A very small adventure

 (Warning - this is an even longer than usual post so if you just want to know what crafts I was up to this week, you will need to skip a ways downward)

In an effort to start taking advantage of being retired, I booked a weekend away by myself to visit the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show and the York Dolls House fair which coincidentally were both on the same weekend and in the same neck of the woods.  It sounds so simple - but felt quite worrying on several levels.  For one thing, I haven't been anywhere without DH for about six years and he does all the portaging of cases and heavy bags due to my weak back and propensity to tear muscles easily.  I hadn't been on a train since lockdown in March 2020. It would be a step change in terms of potential COVID exposure. My gluten and other intolerances have gotten much worse the last few years so food is always an issue.  Despite trying to do a walk every day, my stamina has become much lower over lockdown / working from home compared to when I was commuting to a full day of work including four miles of daily walking.

Putting all that to one side, I slapped myself around the head a few times to remind myself that a) I'm not getting any younger so if I can't do this sort of thing now, it's not going to get any better and b) I may have become more feeble but I am hopefully not any dumber and in the past I have booked many complicated overseas trips myself so surely I could manage a weekend to Yorkshire.

Armed with my shiny new Senior railcard, I set off Friday morning for what was meant to be a four hour train ride to Harrogate but  - due to a broken down train blocking the exit from Nottingham station - turned into a 5.5 hour trip. Since you can drive to Harrogate in 3 hours, this was just annoying as well as pretty much eroding my sightseeing time for the remainder of the afternoon. Luckily, being a paranoid person, I had packed emergency snacks and an emergency book on top of the normal snacks and book, and ended up breaking into both as well as turning the heel of my travelling vanilla sock that I started in the caravan a while back.  Hardly anyone was wearing a mask on the train so this was the beginning of my potential exposure to COVID. I did see some very pretty Christmas lights that evening while walking around the town admiring the Victorian architecture.

Saturday morning I dropped my bag off to the pre-booked storage place  and walked around some of Valley Gardens, laid out in the Victorian era and full of old well heads and pump houses for the mineral springs that used to attract the fashionable crowds to this spa town.  There was even a little Japanese garden.

Then I headed over to the Royal Pump House Museum to learn a bit more about the spa town in its prime.  This houses a rather eclectic mix of antiques and Egyptology but the building itself is quite interesting. You can't take the waters any longer but I remember back in 1982 trying a glass of spa water somewhere, possibly Bath?, and it was just disgusting.

Then it was time to go into the Knitting and Stitching show which was in the Royal Hall and adjoining convention centre.  The Royal Hall is a stunning Edwardian theatre building and it was open for people to enjoy teas and coffees or packed lunches in - so I ate my gluten free picnic lunch while sitting in the theatre seats admiring the view.

The show itself was quite enjoyable, I think partly because I hadn't been to anything similar for so long.  It was smaller and much less pretentious than the London show they do, there were very few guilds present and not many exhibitions.  There were a lot of stands selling dressmaking fabrics and some quilting fabrics, so would be ideal if you had a car and sew your own clothes.  There were several sewing machine manufacturers present, Grace quilting frames, and a live demo theatre. Most crafts had some presence: cross stitching, knitting, beading, scrapbooking, sewing patterns, embroidery, etc.  I quite enjoyed wandering around although it did get quite busy and in the end social distancing became pretty impossible. My favourite exhibit was from the Embroiderer's Guild, who had brought together a number of examples of antique embroidered and beaded bags and needlework tools, together with some modern stitched examples. I should have taken more photos.

I thought this was an interesting construction, a hanging lidded box

that slides out of a decorated cover.

A tiny embroidered bible cover on a real printed bible.

I thought this also was an interesting construction, because you could cover the

surfaces with anything: patchwork, printed panels, decoupage, and then hang

it on the wall as storage.

I didn't actually buy very much at this show.  I found the knowledge that I was going to have to carry around myself anything that I purchased really inhibited my impulse buying.  I did get another pattern from Beth Studley, having previously made her Honeycomb Organiser (one of the more useful things in my sewing room) and handled baskets.  This one is for a little two compartment hamper, with lids.

And I picked up a little kit to make a very pretty flower beaded necklace and earring set. I'm not much good at jewellery making (I can never turn the little metal loops properly) but I'll have a go.

Then it was over to York by train (delayed again). I have a fondness for York as I lived there for six months when I first came to the UK for college back in 1982.  It has changed almost out of all recognition since then, and yet it hasn't as the ancient buildings are mostly still there.  I had booked myself into a hostel, booking a bed in a 10 bed female dorm, partly because it was cheap and safe and would store my bag for free, and partly as an experiment - can I still do hostels?  Am I too old?  According to Youtube, lots of older people stay in hostels and certainly I saw several at mine, but physically can I still do it?  I was daunted to find I had been given an upper bunk but impressed at the introduction of privacy curtains and nightlights since my backpacking days back in the 80s.  Cocooned in my little curtained world, reading before going to sleep, felt a lot like I imagine a capsule hotel might feel  in Japan.  And surprisingly I didn't sleep too badly either.  I was only woken occasionally by the girl underneath me moving about.  I was expecting revellers to be coming back at 2am and had packed my super-duper earplugs accordingly, but in fact another girl turned the light out at 10:15pm and I didn't hear many people come in after that.  York itself was an absolute mob scene when I went out Saturday evening after checking in, I could not believe the Mardi Gras-level of crowds flooding all the shopping streets.  I think because there was a Christmas market, a normal market, Christmas shoppers and just Saturday night partygoers all creating a perfect storm. It was difficult to even move through the streets and every restaurant had a huge queue out the doors.  Using half-remembered local knowledge, I worked my way around the crowds and after trying a few places, ended up at a Pizza Express which at least does gluten free pizza and gluten free beer so that was fine.

Micklegate Bar with Christmas lights, one of the 

medieval gates to the walled city

The grand staircase in my youth hostel, in a converted Georgian mansion

The Shambles, one of York's medieval streets

Sunday morning I walked around a few old haunts and then hiked the mile and a quarter over to York racecourse where the York Dolls House Fair was being held. I haven't been to a dollshouse show for a long time - in fact it may well have been when we came to this same fair in York on our motorhome holiday back in 2016?  Also I have done very little dollshousing the last few years so I wasn't sure whether I was going to find it that interesting.  But it was quite fun. It's not a huge show but it's a decent size for a couple of hours including lunch at the cafe.  It again got quite busy so social distancing was not possible. There were some familiar vendors but a lot of newer ones as well, and of course everyone and their brother has a laser cutter now so lots of lasercut minis.  Based purely on this single show, 1:48 scale remains very popular, virtually no 1:24th scale, several 1:144 scale offerings.  There was a lot of 1:12 scale cheaper items being sold off in bargain bins, not sure if that's just this venue or a sign that that level of quality in that scale is less popular now?    I ended up buying several things to my surprise.

Some cheap old kits and some wicker instructions from the Breast Cancer charity stall

A Jane Harrop pocket shop 1:48 kit

Jane Harrop laser-cut little houses, and three kits from Valerie Claire for making

perfume and toiletry bottles. I got these for the 1:12 scale hairdressing salon

that I inherited from a friend and need to finish

Some adorable Christmas items which will hopefully find a home in my 

Mrs Santa bedroom vignette. The sleigh and Christmas cookies

are by Ella-Rose Miniatures, who had a lot of really nice things and

quite reasonably priced I thought.  The Teapot is by Uniqueables by Ursula who also made

the little caravan teapot below which obviously I had to get to add to my Canadian

house which is a sort of record of my life.

One stall was selling basic scenes in suitcases - I have a couple of these suitcases

but had never thought of making scenes in them. I would like it better it they were set up

so that you can close and open the case without disturbing the contents, like a puzzle box.

I was briefly excited by these magnificent French style houses until I realised

they are made out of high quality printed card.  They were on sale for £99

fully assembled but I assume they were originally some kind of 

flat pack presumably from the continent?  I so wish they were actual 

dollshouses. I wonder where they came from?

After the show I walked back  into town to do a bit more sightseeing but it was still surprisingly crowded, and getting very cold (6 degrees C) and raining a bit. So I took refuge in the York Art Gallery until it was time to meet my knitting friend Katie who now lives in York. It was great to have a catch up with her as I hadn't seen her IRL for several years.  By this point I was really tired, after all the shopping and walking and adventures on trains, so hopefully I wasn't too boring company.  Then it was time to get the train home again, with only one slight delay which resulted in me literally having to run with my suitcase to catch my connection.  I'm still tired and rather stiff today, plus I have acquired a floater in one eyeball - yay for old age (bleah).  But I did it. And it worked.  So maybe I can do it again. And meanwhile I will be taking COVID tests this week which hopefully will all be negative.

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We resume our regular programming - what did I do this week?

As part of the continued processing of project-notes-formerly-pinned-to-my-design-wall, I made a mug coaster with Japanese indigo fabrics, based on one that I sketched back in 2019 on our trip to Shikoku that I saw in a gift shop.  Mine hasn't come out as nice as the original but it's okay. It's stiffened with some Peltex inside. I think my fabrics blend together a bit too much so you can't make out the individual pieces so much.

Another design-wall-pin was to make a tailor's ham holder out of wood.  Very few people sell these, mainly an American woodworker, and his didn't look like they would fit my tailor's ham..  Sometimes you want to stand your ham on its side to simulate a shoulder or a bodice curve, or even on its end. It's quite awkward trying to hold a ham steady with one hand while also holding down a garment smoothly, and manipulate the iron with the other hand.  I made a mockup out of styrofoam, tweaking it until I thought I had the proportions right, then cut the side pieces out of the remains of the £5 oak mirror frame I had purchased for the bookcase project. I had to use MDF for the base because the remnants of oak wood weren't big enough.  The holder has turned out quite functional and works and it's fairly strong, although not very pretty.

I also ventured into the dollshouse room, which had once again become a dumping ground, and tidied up the work area, and put some of my purchases into their intended houses.  Then I carried out an audit of the various house kits I have accumulated in several scales, totalling a rather alarming number.  I think I will try to sell some of them.

before

after

And last but not least, this week my retirement gift showed up, purchased by myself with contributions from family members.  What's in the box?

I haven't actually taken it out of the box yet due to time constraints, fear and procrastination, but I have started watching tutorial videos.  It's a computer-controlled cutting machine which hopefully is going to cut applique pieces for quilt projects, card projects for dollshouses and possibly other things.  There appears to be quite a learning curve to climb.

Whew!