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I have been knitting - small because the weather has been too warm for a great big dollop of alpaca in my lap.
The top is from "The Family Knitting Book" - a James Norbury dating from the late 1960's, and the skirt from this pattern, which has been hanging round the house since I was a very small person.
I used good old Sirdar Country Style, which was part of my treat to myself after the success in the show - the other was a bit of laceweight which I am still thinking about. It was a great pleasure to discover that the stationery shop in Lincoln has expanded it's art materials department to include knitting supplies and a small amount of textiles for patchwork. I felt I had to encourage them to the extent of a couple of balls to play with.
I also have a small sewing project on the go. It is a piece of Liberty print I was given which has been waiting for the right purpose for a very long time. They used to do half-made skirts - Tana lawn with elastic at one end, and you sewed the side seam and hemmed it to taste. Only it never was to my taste since the resulting skirt was always unpleasantly skimpy. But this piece was a gorgeous mix of colours, and then I realised that it was a good match for some embroidered trimming which was another find waiting for a purpose.
That's all for the moment on that one!
This is the nose that knew something good might have happened. I had a little fumble, and a loaded plate landed on the floor. Mine, actually.
She understood "NO" but needed the OH to hold her back while I cleared up. Fortunately I was able to retrieve a reasonable helping from the food that was not in actual contact with the floor. I just left the rest. I have to report that she is not too keen on cabbage, when it comes to clearing up, but there is an unnaturally clean patch on the kitchen carpet tiles!
Now I remember why we wanted a dog. Spillage control.
Out of the Sunday paper comes a group of pages that details various useful bedroom things, available mail-order.
"Lightweight Summer Duvet" -"this 100% cotton duvet ticks all the right boxes" "it's filled with 100% hollowfibre, inside an easy-care polyester cotton cover"
Last time I looked, hollowfibre was 100% synthetic, likewise polyester. So which bit does the copywriter not understand - cotton, or 100%.
Spray to keep the moths away
Trust me on this one. The socking great moth pictured on the holey jumper is actually (probably) a Sloe Carpet, (rather a fuzzy photo) Aleucis Distinctata,
and the carpet bit does not refer to eating habits, but wing pattern. Normal food is Blackthorn, not wool.
It is sad that I find myself so irritated by these sort of errors. I would have been the teacher that nobody loved, if I could have kept myself from blowing a gasket!
Maybe I just have this tragic need to know better!
Not the most stunning of photos, but enough to show that it is a Painted Lady. They don't always show themselves here since they come from the south of Europe.
After a dearth of butterflies, it is turning out to be a much better year for them than last summer.
Back in the mid 1990's, we had a "Painted Lady Year" I shall remember it for the rest of my life.
There was a letter in the local paper from a lady who said she had nine - NINE - in her garden. We went out for a walk round the wood at the back of our home, which led to a derelict bit of land at the back of the motorway service station. A patch probably quarter of a mile square. All thistles. One plant every six inches or so. The plants were not green, but a dusty khaki brownish colour. That is because each plant was covered with roosting butterflies, packed so closely than the green was completely hidden. Much in the way that Monarch butterflies do when they go to Mexico to overwinter. We let the spaniel run into the thistles, and we could track her movements at the base of the plants, by the little clouds of butterflies that rose up and settled back down in her wake.
Nine in one garden - maybe nine hundred thousand in that field - possibly! Maybe even more.
UNFORGETTABLE
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