15 years later...

 DH often looks at my blog, mainly to keep track of new acquisitions I think, and he pointed out that in March 2022 I will have been blogging for 15 years!  Good heavens.  It doesn't seem that long since I met Swooze on a text-based chat forum and she said I should start my own blog to show pictures of all my crafting. I've long since had to start paying Google a monthly fee for storage because of all the posts and pictures (almost 900 posts) although I don't expect anyone ever looks at what I was doing 10 or 12 years ago.  Perhaps I should have a big purge of older posts if there is any easy way to do that without killing the blog.  I started printing the blog off as an annual photobook several years ago for my own records, being a dinosaur who still doesn't trust the magic 'cloud' that the youngsters place so much faith in.  Wait until they experience a few episodes of media becoming obsolete, companies discontinuing their service (sob, my Nokia music library...), or going bust, that'll learn 'em ha ha ha.

Anyway, happy new year and hope you had a good new year's eve.  It is a startlingly balmy 14 degrees here, we went out to do some weeding this morning and I actually got too hot, bizarre weather for January. This morning I conducted the annual ritual of swapping out the old year calendar and desk diaries and replacing them with the 2022 versions. Although after two years at home, my planner system has pretty much broken down so I didn't have much to copy over from last year. Gone are the days when my mini filofax went everywhere with me and ruled my life.

This week I managed to finish two more blocks in the Tilda Wreath Quilt, so I'm up to 6.5 blocks out of 9.  I rewarded myself by taking a break to sew a pillow cover out of a cross stitch alphabet sampler that I rescued from a charity shop in Olney last week.  Beautifully stitched, it looked like it had come out of a frame, and they only wanted £1.50 for it.  I have given it an inner border from the robin fabric that I bought in Birmingham a few weeks ago, and backed it with the bird tea towel that I got at the V&A museum in London last month.  I thought I was finished then realised I had managed to sew the back on upside down so all the birds were facing down, so had to unpick and re-sew. I think it's quite pretty, I hope the original stitcher would approve.

I've continued knitting the Just Keeping Warm hat, finishing the brim and picking up and knitting the main body.  It looks quite odd on the needles but looks nice when I try it on.  The cable in the crown is 6x6 which can be quite difficult to knit in this thick yarn but I'm managing.

Do you remember the Venice 3-D scene I bought this summer from an antique shop in Horncastle?  It had good bones but rather cartoon colouring and crude paintwork.

Using photos of canal houses in Venice for reference, I've spent some time the last few weeks touching up the original paintwork with acrylic paint and completely changing the colour of the walls themselves.  I was trying to achieve that ancient dilapidated quality that so many Venetian houses have, after centuries of renovations and repairs and weathering.  I didn't achieve what was in my mind's eye but am fairly pleased with the result nonetheless.  I wish I had taken a picture before putting the frame back together because it has proved impossible to find a camera angle without reflections on the glass. So it doesn't look as nuanced in the photos as it does in real life. I built up layers of colouring and stippling on the walls trying to add some realism.

Also in the dollshouse room now are my 12 kits  in 1/24th scale from the Petite Properties '12 Days of Christmas' advent calendar. I think the media embargo has finished and I'm ok to publish a photo of the contents.  It was fun to open a little kit every day. It's a fairly random assortment, ranging from kitchen cupboards to a bicycle!  PP have said they won't be doing Advent calendars next year, I think it's too much work for them and too much aggro over delayed post etc.

I have so many kits now, I have got to start making some of them up.  Youtube found me this video where he talks about how many hobbies can we realistically have, as opposed to 'interests' or more casual activities. I definitely feel pulled so many different ways now that I'm retired and supposedly have so much time to do things.  Sewing and sewing-related things like bagmaking are definitely a hobby for me, but I have several formerly all-consuming passions like knitting and dollshousing that I don't do much of now, or not at all (machine knitting), not too mention multiple other more casual but enjoyable craft interests, travelling, gardening etc..  Somewhere in my deluded brain I think that I am going to get to them all and therefore need to acquire and retain related stash, when obviously that isn't realistic.  The Youtube video links to a Ted Talk which defines a personality called a 'multi-potential-ite' and I think I am definitely one of those. Or maybe a hoarder. That's it,  I'm a multi-potential-ite-hoarder.