Friday, July 31, 2015

Gladioli Glory

Hi Dear Folk,

Here I am in Blogland again, so much going on, but basically I've been giving my eyes a rest from anything computer screen related. I was away for five days in Ithaca visiting The Boy and stayed off my iPad and of course away from work so no computer screen, my eyes truly needed a rest I feel better for it.


Such a buy at Trader Joe's, ten stems of gladioli for $4.00 who could resist, I so enjoyed all their glory.


Today I am home, I've been fighting a soar throat for days now, and have felt so achy that today I just decided to give my body a rest a stay at home, and I feel better for it.

The Boy has been helping me set up my new computer.  He has spent the summer up in Ithaca working, but is spending a few weeks at home now before the new term.  He plans a trip to she shore camping at Henlopen State Park in Delaware, a favorite of ours.

Have a great weekend.

Christy

Ithaca Falls, NY



My first post from my new MacBook Pro.  I have long wanted to move into the Apple world, first I had my iPad which I love and use all the time and now my new laptop, a learning curve, but it's already a million times easier to download video off my camera, hence video of Ithaca Falls.

I love to visit the falls when in Ithaca, it is such a relaxing place to be by the water, even though the falls roar.

Christy

Ithaca College Library

Hi Dear Folk,

I probably need to announce that I'm on a semi sabbatical for the summer from Blogging.  I wish I was on a sabbatical, but no, just trying to keep up with everything.

This was sitting in my draft folder along with some other posts that I need to attend to, I wanted to share with you my trip to Ithaca and my visit with The Boy,

Here is the library at Ithaca College, it is really nice.  I love the tree out of the window, but if there was no tree there you would have a view of Lake Cayuga, but I expect in winter you can see the lake after the leaves fall, so maybe that is the best of both worlds.




The Boy checking out some DVDs for us to watch on his new projection screen, remember his summer project?  It works really well, he now has an 83" screen and he bought a second hand projector off a friend, to run the movies on.




I left on a Wednesday for Ithaca, did get everything packed the night before, always a challenge after a full day of work.  Out on the road by 6:00AM whoopee.  Since I was up in the area of Ithaca by 9:30AM I stopped off for breakfast at a very country cafĂ© place, only three people in the restaurant, surrounded by corn fields.  I had an English muffin sandwich, egg, ham and cheese with home fries and coffee, very good, hit the spot.

I contacted The Boy and arranged a time to meet him, so had some time to kill before that, so decided to go to one of the thrift shops in Ithaca, where I found some lovely Japanese plates with a little cottage scene on them and a J Jill embroidered jacket, so very nice in shades of grey and blue embroidery, also a pink applique table cloth, so fun.

Met the boy unloaded the car along with a few of his requests, and then headed on downtown to pick up a Reuben sandwich for the boy.  Right next to where he works is this Jewish Deli, except you would hardly know it as the street presence at front to say the least is different.  Like looking into a sixties plate glass window with the sitting room there, only after you walk inside you realize that it is a deli and the restaurant part goes back a long way.

My Jewish grandma is sitting right there oh yes!  Taking orders and running the cash register.  The food is great and we will definitely have to go there again, time warped sixties globe lights and all.

Will return.

Christine





Monday, July 20, 2015

A Few Months of Thrifting

Hi Dear Folk,

Almost every Friday evening after work I stop off at our local thrift, it's just a fun thing to start the weekend.  Here are a few of my finds over the past months.


Old Patagonia Pottery, made in Western, Pennsylvania.  As soon as I picked this up I knew it was a keeper, by that I mean things that stay in the cart and you never have a second thought about them. 

At $3.85 it was a good buy, that became an even better buy when I saw that these pots sell between $60.00 to $100 or so dollars.  See here for other beautiful designs.  There is not much on the Internet about the potter.


I love the shade of green inside, it is very twenties.  This was a choice of colour for much household woodwork during that time period.  We sold our very first house to a friend, the trim in one room was painted this colour and he said it reminded him of his family's farm house at Island Pond in Vermont.



One lovely tea plate Strasbourg $1.85 and this too seems to be a collection piece, just a one off, that I will use every day with a cup of tea and a slice of cake.  It was hard to capture the turquoise green of the plate.


All the little wild flowers.



A prolific impressionist this print just appealed to me, will look the name up and add this in later, I can't remember it right now. I looked his name up before, he did many very appealing paintings, so this is for the basement, just to enjoy, roaming the streets of Montmatre.


Crochet, crochet and more crochet magazines and books.  I am well prepared for those winter evenings which do inevitably come around, when crocheting is such a cozy thing to do.  Although with 100% humidity and over 95 f today, it's not something you think about.  Although I do have one project that should be done this summer, involving string, will post more on that later.



Monet's cookery notebooks, how could I pass this by after having visited the gardens at Giverny and seeing the yellow dining room.


I have some yellow and blue plates very similar to this.



A little Japanese vase for a pretty posy, how delicate that is.



This was rather of a splurge buy at $12.00 but was brand new never used and so seventies.


Old ice maker ties in with my cream and brown items below, which were all wedding presents and still working perfectly after 34 years.



Doesn't this case look very sixties I think.  It's a circular adjustable knitting needle set, by Boye.





When I bought this little feller I thought it was a rabbit, but on taking it home I'm sure it's meant to be a hare, he sits here quite happily.


A Chinese pot with goldfish swimming around inside.  So I will not fill it with soil, I'm thinking a solar powered water piece, a little fountain or something, to look through the water at the fish, or just stick a little glass top on and make it a little outside table, or just leave it like this to enjoy.


So just catching up.

This week I have three days off and will be up visiting The Boy in Ithaca, then he will be returning home for a couple of weeks, before the new term starts.

We hope to attend the Artist Market in Ithaca see here and the Finger Lakes Cheese and Wine Festival on Saturday.  Plus a few meals out and a book by one of the many falls is planned.

Christy

 

Saturday, July 18, 2015

No Surrender by Constance E. Maud - Persephone Book

Hi Dear Folk,

My goodness now don't all fall off your perches, but I am posting and actually posting a book review.  It's not that I haven't been reading somewhat, although not as much as I would like to.  As my time for reading is valuable I don't like to waste time starting books that turn out to be awful, so quite often I will stick to a Persephone book, tried and true so to speak.  As you will remember or maybe not, I started my own rating of Persephone books as I read them.  One to five stars, five being the top.

No Surrender, by Constance E. Maud is a book of it's time period, but some social commentaries would hold true for today.  The subject is women's suffrage.  I was able to obtain this book from my local library in old shelving just love those archives.  This copy was published in 1912 by  The John Lane Company, New York, printed in Great Britain by William Brendon and Son, Ltd, Plymouth.


The opening chapters are set in the Black Country, Textile Mills of North England. Jenny Clegg is our heroine she works in a mill, she has an invalid brother Peter, a sister Liz married to an alcoholic, who sends their children away to a distant relative in Australia and Liz has no say over the matter, the law is not on her side; a father who gets drunk and takes all the household money, even the little bit her passive mother had put aside in the Co op Society.  Joe Horton is a Union leader and wants to marry Jenny, he is an up and coming star in the political arena.

Mrs Keziah Topper a neighbor and widow, mother of five children, lives next door to Mrs Clegg and experiences the need of equal pay for women, as all the women do in this neighbourhood.

Contrasted to this are the residents of Brankenhill Hall, the mill owners.  The main character of which is Mary O'Neil a cousin visiting from the Irish side of the family and has sympathy for the workers, although not a true understanding of what they go through, how could she?

Jenny, Keziah and Mary become staunch friends for the cause of women's suffrage.  Jenny and Keziah take a train along with other mill girls, in their mill dress and clogs, down to London to picket for the cause; they know that they will be imprisoned and expect this, but not for as long as the judge sends them down for.  During this stay they meet and befriend many women from all walks of life and different age groups, the Suffragette movement is the great equalizer and sisterhood.

One of the persons she meets in prison is -

Miss Chadwick, a lively, capable-looking woman of the New England type, stood side by side, getting what support they could out of the irresponsive wall.

"We don't call you 'free England,' my dear," Laughed the American lady, "we call you 'poor benighted old England.'"  Says Euphrasia Chadwick from Colorado.

"I love fairy tales, they always seems to me just the truest tales ever written," said Jenny.

One becomes privy to any number of conversations going on in the prison and it is certainly an inside view, excuse the pun, of the conversations that were going on at that time 1912.  Jenny's speech and way is appealing to her audience and she is recruited by higher ups to leave her job at the mill and work full time for the cause.

Here is an interesting commentary on the motor car, remember 1912

The motor-car had also been pressed into the service, and in working for this truly democratic measure, thereby partly atoned for some of its sins as the rich man's luxury, overrunning the country as it does, and destroying in its blind, selfish course the cottage garden and the peace and safety of the village street for children and old people.

One of the leading suffragettes was a Mrs. Wilmot who Jenny goes to stay with.

It was June.  In the heather and pine country of Surrey, which looks as though it had been sliced out of Perthshire, and dropped down within easy reach of the poor toiling Londoner, by a beneficent giant, stood Mrs. Wilmot's pleasant little bungalow ...

Jack Mrs. Wilmot's son is in love with Jenny.  Some interesting conversations with Mrs. Wilmot's cousin, who does not believe in the cause, while all are sitting in the garden partaking of afternoon tea.

"Oh yes," she laughed.  "Anarchists always have a motor ready to take them away after flinging their bombs.  I believe that's why you have one-and all Christian Scientists say they ought to be rich.  Mrs. Eddy's teaching is that poverty is only an error of mortal mind.  I think of joining the sect to see if my bills will get paid."

Later a talk with Jack on their own.

Jenny shook her head sadly.  She liked him;  he was much younger than she had thought;  she hated giving him pain.

"Oh yes, it is," said Jenny.  "It's only what we've lived through as we can feel-that's what shapes our thoughts and shapes our souls.  You must work in your class, God knows you're needed there, and I must work in mine."

Things come to a head, when Jenny, who has sort employment as a maid to gain access to a dinner party being attended by many political men, including Joe Horton.  Mary O'Neil hosts the party in the London house while her aunt is away.  It is at this time that Joe Horton is won over to the cause.

There are many interesting observations on character, jumping to near the end here is one I found very interesting, about Alice Walker who is engaged to Mary O'Neil's brother Terence.

Alice Walker was one of those young women who, while impressing their menkind with their pliability and malleability, retain intact an absolute inflexibility of character, the hardest of all natures to be influenced or convince from the outside, being fundamentally lacking in the suppleness which appears to mere man their chief charm.  To know them he has to marry them and even then such is the guilelessness of many of the self-styled superior sex, that after years of matrimony: ...

Thoughts on a women's suffrage march.

These were those who had borne the toil and heat of life's long day-working, digging, ploughing, sowing, since early womanhood.  Side by side with these marched their younger sisters, the gallant leaders of the great Social and Political Union, whose heroic courage and devotion, even to the death test, had lifted the question of Woman's enfranchisement at last into the arena of practical politics. 

I do like this passage because it gives you an insight of who was involved and many of the trades at the time.

Textile workers from Lancashire and Yorkshire in their shawls and clogs.  Swarthy, strong-limbed Welsh women from the pit's mouth;  sweated tailoresses, doing government work on sailors' and soldiers' uniforms at half men's pay;  post office clerks, who had also experienced the bitter difference between justice as meted out to those with the vote and those without;  chain-makers, jelly-makers, each bearing on a banner the emblem of their trade;  on and on they came.  ...

If one was studying this subject it would be an excellent book to read, how it would shape a picture in your mind of this time period and the suffrage movement.

Did I like this book?  Yes.  How would I rate it, out of five, two stars in the Persephone library.  It did not move me as many other Persephone books have, but still a good read.

I happened to be listening to the BBC about equal pay, today it seems the best Western country to live in for equal rights on pay is New Zealand, just a thought girls, I have still to visit there it's on my list.

Signing off.
Christy

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Crochet Bracelets

Hi Dear Folk,

Ta-da!

The debut of my thirty-five bracelets I've just completed.  Next week they will be on their way to Estonia with a friend who is attending an international convention. The "Imitate Jesus" convention, ours is this weekend in Philadelphia, same programme.  These bracelets are for gifts for friends she meets there at the convention. I also made fifty crochet hair flowers for the little girls, but forgot to take any photos.  I do have one odd one left that slipped down the side of the chair, but no clip attached.  They looked so pretty with all the different buttons on in the centre.  Samone who is attending made little bow-ties for the boys and handkerchiefs for the brothers.

Friends gave to me odd bits and pieces such as odd earrings and broken necklaces, so I took these pieces along with my stash of beads and odds and came up with these.  I had all sorts of wonderful pieces, lamp glass beads from India, old Czech glass beads and Swarovski crystals, bone beads and some amethyst.

These crochet bracelets are such fun to make.  No two are the same, it lets your creative imagination run and you can use all those one off beads that you love but could never use before, it's so rewarding and quite addictive, I am not finished with making these bracelets yet.

Actually I would like to have some friends over for a little bracelet making party, I think it would be such fun. I did stick roughly to a colour scheme for each bracelet.



Some I crocheted with a neutral yarn and others with black yarn, and most of them wrap four times.  So here is one photo of each but not all that I made.

















On about fifteen of the bracelets friends put together the dangles, they were so multicoloured that I decided to attach them to a black yarn, these just wrap twice.




You have to straighten them out a little bit when you put them on.  I was in a bit of a hurry while taking these photos so didn't always take the time to straighten them as I would, if wearing my bracelet out.

I have made two bracelets for myself, will have to take photos of those, one predominately in blues and the other in browns, both in the neutral yarn, but I'm thinking of redoing the blue one with black yarn, we will see.

Christy
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