Dodged a bullet

I had a job interview this week so preparation rather dominated my free time over the past several days. It's been a year and eight months since I last had to job hunt so it took me quite a while to get back into the right head space, learn my 'elevator speech' again, remind myself of interview techniques etc.  I was rather dreading the interview which included a test, but both test and interview turned out to be rather easy.  That's not to say that I did brilliantly - I certainly could have answered several questions much more actively and succinctly.

But I wasn't that enamoured of the job which sounded repetitive and lower level than my current role, the office was small and old fashioned and overlooked a busy noisy road, and worst of all it was about 100 degrees in the room where I would be working.  Nonetheless, I was kind of talking myself into to being ready to accept should they offer me the job, as we need my income.  Luckily they didn't offer me the job so I feel like I dodged a bullet as they made the decision for me. Still, it was good practice to gear up for an interview and hopefully I will do better on the next one I get invited to.

Still no real news at work, although the mood is getting grimmer every week as people start to panic. They are still saying that they plan to issue notices in early April, yet there is no real news on how they will select people etc. There's a new twist which is that they've decided they have to place my job-share partner currently on maternity leave into an unspecified role, but they had no information on how that would affect me as her jobshare partner nor the contractor currently doing the maternity cover.

Gardening time

It's starting to feel much more like Spring, things are starting to bud in the garden, we've got daffodils and crocuses blooming.  We don't have any money to spend on it but there are things we can do that won't cost much.  Last weekend DH and I measured the garden and then I drew it on graph paper and started playing with designs.  I'm thinking of something like this, with a snowman-shaped lawn on the diagonal, and a patio on the right behind a trellis privacy screen as we are very overlooked.

So today we went out with a can of line-marking spray, some pegs and string, and measuring tapes, to draw out what it might look like for real.

We bought a sledgehammer and safety gear and DH is currently pounding away outside to break up the unwanted former concrete path down the middle of the lawn. It's going to be a long job, in one hour he only managed a little nibble but I expect there's a learning curve.  He seems to be finding it quite satisfying but I bet he will be stiff tomorrow. In a few more weeks when it is warmer, we will start digging the new beds and moving existing plants around. I'm still waiting for a quote from the builder on repairing our crumbling boundary walls, although he did say he might bring a mason around this coming week to have a look. We can't do anything about the patio until the walls are repaired.

Sewing

This week I was working on an old project, a Lone Star quilt kit that I bought at the Chicago Quilt Festival in 2008 from Karen Witt of Reproduction Quilts. It's called 'Suzanna's Star' from c. 1870, and included all the fabrics and some quite minimal directions which didn't even specify all the cutting sizes. Luckily I have the excellent book by Jan Krentz 'Lone Star Quilts & Beyond' which has comprehensive directions for sewing accurate lone star points, blocking them, and calculating how big to cut the setting squares and triangles.

It's taken me a long time to sew the points, because each strip segment requires matching 7 seams accurately, so 56 seams to match every time I added one of the eight segments to each of the eight points.  But this week I finally finished the last of the eight points and was able to draw out a blocking diagram on some scrap fabric based on average measurements of each diamond.

Then I pinned out each point in turn, starched it, and pressed the seams open.

Which yields eight points which in theory are all exactly the same accurate size.

Then I had the fun of putting them up on my display wall to get the full effect for the first time. Wow!

Bobbin Lace

I'm meeting every Monday with some former classmates from the lace class for mutual encouragement. Last Monday I finished pricking number three from the Pamela Nottingham book. It's got several mistakes and I wasn't tensioning the 'fans' very well to begin with, but I was getting better by the end of the piece (where the loose threads are).

Then I moved on to pricking number four, which is a short piece with fans and spiders.  I was doing the edging wrong for a while but I worked out my mistake and was able to correct it from then onwards (about halfway through the square corner, heading towards the loose threads). Some of the other students repeat pieces again and again until they get them perfect, but I feel I am learning more by pressing onwards and learning new concepts. I don't see a lot of value in repeating something I already know how to do, just to get it absolutely right with no minor flaws. I will repeat if I genuinely didn't understand, or was using the wrong thread or something. My plan is to complete the half dozen samples in the Torchon chapter and then have a go at actually making something like a mat.

Knitting

I'm quite pleased with my finish this week on the Capelet from Let's Knit Magazine, designed by Jan Henley (which let's face it is basically a poncho). It's come out the right size, feels light and springy and cosy, and unlike a shawl it stays put and keeps me warm.

TV knitting has been another square for the GAAA Afghan, which I'm enjoying as it seems fairly easy after slaving away on the Aran Sampler Sweater.

Commuter knitting has been the Mixalot Sock and I'm just about to knit the final toe. I'm still knitting the Battle of the Five Armies MKAL Shawl, this week is Clue Seven. And I dug out another ancient kit, a free gift from Rowan when I was a subscriber about 10 years ago, for a denim yarn shoulder bag.  I never knit it because it was basically a meter-long strip of stockinette, but I suddenly realised I could whip it up quickly on the knitting machine. So I knit the bag body and flap on my Brother 260 at Tension 2 quite easily. Now I have to hand-knit long strips of narrow cable to edge the flap and be the strap. Then as it is denim yarn, it all goes in the washing machine to be shrunk before it gets sewn up.  Due to back issues I don't really use shoulder bags, I always use a knapsack to distribute the weight. But it will be nice to finish it and perhaps it can be a knitting bag.

Well, that didn't work.

Fairly major 'FAIL' on the knitting front this week.

Having removed and re-knit the stained portions of my Aran Sampler Sweater, this week I sewed all the pieces together for the first time.  I tried it on and stepped in front of the mirror.

The first obvious problem is that the sleeves are too short. If I pull the shoulders up so the design lines are vertical, then the sleeves are about 10cm (4 inches) too short. They are meant to be full length and when I knit the cuff I actually thought they might end up too long.

The second problem, which may not be as clear in the photo, is that the different wool I used for the main part of the sleeve (not the cuff) is a really different cream colour and stands out like a sore thumb.  Even DH, who hadn't been able to tell the difference when the pieces were separate, immediately remarked on the bi-coloured effect.

It's also not the most slimming jumper in the world. I haven't knit the neck yet, but that will help pull in the neckline and support the shoulders.  It was a drop shoulder design which I turned into a modified drop shoulder, but even so there is still some unattractive bulk under the armholes. The textured front is doing nothing to disguise my tummy.

After considering it in the mirror from different angles for a time and feeling really depressed, I think I have no option but to take the sleeves back off, pull out the non-matching wool, and try and buy some wool which matches better then re-knit them (and knit them longer this time). In retrospect I probably should have added some waist shaping in the back but I'm not going to pull that out.  It was tempting to put the whole thing in the bin but I haven't hung onto this yarn for 20 years and put so much effort into the Aran front to give up now.

Other knitting this week has been a few more inches on the Capelet where I am almost ready to seam together the cape part of the poncho, Clue 5 of the Battle of Five Armies MKAL, and the second sock of the Mixalot Socks (and the short row heel went a lot better on the second sock).

On the quilting front, I dug out all the completed blocks of my 25 Block hand applique quilt and put them up on the design wall.  It seems that I have completed 17 blocks so far so I have another eight to go.  I spent a couple of hours preparing the templates and tracing the background and fabric shapes for Block 18, and have started stitching it. If I ever finish this quilt, it is going to look so nice.  According to my notes, I started this in 2007 with the plan to complete it in one year.  ha ha ha ha ha ha haha

What's in the box?

I had a very interesting delivery this week.

What's in the box???

Could it be 120 part-works to build a Japanese dollshouse??  Why yes, I think it could be.

What's that, Sharon?  All the instructions are in Italian?? Well, you're not insane at all, are you??

he he he

Yes, after reading a feature in a British dollshouse magazine about an American lady living in Italy, who had built a gorgeous Japanese-style dollshouse from kits published as part-works by De Agostini, I made the fatal error of looking it up online.  The more I looked at it, the more I liked it and thought how fun it would be to build.  It was a small step from there to Italian eBay, where I soon found an entire full set of kits on sale for about 1/10th of their original price.  Despite being skint, I decided to cash in some Premium bonds and snatch it up before it was gone.  After an interesting exchange of communications relying heavily on Google Translate, my big box arrived this week by courier.  I'm really looking forward to the day I can start translating the instructions and get going on it, but that will have to wait until my dollshouse workshop gets set up and I can unpack all my gear.  Still no word from our erratic kitchen fitter on when that might be.  In the meantime, after unpacking and checking all the kits, they've gone back in the box and into the attic storage room to wait for their day in the sun.  And I want to put in this post for posterity how supportive DH was about this purchase. Instead of telling me off for buying crazy things when I'm about to be made redundant, he congratulated me on my bargain buy. He's the wonderful product of 25 years of training and I'm grateful.

Less haste, more speed

So I blocked my Aran Sampler Sweater  on Tuesday, let it dry until Friday, then Friday night I hand-seamed the shoulders together. This morning I thought "I'll just give those seams a quick shot of steam before I sew in the sleeves on my linker."

Then this happened.

And it won't wash out.

I was pressing onto a wooden ironing ham that my f-i-l made me, which I've used several times for quilting when you want a really firm surface to press on.  It's never made any marks on the fabric I've pressed, yet when I turned over my first seam to see how it had come out, there was this horrible brown stain all along the wool.  It isn't burnt wool - it almost seems to be some kind of dye or oil and yet I don't believe he used either when he made the ham. I tried various cleaning agents and it won't come out.

So I guess the only thing to do is to let it dry, and unpick the seam, unpick the stained knitting, and re-knit the back and front shoulders.  Luckily even though I don't have much yarn left, I've got enough to do that.

Earlier this week I seamed together the blocks of my Star Sampler Quilt with the inner border.  The pattern binds off the quilt around the outer blocks, but there is an alternative version which has an outer border.  I tried the first version on a double bed.

I thought it looked a bit skimpy and not covering the bed sufficiently to be useful.  So I went ahead and added the outer borders.  I didn't have enough fabric left to cut them all in one length, I had to piece four cornerstones to make up the length.

I like it better in the bigger size, it covers the bed properly and the blocks are set off better.  So that can move out of the 'needs to be pieced' queue and into the 'needs to be quilted' queue now.

I finished my first Mixalot Sock which I quite like apart from the badly-worked shortrow heel.  I'm considering cutting the heel out and knitting a new one back in, but I'll see how I feel after I knit the second sock (which I've started). The fit is quite good, although as usual with my handknit socks, it's not going to stay up my calf in wear.

Otherwise this week I've been working on my bobbin lace,  and knitting the Capelet.  It's been a fairly quiet week because I still wasn't feeling 100%.  Today was a gorgeous sunny day, up to 17 degrees C, so we went out and did a big clean up in the garden: cutting down all the dead stuff, raking up leaves, pruning roses etc.  There are loads of bulbs coming up and you can see them better now that all the debris is gone.  Spring is coming!

In which I sort through several years of tear sheets

I think I've been quite clear that I suffer from S.A.B.L.E. in all my hobbies (Stash Acquisition Beyond Reasonable Life Expectancy), but the fact that my eyes are bigger than any lifespan I am likely to enjoy was driven home to me this weekend as I sorted through my craft files.

Last weekend I put two coats of Dulux Wood & Metal paint on a decrepit four-drawer filing cabinet bought at a charity shop several months ago.  It looks a lot better although obviously painted.  Then I started unpacking four boxes of files and sorting through them to determine which would go in the cabinet, which needed to be broken down into smaller files, which were rubbish etc.  After those boxes, I moved on to the 18-inch stack of magazine tear-outs in my quilting room, and the similarly-sized pile in my dollshouse room.  It actually took several hours over yesterday and today and was quite sobering because there is no way in heck that I am ever going to have time to make even 1% of what I've optimistically pulled out of magazines.  Also sad to find projects that I was really keen to make, say, twenty years ago but never did. But also nice to come across projects that I did make and enjoyed.

I have made a stab at sub-dividing by topic: for example, 1/12th scale furniture, polymer clay ideas, quilt patterns, machine quilting tips etc.  But there are six fat files of quilt patterns alone.  I think at some point in the future I am going to have to go through it all again and winnow it down to things I might actually need or make.  But for now at least it is all in one cabinet and reasonably under control. And there is a system set up so future tear-outs will have a home to go to. And the good thing about sorting through a curated pile is that I liked almost everything I came across, so lots of pretty eye-candy.

Earlier in the week, before I succumbed to the sniffly cold I've had since Wednesday, I sewed some vintage lace onto one of our new blinds, in my bedroom, and I'm really pleased with the Edwardian vibe it has now.  This is made from two pieces of vintage crochet intended as towel ends - I've seamed them together as unobtrusively as possible (by hand) and then machine stitched the lace onto the blind.

I've got plans to make a valance for my bed out of some more lace when I'm feeling better.

I also spent several hours earlier in the week laundering the vintage linens that had stains on them.  Some of the stains didn't come out sadly, but boiling some of the most affected items produced some startling successes.  The two collars/cuffs drying below were a disgusting peanut-brown, but turned snowy white in the boil wash, as did the similarly dingy two netted doilies.   The pink tatted dresser set previously looked grey and grubby and brightened up wonderfully, and one of the bigger tablecloths that was badly stained with large brown marks came out almost completely white.

The clothes horse above is suspended in one of our cellar rooms which were the former servants quarters (possibly the former kitchen) so I thought it was quite fitting to be hanging up vintage linens to dry just like those previous occupants probably did over one hundred years ago. Too bad they weren't around to do the subsequent ironing - I'm sure they would have done a better job!

On Tuesday I wound off my remaining Aran Sampler Sweater yarn ready to machine knit the back and sleeves. It quickly became apparent that I hadn't bought enough yarn 20 years ago.  I had enough to knit the back, but nowhere near enough to knit two sleeves.

 So I sent off for some budget yarn from Black Sheep, some Wendy Traditional Aran 100% wool in cream, which is a similar colour but definitely a bit darker. I've machine knit the sleeves out of that, but I've knit the cuffs and the back welt with the original yarn because it's softer.  As I'd also finished the Cabled Cardigan final sleeve, I now have all the pieces for two sweaters waiting to be wet blocked to measure.

I might do the blocking on Tuesday as I have the bobbin lace ladies coming over tomorrow and they might wonder why my lounge is carpeted in wet knitting - (DH is just used to it so won't bat an eyelid).

Now that my bobbin lace course is over, I've set up a workstation upstairs in my knitting room as it didn't seem fair to continue to litter the dining room with all my lace equipment. I'm near the window so the light isn't bad but I've also got a daylight lamp for extra light.

I'm working my way through Pricking No 1 from the Pamela Nottingham Torchon chapter, it's going fairly well although I've made a few mistakes. I'll probably finish this one tomorrow and move onto the next pricking in the chapter - I've printed off all the Torchon prickings from the chapter and have got them ready to go with coloured film and card, I just need to prick the holes first before use.

Bad news on the job front

My team suffered a sudden crushing blow on Thursday, delivered via a hastily arranged Webex conference call.  There are some 50 or so people doing similar roles around the UK - they've announced this group will be cut to 22 (first shock!) and that we will be given our notices by the end of March (second shock!).  People are a bit stunned by the scale of the cuts and the speed with which they will be enacted, particularly since the dust has barely settled on the previous round of redundancies before Christmas.  First we have to go through the charade of consultation which they are abridging to the bare minimum of 30 days. I think it highly unlikely that I will survive, although we have no information yet on how they are going to select who goes and who stays. Being part-time I am already at a disadvantage. We'll see what happens but it seems likely that I will be out of a job come June. I've started looking at what's available in London and around where I live, but as usual there is very little part-time work in my specialism. Roll on the lottery win is what I say.

A rumour of Spring

Despite the damp chill which seeps into your bones, there is a sense that Spring is just around the corner in our garden.  A few inherited crocuses are peeping up, several clumps of snowdrops are glowing white against their dark surroundings, and bigger bulbs like tulips and daffodils are stretching green tips several inches upwards from the ground.  Our pear tree has buds on it, and what I think is a Mulberry tree has several fat buds as well.  I've indulged in some cut daffodils in support of the Macmillan cancer charity which are ripening to yellow buds in the dining room, and a little pot of narcissi from Morrisons for the study which have grown about three inches already in just a week.  I'm looking forwards to the earth warming up as I want to move around several shrubs in the front garden.

I had the builder back to give me quotes on all the repairs needed to our boundary walls, and I'm bracing myself for a big number. I knew the buttresses on the front garden wall were all broken away, but I didn't realise the wall itself was loose at the bottom - rather shockingly it rocked back and forth when the builder gave it a push.  It's all got to be done though, particularly the tall brick wall in the back garden which I'm afraid is going to drop bricks on someone's head - the top few courses are already collapsing.  The brick bays in front of our front cellar windows need digging up and rebuilding as well. So there won't be any point doing too much in the garden beds around those potential construction sites as plants will get smashed down. So instead I will likely be moving stuff out to safety in the side beds or even into the back garden temporarily.

From my sewing room I can look out at the garden, nice for good light but the view isn't that inspiring yet.  One day we will have a nice garden.  This week I cut out and put together a flannel raggy quilt for my son, which made an instant dent in my stash. Flannel quilting fabric is incredibly expensive in the UK but I had been picking up a few yards here and there in sales for several years. Therefore they probably weren't the fabrics I would have chosen if money had been no object, but I'm fairly pleased with the outcome.  I looked at a few tutorials to refresh my memory as I hadn't made one for several years, and I found this image of a four-patch quilt which suited my five-fabric stash.I used leftover flannel scraps for the middle layer plus I cut up an old brushed cotton sheet that I used in the past as a design wall.

(above) Piecing together the squares: large squares are cut 9", small squares are cut 5", 1/2" seam allowance used throughout. Eight rows with five blocks.

(above) The quilt top after I had cut into all the seam allowances, which took a couple of hours and gave me proto-blisters. At least this time I managed NOT to cut into the quilt itself, unlike previous experiences.

(above) The quilt edges all frayed after a trip to the commercial laundrette and a few spins through their tumbledryer. I didn't want to subject my own washer to such a heavy load and all the loose threads. I'm pleased with how it's turned out although it would have been nice if I'd had enough fabric to make it bigger, my son is tall enough that this won't cover him up completely.  I still think he'll like it.

While I was sitting in the laundrette waiting for the quilt to be finished, I was knitting on my capelet. I think I must be a bit more than halfway through, it's got to wrap loosely around my body and be seamed to itself.

I'm almost finished the last sleeve for my cabled cardigan, I'm just decreasing for the cap of the sleeve.  Then it will just need blocking and I can sew it together!  For my Aran Sampler Sweater, I realised that my plan to use the handknitting pattern as a machine knitting guide wasn't going to work. The handknitting pattern casts on a lot of extra stitches to compensate for the dense aran texture, and in stockinette it would mean a back that was half again too wide.  So I had to sit down and write out a machine knitting pattern to produce a back and sleeves that will be more or less the right size at the gauge I am getting on the machine.  Fingers crossed anyways.

Commuter knitting this week was the sleeve the first few days, then the Mixalot sock which is slowly progressing. I'm still not happy with the mess I made of the heel, but it's fitting pretty well. The top of the cuff is a little tight, I will have to be careful to cast on extra loosely for the second sock.

I finished Clue 2 & 3 of the Battle of Five Armies Mystery KAL shawl, which was leaves representing the elves of Mirkwood, followed by shields representing the Dwarfs. I added a couple of beads to each dwarven shield to bling them up a bit. I'm now working on Clue 4 which represents the goblins. This is TV knitting because I need my iPad to keep track of where I am on the charts.

And I astonished myself this week by picking up a hand applique project that I started many years ago, to sew some more leaves onto a block that I started at least two years ago. One day this will be a 25-block traditional applique quilt - I think this is something like block 17 but I've misplaced my master list of blocks. It felt really good to work on it, I enjoy hand applique once all the pieces are marked - it's the faffing about with templates and tracing onto the background for placement that I find really tedious.  Most of the blocks are from the book 'Grandmother's Last Quilt' but I'm also doing some out of the 'Rose Sampler Supreme' book.

I haven't done any bobbin lace this week as I've been waiting for my new threads to arrive.  They tried to deliver while I was out so I picked them up from the post office yesterday. Now I need to copy out some practice Torchon patterns from the Pamela Nottingham book.

I'm pretty much finished sorting through my vintage linens, although I have a pile that needs washing to try to remove stains.  I didn't find everything that I had previously catalogued, but then I found quite a few things that hadn't been catalogued or at least didn't have tags on, so there may be some overlap there.  I've scrawled all over my old catalogue so I need to type all that up and re-print it.  I've sorted everything into four boxes so I need to label those as well:  Small mats and doilies, Large mats and doilies; Tablecloths; Oddities and clothing.

Oh great, it's started raining again outside...  England in February, not fun.

Let the sunshine in

It isn't actually sunny out, as we are going through a typical English grey and rainy spell, but the light levels inside our house have been considerably lifted with the installation of new sheer roller blinds in the front rooms.  For six months we've been living in partial gloom because all the front windows face onto a busy main road and people and buses are passing by within a few feet of our house.  Being privacy-loving individuals, we've had no choice but to keep our grubby inherited dark roller blinds closed at all times, casting the lounge, dining room, and front bedrooms into shadow 24/7.  Last month we scrimped and saved to put aside the funds to buy six sheer blinds in an lacy pattern that reference the older style of the house, and yesterday we put them up.  They let the light in, and give a partial view of the street, but people outside can't see in during the day time.  Yay!  It makes such a difference to the dining room, even in this gloomy weather. The room seems twice as big, and is much more inviting to go and sit in.

One day when we have the funds, we will replace the grubby old roller blinds with nice Roman Blinds in fabrics to echo the room decor.

After cleaning the house all up last weekend, and putting all the leaves into the dining table etc., I was let down at the last minute by the lace group which was disappointing.  The Council found a new venue for the last class, so the teacher called me a few hours ahead to tell me of the change. At least we ended up with a tidy house :)  So the course is over now, but there is talk of continuing to meet informally as a lace group so I said I would be interested in that.

In the meantime I finished my lace circle and turned it into a card even though I am only keeping it as a sample. I had my first try at joining lace to itself, I didn't do a good job and the join is quite visible, but I learned a lot by trying it so I think I can do a better job next time.  This is worked in 50-wt sewing thread.

The last lesson for the course was to try Bedfordshire-style plaited lace.  I worked two samples from the Pamela Nottingham book 'Plaited Lace No 1' and 'No 2', I just ran them together on the same pillow to avoid re-winding bobbins.  The strange place where some threads are stranded across is where the second sample starts.  Unfortunately the thread I chose, a No 80 crochet cotton, is too tightly twisted to lie flat for this lace.  I've since ordered a few reels of more suitable thread and when they get here I am going to keep working through the Pamela Nottingham book to teach myself. I didn't really enjoy the plaited lace, so I'm going to go back to Torchon and work through that chapter.

On the knitting front, I was sorting out my collection of ripped-out patterns to file them, and came across a few things that were tempting. I succumbed to a pattern from Let's Knit magazine for a Capelet, which normally I wouldn't be seen dead in but it just looked so warm for wearing around our cold house.  I'm knitting it in some Rowan Kid Classic from my stash, stranded with one strand of Forsell Shamal (a machine knitting coned wool blend) and I'm really pleased with the lofty lightweight fabric I'm getting.

I finished the first sleeve for my Cabled Cardigan, and I've finished one side of the neckline for my Aran Sampler Sweater.  I also did a bunch of tension samples on my Brother 260 chunky knitting machine in preparation for machine knitting the back and sleeves for the Aran jumper. Since they are now just going to be plain stockinette, there's no reason to slog through them by hand. With this discontinued Jaeger Sport wool, Tension 4 on the machine gave me the required 18 st x 24 rows, so I should be able to just follow the hand knitting pattern as there is no internal shaping.  I will probably knit the welts by hand because my ribber sponge bar is shot, and also to make them match the front welt.

I tried on the pin-fitted tissue bodice of my Mannequin Cover and it seemed to fit, so I laid out the pieces on some cotton gabardine fabric, and chalked additional seam allowance around each of them (the Craftsy video recommends increasing the seam allowances to one inch), then cut them out.  Now I just need to add the markings and symbols and then I can baste it together for a first fitting. I might do that today.

You can see I have turned my sewing machine desk sideways on to the window now, and I've set up the two folding tables in front as a work area.  It seems a better use of the space than when the desk was facing the window.  If I ever actually machine quilt something larger, I will need to rig 'dams' along the lefthand and far edge of the work area to prevent the quilt falling off, but I think that day is far off at the moment.

Did you do anything for Valentine's Day?  We didn't do much apart from putting the blinds up, but we did have a nice bottle of chilled Prosecco in the evening which was a treat.

I'm still ploughing through my vintage linen collection, I've ironed most of the small stuff so just have about 25 small table cloths left to get through.  I have a number of fragments of lace that I found in bargain bins, edgings that were cut off from decayed cloths, or unfinished lengths of lace.  I've left them until last but I would like to find things to do with them.  I might sew some onto the ends of hand towels, and make a valance for my bed edged in lace, and maybe sew some along the bottom of my new sheer blind in my bedroom. I'm increasingly feeling like I would like to get back into sewing, it's mainly the unheated floor in my cold sewing room that's discouraging me so hopefully in the spring you will start to see more sewn items on the blog.

The sun is shining..

It's a gorgeous sunny day out as I write this, still cold though and hovering just above freezing.  We had some more of this a few days ago:

but it's all gone now.  And I've been very pleased to see the dawn almost breaking when I am at the station in the morning, so it's quite light out, plus it's staying light longer in the day as well. It's always so oppressive to be going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark.  We have several clumps of snowbells blooming in the garden, and quite a few inherited bulbs poking up so it will be exciting to see what we've got in the spring.  There are also some fat buds on some of the trees in the garden, I think one is a magnolia tree so that could be pretty.

We had a breakthrough on the noise-from-next-door front, when our doorbell rang one evening and someone who looked a bit  like a ZZ-Top band member announced that he owns the studio.  Despite a beard lush enough for families of birds to nest in, and a big piercing through his nose, he seems quite pleasant and anxious to adjust sound levels so that the Council doesn't email him again.  He said he didn't realise how loud it was outside until recently, so he's turned everything down and has been round a couple more times to check that it's not bothering us.  So that's a huge relief and we're very grateful.

Today I've been cleaning the house up because I've invited my lace class round tomorrow, we didn't have a venue for this week's class because the normal one was double booked.  I've cranked out our Victorian dining table and put both leaves in, so we can easily sit eight around it and could sit 10 at a pinch.  I've been getting on fairly well with my  bobbin lace circle piece and am almost to the point of meeting where I started. We've only got one more lesson the week after next and then the course is over.  I can't justify the money to sign up for another one, but I think I've had a good grounding that will now enable me to keep working on my own from my library of bobbin lace books. One day I would like to buy some decent hardwood bobbins, but the plastic ones are working fine in the meantime.

I topped my Christmas Table Topper, so it just needs quilting now.  The 'ribbons' are fusible applique finished with a small zig zag. There will be dark green binding to finish it. I'm definitely not getting a quarter-inch seam with my quarter-inch foot, not sure yet whether it is me or the foot so I need to experiment before I tackle anything more complex.

I also did a bit more sorting out in my sewing room, and spent a couple of hours sorting photos and pasting them into my project scrapbooks.  I used to be really good about pasting in a picture of everything I did in a year, and including notes or patterns etc.  Somehow with everything that's been going on I stopped filing about three years ago.  So it was quite challenging to work out what went in which year, I found scrolling back through my blog quite useful to pinpoint when I was working on things.  It's made more complicated by my habit of taking several years to actually get around to finishing things.  So a quilt that I started in, say, 2003 might not have been topped until 2009 and not quilted until 2012.  It was quite nice to look back over old projects though, I'd forgotten a lot of them. I sometimes feel like I am the only one that still prints out hard copies of photos (I save them up and send 150-200 at a time to an online place, it's much cheaper). I just like being able to have a physical copy that I can write on, write notes next to, move next to other related photos etc. and know that it is safely preserved and not at risk of loss due to hard drive failure or technical obsoleting.

I've got as far as cutting out the pattern pieces for my Mannequin Cover. It's been a long time (decades) since I handled a dressmaking pattern and I was confused that there were no seam allowances marked. I googled and it appears that they are included, just not marked on this McCall's pattern.  Then I had to try to alter the pattern for my thick waist.  I'm not sure I've done a very good job, but I guess the next thing to do is to pin the tissue together and try it on.

On the knitting front, I've completed the increases for the first sleeve of the Cabled Cardigan, and I'm on the short row heel for the Mixalot Sock.  I also did a bit of knitting on the neckline of the Aran Sampler Sweater.  I've gotten muddled up several times and had to pull back because of either forgetting to decrease or forgetting that my charts are now partially cut away due to the decreased stitches.

I've also started a new Mystery Knit Along, The Battle of Five Armies, which is the third shawl in the series by AlterLace on Ravelry to go with the three-part Hobbit films.  I really enjoyed the first two 'An Unexpected Journey' and 'The Desolation of Smaug' so it's fun to be knitting one again.  Apparently this will be another half-round shawl.  Of course, it doesn't look like much until it's blocked.  This is in Auracania Ranco Multi, and this is Clue One and Clue Two.

For machine knitting, I finished, blocked, and sewed together the little denim baby jumper, and it's all wrapped up now ready to take to work on Wednesday to travel to the baby shower with a colleague. I stitched the bands down with a contrast cotton and gave it wooden buttons, for a bit of a 'denim jacket' vibe. I hope she likes it.

Prettifying the house

Several years ago I cut up some charity-bargain vintage linens to make bunting, copying some expensive bunting I saw for sale in Lewes.  This used to be pinned up in my bedroom at the old house, but I decided to try it in our new kitchen.  I think I like it, it adds to the 50s country kitchen feeling and the yellow is a cheerful contrast with the blue cabinets.

I've also started sorting out my large collection of vintage and antique linens.  About 10 years ago I was really into collecting filet crochet, especially pictorial crochet, and was always on the look out for items at flea markets, antiques stalls etc.  Along the way I have picked up or been gifted various other linens other than crochet, such as knitted lace doilies, netting, tatting, needlelace, pulled thread work etc.  Again, initially, I was very good at cataloguing them and put a little tag on each one but that rather fell by the wayside over the years.  Partly because there were few places to display them in our previous little house and because they were inaccessible under a bed.  So now I've taken over DS's bedroom and have unpacked them all and am gradually ironing them and ticking off items on the catalogue, and tagging uncatalogued items.  Despite the incredible work and artistry that goes into them, vintage linens are still almost worthless.  I have about 25 gorgeous little table cloths that used to go on tea tables etc,, all heavily decorated with fine crochet borders, and these still seem to be selling on eBay for abou £4-5. It's ridiculous.  I don't need so many linens and doilies but I feel like I am keeping them safe for future generations.  But I've been having fun finding places around the house to display some of my collection. Much easier in this house plus they are more likely to stay clean for longer now that DS is grown up.