A Bluestocking Knits

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    “Even When Friends are Absent, Yet They are With Us”

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    This is my friend J’s “Peacock Tapestry” cross-stitch that was her half of our “finish-along” in the summer of 2022. It has been six months now since she died, and although I am slowly getting used to that — it can be surprisingly easy, when one is hundreds of miles away, to forget that someone is gone, to find yourself picking up the phone to text her then thinking, “oh wait, no” — just seeing this is still hard.

    I had to laugh when her sister-in-law and best friend brought me the frame and supplies a few weeks ago — of course, I had told J that I didn’t think I should finish it for her when she asked me in 2020, because of the “left-handed, right-handed crosses” issue, and then two years later, when I had pulled out my equally long-unfinished “English Cottage” (also by Teresa Wentzler), we had a memorable summer exchanging photos and encouraging messages by text, as we worked on our respective projects.

    But Laura and I had a chat about it yesterday, and I have decided to finish it. I admit that I have been reluctant, since it isn’t really my style — definitely J’s though, she liked rich colors and textures and, it must be said, a bit of drama! not in her personal life, mind, just in her decorative sense! — but it will be my memorial to her and to our friendship, since, unless I can wrap my brain around making my crosses the “other” way, hers will be this way / then \, and mine will be \ then /, so that it will be clear, to me and to the eagle-eyed at least, which are hers and which are mine. She had worked, really, comparatively few of the leaves in the tree, and I am hoping that, if it really does matter about mixing the two kinds of crosses, the scattering of her leaves here and there will not be too distracting. Luckily for me, she had finished pretty much all of the border except for the Algerian eyelets in the lines of diamonds, and a few other spots, so that at least will be relatively cohesive!

    She was sometimes even more librarian-y than me, even though she was never actually a librarian — yes, there is a dot-matrix printed inventory of threads! She bought the chart in 1994! —

  • “The Bywater Diary of Bowman Underhill” (part 6)

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    [page(s) missing]

    … opened my blocked garden gate! Spent quite some time this afternoon just sitting there on the little step, enjoying the autumn sunshine, the sounds and smells.

    I will need more orange paint at this rate!

    [pages missing]

    … collecting Walnuts for a Foraging Club mission. I declare, I never saw such a place as Bywater for Walnuts.

  • How to Sew Mitered Corners

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    This was a surprisingly popular post on my old “Mommy Cooks” blog, and so since that is not longer available after TypePad’s demise, I thought I’d write it up again here!

    We regularly use fabric napkins at our house, and also Japanese wrapping cloths (furoshiki) for gifts. When making a new set, mitering the corners of the hems is a simple way to get a finished look to them.

    Fold the raw edges of your fabric 1/4 inch to the wrong side, and press.  Fold under again another 1/4 inch, and press.

    Unfold these turnings, and trim off each corner diagonally across the second fold lines.

    Fold this new edge 1/4 inch, and press.

    Refold the straight edges and press again to form the miter. Top-stitch the folded edges into place.

    There are many ways to tie furoshiki for wrapping gifts, carrying things, etc. Try the tutorials at Keiko Furoshiki, the classic PDF of illustrations from the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, or any number of sources.

  • “The Bywater Diary of Bowman Underhill” (part 5)

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    Thursday.  Fine.

    Farmer Cotton & Rosie here for breakfast – early because “a farmer’s work is never done,” as he is fond of saying.

    I’ve been doing well enough in the Fishing Club for Old Noakes to give me a new rod, with a fine new bobber!  AND earned a new mixing bowl in the Cooking Club!  Find that I am quite enjoying cooking — especially for friends — & the washing-up takes no time atal, wh. is a constant wonder to me, as I always found it a bit of a drudge in Bree.  It has just occurred to me that I didn’t say “back home in Bree” — I am starting to feel truly at home here.  This pleases me no end!

    Overheard in the Village Square: “I swear I saw Delphinium crunching on a mushroom like an apple”!

    Being a somewhat absent-minded hobbit, I am spending the evening drawing a map of Bywater on which I mean to note the locations of the various fruit & nut trees &c &c.  One doesn’t wish to be caught short of Apples when it is time to make Baked Apples Filled with Oats, to be sure.

    Am also a hobbit who loves maps.

    Friday.  Fine.

    Went to Nefi’s forge at his request. to learn that I’m to be allowed to fish from Ladle’s Jetty! “Catch many fish to make the mad Hobbit happy,” Nefi said.  I’m pretty sure that was a joke.  Ladle just quacked & looked a bit perplexed, as Ladle does.  Still haven’t figured out why Ladle wears a helmet.  Perhaps that’s also a dwarf joke.

    Saturday.  Fine.

    Had Delphinium & Sandyman here for an early supper.  Made a Baby Marrow Tart & Tuckborough Pikelets — a recipe that Delphinium had given me.  They’re sort of like crumpets, but with Currants & mushrooms & nuts, so a bit more substantial.

    Have been doing pretty well in the Foraging Club, too, enough for Delphinium to give me a lantern so that I can forage when it’s getting dark — very handy indeed!

    [page missing]

    … spent the afternoon foraging — Blackberries & Elderberries — there are quite a lot of each along the lane outside my front gate — then the evening making jams.  Made nineteen jars all told!  I’m sure that my face is as red as a piece of Rhubarb.  Went outdoors for a little while before bed to enjoy the cool evening & the beautiful stars.

    [page missing]

    … the dirt under my fingernails!  Found myself inspecting them multiple times this morning, waiting my turn at Farmer Cotton’s stall.

    At Ladle’s Jetty, I caught a splendid Tench, twelve pounds if it was an ounce.  Felt very pleased with myself!  Then in full view of Nefi and Ladle, I ran straight into the timber support around the Burrowses’s back door as I left, wh. kept me humble.

    [page missing]

    … was so involved in deciding yesterday evening what to plant where that it was utterly dark when I rushed to bed — taking my watering can with me!

    Tuesday.

    An exciting day!  Had spent much of it out & about — fishing, mostly — when I ran into Willow Took, who completely flabbergasted me by admitting that she’d fixed my front door & opened up the passage & the room beyond!  I could barely stutter out my thanks before racing home to see it.

    It is a lovely big room with a fireplace & a little sort of alcove off to one side.  It will be perfect done up as a bedroom for uncle — I must write & tell him.  And start looking out for furniture, of course.

    Lit a jolly big fire, as it was quite cold! & of course the room need airing anyway —

    Fished at Ladle’s Jetty later.  A beautiful afternoon — the cold water so clear that I could see the shadows of the fish on the bottom, & so blue that it was like the sky but for the ripples on the surface.

  • Making a Sandwich

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    A quilt “sandwich,” that is! No more Joann’s to run to with coupon in hand — alas — so instead of patronizing my not-quite-local quilt shop, I’m afraid I caved in and bought a package of batting online. This is a brand I haven’t tried before, Quilter’s Dream, but it feels good in my hands and pinned smoothly and neatly, so that now I am ready to start the hand quilting!

    Now I just have to decide what design to do ….

  • “The Bywater Diary of Bowman Underhill” (part 4)

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    Saturday.  Last day of Summer.

    Ran into Mrs. Cotton on the path, coming down from the farm.  She has a great many recipes that she got from her old family cookbooks, for the Cooking Club – but her old mixing bowl is bent out of shape, & would I take it to someone called Nefi, at the forge.

    Nefi is a rather alarming individual — a Dwarf — though much taller than I expected.  I may have stared a bit — I have never met a Dwarf before.  He was stern & brusque.  “Making friends is like ice fields carving the mountains.  Powerful.  Mighty.  Very slow.”  I was not a little taken aback when he said it was impossible to mend the bowl, but then he said that this was because his tongs had fallen into a tunnel, down which he could not fit.  (I can well believe that.)  But I was happy to go down there, once I found the way in, although it was dark & not a little dank, & fetch them.  “I am grateful,” Nefi said, “Now I will call you ‘Tong Friend.’”  That is something to tell the folks back in Bree!

    Found another lost parcel, a bit wet from the dew so that the address was illegible, but I could still read “From your favourite cousin, at Bucklebury.”  Wandered about for a while, foraging, then it struck me — Brandybuck, of course, you mutton-head!  It did indeed turn out to be for Miss Delphinium, & she was so happy to get it at last that she gave me some Delphinium seeds for my garden.  The seeds are from ones growing up on the hill above her home —

    Sunday.  First day of Autumn.

    First day of autumn — the leaves seem to have turned golden overnight!

    New season, new vegetables for the kitchen garden!  Bought a bag-full of seeds from Farmer Cotton — Brown Tater & Brown Onion, Eggplant, two kinds of Pumpkin, Squash, & Turnip.  Don’t have quite enough room yet for everything, with the last summer things not ready to harvest yet.

    Had Hobson Hornblower & Nora Burrows here for tea.

    Went out for a spot of night-fishing — 2 Blue-finned Gudgeon, 2 Ruffe, & 1 Stone Loach.

    [page missing]

    … suspect that Delphinium Brandybuck does not eat meat, for she adds in her note of thanks, “Some hobbits aren’t used to cooking the food I like,” wh. is interesting. 

    Monday.  Second day of Autumn.  Rain.

    Orlo & Old Noakes here, & we talked about fishing the whole time.  Made two dishes of Very Good Fish Cakes, experimenting with flavour combinations.

    Went down to the Village Square afterwards with Orlo.  He is certainly welcome to come for any meal, any time — my door is always open.

    Tuesday. Fine.

    Completed my first Club mission! — foraged eight stems of Hedge Mustard.

    Had Nefi & Marigold here for luncheon.

    Overheard in the Village Square: “Sometimes I see a Puffball mushroom & I have the urge to just give it a kick”!

    [page missing]

    Wednesday.  Rain.

    Completed a Fishing Club mission.  “You might not know a lot about fishing,” Old Noakes grumbled when I told him, “but you know more than you used to.”  Patience.  That’s the secret.  So practice it!

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    Gilded Cage Mitts

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    The “Gilded Cage” mitts, finished at last! The pattern is by Rachel Praest of Cat & Sparrow UK. I did have some issues with the gusset, as I mentioned in a previous post, and reworked it with the increases more evenly distributed, wh. looks much better on my hand. While I was doing that, I thought I might as well make them reversible — in for a penny, in for a pound — as the original does not have the line of slipped stitches on the palm side.

    I do like the way that the ribbing and slip-stitch patterns flow neatly from one to the other! I would probably next time listen to the tip of working the vikkel braid with needles a size larger.

    The yarn is Cascade Yarn’s “Heritage”, a yummy soft merino/nylon blend — the mitts would probably be lovelier in a yarn with mottled colors like the original, as the slip-stitch pattern is ideal for that, but needs must, and the “Pine” is certainly a beautiful deep green, plus easy-care for the recipient, and I’m quite pleased with the finished mitts!

    • Project Gilded Cage Mitts, by Rachel Praest
    • Materials About a half-skein of “Heritage” by Cascade Yarns (75% superwash merino, 25% nylon), in color 5608 Pine
    • Worked February-June 2026, but with a big gap after the second thumb gusset
    • Modifications Added a slipped-stitch column on the palm side to make the mitts reversible, reworked the gusset to space the increases more evenly
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    Update on the 10th

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    I work on this 1:12 carpet most mornings after breakfast — while finishing my cup of tea — so maybe between fifteen and thirty minutes, let’s say, and it finally feels like it shows! I turned the third corner a few weeks ago, which I pushed a little, mostly, to be honest, because I don’t want to end up with nothing but border to work. It’s good when you get tired of one section, to be able to move over to something different. I reckon that this is still a few months’ stitching left — and there is three lines of medium-blue all the way around the outside edge, as well — but I’m getting there! Soon my corner shop will have something to put on the floor …

    I just finished reading Madhouse at the End of the Earth by Julian Sancton, which Julia got for Christmas. (After watching “The Terror” while at Otago last year, she became what can only be described as somewhat obsessed with the series and the Franklin expedition both, so much that she can rattle off the names of the crew members of both “Erebus” and “Terror” and the — probable — fate of each.

    I must admit that she takes after her mother in many respects, though she is enough of a Gen Z member that she went to the length of making a two-hour PowerPoint presentation on the expedition (!) and how the series diverts from it. (We were treated to the presentation over two evenings in our hotel in Wellington!) Anyway, last December Dad was trawling around for Christmas-present ideas, as one does, saw the “Belgica” book among the recommendations, and bought it for her. I had heard of the 1897-1899 expedition, of course, and its numerous dramas, from Roland Huntford’s Scott & Amundsen, so was already familiar with the story, but Sancton’s book of course goes into much greater detail. It is certainly a rather harrowing story — stuck in the polar ice (secretly intentionally) with a crew many of whom refused to eat penguin and seal but stuck with the ship’s inadequately-canned food, most of them came down with scurvy, which was at that time only partly understood. The expedition’s doctor, hired en route at the last minute, was Frederick Cook, who was already an experienced polar explorer, and was instrumental in saving the men from the worst ravages of scurvy, though he could do only so much about the mental ravages of being on a wooden ship stuck in the two-meters-thick, ever-shifting polar ice for over two months of polar night. (Amundsen, meanwhile, learned any number of lessons, both from the “Belgica”‘s experiences and from Cook himself — one can imagine him noting things down, “this didn’t work, that didn’t work, this worked,” etc. etc. He decided, after trying it, that man-hauling across the ice was far too draining, and that Cook’s insistence on fresh meat did indeed keep scurvy at bay — two hard-won lessons that a decade or so later got his own expedition safely to the South Pole and back.) Sancton’s book is meticulously researched and well-written, feeling almost like a novel with its deft characterizations of the expedition’s members and the events that most of them managed to survive.

    On a completely different note, I am now sewing the sashing between “Lucy”‘s diamond blocks, and sewing the blocks into diagonal strips. I was impressed with the freezer-paper technique for the diamond pieces, which on the whole worked well — as long as I’d cut the freezer-paper templates the right size, that is (sigh) — but when it came to the sashing strips, it was pretty much a failure, I suspect because a 3/4-inch wide strip of freezer paper doesn’t really have enough oomph to stick to a piece of sashing throughout the process of moving it back and forth between ironing board to sewing machine. I gave up on it about eight or ten strips in, and decided to simply draw stitching lines on the backs of the pieces with a water-soluble pencil, which to be honest is I think a bit easier than the freezer paper, and certainly more ecologically-sound, since there is no freezer paper to throw away afterwards and the freezer paper is in fact coated with plastic, not wax as I thought (because ironing the coated side to fabric makes it “stick” slightly = wax, in my mind). In order to print the templates onto the freezer paper, you have to cut the large widths of paper into a size that will fit into your printer — which is a bit of a pain, to be honest, even with a long-arm paper cutter — then carefully cut out the templates, iron the templates to your fabric, sew the pieces together (getting the two edges aligned properly!), whereas with a quilting pencil, once you have a set of templates, you just trace the lines on the back of the fabric, pin, and start sewing. But, as I say, the freezer paper worked well for the diamond blocks, and I’m very pleased with them, so — huzzah!

    I would just like to add again that I rain hosannas on the head of whoever came up with the technique of nesting seam allowances to line up the spot where four fabrics meet! I didn’t always get it perfectly in this project, but I always got at least very close, and many times, it looks superb!

  • “The Bywater Diary of Bowman Underhill” (part 3)

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    Monday.  Rain.

    Farmer Cotton kindly sent me a small round garden bed, which I set up near Ruby’s old square ones, opposite the kitchen door, near the edge of the stream so that I can easily fill the watering can (when it isn’t raining).  Planted the seeds I’d bought in the morning.

    Explored after luncheon, into the Forest on the other side of Willow Took’s place.  Lost my way any number of times, & found myself going around in circles more than once.  There is a fabulous old fallen-down tree beside a small pool that looks like it might be just the thing for some fishing.  Couldn’t make a sketch as it was too wet, & anyway the raindrops kept getting on my spectacles.

    Tuesday.  Fine.

    Fished in the morning.  Went foraging in the afternoon, this time to the western end of Bywater.  There is a big open meadow there – it was lovely to feel the summer grass on my feet.  Ended up somehow – had come out without my map – at the mill, & so I bought some flour from Sandyman.  “No doubt I’ll see you nosing around soon enough, Underhill,” he growled. Nosing around!  I ask you!

    Am not a little curious about the rooms that Old Ruby closed off – surely there is enough space for my elderly uncle to come & live with me – but I would have to ask Willow Took about opening them up, & I confess that I’m rather afraid of Willow Took.  She speaks quite sharply at times – though apparently she does so with everyone.

    From memory, needless to say.  I don’t think she would suffer very patiently the time it takes to do even a little sketch!  And the supercilious expression is not very flattering.  Not exaggerated, by the way.

    Wednesday.  Fine.

    Harvested not one but two rather good vegetables – a Shallot & a handful of Brown Taters.  Planted the rest of my seeds in a frenzy of delight & dashed up to Cotton Farm to show Rosie.  She said she’d never seen better!  Even Farmer Cotton had to agree.  Rosie is now the leader of Bywater’s Gardening Club!

    Daisy & Willow Took here for luncheon.  Made Very Good Fish Cakes, this time with a Honeyed Chub I’d almost just that minute caught in Old Ruby’s Pond, & a Raised Cheese Bread, both of wh. went over pretty well.  Daisy is an excitable child at times, but I admit that I am warming to her. 

    Thursday.

    Daisy sent me an effusive note & some plum jam as a thank-you for the luncheon yesterday.  Willow wrote that my table is a bit wobbly (!) but it was nice to come down from the workshop.  Typical of each, I think!

    Saw a fellow in the Village Square with a splendid waistcoat.  It seems that Nora Burrows makes them, & so I stopped by to have a look.  Will have to start saving my pennies.

    Friday.  Very fine.

    Spent some time this morning chatting with Young Tom at his stall in the village square.  He has been making cheeses, & I bought one that he calls a Shirefield – “it’s crumbly, & got a good sourish taste to it,” he said, adding that he wanted to name it something that would represent all of us – a generous thought.  At present the cheese is sitting on my pantry shelf waiting for some good company to share it with!

    Am out exploring down to the northeastern edge of Bywater.  Saw the Three-Farthing Stone, so now I have been in the Westfarthing, the Eastfarthing, & the Northfarthing.  A great many things to sketch –

    Later. – Was so involved in drawing that I nearly forgot that Orlo & Young Tom Cotton were coming for dinner!  Made it just in time, though perhaps it was really a supper.  Used the Mutton I’d bought in the morning from Young Tom to make a Saddle of Mutton Stuffed with Cheese – one of Tom’s tangy Shirefields, in fact – & a Rich Rhubarb Pie with my home-grown Rhubarb & some Blackberries & Raspberries I foraged yesterday.  Quite good, if I may say so myself!

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    Advanced Cooking Tips for “Tales of the Shire” Players

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    It took me a while to get the hang of cooking in the “Tales of the Shire” computer game, not so much the actual techniques — though of course that is at times not at all like real-world cooking! — but of balancing ingredients and seasonings for the optimal flavor combinations that the game developers have set up for each dish. The hardest thing for me was to not think like I do in my own kitchen, where I would never add, say, garlic to my raspberry jam (!!), but in the game I might actually want to do that if I need a spicy jam and garlic is the best choice at hand. And so, because I depended rather a lot in the early days on more-experienced players’ advice — and all of the resources I found were beginner TotS cooking tips, not advanced — I want to return the favor as well as give some tips to those players who will come after me!

    Enjoy!

    TotS Advanced cooking tipsDownload

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