Another week of holiday

 We have enjoyed a second week of holiday, just staying at home and relaxing, doing hobbies etc. We're having another heatwave so spent a lot of yesterday with all the windows and blinds shut tight, like living in a cave, to keep the 30+ C degree  air out of the house.  Today is overcast and feels cooler although apparently will again head towards 30 later on. None of us like hot weather so it's been a better summer for us than last year up until now.

The result of two weeks off is that I have fully reverted to 'early retirement' mode and work once again feels like an irrelevant inconvenience that I will have to return to tomorrow. I guess it's not irrelevant since I need the money, it just feels like that emotionally.

I found some more blue thread and finished the little cross stitch card I was working on in Cumbria.

I cut out and pieced together two more blocks for the Janet Clare BOM from Today's Quilter, catching up for about two hours before the post arrived with the latest issue including the 11th instalment (of 12) so it's back onto the sewing queue.  Still can't visualise how all of these are going to go together into one quilt, there are so many different block styles. It's a mystery (literally).

Having cleared off the BOM queue (temporarily) I started working on another dress.  This one is a fancy afternoon tea dress, in quilting cotton.

I've also had a go at painting some of the rocks I collected on holiday, following the instructions in the secondhand book I bought on holiday.  It's been rather fun, looking at a plain rock and trying to picture it as a house or building, then trying to bring that vision to life with paint. I'm not really art-y so have been studying the pictures in the book for inspiration.

This was my first attempt, which has an added chimney made from wood filler.  The rock is about 1 3/8 inches high.

My second rock was bigger, about three inches high, and I tried the book's suggestion to add dimension to the thatch roof with wood filler.  I'm rather pleased with this one, I think it turned out surprisingly well.  I left the flat back plain on this one.

My third try was from the chapter on Churches and again it's a fairly little rock, about 1 1/2" high. I left the rock sides bare to suggest a stone church, and turned the natural bulges into an entrance porch and projecting roofs.

Rather fun and I still have some rocks left.  They need to be varnished but I've been putting that off because I've had so many issues in the past with varnish turning opaque, or bumpy, or damaging the paint etc so I will need to do some testing on a 'stunt rock' from the garden.

The garden seems mostly recovered from its week of drought while we were away, apart from the hydrangea flowers which are all crispy just as if we had dried them on purpose for display, and our Ballerina rose bush which is similarly crispy in its lower half.  Two of the climbing roses have even put out a second smaller flush of blooms so I've been able to bring some into the house again.  They are lovely but never seem to last more than a few days even though they are in water and oasis.

Probably due to the weather, the pears have been rotting faster than I can cook them.  I've made two crumbles (the second with additional blackberries gathered from a nearby wilderness patch), and a nice pear pie. But the remaining pears are either furry or very ripe, so I don't think I'll be able to make much more from them. It's unfortunate that I had to pick them before we were away for a week, a lot of them were hard to begin with.  The little apple tree is has a nice drop of largish apples ripening but they don't get picked until late September/early October.  

Hope you are staying cool and safe.