Cross Stitch

Our elefantz reading this week from Jane Brocket's book The Gentle Art of  Domesticity focuses on beginning and not following through on crafts. That is me. I tried so many different crafts over the years. I took up counted cross stitch way back in the day when my kids were pre-schoolers. Not sure if I took a work shop or just started. I bought patterns and floss and more patterns. I had baskets and bags of books and frames and rolls of fabric and I was going to make every one of them. I even started teaching it at our local school. We made little framed Christmas ornaments. After all, it had to be something doable for the 10-11 year olds.

 Problem for me was, I wanted to have a completed something right away. I had not yet learned the art of slowing down and just stitching for the sake of enjoying stitching. Taking one stitch then another.

I even sold stitchery kits at home parties for a while. I probably bought more kits than I sold or so it seemed. I did, however, complete this one. I recall redoing that top right corner several times until I had it perfect. It had to be perfect. I operate out of left brain function and cross stitch was invented for people like me. I loved following the straight rows and columns and the counting. The colours were already selected so I did not have to pick and choose.
But I did change the colour of the cows. They had to be brown. And I did change the style of the house so it is my house. And I did change the verse because I could.

Most patterns have a floss list so you can purchase all the recommended colours. I bought lots and lots of floss. And containers to store them in.

The dates on these two samplers say I completed them in 1990. But when did I start them? I recall starting this while working as a poll clerk at a federal election. I had to sit there all day and people came in to vote sporadically. I thought it would be easy enough to do that outline border. My goodness, I had to stop and start counting so many times before I had it right. Then I stitched in all the little frames for each section. I loved it.

And why did I stop stitching samplers? Because I started not finish quilts!

Blessings,
Chris

Crocheting Reminds Me of Morning Sickness

This week in Jenny elefantz book-study the topic is about colour. I am such a coward when it comes to selecting colours for any project. I do not trust myself here and probably end up  missing out on so much fun. And yet, I love colour. The predominant colour theme in my 175 year old farm house is earth tones. Often lots of earth. The living room is the only room with carpeting. It is an earthy butternut colour. The colour of sand.  The pine floor boards in the original 9 rooms and 2 hallways are 2 inches thick and 7-7 1/2 inches wide. The back kitchen and 2 guest rooms above the kitchen have 1 inch thick boards. These 3 rooms were added to the original house in the 1880's. The kitchen and back kitchen floors are hardwood maple milled in the 1930's from the maple bush by the swamp. This is where our farm name, Maplehurst came from - as well as lots of maple syrup over the years. We used to boil down the sap collected from the massive majestic maples lining our long laneway. We set a couple of large pots on the stove in the kitchen and let them simmer for days. The kitchen door open so the steam had somewhere to go besides on the ceiling and walls. The last time we made it was at least 25 years ago and I determined never to repaper the kitchen again. I had stripped the layers of paint from the 6 doors and 2 windows - coffee cream over dark brown over lime green over a bubble gummy base that took a lot of patience to remove. The new wall paper was a naturalistic Glen Oates green and gold maple leaves and stems. I love it. It will stay on the walls as long as I live in this house.

As I started to say, I have a hard time deciding on colors. That is one of the reasons I have purchased sosososososososo much fabric to make quilts. Jane Brocket, in her book The Art of Gentle Domesticity, talks about her journey of processing colour. She crocheted a rippled blanket from many bright colours.

Now I learned to crochet in the first trimester of my second pregnancy. It was going to be a red sleeveless sweater but nausea and red just took the joy away from finishing it. Dang! That is another thing I started and did not complete. Sigh.

Instead, I just gave my mother some yarn and she made me several afghans. I found these in the time out closet under the stairs the other day when I was looking for something. They do not match any of the earth tone rooms.  I also gave her yarn to knit things for my children. Now I do know how to knit, but why bother when she so enjoyed doing it for me and she finished things.  I miss my mother who died nearly 20 years ago. I am thinking I might put revisit knitting on my 2020 goals list.

Jane likes the bold brilliant colour styles of Kaffe Fassett. All those bright colours squished together gives me a head ache. Seriously. I started my second Dear Jane Quilt in brights on a crisp white and recently decided to stop making any more blocks and complete the thing with an original layout designed by my creative grand children. Stay tunes to see what we finally come up with.

Blessings,
Chris

btw - I did not complete my one-monthly-goal for February. 

Domesticity in Books

We had had no less than 5 snow days in the past 2 weeks and a PA day where all the school children stay home and the teachers go to school. Today we have the little boys here for the week along with the snowbound little girls. My first wake up came at 3 am when 5 year old Devan could not find her hippo stuffy. It was lost among the mere 6 blankets she brought to my bed to sleep with me until we can finish removing the wallpaper from her bedroom. I found the stuffy and settled her in again until the next wake up call at 6 telling me all schools were closed today because of the snow storm and Dad was going in to work since he is the foreman. Elly came next at 6:20 saying she could not find Daddy and the radio was on in the kitchen. That was to listen to the storm reports. Elly has a birthday next week but we celebrated last night with the traditional pizza and cake. We went downstairs to turn on a show and I thought I might sleep a bit longer on the couch, but little 3 year old David and 4 year old Jonathan showed up around 7 and joined us under the quilt. Eleven year old Ava came down at some point and we were only missing the sleepy Devan who came in at 7:30. I got up and made milkshkes for breakfast. My blender had given up the ghost last week so my son brought in his Ninja cement mixer. That thing is serious about blending frozen anything. And it has a 2 liter capacity. We had strawberry banana with French vanilla ice cream and the last of the whipped cream from both cans. Yum. Official breakfast was cereal at 10:30. The snow has let up but the wind is still howling out there. 

Two weeks ago, Jenny of elefantz  asked the question, "What book have you read in the past which still holds an emotional connection for you? In what way? This is part of the reflection on Jane Brocket's book The Art of Gentle Domesticity.

I read Anne of Avonlea last month just because it was laying here near my desk, but I really should have been doing coursework. (By the way, I dropped a course that I hated working on and picked up another about healing of memories for my doctorate in Christian counseling.) 

As I was saying, I re-read Anne of Avonlea. I have a fragile hardcover copy printed in 1944. I think it has been at least 30 years since I last read any of the 8 books in the series. I had the complete collection in my cart on Amazon for many months and finally purchased a hard cover set last week. I have loved this Canadian author since I was in a one room elementary school in rural Canada in the late 1950's early '60's. Our teacher, a 20 year old single fella who boarded at a local  home in our village, read out loud to all the grades every week. I recall him reading Anne of  Green Gables. Later in high school I read Anne's House of Dreams so knew that Anne and Gilbert got married even though there were still 3 books to be read before that one. I finally visited Green Gables in Prince Edward Island a couple of  years ago. It turns out that the hard cover "set" is really one very large hard cover book with all 8 novels in it. I arrived yesterday damaged so I will be returning it.

I actually was intending to write about the Little House on the Prairie series. I read my first one, Farmer Boy, in grade 5. And just tonight as I was starting to put the little girl grandchildren to bed, the 2 little ones were playing school and fighting over 2 boxed sets of books. One was the Little House set. Interesting that Laura Ingals Wilder, the author, opens the first story with butchering day on the farm in the 1860's. My father was a butcher and he raised a few pigs along with cows and chickens. The girls were never allowed out in the barn on butchering day. But his smoked Kalbasa was the best I ever had. He told the story of meeting my mother for the first time in post war Germany. He was a young Polish soldier serving as a cook in a British battalion delivering some of his amazing Polish kalbasa to a refugee camp when he first saw the beautiful young Polish girl who was his wife for 54 years. 

It appears that I copied a line from another blog post but cannot figure out how to return to the regular printing here. Oh well. Live and learn.

Blessings,
Chris

The Beginning of Domestic Arts

It's interesting that Jenny of ELEFANZ asked the question what domestic arts did  you pursue when you were young. Earlier today I was telling my granddaughters that I started baking when I was 11, same age as Ava my oldest granddaughter. I started reading a cookbook, because I always had to be reading something, and taught myself to make an apple pie to impress my sister's boyfriend. This in late July when the early apples were ripening and I climbed the highest part of the tree to get the ripest apples because I had to be climbing trees.

I joined 4-H when I was 12. This became the main social part of my teen years. My parents bought a brand new Singer Featherweight 222K (which I still have) to replace the treadle that I do not remember my mother ever using. I learned how to make my own clothes.  This was wonderful since being the third daughter, I grew up in hand-me-downs. But I fooled them all and grew taller than my sisters and besides, they both left home when I was 15.

When I was 15, we did an  4-H embroidery club. We made a very simple sampler with a few lines of different stitches. We had to create a picture to embroider and I copied a flower off a curtain - a Jacobean thing. This was way out of my element back then. But it inspired me.

I recall going to Toronto with a friend to stay over with her aunt for a few days when I was 16. Being a country girl, this was a great adventure. Not only did we take the city bus to the Canadian National Exhibition, I visited one of the first malls. This back in 1968. The thing I recall most about the aunt's modest bungalow was a basket sitting beside her chair with embroidery floss and a piece of cloth in a hoop on which she was stitching. I wanted one. When I got married 3 years later, I suddenly had much time on my hands as an adult and used my few embroidery skills to make up squares for a quilt I was eventually going to make, getting my inspiration from the array of fancy tea cups in my mother-in-law's china cabinet. I made enough for a pillow.

Life and babies came along. I found a whole bunch of patterns for embroidery blocks in the old farm house I have now lived in for nearly 48 years and stitched them up and made my first ever quilt.

Another 4-H club in embroidery I made this picture. It was my first applique. I found the pattern in a needlework magazine, enlarged it and made it all out of left over crimplene. Remember that stuff? I made many clothes over the years out of that. I even cut up a lot of squares and was going to make a quilt "some day". That all got donated a long time ago.

Looking forward to reading the next segment from The Art of Gentle Domesticity. 

Blessings,
Chris