The Ides of March, and other more cheerful thoughts

Today's the Ides of March, the day his wife, Calpurnia, warned Julius Caesar to not go to the club meeting with his buds, give it a miss, and he went anyway, despite her saying beware.  And when his best friend, Brutus, joined in the fatal attack, exclaimed "You rotten brute, you!"  Or something.  

Anyway, on this and a couple of other months, the Ides falls on the fifteenth.  Not every month though, for reasons I have forgotten, in the midst of studying how Julius Caesar was busy dividing Gaul into three parts, also for reasons I have forgotten.  The rewards of a classical education.

Onward.  Today's stitching was a bit tricky, very difficult getting the needle through several layers of fabric.  A needle with an eye big enough for three strands of floss is not easy to pierce with.   I did the ties on the Robe, two of them, anyway, so as to have them harmonize with the rest of the work. Then my hands needed a rest.

The sashiko stitching, that's the running stitch you see here, will be on one layer only in the next part, much easier to deal with.  I mixed the thread colors in the needle, too, so as to give a bit more subtlety to it.

Here's the threads in a very messy heap, waiting for action

And here's the sashiko done on two of the ties, so that they look like this

Now the ties look like part of the work, not an afterthought.  Next I have to mark the curves and shapes of the sashiko to be done on that side, seen here as the left, after I stitch down the peacock motif permanently in place.

Then there was lunch

Fast food again, this time a dish of frozen cooked leeks, potatoes and onions from the freezer, leftovers from some earlier pasty caper.  And the last little ball of dough from the tortilla recipe.  

I really recommend this fast food idea.  You make the flour tortilla recipe, I don't think the harina one would be sturdy enough, knead and divide into six bits, wrap separately in parchment paper and freeze.  Then an hour of thawing for one piece, roll it out on a floured countertop, fill, seal, bake at 400f for 20 minutes, spritz olive oil on top to keep it pliable.  You can make one big pasty like this one, or two smaller ones, from one ball of dough.

It's about 25 minutes from thinking of it to eating it, if you remember to get it out of the freezer, time to wipe the counters, do a few dishes, little bit of macarena around the kitchen.  I do like my little kitchen dances, who knows what the passersby think, since the window opens on the street.  Then your lunch is ready.  And, a nice misfits salad, fit for a queen. All the veggies in the pasty were misfits too.  The yellow potatoes make really great stuffing types of results.  And you've done a fitness exercise, too.  

I often do stretches and Eight Pieces of Silk exercises in the couple of minutes I'm waiting for something in the microwave.  Balancing exercises, all that. A couple of minutes is plenty, done fairly often.