A lack of memories

 More downsizing this week: going through various photo albums mostly of old holidays - including several hundred colour slides from trips in 1982 and 1985.  Obviously it was difficult to see the slides clearly without a projector - I put them on my light table so I could make out the subject of most of them, and I have a little magnifier to look at individual slides.  I pulled out the few slides and photos that depict me or a family member. But the vast majority of the photos were of scenery, architecture, antiquities etc.  which I don't even remember seeing, apart from a vague 'I was there' memory. At least I have learned over the years to take more pictures with people in them, particularly myself.  There were also photos of roommates, chance-met travelling companions of a few days etc, and I don't remember hardly any of them either.  In the end, I threw almost everything out.  It seems a bit pointless to save photos of, say, what the Acropolis looked like in 1985. If I want a picture of the Acropolis, I can look on the internet. It was a bit depressing though - not just the waste of money and time, and dragging all these photos/slides around from house to house over the years - but also the fact that I can't remember much of what I saw 40 years ago.  Makes you wonder what is the point of travel, but I know it shaped me as a person and ultimately resulted in me emigrating to the UK. Anyhow, the photo cupboard is a lot emptier now.

I finished the quilting on the Red House quilt.  It mostly went fairly well - there were a few errors in rolling on which resulted in the occasional overlap, but these aren't too noticeable.  This is a photo on a double bed but really it's a queen size quilt (but I couldn't be bothered to tidy my own room). I chose a modern pantograph of stylised feathers in a fairly close texture so as to quilt down all the seams from windows and doors.

I've been working on week six of the Lori Holt My Happy Place quilt, which includes three pieced blocks and this appliqued block featuring an actual cross stitch design. Luckily I had a dot grid fabric to use as the  embroidery background (since I haven't bought her specified fabric).

I've been knitting a bit on the Latvian mitten that I started a while ago, and have done a bit on the Little Houses cross stitch.  

Just a month until my New Zealand trip now, so as part of my preparations I have kitted up some craft projects to take along: a small cross stitch design, the sumo design sashiko I bought in Japan, and an embroidered panel for a French quilted zippered pouch kit.  I may not have room to take all three.

DS and his girlfriend have decided it's time to stop renting and buy their first house. After viewing only a handful, they have gone ahead and offered on one.  We did tell them that there will be a lot more selection on the market in the spring, but I think they just want to get it over with and get settled.  They are both busy professionals, and their tastes are quite different than ours anyway, so fair enough. Also there was some pressure from the other in-laws to get on the housing ladder sooner rather than later. So now they are furiously adulting as the buying process picks up steam. I hope it all turns out for them.  Mortgage rate trends into the future are anyone's guess. And I think they will have a lot to learn about being responsible for keeping up a home, but I guess we all went through that ourselves and we survived.  As someone who used to hide the dirty dishes in the oven in my twenties, up until that time I put the oven onto preheat, thereby transforming the lid of my food processor into modern art, I remember the learning curve. In my defense, I was living alone in a rented small flat.