Sunday Ramblings

I did not feel 100% yesterday and ended up going to bed reasonably early only woken in the early hours by the cat going on manoeuvres in the dark and knocking poor Bert the Chilli off the windowsill.  Mischief living up to her name is usually good but last night for some reason she was a nightmare!  Needless to say that both Mischief and Missy are now in the land of Nod! Typical.

I have slept late and feel better for crashing out, think was just a fatigue flare but am going to keep an eye on it.  Feel brighter today though.

I have checked on the greenhouses and they seem to have survived the storm.  The beans have suffered most; I think I may have lost a couple of them, but we will see.  It is still blustery here but not as bad as yesterday.  Thank heavens for small mercies for which I am grateful as I had visions of all my hard work disappearing!

I have started cutting some of the pot covers up, but will show more on that later on.  Otherwise not very much has happened here just a sleepy Sunday.

I did however start to go through some of my worked items yesterday which were in another bag in the front room.   "Hands up I do have a lot of projects and I am "bitting" about with a lot of them i.e we are clearing front room out so there is a need to deal with some of these items in respect of that). Some are embroidered pictures which need framing.  Will set about these in due course.  Some of them will need mounts for them and will work out what I need piece by piece.  Many of the pieces are Vintage worked pieces; not worked by me but found on Ebay.  I have a weakness for beautiful things and some of the needlework in these pieces is really expertly crafted.  The idea is and always has been to have what I think is commonly referred to these days as a "Gallery Wall" of mixed pieces.  However because of the frailty of the threads and the beautiful colouring this needs to be somewhere where the sunlight cannot damage the pieces and fade them.  At the moment I am thinking about using the staircase in this house as such a display wall, as it is reasonably dark but will see how we get on.

I do have a lot of second-hand picture frames to use up that I have purchased cheaply from Charity shops etc. over the years it is really just stringing the pieces on acid free board (which I also have) and then deciding whether the mount is needed or not and in what colourway.  Some of the frames need to be dark and yet a lot of my furniture is pine.  Decisions will therefore have to be made which piece suits what.  Some of the pieces will also be elsewhere in the house.

There are also pieces of woven ribbon work which I have worked with the intention of turning them into cushion covers and Sachets for my linen drawers etc.  They are still in their worked pieces and have not been finished off into their finalised form as yet.  As these are relatively small I may end up doing these when I drag the sewing machine out.

I also have Needlepoint/Tapestry panels for cushions as well, which will also at some point need making up.  However at the moment I am choosing not to finalise these although I do have backing fabric for finishing some of these off.  Some of them I do not.

I also found some more of my "Antique" Bedlinen and embroidered tablecloths and also a stash of unfinished embroidered tablecloths that have been part work.  I have bought them like this with the intention of finishing them off.  I do however need a magnifying craft lamp and a back stool for working these at my frame.  I had a very good tippy up back stool (you kneel on a lower step and  your bum resides on a top piece.  It helped my back no end as it kept my back straight and also helped me with completing quite a bit of work) as I got really comfortable.  Will see what turns up.  G absolutely hates them, but then again it is not about him when it comes to embroidery or crafting!  What suits one person does not necessarily suit another.

There are loads of books that are all over the place as well.  They will need sorting out and then reinstating where they need to be once the room is finally cleared which could be a little while, but if I try and do some each day should be able to get there.

Well tea for tonight, has been a homemade Chinese style stir fry.  I used four small steaks flavoured with Star Anise, cooked them in the frying pan gently as I did not want the meat to overcook.  I then cut the fat off and cubed the meat and popped it into a bowl for one side.

In the same frying pan, I added mushrooms and onion and fried until golden brown and then added in a mixture of veggies i.e. cabbage red and green, mixed peppers, carrot, Bean sprouts and cooked this down a bit. I then added in some sliced stem ginger and a little of the syrup and stirred this around a bit.  This is something I tend to do a lot with homemade stir fry type meals.  I then added in on this occasion a bought sweet and sour stir fry sauce although I normally make my own Stirred this around and got it going and then added in a small tin of chunk pineapple not the juice.  The meat was then added in and then finally noodles which I had boiled and drained and then popped in to the mix and cook until nice and hot.  However you do not want it too hot as there is a possibility that you will end up burning the mixture which you do not want. You could serve this over rice, but today we just served it as it was.  It came out well. I normally do the stir fry type meal with chicken, but really enjoyed this so will not hesitate to do this again.  Has gone down really nicely.  So a later tea and it looks as though it is going to pour down with rain again.

Have a lovely evening.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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