This Old House

 When I was at university, I used to watch the popular American renovation show 'This Old House', a pioneering programme before such programmes were popular, or indeed, before renovating/flipping old houses was popular.  It all seemed so romantic and wonderful to see all this history being rescued and cared for. The reality as an adult of course is that owning any house is a constant drain on your resources, and an old house particularly so.  Jobs such as 'a couple of windows appear to be rotting at the bottom' snowball into 'the whole house needs scaffolding' + 'multiple windows are rotting in various ways '; and now: 'there's not much point painting around the failed doubleglazing panes because they will only need to be replaced later'.  An audit of the failed 1970s double glazing panes has come up with 10 (!!) panes and the quote for that (by an intrepid young man who clambered around the scaffolding quite happily measuring windows) is over £1700.  Aaargh.  And of course the scaffolding needs to stay up (at our cost) until the panes can be fitted (4 weeks lead time) and after THAT, the builder needs to paint them all in.  Good thing DH is still working full time is what I say. :)

I finished the binding on the Janet Clare Spoondrift quilt.  It fits nicely on my hallway hanging system.

This was quilted with a panto on my old frame arrangement, and consequently the stitch length varies wildly.  Going forward, I will have the benefit of stitch regulation on my new-to-me Handiquilter Simply Sixteen which was delivered and installed this week.  I'm glad we decided to have the professionals do the installation, because it took him ages to get the frame levelled on our very wonky old floors (which as it turns out, have a decided slope towards the window).  There is just room in its current position for me to walk around the frame.  I had it mounted on castors so that I could move it to create more room on one side. But having watched what he went through to level it, I may never move it again. I've only banged my head a few times while practicing.  :)

I had some basic training on delivery and have read through the paperwork that came with the setup. So far it all seems pretty similar to my old set-up - only bigger, better, and so much more robust and well-engineered.  It came with a ruler table and some rulers, so I want to learn how to use those.  In order to use pantographs, I think I will need to dismantle the yarn storage tree and move it out of the way. Not sure where to.  I'm so pleased to finally own a quality frame that is permanently set up, it's something I've wanted for many decades. As DH pointed out, now I will have to change my quilt process from 'create a top then store it for a few years', into a unified process from planning to quilting in one journey.

I think my Christmas porch scene is now 'finished' apart from connecting up the lights and doing something with a snow effect.  As it's a Christmas theme, I can always add more to it in future. It will be a fun addition to our Christmas decorations.

The Latvian mittens are about 1.5 inches long now and I'm getting the hang of knitting with three colours but it's a slow process.  I tried a Norwegian knitting thimble for a while, but am now just holding two strands over my left index finger and one strand on my right index finger.  I'm a bit worried that the mitten may be a bit snug fitting, but I need to knit a bit more before I can decide.

And summer, such as it was, is almost over.  Hope you have a great bank holiday weekend!