Finishing up a few things

 I finished up a few things this week that I started on the retreat.

I had cut out and started stitching this cute teapot pincushion kit that I think I bought in New Zealand. So this week I turned through the various pieces, stuffed them, assembled lids etc. to finish it off.  So cute!  And quite relaxing to make something small just for fun.

Another kit I had started was this mini clasp purse that I bought at Crib Quilts in Tokyo.  A bit fiddly to sew it into the clasp when it is so small, but again very cute.  I think it's intended as a necklace accessory.

I seamed a backing for the Vintage Linens quilt, cut some binding, and added the whole thing to the 'to be quilted' queue upstairs in the long arm room.

I finally made up my Welsh quilted cushion into a cushion with piping and a zip (thank you Youtube).  I'm pleased it's finished but I'm not entirely pleased with it.  I drew my pencil lines for the quilting design too dark so the resulting necessary scrubbing to get rid of them left the fabric looking a bit scruffy and the sateen has lost most of its shine. Also the 2 oz polyester wadding that I used (recommended by the teacher) doesn't give it much loft so the quilting looks a bit flat to me. I think wool wadding would have been better but I didn't have enough.  And despite having drawn a square design, somehow the cushion looks a little oblong to me - perhaps the cotton sateen shrunk more in one direction?  Regardless, it's finished and it's a nice souvenir of a long weekend in Wales.

I gathered my courage this week and refinished the top of the antique sewing table.  When I originally bought the table,  the top was ruined by a big white streak running through the finish, and the finish itself was virtually coming off by itself.  So I scraped off the old finish on the top surface a while ago but put it to one side while I refitted the interior of the table.  Following some videos on Youtube, I filled in some fissures and cracks with melted coloured wax filler and then started painting coats of French Polish (shellac), sanding in between.  Ideally you apply French Polish with a special cloth pad called a rubber, but that looked hard and a lot riskier with the irregular shape, so I went with brushed coats.  The resulting finish isn't as smooth because it's harder to avoid brush marks, drips etc.  I did 9 brushed coats over two days, rubbing back in between each coat, which hopefully will be enough protection.  I will rub down the final coat and then wax both sides of the top before adding it back onto the table.

I've started knitting my Icelandic Lettlopi hat this week.  It's reminded me how much I don't really like this yarn, it's scratchy and has wiry hairs in it.  I used it a few years ago to knit up slippers that I subsequently felted down to fit.  Glad I didn't buy a sweater's worth!  The pattern calls for a 100st cast on with 4.5mm needles, continuing in 2x2 rib on 3.5 needles for 10 rows.  That was enormous on my head even though I went down a half size due to being a loose knitter.  I tried again with 80 stitches which was a bit tight, so started a third time with 86 stitches which seems about right.  Also 10 rows seemed really mean, I like my ears to be warm.  So I knit enough rows to cover my ears with a turned up rib before increasing to 90 stitches to start the pattern.  Nice to be knitting again, I haven't had a knitting project for a while.

We went out and did a bunch of gardening jobs today.  I bought us a cheap pressure washer recently.  We've never had one before.  So we fired that up today and it was so helpful.  Cleaned out the fountain before we wrapped that up for winter protection, cleaned down a lot of the big pots, and then we cleaned off our brick-laid patios - getting all the muck and moss out from between the bricks and cleaning off a lot of algae and dirt build up.  We'd kind of forgotten that the patio was meant to be brick-coloured, it's been dirt-coloured for a few years now. And the inclined side alley was getting a bit treacherous with algae and moss, so that's all cleaned off now.  There was a learning curve - like not spraying towards the house because I inadvertently managed to blanket the back wall with mud spray and had to hose that off.  We became pretty mud-sprayed ourselves.  We also pulled out the leaf blower and tidied up the first wave of leaf fall from our trees out the front, there will be many more.Tiring but good to get some jobs done.  Are you getting ready for winter?