The pansy that wasnt

A couple of months ago I started an embroidery project involving flowers which I regarded as intimidating - pansies. Their dual colours and delicate streaks of contrasting colours on each petal requires some skill to achieve with a needle and thread.

I started off by selecting a pattern I found in a pdf from the Antique Pattern Library. For fabric I chose pink casement, which I would later realise to be a fatal error. And then with three shades each of golden yellow and purple I was set.

The embroidery itself went off quite well, with the shading and contrast strokes.

However I had a nagging feeling all through that the colours were somehow not at their glorious best and after I finished the first flower I was convinced that such was the case. The culprit was the fabric, that was the colour of an overwhelming, all consuming pink.

So I've abandoned this project for now and relegated it to a little stash of ufos(unfinished objects). But the learning has been immense - I feel much more confident about blending colours and creating brush-stroke like effects. Isnt that what needlepainting is all about!

Embroidered pink frangipani

I finished the pink frangipani flowers I was working on, a couple of days ago, and what a sense of achievement it was! It took 15 min snatches of time each day, over 14 months.
My son was born during this time, we relocated to another city, and during all the upheaval this project was my faithful companion, something that would invariably calm me down.
Now that it is done, I'll miss it! But hey, there's a new friend on the block -what is it? A pansy or a lily?

A little gyan

What can a tiny mass that coos and gurgles, and needs to be constantly fed and changed, teach you?
A lot. Immense patience for one. The last few days must have halved my molars as I grit them, grind them and clench them. What else can one do if a 2-month old cries on and on for no apparent reason? You can talk the goo-goo-gaa-gaa language for a bit, hum a little song, rock him for all you're worth, but if the little devil still insists on bringing the house down, well, you just clamp down, and pray that time flies by and he exhausts himself, and you're still sane when the ordeal is over.
The other lesson I've learnt is to value every free minute I get from managing two brats. A leisurely bath, an unhurried meal are stuff history lessons are made of. And talking of meals, someone should research why children need to take a potty break right when the mother is halfway through her meal! And why do kids act up in tandem - one howling baby is bad enough, but when the toddler decides to join in, you begin to think of the nearest asylum.
Seldom do I get even ten minutes at a stretch but I want to a whole lot of things in that time - stitching, writing, excercise, sleep... Dream on, say my little ones!

Back!

It feels strange to be writing something other than a terse email or a quick sms. I've done little else the last four years and now writing even these few lines seems like an effort.

A marriage and two kids have enriched my life. And made it unbelievably busy. Days, months and years are simply slipping by and my fear is that one day I'll be blowing sixty candles on my birthday cake and wondering what the heck I've done with my life!

How I've missed this blog all this time - racking my brains to produce a few words that bring joy to me and hopefully to others, sharing experiences and perhaps creating a little posse of work that's 'me'.


Although finding even five minutes in a day is a struggle, the challenge now is to make even those five minutes count!

So here I am and here to stay...