In which I see many interesting things

 We went away in the caravan for two nights last weekend as it was a bank holiday weekend.  Just to a small site about 10 miles from our storage yard, on a working farm.  The site itself was fine (although we had noisy neighbours), and we had a nice walk around the village of Grandborough and a drink at the local pub on the first day.  The second day we went for a longer walk around part of Draycote Water (a large reservoir) and the nearby very attractive village of Dunchurch and neighbouring Thurlaston.  There were several adorable thatched cottages in Dunchurch.

On our way back along the dam towards the car park, we began to notice a huge ruckus that had started up behind the treeline.  We couldn't see what it was but it sounded like hundreds of engines.  DH started saying "it sounds like tanks" and I was like 'don't be silly, it's probably construction'.  We yielded to temptation and took a side path out of the reservoir park through the tree belt, only to emerge into a giant area of fields just as a convoy of actual military tanks went careening past on the dirt track. But the drivers and passengers obviously weren't soldiers.  We hailed the man guarding the crossing who told us that it was a big event called Tanks, Trucks and Firepower 'the Midlands premier living history and military show'.  Well this is right up DH's alley so we bought tickets and spent a few enjoyable (and hot)  hours wandering around the site taking it all in, and having lunch from the food stalls.  It's not my thing but it's still very engaging to see so many collectors and people passionate about their hobby, getting to literally play with the big guns and big trucks.

And very unexpectedly, on a trade stall selling mostly military paraphernalia plus a few antiques, there was a pile of fat quarters of fabric! and when I asked the price, it was 6 for £10 which is extremely cheap nowaday for the UK - FQs seem to be mostly £2.50 and upwards to £4.50 depending on the fabric.  And these feel like they are decent quality. So I was happy.  I also bought a vintage chintz sandwich plate.

And that night, from our campsite, we were able to watch the event's firework display which was quite impressive.  Apart from the noisy neighbours, it was quite a nice break and we felt very relaxed on the way home.  

On Wednesday I headed down to London for the afternoon, primarily to catch the '150 years of the Royal School of Needlework' exhibition at the Fashion & Textile Museum before it closed. I wasn't sure what to expect but ended up quite enjoying it.  There was a huge variety of items on display from throughout their history, everything from royal coronation robes through to 30s lingerie (apparently a best selling item for the RSN at the time) up to contemporary artworks.

This was a huge applique picture the RSN made in the 1980s for a corporate commission - it appears to be raw edge applique accentuated with embroidery stitches.

A stumpwork and applique picture made in 2014 by Deborah Wilding on the theme of the Princess and the Pea.

Alice in Wonderland themed cards made by Rachel Doyle in 2009,

completely stitched apart from the tiny key.

Lingerie pieces by current second year students, inspired

by some of the vintage 1930s lingerie collection.

I appear to have missed photographing the label but I think this was a throw

made for Queen Mary (known as 'May'). Interestingly, the text said that throws

such as this - which is about pram size - were used to cover up things, for

example underwear layed out on a bed ready for an outfit. I immediately

had visions of covering up all the untidyness in my bedroom with a few quilts :)

I'm not normally a contemporary textile person, but this 3D interpretation by

Hisae Abe in 2020 of her mother's wedding kimono was pretty cool. Basically

she is interpreting an elaborate Japanese 2D floral fabric as a 3D textured creation.

I bought a little kit for a sewing roll in the museum gift shop

After the Fashion museum, I travelled over by very hot and stuffy Tube to the V&A museum and went in to the 'Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature' exhibition where I was surprised to find this 1863 quilt which I'd never heard of - I guess the Quilter's Guild hasn't recreated it yet perhaps.  It was made for the wedding of Beatrix Potter's parents, possibly by her mother with sisters and friends.  It's in velvets, silks and cottons and decorated with embroidery.  I couldn't tell if it had wadding in it or not. It's in the collection of the National Trust.

It felt strange to be back in London.  I worked there for 25 years up until 2015, but already I could see so many changes.  It didn't feel familiar any longer.  I visited a few other exhibits and galleries in the V&A, then trucked along to High Street Kensington to visit Japan House to see what it was like (I get their emails but had never visited) - very Japanese as you might expect.  I was tired then so headed back to St Pancras to kill time in the shops there until my train left.

I finally got around to unpacking the dollshouse miniatures haul from a few weeks ago, I took some photos then put it all away in the dollshouse room. The porch kit has joined my long list of kits awaiting assembly. I think it might make a cute Christmas vignette.

I've been preparing for my Italy trip in a few weeks - researching sights and printing out maps etc. I'm very much old school about having hard copies rather than relying on a device I could lose, break or have die on me. With all the flight cancellations, I'm half expecting  my airline to change my flight again - they've already moved it from Luton to Gatwick airport.  Hopefully I will still be able to get there and back as planned.

My Japanese teacher, who is in her early 40s, told me this week how much she respects that someone "of my generation" is trying to learn a language and how it has inspired her to keep on with studying English - which made me feel older than the dinosaurs as well as doomed to failure due to incipient decrepitude. She meant it kindly and respectfully I know, but it still made me wince - smiling on the outside but crying a little on the inside!

I'm cold?

 Suddenly it feels like Autumn is not that far off - it's getting quite cool in the evenings and I even had to put a cardi and slippers on last night - which felt really weird after weeks of being too hot.  In a way, we feel cheated out of summer, after having to hide indoors for several weeks because of the extreme heat.. And suddenly it's almost over. It's getting darker earlier as well. I think we only used our garden sofas once this summer, all the rest of the time it was either too hot or too windy or too wet...

Enough moaning about the weather.  After I finished the seventh frame quilt, I partially disassembled the broken roller and re-glued the end insert with Araldite. I also applied a lock-nut which should help hold the spindle in place.  I don't really remember how I built the roller ends in the first place - past-me should have kept better notes.  So now I'm on quilt 8 (Tilda Wreath quilt) and so far the repair seems to be holding, thank goodness.

In keeping with the flower theme, I chose a flower panto.  I haven't used this one before and it's more complex, so I had to have a few practice runs with no thread to get used to the rhythm of it. I want to do a good job because I am keeping this quilt for myself.

I've been measuring up and graphing out a drawing of the attic room to see if I can fit a Handiquilter into it.  It's not looking good.  A 10' frame would fit in fine lengthwise, with room to walk around the ends.  But width-wide, the limited headroom due to the slanting ceiling is a real issue. I think it would be really tight and I would only be able to work from one side at a time - but if the frame was on casters then I could move it when I want to work on the opposite side.  I need to do more measuring.

I'm busy sewing binding on to the Cottage scrap quilt because the Project Linus rep is coming to collect my four donation quilts next week. I've also made a start on month 15 of the Australian BOM but had barely scratched the surface when month 16 showed up in the post. I'm definitely not keeping up any more. Oh well.  It will become a winter project I guess.

I put up onto my design wall 36 of the 40 squares in the Tilda Chic Escape layer cake that I bought at FOQ.  Disappointingly, they don't look that good all together - I think I will need to reduce the collection to just a couple of colourways.  I love most of the fabrics, but the layercake has unfortunately separated several peacocks from their heads, leaving a not very useful square with an enormous tail on it.  I had a look online for patterns for big print fabric, and I'm thinking of something similar to Arcadia by Mountain Peek Creations.  I've ordered some border fabric and a contrast solid from Cotton Patch in preparation.  The same day, Doughty's announced a flash sale on their extra-wide quilt backing which brought it down to about £4.20 a metre so I ordered two backs-worth of those as well for some of the quilt tops that are waiting to go on the frame.

Just for something fun, or so I thought, I decided to put together a folding wallet from the ByAnnie 'Necessories' pattern I bought at FOQ. I'm sure it was partly (mostly) me, but I became confused several times by how the instructions were worded, and went wrong each time.  There are only a few diagrams, and no clear photos of the wallet in the pattern apart from the cover photo.  I had to look at their website to work out what was meant a couple of times.  One particular paragraph was so misleading that I actually emailed them and received a form letter thanking me (by the wrong first name) and stating they are correcting the wording for future printing and will publish a correction on their errata page (they haven't yet, I just checked).  Do they not beta-test these patterns? Anyway, I got there in the end.  I only used some cheap Aldi fabric for this sample, but I'm going to re-make it as a sewing wallet now that I understand how it goes together.

My decluttering effort this week was to go through my clothes and weed out a big bag of things that don't fit me any more, or work clothes that I just don't wear in retired life, and I took them all to the charity shop.

My online Japanese conversations continue.  I think I'm learning more about English than I am about Japanese, from the questions the learners are asking me.  Did you know that we change the pronunciation of  the word 'the' depending on whether it is followed by a vowel or not?  'Theee apple', but 'tha dog'.  I didn't know that until a Japanese lady asked me.  When I tried it out, I realised I always do that, and so does DH. And another lady asked me whether dinner is always the evening meal, or sometimes the lunch meal - which is a very complex question here in the UK.  I referred her to an online article which quotes a north/south and also a class divide, on whether the evening meal is 'dinner', 'tea', or (a minority) 'supper'.  I tend to call it supper more often, because I grew up in Canada.  But my working class m-i-l will also use 'dinner' to refer to the midday meal, especially on a Sunday.  It makes me glad I'm not having to learn English!

Festival of Quilts

 I got back yesterday from my two days at the Festival of Quilts.  I quite enjoyed it this year.  And although the train strike was the only reason I went for two days, it was actually quite relaxing to have two whole days instead of trying to rush around and do everything in one day.  I didn't go last year because like a lot of people I thought it was too early when the pandemic was still raging and not everyone had had their jabs yet.  But apparently last year they introduced a lot more space between exhibits, wider vendor aisles, booked more hall space etc. for social distancing.  People liked that so much that they have repeated the roomier layout for this year.  It really felt much more like an American show this year, and I mean that as a compliment.  More spacious, better layout which was more intuitive to move around, good signage, the quilts were well hung and with sufficient room that passersby weren't brushing against them (which I have seen happening at past Festivals), the winners were pulled out and displayed in a separate photo-friendly exhibit area, there was a good assortment of vendors and you could easily access the vendor stalls due to the roomier aisles, the classrooms were all close together so easy to zip to your next class, more places to sit, etc. It just all felt like a much better customer experience.

I started out with a three-hour Handiquilter familiarisation workshop because I am still flirting with the idea of getting a longarm now that I am retired..  Basically the workshop was a classroom with two Moxie machines and seven Amaras, all set up differently so you could move around and try out, for example, ruler quilting, micro stippling, an echo foot, pantographs, Pro-stitcher computer, couching etc.  It was quite enjoyable and the trainers were both award winning quilters (one of whom took a first in Excellence in Machine Quilting at this year's Festival) so really knowledgeable and quite friendly.  I had a go on most of the machines.  I found the Amaras (a 20" machine) felt a bit ponderous to move around because I am used to a little domestic, but the stitch regulation was amazing, the frames seem really solidly built, and everything seemed to work well.  I was disappointed they don't have a thread cutter so you have to pull your threads up manually to cut them. Also the handles don't extend very far at all, so on the deeper frame for the Amara, you have to hold your arms awkwardly far out in front of you which I think would hurt my back after a while.  

One of the classroom Amara machines

The class goody bag contained Glide thread, a quilting stencil, a

ruler template for leaves, and a  spectacles cloth

Also at the show were dealers for Innova, Bernina, Grace/Q-nique, Gammill (who were so posh that you couldn't even try the machines out as they were auto-stitching patterns by themselves, and the stand wasn't manned some of the times I passed by) and Juki.  So I tried most of the machines out (not Gammill) to see how I liked them.  Bernina is out, not just because of the price, but because of the hot air vent at the rear of the machine blowing in your face while you do pantos.  And the Q-nique just felt a bit cheap and low-end after using the Handiquilters.  The Innova is built like a tank and seems great but I suspect will prove expensive - I'm still waiting for the price list to be emailed to me.  I quite liked the Juki but their website is impenetrable and I am unable to find much out about their machines, and for a service apparently you have to take the machine into their shop in Essex.  So it looks like Handiquilter are topping the ranks: they are easily available, there's a big user community both in the UK and abroad so lots of educational material and support, the service and support from the UK dealer Pinhole Quilting is widely praised, and everyone seems to love their HQ machine.  The overall price is hard to determine because there are so many add-on options, I guess you would have to have a long discussion with Pinhole as to what meets your needs.  I don't think I would want the computer add-on, it doubles the price and I wouldn't do enough with it to warrant the cost.  I'm not sure it would feel like my own work if the computer had guided the machine to stitch out the pattern anyway.  I'm also not sure where I would actually put a machine - obviously it can't live permanently in the dining room.  Maybe I could get rid of the knitting machines (which I haven't used for years) and use the attic room, but it has a sloping ceiling so I would have to do some measuring.  I'm sure the installers will be happy to trot up three flights of stairs with enormously heavy boxes....not.

I went straight into a one-hour quick class to sew a rope bowl on the machine.  I'm sure you've all seen these but I had never tried to make one before.  It is both easy and tricky at the same time. I found it hard to get a consistent slope on the sides, and I need to do some more stitching on my base.  But it was fun and I might make some more, maybe as Christmas presents.

I had a couple of hours until my final class so I toured around the various quilt exhibits.  There were a number of standalone exhibits by various artists or collections, and then of course the competition entries and prizewinners.  The entries can be viewed online here. Some thoughts:

- a healthy percentage of the entries and winners had been ruler-quilted within an inch of their lives.  It's not a look that I care for even though I recognise the technical difficulty. And I don't think it suits every style of quilt either.  The minority of entries that were more traditionally quilted, eg stitch in the ditch and loose fills in areas using cables or feathers etc., looked under-quilted in comparison. It makes me feel that I am now creating very oldfashioned quilts with quilting that is utilitarian to hold layers together decoratively.  I'm not turning the quilt into a version of corrugated cardboard with close geometric quilting lines which is what seems popular now.

- there were more entries in the Traditional category than I remember from previous years, and many entries in other categories which I would say were traditional as well.  I was pleased to see this swing, the Festival used to be heavily orientated towards City & Guilds-type textile art and contemporary experimental design which is not my thing.

- there were even a small handful of Hawaiian quilts so perhaps that is coming back into fashion again?

- I was puzzled by the choice of Best in Show, and I don't think there was any explanatory note as to why it had been singled out.  It was an attractive impressionistic pictorial quilt of a Venetian street scene, competently executed and quilted in horizontal lines.  It's a nice looking quilt but on the face of it comparatively simplistic in technique. I don't know. Perhaps there is some hidden excellence that I wasn't picking up on.

I liked this Miniature Quilt, with insanely tiny pieces.

And I thought this was a neat idea: someone cross-stitched a geisha, then blew up the pattern into large squares and turned it into a quilt.

I did take other photos but you are better off looking at the official website. 

At 4pm I had my final class which was a 1-hour quick introduction to indigo dyeing.  We were given three weights of fabric in squares to hastily apply thread ties or wraps before dipping in the dye vat.  None of mine are particularly impressive but it was fun to find out more about the process.

My second day was all about the shopping, it took me about three hours to make my way around all the vendors.  The only thing I was specifically looking for was cake-themed fabric for the pattern I bought in Paducah, and I didn't see any at all. Obviously that's out of fashion as well :)

But I did manage to acquire a number of other finds:

 

A dress length of drapey fabric

A subscription to an Australian magazine

A pack of fabric from Janet Clare from her Spindrift collection, and a 
layer cake of Tilda Chic Escape

Some custom-printed garden birds and seasonal fabric, from a woman who was 

an ornithologist in a previous career.  There were a few stands selling

custom-printed fabric this year.

A By Annie pattern for little pouches and a wallet

A sewing-themed panel which is surprisingly large.

So that was the Festival for this year and it was quite fun.  I got back yesterday and today had my final shop class making the sampler wallhanging.  I have got as far as putting my blocks together and adding some of the embellishments, although I did most of the assembly at home on the machine and not by hand in class as intended.  I don't see the point of sewing sashing on by hand and I wouldn't be happy with the resulting inaccuracies.  I'm fairly pleased with the Victorian feel of the quilt, and I made a fun little pull-out tag which is embroidered 'Remember Me' and tied with ribbon and lace. The class was a fair bit of work but also interesting to revisit techniques I haven't used for years such as EPP hexies (hate them), crazy quilting, yo-yos etc.

I finished quilting  the seventh quilt, the Cottage scrap quilt.  Frustratingly, about halfway through, one of my homemade roller ends broke and started spinning freely. This meant that I could only secure the takeup roller at one end, which resulted in the quilt rolling unevenly despite efforts to ameliorate the problem.  So the panto lines get more bowed as the quilt progresses, luckily the quilt was going to charity and wasn't something precious to me.  I had to wait until the quilt came off the frame then I could remove the roller and try re-glueing the end fitting with Araldite.  Hopefully it works.  The DIY roll ends lasted through probably about 35 or more quilts so I should be feeling lucky I guess. The Pfaff felt like a children's toy after working on the Handiquilters at the show.  But it does the job.

It's cooled right off and we are back to normal British summer weather, cloudy and about 22 degrees, thank goodness!

Twelve cauliflowers anyone?

 I have a history of embarrassing mishaps when it comes to online grocery shopping. On several occasions I have been tricked by the deceptive picture of a nice big bag of carrots, or a bag of parsnips, and I have added '1' to my cart - only to have a carefully bagged single parsnip turn up, or one tiny carrot.  I bet the pickers have a good laugh sometimes.  I went the other way on the most recent shop: I changed '1' cauliflower to '2' cauliflowers in my basket, but apparently not very carefully because when DH came home from collecting the order, he wanted to know if I had really ordered 12 cauliflowers.  I thought he was joking at first.

So it's cauliflower with every evening meal and leftovers for lunch.

It is once again reaching silly temperatures in the UK, it's been hot since midweek and hitting 33 or 34 degrees since Friday.  Our house is pretty good because of its thick walls but  now it isn't getting a chance to cool down now, so I'm sitting here at 10:20pm and it is still uncomfortably warmer inside than it is outside.  I've mostly been hiding in the house.  I visited the quilt shop class just for two hours this morning then came home, because they don't provide even fans in the workroom and of course it's Britain so no aircon.  In some ways, it's been nice to have normal activities limited by the heat so not having to feel I should be doing outside chores, or anything energetic indoors.  Lots of sewing, a bit of dollshousing, lots of paperwork and Japanese at my desk.

I've been doing my frame quilting in the morning, because although that room is in the sun then and getting warm, the outside temperatures haven't yet peaked.  I finished quilting the pastel hexies quilt and have given it a rinse in the washing machine since taking these pics.

I used my Brother Scan N Cut to help throw together a little card bobbin holder, to stop my prepared bobbins from rolling around and keep them ready to go onto the frame machine.  It's handy and keeping things much more under control with less thread tangling.

My Janome arrived back without fanfare from the warranty people.  A terse service note says they adjusted a few things like feed dog height and stopper height and they've replaced the bobbin case for the second time (or third time if you count the one I bought).  I am losing faith in this machine, also I wonder why they didn't adjust those things the first time it went in.  I looked at a Facebook group for Janome MC8200QCP owners, and there is a real mix of people some of whom have no trouble with thread, and people who find their machines are thread divas and only like a particular brand, or only like the  same thread top and bottom etc.  I'm starting to wonder if I should cut my losses and try to sell this machine.  The Janome HD9 is supposed to be really good for bagmaking and quilting, though it only does straight stitch.  I would miss having the applique stitches, zig-zag and overcast stitches.  I don't use the embroidery stitches much at all though.

So with the Janome back, I was able to finish the quilting on the One Block Wonder beach panel quilt and also ran it through the washing machine rinse cycle to bring out the quilting.  This picture is after the rinse but before ironing it, so the texture is quite pronounced but it shows off the different areas of quilting pattern.

I foresee a lot of quilt binding in my future.  I'm currently sewing down the binding on the Tilda cot quilt.  I also finally stopped five years of procrastination and contacted  my local Project Linus coordinator.  I have three quilts for her already: the Disappearing 4-patch from this round, a scrap quilt from the last time I had the frame up 5 years ago, and a large bed size quilt that I made about 15 years ago and have never used because I didn't like it when it was finished.  I've also got my Cottage scrap quilt on the frame now, so when it's finished she can have that one as well.

 I finally finished Month 14 of the Australian BOM.  I messed up a bit on this one by accidentally reversing the background (the transfer lines were showing on both sides and I chose the wrong side to work on).  So I had to add a second flower cluster to cover up the duplicate stamped lines.  But it looks okay.

So I finally opened up the packet for Month 15 which is a dauntingly enormous composition of a sewing box filled with items, surrounded by an assortment of even more sewing items. I think this is the feature block of the quilt.  This is going to take a very long time I think, there are so many individual items to be embroidered, embellished, appliqued and fused.  The densely written instructions are eight pages long.  It is starting to feel a bit like a slog now and I miss having evening time for other sitdown crafts like cross stitch and knitting.  But there are only five more months to go so the end is in sight.

After the stash accumulation at the Coleman's sale last week, I really fell off the wagon this week with a huge stash acquisition of dollshouse supplies.  I haven't taken a photo yet, but I basically have a carrier bag full of all sorts of bits plus a Houseworks kit for a wall hung porch vignette.  One of the members of DH's model club sadly died, and he was also crafting and selling dollshouses.  Another member has ended up with all the dollshouse bits and asked DH if I would be interested.  Of course I was, and I took along another friend who does miniatures.  His dining table was absolutely covered in boxes and plastic baskets full of bits, it was like a flea market and Christmas all rolled into one.  He was only asked for donations for charity so I gave him a hefty donation for what I chose, but still only a fraction of what it would have cost to buy everything new.  In my defense, I did take down some pictures and ornaments from our walls and dropped them into a charity shop this week, so the clutter flow is not all one way.

And the builder has resurfaced - he's supposed to be coming on Monday and/or Tuesday this coming week so we might get our main shower back - hurrah!

Why can't things just work?

 My sewing machine decided to top itself again. Sigh.  Why can't things that are supposed to work, like cars and sewing machines, just work?  Things that you take for granted when they are doing their job, but create so much uncertainty when they start to behave erratically or become unreliable.  Thankfully the car has behaved fine since the clutch was replaced. Hopefully that's the end of its problems, but I've just paid to extend the warranty just in case.

So I was just doing some applique stitch on the Tannenbaum quilt to hold down the fused on leaves and flowers, when suddenly I had another catastrophic failure and needle breakage because the bobbin case had once again jumped out of its place.  This is the new bobbin case that I bought a few weeks ago after the previous new bobbin case was damaged the first time it happened.  This time the bobbin case wasn't as badly damaged so I smoothed out the areas on the plastic with fine emery paper and tried again.  It sewed for another 10 minutes, rattling a lot, before it jumped over the stopper again.  So I phoned the warranty people, who understandably are  now wondering if it is my fault and something I'm doing.  We went through some interrogation re when had I last cleaned it and what was I doing at the time, and I had to take photos of the area and send them.  They've agreed to have it back again under warranty but they've warned that if they judge it to be my fault for some reason, then I will be charged.  I did plaintively say that I thought I had paid out enough to secure a long term workhorse machine, even though it isn't the top of the line.  She said the Janome MC8200 is normally a very reliable machine with few problems.  So I'm obviously being very unlucky.  So it went off by courier on Friday and I am now back to sewing on the Singer Featherweight. I don't think it's anything I'm doing, I've been sewing for around 45 years and have never had this happen before.

I loaded on the pastel hexies quilt onto the frame and have been stitching a pantograph pattern of a stylised rose along it.  It's going fairly well.  Any individual rose repeat is not identical to the paper pattern due to steering issues (my own, and some hesitations on the travel of the carriage itself) but the overall effect is nice I think. This is quilt number 6 of 15.

I spent a fair bit of time this week catching up on a mystery sampler wallhanging class that I've joined at a patchwork shop.  It's taught over four classes and I missed the first class when we were in Dorset, so I had the blocks from that class and the next class to put together.  The pattern aims to teach you various patchwork techniques used in handsewing such as foundation pieced log cabin, EPP hexies, applique, Chinese Coins etc.  It's all stuff I've done before but it's something I booked back in the winter when I was looking around for things I could try now that I'm retired.  I thought the social element might be nice. The teacher is keen for us to enjoy the zen of slow stitching and not just always be machining everything.  I enjoy hand stitching when it feels creative, but I do not see much benefit in handsewing straight lines for a log cabin - so I did my log cabin at home on the featherweight.  The hexies of course had to be hand sewn and became very tedious. It's a lot of starting and stopping, and I kept getting the order wrong and ending up with two of the same colours next to each other and having to unpick. I got there in the end.  I'll post pictures once we get further along, at the moment it's just some loose blocks.

I've been pushing along on the Australian BOM because the next block landed on my desk at the beginning of the week and it's a really complicated one - so I need to get this block done.  I'm almost there, I'm just stitching the decorative flowers on the pincushion.

I think I posted a while ago that our nearest big craft shop, Coleman's Craft Warehouse, was sadly closing down.  We had visited their closing down sale when it was 33% off, but now the discount is 50% off plus they are selling off their warehouse furniture and equipment.  I picked up a bunch of plastic crates for £1 each which will be useful for camping and storage, and some sewing, crafting and scrapbooking supplies at 50% off.  Their fabric which was originally £16/m is still too expensive for me to consider at £8 and what they had left wasn't that attractive.  There was a fair bit of acrylic yarn but I didn't get any of that either.  DH got a tall shelf for his modelling room and some other bits and pieces.  It felt a bit like being a vulture picking over their bones, I'm sad that they are closing down but I'm as guilty as anyone of ordering things on the internet because it is easier and cheaper.

I found out yesterday that the series of industrial action days (train strikes) scheduled this summer includes the day I was booked to go to Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham.  Since I had also signed myself up for a fairly costly Handiquilter taster workshop, it wasn't a case of just not going.  So I've had to scramble to book a hotel in Birmingham so I can go up the day before by train, and come back the day after - so I've booked to go back to the show the second day as well.  I'll have to travel by bus from Birmingham town centre out to the NEC, hopefully that's not going to be too crazy crowded because of the train strike.  So it's all turning into a rather expensive visit to the show.  At least I can still go, I saw someone on Facebook who is having to cancel their visit altogether because of the strike, and obviously it's a huge PITA for commuters to work. DS has just been working from home on strike days but often the trains are still disrupted the following day as well because they are all out of place.

I'm trying a new approach on learning Japanese. I found out about an app/website called Tandem.net which is a site for free language exchange.  It seems to be very popular with Japanese people learning English.  As soon as I set up a profile, I had half a dozen Japanese people contacting me wanting to chat.  I've talked to 4 or 5 of them now, they are all working a lot harder at learning English than I am at learning Japanese.  I've been warned by some of them that there are scammers on the site as well that want romance or your investment money, but the people I am in contact with all seem genuine.  And if a scammer wants to speak very slow Japanese to me and listen to my very slow Japanese in return, then I would still be ahead of the game :)  I don't know if it is something I am going to keep up or not.  I'm wondering if hearing regular Japanese will finally persuade my ageing brain that it needs to actually remember some grammar.