The Owl and The Pussy Cat

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful 'red and white'(!) boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, 'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are, You are, You are!What a beautiful Pussy you are!'


Edward Lear











Saturday 14 September 2013

"Do it with a passion or not at all"

One of the things I love about getting older is the understanding that comes with all those years of experience. Something about myself that I am getting used to is the fact that I am rather an all or nothing person. I will spin wool or play the guitar or sew obsessively for several weeks, then won't touch it again for six months. This used to bother me. I would feel haunted by the spinning wheel/guitar/sewing and worry that I'd never do it again. Now I am ok about being like this. I know that the urge to do things that are special to me will return.
So, right now I'm into blogging. I've no idea why, I just suddenly feel like putting 'out there' all the things I've been up to. I find it slightly disturbing that I don't know why I'm doing it, I like to know the whys of things. I'm hoping one day it will become clear to me. In the meantime I'm enjoying sorting/labelling/resizing my pictures, and good grief I've even got a little notebook for keeping blogging ideas in. That's a bit disturbingly organised. I'll probably mostly ignore it and ramble on about what comes to me when I sit down. I do dream of being one of those people who is really organised. I dream of being the sort of person who would keep a track of what they spend their money on, what the weather is like every day, when the sowed what in the garden. Occasionally I get to be in that place for short periods of time, but ultimately it's not me, and that's ok. I'm really quite happy as I am, but there's no harm in aspiring to be better.
And so, from my library of (currently) well organised and labelled pictures here are two things I'm working on ..... when the urge takes me.
 One finished hat for the winter for me. One hat in progress for Vince. I'm a slow knitter, and I get bored after a few rows. It always makes me chuckle that a friend of mine will think nothing of knitting a couple of blankets and a  jumper in the time it takes me to knit one hat. I'm hoping to have Vince's hat ready for this winter, I'm making fairly good progress.
Both handspun wool (of course?)
Patchwork quilt in progress. These are quite large pieces, you can just see the toe of my left foot for scale. It's all made from scraps/offcuts/old clothes. Being a peasant at heart I think it's cheating to buy brand new perfectly good pieces of fabric from a shop and cut them into small pieces and sew them all together again.
The plan for this is to make it triangular for our triangular bed in the boat (the bedroom in the boat is in the pointy bit at the front of the boat). The longer term plan will then be to extend it into a normal shaped quilt when we get back from our travels.
These are pretty long term plans, which is a good job because I can see this is going to be a long time in the making..

4 comments:

  1. This is SO what happens to me, Nina! In fact at the beginning of the year I was blogging about what I considered a 'character failing' because i felt I ought to be more even handed in y passions. I would obsess about stitching for weeks, completely abandoning other interests. Then I would want to be journaling and away would go all the fabric and threads - why can't I do a little of each, I feel? Same with work, I am either in the mood for cleaning and organising and I trhow myself into it then.....leave it alone for ages. Why can't I be more even handed? Grrrrrr! So am pleased to hear that you have taken this out, looked at it, and decided it's ok. I can echo every single thing you have written there. The GUILT! Oh the guilt when things languish! Never mind I shall take a tip from you and Carry On, as they say!

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    1. Brilliant Lynne, isn't it wonderful to have partners in 'crime'! I did notice your journalling posts some time ago and wondered what had happened to them. I take on new projects/passions with frightening regularity, and actually if I'm honest things DO still haunt me, but I deal with it better than I used to! You'll love my next post, I'm on the art journalling trip now, for how long? Who knows!! Oh and I've got another sewing project just started!
      Keep on making lovely music and lovely stuff, your felt applique is beautiful.

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  2. I quite agree about not buying material specially to do patchwork with, (a bit like buying 'leftovers' to cook with?), but, a few years ago, when there was a glut of 'ageing hippy' clothing made of old cloth scraps available in certain shops (goodness, how long is this sentence?) (deep breath) ....Mrs Sage bought a pair of wonderful patchwork trousers- but one particular design fell into pieces more quickly than any of the others- you need to know the provinence (spelling??) of your scraps!

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    1. Hi Sage, thank you for visiting my blog. Yes, I appreciate what you are saying, and you have reminded me that I too bought a lovely patchwork coat several years ago, which I got bored of patching! If I were selling my patchwork then provenance (I had to look it up…) would definitely be an issue, but as I'm making it for myself then I don't mind if some bits get threadbare, I accept that I might have to put patches on my patchwork. I do try to use stuff that's not too worn.

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