Generally Gemma

Befuddlement

I have been neglecting my poor little blog and I have no good reason. You know sometimes you have those weeks when you just can't settle to anything? Nothing, not cleaning, not cooking, not reading, not knitting nothing. For me to be unable to settle to reading it has to be a really bad week. I have been rereading some favourites. I had a craving for Anne of Green Gables but my books are all at M's so, I had to dig out the video. A bit of Gilbert and Anne on a bridge is good for the soul. Or so I always think. I also reread the Time Traveller's Wife, oh how that book can make me weep when I am in the mood for it!

On another tack, I went to the Chelsea Art College degree show. A friend's daughter has just finished the textile course there. I was blown away. So many things that I haven't been able to really process it in my head yet. Knitted garments of a structure I have never seen, computer printed silk designs, felt material cubes in patterns, shoes with intricate pompoms and snips of material flowers. I'm not really doing justice to it with my pitiful descriptions. To be in the presence of people who are younger than me and yet turning out work that I feel I couldn't even begin to attempt was very humbling. To be so proud of my lone sock or my little quilt when I've had to follow a pattern and there are these children who have produced original pieces of such scope, well words have clearly failed me.

All I can say is if you live in/near London go and take a look. Incredible.

I leave you with a little snapshot of what has got me through the week. Chocolate and tea. The perfect combination for an unsettled wretched creature.

(Bad indoor pictures, why can't the sun be up at 10 O'clock at night when I want to take pics?)

Rescue Me

I have been known over the years to buy things that I feel sorry for. The lone apple in a supermarket, the last muffin on the shelf, an isolated petunia on a market stall. (This is how my Bro ended up with Eeyore at Disney World and not Pluto as he wanted. Poor Eeyore had no friends to play with, I guilted him into it, I wasn't giving Mickey up for anything!)

When I went to University it morphed into a desire to rescue poor pre-loved teddies from the charity shop. The idea of these poor things dumped in the 10p bin tore at my heart. How could someone get rid of these poor babies who had clearly been so important to someone at some time. (I live in dread of the same thing happening to my beloved Bear.)

These three are my favourites and possibly the most bedraggled, but somehow all the more lovable for it. The one at the front has had major surgery on his face, the cow has laryngitis and no longer moos properly and the his passenger is nearly losing his arm. Poor things.

So today, I rescued something else.

£1.49 from the charity shop. Some poor person probably sweated blood and tears over this. The material is all different weights so quite possibly it was made of favourite clothes or something.

                            

I nearly shed a tear over it. I've only made the one little quilt and I stood in the shop wondering how I would feel if someone cared so little for my endeavours that they would toss them out.

                             

It isn't perfect and some of the patches are, shall we say, not quite to my taste. But still £1.49 for all the work that went into it! It just doesn't seem right.

                                  

I think it is going to find use as a garden rug this Summer. Which means that once again it will be happy, useful and appreciated. (Am I the only one that sometimes thinks inanimate objects have feelings?)

Everything in the garden is rosy

Or at least it was. Today it is blowing a gale outside, all the petals have knocked off this beautiful rose and I am considering going and chopping the other two off in order to rescue them from the squall!

Well, it would appear from the comments on my previous post that I have been very remiss in not going and visiting Liberty's before now. But you hear such horror stories about the amount of money spent there that I have been trying to resist. I shall give into temptation though, in fact I was all prepared to go and kneel at the altar of all that is fabric on Saturday. But, I have been invited to a Private View dahling (have to capitalise that) and so must postpone until another day.

On another note, as you may have noted from my sidebar I have signed up for the magazine swap that Cotton Strudel has organised. Something small I thought to start me off, something with not a lot of pressure. And now, well now I am paralysed with fear! What to get, what to include, extras? I don't wish to say too much as I know my swap pal may well be looking in here from time to time. But oh the paralysing total fear of wanting it to be lovely, for her not to be disappointed when she opens her package. (Breathe Gemma breathe.) I am sure it will all be fine in the end, going shopping on Saturday, before my outing, did I mention I was going to a Private View? :-)

Material Girl

Whilst browsing through some blogs the other day I was struck by the fabric that so many of you lovely ladies use. I have searched high and low, far and wide for such things and haven't found a shop or a website in the UK that seems to supply such things. No bright florals, fifties prints, geometric circles nothing. The designers that people seem to take for granted, Amy Butler, Denise Schmidt and others. (I'm only a beginner I'm not quite up on the names yet!) These gorgeous modern prints that seem to scream out their colour. Whilst all I seem to find are the drab and the nondescript, pastels and ice cream shades. Which while all very well and good in their place, and there is a place for them, sometimes a girl just needs a Hawaiian print, a bit of kitsch something a bit retro.

Last night I was perusing Plump Pudding's blog and drooling over the divine fabric that she has used in her friend's basket and was moved to ask where she found them or did she do the unthinkable and order from the States. (Like I did for this little lot. My next quilt project!)

Turns out I have been rather blinkered in my thinking. Of course fabric doesn't just come as fabric, it comes as clothes, as bed linen, as tablecloths. A multitude of items all made of fabric and an awful lot of it with delightful colour schemes and scrumptious prints.

I went to the charity shop just as you suggested my Pudding friend!

And then I picked and I picked and I picked them apart. Two skirts on the right  and a dress on the left. The colours don't seem to have come out, I can only assume a cloud passed as I pressed the button. But the one on the right is this gorgeous bright turquoise, just perfect for a summery something. I think this one is my favourite though.

Who knows what will become of it though? I can but wait and see what happens when inspiration strikes. Which will hopefully be next weekend. G is off to his Mother's so I shall have a weekend to litter the floor with thread to my heart's content.

Exhausted

Well, as you may have seen in the previous post my Mummy, hence forth to be called M, came to visit. Which for us is quite a big deal. Once upon a time she used to regularly get on a plane and come and visit her family back in England but since my Daddy died she has been somewhat housebound. Or rather Spain-rooted. But it would appear that now that is all over! Yippee. She wasn't here for long, only five days but it is a huge step for her and one that I am really proud of her for making because I know it wasn't easy.

It's been a rather emotional week all in all. She hasn't been in England for five years which means she hasn't seen her Mother for that amount of time. So I gather that reunion was rather an emotional one, which no one witnessed but the two of them. I had been woken at 5:45 AM!!! expected to produce tea to the weary traveller and was then dispatched to work. Saturday was the first England match of the World Cup. (The whole family apart from me is football obsessed.) G went off to watch it in a pub with my brother, I went to Granny's to watch it with the rest of the family. We won, but well it all seemed rather anti-climatic. But as my Aunt says, a win is a win.

Sunday my brother and M came to my house for a BBQ.

     

It isn't often that the three of us are together these days. Bro and I try to split our visits to Spain so M gets more visitors and so the only time the three of us are together is Christmas! Which made sitting in the garden in the Summer a bit odd, especially as G was there as well, I think he has only had to suffer the volume of the full clan once before! We are a rather loud family.

I took the first half of the week off to spend with M and on Monday we went to visit the memorial garden where her Father is buried and the grave yard where her grandparents are, Tuesday was shopping day and before we knew it she was off on a plane back to Spain again!

It has been a lovely few days, wonderful to see her here again as some of us were beginning to wonder if she would ever leave Spain again. Wonderful to see her, very sad to see her go, but only seven weeks until G and I pack up for two weeks and go and stay with her! I can't wait.

In the summer time

When the weather is ....

Great! Out comes the Pimms!

I spent far too much time in the garden this weekend as the burn on my back is testimony to! You'd think that after all this time I would have learnt that the sun in England burns just as badly as the sun in Spain does. I never would have thought about laying in the sun for hours as a teenager when we lived in Spain but somehow now I am a proper grown-up all sense flies out of the window and I bake for hours thinking that a change of country will keep me safe. Well, it doesn't. Still I learnt my lesson and on Sunday I did put cream on, with the effect that I am turning a nice brown which stands not a chance of peeling. Just wish I could say the same for my back, those strap marks are going to be murder to great rid of too.

Tea was also partaken of in the garden

Using my new tea cup and the new cake stand. Well new to me anyway. I love and adore eBay much to G's consternation. We had to have tea and cake in the garden to prove to G that there is a use to the cake stand. I have great plans for the cake stand I can assure you.

I also put my fear of grafting away in a little box and finished the sock!

How do you take a decent picture of a sock anyway? I have been trying to stage my photos as some bloggers seem to do with such effortless ease, but a sock? On fat ankles? With chubby calves? Surely it isn't possible! I have started on the second one immediately and have passed the rib cuff so as not to fall foul to second sock syndrome. Once I have a pair I think I might attempt to squeeze G into them and have him stand on the table in a pretty ballet pose or something! That will please him. The thought makes me smile just thinking of it!

Only four more sleeps till my Mummy wakes me up banging on my bedroom window! And to make G happy, until the World Cup starts. Never have I felt so happy and so depressed at the thought of one day! Terrible conflict!

Excitment

A week tomorrow my Mummy arrives for a visit! She hasn't been to England for about five years and has finally screwed up the courage to get on a plane and come and visit her Mother and of course her beloved children.

I am so excited it is silly. I can't wait to see her. It has been far too long since Christmas.

The lack of blogging on my part is because G has been hogging the computer. He has end of year reports to write for all of his little darlings. However, it does mean that I am making great progress on the sock, which had grown embarrassingly little. I will however, reach the point of grafting by this evening. I am scared to graft. Pathetic isn't it? I might leave the grafting till the weekend. I think that would be best. Anyone out there with any grafting tips? Please, anyone at all?