slow coming of summer

Lost and lots of rain.............

Wet winter, wet spring means that our small garden is very lush and green; 

but with little sunshine now and then some colour is coming through at last!

With so much time spent indoors I managed to finish two projects in May.

Crojo Retro blanket - so pleased this is done. 

It is all wool and very warm, so not very comfortable on my lap any more. 

Also my Cherry Picker's Garden quilt, all done.

The colours in the picture are not exactly true,

what looks red here is actually more salmon pink. 

Whenever I am working an any project, 

my sewing room is a total chaos;

but all tidy now....ready to start on something new. 

What is it going to be?

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2024

FNwF and into July

After very hot June, July is so much more pleasant. 

Cooler, with the occasional (very welcome) rain.

It is so much easier to look after the garden, it is flourishing now,

not just surviving.

Small lavender harvest from our front garden

(little earlier then usually, probably due to the hot June).

On Friday I joined others for FNwF, first time in a while.

Thank you Cheryll for getting us together again.

As I was watching tennis on TV, I didn't want to get involved in anything which needed too much concentration, 

so I decided to start working on my new crewel embroidery kit.

 Earlier in the week I got around (at last) to choosing fabric for the final border of 

the Butterfly's Ball quilt, and after trying various options, I settled on this pretty pink.

I have enough of this fabric for the backing as well, 

so that's sorted.

That's all for today; I leave you with the view from my kitchen door.

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2023

summer marching on ........

Another month gone....

it is Glastonbury weekend, and the weather this year is magnificent;

being just in an earshot from it, we could hear the music kick off last night.

Early June saw a heat wave in England, and very, very dry. Any rain (as there was) was passing us by and we could only watch wishfully the dark clouds from a distance.  

As I get older I find I can't tolerate the heat so well, so I was spending most of my time indoors, looking for the coolest space and doing lots of reading.

The roses in our garden were the only ones enjoying the heat.

There was lots of watering going on to keep the rest of it alive;

we invested in another water butt earlier this year, so we have 6 of them now, which proved to be a good thing to do. 

It has got better since and although still warmer than the average, it isn't unpleasant. 

Not much sewing going on, as my hands are too hot, so I find myself stitching little in the evenings only.

That said, I just could not resist a wool embroidery kit I came across on Etsy - "Partridge in the Pear Tree".

I don't normally stitch much for Christmas, specially not this early in the year, but it is a while since I did any crewel embroidery, 

so here we are.

I look forward to making this.

I finished the applique borders for the Butterfly's Ball quilt, I embroidered some simple butterflies

in the corners; 

I also now have enough hexie flowers for the next border, so I am now stitching these on.

 By the way, I missed out one of the borders in the pattern (purely personal choice).

I am pleased that despite all that heat and shortage of rain, the garden is not looking bad; 

this of course is thanks to my husband for spending so much time watering and feeding.

(And no, all those water butts are still not enough, one needs to have rain to fill them up! But they did get us through the first heat wave, and we did have some rain last weekend.)

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2023

FNwF

Another month gone! 

Thank you Cheryll for getting us together again for virtual get together. You can pop over to her blog to find out what the others were up to.

I was playing with the central block of a new applique project (yes, another one!), 

a small quilt

which I found in one of the older issues of Quiltmania magazine. 

It is by Dutch designer Janine Alers and which she called "Surrounded by  Flowers".

The only other bit of sewing earlier during the week were some very small blocks for the Angel quilt.

I seem to be more in a reading mode right now. Our summer has now settled to more what we are used to in England - a mixture of sun and showers, but some completely dry days, when it is lovely to sit outside and sew or read, in pleasant 20C +.

We are re-discovering our small local library (re-opened last month), which was in a serious danger of closing before Covid, 

but which in fact was refurbished and re-stocked during the lockdown, 

with the help of a substantial financial contribution from Michael Eavis (of Worthy Farm = Glastonbury Music Festival).

The garden has slowly recovered after the hot dry spell.

There isn't much else going on, we are still being very careful 

and keeping away from busy places.

 Enjoy your weekend, whatever you are up to!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2021

it has been hot, hot

...... although not as hot as in some parts of the world, but hot enough for England. 

It has been hot without any breeze, which gets oppressive very quickly. 

Most of English houses are not built for extreme temperatures.  

So my days have been spent finding the coolest shady place. It was well far beyond "stitching in the garden" weather, too hot for hands trying to hold a needle.

This is all I was capable of doing, few hexies, and reading, lots of reading.

Ideal weather for picking and drying some lavender from our front garden.

Somewhere in the middle of that heat we managed 

to celebrate my daughter's and granddaughter's birthdays in our tiny hot garden.

Call me crazy, 

but I actually made a chocolate cake for the occasion 😕,

with lots of soft fruit it worked OK! 

The weather people are telling us that RAIN is on the way to us tonight!!!!

The plants will be pleased (as will my husband who has been struggling keeping it all alive).

Last autumn I got a tiny pomegranate plant. 

It survived English winter and now it is positively thriving!

There have been other additions to out small patch, but that will be another post.

This has also been a week when "Freedom Day" arrived in England,

whatever that will mean. Make of it what you want.

I am sticking with my mask.

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2021

Midsummer

Happy Midsummer to all in the north part of the Globe; I always feel little sad because it means that from now on we will be loosing a little bit of the daylight every day, and specially as we have been looking forward to this summer so much!

We have had lots of rain during the past week, very welcome, our little garden has much fresher look and lots of colour coming through.

I am now working on the second part of the Manor House quilt,

I like the fabrics I am using, but some of them seem to appear "swallowed up" by the grey background, so I have decided to stitch a row of chain stitch, using an embroidery thread, around the outlines of the vases, 

to give them more definite shape.

It seems to work quite well, I think.....

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2020