I've recently become aware of the appalling temperatures on the west coast of Canada where I grew up, after DH saw it on the BBC site and told me. It is just unbelievable and I feel so sorry for the people that are suffering. When I was growing up, it never seemed to get particularly hot, maybe occasionally up to 30C but that would be really unusual. So nobody had air conditioning, back then anyway. One of my first paid jobs as an adult was for a small NGO not for profit environmental charity, which produced learning materials on climate change. Back then it all seemed a touch hippy dippy and 'sky is falling' rhetoric, but it has sure turned out to be true, very unfortunately. Meanwhile summer is having a bit of a power failure here in the UK, it's warmish in the low 20s, muggy, and frequently overcast and rain showers. But I would rather have that any day than 44 degrees C, that kind of heat is just insane. When I was in Egypt it was only up to 38C and that was so punishing we had to hide in the hotel through the middle of the day.
Here is the photo I forgot to take last week of month 2 of my Australian BOM, and the pack of accompanying embroidery threads. Looking forward to getting started on this, hopefully next week.
I haven't been doing a lot on my fair isle Lenten Rose socks, don't know if it's the mugginess but knitting hasn't been attracting me lately. But I have finally finished the first chart for the leg and am about to start the heel. The back of the heel will be a solid colour and then the gussets are in a pattern which is unusual and I'm looking forward to working that out.
I've mostly been working on the cross stitch birthday card that I started on holiday, because the intended birthday is in early August. Slight hiccup when I absentmindedly started stitching with 3 strands instead of 2 strands (because the teapot felt mat is stitched in 3 strands). Not only did this create a lumpy area of cross stitch, it meant I ran out of the green colour too early. It wasn't until I ran out that I realised what I had done, so too late to unpick. I have sourced a close match from my existing stash of threads, the elderly recipient probably won't notice.
I finished reading the Nerylla Taunton Antique Needlework Tools and Embroideries book that I got secondhand on the last holiday. I really enjoyed it, great photos placed close to the relevant text (so no flipping back and forth which is a peeve of mine), ingenious and beautiful solutions from the past to storage and function issues that we still face today as sewers/sewists. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I looked for a few more books online and hit a goldmine of secondhand old books on a charity site. So I've got lots of reading to look forward to. I would be tempted to start a (another) collection if everything to do with antique sewing tools wasn't so expensive. So alternatively, I feel tempted to create a modern equivalent. I've had a bit of a look online, very few craftspeople are recreating fine needlework tools which is surprising as you would think there would be a huge market for fine tools that aren't made out of plastic, and pretty containers to put them in.
The sumo is back on TV so I'm enjoying watching that apart from I can't really do crafts like normal for tv watching, because the matches are over so quickly. If you glance down at your knitting/quilting/cross-stitch just for a second, you've probably missed the moment they throw their opponent out of the ring. My new Japanese teacher thinks it's hilarious that this (late) middle-aged British person is into sumo, she lives in Osaka (where the major tournaments are even held once a year) and she isn't interested in it at all. She asked why I like it, but I lack the vocabulary so could only say it was interesting and exciting and Japanese culture. She looked a bit baffled but that may be my accent, lol.
It sometimes feels, as an almost-pensioner, that things are changing too much and not always for the better (still don't like using a mobile phone for example yet everybody wants you to use one for everything) but a new thing has recently entered my life which I love. And that thing is Command strips. I think these may be relatively recent in the UK because I had never heard of them until we got the caravan and I started seeing them mentioned on caravan FB groups. I expect everybody else but me knows that these are strong adhesive products which can be easily removed leaving behind no holes or residue. But the range is just astonishing, everything from a heavy-duty waterproof hook we have put in the caravan shower to hang coats on (as the shower is only used occasionally), hooks of all different sizes and purposes and weight loads, hook-and-loop strips for attaching things to surfaces, and I've just found out they also do cord wranglers so you can stick one on, say, your food processor and coil up the electric cord. There seem to be dozens of Youtube videos on all the home organisation hacks you can do with Command strips, like using them to run electric wires along walls and furniture (instead of those awful nail-in hooks that our house is decorated with), hanging baskets on cupboard doors, turning walls into wardrobes, hanging pictures without peppering the wall with holes trying to get them level...we live in strange and wondrous times.
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