My 900th post and Books #32 - #41

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#32 The Saltmarsh Murders
by Gladys Mitchell

Although this is the fourth in the Mrs Bradley series it is my first and something I came across in the Library by chance. (Holborn Library is awesome by the way if you work in the area). I was attracted by the description of Mrs Bradley which I forget the exact words for but was something like "small, shrivelled and remarkably ugly". She sounded like my kind of anti-heroine and indeed in the books she is. My liking for this one caused me to get hold of the TV series starring the really beautiful Diana Rigg as Mrs Bradley. Not fitting a single element of the description in the book I was rather surprised at the casting but she does look f-a-b-u-l-o-u-s in the outfits. Sadly the series is bilge and only to be tried if you're in your second week of flu and have run through all the Murder She Wrote's already.

I rather liked the helter skelter plot of this and the way you weren't quite sure who was who or why they were being so weird. I retained faith that it would all be explained and it was and in a decently entertaining way. I have since read another and plan to read more.

#33 Sweet Death, Kind Death
by Amanda Cross

This would be a great book for someone who likes highbrow english lit and detective stories. Not being a highbrow english lit-er I didn't particularly enjoy it. The story revolves around the autobiography of a professor at an all female college in amercia being written by two men. They start to suspect it could be murder and suddenly our hero, Kate Fansler, is accepting an invite to investigate and sitting on a working group looking at womens studies or something. This is the 7th book in this series so I guess I should have started earlier to get more of the back story. As it was I was a bit lost as I'm not familiar with the american educational system. That aside, as a story this was quite well written but the plot left a lot to be desired as it fell into the Byrne category of "bit silly".

#34 The Ivory Dagger
by Patricia Wentworth

Yay for Miss Silver! Boo for the amazingly stupid, repellant, insipid, mimsy, useless young female. Yay for her friend who had pluck and was therefore a decent female character!

I rather liked the wicked Aunt in this one. I might almost say I aspire to be her. I adore Miss Silver. I definitely want to be her once I get to 70. All that knitting - what a gal.

#35 Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
by Catriona McPherson

Bloody hell this was an awful book. I rather liked the others in this series, of which this is number six, but this one sucked. The story was morbid, which might sound like a strange thing to say about a murder mystery, but seriously it was. With every new revelation I felt like begging her to just stop there as she was clearly making everything worse and as painful as possible for the two families involved. What starts as Romeo and Juliet ends as some Freudian nightmare. Ugh.

#36 Death at the Opera
by Gladys Mitchell

 This is the fifth Mrs Bradley book and one that they tried to televise in that Diana Rigg series but made an awful mess of. The teachers at a small school decide to put on the Mikado and during the performance it all goes a bit pear shaped and one of them dies.

While you could tell that this was by the same authore as #32 it was sufficiently different for you not to be reminded of Agatha Christie or even Patricia Wentworth. Mrs Bradley remained at her ghastly best and romped about psychoanalysing and disturbing people. There is a strange interlude with a man with a tin bath which all weaves neatly in to the plot. A very satisfying and engaging read.

#37 The Documents in the Case
by Dorothy L Sayer

I did this one as an audio book which could have gone wrong ( as it is a series of letters) but actually worked rather well. Letters between various people over a period of time outline the story of a married couple with two lodgers and a female companion slash housekeeper and the interactions between them. I will say no more than to let you know that the husband enjoys eating wild mushrooms. Aha. Exactly.

Dorothy Sayers is most famous for her Lord Peter Wimsey stories but this is outside of that set. If you like a traditional mystery story then you will enjoy this one.

#38 Murder on the Eiffel Tower
by Claude Izner

I am still in two minds about whether to read another in this series. The book overall left me with a little puff of an out breath and a general feeling of 'meh'. But I did get the feeling of wanting to find out hwat happened next so maybe this was just a slow start?

This is the first book in the Victor Legris series. Victor runs a bookshop with a japanese friend who raised him and is his mentor but not in a lame karate kid type way. He happens to be present when a woman apprently dies from a bee sting but of course it's not that straight forward. All good fun and the heat of a paris summer is well evoked.

#39 A Christmas Beginning
by Anne Perry

My eyes! My eyes! Save me from the sight of any other books in this series. No! No! Take them away! Away!!!!!!

I just wanted to hit the main character. Don't ask me how he ever got to the rank he has. This book is only about 50 pages long and every one of them stank like three day old dog poo. I could not have cared less about who killed who or why by the end. God it sucked. And there are loads of them in the Library! I made the fatal mistake of thinking them must be ok if it was such a long running series. Ugh. Stupid me. If it hadn't been a library book I would have taken it to work and shredded it. Ugh.

#40 Mr Tickle
by Roger Hargreaves

I happened to read this when spotting it among Nickerjac's LB's toys at the weekend. I later read it to him, with actions, which only confirmed my earlier opinion. This book is a psychological exploration of the effect of in and out groups in a closed society and how Pavlovian theories can be used to good effect to bring about a change in disruptive behaviour and thus return the community to a state of harmony. I suspect this is how prisons are run.

#41 Death at Face Value
by Joyce Christmas

Who can forget the first of her books I read, "Suddenly in her Sorbet".

Ever since then I have been a devoted fan. I prefer the Lady Margaraet Priam series but I've read all those so now we're on Betty Trenka, retired office manager and looking to not be bored in her retirement. This was a quick read and good travel/beach reading as it was engaging without requiring a lot of thought. The murder of a model in New York triggers a series of events in Conneticut (are these places close to each other? I have no idea but I guess it doesn't matter). Betty ends up with a cat though which can only be a good thing.

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Oh What A Lovely Wedding

The wedding of Nickerjac and Andy took place last Saturday. It really was lovely. Jane had lent her family home on the Isle of Wight and it was the perfect setting. A beautiful garden was lovingly done up with about a mile of my handmade bunting.

 

They both looked lovely. Plus I finally get to show the waistcoat I was making for Andy (plus a matching one for their littl'un). 

I also had a hand in Nic's dress although the body of it was done by another more skilled sewer than I. 

She looked like a Princess! My face was 99% grin through the whole ceremony which Laura performed brilliantly. As well as a mountain of savouries we also had a candy bar. It was brilliant! Lots and lots and I mean LOTS of sweets and little paper bags all hand stamped to put them in. Kids of all sizes were enjoying that one. And I adore this photo of Yvonne and Sue trying to make their selections. 

You can see all of my photos here. It really was a very lovely day. 

Festival of Quilts 2012

Squeee! It was another lovely one. I went with Mum again and we both had a great time. Here she is rifling through the Liberty scraps with the greatest concentration.

As was I of course, except to pause and take a sneaky photo without her noticing. Here are the ones I picked out.

It's the amazingly fine lawn cotton and the perfect size for lovely little somethings.

The quilts were of the usual excellent standard and variety. I loved the Miniature Quilts section last year and this year it was definitely my favourite. Pictures of some are hard to take given the light and the number of people. This was the first place winner.

You see how perfect that is? It's about 5 inches across. There's a close up of the detail here. The workmanship was just amazing. I actually preferred her second one - which came second. Yep, she got first and second place in this category. Here it is.

Bit fuzzy but yes, she made miniature 9 patch stars. I can't even do them full size. Phew. Detail here.

My favourite was this one:

So clever. I would *love* to have this on my wall. Other favourites from all the categories:

It's made up of these wavy blocks and hand embroidered:

Beautiful hexagons. There were quite a few hexagon quilts plus a miniature one that was amazing.

An amazingly textured pictorial quilt of Venice.

A gorgeously vibrant silk quilt.

The detail on this was beautiful - the whole thing seemed to glow.

And then I was also very taken with the aerial map type quilts which can only have been by the same person (I *will* get a catalogue next year). There was one full size one.

And then a tiny miniature one.

So cute!

As well as the Liberty scraps I got a few other things. A selection of fat quarters.

And two jelly rolls.

Rather moderate for me I thought! And I came in £10 under budget. Holla!

Since then I have of course been to Nickerjac's wedding which was amazing. I just need to have a word with someone before posting about it though. I'll tweet as soon as all the pics are ready for viewing. In the meantime all of my Festival of Quilts photos (all 127 of them) are here.

Learning in Action

I have learnt several things recently. One was that ring cushions often have ribbon on them to tie the rings in place to make sure they don't fall off.

I made this last night using the waistcoat lining as the main fabric and a smidge of petrol blue organza as the overlay on the top.

I kind of swirled the organza and caught it down with a stitch or two and a bead or so. This project also taught me what this kind of needle is for.

I'd always wondered. It is for adding ribbon after you'd sewn it all up.

Ta da!

Shawl! Shawl! Shawl!

In WWE there is a finishing move called The Spear and when the wrestler does it (it used to be Edge but Christian inherited it when Edge retired) the commentator shouts "SPEAR! SPEAR! SPEAR!". So now you know.

In the same way when I finally unpinned the shawl from blocking and wrapped it around myself I could hear a voice in my head shouting "SHAWL! SHAWL! SHAWL!"

Blocking it was quite a mammoth task because it is humungous.

It is the same width as my two person sofa and rocking chair in a line. Fortunately it dried overnight as it was taking up most of my floor space.

I do love the pattern though and it was pretty easy. Especially after my first abortive attempt. I'm very pleased I redid it.

The pattern is Gail or Nightsongs and is free. It is going to match my dress perfectly. And....ta da!

I've also entered it for the Lace Longjump but haven't been to the podium for that yet.

Yesterday was pretty hectic - fabric shopping in the morning followed by 5 hours straight sewing - the results of which will be seen next weekend. During the shopping part I did find a few fairly odd things in the pound shops of Lewisham. I do adore those shops. You never know what craziness you'll see. The winner this time was undoubtedly the pet tombstone.

Yours for just £1 plus postage. Let me know if you want me to pick one up for you.

Limpics

This week I spent a day at the Olympic Development Authority's offices at Canary Wharf. It was for work - filming some interviews.


We were there to use the view as the background.


You can see why that would be desirable. The 23rd floor gives you quite a view. To spot the Park it's easiest to look for the red Orbit Tower then you'll see the Stadium next to it.

Sadly the best laid plans... After a few days of dull skies it came over all sunny. Too sunny. With that in the background no amount of light could prevent our interviewees from looking like Crimewatch informants.


But it was still a great view. Especially with the DLR trains underneath.


Like nothing more than a giant train set.

I've been doing a massive amount of sewing this week but nothing much to blog as I don't want to giveaway what the Groom is wearing before the wedding next weekend. Suffice to say he'll look snazzy.

My Games Teacher Would Never Believe It

I am excessively excited.

Never before has so little meant so much to so few.

The Virtual Quilt Museum

I am utterly gutted to be too ill to visit the American Museum in Bath today. Had I done so I would have been enthralled and inspired and taken photos. Instead here are some of other people's photos to inspire and enthral me.

Let us begin with a scrappy spiderweb.

I do tend to be drawn to the quilts with small pieces of fabric making the body of the design. I have a bit of a phobia though about things that join many points in the centre of a motif like this one does. 8 sections? How do you get the centre to lie flat when it collects all those seam allowances and joins together? Something I need to work on. Even in something like this next one - where you have only four corners coming together - it could be an issue.

Source: finitegeometry.org via Alex on Pinterest

Now isn't that impressive? All those designs are from one square made of two triangles - one black, one white - and joined on the diagonal. And the pattern will look different again when you join multiple blocks. Do non-maths people think about iterations? It's a basic method for solving equations although thinking about it I guess dyers must use it a lot too. Although dyeing is basically an equation I guess.

Something I've never invested in but will be looking out for at the Festival of Quilts is a jelly roll. 2.5" wide pieces of fabric that are 42" long - the width of the fabric itself. Strip piecing gives you lots of options. For example...

Source: scientificquilter.wordpress.com via Alex on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Alex on Pinterest

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

Source: craftster.org via Alex on Pinterest

(Although that last one is apparently made out of t-shirts and not a jelly roll.)

Then there are quilts which use machine techniques to give the appearance of a paper pieced quilt. Hexagons for example.

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

Very clever and I would rather  like to do this on a bigger scale so you get a quilt seemingly made up of great big hexagons - perhaps 8" across? When you do a simple shape on that scale it becomes more about the fabric than the design. Like this one perhaps.


Finally (because even typing is wearing me out today) there are those quilts where the piecing is creating a bigger picture. In some cases a very big picture.

Source: funthreads.blogspot.com via Alex on Pinterest

I 100% admire the technique but it's not something that I would want to do. I'm not very good at light and dark which is why a jelly roll interests me as it will have selected the fabrics for you. Or perhaps something like this, although really this is appliqué.

It is definitely the quilting that makes it though. Free arm quilting is again not something I have mastered although I do like machine embroidery. You do need a long arm machine for it though unless you are making a miniature quilt. But this one is something that interests me.

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

I have a fascination with little houses. This one is done in small blocks and then assembled. I can imagine having a lot of fun with this, and with the little trees, and with embellishing with buttons. Maybe one day...

I hope you enjoyed the virtual quilt show. I have to go back to coughing and sneezing til my ribs ache now.