Yesterday was a very domestic day. I washed clothes and made pinto bean soup in the morning and ironed and sewed in the afternoon. Don played golf in the morning and gardened in the afternoon. It was overcast most of the day yesterday although the sun did try to break through the cloud cover a few times and because of the humidity, the temperature was quite warm.
The photo shows the bed in its new splendor. When we moved into The Rowans in March 2004 we bought two sets of sheets and pillow cases, a duvet cover, a bed skirt, and curtains all from a matching set. Our bed is quite a large one (you may not realize it but the reason there isn't more of the bed showing in the photo, is that I'm standing in the doorway to take the photo. Essentially, the bed IS the bedroom.) As I was saying, the bed is large and because of the way the bed skirt was made, it never fit properly. The first time we rotated the mattress, it got all wapper-jawed and remained that way. At least twice a month for 3 years now I've tsk-tsked at the state of it and vowed that something had to be done but couldn't think what. The last time we rotated the mattress, we wrestled the bed skirt out from under it and I vowed to come up with a solution. Yesterday, I cut the center out of it leaving about a foot all the way around to fit under the mattress. Perfect solution: the bed skirt now fits properly and looks as it should. Then I took the leftover fabric and made 2 pillow shams from it, so that now the bedroom looks ever so much smarter.
Don was out in the garden the whole time I was doing this, cutting the grass in the front and the back. Then he finished weeding that bed I had been working on the other day. The next task he took on, however, was a difficult one: edging that bed by creating sort of a trench to help keep the weeds from reinvading the heathers. He had to quit, however, about halfway through because the sod-laden grass plugs he had cut out weighed so much he was having trouble moving the garden waste bin he was putting them into. He also was miserably hot and beginning to be achy from all that effort.
I had returned to the studio after dressing our bed in its "new" finery. I am back at work on the Provence quilt I bought the bulk of the fabrics for in Paris in 2000 and first began work on in 2002. I have now joined the blocks into units that I can work on if I decide to machine-quilt it myself. Normallly I would take it to Diane in Lochearnhead to quilt for me on her long-arm machine, but there are lots of "lumps and bumps" in the construction of this quilt, which might be difficult to smooth out sufficiently for her to use her machine on it. Today I must make a decision about how to proceed.
It was warm enough for us to have our dinner out on the terrace last night. When these opportunities come along, we like to take advantage of them as they don't come that often in this climate. We had teriyaki chicken which Don grilled. I made a salad which was a combination of roasted butternut squash and cherry tomatoes mixed with raw broccoli florets, sweet red pepper strips, and feta cheese. Yum! For dessert we each had a quarter of a fresh honeydew melon.
Tonight we're off to Glasgow for a performance of two short works by Alan Bennett called "Office Suite" starring Patricia Routledge. You probably know Patricia Routledge as Hyacinth Bouquet on the popular PBS British sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances." Routledge has done many roles for Alan Bennett's work, especially in his "Talking Heads" series. We have long admired his writing and her acting and so when we had the chance to see "Office Suite" we decided not to let it slip by.
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