A senior moment - aaack! I'm too young!

You know that moment of realisation that you've done something really stupid, and you just can't believe you've done it?

Today I was sewing together 36 vintage snowball blocks into six rows of six blocks.  I spotted that I had pieced three blocks in Row 1 in the wrong orientation, luckily before I joined it to Row 2.  I ripped out the seams, telling myself off, carefully resewed them, pressed them again, and then joined Row 1 to Row 2.

Then I hold up the two joined rows to inspect my work, and realised I had sewn the three blocks right back into the same wrong orientation! And this time I had to rip out the row seam first and then AGAIN rip the block seams.  Grrrr, smack head several times...

The blocks came from a vintage top I bought in Sisters, Oregon back in 2007.  I thought I had a picture of the whole quilt top, but I only have this image where it appears on the right hand side.  It had blue sashing with red corner squares, which were vintage fabric but the colours didn't look good with the block fabrics. The blocks are hand pieced but were joined together by machine into blocks of four, then sashed.  I suspect someone found some blocks and joined them together into a top to make it more sale-able.

I ripped out the sashing and started playing on the design wall.  Due to the extremes of values (dark and light) the groups of four blocks didn't work well at all, so I ripped them all out to end up with 36 single blocks.  Then I played some more and in the end I came up with this arrangement where the dark blocks form a diamond and the duplicate blocks are arranged symmetrically.

So I've sewn those together now and I just need to add an outer border.  Then that will be another UFO I can move to the 'needs to be quilted' list.

Before I tackled the snowball blocks, I finished sewing the borders on the Stack and Whack Sara's Stars quilt.  I'm pleased with how it's turned out, it was so enjoyable to sew all the kaleidoscope stars and hexagons, which are all from the same fabric as the outer border, and see all the amazing designs emerging. The colours really sing to me.

Knitting

This week I finished the little baby cardigan in Lion's Brand worsted acrylic for the girl at work. The pattern is 'Miss Sadie Baby Kimono' by Mary Kate Long and it's  a free pattern on Ravelry which is written for either DK or worsted weight.

I've blocked the machine knitted marled t-shirt pieces after finishing the v-neck trim application, and I'm just waiting for it to dry so I can sew the side seams and set in the sleeves (pic is of the sleeves blocking).

There hasn't been much commuter knitting this week as I have gotten totally sucked into re-reading the Aubrey and Maturin books by Patrick O'Brien - I've just finished book 6.  It's actually been a bit of a mental wrench a few times as my train pulls into London and I have to take myself away from some tense naval battle in 1812 off the New England coast and turn back into a London commuter.

I finished the Fenick square for my GAA Afghan.  I've lost track of whether this is block 17 or 18 so not sure whether I have 2 or 3 squares left to knit. I've cast on for the next square - I hope it's square 19.

Other stuff

I finished painting the mirror frame.  It looks quite dull in this photo, in reality it came out a sort of goldy-greeny-bronze sort of colour.  It suits the hallway a lot better than the original orange pine frame. I really like this sort of 'quick fix' where with relatively little labour or expense, you can completely change the look of something. I had to buy a tin of gold paint for £4 but I had everything else to create this effect.

I had a go at flower arranging using some of the early summer flowers from our garden.  I've never been much good at flower arranging but it is easier when you have a selection of ferns and greenery to draw upon. I was disappointed that the rose only lasted three days though before it started to droop, and the hydrangeas were limp by four days. It almost seems a shame to bring them in from the garden then. But they did look fabulous in the hallway, made me feel very posh.

I finished the strip of dollshouse bobbin lace, but can't show it to you made up as a towel end because all my miniature toweling fabric is packed still.  I'll put it safely away until the dollshouse room is set up.  The long strip of lace is almost finished, I'm just working the final corner and then I will seam it onto a vintage cloth.

The garden is looking pretty good.  After a few weeks without many flowers, we now have geraniums, foxgloves, roses and other unidentified things blooming.  However, we've realised that there are no apples forming on the apple tree despite the brave show of blossom it put out after we moved it.  I guess the stress of moving was too much for it to fruit this year.  Hopefully next year we will get some apples.

DS will be coming back from university soon for the summer, which will change the dynamic of the household. It will be lovely to have him back, but there will be a period of adjustment while we get used to having a third person in the house, and he gets used to not being as independent as he is at school.  I also think we will need to have a conversation about pitching in with housework this time round, although he did do a lot of cooking last summer which was nice.

Gardens and cream tea

Today (Sunday) was a lovely sunny day at last. We spent the morning grubbing out the copious crop of weeds from our own garden, and putting down some mulch - which we should have done weeks ago but the garden wasn't ready then.  But in the afternoon we headed off to the pretty Northamptonshire village of Creaton, which was having its annual Open Garden Day.

Ten lovely gardens were open, and it was quite enjoyable to stroll around the pretty village in the sunshine and just walk into people's gardens.  You pay £4 to get a map showing all ten gardens and then you can visit them in whatever order you like.  We saw so many lovely plants and it really made me wish that I knew more about gardening. Also lots of lovely features like ponds, gazebos, arches, sundials, dining nooks etc.  Makes our infant garden look quite boring and open. And we had a lovely cream tea at one of the houses along the route, in fact they brought out an entire platter of cakes and just left it for us to try whatever we wanted - yum yum!

Sewing

Yesterday we went to Northampton to run some errands and stopped into the marvelous Fabric Millshop, which is a huge Aladdin's cave of  bargain gorgeous home dec and upholstery fabrics, as well as craft fabric, trims etc.  I wanted to recover two cushions in the living room to tie in better with our blue painted walls, and I chose two fabrics that picked up the right blue colour, plus two more cushion inners and some continuous zips.  A bit of sewing last night and this morning and we have four new cushions. The plaid fabric was only £2.95 a metre!  I'm pleased with how the cushions make our ratty old sofa look more like it belongs in the room.

I started to add the outer border to the Stack and Whack quilt.  The short borders went on fine, but the first long border is too short so I've measured something wrong - not sure whether it was the quilt or the border fabric.  Need to investigate.

I stumbled across a free online BOM called the Cosy Afternoon Free BOM by Jacquelynne Steves and decided to sign up.  Not because I need a new project (I really, really don't...) but because I thought it might get my creative juices flowing again and bring back some of my quilting mojo.  I pulled some fabrics today ready for the kick off on 15 June. What do you think? I was going for a vintage feel.

Knitting

I finished the teddybear for the pregnant colleague at work.  For some reason his head looks a bit small - perhaps my tension tightened up from the stress of playing Scrabble with the in-laws? :)

I knit a pair of booties for her as well, and have started a quick newborn cardigan in worsted weight Lion Brand acrylic.

Commuter knitting has been the same. This week I also made a start on a cardigan for me out of slubby cotton yarn.

Do you remember this bargain buy of 'tangled at the dye stage' Rowan Summer Tweed, from Texere at Fibre East?

I've spent probably about 8-10 hours in the last few weeks untangling the blue yarn. I was very disappointed to find that hidden in the coiled skein were multiple broken ends, ranging from just a few feet up to several yards.  I have managed to wind two big continuous balls from it, then I have some medium balls then some pretty useless balls of lots of small scraps.  The plan is to knit a cardigan for summer from it, but I need to do some tension swatches now that I've untangled it.  Not looking forward to ever untangling the purple skein now...

Bobbin Lace

I was almost finished the long strip of bobbin lace but I've found a vintage cloth that I think I will attach it to, and the cloth is wider so I need to extend the strip by two more fans. That means I've got to move the lace up the pricking again, so that might be my job for tomorrow's bobbin lace meeting.  I've also got started on the first dollshouse edging.  It's a fairly simple pattern of fans and ground, the real challenge is that the thread is much thinner (Cotona 30) than I've used before.  As dollshouse scales go, this is a pretty wide lace edging - it would equate to something like 6" deep in real life. But I'm proud of what I've managed so far, even though it's only half an inch long. Now that I'm familiar with the pattern I can manage it with my glasses on, although I occasionally have to use a magnifying glass to check if I've missed a pinhole or not.

Around the house

While my f-i-l was here, he narrowed the quilt ladder he built for me last year so that it fits in the corner of our hallway. It makes quite a nice display area for rotating quilts from my collection, and I see it every time I walk to my bedroom. The top two are vintage 30s quilts that I bought on holidays in America, the third one down is a vintage top that I added borders to and quilted, and the bottom one is my Piece o' Cake applique quilt that I finished a few years ago.

I've put a first coat of paint on the frame of a cheap pine wall mirror that came with us from our old house.  My plan is to do an antiqued gold finish to make it look a bit more 'period'.  I saw a Youtube video by a picture framer showing a three layered technique: base coat + gold coat + antiqueing stain. I've got some gold paint but no antiqueing stain. I might try normal wood stain and see if it works.

Yesterday we spent a few hours constructing a cage of netting for our inherited strawberry patch, to keep the birds out. It looks like we should get a pretty good crop, although they will be hard to pick as the patch has sprawled to about six feet by 12 feet. I think we need to do some judicious runner removal afterwards to try to create some lanes between the plants because they are just all growing together at the moment.  I put down some straw underneath all the plants I could reach, to keep the berries away from the dirt and the snails. Although our garden seems to be inhabited by rare acrobatic snails, I've found several climbing high into our pear tree nibbling on leaves, so low level straw probably won't give them any trouble.

If this is summer then why do I need my woolly hat and gloves?

First of June today, and when I went out this morning I had to combat the icy wind with a double layer of jacket/jumper, a woolly hat and gloves.  Summer, yay.  Summer in Siberia perhaps. Even Canada was warmer than this on 1 June.  Still, at least it's been raining after the long dry spell so my transplanted garden plants are looking happier. Some of my inherited flowers are blooming now, gorgeous paeonies, roses, geraniums, and I am still discovering plants popping out of nowhere and having to move a few things.  The transplanted 'lawn bricks' have been enjoying the damper weather, and the seed I planted on the future patio area is sprouting a green fuzz so the birds didn't get all of it.

We bought a few more plants for the garden last weekend, including a hydrangea for the central planter.  Also the baby hedging plants arrived and are now planted out - you can barely see them in this photo but one day hopefully they will be a trimmed hedge about two feet high.

Sewing

Bit late blogging this week as we had the in-laws staying for the weekend. That went off fine, they liked my cooking and enjoyed the pretty Northamptonshire countryside.  We stopped in at a quilting shop as my m-i-l is also a quilter, and I bought a metre of fabric for the border of my Stack and Whack Sara's Stars quilt.  The first time I've bought fabric for a very long time, it felt a bit weird.

As it turns out, although the fabric was a good match, I've decide not to use it because it was 'shouting' at me when I put it on the design wall.  I've added a blue inner border which really helps calm the quilt down, and I've calculated that I have just enough of the Stack and Whack main fabric to add an outer border which I think is going to look better than plain red.

I felt a bit coldish on the bank holiday weekend so I spent a morning nesting in front of my computer,catching up on episodes of Outlander (not very good) and Youtube videos while I knitted and then did some stitching on my hand applique block for my Grandmother's Last Quilt applique quilt.  I've done the four flowers and now I am stitching on 20 leaves around the circle.

On Tuesday, my friend drove up from where I used to live for a visit and to see our new house.  She brought me this lovely handmade shoe bag with applique on it, which would make a good knitting project bag also. It is especially welcome as it is made from fabric from the stash of our mutual older friend whom we sadly lost last year. Isn't it nice that our stash can live on after us and bring happy memories?

Knitting

Commuter knitting continues to be the pointless handbag but while the in-laws were here I started a new easy project which is another baby teddy bear toy. This is about the fourth time I've made it, but this time I am using brown as my young colleague at work doesn't want to know if she is having a boy or girl so I can't pick the usual blue or pink. I was knitting on this project while we played a couple of games of Scrabble last night. As well as calming down the impulse to kill people, it turned out to be a good strategy because I didn't look at the board until it was my turn each time. Then I just put down the needles and laid out the highest scoring word I could see to fit onto the grid.  Not only did I remain much calmer, I won the first game and tied for winner on the second - not bad when I haven't played for years and my in-laws are fairly keen players.

Just before they came, I finally finished sewing together the Cabled Cardigan in Eco cotton. I  had to press the seams and sew on the buttons but had been procrastinating.  I wore it on the first day of their visit, it's comfortable but surprisingly heavy. So it had a tendency to want to slide backwards on my shoulders leaving an increasing gap at the back of my neck.  Other than that it was fine and will be good for wearing to the office in this transitional weather. It probably could have benefited from being a tad longer, but being cotton it will probably droop with time anyway (just like me)  :)

Other stuff

My strip of bobbin lace is getting longer.  My f-i-l wanted to see how it was done so I did a bit while he was watching.  Partway through I realised that in the stress of being watched I had done some of the stitches completely wrong, but to preserve my image of skilled lacemaker I had to press on regardless.  So this afternoon when the bobbin lace group comes along, I will start out by unpicking that area! I've also started preparing the pricking for my first attempt at miniature lace for the dollshouse. I've chosen a Rosetta Stone-like pattern which is a largish towel edging (for a mini towel) which is given in two sizes.  I will try the larger size first and if I can do that, then I will downsize to the (microscopic) smaller size in finer thread. I've had to put my glasses on just to prick the holes in the pattern though which doesn't bode well for actually working the lace!

When is a new house not 'new' any more?

Tomorrow is our one year anniversary of getting the keys to our 'new' house. On the one hand, it still feels very new as there is still so much I would like to do, and add, and change. On the other hand, a year is a long time: we've been through four seasons here now, two redundancy scares, DS has been in and out for his first and second years of university, we've made major transformations in its appearance, we've celebrated holidays and birthdays.  But I still feel grateful almost every day for it, for the space, for the craft rooms, for the sunlit rooms, for the period features.  Not so much for the people yodelling down the street at 2am going home from the pub, but you can't have everything and that's part of being right in the town centre.  So happy birthday to our new house - one year and counting and hopefully with many many more to come.

The road not taken

I used to work for a big corporation. This week I met up with a woman who was probably my closest friend during those years.  She still works there, and has been promoted to middle management. We hadn't seen each other for three years, because her job keeps her very busy, with a lot of travelling, and somehow our plans always fell through.

We caught up over lunch, and it was sort of fun, until the question of my working part-time came up.

"But what do you DO on your days off?" she enquired, looking genuinely baffled.

And thus the mighty chasm opened up, the one that divides the countries of "Work is my life" and "Work is something I have to do to pay the bills".  She is ambitious, absolutely convinced that higher salary/higher job group equals success and even superiority. I would guess that she feels I have let the side down, taken the easy route, wilfully sacrificed my career and my salary because I'm not tough enough, or perhaps even lazy.

While I on the other hand would be tempted to say she has sold her soul to the devil: working 15 hour days, travelling time zones at short notice away from her family, enduring constant stress and continual corporate BS. Yes, she is getting paid mega-bucks and will have a huge pension, but does she have a life right now?

I tried to convey my enjoyment of my downsized career, my crafts, my bobbin lace group, the garden, but I could see her eyes glazing over and pretty soon she changed the subject.  I suppose if I had been better prepared, I could have talked about project managing two house moves, a major refurbishment of our new house, transforming the garden.  But I'm not sure it would have made much difference. The fundamental divide is too great.  I genuinely enjoy not being at work, it feels like a holiday, it feels like I'm getting on with my real life, it's reduced my stress.  Whereas I would say work is her real life. It makes me wonder what she is going to do with her time when she retires in less than ten years. Although she said she is looking forward to it, I wonder if when the time comes, she will panic and ask to work on.

Crafts

This week I finally finished the Battle of Five Armies Mystery Shawl Knitalong.  This sucker is huge, 72 inch wingspan and about 37 inches deep.  I had trouble blocking it because the final two charts introduce a lot of fullness. Only by blocking the centre very hard indeed, could I get the leaf edging to lie at all flat. It's knit in Auracania Botany Lace which is a fingering weight, and I added some beads to some of the charts.

My strip of bobbin lace is coming along well.  I had to execute the tricky manoeuvre of moving the lace up the pricking / up the pillow, which is what you have to do when the strip of lace is longer than the pricking/pillow.  It involves taking all the pins out, and then gingerly moving things while trying not to put any tension on the bobbins until you get the pins back in again.  It seems to have worked fine, I can't see any difference in the strip where the move took place.

I knit a sleeve on my machine knit t-shirt, fiddly because of all the increasing and decreasing which aren't fast to do on a machine.  One more sleeve to go. It's in a marled two-colour cotton thread.

Commuter knitting continues to be the completely pointless handbag and I'm almost finished the second side of the 'wicker' basket.

I did a little work on the Stack and Whack Sara's Stars quilt, piecing in some dark red triangles at the end to square off the hexagon shapes.  I think I am going to do a blue inner border and a red outer border, but I don't have very much blue fabric.  Will have to do the dreaded Math to work out how wide a border I can cut that will still go around the circumference of the quilt.

I'm knitting another square for the GAA Afghan.  It's the Fenick square, which shows a tree made from cables standing out against a reverse stockinette background, with cables up either side.  I was knitting away, and after a while discovered that my tree had disappeared because it was blending in with a normal stockinette background.  After some baffled consultation with the pattern, I eventually realised that when I had photographed the chart with my iPhone app to turn it into a PDF that I can use in Goodreader on the iPad, the scanner app had 'helped' by turning most of the grey squares (purl stitches) into white squares (knit stitches).  Not good, and I had to pull back about 10 rows on either side of the tree and crochet them up again one column of stitches at a time. I can't trust the chart now so will have to photograph it again, or perhaps dig out the old scanner and plug it into the PC.

It's a bank holiday (long) weekend again here in the UK, so of course the weather is pretty grey and uncertain.  I've been out in the garden today painting teak oil on the garden furniture to make it look better, and black paint on the rusty drainpipe (and by accident on the house).  There are weeds coming up everywhere so I did a lot of hoeing.  There are things coming up that might be weeds or might be flowers, I don't know.  And a lot of bindweed, which is bad.  If you are here in the UK, I hope you are enjoying your long weekend and perhaps getting in some good quality craft time.

Fallen off the wagon and under the wheels

I've been so good about not buying craft stash for such a long time, largely by avoiding temptation through not attending my former round of craft shows like Miniatura or the Knitting and Stitching show. But this week I fell off the wagon with a vengeance, attending not one but three craft shows.  Oops.

The first one, the Makit Lacemaking, Quilting and Needlecraft fair in Peterborough last weekend, I could justify because it was fairly local, and had a large focus on lacemaking - so providing access to supplies that aren't readily available elsewhere. I had a pleasant visit with a fellow bobbin lace beginner. The fair was a good size, sort of medium, well worth going to but not so big that it was exhausting.  There were probably at least a dozen stands relating to lacemaking, including several bobbin makers and stands selling supplies, pillows, patterns etc.  I was looking for a couple of reels of thinner thread than I have been using so far, which I bought. I also bought 20 unfinished wooden bobbins, the cheapest way to buy them, then when I got home I stained and varnished them myself.  I got some beads and wire for spangling the bobbins, and I also found a secondhand copy of Ros Snowden's Miniature Bobbin Lace which is all patterns for dollshouses like doilies and tablecloths.  Technically I know I can do the stitches, the tremendous challenge is that they are all in incredibly fine thread, much finer than anything I've done so far.  I'm going to have a go, and I've ordered some Madeira Cotona 80 thread for it.


The second fair, the I-Knit Fandango yarn fair, was an impulse ticket buy some months ago when it was first announced, prompted by happy memories of the previous I-Knit Weekenders which had included speakers, workshops, fashion shows, live music etc.  However, it later emerged that the Fandango was only going to be a yarn market, with no other events, which was a disappointment.

I was considering not going to the Fandango at all, despite having a ticket, but my willpower drained away when I regarded the temptingly nearby London Kensington Dollshouse Festival on the same day, one of the best dollshouse fairs in the world.  I hadn't been to KDF for a few years now, and was feeling increasingly out of touch with the miniatures hobby. So I ended up going to both.

KDF was great, even when trying not to spend money. I used to get a bit bored with it because it was mostly the same traders, who were always in the same spots.  This year they rearranged everybody, which made it feel much fresher.  I was also surprised at how many new traders there were, including some younger artisans crafting upmarket expensive dollshouses.  It suggests the hobby is picking up again now that the economy is improving. There was a fantastic display of items in the lobby which had been entered in the new competition for makers, 'Perfection in Miniature Awards' (PIMA), with the winner being a working scale replica of a Swiss Army knife complete with multiple tools. Some lovely items in that display case.

I saw lots of things that I would have bought if I had more money, and lots of things that I couldn't afford in any case but were still lovely to look at.  But my purchases were another house teapot from Sally Meekin to add to my collection of them, a kit to make a decorated blanket box from Art of Mini.com (who also threw in a free gift of some mini clock faces), a cast metal dollshouse from Phoenix, and three non-working resin clocks from Hall's Miniature Clocks.

The Phoenix house has two floors inside, a staircase, and a few pieces of cast-in-place furniture, so lots to paint up.  Phoenix have definitely upped their game: they specialise in cast metal items and it used to be all jumbled anonymously in stapled bags with minimal labelling, with a fair bit of sprue and flash making it even harder to see what the item was supposed to be.  This time they had a good sized table with most things assembled, cleaned up and already primed, unbagged and in trays, making it much easier to shop their range.

Off to Fandango then, where I ate my lunch with Maurice who repairs knitting machines, so we had a chat about my ribber problems and he gave me some advice on calibration.  I strolled around the not-huge marketplace, which was almost entirely indy dyers and small yarn companies like Blacker.  I wasn't especially tempted until I came across a sock pattern inspired by the Outlander series called Lady of Lallybroch by JavaPurl Designs. Once I bought that, then I had to buy a couple of Jamie-inspired buttons for the sock's cuffs, and a skein of sock yarn from SparkleDuck, Galaxy in the Autumn Leaves colourway (75% superwash merino, 20% nylon, 5% stellina, bottom in picture).  And while I was at Sparkleduck I couldn't resist a skein of Pebble (85% superwash BFL, 15% Donegal nep) with an intriguing dark tuft. Both very pretty.

So excuse me while I go sell a few more premium bonds to pay for all the above. But it felt nice to pretend to have money again, just for a day  :)

Crafting

This week I finished an Owl toy which was a free gift with Let's Knit magazine a while back. I stalled on it when I ran out of dark pink for the wings, but decided to just finish it up with light pink wings instead.

I've been machine knitting a marled cotton t-shirt, which has a ribbed hem and a v-neck.  The ribber didn't want to play at all, which is why I was talking to Maurice about it today.  I got it sort of working in the end, but it's not right. The t-shirt is plain but good for practice on shaping, neckline finishing etc. I've done the front and back so far.

I've been sewing up the pink cabled cardigan that I knit a while ago. For some reason I've been really procrastinating on this, usually I like sewing up.  I sewed on the neck trim around the back neck last night, tried it on and realised it was gaping. So had to unpick what I had done (always harder) and remove some of the neck trim, and re-graft it.  So many ends to darn in...

I've started a new commuter knitting project, a completely pointless handbag designed by Clare Scope-Farrell for the July 2012 issue of Simply Knitting. I don't even carry a handbag but there is something strangely appealing about the vintage impracticality of the design. Perhaps I shall use it for knitting accessories.

On the sewing front, I'm back on the UFO list and have dug out the Stack and Whack Sara's Stars quilt that I was completing when we were in the rental house a year ago.  At the time, I wasn't sure about the blue background colour but now I like it.  I've been shopping my stash to see if I have a border fabric I can use.  I tried the dark red but I don't think it has enough contrast. I'm considering the blue border at the moment - what do you think? The quilt is pretty wild so I think it needs a more solid border to calm it down and set it off.

I finally finished the Rowan denim yarn messenger bag. It's come out fairly well, I decorated it with some Cath Kidston buttons from my stash.  It's stiffened with fusible fleece so holds its shape, and lined with quilting cotton. The denim yarn is attractively faded and soft after its trip through the washing machine.

On the bobbin lace front, I've started a longer strip of the Pricking 6 lace that I did the sample of . I'm making it long enough that I could use it to trim an antimacassar perhaps, and it's going fairly well. Having done the sample, I'm familiar with the pattern now so I can catch myself if I start going wrong. I'm enjoying it.

Hope you've had a crafty week also!

Twelve years old but who's counting

Yes, this week I 'topped' my Lone Star Quilt, purchased at the Chicago quilt festival in 2003. So it's only taken 12 years.  And it's still not quilted.  But it looks good, I'm pleased with it. It's 80 inches square so it covers a double bed quite well. And I like the reproduction Civil War fabrics.

You may recall I was trying to get the directional border fabric to a) all face upwards and b) line up horizontally at the seams.  It just shows the flexibility of fabric that despite cutting the side borders in one length, starting from the same pattern place, they didn't end up at the same pattern place despite both measuring 80". As there is an obvious horizontal pattern, I had to cheat a little on the bottom border. I was able to line up the top border quite well horizontally. On the bottom border I had to cut the third segment crookedly by about three-quarters of an inch so that the horizontal pattern lined up on both ends.  It's a subtle flaw but would probably get marks off if I ever  try entering it in a quilt show.

As a reward for finishing a UFO, I went off piste from the UFO list and whipped off a few fun projects.  I finished the second Sleep Eye Visor which turned out well, and I used a remnant of good quality cotton velvet to make a cushion cover for an IKEA inner pad to go on our window seat. I also tried out this fun Vintage Caravan Pincushion tutorial, although I didn't so much as follow the tutorial as look at the picture and make up my own smaller version.  I'm going to use it as a pincushion for my bobbin lace pins.

The tutorial recommends glueing cardboard underneath to prop the wheels apart - I used a length of balsa wood instead for a neater result. I had a plastic key in my box of findings (I don't know where from) so I sewed it onto the bottom to be the trailer hitch.  So cute!  Although I know I could do a neater job if I made it again, but I probably never will :)

On the knitting front, I finished the miniature Aran jumper for the next square of the GAA Afghan, it's cute as well.

I've started the next square, which is the Fenick square showing the Tree of Life.

I'm still working on the BotFA MKAL Shawl, a.k.a the shawl that will never die.  The number of stitches on each row is just ridiculous now and I'm waking up every morning with quite stiff fingers from overuse.

Commuter knitting this week was a free kit from Let's Knit magazine for a striped baby hat.  Rather squeaky acrylic yarn, but quite pretty colours. I'll probably give this to my young pregnant colleague at work.

Gardening

The lawn edging arrived late on Tuesday and most of the evenings since then were wet, so today was the first day I could tackle putting it in.  Tackle being the right word, or even wrestling wouldn't be far wrong.  This stuff is six inches wide and comes in 5m (over 15 feet) rolls. It's metal and wants to stay rolled up. And although it's not as flimsy as I feared, it is flimsy enough that it only has to hit a small rock and it won't go any further into the ground.  So it's rather like wrestling a recalcitrant, awkward snake - you push down one loop and another loop pops up and the end starts rolling up again, and then the wind catches the loose end which starts waving... I've done four hours work on it today and feel quite stiff, but really don't have that much to show for it.  I've done round the central round patio, and around about half the snowman lawn. Not worth a picture because it won't show up.  However, DH did take a picture of me out in the garden in my fetching old clothes, transplanting some Black Eyed Susans to temporarily fill up the border where our privacy trellis will go one day.

Tomorrow I'm going to the Makit Lacemaking, Quilting and Needlecraft Fair in Peterborough, my first craft fair for ages since I've been trying to avoid temptation.  I'm mainly going to get some more lacemaking threads, which are hard to find on the high street.  Willpower on maximum...

We have a path

We got up nice and early today ready for the gravel delivery at 8am. DH even put on his gardening clothes and went to wait outside.  He came back about 8:45 because he was getting cold, and at 9:15am I started contacting the landscaping centre trying to find out where our gravel was.  They said they were running late and it would come around 10am, but it didn't actually turn up until almost 10:30 by which time we were both a bit grumpy at all the hanging around.  So I wasn't that sympathetic as the driver tried to get his massively long lorry close enough to our driveway  (now hemmed in by parked cars on either side which wouldn't have been there if he had come at 8am) to crane off the bulk bag of 900kg of Breedon self-binding gravel.

Earlier in the week I spent 4.5 hours crawling around on my knees digging in and placing edging bricks (reclaimed from the former patio we dug up) and levelling them, and laying the weedproof membrane in the centre patio. Then last night I laid membrane down the path itself ready for gravel.  So this is what it looked like first thing this morning.

The driver inquired if we knew how to lay self-binding gravel, and gave us a brief lesson.  That sent me upstairs to the computer where I googled and found out that self-binding gravel is different from normal gravel, and we should have put the weedproof membrane under the hardcore instead of on top of it.  Too late now with the edging stones all laid.!  Hopefully it will be alright.

Cue a couple of hours of shoveling, wheelbarrowing, raking and tamping down, and we now have a lovely golden path! This type of gravel is supposed to clump together into a hard surface rather than stay loose and get kicked around.

That's our octagonal planter in the centre, waiting for some feature plants. And obviously the circular bed will look better once it has the hedge planted in it. I have ordered some lawn edging which is coming on Tuesday.  We can't afford the good stuff (Everedge) but I didn't want to waste money on plastic, so we've gone for corrugated galvanised metal edging by Gardman which should last a long time. So the next big job will be to edge all the lawns and at the same time we can cut lawn bricks and fill in the last bits of lawn on the lefthand side of the circular patio.

Meanwhile I am stalking used kitchens on eBay for the dollshouse room, having given up on the kitchen fitter producing any cabinets.  I've come close to winning on a few of them but haven't been successful yet. Still haven't had the third builders quote for the boundary walls, even though I chased him.  I suspect he doesn't want to do the work but I will try him again next week.

Crafts

I finished the basketweave socks in lovely silky Mirasol Tupa, which I bought in Vermont four years ago.  This is a picture before I blocked them and they are very cosy.

I finished the body of the miniature Aran jumper for the GAA Afghan and have started the first sleeve.  Eventually this will be appliqued onto the plain square I knit earlier.

I continue to trudge onwards with the BotFA MKAL Shawl and have started a little striped baby hat that came as a free kit with Let's Knit magazine to be my new commuter knitting.

For my summer sleep eye visor, I took apart my old eye visor and salvaged its cool-feeling inner nylon lining, and re-used it in a new visor.  I haven't put the binding on yet which will be cut out of the purple fabric. I chose the daisy fabric because it seemed suitably summery.

I have mastered pricking number six of my bobbin lace on my third attempt, and am getting on fairly well with it now, although I am still painfully slow.  I'm trying to think of a project where I could use a longer piece of this lace because I quite like the sample I am working on.  And m-i-l phoned to say she loves her Torchon lace bookmark, she's very impressed and can't see the mistakes at all.  She's taking it to her quilting group to show them, so let's hope none of them do bobbin lace either  :)

I've started cutting the borders for my Lone Star Quilt, although with limited yardage I am having to invisibly applique short sections to create the top and bottom borders in this directional fabric.  I do the applique by cutting the first segment to the correct width, pressing under a c. half-inch seam allowance on the short end, giving the seam allowance a quick squirt with 505 temporary adhesive and then pressing it down onto the uncut fabric main piece until it exactly lines up with the pattern.  Then I flip over the cut piece and take it to the sewing machine and stitch along the trough of the press mark for an almost invisible join.  I press the join, then take it to the cutting table and cut the just-joined fabric to continue on the 8.5" width of the border.  I have to join three pieces for each border.  (Turns out that when you put a partly empty can of 505 spray into storage for two years then try to use it, what you actually produce is extensive bubble blowing of sticky half-set gel - luckily I had an unused can as well).

It's traditional in the UK to have rotten weather for any bank holiday (long) weekend, and this one is no exception: it's grey, clouded over, cold and windy, and threatening rain.  But it can go ahead and rain because our new path is all laid!