Read All About It!

 A brief report on the trip to the Museum last week. I was glad we got there early - the hi-viz guy at the gate encouraged us to get in the line straightaway. There was efficient management of the queue, quite a lot of walking involved from where you go in to the exhibition to the point where you encounter the tapestry. By that point you are all [in theory] shuffling along at the correct pace. Here are just some of the panels which I particularly wanted to see,

Panel 1 - Edward the Confessor. Famed for his milky white skin, and long, almost translucent fingers. His 'striped' stockings. I am inclined to agree with Mia H. - these only have the papearance of stripes becaus eof the way the couching has been stitched! Also the various pairs of animals in the borders. Moving on to Panel 4, four of Aesops Fables 

The Fox and the Cheese [flattery]
The Wolf and the Lamb [false accusations]

The Pregnant Bitch [Don't give away your possessions too easily]

The Wolf and the Crane [don't fight a predator]

These are in the lower border, and mirror the historical events depicted in the panel above them.

There was insufficient time to study panel 8 and look for the "cigar burn", allegedly done by a Nazi in WW2

Panels 17 & 18 show Harold's bravery when men were in the quicksands, pulling soldiers out of the danger. The border below shows a line of creatures all tagging the one in front..

An eel [out of sight on the left] bites a man, whose foot is in the mouth of a lion- whose tail is in the bird's beak, the birds wing is nipped by a boar , whose tail is tugged be a centaur. A wyvern looks on. I looked at Edward's death

...which was all too rapidly followed by Harold's coronation

There are 15 people named on the tapestry [only one a woman. Huh!] but at the King's left hand stands Archbishop Stigand. Who lived up the road from here. Yes really - prior to becoming archbishop, he was bishop of North Elmham [where our fish and chip shop is] and owned loads of land round central Norfolk. One street in Dereham is actually called "Stigand's Gate"

Obviously I was on the lookout for panel 32, and Halley's Comet - such an omen for them. I love the way they have depicted it!

The remainder of the tapestry I was studying the stitching [it is clear that women worked from both top and bottom of the fabric- so some were stitching upside down. And they didn't always match up very well with their opposite worker - so sometimes the chainmail is round, or diamond shaped, or square...

I mustn't forget to mention the Feast on panel 43, where the Bishop is blessing the food before they eat- lots of detail here. Picture at the bottom of post. Onto Panel 54, where Bishop Odo, believed to be the man behind the whole creation of the tapestry is shown strongly "encouraging" the troops by waving his club/mace at them. Priests were not supposed to shed blood so did not carry swords. Just a Very Big Heavy Stick!!

Panel 55, almost at the end- William lifts his helmet, to show his troops that he is still alive.  Panel 57 is One In The Eye For Harold [or maybe not - will we ever be sure that is him?] and then the whole thing tails off as whatever followed Panel 58 has been torn away. 

It was incredible realising just how old this is, that it was stitched without the aid of decent lighting [or spectacles] These women have done a phenomenal job, and done it so well.

When we came out of the darkened room where the tapestry was, we were immediately in the bright, light Gift Shop [as is always the case with these places!] 

Bob said I really ought to buy the BM Guidebook, as a memento of this visit, and it is indeed very informative and will get its own review here later. 

Apologies if this post is rather long, and picture heavy. Pictures came from Wikimedia, the BBC and the Observer. I can see why the BM has forbidden photography- it would delay everybody.

Bob did take a shot of me in the central area of the Museum by a display panel... just to prove I was there.

Crafty Conundrum

Perhaps that should be Cone-undrum. Now that Santa is sorted, I have turned my attention to Katie's event next week. She is holding a coffee morning in the chapel to raise funds towards her 2027 London Marathon attempt, when she will be running for Hospice UK. I have been busy crafting since early Friday morning. Here's a teaser collage for you

Wooden pegs
A box of felt
A bowl of ?
Washed glass jars
Stuff for handsewing
A"Dead Salmon" Farrow & Ball Tester tin
A Cardboard Cone
A pack of battery tea-lights
Felt and coloured papers

If this idea works, I shall post photos next week.

It's A Sign

 When  I was in my teens, my Dad sometimes took me to the Lamb Inn in Norwich for lunch [its changed in the half century since, and not so good now, imho!]  I was always amused when you went downstairs to the loo by the witty sign on the wall.

This anatine one, spotted in a Hampstead Coffee Shop on Sunday morning seemed less clever. Why is it only a duck who must mind its head? Hampstead seemed a place of inexplicable signs. One area had all roads completely closed off because of some sort of excavation works. Right in the middle was this...

There was only just enough space for a pedestrian to squeeze past - it would be amazing if any sort of vehicle got to that spot, let alone stopped to unload or park.

I have just made a new sign for our local parish church. It replaces the one I made in 2023, which has fallen to bits in the wind, rain and sun.

My Banner-making instructions are here. When you plan a sign, always get someone else to check it before you print, paint, or stick. 
I will never forget laying out fabric letters on a sheet. I was working from the top edge, whilst cousin Gill lay on the sofa. [to keep her feet off the floor] She watched me silently, then said "Ang - you do realise your banner says WELLING BATSPIT CHRUCH don't you?

Making A List, Checking It Twice...

So the neighbours were sitting round at the BBQ, and Helen mentioned the problems Peter was having with his costume. Her husband is a semi professional Santa, and does dozens of gigs every Christmas - hospitals, hospices, care homes,charity functions... He is short and round,with thick snowy white hair, and a long, soft, flowing beard. But Helen said his costume was looking tatty and the fur was dingy and matted. She'd tried sponging it, but the red fabric was not colourfast. Some fur went pinkish...

Can I help? I said. Can you sew? she asked me. Much laughter as other neighbours said Yes, definitely Ang can sew! 

We agreed I'd look at it when I got back from Cyprus [he has his first photo shoot in a week's time] I took the fur off, and made notes and took photos at every stage, so I'd be able to reassemble it properly with new fur.

 

I am glad I made a list, I'd never have managed to get lining, red fabric, interlining, zip, white fur all in the right order. 

The new fur was quite a contrast to the old. 

I did most of the work before we went to London, there were bits of trimmed fur floating about, drifting into every room. Yesterday morning I finished the work, including creating a new bobble for the hat. 

Top Tips For Adding Fur

• Make a list of the order of work
• Use plastic clips, or pins with glass heads. Regular pins will disappear into the fur, and that's not safe!
• Use a contrast colour thread for tacking, it is easier to find and remove at the end.

I have made the new cuffs separate, removable pieces - and hand stitched them in place. If they get grubby, it will be easy for Helen to unpick them for washing.

All that's left is a quick polish of the hat bells with Brasso. I shall protect the fur from polish by putting a piece of card round each bell as I clean it

Peter and Helen are currently on holiday. I hope to get a good photo of him in costume soon! 🎅 🎅 🎅 

Today's The Day!

10.20am British Museum.

I am quite possibly more excited than a child going off to DisneyLand. 

There's A Mouse In The House!

 

On Saturday, the final full day of their Norfolk holiday, Liz suggested we did the Museum Open Day. So we did. Mouse crafts, Mouse Hunt, and much more mousiness - Rosie spotted that the mice were all wearing the hats and scarves I'd been knitting before the holidays. A volunteer I'd not met before thanked me for all my mouse-making. Then I walked with the girls in p to Starbucks where Liz was waiting. A long cool drink was very welcome.

Do you like their Mouse Ears? 

Books, Books, Books...

 I picked up an email on Wednesday afternoon telling me that Book-Mark would not be coming on Thursday with the Mobile Van. Lots of the older folk in the village really enjoy his monthly visit. They don't have easy access into the town library. Mark is so good, finding and reserving their books. He's just received a certificate celebrating his 25 years as a library driver.

But I realised that many of these ladies [the customers are 90% female!] do not have access to the internet.So Rosie and I strolled round the corner and put notices on both sides of the road where he usually parks. It's far too hot to be hanging about hopefully, wondering why he is late!

Initially a little frustrating, as I had a stack of books to return, but then I received a second email, telling me a reserved book was in Dereham Library waiting for collection. So after lunch yesterday I zipped into town and was in and out of the library in 5 minutes!
The returned books were a little disappointing to be honest. Wortking down the pile

• Rosewater - Bob's science fiction book. Did not read
• The Art Of Repair - brilliant. Reviewed here
• OTK Extra Good Things - I borrowed this last year. I thought it looked good then, but did not try any of the recipes then. Re-reading it, I decided I was unlikely to do so now...
• Actually Delicious Air Fryer - rather similar to all the other A/F books. Nothing exciting
  
• Gino's Air Fryer - I am hoping to try the Signor D'Acampo's arancini sometime [recipe here]
• Sicily - recipes from husband and wife couple Katie and Giancarlo Caldesi. A very pretty book for your coffee table. Not sure I'd use it much in my kitchen
• Forage and Stitch; using natural materials in textile art  This was another inspirational gem

Carolyn Hyde-Brown, I discovered, lives a few miles from here! She gathers leaves, flowers, twigs, and other foraged materials, then uses a variety of techniques- hand and machine stitching, felting, solar dyeing, hapa-zome* and more to make interesting and diverse artworks. I'm rather busy with the family around at the minute, but I plan to borrow this one again in the autumn, and try some of her ideas.

*Hapa-zome is the Japanese word for extracting the dyes from leaves and petals by putting them on a sheet of fabric or paper, and walloping them with a hammer! 
Here's a quick explanation of HZ from another artist

Stitching Old Things To New Life

I grabbed this one in the library on the way to the
checkout machines, it was on the end of a shelf and I liked the cover. But I never looked inside till I got home. And found it to be a lovely read! How serendipitous is that? 

Molly Martin tells how her favourite socks wore out, and her Mum showed her how to mend them 

using a darning mushroom. And she loved the idea of reinforcing the thinning stitches, restoring the socks to a new life. She has been stitching and mending ever since. She became an artist and textile repairer, and now works with the company TOAST to teach others to mend. 

This book is a distillation of all she has learned about mending, told through the garments which have been restored. 

Mollie brings the global vocabulary of mending to us - Japanese wabi-sabi [beauty in imperfection] 

and boro [tattered] where patches of fabric are stitched, layer upon layer

to make stronger, padded garments. Mottainai [not to waste] Then there is the Sanskrit word kantha - layering old saris and dhotis to make quilts. The old English word hussif - a contraction of housewife meaning a portable sewing kit [first on print in 1749] These were  used by men as well as women, 

notably soldiers across the world - from the American Civil War, through the Crimea, WW1 trenches and the Vietnam War.  And back to Japan again for sashiko ['little stabs] a reinforcing technique - and to Levi Strauss, who realised that adding copper rivets to his jeans meant they would last longer and could be patched and mended over and over again.

Her book is filled with stories of special garments mended by herself, or by friends. It is beautifully illustrated, and she devotes lots of pages to describing tools and techniques, so others can do mindful mending. And this slim volume is peppered with great quotes about repairing and restoring. I have copied them all down in a pretty notebook Kirsten sent me, and will be sharing them with you sometime. 

This book is a joy - learn about Mindful Mending - the history, the vocabulary, the techniques, the pictures, the stories. Even if you do not sew yourself, reserve it from the library to enjoy the read! *****

Happy St Withburga's Day

My apologies, St W's Day was actually yesterday, July 8th. But I only discovered that at 5.30 in the afternoon. This saint is not particularly well known outside of East Anglia - but she came to our town 1350 years ago and founded a nunnery. And she is commemorated on our town sign, which spans the road leading into the Market Place.

Her story goes like this ...Anna, king of the Angles had four daughters. He died in 654, and one daughter, Withburga came to Dereham. Here she founded a nunnery. The women cared for the community and built a small church. They had little money or food. One night the Virgin Mary appeared to Withburga, saying ‘Send two of your women down to the stream every morning, where two does will stand to be milked’. This they did, and so there was milk, butter and cheese for all. The news spread, many came to ask for help. The Reeve became jealous and set off with his hounds to kill, or drive away the deer, but his horse stumbled and threw him, and his neck was broken.

The years passed, Withburga died, and was buried in the churchyard until a suitable shrine could be built. When the time came to move her to her final resting place, the coffin was opened, and her body was found to be whole and uncorrupted as on the day she died. One story tells how one of the men reached and touched her cheek with his finger – whereupon the maiden saint blushed at the sacrilege! Then came the Danish invasion. The nuns were scattered, the nunnery destroyed. But the church and shrine escaped, and when peace returned, became the parish church. Many pilgrims came to pray at the Saint’s Tomb

In 870 King Edgar gave all the monasteries destroyed by the Danes, and the cathedral at Ely., into the care of the Bishop of Winchester. The bishop suggested that Withburga, should lie at Ely with her three royal sisters, but Dereham folk did not wish to lose their saint. So Ely monks gave a great feast to the men of Dereham and when they were all drunk, they stole the Saint’s coffin. Next morning, they found the grave desecrated, the coffin gone. They chased after the monks, but it was too late. Returning to Dereham, they found the empty tomb had filled with a spring of clear water. Pilgrims continued to come to pray, and drink the holy water, which to this day has never run dry.

Years later, at the end of the eighteenth century, a Bath-house was built over the spring, in the hope that the town would become as famous as Buxton nor Bath. Described as ‘a hideous building of brick and plaster’, it was never popular and in about 1880 it was removed and replaced with iron railings and for years was smothered in ivy and ferns, the water green with duck-weed. 

Since 1950 it has been cleared, the ivy replaced with climbing roses and rock plants, and the water kept clean. Every year on a Sunday near St Withburga’s Day, a special service is held. In a few week's time, Katie is organising an event at the museum, and wanted a Withburga Mouse to head up her display. So I have been busy today creating the Saintly Mouse. 

So now you know!
Does your town have a special Saint?

I've Sent A Cable

 A cable [or cablegram] was the historical name given to a message sent by an undersea cable. Isambard Kingdom Brunel built the iron-hulled SS Great Eastern, which laid the first transatlantic undersea cable in 1866. My great great grandfather was on the crew of the ship at the time, and very proud of being there.
For my latest DoubleKnitting contribution I decided to do some cable knitting.

I have not knitted any cable since we retired. My last bit of cable work was at the end of lockdown in September 2020. I knitted one of my niblings a cable jumper for her new baby. It was from my much used Sirdar Baby book, and has a run of two cables centre front. Almost identical to #27 Double Cable in the book! I am really pleased with the definition of this latest pattern – it astounds me that just swapping the positions of 6 stitches can make such a huge difference. So much texture, you can follow the twisting ‘ropes’ all the way up. So very clever.

Pinning the square to the bedspread made it much easier to photograph. I did two identical green squares, Kirsten opted for pattern #34 Allsorts, but instead of using a selection of different colour yarns with a black line between, she used balls of random 'self striping' yarns. She says "I used a fluffier yarn which slowly changes colour, so I didn’t do the stripy pattern in the instructions but just kept on going. I think I prefer the more muted shades, and I like the way the fuzziness blurred the stitches and the colour changes.
I found it a bit tricky to keep track of where I was. The double decrease every other row makes it more complicated than just marking the centre stitch and decreasing from there as the actual centre stitch gets knitted into the decreases along with the stitch on either side."  she added
"When I’m knitting mindless squares, I mark the centre stitch and just K2tog immediately after on every row. Much easier, and no thinking required. There’s quite a difference between ‘mindful’ knitting and ‘mindless’ knitting! "

The way you start with casting on two edges and then keep reducing at the centre to make the diagonal is intriguing - ending with just one stitch to cast off at the top corner.

Summer Is...

 ...Days Of Syrup Sliding Off A Silver Spoon

My first squares for our new "Double Knitting Collaboration" new. I did Block 195; Ridges from The Book. This was one of the patterns chosen my good friend Heather. So my first attempt was using a random yarn in heathery shades, with a white contrast. I tried white with heather ridges, and heather with white ridges. Neither worked! The weather was so hot and sticky – like days of syrup sliding off a silver spoon.
Then I found in the stash a soft cream yarn and also a golden yellow. Silver and Syrup. Milk and honey. These did contrast well, so I knitted up the square in both arrangements. I can’t decide which I like best.

I am fascinated by the way that a very simple 4-row pattern [3 plain 1 purl] makes this neat ridge pattern, and would work well even without the contrast. I am delighted by the fact that we both started with a ridge pattern!
These are Kirsten's squares Block 10; Horizontal Ridges. Her pattern has ridges which are twice as deep, and is done in a single colour. She posted me the bright blue, and kept the grey marl.

This was the flat gift I sent her - it seemed appropriate!
She gave me a pretty little notebook

Blocking notes
I cut two 6” squares from a brown card envelope, misted the squares [both sides] with lukewarm water, and pinned them neatly to the cards,
then left them overnight to dry. We need to keep our pieces straight and true!

Read more about these first squares on Kirsten's post today

Shedloads Of Stuff

We held a yard sale on Saturday, to raise funds for the Men's Shed. Bob in the coachhouse with lots of tools and stuff, me round the corner, under the Shed's Big Red Gazebo, with stuff that wasn't tools or shed related. We'd told our neighbours we were doing it, and half a dozen others joined in with their own sale tables. The weather was kind, we had publicised it widely on Social Media, and put a big sign out on the main road.

There was a lot of fetching and carrying, and a lot left.  
We had a few visitors, not a lot - and made about £30. I am beginning to think that sewing BBQ aprons was an easier way of fund raising! A couple of guys expressed an interest at coming along to Shed Sessions, and I had good chats with some of the locals and their dogs*. 

Over the course of the weekend, Bob has developed a nasty cold, and I think I am catching it now...

Today will be a Slow Day - I don't think I should go to Craft Group in case I have a sneezing fit. 

A quick mention of  Heather, who has been following Tracing Rainbows since March 2015. I did not know this till we actually met in person last autumn, and I discovered she lives less than 3 miles away. So we meet for coffee and chat sometimes. She has become a really good friend - I hope she has a lovely day today, as it is her birthday. 

* speaking of dogs, my latest sewing challenge from a neighbour "Ang, can you mend this do you think? It is my favourite bra, I left it on the bed, and the dog has chewed right through the strap!" [if I manage the repair, will she become a bosom friend?]

Great Oaks From Little Acorns Grow

Sometime I must ask Ann just why they call the Toddler Group "Little Acorns" I mentioned yesterday that the lady at the Fete from the local council had been very interested in our group. She gave me a nylon zip bag and two plastic folders and hoped they would prove useful.When I got home, I unpacked them in the kitchen

Would you believe this amazing hoard?

The contents were: five quality books*, thirteen activity cards, two booklets (songs and games)  one finger puppet, one headband, one  set of "feelings" cards,  one Orchard Toys boxed game, a safety mirror, a wooden pig and a cow, a stress ball, a pot of bubbles, one-minute timer, chiffon cloth, foil blanket, biro, box of crayons, and two Norfolk Council information sheets. 

I reckon at least £40 worth of materials. The activities cards related to the books too, so you could plan a morning's activities round the stories. Ann was really astounded at church on Sunday to receive this bag of goodies. She asked if the lady was giving them away to lots of people - I said that nobody else came up in the whole time I was near the council display. Which is a real shame. [* including a proper Julia Donaldson lift-the-flap one]

Thank you Louise, from Broadland Council for your generosity!

Are you involved in any sort of Toddler Group or activities with Preschoolers? 
Have you come across any positive support for young families in your area?

Of Mice And Museum

 These were the mice I made two years ago for our local Museum

This year the theme is Sport In  Dereham, so the mice are all wearing hats and scarves in support of Dereham Football Club, aka The Magpies. 

Katie has planned a new trail and more mousey mayhem for the summer. Bishop Bonner's Cottage Museum opens today for the summer season.

Well done to all the team at Dereham Heritage Trust. 

In other news, our next door neighbours have discovered mice in their loft. Cornerstones is semi detached. I'm hoping these little creatures don't get through into our space! I do not want them nibbling through my new wallpaper books!

🐭 🐁 🐭 🐁 🐭 🐁 🐭

Bonnie The Mouse even got a mention on the BBC Radio Norfolk breakfast show on Wednesday!