Too Many Hobbies, Not Enough Time: Grumpy old woman

This week has made me grumpy as I have been trying to get to grips with 'new' technology and grousing because it isn't as easy to use as the good old stuff. First of all my laptop, which I bought almost a year ago but have only used for joining Zoom calls in the sewing room. I'm going to take it to Japan, which means I have to learn how to use it. Or in other words, how to make it work as much like my desktop PC as possible. This has involved much comparison as to what software I am using on the PC so that I can get it installed on the laptop, tweaking the laptop display so that I can actually see it, getting through all the 'you have logged into your account from a different device and we are now very alarmed' emails from my various online providers, trying to remember what my passwords actually are for accounts that normally open automatically, and the piece de resistance which was discovering the laptop doesn't actually have an ethernet port so I've had to order an adapter from Amazon. But better to get all this sorted out before leaving the home bubble. I am actually writing this blog on it, trying to get used to the keyboard. And yes, I know I am a dinosaur and that laptops have been a mainstay of the work world since the Noughties, but I've never had to stoop to using one and desktop PCs are just superior in every way apart from portability in my opinion. Another trial has been getting to grips with the social media account the Japan language school has set up for us, using an app called LINE which is very popular in Japan. You can only use it on your phone or tablet, so I am having to navigate it and type on my phone. I hate typing on my phone, I have fingers like sausages so between that and predictive text, I spent half the time going backwards to make corrections. But it's a chance for the students to get to know each other before class starts. So far there seem to be about six Americans and two other Brits, and no non-English speaking students as yet.

This week I finished the Cartonnage box and I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out. I feel like I am getting a bit better at producing a neat result. The fabric is from a little set of fat quarters I found randomly at a sale table. The knob is one we had kicking around in the workshop.

I have been progressing the House SAL cross stitch, I've finished the cross stitching and am now adding the back stitch. So much backstitching on this to add all the details. I'd like to get it done before I go.

I'm also trying to get the Australian BOM quilt top together before I go. After my painstaking choice of inner sashing fabric in pink last week, I assembled the inner top and stepped back to look at it - then realised the pink was the wrong choice. Although that pink is featured in the embroidery colours, the main pink in the piecing is a cooler less vivid pink, and my choice of sashing just looked wrong. So I was pretty stumped since I had exhausted my stash and available shopping opportunities. But I happened across the bag of scraps where I have been saving every tiny leftover bit of fabric from the kits just in case, and I suddenly thought that maybe I could make a pieced sashing out of that. At first I tried 2.5" squares like those already in the quilt. So I pieced a few shorter strips of those and tried them out on the design wall but they didn't look great. Also I wasn't going to have enough scraps of sufficient size to cut that many squares. But also in the quilt are some narrower 1" sashing bars. So I tried cutting down my squares to 1.5" bars, and sewing them together to create 1" wide striped sashing. That looked a lot better so I ironed all my scraps and started cutting out 1.5" x 2.5" bars and assembling them into sashing. Then I took the top apart again, removed the pink sashing, and inserted the striped sashing instead. I am pretty happy with it now, I think the inner top looks a lot more unified without being divided by a plain sashing, and the stripes add a touch of energy to the wishy-washiness. And of course the sashing goes well with the blocks since they are all the same fabrics. The top is getting big enough now that it's hard to get a good picture of it.

I received some happy mail this week from an Etsy shop called AmberMakesCo, who create original digitally printed fabric panels. I saw the thatched cottage panel featured in a cross stitch magazine and then saw the little sewing kit when I went to their web shop. The packaging was adorable and the quality of the fabric seems quite good. The digital printing is very sharp. I look forward to making these up when I get back. So interesting to see an original quality panel design instead of what you see in quilt shops which are also often not such good quality fabric.