Endings

 It's the last day of 2022 today. Also today we took DS back to his apartment so we are back to being empty nesters.  Despite DH remaining stubbornly positive for COVID all week, DS insisted he wanted to go back today in the car being driven by DH.  Being young and immortal, and having had COVID himself fairly lightly a few months ago, DS judged it to be a low risk experience. Let's hope he's right, and he doesn't end up getting it again or giving it to his girlfriend.  

DH has been testing every morning and then being depressed about the persistent line.  We had to cancel the family get together with his parents and sister and felt bad about that until they phoned up the next night to announce that they all had COVID as well. It is unknown whether the in-laws gave it to my sister in law or vice versa but they've all got it now. So it's just as well we couldn't go down.  So the Christmas holiday remained strange throughout, with DH having to stay away from DS and eat in a separate room from him, and we couldn't go out for a meal together or anything.  But we feel fortunate that DS stayed well and DH and I weren't very ill with it.

Freed from the daily grind of having to put in time on the quilt frame (I'm ignoring the subsequent pile of quilts needing binding), I've been enjoying dabbling in various other crafts over the holiday.

I finished the Bruge lace sample I started months ago, which is half one design and half from another - it's not meant to look pretty, the purpose was to learn the two different filling patterns and frames.  So the join is pretty messy. Now I can move on to the next chapter in the book which is ten different flowers.

I actually fired up my Brother Scan N Cut and cut out a 3D angel christmas tree ornament from a free .svg download, which is kind of cute.

I made a bunch of dollshouse pillows for my friend Anita, who is making a Chinese room box.  She sent over the shiny brocade fabric she wanted me to use for the front, and I used a matching cotton for the back to cut down on the bulk in the seams. To avoid having to handsew this heavily fraying brocade, I glued the final seam with Fabrictac which worked quite well.

I finished Month 17 of the Australian BOM.  I've now started the final embroidery packet in Month 18 which is two small blocks.  Month 19 and the final month 20 have both arrived, they include the fabric for creating the sashing around the blocks and the final quilt borders.  So that's another ending coming up - I've been working on this quilt almost every evening since early 2021 when I signed up as a treat during COVID.

I sewed a snack pocket into my travel backpack (no photo because it's not that interesting) so that my gluten free snacks won't keep disappearing underneath all the other stuff I carry when travelling.

I finished opening up my Cotton Cuts fabric advent calendar, so 24 more FQs to go into the stash.  It's rather an odd mix - at first it was all tangerine reds and lights and I thought it was going to be a two-colour quilt's worth.  But then it diverged into various other colours that aren't exactly harmonious.  It was fun having something to open every day.

Most random of all - I actually went into my dollshouse room and started a new project.  I had that porch vignette shell kit that I got from the dollshouse haul a while back.  For my Christmas present, my friend Anita passed on to me various components she hadn't used when she made the same kit: windows, a door, porch railings etc. for me to use with mine.  I've decided to make a Christmas-decorated porch.  Once I got over the shock of how big it all was (I haven't worked in 1/12th scale for a long time), I started work.

Sanding pieces, making the window openings taller, and cutting out an access port to

access the under-porch

Glueing together the shell - never enough clamps.

first coat of paint on the windows/door, and what I am using as clapboard (it's actually roofing sheets- I thought I had clapboard but I don't)

Glueing the porch floor and roof.

The basic shell

Painting the sash windows was just as annoying in 2022 as it was back in 1993 when I painted the similar windows in my big house - these windows don't come apart for painting, are already tight in their frame so the paint just makes it worse. and it's really hard not to get paint on the glass.  You would have thought improvements would have been made in 30 years.  I've decided I won't be opening the windows so I'm not worrying about locking them up with paint.  I've ordered some verandah posts so I need to wait for those to arrive before I can work out where the porch roof is going to sit.  The UK post is still hugely delayed because of the strikes and the christmas rush - I've received a couple of belated christmas cards this week.

Now that DS is gone, and won't be back for at least a few months, I have seized the opportunity to pull all of my quilts out of their cupboard and shake out their folds and let them relax on the guest bed for a while.  Rather than make multiple trips up and down the stairs with armfuls of heavy quilts, I just dropped them all over the banister onto the stairs.

Then with DH's help, we spread them all out onto the bed.  People keep asking how many I have, so we kept count.  There are 25 bed quilts here (plus two more on my bed) and 9 larger wallhangings.  I'm not counting the various other family quilts, TV quilts, windowseat quilts etc. littered around the house and with DS. And there is a drawer of smaller wall hangings. It's been quite a while since the bed quilts all got out the cupboard, some of them are quite wrinkled. In fact I can't remember the last time, possibly before COVID. oops. Bad quilt owner.  I do cycle various quilts onto my bed every month through the winter, and hang up others in the downstairs hallway.

So I hope you all had a nice holiday break, received some good crafty gifts, and my best wishes for 2023, whatever it brings us.  I can't believe I'm going to Japan in just over four months, suddenly it doesn't feel so comfortably far in the future.