Feeling like spring

 Suddenly it is feeling like spring is just around the corner: we've had a number of beautiful sunny days this week, the garden is full of snowdrops and crocuses (and a few primroses that haven't yet been gobbled by the slugs), there are buds on the roses I pruned in the autumn and I even spotted some early daffodils blooming by the side of the road today.  It's still dropping down to freezing at night, so we're not out of the woods yet.  I've dug out the Spring Flowers quilt that I made about 25 years ago, and hung it up in the hall (the creases haven't hung out yet). I think this was an Quilt in a Day pattern.

I came across a free stitchalong for the Rosa Supply Case, a pattern from Clover & Violet for a handy little zippered book-shaped organiser that is very customisable.  As part of the sew-along, the designer filmed some helpful videos explaining various techniques, and there is a private Facebook group to show off all the makes.  When tidying up my sewing room, I had re-discovered a pack of slow stitching materials including scraps of lace, vintage textiles, trims, embellishments and so forth, that I had purchased from a textile artist at the St Ives show I think.  So I decided to use those materials to make the Rosa Supply Case.  I had to add in a piece of vintage embroidered textile from my m-i-l's stash and a bit of my own fabric, to make a sufficiently sized cover.  It was quite fun coming up with a crazy patchwork design and loading on lots of different trims. As well as using up the slow stitching pack, I also finally got to use a lace 'S' motif that I bought in Tokyo in 2019.

For the inside, I customised it to hold my supplies for quilt binding, and continued the vintage theme. A fun project and I love the way it turned out.

I finished the first two woven fabric placemats and realised I don't  have enough fabric left to make two more.  I am still struggling with maintaining a consistent width on the loom (that's why they are overlapped in the photo to conceal the worst one :)   ).  DH and I are now using these on the table, so I guess I'll find out in a while whether or not they will survive the washing machine.

I traced off the Gail Pan BOM embroidery blocks and prepared a little travel embroidery kit to take with me on my trip.  For cross stitch, I am going to take a kit I bought a while ago to make a cute little cross stitch miniature handbag because it's on 14 count which I will have a hope of seeing in the poor light of hotel rooms at night.  For knitting, I looked through my stash and found the gorgeous skein of hand-dyed fingering yarn that I bought in Iceland from the independent dyer at a yarn shop. The dyer was wearing her own handknit 'Close to You' shawl by Justina Lorkowska which she said worked really well with the yarn. So I'm going to have a go at that pattern, I have wound the skein and prepared a knitting travel pack.

Further to my post about printing and making my own paper journal a few weeks ago, I went ahead and invested in the Epson Ecotank EG-4850 printer which promises to be hugely more economical on ink. The ink tanks are filled up from bottles of ink (see photo) which are far cheaper to buy than cartridges  It's a nice feeling to be able to just print things without having to worry about being miserly with ink.  Being a dinosaur, I still like to print hard copies of quite a lot of stuff, particularly for travel - I just find it so much more convenient to whip out my printed map or printed confirmation rather than trying to peer near-sightedly at my tiny phone screen or holding up a queue while searching for the confirmation e-mail.  So far the printer seems to be working quite well.  The scanner is definitely slower than my previous Canon printer, and the full colour prints are perhaps a little less vivid, but overall I am quite pleased with it.  I may have another go at making a printed journal.