My future tribe

When I retired a year ago, and was starting to scope out what being retired meant, I joined to try out a few organisations such as the Quilters' Guild and the Cross Stitch Guild.  The latter is more of a marketing arm for Jane Greenoff's lovely designs, kits and products but in addition to a members' mini-mag subscription and a member's discount, you have the option of paying to attend one of  the three weekend get togethers each year.  These sell out well in advance, so a year ago I booked myself onto my closest venue which is Leicester. So that's where I was this weekend.  It was all very pleasant, with around 60 ladies in attendance, sitting in groups of 8 around round tables in a big well-lit room over two days and an evening.  

Everyone was very friendlly, many of them attend regularly so were old friends with each other, but it was a bit of an older crowd for the most part. As you would expect, the majority (if not all)were expert stitchers and there was a huge amount of needleworked bling in use around the room in the form of exquisite scissor keeps, pincushions, thread catchers, needlebooks, stitched storage boxes etc.  There were also some amazing things in the show and tell.  We were given the weekend project kit, this year a mostly cross-stitched floral sampler with some 3D elements and a lot of people were working on that for the whole weekend. 

This is how far I got

But there were lots of other crafts going on too, from paper-piecing to knitting.  Lots of chatter and laughter as well.  Jane Greenoff joined us for Saturday and Sunday and chatted with all the tables, and also gave some informal tutorials. I attended one for hardanger stitching which I quite enjoyed as I've never done it before, and I've bought Jane's book on Hardanger embroidery as well as some of the recommended 25 count Dublin linen.  I also picked up her stitcher's bible, and a lovely little kit for a robin christmas decoration. Although DS has now announced how much his girlfriend loves the fingerless gloves I made for him but they are too big and maybe I could knit a pair for her? So I may be knitting gloves instead of stitching robins.

Jane collects antique samplers and had some wonderful custom printed linen with a design from the Catherine Archer antique sampler.  It wasn't cheap but I indulged in a fat quarter because I think it will look great made up into a pouch or bag.

Everyone brought items to donate to the raffle - I won a kit for a cross stitch picture of various antique items, and a little kit to make a heart-shaped pincushion decorated with hexies.

It was a perfectly pleasant weekend, but in a way I felt like I wasn't quite ready yet for a largely sedentary weekend just sitting and stitching for hours in between overly-copious meals. Somehow the sewing machine weekends seem more interactive and you are moving a lot more.  Also for me, hand stitching like embroidery or cross stitch is something I do quietly and meditatively in front of the telly, not in a room full of loud chatter and people.  I think this may be my future tribe, when I'm 70 or so, or feeling too old to go on a more active weekend. But it was good to try it, I wouldn't know otherwise.  These things all sound fantastic when you are working a job and can't go, so it's good to actually test them out.  I may not make a push to finish the class project now as I'm thinking it might be a good travel project to take with me to Japan next spring.

I've been in touch with the organiser in Japan to get some more joining information so I can book flights. I also enquired if there was a western style bed available in the shared houses because sleeping on a futon when we tried traditional Japanese inns on previous trips just killed my back. Apparently they have one room with a western bed so they have reserved that for me, hurrah. Privilege of the aged. :) Hopefully the bed won't be quite as firm as a futon. I bet all the youngsters will feel sorry for me that they get the Japanese rooms while I am stuck with a western bed - bhwah ha ha ha ha, wait until they've tried them for a few nights.

I've made a start on quilting the antique hourglass top on the frame.  I'm using a faux Baptist Fan panto as it's the most traditional looking panto I have.  With my set up, it's a bit hard to stitch the design accurately and at first I was thinking 'gosh I'm ruining this antique top with my wobbly machine quilting'. But the more I work with the antique top, the more I've realised how really poorly made it is. I wonder if it was made by a child, or a first quilt by a beginner.  I mentioned before that all the triangles are cut on the bias.  Many of the resulting wavy edges have been gathered into crude seams, and forced to lie flat by dint of creating pleats of up to half an inch of fabric along the seams.  Many of the seam junctions are gaping haphazard lumps of fabric.  I've already had the sewing machine foot hang up on several of these road bumps, or get caught in a pleat and inadvertently rip a seam open.  So if I can turn the antique top into a usable quilt then I think it's a win. The baptist fan is a good choice as it will closely hold the many dodgy pieces onto the modern reproduction background, adding a lot of strength and taming the many flaws.

Traditional hand quilted baptist fan design,

the machine quilted version is different

I've been stitching away on Month 16 of the Australian BOM - meanwhile they have advised that they are preparing the final packet for Month 20 which will ship in December. So the end is in sight although probably for me not until next summer.

I did some more excavating in the machine knitting room, and put together all the bits and manuals for two intarsia carriages, a linker carriage, a transfer carriage and a single bed colour changer.  One of the intarsia carriages has sold and is with its new owner. The transfer carriage may be going to America. Hopefully the others will go soon.  I've got two more double bed colour changers to find pieces for and then I need to look at my ancient garter carriage and see if it still works.  Meanwhile the caravan stuff coming out of the van for the winter, which would normally go into the machine knitting room, is piled up in the basement and in other nooks and crannies all in the way, until I can make room for it in the MK room.

In my hotel room I was knitting on the Paducah lace shawl and the travel lace scarf, both relaxing projects for night time TV watching. For once the light was decent enough in the room. I don't know what it is with hotel rooms and lighting, so often the level of illumination is just dire.  We stayed a week in Carlisle a few years ago and it was so bad I actually went to a DIY store and bought brighter bulbs to swap into the bedside lamps for the duration. The hotel room I stayed in for one night in Milan was almost completely dark, and had dark purple walls, no overhead light, only two terrible glaring bedside uplighters that were so blinding they just made the rest of the room darker plus you couldn't actually point them at a book or at your knitting.  Sorry, enough ranting, I'm sounding my age  ha ha ha.

I realised when I packed for the previous sewing machine retreat that I no longer have a portable cutting mat - my old A3 mat became so brittle and scratched that I cut it up to use as a bag bottom then forgot all about doing that.  I took a cheap Aldi one with me instead which was too small and too hard and blunted my rotary blade.  So I was looking online for a new rotary mat, starting with OLFA as that is my preferred brand.  But a few websites later I discovered folding cutting mats, which is a new one on me.  These ones are from Amazon and weren't expensive, the reviews are decent.  When the mat is folded out, the seam is imperceptible to the touch - I haven't tried it for rotary cutting yet but it should be ok I think.  I bought two sizes A3 and A2 as they are perfect for taking to workshops in a suitcase.

It's raining almost every day now, so my procrastination about putting the garden to bed for the winter is turning into slight frustration that it's staying too wet to go out and do it.  Hopefully this week.  Halloween was a bit of a fail, we only got about a half dozen parties of trick or treaters as there was intermittent heavy rain all evening.  My first visitors were two kids about 11 or 12 in school uniform, no costume at all.  I apologised but said I was keeping the sweets for the smaller children in costume later (little did I know how much candy we were going to have left over) and turned them away.  When I told DS, he said this was harsh and since they had made the effort to ring my doorbell, I should have given them something despite the fact that they were probably just on their way home from school and were chancing their luck and weren't dressed up or anything.  Is this yet another instance of older mindset not keeping up with modern thinking on my part?  Would you have given them sweets and wished them happy halloween?