Twelve cauliflowers anyone?

 I have a history of embarrassing mishaps when it comes to online grocery shopping. On several occasions I have been tricked by the deceptive picture of a nice big bag of carrots, or a bag of parsnips, and I have added '1' to my cart - only to have a carefully bagged single parsnip turn up, or one tiny carrot.  I bet the pickers have a good laugh sometimes.  I went the other way on the most recent shop: I changed '1' cauliflower to '2' cauliflowers in my basket, but apparently not very carefully because when DH came home from collecting the order, he wanted to know if I had really ordered 12 cauliflowers.  I thought he was joking at first.

So it's cauliflower with every evening meal and leftovers for lunch.

It is once again reaching silly temperatures in the UK, it's been hot since midweek and hitting 33 or 34 degrees since Friday.  Our house is pretty good because of its thick walls but  now it isn't getting a chance to cool down now, so I'm sitting here at 10:20pm and it is still uncomfortably warmer inside than it is outside.  I've mostly been hiding in the house.  I visited the quilt shop class just for two hours this morning then came home, because they don't provide even fans in the workroom and of course it's Britain so no aircon.  In some ways, it's been nice to have normal activities limited by the heat so not having to feel I should be doing outside chores, or anything energetic indoors.  Lots of sewing, a bit of dollshousing, lots of paperwork and Japanese at my desk.

I've been doing my frame quilting in the morning, because although that room is in the sun then and getting warm, the outside temperatures haven't yet peaked.  I finished quilting the pastel hexies quilt and have given it a rinse in the washing machine since taking these pics.

I used my Brother Scan N Cut to help throw together a little card bobbin holder, to stop my prepared bobbins from rolling around and keep them ready to go onto the frame machine.  It's handy and keeping things much more under control with less thread tangling.

My Janome arrived back without fanfare from the warranty people.  A terse service note says they adjusted a few things like feed dog height and stopper height and they've replaced the bobbin case for the second time (or third time if you count the one I bought).  I am losing faith in this machine, also I wonder why they didn't adjust those things the first time it went in.  I looked at a Facebook group for Janome MC8200QCP owners, and there is a real mix of people some of whom have no trouble with thread, and people who find their machines are thread divas and only like a particular brand, or only like the  same thread top and bottom etc.  I'm starting to wonder if I should cut my losses and try to sell this machine.  The Janome HD9 is supposed to be really good for bagmaking and quilting, though it only does straight stitch.  I would miss having the applique stitches, zig-zag and overcast stitches.  I don't use the embroidery stitches much at all though.

So with the Janome back, I was able to finish the quilting on the One Block Wonder beach panel quilt and also ran it through the washing machine rinse cycle to bring out the quilting.  This picture is after the rinse but before ironing it, so the texture is quite pronounced but it shows off the different areas of quilting pattern.

I foresee a lot of quilt binding in my future.  I'm currently sewing down the binding on the Tilda cot quilt.  I also finally stopped five years of procrastination and contacted  my local Project Linus coordinator.  I have three quilts for her already: the Disappearing 4-patch from this round, a scrap quilt from the last time I had the frame up 5 years ago, and a large bed size quilt that I made about 15 years ago and have never used because I didn't like it when it was finished.  I've also got my Cottage scrap quilt on the frame now, so when it's finished she can have that one as well.

 I finally finished Month 14 of the Australian BOM.  I messed up a bit on this one by accidentally reversing the background (the transfer lines were showing on both sides and I chose the wrong side to work on).  So I had to add a second flower cluster to cover up the duplicate stamped lines.  But it looks okay.

So I finally opened up the packet for Month 15 which is a dauntingly enormous composition of a sewing box filled with items, surrounded by an assortment of even more sewing items. I think this is the feature block of the quilt.  This is going to take a very long time I think, there are so many individual items to be embroidered, embellished, appliqued and fused.  The densely written instructions are eight pages long.  It is starting to feel a bit like a slog now and I miss having evening time for other sitdown crafts like cross stitch and knitting.  But there are only five more months to go so the end is in sight.

After the stash accumulation at the Coleman's sale last week, I really fell off the wagon this week with a huge stash acquisition of dollshouse supplies.  I haven't taken a photo yet, but I basically have a carrier bag full of all sorts of bits plus a Houseworks kit for a wall hung porch vignette.  One of the members of DH's model club sadly died, and he was also crafting and selling dollshouses.  Another member has ended up with all the dollshouse bits and asked DH if I would be interested.  Of course I was, and I took along another friend who does miniatures.  His dining table was absolutely covered in boxes and plastic baskets full of bits, it was like a flea market and Christmas all rolled into one.  He was only asked for donations for charity so I gave him a hefty donation for what I chose, but still only a fraction of what it would have cost to buy everything new.  In my defense, I did take down some pictures and ornaments from our walls and dropped them into a charity shop this week, so the clutter flow is not all one way.

And the builder has resurfaced - he's supposed to be coming on Monday and/or Tuesday this coming week so we might get our main shower back - hurrah!