White Threads

the young chef

I sometimes tell you about Rainbow Girl’s gymnastic achievements, and not so much about The Reader’s accomplishments. That’s not to say that The Reader doesn’t do anything wonderful. She is also highly accomplished at what she does – they’re just not flashy skills like Rainbow Girl. Transposing “Ode To Joy” in your head from one key to another (F sharp) while playing it on the trumpet, without music in front of you is an amazing skill though!

On Saturday morning I found The Reader reading (what a surprise!) a cookbook. I asked her if she was planning to make something. Apparently she wasn’t, but my question planted in her the idea that she could make a meal for us all.

So on Sunday night, The Reader made dinner for us. We had a potato and chicken salad, and then the most delicious freeform apple pie (though according to her it was a tart, as that’s what the recipe called it). It was excellent! She had been planning to make it ALL herself, but as she’s not all that experienced she found she did require some help with chopping. My husband provided the chopping, and also bits of encouragement and advice.

I was really impressed, particularly with the dessert. It was great!

The Reader did a wonderful job, and I am very proud of her. 🙂

On a completely different subject, yesterday I received a call from the lady at Bazmark Films who commissioned me (and my sister) to embroider some props for her for The Great Gatsby. She wanted to ask me a question about something completely unrelated, though textiley. I asked her if our hankies have made it into the film. She didn’t really think so, though if they have, she feels it will be in a flashback bit with Daisy. We’ll all have to keep our eyes peeled. I’m not too hopeful. 🙁

upcoming classes

Portuguese Whitework panel class with Yvette Stanton

Most of the classes will be this project from my book "Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães"

Class bookings have gone quite crazy here. Hardly a week goes by when I don’t have a new class enquiry. I’m now booked well into 2013, so soon I will have to stop taking any further bookings for the time being.

Over the next few weeks, I have quite a few classes coming up.

Starting off, this coming Saturday I will be doing a demonstration of Portuguese Whitework at the Embroiderers’ Guild of NSW exhibition. This isn’t a class, but you can come along and see me in action, see the projects from my book, ask me lots of questions, and enjoy the exhibition in general. My time slot for demonstrating is 12 noon until 1pm. Some of that will be setting up and taking down time, so if you come in the middleish of that time, that will probably be best.

The Embroiderers’ Guild exhibition “Beyond Imagination” runs from Friday 27th to Sunday 29th July 2012 10am to 3pm at Concord West Masonic Hall, 315 Concord Rd, Concord West. Admission $10, children 15yrs and under are free.

Next Monday, 23rd August, I will be teaching Portuguese Whitework at Lyn’s Fine Needlework at Baulkham Hills.

I will then be doing a Portuguese Whitework class at the Miranda group of the Embroiderers’ Guild.

In September, I will be at A Stitch in Time in Hobart, teaching Portuguese Whitework.

October brings a Portuguese Whitework class at the Coffs Harbour Guild.

If you’re in Canberra, on 26-28th October, I’ll teaching a Mountmellick embroidery workshop (2 days) and a Portuguese Whitework workshop (1 day) at the Craft Frog in Kambah. You can book into one workshop, or both!

Moving on to November, I’ll be teaching Portuguese Whitework at the Embroiderers’ Guild of NSW (3rd November), and later in the month, at the Toowoomba group of the Qld Embroiderers’ Guild.

If you’re interested in joining any of these classes, please contact the shop or group that is hosting me. Its going to be great fun!

still knitting

I went back to the doctor’s yesterday, knitting in hand to be prepared for a wait in the waiting room. The nurse walked past and commented on what a good idea it was to bring something with me to do.

Currently I’m working on the knitted dress for Rainbow Girl, and it is progressing well. She’s tried it on, and it fits well, and she loves it. She thought it was a bit itchy, but that’s fine as we always planned that she would wear a t-shirt under it, and tights. I think she’s looking forward to wearing it. (She’d better wear it, after all the effort I’ve put into it!)

The Reader has been very happily wearing her jade shrug at pretty much every opportunity, which is nice.

If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you’ll know that in the past I’ve dabbled a bit with making my own bags – as in travel luggage type bags. Because this is an interest for me, I have been inspired by Tom Bihn‘s amazing bags for quite some years now. I even won a Tom Bihn bag on some guy’s blog (not affiliated with Tom Bihn) a few years back, and while he said he sent it to me, it never arrived. Personally, I don’t think he ever sent it. I think he baulked when he realised that he would have to send it ALL THE WAY to Australia. It was rather disappointing.

Anyway, that aside, yesterday during my lunch break – sometimes I stop work while eating lunch; it seems quite decadent! – I was reading the Tom Bihn blog, and saw that someone had knitted some excellent slippers from cast off selvedges from Tom Bihn’s factory. I thought they were great – such wonderful colours!

Actually in writing this post, I’ve just made a really interesting discovery. The US spelling of selvedge is different to the Australian/UK spelling! Americans spell it selvage! I did not previously know this. Great to always be learning new things. 🙂

After tantalising you with the comment that I went to the doctor’s, I neglected to actually mention the progress of the healing of my burnt finger. The doctor said one more light dressing which can stay on for a day or two (or however long it lasts) and then I don’t have to come back any more. Very happy. Obviously it still doesn’t look normal, but it is well into the healing process, and will soon be right to meet the big wide world again. I’m happy to keep some sort of dressing on it for a bit longer, because knitting wool can be a little rough on sensitive skin, and for embroidering its much less likely to hurt if it gets knocked.

back to the app

Yesterday I finally managed to get back to preparing files for the app. Truthfully, I had been putting it off, because resaving files into the correct format for an app is complete drudge work!

The process was taking too long, so I knew that I needed to streamline it. I had been mulling over for the past few weeks how I might do it quicker. Thinking time obviously helps, because instead of it taking several hours, I got a whole page worth of diagrams redone in about 15 minutes. I was so pleased.

It makes me feel like this might be achievable without me going absolutely spare. Very pleased with myself. 🙂

Hungarian embroidery

I have a standing joke with Mary-Anne who runs A Stitch in Time in Hobart. She repeatedly and mistakenly calls my Portuguese whitework “Hungarian whitework”. And then when she’s feeling particularly silly she’ll call it Hungarian Folk Dancing. We laugh and both know that she’s actually referring to Portuguese Whitework. I have no idea how to teach Hungarian folk dancing!

However, it has made me wonder about Hungarian whitework…

And then, when I was at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair, I met a lady who was going back to visit Hungary the following week, and told me of the beautiful whitework embroidery that she has seen in Hungary.

So I am intrigued. I know little about Hungarian embroidery, though I have seen Kalocsa embroidery, which is quite colourful. Do any of you wonderful readers know of traditional styles of whitework from Hungary? What regions are they from?

Teaching in 2012-2013

Just a word of warning: if your group or shop is looking at booking me for a class before the end of 2013, you’d better get in quick. My husband has very kindly organised me today with a great big dates planner. We’ve put in all the existing teaching bookings, and there are not many slots left…

So get in quick if you’re wanting me to come to you any time soonishly.

It seems that learning Portuguese Whitework is *extremely* popular! (yay!)

Goodies from Canberra

When we were down in Canberra on the weekend, we went on a little antiques crawl through Fyshwick and surrounding suburbs. At the Canberra Antiques Centre, which is a large shop divided up into smaller “shops” each one operated by a different second-hand dealer, I enjoyed visiting Needlewitch.

Bernadette Thomas, who I met a few years ago at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair, operates Needlewitch, with a focus on antique needlework tools. I was hoping to pick up a few little items that I might be able to use in future photo shoots of my needlework.

I came away a very happy customer with some antique paper needle packets. I did admire some very lovely mother of pearl thread winders too, but they were WAY out of my price range!

Even if you’re not in Canberra, you can “visit” Needlewitch at its website. Bernadette has much of her stock listed and photographed online. She is happy to send domestically and internationally.

burns update

Thank you for all the good wishes yesterday. My trip to the doctors was very satisfying. Apparently we did all the right things in applying first aid to my burns. The doctor said that they will heal up quickly. They put dressings on the burn sites (just three were bad enough to bother), and then put little “socks” over the dressings. The nurse that was doing it said mostly the socks are just to remind me of my injuries!

All the remaining burns are on my right hand, and as you would know, I am left-handed. My left hand seemed to heal up of its own accord overnight. The burns on that hand were only very superficial, so they did not need attention apart from our initial first aid.

I’ll have to go back tomorrow for them to remove the dressings and check the wounds, and that will probably be it. Nice and quick. 🙂 And I am not in any pain any more. Well, if I press on the blistered one, that hurts, but why bother doing that?!

I’d love to say that I’ve learnt my lesson, but in all honesty I’ll probably accidentally do it again one day in a tired and brain-dead moment! Sometimes we just don’t think things through before we act.

I must say that I am looking forward to being able to type again, properly. With these sock things on my fingers, it does make typing a little more clumsy!

I am sorry if I alarmed you yesterday with my post. Thankfully, things are probably not as bad as you might have imagined.

Not my best day…

I should have gone back to bed yesterday. Or not gotten out at all.

When the P plates flew off the car as I went up the street, when I accidentally got a customer’s name very wrong in an email, when I misplaced quite a number of things throughout the day, and then when I burnt my hands just before a friend arrived for dinner in the evening… (actually I’m sure there was more that went wrong than that!)

I stupidly picked up the cast iron mortar and pestle to move it (without oven mits), right after taking it out of the oven (with oven mits) where dessert had been cooking and the mortar and pestle had been drying. Clever.

After keeping my hands under running water for 20 minutes, we then covered the burn sites in sterile non-stick bandages and then covered the worst ones in stretchy bandages for some pressure. While one bit of one finger blistered on contact the other bits didn’t seem so bad. I didn’t feel it was bad enough to go up to the hospital after our guest left, although we did um and aah about that for a while. I’ll be off to the doctors this morning to get my hands checked out, and to get them to show me how to care for them properly.

Fortunately I finished knitting The Reader’s shrug yesterday (thankfully it fits well and she loves it!) so I don’t have that hanging over me. But I was SO looking forward to getting started on Rainbow Girl’s knitted dress. I don’t think that will be happening today. 🙁

A sojourn in Canberra

We spent the weekend visiting friends in Canberra, which is about 3 hours drive from Sydney. It is the capital city of Australia, and we always enjoy visiting Canberra. It was very cold compared to Sydney (about -5 degrees Celcuis overnight) so we rugged up and enjoyed our friends’ fire.

My husband, our friend Danny, and I went for a bit of an antiques crawl on Saturday, and I bought some gorgeous little vintage paper needle packets. (The packets are made of paper, not the needles!)

We also visited the Australian Institute of Sport for the sake of Rainbow Girl. We knew that the Australian women’s Olympic gymnastic team was “in camp” at the AIS currently, training for the Olympics. We went on a tour of some of the facilities, and were thrilled to be able to watch them training in their sparkly leotards for about half an hour. They looked great, and I think Rainbow Girl found it very inspiring!

Back home now, with lots of orders to fill, and friends to have over for meals this week. I almost finished knitting The Reader’s shrug too. I just got her to try it on, and it fits a lot better than I thought it was going to – I thought it was going to be way too short!