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.

Re-visiting a former passion

I made the trek by train and foot over to the Summer Wool Festival, which has succeeded Fibrefest at the Ampthill venue in Bedfordshire. The organisers had been bigging it up on social media so I was curious to see what it would be like.  It's the first yarn festival I've been to since the COVID years I think.  The Festival turned out to be very similar to its predecessor, perhaps slightly smaller as they were down one marquee. But one thing I noticed was that about 90% of the stalls were selling yarn of some description, either hand-dyed, handspun, home-grown, etc. Lots of unfamiliar vendor names - I'm assuming that over the lockdown period, lots of people decided to follow their dream and dye their own fibre. The previous Fibrefest had featured a healthy percentage of spinning, dyeing, weaving, more guild stalls. There were still a few guilds present, and a couple of spinning and weaving stalls, a few needlefelting businesses and some bagmaking businesses.  I admired the very neat zipper tab ends of one bagmaker and she was kind enough to turn the pouch inside out to show me how she had done the inside corner. Apparently the show was crazy busy yesterday, I had several vendors tell me I should appreciate being able to look around without such a crowd.  A lot of pent-up demand from lockdown I guess.

But overall, it all felt a bit flat for me.  I can remember several prior trips to Fibrefest and the excitement and enjoyment of fondling new yarns and purchasing new colours. I was quite passionate about handknitting for 10 years or so, and always had some knitting in my bag to pull out in any idle moment.  Why do we crafters fall out of love with our hobbies?  I still like knitting, I still knit things, but it's not a passion like it used to be.  I felt no temptation to buy yarn because I still have so much of it up in my knitting room from previous buying sprees.  I also have a ridiculous amount of socks, hats, gloves, and shawls piled up so I just don't need any more.  So I was just strolling by the yarn booths, occasionally stopping to admire a particular colourway. The only thing I bought was a pattern for a lacey jumper, and some secondhand cardcrafting magazines.

This week I finished the frame quilting on the One Block Wonder beach panel quilt.  It needs a bit of finishing off the frame, such as the vertical lines on the fencing. And I need to correct my horizon line which I had a go at freehanding and consequently wavers drunkenly across the quilt.  Most of the quilt is meandered but I did straight line ripple quilting on the sea and path areas.

It's now time to re-learn how to do pantographs (stitching from a paper pattern using a laser guide) so I've loaded the practice sandwich onto the frame.  I had to do a lot of re-taping on the paper patterns since the sellotape has rotted over the five years letting the separate pages fall apart.  Steering my way around a pantograph pattern is quite a different rhythm than meandering - I have to go slower, and I have to pause for a few heartbeats on each pointed point to keep them sharp. And I can't just shuffle along behind the frame as I do it - the precision steering required demands that I stop, move myself along the frame, then restart and stitch as far as I can reach and see; stop etc.  I'll practice a bit then load on the next quilt victim which is the pastel hexie quilt. I also need to flatten out the paper pattern more, once I get it lined up correctly with the next quilt.

Downstairs I was stitching on stencil lines using a walking foot, to fill in the hexagon centres on the Tilda Cot Quilt.  The first hexagon attempt was terrible and I had to unpick it.  It's hard to draw on the lines (from a celtic stencil given away by Today's Quilter magazine) now that the quilt has wadding in it, and my walking foot for my Janome had a really poor field of view.  There was a piece of metal blocking the first eighth of an inch, then distorting thick plastic, so it was really hard to see the lines I had drawn.  Since I now have a spare walking foot (Janome accidentally sent me an extra one when they returned the machine, and when I phoned they told me to keep it), I got out the junior hacksaw and cut away the plastic and metal bits to clear the opening.  Now I can actually see the line I am trying to quilt, which is a big help. The quilting is still a bit wobbly but it looks okay I think.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the cot quilt, it seems a shame to just give it away because Tilda fabric is quite expensive.  One of my lacemaking friends was rather taken aback when I mentioned that I used to make 12-15 quilts a year and now I've only made 15 or so in five years.  "What do you do with them all?" she asked in amazement.  It is a hard hobby to explain to a non-enthusiast, that's for sure.  I bet no one asks artists what they do with all their paintings, but somehow quilts (and knitting) are meant to be functional and useful.

At least the Tannenbaum quilt has an identified use as a Christmas wallhanging.  I finally finished all the rows, I just need to add side strips and it's done.  Then it becomes number 16 in the frame quilting queue.  Although I think I will have to quilt the tree at the sit down machine, but I could stipple the background on the frame.

I'm still doing about 1 -1/2 hours a week on my slow attempt to learn Bruges lace - currently learning how to make a plait and picot filling.  At this rate it will be years before I can tackle actual Bruges lace.

 I realised while bouncing around in the pool on Friday for Aquafit (with my brain cycling in neutral over various topics) that I have been treating retirement as if it's my new job.  Like a job, I feel like I have to tackle certain maintenance tasks every day (Japanese, exercise) and work on longer term projects (frame quilting, decluttering, the Australian BOM etc) regularly - and if I don't then I feel like I am failing and not doing a good job.  Add in all the daily tasks like cooking, gardening, bit of housework, laundry etc., and it leaves very little time for all the hobby things I would like to be doing. I feel like I can't go and 'play' until I get my 'work' done.  So it turns into an endless cycle of feeling like I am running to keep up and not succeeding very well at anything. And certainly not living the retirement cliche of doing whatever whenever.  I suppose some of the tasks have an end date - eventually the house will be mostly decluttered for example (although at the rate I bring in new things, that point may be far in the future). I expect it comes down to personality type - I certainly see a wide spectrum of viewpoints represented on the retirement groups I read on Facebook. Including people who get fed up with retirement and re-join the workforce.  I am obviously a personality with very unrealistic aspirations as to what I can, and want to, get done craft-wise.  I'm trying to do better. I actually gave away a roll of lampshade adhesive backing that I bought 10 years ago to make one lampshade with, and the book on how to do it - I have accepted that I am unlikely to ever make any more lampshades :)  I've seen various suggestions for time management - like having designated days to do things, or doing a deep dive for a week on one task like de-cluttering.  Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Way, way, way too hot

 The temperatures reached silly levels this week, with one of the highest in England being recorded not far from our town, at Pitsford Reservoir at 38.2 Celsius on Monday and then it went up to 40.2 the next day at Heathrow.  One of my friends recorded 49 degrees C in her sunny back garden due to reflected heat! It's just crazy weather for the UK and I want it to stop.

Luckily we were away in the caravan down near Bridport in Dorset, where the sea breezes kept the inferno down to a mere 33 degrees on Monday and 29 on Sunday and Tuesday.  Our pitch had high privacy hedges on three sides so from 3pm onwards there was enough shade for us to sit in to wait it out until evening - DH with a wet towel on his head and me resorting to dampening my entire dress front every half hour or so.  On Monday we actually hid in Morrison's (a supermarket) air conditioned cafe from 12-3 until there was going to be some shade at the campsite.   We were probably better off at night because we can open windows on all four sides of the caravan and it didn't hold the heat the way masonry house walls would. Subsequent days were rainy and muggy before setttling down to more normal summer weather, so it was a pretty challenging week weatherwise and clothes-wise.  Luckily I had purposefully overpacked so I had clothes and shoes for pretty much any condition we faced.

Consequently we had a very relaxed week as the weather conditions prevented us from gallivanting around to lots of sights and walks like we normally would.  We had some nice walks in Bridport in the morning or evening before it got hot, and visited West Bay and its shingle beach a few times.  

I particularly liked that there were loads of what I call 'proper' seagulls, big and white instead of the scruffy smaller grey coloured gulls at many seaside locations.

The rain and clouds on the cliffs at West Bay

Walking on Eggardon Hill - an old Iron Age hillfort with stunning views to the sea

We love higgledy-piggledy secondhand bookshops.

I was rather taken aback to spot 'My First Coffee Machine' on a shelf in a toy store where DH was looking at models - I am obviously completely out of touch with the modern child's preferences. Although the coffee machine was on the same shelf with more traditional pretend appliances such as irons, washing machines, cash registers etc.

Bridport has several antique stores, as does Crewkerne a few miles further north - and we spent a couple of enjoyable mornings poking around. We did quite well for secondhand books, and  I found this carved coquilla nut which is probably an old thimble holder - the actual colour is a dark chocolate brown, for some reason my phone is lightening the pictures.

I also found a very sweet little carved firescreen, probably Victorian, which has a replacement embroidery in a 1920s/30s style.  The wood needs a bit of a clean up but otherwise it's in pretty good shape.

And an impulse buy was this very handsome little worktable, not sure if it's Victorian or Georgian. They were practically giving it away because it needs restoration. But on first glance the woodwork is sound, it just needs refinishing and some veneer replaced. And of course the inside is in a poor state but I think could be improved and repaired.  Another project for me.

Other than books and antiques, I didn't buy a lot this week.  These lace bobbins were ridiculously cheap at one antique bric-a-brac store, 10 for £3.50, so I got three lots of those to share with my friends. The mosaic letter was from a craft shop and I got it home safely only to drop it on the floor and break the tip of the leaf off, aaargh - DH is going to repair it for me.  The bag pattern was secondhand in a craft shop. The vintage huck towel was from another antique shop, I have a few of these already and use them as hand towels in the bathroom.  The glass art reminded me of cherry blossom from Japan, it's by a glass artist called Kathryn Webley.  The rather charming embroidered felt pincushion (which has a weighted base) was from a craft fair at West Bay.

On the holiday I did some more work on the cross stitch Iris bookmark, the Aldi boucle t-shirt reknit, and the lace shawl from Paducah.  But it was so hot that I will admit to spending a lot of time scrolling on Facebook and watching sumo matches on Youtube.  Now that I'm home, I need to get back to quilting on the frame.

Unsurprisingly, the garden suffered a bit in the heat with noone to water it. The central hydrangea in a big pot looks like a dried flower arrangement now, and there are a few other casualties.  But most of it has pulled through and I've got the drip hoses running now to get some water into the beds.  That was our last full week away as DH is now getting low on holiday days, so we may only manage a few long weekends in the caravan before it gets packed away into winter storage.  Even though we are limited by DH's leave allowance, we're still really glad we bought the caravan last year. It's lovely to have a comfortable base without having to take a chance on a rundown hotel or a tired self-catering cottage.

If you're in the UK, hope you survived the heatwave okay.  At least my basement sewing room stays cool!