This and that

 Various crafty activities this week.  I tried out my Icelandic hat on a trip to the post office and realised it was still too short despite my tinkering with the crown decreases.  So I ripped it back to the ribbing again, and reknit it one more time with an extra zigzag to increase the length. I also went up a needle size to 4.5mm to make it a little looser.  I did the crown decreases as per the pattern since I already had the extra height.  It's much more comfortable now and I've worn it out a few times, nice and warm.  That's the nice thing about knitting, you can usually have a do-over.  And it's a nice souvenir of my trip.

I managed to produce a second Double Wedding Ring block so I now have two somewhat wonky blocks. I need 16 blocks - two down, 14 to go. 

After quilting the Tilda cot quilt (which I am now binding), I loaded the Japanese tea cup wallhanging onto the frame.  I meandered in the dark border then used my channel locks to quilt a series of vertical lines through the background, 'hopping' over each teacup as I came to it by doing some tiny stitches on either side.  I still need to quilt around each cup then I can take it off and do the hand embroidery to add the rim line to each cup. I like the way the cups are standing out from the background in a 3D effect.

I forgot to blog last week that I had a go at the Kiss clasp box based on the one I saw at Festival of Quilts last year.  I had bought a clasp at the show, and I drew up a pattern for a simple box shape modelled on the one in this video.  The video was helpful in showing how the frame is glued onto the fabric shell.  I used Bosal foam to stiffen my box shape, and hand sewed the corners.  It was a bit tricky to glue on the frame, having an extra pair of arms would have helped.  I used some bulky yarn as I don't have any paper yarn.  It turned out pretty well, apart from a design flaw, and I am using it to store my lacemaking tools in.

This is the design flaw - the frame I picked has big chunky metal balls for the clasp.  These of course make it incredibly top heavy, so all's it wants to do is this if it's empty:

So the lesson here is, don't buy a frame with a big clasp.  It would also be good to get a deeper frame, then you could have a bigger box.  This one is only about two inches deep.

I stripped off the French Polish from the antique sewing table top with meths, so I'm back to bare wood again ready to try again with the new Finpol polish.

And last weekend, we had an outing to Witney Antiques in Witney, west of Oxford, to see their amazing exhibition ‘Choice and Precious Work’: The Needle and Beyond, 1650-1770'.  The shop itself was amazing, they specialise in museum quality embroideries, mostly samplers, and I've never seen so many antique embroideries in one place.  And in such amazingly good condition.  They had an Elizabethan embroidered panel that looked like it had been finished yesterday - only £220,000 and it's yours!  I was rather staggered that there are people that spend the price of a semi-detached house on a piece of embroidery but apparently the shop is well patronised by a global clientele of collectors.  To be honest, I probably wouldn't have felt comfortable even going into such an obviously posh shop normally, but the exhibition set up in the large back room is open to the public.

Part of the shop (no photos allowed in the exhibition)

The exhibition of 17th and 18thC embroideries, needlelace, samplers, and other handmade textile related objects unbelievably showcases the work of schoolgirls.  We were lucky enough to be shown around by a PhD specialist in antique embroidery and her stories were so interesting that even DH was absorbed in what we were seeing.  So much of the stitching was so tiny and fine, you just couldn't believe it was done by girls of perhaps 11 years old, probably in candlelight.   The most mindboggling piece was probably the two bobbin lace pictorial panels made around 1660 from human hair instead of thread.  They were framed behind glass but looked so fragile that you were afraid to breathe near them.  Many of the items came from just two or three families who had kept the examples of family needlework safe over the centuries.  It makes me think of all the craft items I've let go over the years - no archive of work from me.  There was a real egg that had been embroidered with needle lace by punching small holes into the egg shell to allow the needle to pass through, nutmegs (once more precious than gold) covered in embroidered casings, quilled picture frames, early decoupage, quite a few Quaker works with tiny stitched Bible sayings, and so much more.  I wish I could have taken photos but it wasn't allowed.

Witney itself had some nice old buildings, so after a fortifying pub lunch, we had a walk around town and down to the lake which was once a huge gravel quarry.  A nice day out.