Re-visiting a former passion

I made the trek by train and foot over to the Summer Wool Festival, which has succeeded Fibrefest at the Ampthill venue in Bedfordshire. The organisers had been bigging it up on social media so I was curious to see what it would be like.  It's the first yarn festival I've been to since the COVID years I think.  The Festival turned out to be very similar to its predecessor, perhaps slightly smaller as they were down one marquee. But one thing I noticed was that about 90% of the stalls were selling yarn of some description, either hand-dyed, handspun, home-grown, etc. Lots of unfamiliar vendor names - I'm assuming that over the lockdown period, lots of people decided to follow their dream and dye their own fibre. The previous Fibrefest had featured a healthy percentage of spinning, dyeing, weaving, more guild stalls. There were still a few guilds present, and a couple of spinning and weaving stalls, a few needlefelting businesses and some bagmaking businesses.  I admired the very neat zipper tab ends of one bagmaker and she was kind enough to turn the pouch inside out to show me how she had done the inside corner. Apparently the show was crazy busy yesterday, I had several vendors tell me I should appreciate being able to look around without such a crowd.  A lot of pent-up demand from lockdown I guess.

But overall, it all felt a bit flat for me.  I can remember several prior trips to Fibrefest and the excitement and enjoyment of fondling new yarns and purchasing new colours. I was quite passionate about handknitting for 10 years or so, and always had some knitting in my bag to pull out in any idle moment.  Why do we crafters fall out of love with our hobbies?  I still like knitting, I still knit things, but it's not a passion like it used to be.  I felt no temptation to buy yarn because I still have so much of it up in my knitting room from previous buying sprees.  I also have a ridiculous amount of socks, hats, gloves, and shawls piled up so I just don't need any more.  So I was just strolling by the yarn booths, occasionally stopping to admire a particular colourway. The only thing I bought was a pattern for a lacey jumper, and some secondhand cardcrafting magazines.

This week I finished the frame quilting on the One Block Wonder beach panel quilt.  It needs a bit of finishing off the frame, such as the vertical lines on the fencing. And I need to correct my horizon line which I had a go at freehanding and consequently wavers drunkenly across the quilt.  Most of the quilt is meandered but I did straight line ripple quilting on the sea and path areas.

It's now time to re-learn how to do pantographs (stitching from a paper pattern using a laser guide) so I've loaded the practice sandwich onto the frame.  I had to do a lot of re-taping on the paper patterns since the sellotape has rotted over the five years letting the separate pages fall apart.  Steering my way around a pantograph pattern is quite a different rhythm than meandering - I have to go slower, and I have to pause for a few heartbeats on each pointed point to keep them sharp. And I can't just shuffle along behind the frame as I do it - the precision steering required demands that I stop, move myself along the frame, then restart and stitch as far as I can reach and see; stop etc.  I'll practice a bit then load on the next quilt victim which is the pastel hexie quilt. I also need to flatten out the paper pattern more, once I get it lined up correctly with the next quilt.

Downstairs I was stitching on stencil lines using a walking foot, to fill in the hexagon centres on the Tilda Cot Quilt.  The first hexagon attempt was terrible and I had to unpick it.  It's hard to draw on the lines (from a celtic stencil given away by Today's Quilter magazine) now that the quilt has wadding in it, and my walking foot for my Janome had a really poor field of view.  There was a piece of metal blocking the first eighth of an inch, then distorting thick plastic, so it was really hard to see the lines I had drawn.  Since I now have a spare walking foot (Janome accidentally sent me an extra one when they returned the machine, and when I phoned they told me to keep it), I got out the junior hacksaw and cut away the plastic and metal bits to clear the opening.  Now I can actually see the line I am trying to quilt, which is a big help. The quilting is still a bit wobbly but it looks okay I think.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the cot quilt, it seems a shame to just give it away because Tilda fabric is quite expensive.  One of my lacemaking friends was rather taken aback when I mentioned that I used to make 12-15 quilts a year and now I've only made 15 or so in five years.  "What do you do with them all?" she asked in amazement.  It is a hard hobby to explain to a non-enthusiast, that's for sure.  I bet no one asks artists what they do with all their paintings, but somehow quilts (and knitting) are meant to be functional and useful.

At least the Tannenbaum quilt has an identified use as a Christmas wallhanging.  I finally finished all the rows, I just need to add side strips and it's done.  Then it becomes number 16 in the frame quilting queue.  Although I think I will have to quilt the tree at the sit down machine, but I could stipple the background on the frame.

I'm still doing about 1 -1/2 hours a week on my slow attempt to learn Bruges lace - currently learning how to make a plait and picot filling.  At this rate it will be years before I can tackle actual Bruges lace.

 I realised while bouncing around in the pool on Friday for Aquafit (with my brain cycling in neutral over various topics) that I have been treating retirement as if it's my new job.  Like a job, I feel like I have to tackle certain maintenance tasks every day (Japanese, exercise) and work on longer term projects (frame quilting, decluttering, the Australian BOM etc) regularly - and if I don't then I feel like I am failing and not doing a good job.  Add in all the daily tasks like cooking, gardening, bit of housework, laundry etc., and it leaves very little time for all the hobby things I would like to be doing. I feel like I can't go and 'play' until I get my 'work' done.  So it turns into an endless cycle of feeling like I am running to keep up and not succeeding very well at anything. And certainly not living the retirement cliche of doing whatever whenever.  I suppose some of the tasks have an end date - eventually the house will be mostly decluttered for example (although at the rate I bring in new things, that point may be far in the future). I expect it comes down to personality type - I certainly see a wide spectrum of viewpoints represented on the retirement groups I read on Facebook. Including people who get fed up with retirement and re-join the workforce.  I am obviously a personality with very unrealistic aspirations as to what I can, and want to, get done craft-wise.  I'm trying to do better. I actually gave away a roll of lampshade adhesive backing that I bought 10 years ago to make one lampshade with, and the book on how to do it - I have accepted that I am unlikely to ever make any more lampshades :)  I've seen various suggestions for time management - like having designated days to do things, or doing a deep dive for a week on one task like de-cluttering.  Any suggestions greatly appreciated.