Category3BT

Based on the Three Beautiful Things project by Clare Law, I try to write about three pleasant things from my day.

3BT – woven, come find me, help please

1. I finish my first piece of grown up weaving. It’s a very basic plain weave but I can see progress (in terms of tension/evenness) across the length of it. There is also enough yarn left of each colour to make a second practise piece – this time trying out some more interesting weaves. Time to level up!

2. Tilda and Strange join me in the top room while I weave. (Or rather they let me join them in their top room.) At one point, Tilda chases the threads at my feet and later, she explores behind me. I hear her purring as she pads on the gorilla then I hear plaintive mews from somewhere in the storage space under the eaves: she’s trying to fish in Strange so she can jump on her. Strange’s face says she’s not falling for it.

3. Lily struggles with the new toy for a little while then takes it over to John. He’ll help so she doesn’t get too frustrated.

3BT – planning, crush, whipped chain

1. I spend far too long fiddling with my plan for the allotments but it’s very enjoyable. I plan a row of permanent perennial herbs, groups of beds for proper crop rotation and wild flowers at the edges, to help with pollination. I hope I can pull it off in reality as well as on a computer screen.

2. I listen to an old Thinking Allowed podcast while hanging out and sorting laundry. The idea of pain as a cultural phenomenon is fascinating and my historian crush on Joanna Bourke grows stronger. She looks at such a wide range of interesting stuff – I want to be her when I grow up.

3. A row of neat whipped chain stitches in a clean mid green.

3BT – quickly smooth/quirk, cushion, pads & purrs

1. I make up some more test glazes and again, I’m surprised by how quickly the lumpy powder becomes a smooth solution.

1b. We’re busy chatting about allotments when my bus sails past the shop window. A quirk in the road system means I can reach the stop-after-next before the bus does – and the traffic is on my side too. I barely even have to rush.

2. My cushion arrives and it makes me laugh as much as it did in Scotland. (I’m not a cushion person but this one made me giggle so much while we were away: he’s just so earnest and those gloved hands, oh my.)

3. Just about every night, when Tilda takes her place in the hammock, she pads and purrs away to herself.

3BT – to scale, t-shirt weather/furrows/the watcher, the visitor, full meal

1. I’m usually so scruffy – scribbled plans on scrap paper – which makes these plans, to scale and neat, even more pleasing.

2. I take off my jacket and realise it’s t-shirt weather.

2b. The wide bed divided into neat furrows. I sprinkle them with seed and then rake the soil flat. Working with full, wide beds is as much as a novelty as neat scale drawings.

2c. The dog watches me work, enjoying the sun, and presses her nose between the fence slats when I cross to the other plot to stow away my tools.

3. Tilda visits me in the bath, just like Carla & Sili used to do.

4. Some hastily cooked vegetables on the side and suddenly it’s a full meal.

3BT – tickles, illusion/only a little bashed, two tone/Team Peach

1. Lily demands tickles from R then becomes a puppy chasing a ball.

2. Cutting the courgette and chorizo on the diagonal makes it seem somehow lighter.

2b. A delicious cake for half price because it’s been slightly bashed about? Don’t mind if I do.

3. I can hear Strange’s purrs at one frequency and feel them as a rumble in the mattress as another.

3b. For a moment, all of Team Peach is together in the top room.

3BT – pleasing, ready to roast, muted

1. I finally start the weft. Even though it’s just cheap acrylic and my ends & packing need practise, the result is very pleasing.

2. A tray full of colourful vegetable pieces ready to roast.

3. More colour love: the muted tones of the crewel wool. I pick two blues, side by side on the colour chart, for the base.