Unexpectedly the pic now posts OK – the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre – we found oursleves hopelessly lost in there but think we will go back for another sortie in the few days we have there beginning saturday. Poeople constrantly throng around this anciemt work, and we found it quite impossible to get within spitting distance of the Mona Lisa – in one way it’s probably better to find a good pic in a book, than push forward to the front of the crowd. And even if you get to the front of the crowd it’s roped off over 1m back, and you still aren’t close.

What with internet difficulties – should I say absences more than anything – I have found it difficult to get anything posted – and even the pic I wanted to put up just now won’t go for some reasson – so suffice to say we are having a most interesting time. Not very textile oriented so far – but I did buy a very nice piece of batik printed cotton from the congo – here in the small town of clamecy about 120m S of Paris – where our canal boat has been tied up the past 36 hours due to unfortunately heavy rain. Black, with rooosters and chickens and eggs all over it, it is beautiful it seemed to symbolise France. A textile shop here stocked mostly with notions ribbons napery and the wonderful narrow curtainings they put up at windows neverthless had a table of these Congo pieces, probably to coincide with an African themed exhibition at the local museum just now. I will put the pic up when conditions normalise.

I have been really struck by how manicured the landscape is, I realise essentially due to the long and many layered history here: and so many lovely flowery window boxes, the locks are all beautifully decked out with flower gardens, the woods and forests can bee seen through with trimmed trunks revealing further landscape vistas beyond… quite different to anything we have been used to. We have found difficulty adapting to things being closed at unexpected times, services not being offered where one might expect them in other parts of the world, and in our humble opinions so many opportunities wasted to show off this part of the world to visitors. But, that’s their way. We have totally enjoyed to fresh foods and cheeses, many of the wines and the wonderful goodies ofered in charcuteries and boulangeries.

So, briefly that’s it from me now, sorry I haven’t been able to post a pic or two but will do later.

So we are getting ready for a little mind broadening, starting with heading to Paris later this week, some canal boating with friends in Burgundy and then on to Cairo: good friend and fellow Aussie Jenny Bowker there has promised to make sure we see good stuff – from all I have heard and pics seen of the tentmakers’ work, that should be a delight, a highlight. And I know to expect so much more. We are fortunate to be able to go into Upper Egypt, too.
So, over the next few weeks while our minds are being broadened, alhough we will have computer access along the way, I have no idea how often I will be able to post, but I do plan to from time to time.

I saw this gem was on board one of the ferries plying between Auckland and Waiheke Is, NZ a few months ago. Now Kiwis, don’t jump up and down – it’s a great sign, nothing wrong with it, and plenty of them were posted about near the life vest storage lockers. Clear diagrams and good text make it clear how to put these things on – that is, how to “don” them. I think english speakers everywhere know what this term means, and some of us outside NZ and perhaps UK? use it very occasionally, but I have never seen ‘donning’ instructions. I guess for the commuters on the ferries this is an everyday term, otherwise the heading would have been ” Putting on a Life Vest”, ” In Case of Emergency”, or “Wearing a Life Vest”.
To quote Kath Day, to me Donning is different, fresh and unusual !

Working with fabric on leather, I came up with the core of this idea some time ago: I realised I could very quickly and evenly make lines of tiny holes on leather, or single very small holes in one spot, by using my machine and sewing with a large, very blunt needle but no thread top or bottom. (To make an old needle reeeeally blunt, scrape the point on a metal file, a brick or cement) Even normal sewing machine marks on some fabrics are almost impossible to remove, but on leather and plastic they’re permanent. Then the other day it occurred to me that on the very tightly woven poplin I’m using I could do lines of dots with the machine to indicate the grid for the layout of the pieces on this design, and then use the holes either to actually quilt through by hand or cover easily enough by machine quilting over them. I ruled pencil lines on the back and sewed along them, which produced a tiny raised edge around the hole where the blunt needle bursts through the fabric.
I decided to hand quilt this with a linen viscose thread exactly matching the fabric, which doesn’t shine, but has wonderful texture. You can see the horizontal stitches in the middle of this pic, running in and out of the holes, and a vertical line of holes just to the left of centre. Even as I have written this I have thought of other ways this might be useful – so I’d love you to let me know if it leads you to another idea….

So, today I put up a few of the blocks I have done so far, just to see how the whole thing is coming along, and given that among the approx 250 or so I reckon I’ll need, I am satisfied that the colours so far are going to be lovely – DD wants a lot of jungle prints included and so they shall be, some appear already in this selection.

Once I get more prints I might do something with lights and darks in groups of 4 but that remains to be seen. And, I might not settle on this block arrangement -tomorrow I will arranged them with the arcs all readiating out in the same direction and see how that looks. After all, there is time to fiddle a bit.

In colour schemes there should always be a value of yellow, not necessarily much, and lots of colours can do the job of yellow – in this case there is a beautiful citrus colour which will be scattered throughout the quilt – plenty of it showing hanging and in the blocks on the wall – there’s also a much more subdued mustard colour, and several other golds and mustards will appear at times, I just haven’t got round to them yet. ‘Yellow’ is relative, and it can be a colour from greeny yellows to orangey and browny yellows and greyed values of those colours, too. If you are auditioning colours for a quilt, take out anything with yellow in the print or any fabric that reads as yellow, and you will see the difference.

These blocks have been trimmed to 6 1/2 inch squares.