Embroidery

Matilda's notice on her door;

Well taking embroidery as the theme of the day, thanks to Morning Minion's comment, I remembered two things I had wanted to photograph and record, one is a piano cover the other a tablecloth.


 Matilda my grandchild is also craft minded as well, and though my daughter is'nt she collects and keeps family 'treasures' in a large school cupboard in which Matilda is always to be found scrummaging around

M proving that it is not a wishing chair

In Matilda's bedroom amongst the assorted bits and pieces on her chest of drawers last time, was an old wooden box in which she kept her 'treasures' she had opened it to show the Victorian bead bag I had given her.  Recognition slowly dawned on me that the box in fact was an old cigar box of my grandfathers'.  He smoked cigars quite regularly, and the whole art, for it is indeed an art, came back to me.  The removal of the cigar from the box, the band removed, hold the cigar between thumb and figure and gently rotate, smelling the tobacco.  Then the clipping of the end and the lighting up, blue tendrils of smoke and the very strong aroma of cigar, which always permeated any car he owned.
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So to the two pieces of embroidery, the first is a Chinese piano cover, exquisitely embroidered on silk, the silk embroidery threads having faded to an all over grey colour, though LS says they would have been coloured.  There is a Chinese water dragon in the centre with lily pads floating around, and flowers and butterflies embroidered all the way round.  It also has family history and will probably be Matildas' one day.  My first mother in law was Dutch, and her parents the Dutch ambassadors in China for a time, and they acquired a lot of Chinese furniture, dragon chairs, screens and a beautiful Chinese dresser, which is still in the family, so it would make this piano drape mid 19th century probably.

It always hung in the house in a dark corner, but has never been photographed fully, digital though does wonders for detail, so today I pulled it out from the cupboard and looked at the detail closely, four motifs at each corner, 2 have chyrsantheum detail, the other two maple leaf.  Around the edge are embroidered butterflies and leaves, and then the skinny water dragon in the middle.

The tablecloth is something I found at a church hall sale, again beautifully embroidered and also carefully crocheted around the edges in cotton.  The tablecloth is thick linen, the colours used are pretty, and even the edging of green shows a lot of work and strained eyes probably.



cornflowers



cotton edging in crochet

The embroidering out of the flowers over the green reminded me of a painting in the Guardian recently, it was of a woman holding a book which stepped out of the painted frame.

Weigala

  

This I think is a weigala, it was in the pub garden, already out, though the blossoms called for me to take a photo, on closer inspection there was a lot of dead blooms, caught by the frost.  This photo captures the lovely grey/blue of the lichen along the branches.  It seems to develop on shrubs facing the wetter west, on the downs hawthorns were often covered with it and it seemed to hang down in fronds the older it gets.  

  Evening meal - fried noodles

For years I always cooked for the family and language students on a daily basis, but now my partner cooks every other day! bliss

A Ploughman Lunch

The idea that you can catch moments in a day by photographing them has taken hold at the moment, see previous post.

What for instance flows through our minds, aimless thoughts like a stream of lava trailing down a mountainside.  Today for  we were going to the Cats pub for a ploughman's lunch, so my mind started to dwell as to when ploughman lunch came into being.  Of course it has been with us for centuries, it was the only meal you could take out into the fields, cheese and bread, with either some cider or little beer, water was not drunk in the medieval period.  In the 19th century, it would have been cold tea, as the farm labourers sprawled near the hedges having their mid day meal.  The plough horses would have been nearby noses deep in the sack nose bags having a well earned rest and feed.  These horses of courses in the early 20th century would be sent overseas as transport and riding horses for the guns of the 1st World War, many, many of them never returned, and we saw the beginning of mechanisation in our farming history.

Two books came down from the shelves, Dorothy Hartley, The Countryman's England and Food in England, they both document a fascinating part of history in the early 20th century and before.  I could fill this blog with Hartley's photographs of rural England, the horses, the women working out in the field, the cottages huddled somewhere with no electricity or phone lines, and the lanes bare of cars (not something to easily imagine now). The different cheeses that came from all parts of the country, England is a bit of a misnomer in the titles, what of the white cattle of Gwent, (Glamorgan cheese) bred for their milk and its cheese making qualities.

The Cats pub is caught in a time warp, a real original pub, beamed, with the same customers coming back and chatting with a warm familarity that comes of long association.  You can see from the following photo that it was originally a small cottage with a later Victorian extension tacked on at the back.  It is full of a collection of cat objects, they line mantlepieces, pictures on the wall, in the loos, around the fireplaces, which Wally always keeps going in winter.  There are no fancy meals here, its sandwiches or a ploughman and only on certain days in the week.

When I was a child, I had a nanna who lived in Wednesbury in the Midlands, she was the mother of one of my stepmothers.  And I would be left there on occasions, her house was an entranced terrace house, one tap in the kitchen, (no bathroom) cold water of course, and an outside loo.  One of the things I remember was Sunday tea, which was of course ham and salad,  No fancy french dressings or mayonnaise of course, but lettuce, cucumber, tomato, radishes and spring onions with the obligatory Heinz Salad cream - it was considered a feast..  The following photo taken from Hartley shows spring onions being washed in the stream ready for market, a very much simpler style of direct production, than those terrible aisles we must prowl in the supermarket, and the half dead vegetables and fruit flown in from abroad....

A glass of stout and Abbot's Ales

Note the large slice of cheese, Heinz salad cream and Branston Pickle

The wood-burning stove with strange cat sitting in front



the tiny cottage backed by the larger house



Photos of the day

Sometimes we need a moment of Zen, when our senses become fused with the environment we live in...

a crop of violets protected by a small tangle of twigs

The sun going down in the West in a last spectacular display

Turquoise mug for coffee, roses for tea.



The ritual of coffee at 10 in the morning



As she lies on the board, slightly erotic,
 is she pregnant? captured for evermore in a few strokes of the brush

Such elegant simplicity this female impersonator actor, draped in his red cloak

Catching up

Retiring to the peace of my blog would be a better title, sometimes I wonder why do I belong to a 'firecracker' group, every so often we get attacked.  Its a phenomena of the internet, the ability of faceless people to say what they want in the interests of 'free speech' and very little comeback.

Luckily they run out of wind very quickly, their arguments foundering on the deep waters they find themselves in.

So to more pleasant memories, I had been charged to find 'the wishing chair' in Whitby and bring back photos. So one morning Matilda and I set out to find the stone, it was supposedly outside Lidl on the outskirts of town, so we walked and walked with Matilda complaining every inch of the way till we came to the countryside but turning left spied Lidl in the distance, photo taken and carpet shop wandered round  we returned by a much shorter route back.  The stone is'nt a wishing chair but the socket for a mile cross to Whitby Abbey.

 Pannett Museum was on Matilda's list, she is like me very curious and also very craft minded.

The museum is a fascinating mixture of everything, beautiful jet jewellery vie with carved miniatures of jet. Ghastly Victorian dolls adorn the cabinets, along with stuffed birds, dusty animals, and pinned butterflies.  Beaded bags, little lace cushions and carefully stitched samplers, plus of course all the arrowheads, rock art and cup marked stones.  Tea and ham sandwiches in the cafe and we did another half hour looking at the exhibits.

Things that are good in Whitby; Boyes which is quite small but which sells everything, including the kitchen sink.  The little patchwork shop, in which we brought materials for projects.  Several fish and chip shops though Fuscos is the best, my eldest grandson had just started a week end job in one, there is talk of him not going to university at the moment, the £40,000 student loan he will probably be lumbered with, has made everyone think twice about spending three years at a university only to come out in a redundant job market.

Matilda and Lillie spent a day making bags, or at least I made Lillie's bags, the girls amuse themselves quite easily, in the shop (they were on holiday) they made houses out of boxes, and Lillie played her 'jack in the box'   game on unsuspecting customers..



The stone



Fireplace with hideous tartan carpet.



The only thing I'm not replacing



cottage with my share of the garden

And already there is a cause to fight for, the Donkey Field,  by the Abbey, which has rig and furrow still showing in it, I just love this photo of protestors and their dogs .


Residents fearing for the future of the Donkey Field near Whitby Abbey are petitioning to have the area declared a protected village green.
Recent sewage works have led to the area being transformed from a meadow into a muddy building site, with many residents fearing the area will never be restored to its original beauty unless official conservation measures are imposed.

http://www.whitbygazette.co.uk/news/environment/donkey_field_could_become_village_green_1_3129256

Kelston Round Hill and boxing hares

Kelston Hill in September

Recently I had an email from someone writing a book about racecourses, he wanted to know about the 'sun disc' on Lansdown.  Now up to a couple of years ago the lansdown had been part of my walking life with my dog, a place to wander and think.  Over the years I accumulated a lot of history about the barrows, Roman sites, etc.  But its greatest treasures were the birds and wild flowers, the great ash trees that lined the sides of the valleys.  The deer early in the morning as they browsed the edge of the woodlands, the little muntjac that would run somewhat ungainly across the open to the safety of the trees, and old brer fox, wandering idly back from a night out hunting.

But once a few years back, when we had got to the viewpoint looking out towards Kelston Round Hill, where you are supposed to see seven counties, including two in Wales, I saw in the field below, boxing hares, a rare site for Somerset. They are a rarity round Bath probably because they get shot, but the dog did once chase one from one end of the course to the other, a good mile, he did'nt catch up though.

Well this week my Resurgence magazine came through the letterbox with a lovely photograph of a winter hare on the front cover, a reminder that March is the month for mad boxing hares.  And it also reminded me of a blog I had written about  Saint Melangell in Wales, who protected the hare.

Toadflax on the race course

The race course was undergoing some drastic changes when I left and I fear for those wild flowers so easily crushed beneath the weight of earth moving vehicles, the animals will always be safe though, the rugged nature of the landscape means that the woods that cling to the sides of the valleys are virtually impossible to eradicate.

Whitby

Whitby;  There is a 'buzz' about Whitby even when  it is windy and cold, and raining as it is today.  Looking out of my bedroom windy and the abbey stands on the cliff tops, , shadowed by the mist and rain.  This house is cold, its tall windows rattle with the wind, the children's voices echo from upstairs, they have to walk quietly because the plasterer has been in to do a hallway ceiling, so no thumping down the stairs.
The small cottage, which is now mine, I approached with some trepidation a couple of days ago, but it is as I remembered it and very cosy. 
Now of course is just the start, probably gas central heating to put in, plus a new bathroom and the chimney to be resealed, but to be truthful it would be easy enough to move in today.
Going to the solicitors for final signings and he had a great fat folder of its history, which we both explored.
The land dates back to 1612, Chumleys were the owners, it presumably was abbey land in Whitby, and the Chumleys took over the abbots land after the Dissolution of the abbeys.  The cottage has a date of 1712 on its front, but like all these small tenement places in the yards, had been added to and rebuilt over the last 300 years.
Yards are common in Whitby, tiny cottages grouped round a small square, sometime in the past, if you went up the steps  I would have owned a 'privy', nothing remains of it now, but I do have a tiny space where I can grow plants against the large wall just in front of the house.  This would have a 'kitchen' in times gone by, what the deeds uncovered is, that this bit of land had  not been registered on the land registerybut  it is mine. 
My next door neighbours came out and explained my 'rights' yesterday, they are a very sweet old couple, and said they had learnt that I loved flowers, and showed me the rather grotty flowerboxes I had inherited plus of course a large rhodendron, also my 'dustbin' which was  rather grotty, but they very generously offered me the use of theirs.All in all it is quite exciting, exploring all this new stuff.  People, are of course very warm up North, ready to talk, and best of all they have real flowers at the greengrocers.  Not those terrible coloured monstrosities you get at the supermarkets, but bunches of daffodils - bliss!

Bits and pieces

the weather was good for gardening today, clipping and tidying; lavender, mints, and a whole host of things at the front.  Daffodils, tulips and crocus pushing through, in the pub garden miniature irises poke their bright purple heads through. 

I have managed to mostly finish my kitchen dresser though it awaits french polish and gilded door knobs,plus of course dusting some sawdust off which the accurate camera eye reveals.So my mind thinks about the next woodwork project, a corner cupboard maybe, or even a davenport desk?

Then there is the cottage in Whitby everything finalised last friday, and a long trip down there next week, to see what there is to be done, a certain amount of trepidation and excitement.  An article written on Isobel Smith - archaeologist.  One of my gripes is that there are not that many women archaeologist who have gained fame.  There was a Times letter on the issue of reburial of  bones this week, 40 professors, 38 male, 2 female!

Isobel Smith wrote up the notes of Alexander Keiller's excavation of Windmill Hill, and Avebury, I think he had become ill, so she devoted several years to this job and being of an unassuming nature her name does not appear on the front of the book.  She went on to become a senior investigator for the then Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, and then on retirement lived in a small cottage in Avebury. 

so who else, Maud Cunnington - early 20th century and of course Jacquetta Hawkes who wrote with such elegance about history and archaeology.  Not many, true we have a few more 'leading light' female archaeologists now, but still not enough.

Blakes Wood

A moss covered path leading to the glade

A blue skied day (the only one) sandwiched between grey, grey days, and whatever comes our way tomorrow!  The above photo is slightly Japanese in its mossiness, but the woods are still bereft of greenery.  Though heart shaped leaves of the violets are pushing through, catkins of course, and honeysuckle leaves  starting to show.  Plus of course the whine of a chainsaw as a great tree came down, we didn't see it but it made a loud noise when it hit the ground.

The computer lost its internet connection yesterday, due to my security system closing it down when a 'hacker' presumably tried to connect.  LS spent a couple of hours with BT on the phone trying to get the connection back but no luck, But a phone call to Dell, and my computer programme got whisked through the airways to Delhi, and a technician cleared the problem.  Tis a wonder of this world, watching someone take over your computer and zoom through all the programs.

It reminded me of the time when my old computer was plugged into Skype and Ghana.  Coming down one lunchtime to it, I could hear the steady drip of water and someone moving in the room, but no it wasn't in Bath it was in Accra thousands of miles away, Ephraim must have moved his computer into the kitchen.

Old Giant

Children often build hideways in the wood

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2010/10/fungi-in-blake-wood.html
http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2009/05/blakes-wood.html

Tissue thin paintings

Bamboo ink painting

Recording LS in the studio, or at least taking photographs of what is happening is an ongoing interest of mine. To be honest many of the scrolls are not to my taste, but the complicated putting together of the many facets of a scroll is fascinating.

Two paintings,if not more on the drying boards, are being restored. The first is a bath scene with two women squabbling. The other is a brush and ink painting of bamboos.

Bath House

The choosing of papers and silks is complicated, mostly done by the collector, but then there are scroll knobs to be found, braid to be bound, and often the added expense of the boxes they are kept in.

The bamboo ink drawing is large, and when finished will probably be bigger than the work bench. From the following photos it can be seen that the papers used are tissue thin, and water has to be applied to take off the two backing papers on either side of the painting. Luckily the old papers came off easily for this bamboo painting, the right amount of paste had been applied 50 years ago, though one false move as they are removed and you tear the painting.

Old paper removed

New ones added

If a hole does appear, or is already there, the wet method of repair is used whereby a small piece of tissue/paper is introduced to the hole and 'wet moulded' to fit, weft and warp of paper matching....

Sometimes paintings can be left on the drying boards for weeks at a time at a tension, and the humidity of the studio has to be watched, this tension helps with the creases, that may have had 'strengthening strips' (another complicated process) to iron them out.

All of this requires a lot of patience, but is fascinating, to watch last year there was a great 18th painting of the Buddha in the studio, it required a lot of work, but one of the fascinating aspects afterwards was the computer expert who had to record it for a catalogue.  He analysised it through a special programme to get the colours rights and also to highlight the seals hidden in the paintings, that told of the school of painters and collectors scroll, the following photo shows the seal of the artist.

Imbolc or Candlemass

February 1st for Imbolc, when the first shoots of greenery are to be had, and the lambs are born. An Irish festival, celebrating the four cross-days, and the beginning of spring. Candlemass of course is the 2nd February and is the christian tradition. Photos from 2007 of the neodruids walking around the bounds of Avebury stone circle...

A good companion

One of the things I haven't written about is my dog Moss, who stayed with my ex-husband last year.  He was a very special dog, my companion on holidays and walking the downs, - Somerset, Wiltshire and Wales we wandered quite happily together.. Collecting all his photos for one album, I realised he had been everywhere with me.  Well just before Xmas he suffered a series of fits and had to be put down, it was a great shock at the time and plenty of tears.  When I thumb through my photos for megalithic stuff he was always there, so as it is his birth date tomorrow (he would have been 11 years old) I decided to put all his photos in one album, well 50 so far, and I realise I shouldn't be too sad because he had a damn good life.

He was beautiful, a blue merle collie with a dash of spaniel, came from Pensford out in the countryside and was a pack leader, sensible and intelligent, he protected me and always managed to find the right path back to the car.   He would chastise young male dogs by taking them by the scruff of the collar and giving them a good shake, but would tolerate small yappy dogs nipping his legs. He carried his ball around most of the time, in fact walking him was wearisome always throwing the ball, and it would have to be hidden.

Anyway to that gorgeous little puppy that grew into an obstreperous teenager who gave me such problems for a while, till he got castrated, who then became the gentle dignified dog for the rest of his life who was much loved  - thank you.

Sacred spaces

Greensted Church, its Saxon timbers caught up in the buildings of later centuries

A rather lovely explanation of the word Temenos, from which the sacred grove or Nemeton arises, see down below......

roses and honeysuckle

Blogs on sacred groves (Devon) and gods     http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2009/02/sacred-groves.html

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/04/shrines-and-rivers-continued.html