hommages, Madam. Politeness like a shield. Culture is a shield.”