Gearing up for travel season

 Definitely in the 'gearing up' phase of 2026 travel planning now. I've finalised all the main bookings for my August Norway trip, and the St Kitts trip at end May is ramping up.  I'm also back to France next week for a tapestry weaving retreat, although that hasn't taken much organising as the week is all planned for us, I just need to get there - jet fuel shortages hopefully not affecting!  I've done some unsuccessful shopping expeditions trying to find nicer swimsuits for St Kitts, and have ordered some beach gear from Amazon (beach tote, towel clips, UV-blocking swim top etc.)

When I travel, I take a little folding tray to corral stuff like my phone, charger, earplugs etc on the hotel nightstand.  It was getting fairly worn out, so I sewed a replacement this week using some of my Japanese fabric purchases. I put Bosal foam in the sides this time, which should help it keep its shape.

I've been in a cross-stitch mood this week so have mainly been stitching on the CrossStitcher magazine house chart - it's almost finished now and I'm just adding the backstitch.

I've also felt like knitting.  I've been feeling reluctant to work on the Dirty lace shawl  that I started a while ago.  I liked the sock wool colours I had chosen, but wasn't enjoying the pattern which was a wide strip of garter lace with big holes in it.  I had knit about 14 inches but decided enough and ripped it all out and re-wound the yarn.  Instead, I tracked down the pattern for a shawl I saw on display at the Nantes show, which I think is 'Chale Neve' by Tone M Andersen.  I can use the same four colours of sock yarn, plus some white, and it is a more conventional triangle lace shawl.  So I've started that now and it may be my travel knitting project if I can squash all the yarns into a vacuum pack.

I spent some time this week re-organising my ribbon collection.  I had wound it all onto cards several years ago, which I keep in two boxes.  And of course ever since then, I had been chucking new additions onto a pile awaiting their turn to be wound on cards - the pile had become pretty enormous. So I cut more cards and wound all the longer lengths, and organised by category (ric rac, lace etc.) which took a while but it is much more useful now.

I also went through all my cross stitching and embroidery kits and projects waiting for their turn, photographed them all and compiled a list, then ranked the list by desireability.  Hopefully this will help me tackle some of the older 'want to stitch' projects instead of constantly getting distracted by the latest cute chart in CrossStitcher magazine.

3D printing this week has been mostly for my 1:24 caravan.  I designed and printed a little headboard for a bed I made, frames for the cupboard doors for a kitchen unit as well as an oven, a sink, and a set of taps; and some seats (awaiting upholstery) that I modified from a hall stand design I found online. I'm basing the decor on a 1:12 scale commercially available Chinese kit, which is decorated in a very retro, cosy style.

I've been considering other 'problems' around the house that I can solve with 3D printing - one of which is these stands which hold my interchangeable knitting needles.  The needles were constantly falling out of the stand when you were removing / inserting others, very annoying.  I measured then printed a little box for the base which holds the needles in place now. Very satisfying.

I needed table gifts for a cross stitch retreat I'm going to, and came across a key chain name generator on Makerworld.  I used it to create then print off ten of these, hopefully people will like them.

I used one of the Nantes travel journal booklets I bought and turned it into a little scrapbook of my Nantes trip.  I find I need to do this now for every trip, or I just forget where I've been.  Reading it on the page and seeing the photos brings the trip right back.

While we were looking for swimsuits in Milton Keynes yesterday, I paid a visit to Neil's Fabrics in the marketplace where I found this handsome fabric which will make a good bag lining.

The garden is coming to life now that it's spring, so that is requiring a bit of attention.  I'm trying to harden off some fuschia cuttings that I took last autumn, but the weather is very difficult for them currently: up to 19C in the daytime but down to 2C at night.  I don't want to kill them by leaving them outside all night, so they go back into the shed every evening.  Our irises have just started to bloom, very pretty.