I need a Time-Turner

 I've had fun this week with my new loom, trying out different things. But of course that means less time on other works in progress. There is only so much time in the day, even when you are retired. The loom has been living on the end of the dining room table but DH is very supportive and is happy for me to be enjoying something new.

I finished the mug rugs, there was one wonky one and some wonky places in the edges but in general I was quite pleased with them. We were going to visit DS and his girlfriend yesterday so I was thinking about giving them the mug rugs for their new house.  DH thought they were too big and he didn't like the colours much.  So I made four more smaller coasters in a blue plaid look, and managed to finish them up in time for the visit.  To my delight, the girlfriend much preferred the mug rugs (although they asked for the smaller coasters as well) and immediately put them to use in serving us tea.  Lovely to see something you've made get put to use and valued.  They've also asked if they can have some more handmade quilts for the new house - I have obviously raised my boy right.

I finally finished the CrossStitcher magazine Christmas Ornament this week.  My kit turned out to have about five times as many beads as I needed, and only half the specified number of star sequins, but I'm still pleased with how it turned out.  I finished it off by gluing some cord around the edges.  The magazine saw it on Facebook and got in touch asking if they can put it on their Letters page which will be fun if it happens.

This week I used some of my TV time to applique nine orange circles to the centres of my Checkered Dresden Plate blocks.  Orange is not my favourite colour but it suited the quilt and I had a good match to the jelly roll colours in my stash to use.  I need to rotate the blocks to sort out the corner square fabrics then sew them together.  Funny how projects kind of take on a life of their own and want to look a certain way even if it isn't a look that maybe suits your personal taste.

But instead of sewing blocks together, I've been playing with a Lori Holt Zippy Bags panel, a fun panel in home dec weight fabric in her characteristic modern feedsack prints, that makes up into four large (14" x 12") and four small (9" x 8") project bags. The panel also includes coordinating pull tabs.  The instructions in her tutorial are pretty basic, with zigzagged edges internally, and the bags are not see-through.  I decided to modify a large one to have a vinyl front instead because I like to be able to see what is in things.  I quilted the back piece for some stability. It turned out pretty well (apart from the double binding which was a disaster in terms of catching it on the back, next time I will glue first) so I will probably do the other three large bags the same way. I used my own stash fabrics for the binding and to add the vinyl panel top. I had to switch to my industrial machine for the final binding seams, my domestic Janome couldn't hack it.

For the smaller bags, I came up with a variation on a quick zip pouch tutorial I saw on Youtube, which finishes the internal seams with French seams for a much neater look.  I stiffened the bag with some fusible woven interfacing.  This came out pretty well so I will do the other three small bags the same.

Still no takers on the dollshouses, apart from a woman who bought my 1:24 scale house then shortly thereafter cancelled the purchase stating that she hadn't realised it was half scale instead of 1/12th scale.  I felt tempted to ask how she thought I was going to post a full-size dollshouse but decided life is too short and accepted the cancellation.  I have a load of stuff I need to take to the charity shop as well.  The dollshouse room is still looking like a disaster zone in the meantime.

Moving inventory out, and a new toy coming in

 I've continued the dollshouse downsizing this week.  I photographed and listed several lots on ebay of unfinished furniture I will never use, and have sold all but one of them.  I've also listed three houses but so far have only had lower offers for them.  Including one lady whose rationale for offering lower than my (to my mind quite reasonable) asking price was to pay for her petrol in coming to fetch the dollshouse.  I managed to politely respond that I didn't think the seller should be expected to pay for the buyer's petrol. She also added that she was on quite a tight budget, but with a further herculean effort I restrained myself from enquiring why on earth she was buying dollshouses in that case.  Grrrr, people.  On the plus side, one of the ebay buyers was thrilled with her purchase and sent me a lovely thank you along with a picture of the project house they will go into.  So that was nice. I am gloomily contemplating having to decide whether to let the houses go for low offers just to get them out of the house, or keep hanging on in case somebody falls in love with them and is prepared to pay the asking price. They haven't been listed for very long so far, but will have been seen by anyone actively looking for a house.

Meanwhile, my new toy arrived this week from Japan, the Clover 40cm Sakiori loom.  It's a beautiful bit of kit, simple but so well made.  I spent a couple of days translating the excellently illustrated Japanese manual (using Google Translate) and then loaded my first warp.  The manual walks you through creating a mini mat as your first project. I threw in a few stripes for interest.  I'm using some Rowan Hand Knit Cotton from my stash, left over from some long ago attempt to knit a Kaffe Fassett design. It's a worsted weight and from memory the sleeveless vest I knitted felt like wearing body armour because it was so stiff and heavy.  The mini mat was a great first project, as right away I encountered common beginner issues like striving for neat selvedge edges and trying to maintain a consistent width and not let the weaving draw in. So I've been watching lots of beginner videos on Youtube and I've sent off for a comprehensive book on weaving which is recommended for beginners.

I've now re-warped the loom and am attempting to weave some mug rugs (coasters) based on one of the Youtube videos, in a weave that gives the effect of vertical stripes.  The tutorial demonstrates the compression of the weft so that the warp threads don't show as much, and the weaver was using a tool made from an old fork.  The tines had been bent over into hooks, allowing her to pull down the weft threads and really pack them down.  I found a set of four cheap forks for £3 at PoundStretcher and managed to achieve a similar tool on my fourth attempt (using a combination of a bench vise, a hammer, and some round-nosed pliers). It is harder than you might expect to bend four metal tines into similar hooks all at the same height.

Before the loom arrived, I enjoyed pulling out another of the little fabric picture kits that I bought in Tokyo, and making that up.  It's a cute little picture of a Japanese tea service with matcha tea, typical Japanese sweets, and some cherry blossom.  Basically you are covering pre-cut foam shapes with fabric and assembling them like a jigsaw to make the picture.  Not that difficult but very satisfying. Plus it reminds me of the matcha tea and sweets that  I enjoyed on my travels. Matcha tea was an acquired taste for me, it's fairly bitter, like very concentrated green tea (which is what it is).  As well as hot tea, you can buy a variety of matcha-flavoured food stuffs: ice cream, kitkats, chocolates etc, some of them nicer than others.

This weekend I have spent all day on both Saturday and Sunday in the UK Quilters Guild online retreat.  This is a ticketed event but the cost is so much more reasonable than actually going away to a hotel and of course much easier to just stay in your own sewing room.  They had over 400 participants this year, the second year they have run the event.  For me personally, I enjoyed last year's event more, as many of the sessions this year weren't of as much interest to me.  But it was still nice to have some company and it kept me working away in the sewing room.  I made another block for the Double Wedding Ring quilt and managed to sew it together wrong twice (too much distraction I guess) so spent a lot of time unpicking which stretched the block a bit - there will have to be some easing in when I sew the blocks together.  I altered a travel skirt, and sewed a little mini drawstring bag for a mini travel power bank I recently bought.  

Then I moved on to the Checkered Dresden Plate jelly roll quilt that I started a year ago at the hotel retreat, based on a Missouri Star tutorial. I had all 9 plates already assembled apart from one plate that needed one more wedge.  So I completed the 9th plate and then cut out nine background 22" squares from my background fabric.  The tutorial recommends appliquing the plates to the background fabric with blanket stitch.  I sewed on two plates that way and decided I hated the effect of the rippled ridged line around each plate.  I tried straight stitch and felt that looked much tidier, so I did the rest of the plates that way, then spent some time unpicking the two blanket stitch plates so that I could re-stitch them.

Having them up on the design wall, I just felt it looked a bit static.  I still had fabric left over from the second jelly roll, so I decided to add some corners to the blocks for a secondary design.  The design is busier now but feels more lively to me.

The Missouri Star quilt has a plain border in a contrast fabric.  I don't think I have anything suitable for a contrast border because these are not colours I would normally use for the most part, but I still have more of the background green.  If I use that, then I will need to continue the side diamonds into the border  so they don't look cut off. But I think it might work better when the design is so busy.

I have finally finished stitching the awful sky of the cross stitch christmas ornament, I have really done a terrible job on this so it's a good thing it's only a christmas ornament.  So I have been able to move on to the backstitching, always my favourite part as it brings the design alive.  The final step will be to sew on the sequins and pearls that came with the kit.  I'm stitching on it as I watch each day's playback of the January sumo tournament in Tokyo - the momentous news being the decision of the reigning Yokozuna (the most senior wrestler) to retire at long last.  So he has dropped out of the tournament and there is no obvious successor.  So he won't be coming to London when the sumo association brings over wrestlers for the exhibition in October 2025 at the Royal Albert Hall, an event I am hoping to get tickets to, when they are released at some unspecified date.

Letting go

 This week I have started downsizing in my dollshouse room.  It has been feeling like an overstuffed disaster area for some time now, even before I had to squash things up to make room for the Mckinley build.  And it was definitely an area on my radar for decluttering in preparation for our eventual house move in 6 or 7 years time.  When I was younger, I had vast ambitions to build all the things, and maybe even build dollshouses to sell. In preparation I collected and hoarded all kinds of furniture, accessories and dollshouse kits. (are we recognising a theme here from my other hobbies?).  It never crossed my mind that in my 60s I would no longer have the physical or mental energy, or even the motivation, to not carry out my grand plan. 

 I watched a decluttering video on Youtube a while ago that talked about the 'seasons' of our life, and how these change, and how something that was a great fit for an earlier season may no longer be who you are in your current season.  I've also been inspired by the ongoing Declutter Challenge by Just Get It Done Quilts on Youtube - which is about sewing but also applicable to other hobbies.

So I've started this week having a look at my dollshouse room and what is taking up space there.  

1) First to go was a room box I made on a workshop about 15 years ago - I did a great job and had put some quality furniture in it - but no sentimental attachment remained.  So I  took out the furniture and sold the roombox on Facebook. 

2) I had an enormous room box inherited from an elderly friend who passed some years ago. She had embarked on a 1:12 model of her father's hair salon where she worked as a young woman.  But she hadn't done very much, and her skill level was low in her older age.  I was going to finish it in her memory and I did some work to decorate the outside and front of the box, and had purchased some hair-related accessories.  But it has sat in the corner of my room for years and in the meantime the little work she had done in terms of internal cubicle divisions had mostly fallen apart.  I realised that I just had no investment in the project, it wasn't my past, it was hers.  And I remember my friend in so many other ways, I don't need to continue to give house room to this large relic.  So that has gone.  It wasn't saleable so I retrieved items that can be reused or given to charity, and the carcass is going to the dump.

3) I had another room box that I made on 'the world's largest mini workshop' at the New Orleans miniatures show in 2003 with Braxton Payne.  The workshop was tremendous fun. The theme that year was 'kitchen' so all participants contributed kitchen related accessory makes which were divided up into gift bags that we all then received back.  The roombox was, of course, a kitchen and we finished it by installing all the freebies we had received.  It was a great memory for a long time.  But now it's over 20 years ago, I only remember highlights of the event, and to be honest most of the freebies were just paper makes or fairly amateur makes, while the fittings were mostly cardboard.  So I emptied that box out (mostly into the rubbish) and will keep it as the box is fairly good and might be useful for something else in future.

4) A long time ago I belonged to an excellent dollshouse club in Shepperton, which included some really talented people and which used to run a great group workshop programme.  I still have some of the club projects that we made for group displays.  One of them was an 'attic' inside a roombox, full of discarded and even broken items.  I did a good job and it looked good, I have enjoyed having it for the last 25 years or so.  But again, the memories are old now, the box is no longer 'me'.  So today I took it to a local charity shop and had a conversation with the manager to doublecheck it was something they could sell.  She was thrilled to have it and said it was going in the window and she was sure someone would buy it quickly. In fact she was tempted to buy it herself.  I'm now going to have a hard look at some of the other club projects as well.

5) I was approached by a woman on Facebook who lives about 40 minutes from me, asking if I had any furniture to downsize.  I have so much furniture that I will probably never use, most of it not great quality as I picked it up on a budget in past years.  She only wanted a modern style of item, which I had little of.  But we did a deal on a few pieces and one of her family members picked those up yesterday.  She also gave me some advice about listing items on ebay, so I should probably get on to that.

So it's a start.

I actually spent about three days in my sewing room this week, despite the cold floor. It felt good to do some sewing. I mentioned last week that I had started on a small Japanese bag using the American Country panel that I bought in Tokyo at Crib Quilts.  I finished that off this week, it's turned out really cute.

Together with some previous American Country panel makes

The rest of my sewing time was on another block for my Double Wedding Ring quilt and pulling together a self-designed stitching organiser which isn't ready yet.

I have continued to plod along on the cross stitch christmas ornament, really disliking it now that there is only sky left, but I'm determined to finish it.  I also have given the frame quilting a rest this week and instead returned my attention to my needletatting beginners books.  I re-learned the basic stitches then picked up a drawstring tatted bag kit that I bought in Tokyo at the Aphyu tatting shop.  I bought two kits there, but this one is the simplest, just rings and thread spaces, so it is a good beginner's project.

The cold snap continues - it's been minus 4C during the day the last few days, we wake up to a heavy frost which just stays there all day.  But lovely and sunny, so not all bad.  I've been wearing my Christmas Kep hat every time I go out, it is keeping my head lovely and warm.

Oh fleece lined leggings, where have you been all my life?

 We're having a cold snap where it's been sitting at 0C or -1C during the day, and dropping colder at night. And this morning we actually woke up to an unusual sprinkling of snow (maybe 1/2" deep) which is actually sitting instead of disappearing.  So it feels christmassy.  However the gas fired central heating in our house has always fought an unequal battle against the icy draughts from our many large poorly glazed 1970s windows, and from the chimney flues in almost every room, and coming up through the many gapes between floorboards.  My sewing room in the basement for example has a wood-planked floor directly over an earthen void.  While this saved the room when we had the flood (because the water streamed down into the void), it means I am standing directly on poorly insulated planks over a -1C void at this time of year.  It's worst when it's windy outside and all the draughts come licking into the house.  So my discovery this year of the wonderful delights of fleece lined leggings has been a revelation.  I bought my first pair in November, then promptly bought two more pairs, and have been more or less living in them ever since.  Comfy and warm, warm enough for the void, even warm enough to wear outside with additional legwarmers (yes, I am a fashion plate, can't you tell?).  No more bundling up in bulky trackpants double layered with thin leggings underneath - where have these been all my life?    

Anyway, enough about my fashion choices.   I finished the Christmas Kep knit a few days ago, and have worn it outside twice.  It's lovely and warm with the deep double brim covering the sides of my head, and looks very seasonal.  It feels slightly odd not to have a ribbing band gripping the sides of my head, but because the stockinette band is doublesided, it just sits lightly and securely over the ears. This is knit in Jamieson's Spindrift wool, partly from stash and partly a few new balls I had to buy to get the colour gradiation correct.

I finished up the design wall creation of the New Zealand Kiwiana scrappy quilt using the Turning Twenty Around the Block pattern.  Then I sewed it together, which was quite straightforward because it's all straight seams and almost no seam matching.  My son helped me pick out the inner border colour before we took him home last weekend, he seemed to enjoy critiquing the various choices I was bringing out from my fabric stash - to the point where he put a bid in to own the quilt.  But this is my NZ souvenir, hands off lol.  Then I added the borders during a zoom call with the Chookshed in Australia.  For the backing, I spent a few more days piecing together all the larger remnants of the 25 Kiwiana fabrics because I can't see using them for anything else. And now it is upstairs in the 'to be quilted' queue by the long arm. It is an extremely busy quilt but I think it has come together surprisingly well to become a 'green quilt', considering I was just buying the fabrics I came across with no real plan on how they were going to go together.

design wall

completed top

I finished longarm quilting the Embroidered Blocks quilt and it's off the frame.  Since taking this picture, I have washed and dried it and it's now waiting to be bound.  This was another learning quilt where I was trying new things - most of them worked, some of them didn't.  I didn't get the quilting density very even so it's never going to hang completely flat.  It's the first time I've tried quilting around embroidered blocks so that was a learning curve.  I tried out some new free motion filling patterns and some of those are a bit messy.  I'm getting better at stitching in the ditch. This is the kit that I bought in Paducah in 2022, then I took the blocks with me to Japan in 2023 to embroider during my 7-week trip.  I modified the design to combat the asymetry by adding the nine blocks on the right, it's still a bit weird looking but I like the folksy Americana 30s  vibe.  I also tried out a cool new ruler I ordered from QuiltOff in America, which allowed me to stitch a very even 'ribbon candy' design in the inner vertical background space - not something I can manage freehand.

I am still plugging away on the Cross Stitch Christmas Ornament, adrift in the random pixellation of the sky area which is so far beyond my limited counting ability that I am at best producing an approximation of the actual chart.  I even drew a grid and have tried so hard but keep going wrong so I've kind of given up and am just going with it now, and just filling in gaps with whatever.  I just need to finish filling in the sky then I can get to the back stitching which is the good stuff that brings the design to life.  There are also some beads and sequins to be sewn on.

After finishing up the Kiwiana top, I have rewarded myself with a completely frivolous fabric folly.  I dug out the American Country panels by Masako Wakayama that I bought at her shop Crib Quilts in Tokyo in 2023.  I had already made up the projects from American Country 21 previously, so I was interested to see what 22 and 23 would offer.  The instructions for 22 (translated using my smartphone with Google Translate) were for very similar little projects to 21: little boxes, an oval zipped box, a tote bag etc.).  23 takes a different approach, you can choose to either use the bulk of the panel as a wall quilt, or, cut it up to again make similar little projects such as tote bags.  I decided to make the wall quilt from 23 so that has gone up to the 'to be quilted' queue.  But for 22, I decided to use the panel for a different bag shape from the Masako Wakayama book that I own.  This is like a little lunch pail with internal pockets and a central zip pocket.  It's been fun choosing which parts of the panel to cut up, plus I appliqued a few motifs onto the side gussets for decoration. I've interfaced the pieces with Vilene G700 woven interfacing, and a bit of light Decovil in the base, to give a bit of structure in addition to the wadding layer. I'm using the Japanese construction method where each piece is individually finished, then handstitched together to construct the bag.

I've taken down all the Christmas decorations and they are put away, leaving the house looking a little boring.  The tree is out in the front yard, awaiting collection by a charity that takes trees away in return for a donation.

I mentioned last week that I have been feeling tempted for quite a while by the idea of a weaving loom.  Reading the weaving magazine I got in my stocking led to watching various Youtube and Craftsy videos about rigid heddle looms and how to choose a first loom. But what tipped the balance was coming across a reference to a Japanese Clover loom for Sakiori weaving - which is weaving with strips of old fabrics - which can also be used as a rigid heddle loom for normal weaving.  I was intrigued and looked into it, and it sounds a lot easier to set up than a normal rigid heddle loom because the warp threads just sit in grooves rather than having to be individually pulled through slots in a heddle.

They are also quite reasonably priced - in Japan.  Shipping them to the UK adds on over 50%, bringing them in at a similar cost to a rigid heddle loom except that I was also able to include accessories such as a second heddle bar for sock yarn weight, additional shuttles and a few other things.  So I spent my Christmas money (and some more) on that and it should arrive over the next couple of weeks from Amazon Japan.  I am rationalising this by the idea of using up some of my knitting stash on the loom, and maybe even some of my quilting stash if the fabric strip weaving is feasible.  What is retirement for if not a time when you can try out something new?

Happy new year everyone!  And may 2025 bring you lots of crafting joy and success.