A stitchy day

 DH kindly drove me to Nottingham today (the trains were in disarray due to overhead cable replacement) for a cross stitching day at a central hotel.  It was a relaxing day, just working on what I had brought, and everyone was very friendly.  There were two traders so I came home with a project bag and some stitch minders, and some 'counting pins' which I hadn't seen before.  Like giant hat pins with caps on the points, for when you are trying to count squares on your cloth for stitching and need to mark off a starting or finishing row.  I forgot to take any photos but we were just in a conference room so not wildly photogenic.  I started the next house from the CrossStitcher Houses of Britain SAL (I think this is the 4th, or 5th? out of 13), then when I got tired doing that, I switched to my Gail Pan embroidery and even cast on for a Lace Cowl in the possum/merino blend I bought in New Zealand.  For the cross stitch, I was trying out a new adjustable magnifer that I bought from Amazon.  I like it because I can adjust it away from pressing on my neck, and it's handsfree, and  I will still be able to watch TV over the top of it.  However I was having trouble with the adjustable loop gradually opening up behind my neck, causing the magnifier to slip lower.  I think I need some kind of tie or clip behind my neck. But in general, having magnification really helped to keep my stitches tidier, I probably should have been using one well before now.

I finished quilting the New Zealand Quilt with a feather scroll that looks a bit like ferns, and ran it through the washing machine.  These photos are straight off the drying rack, it hasn't been ironed or trimmed up yet for binding.  It's turned out pretty well, considering the wildly disparate fabrics with New Zealand motifs that I came back with.  I made the back out of all the leftover bits of New Zealand themed fabric since I doubted I would use them for anything else.  And I also included some of the selvedges with the local names on them. 

Also on travel-themed finishes this week, I finished the vanilla socks in the Opal yarn that I bought in Tokyo  and used as my travel knitting project after I finished the shawl.  It's too hot to wear them now so I've put them away for the winter. I will blow my own horn and point out that they are nearly identical, which requires a bit of finessing when you are working with one ball of self-striping yarn.

Just before I went off on my travels at the end of March, I had finished weaving my Colour changing scarf using an ancient cone of Denys Brunton Magicolour colour changing yarn left over from my machine knitting days, and Panama cotton as the warp.  It's the longest thing I've woven, and I was getting better at having tidier edges.  This week I learned how to finish the ends with hemstitching and fringed ends, thanks to Youtube.  I've washed it as well to set the weaving.  I love how the colour subtly changes along the scarf.  The weave is a bit dense, I need to stop thinking like a quilter and aim for more of a looser mesh on the loom, since it tightens up once the weave is not under tension on the loom and when you wash it.  It makes me want to get my loom out again.

Last week I posted about the needlebook I was making out a couple of motifs cut from the fabric I was given in Korea.  I added the felt pages, stitched the book together on my industrial and added a ribbon for decoration.  It's cute.

The amount of DS's stuff that we have taken out of the attic and over to his new house over several trips this year, had finally reached critical mass. So last weekend we were able to finally go through the attic and weed out a tremendous amount of clutter, rubbish and charity donations.  So I've spent a lot of this week going through boxes of old financial records from, like, 2009; records of three prior house moves etc. and assembling vast piles for shredding.  In the spirit of decluttering, I also pulled out the Hawaiian quilt UFO which I started shortly after our trip to Hawaii in 2009 that I blogged about a few posts ago.  This wildly overambitious queen size  quilt was not only my first ever attempt at Hawaiian quilting but I even created my own design.  I had appliqued almost all of the centre (there was going to be a border as well) apart from the flower tips - but over time the flower tips had all frayed and gone wonky so it was impossible to applique symetrical flowers any longer.  And looking at it with a much more experienced eye, the applique itself is not well done - lots of bumps and kinks instead of smooth curves, and definitely not symetrical.

So after realising I didn't even want to finish it anymore, I decided to unpick the blue applique so I could re-use the white as backing.  But after spending 45 minutes unpicking just two  flower sprays from one branch, I decided life was too short and put the whole thing in the bin.  I had done too good a job on the applique so it really didn't want to be unpicked.  Also I found the blue batik fabric had gone slightly rotten and was tearing pretty easily, so I put the rest of it (saved for the border) into the bin as well.  So that has cleared off most of a shelf in my UFO corner as well as removing a little nugget of guilt that I hadn't even realised had been burdening me. I think that was my oldest outstanding quilting UFO although I have some bags of patterns and fabric waiting to be started which are possibly older than that.

What's your oldest stitchy UFO?