Incoherent Scribblings

The Dyeing Bug

Though I haven’t stitched anything on it yet, I absolutely love that hand-dyed fabric Susie sent me for my birthday! I thought about joining the Silkweaver’s fabric of the month club, but the problem is, we don’t have a credit card.

When we got married and before we came to Germany, we both paid off our credit cards and decided not to get another. It is both a blessing and a curse: The blessing is that we don’t have any credit card debt; the curse is that in these times of digital shopping sometimes it can be very frustrating not be able to get something that I really “need.” (Like Silkweaver fabric!)
Anyway, since I can’t get the FOM, I have been doing a little bit of research here and there about hand-dyeing my own fabric. It seems pretty straight forward, but up until now I hadn’t taken the time to look up the necessary German vocabulary or to see if I could find the supplies at the craft store.

However, this morning when I was browsing blogs, I saw that Christine had hand-dyed some fabric and my dyeing-bug was rekindled. So I looked up my dyeing vocabulary and took a trip to the craft store where I finally bought some dye and all the accessories I need to attempt to hand-dye my own fabric (and if it works out maybe my own floss someday too!). I have some 27 count White Linda and some 14 Count White Aida that I will probably use for my preliminary dyeing experiments. No sense in ruining some good (and expensive) Linen if things don’t work out.

I think it should be fun, even if it doesn’t work out. However, I am hoping for the best because I get really tired of stitching on white and/or cream fabric most of the time!

Down and Around

Is it Wednesday already? Apparently so, because a reminder popped up on my calendar this morning that it is SBQ Day and boy do I have a doozy of a question for you, courtesy of Karen F., and that is:

When starting a new project, do you start in the middle? If you do, once you’ve worked down to the bottom, do you turn your chart and fabric around so that you are stitching the top section downwards again or do you just stitch upwards from the middle?

Well, I am definitely a middle-starter! I have tried to start from a corner a few times, but every single time I do it ends up off-center.

But where do I go from the middle? Now that is a good question! At first I was going to say that I work towards the bottom right corner, but then I realized that while I did that for “Passing Admirers” I don’t do that all the time.

I prefer to work towards the right and probably do that 75% of the time, but I have been known to go left, up, or down from the middle because I tend to work by “blocks.” Usually when I stitch I set small goals within my project and I stitch whatever way those goals take me.

For example, when I did Maggie’s torso it went up and to the right, but today I stitched a ruffle on her dress and it just so happened to go down and towards the left. Since I like to work this way I have often thought about “gridding,” but it sure seems like a lot of extra effort.

Now, for the idea of turning my chart and fabric around… I don’t do that and don’t think I could. Even with the chart the right way up I have been known to confuse similar symbols, so I imagine if I tried turning everything upside down it would just be courting disaster!

Fly like an Igel

Apparently, once when my mother-in-law came to visit A. while he was still living in the States, she heard the chorus to The Steve Miller Band’s “Fly like an Eagle” on the radio.

I want to fly like an eagle
To the sea
Fly like an eagle
Let my spirit carry me
I want to fly like an eagle
Till I’m free
Oh, Lord, through the revolution

Since my mother-in-law doesn’t speak much English, from all of the words in the chorus she didn’t really understand much more than “fly,” though she thought she understood “eagle.”

However, she considered a flying “eagle” so strange that she mentioned it to A., who had to clarify that an eagle is ein Adler and not ein Igel (or in other words… a hedgehog)!

Too Hot to Stitch?

Today I am not a very happy stitcher. I wonder if it is getting too hot in our apartment to stitch…

Currently, our apartment is sitting at a nice and balmy 24 degrees Celsius (about 75 degrees Fahrenheit). Now I will be the first to admit that 75 degrees isn’t really that hot (I used to live in Texas for pete’s sake!), but the humidity in the apartment is hovering around 80% and that definitely makes things uncomfortable!

Like the majority of northern Europeans, we don’t have air conditioning to help lower the humidity level in here, so the simple act of sitting in my stitching chair (which is made of leather) for longer than a few minutes at a time isn’t very appealing right now. For the past two days I have tried to stitch according to my 90 minute per day goal, but since I can’t sit still for very long I am not getting much stitching done.

In addition to that, once I finished Maggie’s head/hat the other day I thought I should try and work on something else before tackling her skirt. So yesterday I tried to do “Little Stitch Devils,” but I couldn’t concentrate on it and put it away after 45 minutes.

I began today by thinking about the Blogger’s Round Robin. I thought I knew what I was going to do for it, but when I looked at the plans I had made, I decided maybe it wasn’t really what I wanted to do after all. Then I spent some time looking through my patterns hoping something would call to me, but so far nothing has. It’s a good thing our post date isn’t until September 1; I may need that time to make a decision!

After I gave up on my round robin pursuits, I decided to stitch. I wasn’t in the mood for the “Little Stitch Devils” OR “Passing Admirers,” so I thought I might whip up a small pattern. I had worked on it for about an hour when I realized that I had gotten off a row at the beginning of that pattern! Grr… Since the heat has made me a bit edgy anyway, I decided it would probably be best to put everything away for the day.

Tomorrow (or maybe later tonight when it is cooler) I will try to stitch again but this time I will go back to “Passing Admirers,” because I think part of the problem is even though I thought I needed a break from “Passing Admirers,” that maybe I really didn’t. I kept thinking about it when I was stitching even though I was stitching something else!

I sure hope that is the case and that it isn’t getting too hot to stitch in here! Whatever will I do for the rest of the summer if it is?!

Book Review: The Favored Child

It’s been a while since I did a book review, so this week I am going to give you a glimpse into what I have been reading over the past few months.

First up is The Favored Child, the second book in the Wideacre Trilogy by Philippa Gregory. (Read my review of Wideacre, the first book in the trilogy.)

Beatrice Lacey’s daughter, Julia, is the main character in this book. She is “the favored child” and has the same attachment to the land as Beatrice did and is often haunted by her “gift of sight.” Together with her supposed cousin, Richard, Julia is to inherit Wideacre, their ancestral estate.

Richard is a mean, cold, and possessive little boy who turns into a psychotic man. He enjoys no favor from the villagers and resents the fact that Julia is admired by the villagers, understands the land, and is looked upon as “the favored child.”

However, Julia is quite attached to Richard and as a girl promises to marry him. Their guardians do not want Julia and Richard to marry, though they will not say why, and when Julia asks to marry a young man she met during her Season in Bath, her guardians are overjoyed.

Richard is so jealous that he sabotages Julia’s engagement by raping her. She becomes pregnant with his child and marries Richard in secret. Because married women could not own property in that day and age, once she marries Richard, she no longer has any control over Wideacre and is demoted to just another piece of Richard’s property.

The climax of the book comes when it is revealed that Richard is not Julia’s cousin, but her brother, and that both were born of an incestuous union between Beatrice and her brother Harry. Julia fears her unborn child will be a monster and swears to kill it once it is born. On the night Julia gives birth, Richard is killed by a vengeful villager and instead of drowning her newborn daughter as she had vowed, Julia gives the baby to a band of traveling gypsies.

Unfortunately, Julia becomes deathly ill after she gives birth. But before she dies though, Julia writes a letter to her ex-fiancé asking him to search for her daughter and be her guardian; for once she is found she will be the sole heir to Wideacre.

This book is a good sequel to Wideacre. I found it to be just as well written and engaging as its predecessor. When I read Wideacre, I was completely fascinated by the character of Beatrice. I wouldn’t say I liked her in a traditional sense, but I really enjoyed her cold, calculating mind and outrageous behavior.

I was also quite captivated by Julia in The Favored Child, even though I didn’t really like her either. She was wishy-washy and subservient, a complete foil to Beatrice. Though women were taught to be subservient in that day and age, I couldn’t help but get frustrated at the way Julia let other people (especially Richard) control her life.

When Julia was in Bath and free of Richard, she seemed to discover her strength and I thought that would be a turning point for her. Unfortunately, once she returned to Wideacre Richard tightened his grip on her again and her spirit was smothered. It wasn’t until the end that she really exercised her will, but by then it was too late for her.

In conclusion, I would say that though I may have been disappointed by Julia’s character, I was definitely not disappointed in the book… just a few days later I started the third book in the series, Meridon. It was a great finale to the trilogy and tomorrow you can read my review of it!