That iPad has a lot to answer for.

You know it's easy to surf the Internet lying in bed on your iPad?  It's getting it in a good position where you can swipe the screen and watch that is the problem.  I find various combinations of pillows are a great help.  Always on the look out for help with my machine quilting I roam into various rooms on the net to see what others are doing. 

This guy is magic. (Name P. Nosa.)  Great music (if you like rock) fantastic stitching and I love his machine that runs on a solar cell. 

 

He has a very cool website show casing his work.

The remote

Monique came to visit and has worked out that the remote can work the TV.  She is such a serious soul and so intent on everything that a smile is something unusual.

They have sat me on the couch and said "look cute", I'm not sure about that.

Oh Oh Uncle Guy has left the remote behind.

Well that has turned the TV on but I'm not sure about this show.

Oh I like this one.

Give it back.  It's not fair, I'm 5 months old now and can choose my own programs.

Charlie is taking over

I haven't been able to sit and watch TV but thought I would try last night only to find my place on the couch, my pillow and my knee rug had been taken over!

And when I checked some of my favourite blogs this morning they all spoke about the clip from Etsy.  Anna Maria Horner looked at it with a nostalgic eye, Mary Corbett referred back to her previous posts and there was a really good, thought provoking article on the Textile Blog.

I did a workshop a number of years ago on this technique with Christine Bishop who in turn had learnt it from the migrants from Cyprus who lived in Adelaide.  All this discussion has made me think I would like to dosome further work. One of the best books is By Androula Jadjiyiasemi, in English, and is available from a German bookseller.

One of the things I missed while I was in hospital was another workshop with Christine. A pulled thread spot sampler.  I really wanted to do that.

Some sox, embroidery and actrobats

It took me nearly 4 days to knit these sox sitting in bed, but knitting them made me feel as though I was still alive and I was not going to give in to the infection.

I often find interesting video clips on the Etsy site.  This one about Lefkara work is tinged with sadness at the realisation that it is losing it's makers to age and Chinese machine made pieces.

Lacemaking in Lefkara, Cyprus from Etsy on Vimeo.

And then someone sent me this clip of acrobatic perfection.

 

And I think I will be able to sit and do some sewing today, Hooray!!

Owls for Monique

I have sewn on all the eyes and the little owlet sweater is finished.

I can highly recommend this pattern.  As I said in a previous post there were so many techniques I did not know how to do.  I found the instructions very clear and easy to understand, really well written.  I bought the yarn in Dunedin when I was visiting New Zealand and found it a pleasure to use.  I liked this so much I have started another.

Make do

I must be getting better because I am itching to get to do things.  Case in point.  I have spent some time lying here listening to my iPod but I can't use the bud ear plugs and have to have earphones that sit over the ear.  The problem was that the foam that covered the plastic has completely perished.  Everyone is too busy to go and buy me a new set so into the crochet thread and I found some very old silk thread and made some new covers.

The silk is smooth against the skin and the crochet pattern allows the sound through.

And the thread is fine enough that it fits snugly over the ear piece.

My husband reckons they would look good in all kinds of different colours with leaves and flowers around the edge.   I just wanted usable headphones. 

 

Reading

Luckily I had been to the local library the day before I went into hospital.  (I also changed the sheets on the beds and did all the washing and ironing so I didn't have to worry about that.) I had taken out some rather scholarly history books that could be read a bit at a time. Great for lying in bed doing nothing.

A little while ago I had read Wolf Hall which was about Thomas Cromwell and this had tweaked my interest in Oliver Cromwell, who was a descendant.  But, I wanted some genuine facts, not just a novel about the era.  This book, The English Civil War at first-hand, is made up of mainly Primary Source material, which can be quite dull, but it this case was fascinating, and was one of the reasons I borrowed it.

 

This was such a bloody, difficult period in English history that I think a lot of people just want to forget it but it also lays the scene for all those people who migrated to the USA and I have often wondered why there are so many similarities yet just as many differences between countries that were originally settled by English migrants.   ( In the case of the USA and Australia I have come to the conclusion it was another 150 years of history between the time of settlement. )

Another reason I was interested to read the book was that a friend from Bulgaria told me many years ago that in Communist Russia the English Civil War was a central part of the school curriculum, it was just a few lines in my history books. I know many of my ancestors fought on the Round-head side,  a couple were Majors in the new army, yet others fought on the Royalist side.  Some of their attitudes and way of thinking have passed down through time, without any reference to their source.

The book has many woodcuts from the time and I would love to do something with them.

 
And having read the terrible and the good about Oliver Cromwell I think I need to read a lot more about him.  I agree with one of the commentators of his time when he wrote,

"he was a bad brave man".

Out of bed

Thank you all for your comments and good wishes.

I'm allowed up for a little today, so first thing is to check the computer.  I have had my ipad in bed but have to admit all I want to do is sleep and I find typing on the ipad hard work.  

Now I have to start to think about what is happening in the world again.  I still have another week of bed rest and high doses of antibiotics but I think I have turned the corner, and, I will be able to sit in a chair.  Laying in bed on your back is not good for pressure points on your body.

I got an email from my friend, Angela, who is travelling in Iceland.  Jee I hope they don't get stuck there with the volcano erupting.  I like these trolls she found in Norway.  I remember the same kind of sculptures up in the trees in the Swiss Alps when we lived there.

The original is never quite like the commercial version is it?

My prayers go out to all those people who have had to suffer the effects of the twisters in the USA.  It must have been terrifying and the reports say there could be more. 

That's it back to bed.

Out of action

I am layed low for a bit after having emergency surgery for a ruptured hernia.  I have had a year of one thing after another.  This is just the latest in an ever lengthening list.  This has been a problem waiting to happen for years but I think the fall I took when in New Zealand finished it.  I'm too sore and uncomfortable to do much so plan just to lay in bed, as directed by my doctor, for the next week or so. I will get back to the blog when this pain goes down a bit.

I've been meaning to...

I should have posted this pinny before.  I found it in a shop in Arrowtown in New Zealand and will make another like it, when I get around to it.

I am still at war with those possums.  I was ready to do the rounds of the kitchen with whoever had been eating the mandarins and left peel in the bowl.

Then I pulled out a chair to sit down and found this.

Possums keep out of my kitchen!

But not the human variety of possums.  My little possum grows everyday and now fits the vest and hat I knitted for her for when she got to be 6 months or older,  (she is only 4 months), and my daughter in-law Inge keeps getting thinner.  This little possum isn't even mobile yet, just demanding.

Oh but she is cute.  Keep knitting Grandmama.