I have seen my future and now I'm scared

 I may have mentioned here before that my sister-in-law is determined to get her elderly parents moved out of their terrace house and into a retirement flat this year, because they can no longer manage.  So today we drove down there and while DH and his sister tackled clearing out some of the shed tools and clutter, my job was to sort through my m-i-l's fabric and craft stash.  I'm not going to lie, it was awful.  She literally had fabric dating back decades, everything from quilt fabrics of various eras, dressmaking fabrics and linings, old cutup clothing, inherited linens, bits of old bedsheets, boxes of old sewing patterns, drawers of bits of ribbon and string and half-made cards and envelopes of old cardboard templates, half-started projects, abandoned projects....  And everything had a story, mostly full of regret for the things she never made.  And there were tears.  Lots and lots of tears.  I had to go get my sister in law three times and in the end she just stayed with us, to talk her mum down and convince her that she really can't hang on to everything.  She hasn't really made anything for years and yet she still wanted to keep most of it, including obvious rubbish. And she wouldn't let us touch the wool or books yet.  I've brought back three large suitcases of fabric to possibly go to charity shops although I need to go through it all again, we binned a lot of small scraps and rubbish, and there is a mountain of the good stuff which she wants to donate to the quilting group that she hasn't been to in years (I was hoping I might get some of the good fabric but sadly no).  So we finally got back home, exhausted, from our day, and I visited my basement craft room and looked at my own vast hoard and I now feel very depressed.  I really hope that in another 20 years I am not going to feel like my m-i-l is feeling.  Although I do think that I have been working hard the last few years to clear out the obvious rubbish and the stuff I know I will never use.  There is so much more to do though.  

We just got back from a week in Malta and Gozo, which was meant to be winter sun but in fact was pretty stormy apart from our first day and our departure day (of course).  The rest of the time it was overcast, 15-16C, very breezy and frequently raining - with the result that the convenient timesaving ferries were all cancelled and we spent a lot of time on buses instead.  But we still had a nice week, our hotel was lovely, and Malta is such an easy place to visit with everyone speaking English, and a high standard of hospitality.  This time we also travelled to Gozo for two days/one night, which was surprisingly greener and more lush than Malta, and fewer tourists, but still lots of history and lovely old buildings.  On Gozo, I visited two lace shops - one not very good, and the other one in the Citadella which was superb.  The Maltese lace is made on a long sausage pillow leaned against a wall, with all the bobbins hanging down, completely different from English lace.  A lot of the lace sold for tourists is very crude, but the Citadella shop in Victoria had some lovely work, really well made.  I only bought a bookmark because all the mats and doileys were more than I wanted to pay for a souvenir, although priced at well below what they would cost in terms of time to make.  The less-good shop also surprisingly had a lot of well executed tatting, so I don't know who is making that but I bought a doiley.

I took the knitted hat with me that I started on the retreat weekend, and got the double brim turned up and started in on the textured pattern which features a float that you catch up into a subsequent row.

I also worked on my fourth cross stitch house from the Houses of Britain stitchalong from CrossStitcher magazine.

After we got home (and all the laundry was done), I had a second attempt at sewing an inner bag for my tatted drawstring bag.  It is surprisingly difficult to make a neat bag to fit inside a constantly shape-changing mesh, but I got there in the end.  It's not wonderful but it looks ok.

The drawstring isn't very functional because the edging wants to all fold in on itself when you tighten it to close the bag.  I may try a wide ribbon instead to see if that is an improvement.  At the end of the day it isn't a terribly practical bag but it's cute.  Let's just hope that I am not crying buckets over it in 20 years...