It's turning into that miserable period in between autumn and winter now, when everything outside is damp, there's chilly fog in the morning. when you go outside the cold penetrates right through your warm clothing even though it is still 10C or so, and the chilly draughts are starting to lick around our ankles inside our old house. And of course Storm Claudia has just swept through, causing havoc in other places but thankfully not much locally. It just makes me want to hibernate. I want to snack more, I am more lethargic, and increasingly unmotivated to venture into either the chilly basement (sewing room and dollshouse room) or the chilly attic (scrapbooking station and long arm frame). I am spending more time reading, drinking more warming cups of tea, and feeling half asleep a lot of the time (despite the caffeine).
So it's been a bit of a pottering week in terms of crafts. I did a bit more on quilting the digital teapot panel on the frame, and I've started a side project making a small journal out of an old box of tea. I've woven about half the checked christmas teatowel. I've realised that if I am actually going to make the unicorn panel into a quilt for my son's girlfriend for Christmas, then I only have about six weeks left to get on with it. So I've ordered a bit of coordinating fabric to go with the panel, and found a pretty simple pattern for a quick quilt online.
I did finally finish stitching house number five (of 14) from the CrossStitcher Houses of Britain monthly project. These take me so long even though they are quite small, there are a lot of small colour runs so lots of changing thread, and then hours of backstitching to bring all the details to life. I am glumly contemplating the prospect of stitching nine more house charts, even though they will look so nice when they are done. I will be taking a break during December because I will be stitching a little Christmas sampler instead. I don't think I want to give up, I would still like to stitch them.
I also made a push and finally finished the multi-coloured Bruges lace trim that I started about two years ago. The quality is pretty mixed, because over such an extended period of time with lots of periods where I wasn't working on it, I kept forgetting how to do things. So there are some real bodgy bits in it, but the overall impression is good. Now I need to figure out what to do with it. I don't think I will make anything more from the book, even though there are other attractive colourful trims. It's just too much starting and stopping with the various colour elements that have to connect to each other, too many sewings etc. If I continue making bobbin lace, I think I will return to making Bucks or even Torchon, where you can just start and keep going. It's nice to have the lace pillow and tool bag etc. out of the study at long last.
On the little miniature kits, I made up two ancient kits from the old club days, for dolly beds made from toothpicks and tongue depressors. They came out fairly well considering the materials. I decorated them with some cutouts from my clipart files, and added some 'quilts' from some fabric in my stash.
Also, I pulled out an old Phoenix metal miniature kit for a dollshouse's dollshouse. We used to think these metal kits were amazing, back in the day before 3D printing came along. Now it looks a bit clunky, I think I got it in a sale a long time ago. I handed it over to DH as painting metal miniatures is his area of expertise. He cleaned up the molding a bit, primed it, and painted a colourful base layer over everything which was very nice of him. So all that I had to do was finesse the details a little bit, which was much easier as his painting delineated all the elements. I need to glue the porch on and probably spray the house with some sealer then it's done.
We re-hung the mended gate, it looks great but now the gateposts more obviously need a coat of paint as well - perhaps we will get another sunny day when I can tackle that. I decluttered some of my chintz china to the charity shop - I had picked odd pieces up here and there at antique shows and bricabrac shops. It used to be very collectible but I looked up all the current prices and none of it is worth much now. The whole research exercise was highly dangerous as I kept seeing other chintz pieces which I absolutely loved but I stayed strong and didn't buy any more. I am hanging on to some of my favourite pieces although we rarely use them. The next thing to declutter will be a small stack of quilting patterns left over from decluttering the file cabinet, I need to photograph them and get them listed for sale.
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