Shropshire

 We were away in our little caravan this week, to a site just outside Shrewsbury.  We really liked the bits of Shropshire that we were driving around:  very green and rolling countryside, loads of period buildings, cute villages, lots of history etc.  We had a day in Shrewsbury which included a visit to  'The Parade', a converted Georgian hospital which now houses a number of independent boutiques and shops.  I really liked the knitting shop there 'Ewe & Ply' which had a great selection of various wool yarns and some nifty accessories, and a really friendly and helpful owner.  I picked up some 3.5mm dpns since all of mine seem to have disappeared when I needed some to knit the cat, some more stitch markers, and this very squishable skein of fingering weight Blue-Faced Leicester 'LegEnds'.

Also in The Parade was a modelling shop that was closing down - I picked up a few sale bags of trees and shrubs since I used most of mine putting together the Christmas porch vignette last winter, and a bag of curious wooden shapes. I don't know what they were meant to be, but I am seeing storage jars, bun feet for furniture, ceiling lights for smaller scales etc.

As usual we visited many secondhand bookstores, where as well as some fiction choices, I found a couple of craft books that came home with me.  The Shaker dollhouse furniture book has pages of measured drawings for furniture but not many instructions as such.  The Japanese inspired quilting book is full of sumptuous creations in silks and Asian-style prints, including this Kimono quilt very reminiscent of the wallhanging kit I made up a few months ago.

Also in Shrewsbury is a branch of Abakhan, the discount fabric and haberdashery warehouse.  They had some shelves of quilting fabric sold by weight - this very cute 'Quilt Fair' fabric came home with me for a good price.

And today I sewed some of it into a replacement for my ageing and dye-run stained sewing pincushion/rubbish bag.  I used the old one as a pattern then re-used its stiffening tape for the bag portion, and its sand for the new pincushion.

While we were away, I was knitting on the Latvian mitten although I found the light in the caravan wasn't really strong enough for knitting with black yarn so it worked best knitting in the afternoons. I was also working on the magazine gift seaside houses cross stitch that I started a few holidays ago.

Still painting dozens of pieces of trim for the dollshouse I'm building, very tedious but I'm just about there on the first batch of window trim.

I often watch/listen to Youtube videos while I'm sewing and lately I've been watching a lot of laser cutter videos.  After looking into the price and lack of availability of Arts & Crafts style furniture for my current dollshouse, I'm vaguely wondering if cutting my own would be feasible.  I could cut .svg files on my Brother Scan N Cut but only in card or matboard as it doesn't cut wood.  I'm getting the impression that although there are several cheaper laser cutters on the market, most of them aren't very good unless you add on a lot of accessories.  It doesn't seem very sensible to spend hundreds of pounds on a laser cutter just to avoid spending hundreds of pounds on furniture. Also I would have to source .svg cutting files for furniture, or design my own, which is a whole nother time suck on my retirement.  Still tempted though, I do like a gadget.