the basket of loveliness

My holidays were a treat but now I'm back in the jug again. I've taken on a lot and things are a bit challenging for me. Since I was a child I've drawn most days, and always made things, and now I didn't do either for a few months. My Moomin calendar promises me that things will be different from 1 October. Meanwhile, how am I coping with myself? The basket of loveliness.

Into the basket of loveliness I am putting all the ideas of things that I cannot yet do. There are books and magazines that I will read, and recipes for preserves and jams that I might make. There are Bohemian and Venetian nineteenth century tiny glass trade beads that I will thread. I have the shirting cottons for a quilt that I didn't work out. And there's the flower thread and linen for embroidery of the wild verbascum that I saw growing on doorsteps when I was on the Ile de Ré. I did buy myself the swimsuit of loveliness when I was there, it's in the basket too, and I will wear it to swim at the Lido. A while ago I found an unfinished finest wool early twentieth century nightdress. I will work all the embroidery with white Danish flower thread and find the palest of ribbons to thread through the eyelet holes that I will have to learn how to make. I think the nightdress might shrink a little and become white when I soak it for the first time.

The biggest project of the winter will be our front and back gardens. Our pavement vault has collapsed. It's a long and boring tale. We're doing emergency stuff but all the rest has to be planned. We will have new walls and will have to rebuild the flight of steps to our front door. I kind of think that we will keep all the climbing roses and the olive and bay trees but otherwise start again with our soft landscaping. That is all the thinking that I have allowed myself to have about new gardens.

The basket of loveliness is getting very full.

 

PS. My favourite winter coat arrived. It is wonderful and all that I had hoped for....but it is so enormous that it fits David not me. He likes it very much. I will see him wearing it often. I don't think I will buy another. Matching coats? Yikes. No way.

Comments

[Marge]

You have much more will-power than I do - I just want to dive in there. And your garden sounds lovely - roses, olive and bay...

[David Stotton]

Actually this comment relates to your entry of 27th April 2013 about the photos of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. The name of the young woman in the photo was Lizzie Alice Hawkesfield and the photo is titled ' Holding the Line'.

[Braunelle]

Hello Victoria,
Oh, I am looking forward to see all the results of your loving basket. Good luck.
Kind regards
Braunelle