Last Sunday afternoon London sister Tan and I went for our first long walk for aaaaages – well, since the ludicrously long one we did last July. She’s been running a lot (marathons and half marathons) while I have been doing weekend wanders and hoping that at some point the rain will stop long enough for the footpaths to dry out.
Despite her belief that Essex is a fly-blown wasteland, Tan trekked over to my ‘ends’ and we did the Moreton and the Matchings circular walk that I’d tried a couple of times last year. It takes in a few pretty churches and villages, and – as it turned out – a LOT of nettles that haven’t been cut back. These were head height in places, with added brambles, and some farmers haven’t cut the crossfield paths so many detours were taken. I spent some time on Monday morning reporting all this to the council, who may or may not get round to looking at it in an estimated nine weeks or so. Add the detours to my legendary (lack of) sense of direction, and the 17k walk came in at just under 20k.
We stopped for a snack break (Mini Cheddars, Snickers and coffee) on the green at Matching, next to the very pretty medieval marriage feast house and the church, facing an oak tree that was planted for Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1887. The friendly vicar came along and very helpfully told us that they had a toilet, which made us happy. We saw kestrels, heard a lot of pheasants, snuck up on a few bunnies and a muntjac, and apart from the extremely hardcore nettles it was a good ramble. We finished with a look inside the 13th century St Mary the Virgin church in Moreton, where we’d parked the car, and then she refused to take my directions on the way home and insisted on using the satnav. Honestly!
Still, Tan’s opinion of Essex has changed – it’s now a nettle-strewn hellscape. Which is nice.
So how’s that skirt coming along?
Very well, thank you for asking! Having definitely said last week that I wasn’t going to do any boro patching as it would be too cottagecore for words, I remembered that not only did I have some Japanese prints in the stash, I had a boro inspiration pack from Japan Crafts that some lovely Secret Santa gave me a couple of years ago when the Young V&A theme was ‘blue’ so clearly DESTINY was saying DO A PATCH.
Derived from the Japanese boroboro, meaning something tattered or repaired, boro refers to the practice of reworking and repairing textiles (often clothes or bedding) through piecing, patching and stitching, in order to extend their use.
Also, the skirt doesn’t have pockets, and I NEED pockets, so I made a boro patch as a pocket. I used some of the indigo fabrics, some scraps from the V&A sample sale, and a square of cotton as a base, and lined it to make a patch pocket. That was my portable project on the tube this week, and it was clearly performance crafting as people kept watching me. As well as the running sashiko stitch, I also used some of the fabric features to embellish with lazy daisy stitch and outlining hexagons. I enjoyed it so much that I looked for other things to boro – starting with some of the zillion cotton tote bags I have collected over the years, probably! This will also encourage me to use some of the embroidery threads people keep giving me…
I gave up on all my marking tools and just used washable poster paint to mark out the final bits of stitching I wanted to do on the skirt, which was lovely and messy and a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon after a morning of ironing. While waiting for the front of the skirt to dry, I marked up a fabric pouch that I bought in a Hobbycraft sale with the Seigaiha (wave) stencil, and then used Bondaweb and more fabric scraps to create a boro panel on a tote bag. The yellow marking pencil worked on this, so I used the Sakura (cherry blossom) and Fondou (weight) stencils for a panel as well. That should keep me busy! Also, guess what everyone is getting for Christmas?
Things making me happy this week
- Cat insurance. Lulu isn’t well and the vet quoted me £600. Once I’d stopped freaking out they helped me put the claim in so that they would be paid directly. Now we just need to get the meds down her.
- Inter-library loans, and new colleagues who recommend books to me. The two may be connected.
- Lots of strawberries and raspberries from the garden
- Coffee with Brian on Thursday morning and a colleague who is leaving asking if they can join my early morning coffee roster. This is clearly now A Thing.
- Cinnamon Bun flavoured Pretzel Flipz.
Today I am off to hang out with illustrator Skye Baker at the Little Angel Theatre community street party in Islington, where we’ll be illustrating houses.
Next week I may even have finished the skirt – the problem is always knowing when to stop with these things….
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Demolition Angel/The Forgotten Man/The Watchman/The Promise – Robert Crais
Shadowstitch – Cari Thomas
Neither Here Nor There – Bill Bryson (Audible)
What Kirsty did next 