3BT – Page 180 – Louisa Parry

3BT – new project, on anti-cry patrol, quiet time

1. She started but didn’t finish embroidering the linen table cloth. For 50p, I take on the challenge.

2. After giving Katherine hell for a week, poorly Joe is all smiles as I push him around the supermarket. It’s the exciting boingy hair and buy one get one free offers that get his interest.

3. While John watches Star Trek in the living room, I spend the evening on the sofa in the dining room reading, with a cat on my belly and a dog by my side. A wonderfully relaxing end to a mostly wonderfully relaxed week.

3BT – on the road, on the pavement, two day week

3/6/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The trees met high above the road and we’re grateful for their shade. We come across two men, topless, sunbathing on the roadside during their lunchbreak. Around them, there are ropes and tools, and we realise they’re the source of the occasional chainsaw noise we’d been hearing throughout the day.

2. When we fed the neighbours’ cats at Christmas, we had to wrap up warm for the short snowy journey – coats and wellington boots. Today I pad next-door-but-one barefoot. The west-facing Yorkshire flagstone are smooth and warm.

3. I realise as I’m going to bed that even though it’s felt like Monday (because it’s been the first day of work after a long-long-long weekend), tomorrow is Friday.

3BT – spectrum, mid-afternoon break, menacing

2/6/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The purple dye transforms all the items but each ends up a different colour depending on its fabric composition and soak time. The colours range from dusky pink to mottled heather and glossy aubergine. The wool yarn, the point of the dyeing session, is a muted grape – I like muted colours so it’s perfect.

2. We drink tea and chatter. The animals pad around us before stretching out in the sun.

3. I mis-read “violent seas” as “violet seas” and when I notice the error, prefer my interpretation of the line.

3BT – I’m not the only one, misconception, night bright

1/6/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The bus stops right outside. I ring the buzzer and tell the voice at the other end of the wire that I’m there to stroke yarn. The way she laughs makes it clear she understands. Inside, everywhere I turn, I see potential.

2. I try spinning for the first time: the wool thing, not the intense exercise thing. I once told Katherine “I want to try spinning” and she was shocked to her marrow, thinking I meant the latter. I am not the type of girl who would want to try that sort of spinning, oh no, definitely not.

3. At dusk, the lime leaved marjoram is particularly vivid against the dull paintwork.

3BT – soft & even, play time, the new recipe

31/5/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. Her freshly clipped coat feels like velvet.

2. We worry – as we always do – that the play is bordering on fighting but the woman assures us that it is definitely play. The dogs bounce around together amongst the oak trees as we talk about them behind their backs.

3. The slow-rise bread – 22 hours in the making – comes out of the oven too late to eat with dinner so we have it as dessert instead. Its golden dome is perfectly cracked, its centre spongy & bubbled.

3BT – finally finished, look closer, soapy spheres

30/5/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The joy of a job finally finished – the last of our veg beds dug over and ready for seedlings. Years of ambivalence left them compacted and weed clogged so it’s been a chore to clear them out but I know that from here on in – next year and the years after that – it’ll be easier.

(1b. There are a couple of plants in the bed and the remnants of daffodils. I transplant what I can but one of the plants falls apart on the way. I salvage its blood red blooms.)

2. John explains that the wild food walk last weekend has changed how he looks at grassland – he no longer sees “just green” but the huge variety of different plants growing in a small area. We look around and spot sorrel, lady’s smock & purple thistles amongst the grass, clover & buttercups at our feet. Across the beck, the bank is full of flowering ramsons & chickweed, a cloud of white flowers giving way to late bluebell wilting up the hill. Definitely not “just green”.

3. I blow bubbles from the balcony. The wind catches them and they float up and out over the gardens.

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