Complete Sunday Rest Day. Great fun. Picture 1 is the Stable Block at Wollaton and Photoshop kindly made it into a line drawing for me, so that the beautiful architecture can be enjoyed, uncluttered. Maybe people wont like it, but your blogmeister does - so it's in. And I converted it to sepia to please Jill.A side-effect is that the interpretation conveys a feeling of age, which suits the subject.
Picture 2 is also from Wollaton. Permission to take photographs inside the building is such a concession, and there is a wealth of photogenic material. Tomorrow I shall e-mail them a 'thank you' and say how much I applaud their policy.This embroidery is I guess, not an original, but the box of cottons looks just right. Many of us remember mothers and grandmothers with a frame such as this and a very similar box. And I am sure that the hobby, and the equipment are extant.
Welcome back Madeline - lovely to hear from you and I am sure that you are right with the 'charm of goldfinches'. They are charming. Far less strident than starlings, less assertive than robins, but still with such a 'presence'.
Sorry about your potential loss of power and I hope you still have it. But Picture 3 shows a chap with the complete, green, alternative.
I've had a great day and caught up on reading, and plenty of radio. The Classic Serial, Poetry Please is back, with the redoubtable Roger McGough in the chair. One of the poems featured was Lawrence's 'The Snake" which in my opinion is one of the best ever nature poems. Please click here if you would like to read it. But many poems can better be appreciated if listened to with the text in front of you. You can always use the BBC's 'listen again' facility and so much these days is available to download (for free) and transfer to your MP3 player.
ArtDaily is good today. And if you catch the John Singer Sargent video you will see a fleeting glimpse of his portrait of Lady Agnew. The painting is probably Y and my favourite portrait and is in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. Looking at their current website (the link above) the painting is not mentioned. So perhaps the current curator doesn't rate it. But, being absolutely sure that it is there I did a little googling and here she is. Beautiful lady, beautiful painting, but my less than mediocre reproduction doesn't do her justice. If you are ever in Edinburgh it would repay you etc.......... Unless the curator has got her hidden down in the stacks.
Quotation.......Dylan Thomas points out a nice point.....
"An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do"
....Nice chat to David this morning, texts exchanged with Y, and my cookery exploits have rested on eating left-over portions that we have frozen. I've had spicy-carrot soup and toasted ciabatta, spagbol and bread, and numerous coffee and bscuit breaks. Several years ago there was an hilarious radio play about this family who used to employ a woman to come in each day to eat their left-overs. Sleep tight and I'll catch you tyomorrow..........
....Nice chat to David this morning, texts exchanged with Y, and my cookery exploits have rested on eating left-over portions that we have frozen. I've had spicy-carrot soup and toasted ciabatta, spagbol and bread, and numerous coffee and bscuit breaks. Several years ago there was an hilarious radio play about this family who used to employ a woman to come in each day to eat their left-overs. Sleep tight and I'll catch you tyomorrow..........
I agree with almost everything you say about the Stable Block ‘sketch’. But it does not, to me, have the quality of a GOOD pen and ink drawing.
ReplyDeleteMy mother did a lot of embroidery, mainly tablecloths, some of which she passed on to Sandra who uses them occasionally. I remember one in particular of flowers (I think nasturtiums or possibly carnations) where parts of the pattern are cut out.
Snow White also embroidered and pricked her finger as I recall.
I do not quit see how the piece in your picture can be other than an ‘original’? Surely it isn’t a print?
Our 17 year old granddaughter Alex is interested in embroidery although perhaps not enough to actually do any (but I may well be doing her a disservice!).
Your picture shows admirably how one can keep fit and lower carbon footprint at the same time.
I am an admirer of Roger McGough; like the way he appeals to childrens and adults too. ‘Potato Clock’ is a lovely childeren’s poem, and one about football and being captain.
The Lawrence poem is terrific although I am uncomfortable with what seems like a change of tense in the second stanza.
I’ll check today’s ArtDaily and comment if I have anything to add.
Great Dylan Thomas quote, here’s one from Mark Twain:
‘Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Please also see comment on yesterday's blog.
Here's a link to a list of collective nouns for birds in Wikipedia. I don't know how accurate they are, but I've heard of some of them.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter used to do a lot of embroidery and cross-stitch stuff, but I don't think she has any spare time for it these days. I was taught embroidery at primary school back in the 1940s along with sewing in general. I hated it, but at least I can mend things!
I think you've just solved the country's obesity problem. Get everyone using pedal-power in order to use their computers! It would mean lower electricity bills too.
Drat, forgot the link! Actually, it's not a link, just a URL that you can use:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collective_nouns_for_birds
I too had meant to mention the John Singer Sergeant video which greatly impressed me also (although Lady Agnew is not my favourite). The quality of light in many of the pictures Is tremendous, very different from but, I would say, as good as Turner.
ReplyDeleteLike Madeline, Sandra hated 'dress making', or whatever it was called, at school. But her aversion has persisted. She refuses to sew on my buttons and only once darned half of a pair of my dark socks with a large white snowball which nearly got myself and a neighbour thrown out of a village meeting for laughing (I was wearing them with open sandals).