It would seem that crime books work best which doesn't bode too well for all that loveliness I am supposed to stitching into my quilting as I listen to my audio book, but never mind.
Next up Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh. Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, I was happy to spot her brass plaque on the literary trail around the city centre...
And also to go up into the Port Hills where Ngaio Marsh lived as a child. The view from the hills across to Lyttleton is stunning. I had been in the country about an hour and looking at this picture now I am smiling at the memory of trying to stay awake on arrival day and being completely overwhelmed just to be there...
Of the Port Hills and writing in her autobiography Black Beech and Honeydew, Ngaio Marsh said this...
'They would be called mountains in England. The tussock that covered them gave them a bloomy appearance as blond hair does to a living body. I was told that a long time ago they had moved gigantically and heaved themselves into their present form and then grown hard, being the overflow of a volcano....'
Ngaio continues...
'The crater of this volcano is now a deep harbour into which a hundred and fifteen years ago, sailed the First Four Ships...bringing the founders of the Canterbury Settlement....they climbed the Port Hills and reached the summit where, with a munificent gesture, their inheritance was suddenly laid out before them...There, as abruptly as if one has looked over a wall, are the Plains, spread out beyond the limit of vision, laced with early mist and great river...
'Whenever I return to New Zealand I like to come home by the hills and still think that an arrival at the pass on a clear dawn is the most astonishing entry one could make into any country.'
It is most definitely the place to stand to get some sense of the scale and beauty of New Zealand
The Lampreys meanwhile were a family taken from real life by Ngaio Marsh for her book, the Rhodes-Plunkets apparently, and who welcomed her into their world as a friend...
'Its doors opened into a life whose scale of values, casual grandeur, cockeyed gaiety and vague friendliness will bewilder and delight me for the rest of my days. If one can be said to fall in love with a family I fell in love with the Lampreys. It has been a lasting affair.'
In Ngaio Marsh's fiction, the Lampreys become a family who live in a state of unaffordable luxury second only to that of the Governor of New Zealand himself. Life on a financial wing and a prayer spent lurching from one financial crisis to the next yet seemingly impervious to the worries; jolly japes, in-jokes and pranks with none of them taking any of it particularly seriously. Until that is, having moved to London during a particularly severe cash flow problem, a body is discovered in the elevator to the family's apartment and all must come under suspicion as Inspector Roderick Alleyne investigates.The family duck and dive and weave all manner of intricate webs, not exactly practicing to deceive, more to confuse, but every member of the family comes under suspicion and it soon becomes clear that this is not one of their parlour games.
Surfeit of Lampreys was a great listen and I will certainly listen to more by Ngaio Marsh eventually, it's just that Rankin & Rebus reign supreme at the moment. Now onto number three Tooth and Nail while I work away at this...
The basic idea is from EuroJapan Links, fabrics are my own as are slight variations on the theme. Pieces are needle-turn appliqued onto the background (24" x 18") and then hand quilted and with probably far too many tiny embellishments, but you know me and over-gilding the lily etc. I had these gorgeous embroidery threads and just couldn't stop myself adding some dots of colour...
Just the border to quilt now.
It started off as the Port Hills but it was all change once I had slotted in that fabric for the lake. By the time I had finished I knew it had to be Lake Hawea and now it has wonderful memories of that wild swim stitched in.
I'll do the Port Hills next.
Recent Comments