Scarlet Tentacle

Warning: not quite my usual allotment – food – craft type stuff.

Sometimes I get the feeling I need to stretch myself a bit more as an embroiderer, specially if I want to make a living from it, I feel like I need to work on certain areas, namely my drawing but also using different stitches more often, learning new embroidery techniques and more specifically working on being able to embroider the human body, particularly faces, better. When you look at embroidery patterns in general if there’s a person in it (and more often or not it’s not a human at all, it’s an anthropomorphised animal, not that there’s anything wrong with that, I need to work on my animal embroidering skills to), anyway if there is an actual human in the pattern they’re more usually cartoon like. I can get why, it’s easier to embroider and really the only area where more real looking humans can be found in embroidery patterns is in pin-up girl patterns (I am of course generalising, there are quite a few embroidery patterns out there that feature realistic looking humans that aren’t pin-ups, it’s just that I think pin-ups are more common). Not that there is anything wrong with pin-up girl patterns and I recently purchased a couple from Scarlet Tentacle, I particularly enjoyed doing the one below and it was interesting technically to trying to decide what colours to use, whether the line on her arm should be pink for skin or grey for her underwear for example. Scarlet Tentacle’s line art is excellent but even so one of the things about embroidery is trying to use only a small amount of lines to represent the whole picture. I think the face is probably the best face I’ve ever stitched and faces in embroidery are so hard.

It’s stitched on flannel to, which makes it quite soft and tactile.

The other Scarlet Tentacle pattern I stitched, I have to be honest been umming and ahhing about how much to post of it, personally I don’t think there’s anything offensive about it but I’m aware equally that other people may find it offensive and considering what this blog is usually like, coming here and finding the full picture of the second pattern I stitched may be, for some people, a little shocking. Equally I haven’t posted the full picture on Flickr either and that’s mainly because my mother-in-law checks my Flickr stream for pictures of the grandkids and now that would be something she would definitely not be expecting.

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Changing the subject to possibly more safer allotment ground, I’ve had a really busy weekend and I’m not the most relaxed person on this planet right now. I haven’t been able to get up the allotment all weekend until dusk today, to do a much needed water. Even that wasn’t particularly stress free as I discovered the cloche for my aubergines had blown over / fallen apart and is possibly the biggest waste of money I’ve ever spent up at the allotment (it was only a tenner though). Anyway after sorting that out (not ideally though, I’ve had to move my netted cloche over it instead, it won’t be as warm but should hopefully offer some protection), I watered the plants, which takes a while now as there’s more and more of them. Anyway, whilst I was watering the leeks (which are next to my wild flower bed), I spotted this, not an excellent photo, but I think it emphasises how such a small bloom can still look so out of place and not quite properly there and yet so vivid in the dim light.

I love moments up at the allotment where I see something that makes me stop what I’m doing and just go “Oh wow!”.

Never Let Me Go

Every month as I’d log on to my Audible account, I’d see Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and read by Emilia Fox and think I really must listen to that (I’ve yet to see the film, although I want to, partly because it was filmed as a historic house near to where I live), but I always got distracted by some shiny new story and never clicked on it, until this month and oh I wished this story had been in my life much sooner as it turned out I absolutely loved this, it’s up there with The Children’s Book I think as one of my favourite stories (and it takes a lot to make it into my favourite stories list, oh there are lots of stories I love but to count as a favourite, it’s got to be a story I’d be happy to read again and again and again, the sort of story that just reading a few pages feels to me like the mental equivalent of slipping into a nice warm bath, the record my list of favourite stories are (most of the stories in) The Dark is Rising Sequence (old childhood favourite), Dracula (an old teenage favourite), the aforementioned The Children’s Book and now Never Let Me Go).

I don’t want to say too much about Never Let Me Go as it’s on of those sorts of books where you discover what the plot is along with the characters and there’s quite a bit of mystery at the beginning (although I suspect quite a lot of people probably have a rough idea of the plot as it’s one of those often talked about books – now – movie). However I shall say it’s about a group of children growing up together in a rather strange boarding school and the book follows them through the school and onto their adult lives. It’s one of those books that slightly twists the world we live in, posing the question if this was happening in the world, how would we go about it what would the consequences be? Sorry I’m being really vague but it is a really good book, so I’d recommend it to anyone from late teens up. The character development in the book is wonderful, so having listened to the audiobook over the past week the characters in the book seem so real to me (helped in part by Emilia Fox’s fantastic reading). Ishiguro painted such beautiful scenes with only a few sparse sentences. He features Norfolk quite a bit, a county I grew up in (well, my teenage years anyway) and the way how he described things like the sky over the sea and stuff like that brought me right back there.

I shall definitely be investigating Ishiguro’s other books, I sort of feel like I’ve been ignoring this rich vain of books for too long and now I have to hurriedly catch up!

After school gardening

As mentioned in my last post I still had some peas, cucumbers and aubergines to plant, we couldn’t plant them on Thursday after school as we finally had some heavy rain, so we went after school today instead (and thankfully because of yesterday’s heavy rain, I was able to pop up to the allotment this morning to and dig over a small patch for the cucumbers (I have still a sizeable bit of land under what is mainly grass which I just haven’t been able to dig over because of this almost drought, as the ground is rock solid))

Girl Lacer was a massive help and she did most of the actually planting whilst I did more of the structural work, putting up the canes for the peas (using the most cack-handed knots ever) and erecting a little mini cloche for the aubergines. Boy Lacer sat and played on my iPhone.

The aubergines in their cloche in the foreground and in the distance the cucumbers under their cloche.

One thing I did realise though, when I plan the layout for the next season I need to plan for better access to the beds, there is access right now mind you and as careful as Girl Lacer is (and she is pretty careful), it can be a bit of a case of thunder feet all over (in this case carrots) when both of us are working together (and Boy Lacer when he’s joining in is even worse). Still, that’s what the allotment is about this year, learning.

Wednesday rushing

I am currently sitting in the cafe at the gym, there are thankfully not to many screaming under 5s around for once (sorry to all those with under 5s, I’m sure they’re lovely, but there’s something about having both your children now age 5+ that makes your tolerance for toddler tantrums go right down hill). I should be working but I am absolutely knackered, so I’m taking some time out (whilst I wait for Girl Lacer’s ballet lesson to finish) to blog instead.

Today was meant to be a waiting in for deliveries day and it was, ‘unfortunately’ one of those deliveries was a box full of Rocket plants (I know, I know, I so said I was going to grow everything from seed now, but I’m proving very bad at growing things from seed and Rocket now sell a number of their plants individually (i.e. not packaged up in one of their gardens) so I took the opportunity to get some rocket, peas, leeks, cucumbers and aubergines). Anyway, obviously Rocket plants need whisking out of their box and planted as soon as possible, so when they arrived about one this afternoon (luckily the last delivery of the day), I knew as well as preparing for work (which I had been doing, whilst keeping an eye on the front door, we really must get a doorbell, I hate waiting for deliveries because if I’m anywhere other than the living room there’s a good chance I won’t hear the delivery guy knock), I had to go plant those plants, all before school pick up time (and there was no opportunity for a little after school gardening today due to the aforementioned ballet lesson). So I had to quickly finish preparing for work (not quite finished actually, as I still need to check through some paperwork, which is what I should be doing right now actually), my preparation for work hampered by the fact that I had lost my text book and absolutely could not find it. ‘Funnily’ enough I did find the text book yesterday when I was busy looking for another book that I couldn’t find, but now I needed the text book, could I find it, of course not. My preparation was also not helped by the printer running dangerously low on both ink cartridges and I definitely didn’t have time to go into town to buy more, so I was playing a spot of printer Russian roulette. Anyway, I finally got the work prepared (just about), so now it was time to go and open that box of plants, I pulled out the leaflet that came with the plants ‘hopefully by now you will have already prepared your vegetable bed’, ‘ahem’ *cough* not quite, the rocket and peas did have a home ready prepared but the ‘leek bed’ was some hard compacted soil under an assortment of dried out weeds and the cucumber and aubergine bed was currently a mixture of hard compacted grass and yet more bloody Jerusalem artichokes (which grow like weeds on my plot and I don’t like Jerusalem artichokes. I also needed to plant out a (bought) basil plant and some squash plants that I amazingly had managed to grow from seeds and were looking a bit too ready to go out.

Almost pick up time for ballet, I have some shoe putting on negotiating to do with Boy Lacer (we’ll currently trying to out compete who is the most tired, I won when I pointed out that he at least got to go in the pushchair on the way here, I walked (and god my feet hurt)). I will be back again later.

It’s a bit later now and I’m on the bus coming home from work. Anyway where was I?

So I was rushing up to the allotment with a box full of plants, not all of them mind you, the peas are strictly Girl Lacer’s territory and as I mentioned the bed for the aubergine and cucumber doesn’t exactly exist yet, so those were popped into temporary plant pots at home (we’ll be planting the peas at least tomorrow after school). Now I love my plot, it’s a major stress mind you but there’s a vibe you can get just sitting out in the fresh air, pulling weeds, that is hard to get anywhere else (the stress bit really is just trying to fit it all in), but I was not getting that allotment buzz straight away, I was too busy stressing about whether I’d get all the plants in on time and thinking about all the other things I had to do today. But even so by the time I had planted the basil

And then my squashes

That allotment vibe had kicked in, I can’t help but have fun up there.

I managed to also plant my rocket.

But then it came to planting the leeks, I had planned to dig over the area where I was going to plant them (although I had already dug that area over twice since I had got the plot) but with the almost drought we’ve been having the ground is almost rock solid, so instead I weeded, chiselled away with the trowel and planted the leeks, if we don’t have rain they’re going to have to be mighty strong leeks to push through that soil to get any bigger.

And I managed to do all that before pick up time. There’s a plot inspection at the end of this month and what with my dental dramas my plot had been looking a bit of a state, but I caught up with the weeding over the weekend, even discovered under the weeds some actually growing carrots and a single pea plant -

The wild flower seeds we sowed a while ago are also now looking less like weeds, attracting bees and providing a few hidden glances of hidden gems as I weeded nearby.

Ok, so that’s one aspect of my life a little more under control (for the moment anyway!).

Mid May allotment work

I finally made it back up the allotment today and as predicted, lots of work was waiting for me. Fitting in time where I could round Girl Lacer’s social life, I managed to do some weeding and a tiny bit of planting. This time there seemed to be a lot of something that looked like it could be a brassica of some sort, I still swear that most my weeds are actually self seeded veg plants that have gone wild over the four years the plot was neglected. There’s also a flower thing that seems pretty much all over the allotment site and is actually quite pretty, but still, trying to be strict, got rid of it.

I planted a couple of herbs (thyme and apple mint) I had bought at the allotment plant sale last weekend (I had also bought basil, but that’s staying on my window sill a little longer). The whole herb bed is looking quite good (after I weeded it and compared to the rest of the allotment).

Apple tree senior is next to the herb bed and is looking pretty good to.

I then cleared the salad bed, again. One of these days, maybe, I may actually be picking salad from that bed and not weeds, but somehow I have a feeling it’s not going to be this salad (also bought at the plant sale), the soil is just so dry it’s not soil, it’s weed root filled grit.

Salad waiting to die.

More weeding tomorrow.

Biology bag

Another piece of embroidery finished off, this one was started I think in February, I’d almost finished it by March but then managed to somehow loose it, I found it again recently, finished off the embroidery and then it sat in my needed to be made into something pile for a while. Anyway the pattern is by Floss Box and was great fun to stitch up!

In other news I managed to buy not one but two pairs of shoes today (unusual for me as I am so not really a shoe person), one pair were pale sky blue ballet style pumps but with a strap (my feet need straps to keep things in!) and will be for more everyday sort of use and the other pair were tan retro lace ups for something a bit smarter. I also bought the Two Greedy Italians book, which I am very impressed with so far and will be blogging about in the next week or so I think.

Slightly more productive

Ok, today turned out slightly more productive than I thought, I managed to sew up one more finished piece of embroidery, this one is a birthday bag for one of Girl Lacer’s friends (who happens to have red hair). The pattern is Floral Fantasy from Sublime Stitching and was very fun to stitch up.

must get new iron - must get new iron

I also, hold your horses, cooked, cooked properly (I haven’t really since the whole tooth thing, you may have noticed the lack of cooking posts round here), chorizo pasta, which was loosely based on a recipe on the side of a jar of paprika and mainly inspired by what we had in the fridge and cupboard.

It was a big hit for tea time, so here’s a very loose recipe.

Fry, in a splash of olive oil approximately 150g chopped chorizo with half a chopped onion for 5 minutes, then add 1 clove of grated garlic, a generous glug of red wine, an even more generous glug of passata and about 2 tbsp of chopped parsley and let simmer for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, obviously, cook your pasta. (Serves 2 adults and 2 surprisingly unfussy children).