catch up

A quiet few days it seems, but that usually means that there’s plenty going on, keeping me out of mischief.

I’ve been busy in the studio, making things which can’t be revealed just yet and yes, learning something new every day.  Yesterday’s lesson was that however many blue threads I possess, it doesn’t mean that I have the right blue to repair my sweater.  Oh well, I went for the right hue if not quite a dark enough tone and muttered the old “done is better than perfect” saying to myself.

Today, I’m preparing one or two bits for our WI competition tonight.  I’ve made a card, printed out a photo featuring a tree, the bread’s rising as I write and I’ve found a suitable item for Class 10.  It was no trouble at all to find my entry for Class 9! 

One of our members came up with this pattern for a knitted poppy which has been doing the rounds of a nearby village.  So, sample knit and pattern printed out to take along tonight for donations for the Poppy Appeal.  How quickly it comes around again.

Finally, in my spare time (!) I’m aiming to play along with Team Tolstoy.  I succumbed to the temptations of the new Kindle recently and have loaded it with 79p’s worth of War and Peace, ready for the off.  As you can see, I’ve been in training during the last few days.

Anyone else fancy the challenge?

Show season

It was Moreton Show yesterday, which meant an early start. 

We were there well before our 8.30am report time and found everything ready and waiting for us.  There were  quite a few entries in the hand embroidery class and some exquisite beaded jewellery, carefully made garments, lovely hand made cards and a few inventive recycled items too.  As always, it was great to see what clever people can do – here’s hoping our judgements were helpful and fair.  It’s always especially hard when someone enters their carefully completed work which doesn’t quite conform to the rules, in this case entering a set of 24 embroidered cards when the schedule stated quite clearly “an item of hand embroidery”.  What to do?  Well, in this case, the steward randomly selected one of the cards for judging and the show secretary wrote a short note of explanation.  But there was surely at least one disappointed exhibitor yesterday afternoon and for that, I felt sorry.

Having finished our work, we took the opportunity to take a look at the other classes before the doors opened.  These beautiful dahlia were all primped and perfect – not my favourite flower but who could not admire the care and attention which had gone into those exhibits?

After a delicious hot lunch of roast beef, I was looking forward to visiting the Herefords!  Relaxing in the warm sunshine, being sprayed with a fine mist of scented insect repellent, these gorgeous creatures were content to accept all the acclaim.

Some prizewinners were being taken to the ring to pose for photographs.   Modelling demands a good deal of patience and this fine fellow was running short on his.  Asked to place his four feet squarely on the ground, he was doing his best, though somehow that did not seem to be good enough for the photographer, who seemed intent on achieving nothing short of perfection.  As I took this shot,  he had enough and decided to take his owner for a walk instead!

The sheep were finding the sunshine a bit challenging and were doing their best to find what little shade they could.

After watching the best of breeds compete for their “best in show” rosettes, it was time to head back home.  For me, the show season is nearly over for another year.

Learning something new

Last year, I signed up for Shimelle’s “Learn Something New Every Day” journal prompts and in the same way as enrolling for her Christmas journal is a once and for all sign up, I can play along with this one again for a second year.  What a great deal!  Though I chose to work 100% in Photoshop last year, I found that I missed the therapeutic benefits of cutting and pasting and this year, will take the old route.  Over the last week I’ve been thinking about how to present this year’s journal and what colours and themes I might choose, generally getting geared up for the starting signal and the arrival of that first pdf attachment.

Anyway, September 1 dawned bright and clear and as Shimelle helpfully reminds me in today’s prompt, the day has to be lived before it can be recorded.  Still, eager to get started and with all the motivation associated with a new term, I’ve spent the day identifying what I’ve learned.  Or rather, I’ve spent the day feeling overwhelmed by the learning opportunities which confront my hero and I.

It began so well.  I’m working on a small embroidery project which must remain under wraps for now, but which was not going well.  After three terrible attempts at creating something relatively simple, I sighed and remarked to my hero, sitting across the room, that I could do the job in five minutes if I could be bothered to get my embroidery machine out.

Now, my embroidery machine is a clever little beast and goes by the name of “POEM”.  It plugs into a computer and using very simple CAD software, stitches out a simple design in a small frame.  It’s not very sophisticated but does what it’s told and it’s an awful long time since I used it.

It hitches up to an old computer on my sewing table which we kept specifically for the job.  Still running XP, the only programs on it are the POEM software and that for my Bernina sewing machine.  I switched it on and watched as nothing happened.

This was a task for my hero.  He switched it on and nothing happened.  He tweaked and twiddled and still nothing happened.  We decided that after all these years, the old PC has given up the struggle.

Do we have another PC running XP?  Aha! my “old” work laptop!  Except, look at the software I needed.

Do we have another PC with a floppy disk drive?  Not a chance!

Fortunately, someone had copied all kinds of old programs onto some CDs – see, I chose my hero wisely – and as I write he is working his way through it all, muttering things like config sys and reminding me gently from time to time that it’s not straightforward. 

Have I learned anything new today?  Indeed I have.  How far we have come in just a few short years, from whole programs stored on 1.4mB floppy disks, serial ports, autoexec.bat, DOS and ZIP drives.

I think I might return to hand embroidery now.