Bleah

 Our car has been written off as not economical to repair. This triggers withdrawal of our replacement car within 6 days, so we will end up with no car at all.  This also means we have to cancel our next booked caravan holiday.  All because some stupid woman made a very regrettable decision to drive when she wasn't sober.  My only consolation is that her car is almost certainly written off as well - it was a lot more damaged than ours. The insurers are at least offering a decent payout, almost as much as we paid for the car secondhand 2.5 years ago. The flip side of that is that car prices in general have gone up a lot.

If things go according to plan, I am off to Estonia on Wednesday for a knitting holiday so we can't really start the process to buy a replacement car until I get back. DH wondered if the Russian events would affect airspace but so far (touch wood) it still seems ok to travel. I feel unhappy at socking a bunch of money into a new car in a year where I spent a lot of money going to Japan, and we have to scaffold our house in August to have all our windows repaired (several are rotting) and repainted which is also going to cost a lot.  Once we get a car, we will have to get a tow hitch fitted which took at least three weeks I think last time round.  So I don't think we will be getting a lot of use out of our caravan this summer.

Anyway, I was away at a lace weekend which took my mind off  all the car cr*p.  DH kindly drove me to the hotel in the replacement car. I was concentrating on elements of Bruges lace and was just making small samples to try out various techniques. It was really nice to have the time to really focus  on lace - I don't do much at home because there always seems to be something more important or appealing to do. I enjoy lacemaking but it's not my main hobby.  The woman sitting across from me guessed that she probably spent 10 hours a week on lacemaking, I probably only manage about 5 hours a month. No wonder it's taking so long to learn Bruges lace.  The lacemakers were a nice bunch and the hotel had pretty decent air conditioning which was great on such a hot weekend.

My samples and rough notes on them

We were gifted a laser-cut pillow name tag (just visible pinned on my pincushion above), and this very cute handmade pincushion.  Someone must have put in a lot of effort making over 50 of these!

This past week I finished the vanilla socks that I knit on the plane to/from Japan. I've put them away until next winter when I will use them as bed socks.  They were a good fit until I washed them - then they bagged out a bit. I'm wondering if the hand-dyed yarn base might be superwash, I'll have to find the label and check.

I spent a day working on a tester bag that I can't reveal yet, but I also finished my self-drafted sling bag that I posted about starting a couple of weeks ago. This is based on the 'Jenny Bag' by Sally Tomato for Missouri Star Quilts.

I was reasonably pleased with how the bag turned out. I didn't get the gusset length quite right, it was a little bit too long so I had to gather it in a bit at the bottom but it looks ok.  The bag feels lightweight and holds the essentials for a trip to the shops.  Unfortunately, when I took it for a longish walk around town, I didn't find it very comfortable.  I had already guessed that the shoulder strap would want to ride up against my neck, which is why I introduced the soft shoulder patch. But in the video, Jenny wears the bag across her lower abdomen, which is a comfortable position for mine as well.  However when I walk, with every step, gravity inches the bag down until it reaches the lowest point of the sling loop.  Not only is this not comfortable because then it's hanging at my side or banging on my hip, but it pulls the soft shoulder patch out of position so that I have webbing up against my neck.  I spent most of my walk fidgeting with the bag and adjusting the front and rear straps trying to find a solution.  But I think ultimately the sling design is a failure.  I don't know if I will keep it for potential gifting, or salvage the hardware and webbing from it to use in another project. It's a shame to waste the Japanese fabric though.

I've also put up onto my design wall the red and white Edyta Sitar house blocks that I was working on at the retreats last year. I still don't know what I want to do with them.  I have a couple more of the full-size and miniature blocks to sew. I still think it would be nice to somehow combine them into a single quilt but size-wise there isn't an obvious solution.  I'm leaving them on the design wall hoping for a lightbulb moment.

I need to think what craft projects I want to take on my Estonia trip. I'm still knitting the lacy cowl that I started in Japan, but it's not very good plane knitting as it requires a chart. And the lighting never seems good enough on planes or in hotel rooms for me to do cross stitch. I will probably take the embroidered quilt blocks again, they were pretty good for working on in hotel rooms as they are mostly just stem stitch.

Tuesday afternoon I will be participating in the Shetland Wool Week online ticket bloodbath - they will be released at 3pm and apparently sell out within an hour typically.  I hope to book various tours and a few classes but it's going to require fast keyboard work and a co-operative credit card company for success.