Rain rain go away! Embroidery for the soul

7th January



Taken today, a very different Thames to the one we usually see!
View taken looking towards home.

I cannot help it, but I am back to talking about the weather!! Bonkers or what?!?! It truly is one minute beautiful blue skies, albeit windy and then BAM! heavy torrential down pour. The ground is so sodden it is untrue and we have sprung a leak...well, several actually. That is the problem with living in a house over 400 years old, things break and often! So we have the classic saucepan scenario going on in one of the bedrooms over here at the eclectic house and a bed moved away from the wall in another bedroom. Best get round to sorting that out soon then!




View of the Thames away from home

In the mean time I have been thinking about embroidery.  Those of you who have been reading the blog may well remember that I attended a ladies Christmas lunch not so long ago, see post here:  http://eclectichomelife.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/ladies-christmas-lunch.html
Where my S-I-L had made a lovely embroidered bag.  A nagging feeling began and an itchiness in the fingers started to tingle.  I had to get back to embroidery.  Having not touched a needle and thread in a decorative way for several years, I did not fancy anything too difficult and as I cannot stop thinking about and talking about the weather what better than to embroider something to do with it.  So here it is my little embroidery...TA DAAA!



Hoping this will be a magical rain embroidery to stop the rain soon



In Norway many years ago in the time of Bestemor (Grandmother) and her mother before her, they used to always embroider 'pyntehånkle', decorative hand towels.  These would be embroidered usually in one colour only, a little like my rain girl above.  I can recall only blue embroidered towels but mamma tells me red was also very popular.  After all red is a very Scandi colour.  These towels would be hung on a rail above a shelf.  The purpose being they were to be decorative and hid the contents of the shelf behind!  A neat idea, although in modern society, we tend to hide everything behind cupboard doors, or haphazardly displayed on Welsh dressers as a decoration in itself.  I do like the idea of a decorative towel though.  Maybe another wish list make?

Hope your umbrellas are bearing up in this weather, it feels like snuggling indoors and hooky time to me.  Think I better put all my crocheted stars and crochet a few more, then put them to some use, watch this space...

Stars pattern are from Attic 24 if anyone wishes to have a go.  They are SUPER QUICK, each one only 3-5 minutes to make and very addictive too!  Link below:
http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/2013/12/little-lacy-stars.html

♥