bibs and bobs

Thankyou.

To everyone for your kind comments.

Not a stitch have I taken since I finished the book. I did clean the kitchen floor (I figured if Tom – a 7 year old boy – notices the mess it’s time to do some housework), and I am cleaning up my workspace, ready to start something new.

What next?

I’m not sure.

Maybe more chickens, guinea fowl and ducks…

Maybe seeds…

.

 

Maybe vegetables….

but not an embroidered perineum in sight, so you can stop worrying Jane!

 

Books

If you want to see bigger better photos of the book pages I have uploaded them to flickr.

Another lovely book by Cecile at Quilt creations for you to admire. Check out her book at flickr.

 

Gift

Jude (Spirit Cloth) sent me the most wonderful parcel of fabric, and a mini appliqué and embroidered P. This is tiny – about 1 inch square and beautiful. Thankyou Jude – your generosity is unlimited – in more ways than one.

Journal

I said during the process of making the book I don’t keep any sort of notes or journal. Well I have discovered that’s not entirely true. I do attempt to work things out on paper first, but I find that anything worked out too much on paper…never makes its way onto cloth. I thought for interest sake I’ll show you the page of sketches and notes I made for this book, which I forgot about until I dragged out my notebook to make the above sketches. I was surprised to see how close to my original idea the book became.

Horror Tutorial (not mine) and a school tale

Jude has posted a poem I really like. At the moment Tom is doing a grade 2 project – ‘farm to table’. He has chosen cotton – we found a kids book in the library about cotton, told him to read it and write it out the relevant information in his own words. (Grump grump grump down the hallway). He comes out a while later and asks me how to spell ‘estimated’. I go to see what he has written so far. In part: ‘There are an estimated 1500 cotton farms in Australia’. In the book they had written ‘…there are about 1500 cotton farms…’. What are the chances of his teacher believing that 1. he didn’t copy the word ‘estimated’ from a book, and 2. that I didn’t write it for him?

I recall when I was in school using the word labyrinth, and getting a comment from the teacher about using words I didn’t understand (the word was in context and I did know what it meant) but I was such a sook I didn’t stand up for myself and went home and cried instead. Tom is made of sterner stuff than I…but I am thinking of telling his teacher straight up that it is his own work, rather than waiting for the inevitable. Our kid’s projects never stand up to scrutiny next to the ‘parent prepared airbrushed versions’ of their peers.

And finally:

Judith posted some lovely thoughts this morning (last night) which reminded me of a quote I read in Organic Gardener yesterday (after I mopped the floor). This was written by a NZ permaculturalist Joe Polaischer before he died. He was writing in response to the support he received when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour:

I discovered how many people do care and I must admit that I had

forgotten about one resource that is sustainable, renewable, abundant

and is not peaking – love and compassion.