Epitaphion photos and today

I promised photos with the last post but forgot them, so you can have some this time :)

To take a break from the baptism photos, here are the pictures of our epitaphion (which symbolises the tomb of Christ) in progress and finished.

First we put in the Crosses, and the filling around them, and added the borders. Here's one short end, all pink and white roses with a red rose Cross


And here's me to prove that this is ours! All in black for Holy Week - red is a concession to warmth, it's *almost* dark! It's been rather cold, end of April so that's not that surprising


Here's one of the long sides. These were pretty much identical, except the background on this side was yellow carnations and white on the other.


Abouna (Father) and Jeremy saw me with the camera and wanted a photo of them 'always arguing' (as if!!), so we staged one:


When the top was done, we added flowers to the posts, and started filling in the edges of the base. The lady in the photo is Khouria - the priest's wife. This is also a good picture of the white side.


And here it is in the Church that night, before the service and procession :)


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I've had a slow day. I finally decided that freaking out and procrastinating against my backlog of work was not useful, so instead I got up and started work. A few hours later, I was half caught up on my math exercises (three week's worth, so nothing to sneeze at) before my class began, and I've been working on them since, too. I'm planning to get the backlog done and then leave this weeks' work until it has to be done, so I can clear the backlog for my other subjects too. I'm sooo glad I'm not doing five subjects or this would be totally unmanageable!

Tonight is TV night, too. I have to watch neighbours and home and away (seriously!!) for school and take notes, so I'm going to do that, and I'll do it for all saints too which I watch anyway.

It's cold, and slow, but it's progressing. And that's good news.

Photopost

Ah yes, the semi-regular photopost of doom.

Firstly, here's Peaceful Paradise as of today - as always, everything here is a clickable thumbnail:

(sorry about the shadow on the side, and the creases!)

I've reached the bottom of the text box, and started working sideways, and dipping into working on the scene down the bottom occasionally. I'm still having so much fun, but I left my pattern at Church yesterday (go me) so I'm working on JOB until Wednesday.

And here you go, here's what I got for my birthday:



Here's the Cross that Pater gave me. It's now hung on the wall in my room, above my bed. Yes, my room is that colour. Yes, it is very pink. I know that :) I've had my room this colour for years and I've yet to go crazy.
Like I said the other day, each of the little 'bubbles' has ground from the Holy Land - rock, chalk, dirt, sand... and yes the sign says INBI not INRI - because is IS the king of the Jews, he didn't just say it! Orthodox crucifixes change that. The budded ends is characteristic of non-Russian Orthodox Crosses, I'm not exactly sure why but I think the three arcs are for the Trinity, which would make sense. Everything is three times for the Trinity with us! The crosses on my Churches all look like this.



These are the cards I've got so far, I always get a few late ones in the post too. From L->R they are from my parents, Troy's parents, my Grandmother and Nona Niki.



My MIL gave me a bunch of fat 1/8th of William Morris fabric. It's lovely stuff, and it's tucked away for something special - and addition to my fabric 'collection' - she says it's a collection, not a stash, stash implies that I have to use it, and I have a lot of fabric that I just like to keep 'cause it's pretty! A lot of it has gold on it too, so nice. And my favourite colours to work with, too - browns and greens!



Nona Niki (my godmother) gave me these - the envelope is from the card, that's my name in Greek on it and I love the clouds! And yay for nummy body scrub that I'm not allergic to.



These are what I also got from Pater - practical gift this time around. Guest bathroom towels for when we get married and they're sooo soft. I love the Greek take on birthday gifts - practical things always win once you get to a certain age. I know that it has its downsides (my friend Jo got pillows for her 18th birthday, lol) but it has a lot of upsides too.

Something completely different, too. I made a quilt for my Personal Project - in the Internation Baccalaureate, when you finish middle school you have to do a PP on something or other. It's often a practical thing, but you have to demonstrate learning. I'd never made a quilt, so a lady from church taught me. This is on our spare bed most of the time, and it's very warm (and got put in pride of place in a bunch of school exhibitions, along with an edwardian costume that another girl made, yay!)



Here's the whole quilt, on a single bed. All done in cotton, and the seams are machine stitched but everything else (applique and embroidery) was done by hand. Anything that's not applique is stitched in a DMC cotton, three strands if I remember right. The embroidery took FOREVER, but is totally worth it!


The first two blocks - the first lines of the poem, and two people, one big one little, holding hands. We deliberately went with a naive style for this, so it's not just that I can't draw (though that's true too!)


These are the 7th and 10th blocks. The dolphin is my favourite of all the embroidered blocks - we photocopies him from a colouring book, enlarged it, and then transferred it onto the design (repeatedly, as it kept wearing off) with dressmaker's chalk and tracing paper. The feet were traced from the feet of a little boy of someone we knew (and he giggled like mad when we did it!)



Finally, these are the last two blocks. That's more or less what my handwriting looks like, though it's a little neater now than it was five years ago. We don't get taught this cursive here, this is american style cursive that I kept from when we lived there (as Australian 'cursive' is really ugly) and still use a lot.

Thanks for looking :)