Hardanger and Me

For those who follow me regularly, you might remember there being odd snippets of an embroidered  Hardanger cloth I have been working on. There were three of  us, making this cloth, and all have now finished after 4 years of sewing it.
 I looked up about Hardanger and got this. 
 History.... Hardanger Embroidery is named after a region in southwest Norway in the county of Hordaland by the Hardanger Fjord. However, it is thought to have originated from the Middle East. From there it spread to Europe with ties to the Reticella and Venetian needle laces.

 

 

 These are quite big cloths at least 1 metre across, possibly 1.2m, I actually haven't measured it exactly and it is all packed away now.  Made on a cream Cashel linen that we purchased from a specialist Needlework shop in USA. Linen is very hard to get in Australia, and often cheaper to buy direct from America, or it was back then.

 

The main stitch of Hardanger is Kloster Blocks, which makes up the basic pattern, from there, little smaller areas are created, within the Kloster block pattern, and can be embroidered by cutting and drawing several threads out so intricate weaving can be done. 

I must admit when we started these cloths, it never occurred to us it would take twice as long as we thought.

 

 

My biggest problem now is I wonder who would like this cloth after I am gone. In the meantime it is in a bag waiting for the Dining table to be cleared of seed sorting so I can put it on there for a while. It is not a cloth that can be used when beetroot is around, that is for sure. 

 

 

I have now got back to a drawn thread cloth, that I started just before this one, and hope to finish it off. I have stopped going to my Monday embroidery group as of last week, due to me being highly autosuppressent, but hope to now and then do some of the drawn thread so when I do go back it is also finished.

 Many things are taking my time, as I have started decluttering again, getting the garden going between rain which seems to be part of our everyday lives, going through old projects, patterns, and just a great deal of paper stuff that I have collected.

 

 

Today, for some reason, I got the urge to cook up a storm of slices and cakes. I have no idea why so much, and quite a bit of it is frozen now. 

 

Chocolate Chip Coconut Slice, Whole of Lemon Cake, Chocolate Brownies and Rock Cakes, and as a family we call nobbies, which came about when dad was a child, who knows how long that word has been in the family. My dad would have been 92 this year. He told me even his friends of the day would call them that as well. It's stuck now.

 

Taken a different day but a bit clearer, although crumpled.

I hope everyone is busily occupied, while we wait out the current events.

Till Next Time, stay safe and well.