Winter go slow

 I'm hitting that time of year now where winter hibernation is setting in. It's getting harder to make myself go outside for some exercise because it's cold and rainy. I'm not going down into the basement as much (dollshouse and sewing) because it's cold down there too. I seem to be spending a lot of time wrapped up in front of the TV. Nevertheless, I have got a few things done.

The Japanese tea cup wallhanging is finished now, with the embroidered rims and all bound.  I like it even though some of the embroidery is a bit wobbly.  And I love the blues.

I also got the binding sewn onto the Envelopes quilt which is now ready to donate - Project Linus are picking it up in a few days and I hope someone might enjoy getting it for Christmas.  I like the 'train track' effect of the binding and border strip in the same colour.

The Christmas tree is now up and decorated.  We have always had a live tree, because that's what I grew up with.  But I was surprised to find a (very expensive) artificial tree in B&Q that looks real until you get up close.  We are actually contemplating buying it if it's in the sales.  It feels like selling out but would make life a lot easier and we're not getting any younger.  I used to feel that I wanted the real one because of the lovely smell of a real tree, but for several years now it seems our trees don't smell of anything unless you stick your head right into the branches.  Maybe it's been bred out of them?

I'm getting on well with the Christmas Kep hat.  This has a deep double brim, you can see the purl row which will be the fold line, so everything beneath the fold line will be tucked up inside. It's a very Christmassy knit.

This week I finally got around to this year's free Cartonnage project from Colorway Arts, which is a box with a hinged lid closed with a magnetic catch.  If desired, you could cut an opening in the top to make it a tissue box, but I didn't.  Boxmaking is such a great way to use up feature fabrics such as this charming English countryside print.

My Christmas shopping is done, I don't have a very big list so it's not a huge job.  DS is coming home for Christmas next weekend.  I hope all your preparations are in hand for the seasonal break.

Christmas cheer

 This week seems to have gone by in a flash, I feel like last weekend's blog post was about two days ago. Christmas cheer has arrived. As well as bringing down the decorations from the attic (much slimmed down after my big clear out last year, I am now feeling sad about a few of the things I gave away) and starting to put them up, we had DH's model club christmas do and awards night at a pub.  Nice food and DH came home with four first place awards (in the boxes) as well as some 2nd and 3rd place medals.  These are his award winning models which he builds from kits and paints from scratch.  Well done DH!

I also had my bobbin lace friends around for our annual present exchange - this year I sewed pen holders on elastic that they can use on notebooks, address books etc.  I warmed up the first mince pies of the season: gluten free but still pretty good.

For the rest of my crafting this week, it has been continuing the same projects I have been working on:  the dollshouse, longarm quilting the embroidered blocks quilt, cross stitch on the christmas ornament, sewing binding on the Japanese tea cup wallhanging, knitting on the Christmas kep hat, and I finished sewing embellishments on the Australian BOM quilt.

 The latter is now completely done - I signed up to the BOM with the Australian shop 'Faeries in my Garden' in March 2021 when we were still locked down for COVID here in the UK. It wasn't cheap, but the packets arriving every month were such a treat and kept me very occupied for months during lockdown learning how to embroider and then crafting the intricate applique blocks. So altogether the quilt took three years and nine months.  It may be one of the best things I've ever made. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what to do with it now.  It's too fragile and precious to be used as a bed quilt, but being bedquilt size, it is too big to hang on the wall in this house.  Our last house had a great stairwell where I could hang pretty large quilts, but this house only has a large-wallhanging-sized gap between door openings in the hallway.

We are currently being battered by Storm Darragh - it's not too bad where we live, just strong gusts of wind roaring around the house and lots of leaves and small twigs down in the garden, and a fair bit of rain.  It sounds like many people are having a terrible time though, especially in Wales and along that western coastline.

Suddenly December

 The first of December today, and suddenly Christmas is looming.  We put up some outdoor lights on our porch yesterday, I've hung up my Petite Properties Advent Calendar (of 25 x 1:48 scale lasercut dollhouse furniture kits), got out my Christmas quilt for my bed and hung the first Christmas wall quilt.  The rest of the decorations will probably wait until next weekend.

I thought I would be finished my dollshouse build by now but no, the displaced dollshouses are still in the dining room.  DS is coming home forChristmas so I think I will probably move the houses back downstairs to the dollshouse room and perch them on the end of my building table so they are out of the way.  The house is in the final stages but still lots of finishing touches  I don't need as much room now that the wallpapering is done and all the house assembled.

Speaking of finishing touches, I sewed the binding on my Australian BOM quilt so now I can start sewing on the hard embellishments to finish off several blocks.  I left them off knowing that I would be quilting the quilt on my frame, and I didn't want to crush the embellishments or have them make the quilt roll unbalanced.  Things like a scissors charm, buttons etc.  I sewed the scissors on with invisible thread and found I am officially too old for the invisible thread because it is now completely invisible.  I had to get out the super reader glasses to even thread the needle.  Then when I briefly set down the threaded needle to get the charm ready, it just completely vanished into thin air.  I had to get a torch to shine light onto the shiny thread before I could finally spot the threaded needle on the ironing board.  Yeesh.  These are the first three blocks, there are several more that have additional embellishments to be sewn on.

The American concept of Black Friday sales, previously unknown in the UK, has now become quite a big thing here.  Did you succumb to anything? I ended up ordering several things that I wanted to get anyway, and a few other items that came up in videos - including a cheap set of Forstner drill bits which I hope to use to create a stronger hanging system for my current dollshouse build which is supposed to hang on the wall.  Forstner bits drill holes in wood but the holes have a flat bottom - without the central hole that results from using a spade bit.  I also came across a FB post flagging these hemming clips. It's hard to photograph them but each clip is marked with quarter inch marks to help you turn up an even hem on larger items like a skirt. They looked like they would be useful.

I've made a good start on this year's Christmas cross stitch project which is a free kit to make a hanging bauble that came with CrossStitcher magazine.  I've had to grid the aida because there are so many colours in the design, far too many for my limited counting ability.  This way I only have to stitch a 10x10 grid at a time.

I gave up on the video game my son recommended: Baldur's Gate 3.  It's based on the Dungeons and Dragons methodology and was far too complicated for me.  I just want to run around and explore and bash things with a single button - not have to worry about D20 rolls and skill tables etc.  I've started playing another older game that I bought several years ago, Fable Anniversary, which is able to be played on a much simpler level, more my speed.  I am having one big problem which is that the button used to bash opponents in all the games I've played for the last several years, in this game it unsheathes your weapon or stows the weapon away.  So I spend the first few seconds of each combat sequence taking my weapon out and putting it away while I run around shrieking like a little girl, taking heavy damage as I frantically mash buttons.  Old dog, new tricks.

Why is technology so complicated

 So this week I discovered that my hard drive was about to die and only had 4% health left.  It doesn't seem that long agao that my other hard drive on the PC died and I struggled through a long replacement learning curve, so I wasn't doing that again.  The PC wasn't suitable for upgrading to Windows 11 anyway.  So I did some research (using my laptop instead) into what are considered current minimum specs and tried to buy something with some futureproofing elements.  I got a Dell XPS 8960 which arrived promptly the next day.  Cue three hours of trying to get the data off the old sick PC using the completely useless Dell Migrate tool before giving up and just copying over the most recent backup files.  Then more hours of recovering non-backed-up files off the sick PC, and working out what applications needed reinstalling blah blah blah.  Trying to work out what the connectors are on my old monitor and the even older second monitor so I could buy adapters to fit the new PC (VGA and DVI-D as it turns out).  Crawling around under my desk unplugging and replugging in peripherals as I switched between the sick and the new PCS.  The long and short of it is that I've wasted most of my time and brain power this week on technology so not so much crafting.  It's also made me realise that in another 10 years or so I probably wouldn't be able to manage the transition to a new PC, and I will become one of those older people reliant on their children to make the technology work.

I've loaded another quilt onto the frame and started stabilising it with stitch in the ditch.  This is the kit I bought in Paducah with the embroidered panels that I stitched while travelling in Japan last year.  I also embroidered the 'rims' onto the Japanese cups wallhanging and sewed a hanging sleeve onto it in preparation for binding.  I sewed binding onto the Australian BOM quilt. 

I've been working on my dollshouse. I've started a new cross stitch kit for a christmas ornament that came in CrossStitcher magazine.  I have tried and failed twice to get gauge for a knitted hat pattern called the Christmas Kep - I've sent off for some smaller diameter circular needles to try again.

DS came home for the weekend and encouraged me to try one of his video games: Baldur's Gate 3, which has a DnD style turn-based combat which after Elden Ring feels to me like watching paint dry, but he says it has a good story line.

I hope your technology is working better than mine has the last few weeks.

Best laid plans

 I thought I was going to have a really productive day today, as DH was heading out to visit his parents.  But no.  First I wasted almost an hour fruitlessly searching for a xmas gift that I stitched for a friend, which has vanished into thin air. I've searched where it should be about five times, and looked everywhere else I can think of.  Nope.  Well, at least I could tackle why my Kindle Paperwhite had decided it didn't want to connect to the wi-fi.  One hour and multiple resets, multiple lengthy password entries and a full factory reset of the Kindle later, I finally tried re-starting the fully functional broadband router which had nothing wrong with it at all.  But for some mysterious reason, that made the Kindle agree to connect to it once again.  Aaaaarghhhh!!!!! and with the factory reset I've lost every custom setting I had made including all my folder collections.  

At least I've finished something: Four years after I started, I've finally finished the ABC Sampler from Little House Needleworks.  There are a few counting issues but overall I'm pleased with it, and glad that it's finally done and can be moved out of the living room along with all its accoutrements. I really like the folksy design style of it, and the subtle colour variations of the Classic Colorworks dyed threads.

As an initial display option, I've laced it around a stretched canvas board.  I may get it framed at some point.

I loaded the Envelopes quilt onto the longarm frame and quilted it fairly quickly using a large scale hearts panto. I couldn't find any postal-related pantos but thought the hearts would tie in with 'love letters' and sending good wishes through the post.  What I didn't realise, because I was quilting it sideways and the hearts tipped in both directions and it's the first time I've used this panto, is that the pattern is actually overall directional.  So my hearts are actually upside down compared to the envelopes.  It doesn't show much on the front though, and I will probably be giving this quilt away anyway. I'll label the panto as directional for the future.

Meanwhile, I've started embroidering the 'rim' of the Japanese cups but I'm struggling a bit with the best way to do it.  I started out with a single back stitch in two strands, and that was so subtle that it didn't show at all.  So I tried doubling up with a second line of backstitching in a lighter colour, which is better but still not great and looks a bit untidy.  I think I'm going to try out stem stitch in a lighter colour with three strands and see how that looks.

It's turned a lot colder here now, hovering around 7-11C, so I headed out a few days ago wearing the fingerless gloves I bought from a maker in Shetland during Wool Week.  But the fingers were really quite short, and I found my uncovered fingers were getting really cold.  So I dug around in my stash to find something that would match the gloves, and it turned out my Urudale yarn left over from my own glove project toned in fairly well.  So I unravelled the cast-off on each finger and picked up to knit each finger a bit longer.  I wore them today and they are a lot better now. This photo is really washed out for some reason.

The vintage sewing table is finally finished and back together.  I put five coats of the Finpol onto the top, using the special brush that I also bought from them (which annoyingly was shedding hairs into the finish) and it came out so much better than my first attempt.  It's not perfect, but it looks a lot better than the very damaged finish it had when I bought it.  Now I need to think where the table is going to go and what I will use it for.

I sewed another Double Wedding Ring block.  I feel like I will be 100 years old when this quilt gets finished.

The rest of the week I kept busy with my dollshouse build, sewing binding on the Australian BOM quilt and trying to do some bobbin lace every day because I have really been neglecting the lace for several months now.  A few days ago I heard my first Christmas song on the radio, it feels like it gets earlier every year.  Meanwhile we are still having to rake leaves up every weekend as our trees dump their autumn foliage.

This and that

 Various crafty activities this week.  I tried out my Icelandic hat on a trip to the post office and realised it was still too short despite my tinkering with the crown decreases.  So I ripped it back to the ribbing again, and reknit it one more time with an extra zigzag to increase the length. I also went up a needle size to 4.5mm to make it a little looser.  I did the crown decreases as per the pattern since I already had the extra height.  It's much more comfortable now and I've worn it out a few times, nice and warm.  That's the nice thing about knitting, you can usually have a do-over.  And it's a nice souvenir of my trip.

I managed to produce a second Double Wedding Ring block so I now have two somewhat wonky blocks. I need 16 blocks - two down, 14 to go. 

After quilting the Tilda cot quilt (which I am now binding), I loaded the Japanese tea cup wallhanging onto the frame.  I meandered in the dark border then used my channel locks to quilt a series of vertical lines through the background, 'hopping' over each teacup as I came to it by doing some tiny stitches on either side.  I still need to quilt around each cup then I can take it off and do the hand embroidery to add the rim line to each cup. I like the way the cups are standing out from the background in a 3D effect.

I forgot to blog last week that I had a go at the Kiss clasp box based on the one I saw at Festival of Quilts last year.  I had bought a clasp at the show, and I drew up a pattern for a simple box shape modelled on the one in this video.  The video was helpful in showing how the frame is glued onto the fabric shell.  I used Bosal foam to stiffen my box shape, and hand sewed the corners.  It was a bit tricky to glue on the frame, having an extra pair of arms would have helped.  I used some bulky yarn as I don't have any paper yarn.  It turned out pretty well, apart from a design flaw, and I am using it to store my lacemaking tools in.

This is the design flaw - the frame I picked has big chunky metal balls for the clasp.  These of course make it incredibly top heavy, so all's it wants to do is this if it's empty:

So the lesson here is, don't buy a frame with a big clasp.  It would also be good to get a deeper frame, then you could have a bigger box.  This one is only about two inches deep.

I stripped off the French Polish from the antique sewing table top with meths, so I'm back to bare wood again ready to try again with the new Finpol polish.

And last weekend, we had an outing to Witney Antiques in Witney, west of Oxford, to see their amazing exhibition ‘Choice and Precious Work’: The Needle and Beyond, 1650-1770'.  The shop itself was amazing, they specialise in museum quality embroideries, mostly samplers, and I've never seen so many antique embroideries in one place.  And in such amazingly good condition.  They had an Elizabethan embroidered panel that looked like it had been finished yesterday - only £220,000 and it's yours!  I was rather staggered that there are people that spend the price of a semi-detached house on a piece of embroidery but apparently the shop is well patronised by a global clientele of collectors.  To be honest, I probably wouldn't have felt comfortable even going into such an obviously posh shop normally, but the exhibition set up in the large back room is open to the public.

Part of the shop (no photos allowed in the exhibition)

The exhibition of 17th and 18thC embroideries, needlelace, samplers, and other handmade textile related objects unbelievably showcases the work of schoolgirls.  We were lucky enough to be shown around by a PhD specialist in antique embroidery and her stories were so interesting that even DH was absorbed in what we were seeing.  So much of the stitching was so tiny and fine, you just couldn't believe it was done by girls of perhaps 11 years old, probably in candlelight.   The most mindboggling piece was probably the two bobbin lace pictorial panels made around 1660 from human hair instead of thread.  They were framed behind glass but looked so fragile that you were afraid to breathe near them.  Many of the items came from just two or three families who had kept the examples of family needlework safe over the centuries.  It makes me think of all the craft items I've let go over the years - no archive of work from me.  There was a real egg that had been embroidered with needle lace by punching small holes into the egg shell to allow the needle to pass through, nutmegs (once more precious than gold) covered in embroidered casings, quilled picture frames, early decoupage, quite a few Quaker works with tiny stitched Bible sayings, and so much more.  I wish I could have taken photos but it wasn't allowed.

Witney itself had some nice old buildings, so after a fortifying pub lunch, we had a walk around town and down to the lake which was once a huge gravel quarry.  A nice day out.

French polish fail

 I attached the refinished table top to my antique sewing table.

Unfortunately, it became clear that my  attempt to finish the top with French Polish was a complete fail.  Not only is it patchy and streaky, with visible brush lines, but it hasn't dried properly.  Just handling the top while I screwed it on was leaving big fingerprints in the toffee-like finish.  I looked it up online and apparently this is likely due both to the brushed on coats being too thick, and the French polish I used being too old.  Apparently old French polish may never dry, ever.  A week later and mine is better than it was but still imprinting with finger prints.  So the duff polish has all got to come off again from the top.  I've ordered a different French polish product called Finney's Finpol Easy Polish which is supposed to be a lot more foolproof.  Also a polish mop which is a special brush that isn't supposed to leave brush marks.  Sigh.

On the happier side, I finished quilting my Australian BOM vintage needlework quilt and I'm pretty pleased with it.  These are pictures straight off the frame, so it hasn't been trimmed up yet or bound, and there are still a few more embellishments to stitch on to it.  I learned a lot doing this quilt, about using rulers and pantos, and stitching around applique, and got much braver about trying freehand filler designs. 

Once the frame was empty, I loaded on the Tilda Pinwheel small quilt and easily quilted it with a pantograph, much more straightforward!

Another finish this week was my Iceland Lettlopi hat.  A rinse in lukewarm water has fluffed up the yarn nicely, it should be fairly warm.

I have been trying to shingle my dollshouse roof and ran into trouble, and had to re-do parts of it a few times until my son helped me with the math.    I still need to finish the ridgelines.

I made myself a gluten free afternoon tea as a special treat, just using GF products purchased from the supermarket aisle.  It was quite fun and I enjoyed it, but it did still upset my stomach - probably from xanthum gum which I am also sensitive to, which is used by a lot of commercial GF food manufacturers as a thickener.  Still felt like a treat at the time though. Fun to break out the good china, and my handmade patchwork tea cosy.  And the quilted  autumn placemats that I made up from a panel I bought in the Cinque Terres on my Italy trip.