February TIF - Sharon's colour palette

After much deliberation I decided to use the colour palette Sharon B set. However the other part of the challenge took be back in time to visit almost forgotten memories.

I remember when with R1 my mother would put 50c petrol in the car, which gave her a weeks worth of travelling backwards and forwards from home to school to work and back again. After we had filled the petrol tank we would drive around the corner to the Café where I would go in and buy a loaf of white bread, a loaf of whole wheat bread (this was for the dogs as we did not eat brown bread then), two packets of crisps and pa packet of beeches peppermint. I would come away with change in my hand.

I remember getting a record player for my 13th birthday, 1972, I had three vinyl records, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and two seven singles; one by Elton John, one side played Candle in the wind and the other Bennie and the Jets. The other single was Cher, with Dark Lady on side one and I can’t remember what the song was on side two because I only played Dark Lady. When I hear any of the above played now I am taken immediately back to my room in our house in Wendywood.

I remember spending the summer weekends in the pool from early morning to early evening. I was never told to stay out of the pool at midday, I never once used sun protection cream….what was that? Sometimes at night I would have milky vision from the chlorine my Dad used to put in the pool water, but that was nothing a good night sleep couldn’t cure.

As both my parents worked I used to go to an aftercare centre when school finished in the early afternoon. I used to walk the 6 blocks from the school to the aftercare centre, sometimes alone and sometimes in a group. Sometimes when there was a group and mulberries were in season we would stop at a house en rout to the aftercare centre and feast on the mulberries from the branches hanging over the wall on to the pavement. We would be late getting to the aftercare centre; we would not be scolded for our tardiness, but we would be severely reprimanded about the mulberry stains on our clothes.

I remember the sad day when it was announced at the assembly that the church was going to be locked because the previous night it had been vandalised. This was unheard of; I remember one of the nuns crying at this ghastly incident and the outcome.
Memories have come to the forefront of my mind, some are wonderful, some have made me sad, especially because some of the people who helped to make the memories are no longer here…..some memories are just too painful to visit….some memories have made me smile and left me with a warm feeling.

I managed to complete my project on time but due to circumstances beyond my control I have not been able to post before now. Yet another challenge for me, I’ve tried where possible to stay within the palette set.

On my piece - going through my fabric and threads I came across a WISP and noticed that the colours in Sharon's palette, so I was very lucky not too much preparation was required. I had intended for this piece to be a bag and now I have managed to complete this WISP.

January TIF - Women of Malawi

My January Challenge is done, I have to say that for me it was quite a challenge, the colours, staying in the lines, fun, lots of fun!!

February starts on Friday looking forward to the next challenge!

Take it Further Challenge - the beginning.....

At last the dial up is connected and I am able to just be in touch with the internet world. Malawi has many advantages, but there are some very small disadvantages – one of them being dial up internet connection – but enough of this on to more important matters.

The challenge for this month; I have decided to use both options for my January challenge, which I am going to call “Women of Malawi”. The reason for using the colours is because I saw this as an even bigger challenge for me, why? Because I can’t say that I am excited by these colours, however, when sitting on the veranda of our house looking out into the garden there before me are all the colours.

Now I am going to digress slightly to a conversation I remember having with my Granny when I was about thirteen when matching just the right colours was very important to me. I remember this as if it was yesterday; my Granny had just put a vase on the dining room table where I was sitting drawing; she said to me – “Isn’t nature wonderful, she can put colours together making them look as though they were meant to be together…….in the vase was a mixture of colours, golden yellow marigolds, soft lilac cornflowers, deep red roses, bright yellow daisies, yellow and purple pansies with their smiling faces. As I sit here on the veranda, I am faced with a similar bouquet; only this bouquet is not in a vase on the table but in the garden before me. How lucky I am!

Back to the present – I have chosen the Women of Malawi, because they work so hard and have to endure many hardships. Driving through rural Malawi it is not uncommon to see the women working the fields; usually she will have a baby on her back and two or three playing around her feet. When she returns home from the field she will have to go to the pump with a bucket to get water, then she will have to see to the children, make a fire, if there is no fire wood she will have to collect this first. Then there is the evening meal to prepare. In the morning she will stamp the corn, lay it out on a mat to dry in the sun, then it will be off to the fields again. Some young girls become women at a very early age, being left at home to look after her siblings. It’s a hard life for Women in Malawi – I know that Malawi is not the only place where a Woman’s lot is difficult, but I am here and I see it almost everyday.

Despite their hardship when greeted they reward you with the warmest of smiles.

I have also decide that in my challenge the piece of work I make will be incorporated in an article to be used, this month I will put my work on to a tote I have been crocheting.

My mind map.

It's December already.....

I've really been very busy, this being the reason for not having posted in such a looong time. Things that have been keeping me busy: The Denim bag was inspiration ganed from Sharon Boggin's blog - In A Minute Ago, The bag of stitches was a way for mwt to get to know some stitches, the beady things was filling a gap and so was the blanket.

I am looking forward to a new year filled with more and more ideas.

June Bead Journal Page

My June page is complete, here it is. This page as I have mentioned before is dedicated to my Father. The waves in the bottom left hand corner represent the sea, my Father would spend hours walking along the seashore; the heart in the top right hand block is placed probably out of place that’s because while my Father had a good heart but it wasn’t always in the right place. The Fleur-di-lis(sp?) represents my Father’s time with the Boy Scouts. I think he was always sorry he did not have a son, he loved the Scout movement. The wheels represent cogs in machinery; my father was an engineer by trade. Lastly the sequins represent the stars, as I believe that is where he would want to be, floating among the stars in the sky, he loved the night sky and star gazing.

Well now it is on to the next month; more about this in my next blog.

BJP June page

Missed my dead line but I am nearly finished. Will post a picture of the finished project 30th June.

There are some amazingly talented people, an hour in the morning is not enough to look at all the beautiful work.

Bead Journal Project: June

I am starting this a little late in the month, I have deceided to set myself a target, as this page is being dedicated to my Father I would like to get it finished by 25th June, his birthday.

Fabrics being considered for the page. I am looking at winter browns and greens as here in the southern hemisphere we are in winter.

Winter solstice is the 25th June, my mother always says on this day..."we have now turned the corner and heading for the summer solstice!" She hates the winter and longs all winter long for long hot summer days.

Lady of Leisure

So now here I am a lady of leisure….. able to do all the things I have not had the time to do in the past.

Living in a small town and not having to work the women network soon envelops new comers. In January I was invited to join the art group, and the potters group, at these groups I learned about activities other ladies of leisure were doing to keep minds and hands busy. It was at the potters group that I learned about the embroidery group. Having delved a little in cross stitch and a few poor attempts at chain stitch, I joined the embroidery group. What a wonder; being the proverbial square peg I feel I have found my square fit.

I have posted some of my first attempts below.

In wanting to get more inspiration for projects I turned to the internet as in this lovely little town there are no library facilities, but then who needs a library when there is an electronic one sitting on my desk…albeit a slow one…it does work. After much searching I happened upon Sharon B’s embroidery stitch library, looked into the “a minute ago blog” and a new world was opened up to me. Sharon if you read this thank you so much for your information and totally unselfish sharing of your knowledge, blogs of interesting topics, I begin my day reading your blog and continue my day inspired.

Now I am going to try my hand at the beaded journal. I was too late to enter as I was on holiday and did not have access to the internet, but I am going to partake anyway.

I have decided that my journal pages will be dedicated to special people and events I have met and experienced. My first page I am going to dedicate to my Father as this is his birthday month, something to remember him by.



Bitten by the cross stitch bug but finding that there was just not enough liberty for what I had in my mind to achieve.



















This was one of my first attempts at crazy quilting and embroydery. I am ashamed to say that these slippers are still a WIP.







This is where I create, this room is wonderful and has a beautiful outlook on our vast garden. I am so lucky!!

How it all began

I arrived in Malawi permanently on the 2nd January 2007. I had been here before in 2005, not knowing the true purpose of this visit; as the weeks turned to months spending many hours soul searching, trying to understand why I had put myself on a very remote part of this continent with people I felt really uncomfortable with. It was after I had made a decision that I had punished myself enough, life on the remote Nyika Plateau had awakened in me the need to become anonymous once more and to return to the concrete jungle I had run away from 5 months earlier. I needed to be in a place where things worked, where there was a city crowded with people, to get away from the handful of broken people each hiding from their respective demons. I remember thinking at the time that I was faced by such wide open spaces everyday, yet by the end of five months I was beginning to get cabin fever.

While being incredibly beautiful, the Nyika was cold and unwelcoming….

On 27th August 2005 I welcomed a group of guests from Lilongwe. They had come to the Nyika Plateau for the weekend. In the group consisted of a married couple, a single woman and a single man. They were very friendly upon my greeting, but being tired and all guest out, to me this was just another series of late nights and early mornings of mindless small talk. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We had a wonderful time and an invitation was extended to me by the single man to use his house as a base when I left the Nyika Plateau at the end of September.

My intention when leaving the Nyika was to travel more in the country of Malawi, but by the end of September I had had enough of Nyika, my spirit was in pieces and all I wanted to do was to go back to South Africa, back to my Son, back to my friends, back to things that worked, back to the rat race!

David (the man I met in August) was upset that I wanted to leave. He wanted me to stay and travel as I had planned. I didn’t instead I spent a week sleeping away my pain that would not go away. I knew that David wanted more from me but I was not able to give anything. He was beginning to suffocate me and I could not get away fast enough.

Arriving home was even more depressing….my mother had allowed my sister to stay in my flat, so when I got home I had to camp in unfamiliar surroundings. Getting a job was proving to be extremely difficult. I was going downhill fast…..All the time David was there to give me words of encouragement and all the time I kept pushing him away. I had another decision to make, I would move back to the coast where I had spent most of my life, my son was born there and my friend family were there. I did this; the healing began, I was surrounded by people who accepted me for me, my friends welcomed me with open arms, my son and I spent quality time together. I was home!

For David this was not the end, he was not going to let me slip through his fingers, after many visits from Malawi to Durban, David convinced me that we were meant to be together. After much deliberation with my Son and my best friend, I decided that I would give it a go. Have not looked back, I don’t take one minute of this man for granted in the last 10 months he is the man I can look in the same direction with.

At last I am happy!