some recent stitches and pics

I'm behind yet again with posting. They say the world is paved with good intentions, and I have surely contributed my share!

About 3 weeks of my time was taken up recently  emptying rooms and cupboards to have carpets replaced with floating flooring - lots and lots of books and, no surprise, a lot of craft gear. It was a  very exhausting process, but I am happy with the result.
I've made several journal covers, a couple as a result of teaching to local groups. These are great to try out emroidery stitches on my machine. I seem not to be trying too many though as I have found a couple that I really like and I keep on using them...

These were small notebooks. The other was an A4 cover to showcase a small piece of natural hand dyed bamboo given to me by a friend. The plants used were gum (eucalyptus) leaves, and I did a little hand and machine embroidery on them.

The colour in the picture of the front is truer than front and back picture below

I also have a much larger dyed piece to work with, but that is going to take some thought.

Whilst recovering from moving stuff and watching Commonwealth Games I have been doing a bit of cross stitch on a small sample piece I bought a while back in Stockholm. I'll take a photo when it is finished. At the moment I am doing some fairly intense quilting on a quilt. I'm not fast, and have done about 24 hours so far, on possibly a third.  The picture for that will have to wait.

When I need a break I escape to the garden for a while. One day I spotted a small narrow upright type of toadstool. The next day when I looked I saw a flower there.

 

 

 Closer inspection showed that it was the toadstool which had opened up and split, but so evenly it looked like petals on a flower - so much so, that when we tried to identify the toadstool using a photograph on Google, it only came up with flowers.
A couple of weeks later in the same spot was this

The weather lately has been so warm, and it is currently so hot that it is breaking records for April. We have had lots of big bright blue skies with some fascinating cloud formations (unfortunately not rain clouds though - we all have our hopes set on tomorrow's forecast for some rain).

 

 

 

 

I tried to capture the shiny silvery leaves on this eucalypt at Meadows the other day. I wasn't very successful, but it looked so spectacular with the sun shining on them and another bright blue sky behind.

 

Here is a little show of my back yard wildlife.
When I moved craft books onto the back patio area while the flooring was done, next day I discovered this cheeky (and quite chubby) gecko on the top of a book...

Another day I looked up from the outdoor table and spotted a couple of cheeky little rats on the rail of the back fence and going back and forth into a native hibiscus. This is one of them - look for the black beady eyes in the middle of the picture.

After they scampered off somewhere I discovered what they had been doing - stripping the bark from the hibiscus, I guess for a nest.

 

Another day I came across 2 small wasp nests. They looked rather like round small pine tree nuts, until I disturbed them and wasps emerged from the different little sectors

This one is hanging from the one little stalk under a bird's nest fern leaf.

That's it for now. Next I'll put up some photos I took of the spectacular Parade of Light during our recent Fringe Festival.

end of our journey

The last few days in Morocco took us to the coastal port of Essouira, through some very dry and desolate stretches,

 and irrigated areas and vines - this raised water channel is running beside an adobe wall or fence,

  past makers of decorated nomad tents

  and native pines and argan trees, here with the infamous goats in the latter,

to a  women's cooperative which processes and markets argan oil, with an extensive product range. These women demonstrated the stages of the processing.

The fruit of the argan tree is small, and round, oval, or conical, with a thick peel covering the fleshy pulp. The pulp in turn surrounds a hard-shelled nut representing about 25% of the weight of the fresh fruit, and the nut contains one to three oil-rich kernels.

Briefly, extraction is done by workers first drying argan fruit in the open air and then removing the fleshy pulp. Then the nuts are cracked to get the kernels which are roasted, ground and pressed to get a cooking oil. The remaining press cake is protein-rich and often used as animal feed. Cosmetic argan oil is produced similarly from un-roasted kernels.

 

 

Finally to Essouira, the old fortified trading port on the Atlantic coast. The Portuguese built the first fort during their occupation in the first half of the 1500s, and numerous other countries tried to control it thereafter. For many years gold, salt and slaves were traded to the Americas and Europe. More recently, in the 1960s and 70s it became a haven for the rich and famous, and hippy culture - it was a favourite of Jimmy Hendrix and Santana. Nowadays it is a busy fishing port and very popular tourist and surf destination.

 

 

There was a mix of small and large fishing boats. We watched some of these small ones, with an outboard motor on the back,  go out at dusk one evening, in what seemed to me quite quite a choppy sea. There were many larger vessels and long-line trawlers. This old one was being refurbished alongside where the fishermen sell their day's catch on the wharf.

 

 Seagull sentinels

The beach, complete with deck chairs for the tourists - the surfing beach was further away.

 It is home of a renowned Nguano music festival – a  soulful jazz style with roots in the music of Africans from Guinea.  Our splendid riad was built up against the old city wall.

At high tide, our first floor rooms resounded with the noise of the waves crashing on the wall below us and sending the spray onto our windows. This was the view from our window at low tide - much quieter then! -

and this was a view from dining room/restaurant at the top of the building.

 and the view from a great seafood restaurant we visited

 We set out to walk around the medina and found ourselves in the middle of a May-Day parade....

before visiting fabulous wood workers, who do the most intricate inlay work

 and French polish all their work, (that's what the young people are doing here)

 and a cooperative of mute workers making beautiful silver and enamel jewellery.

Here are a few random shots 

Date on this building is 1332...

 Narrow alleys before trading hours

 This gentleman crochets these caps to sell

 The traffic warden's lunch on the footpath

 The old caravanserai

 

Old berber camel rugs and chairs

 

Very colourful jelabas

Traditional instrument and dress

The French influence!

And finally, sunset over the Atlantic for a fitting finish

If you have watched to the end, I hope you have enjoyed it.