Sorting out

 "I just need to get sorted" has become a humorous catchphrase in our house, because DH's elderly mother has been saying that for years - like there will come a moment when all the stars are aligned and she can finally get started on doing 'the thing' - only that day never comes.  But it does seem to be human nature to create mental barriers to pursuing the fun stuff - "I need to finish X project before I can start something new"; "I need to use up my old fabric before I can buy any more";  "I need to do some paperwork before I can go play in my sewing room" etc.

With the eternal chores of housework and cleaning temporarily off my guilt list, after our cleaning marathon for my relative visiting last weekend, I have been sorting out some of my barriers to creativity. I've been reorganising my fabric stash - in particular I unpacked two large carrier bags of repro fabric and folded it all into squares I can stand up in some plastic trays I bought.  I went through my crammed shelf of special fabric and dispersed it into more sensible collections where I can see what I've got (and hopefully use some of it). I emptied out bags of scraps and threw out a lot of small pieces I will never use, and cut up others for my scrap bins.  I also went through my boxes of 'patterns or kits I want to make' and pulled out several to kit up in preparation for some retreats I will attend in October.  

One of those was the clever Clover gadget that lets you easily sew jelly roll rug fabric tubes.  I tested it out on some wadding scraps after doing some Youtube research, then cut up a bunch of wadding scraps left over from longarming to be 2.5" wide.  The plan is to make some baskets from my scrap 2.5" fabric stash.  I also researched how to make selvedge fabric, and chose some projects to make with that, once I use my selvedge stash to cover some foundation fabric.  Today I sat in on an online zoom retreat organised by one of the regions of the UK quilters guild, which gave me something to listen to while I was cutting a million strips of wadding.  After that, I was stitching on a little beginner's Boro panel that I started in a quick workshop at Festival of quilts a few years ago, which I found in the box as well.

In the attic disaster room that houses my knitting, bobbin lace and junk journalling stashes, I have also made inroads.  I've pulled out some of the bookcases lining the edges of the slanted ceiling, so that I can access the wasted space behind them.  DH took the old dining table I was using as a stand for my ScanNCut off to the re-use centre today, which freed up a lot of room. I've moved several things I only use occasionally into the slanted low part of the room to free up more floor space.  I had two crates of tatting stuff, a hobby I've hardly done at all for a couple of decades.  One crate was just books, patterns and newsletters - I was able to discard or donate almost all of it.  The other is full of threads which I haven't tackled yet.  I've put together a big bag of acrylic worsted yarn to donate.  So it is gradually looking better.  I've been on a bit of a decluttering roll - I've sold a chair, a shelf and a towel rack on Facebook Marketplace this week, and let go of a wooden quilt display ladder that never really fit in this house.  So there is more space and more empty corners than there used to be - it feels good.  

The visit with my relative and her partner went fine, although very low key.  Disappointingly (especially after all our work) they didn't seem very interested in our nice old house.  I gave them the tour but they looked in most rooms without comment and showed no interest at all in my dollhouse or sewing rooms.  I suppose to Canadian eyes, our Victorian house may look old fashioned or cluttered.  Much more satisfying was a visit a few days later by my sister-in-law with her partner. They hadn't visited since we were renovating the house 12 years ago because we usually go down to them.  They loved the house and expressed much admiration and interest, and asked lots of questions, which feels more like what our nice old house deserves, lol.

While I was tidying my sewing room, I found the embroidered house sewing accessory that I finished a few weeks ago and realised I had forgotten to blog it.  I based my little house on photographs that I found online of a design by Australian company Faeries in my Garden, which they call 'Little House of Needles and Pins'.  I undertook it partly a technical challenge to see if I could come up with a suitable construction method.  I eyeballed the proportions for the components and used cardboard inside the pieces.  My embroideries riff off of their designs but are of course cruder, my embroidery skills are only so-so.  There are small pockets on all four sides, inside the roof panels there is needle storage, and there is a ribbon to hold a pair of scissors. Construction wasn't entirely successful, I had trouble with bulk in the seams so I wonder how the original dealt with that, but it did go together. I made a boxed pincushion that fits inside.  The final result isn't as cute as the original but it's still cute.  Not sure if I will use it or not, it may just be a decoration.

I said last week that I had finished the knitted shawl that I started in St Kitts.  It is now blocked and dry.   I like the design but I don't like the colour - I used a variegated sock yarn and it has come out much more lime green than I expected.  I have a friend visiting in a few weeks that likes bright colours so I might see if she will want it.

Once the family visit was over, I could start making a mess in my dollshouse room again so I have made a start on a kit by Petworth Miniatures for a 1:48 book box on the theme of Pride and Prejudice.  I remember buying this from a dealer at the York miniatures show some years ago, and there were several book boxes themed on different books.  I've been making the box itself first, but the kit also includes some laser-cut furniture kits to make.  I am not overly impressed with the kit - the instructions to my mind are not in the right order, like they want you to install papers and then try to paint the edges of the box (I did it my own way and reversed that), and are also a bit confusing; there is no mention of painting the ceiling that I have seen so far anyway; the supplied wallpaper was on light cardstock and difficult to fold into the room, and I'm finding it difficult to get a good finish on the laser cut wood.  Hopefully I will like the end result. There was no frame supplied for inside the window so I bodged one in Tinkercad and 3D printed one.

 

Four days of skivvying

 We were away in the caravan for a few days down to Suffolk, staying near Woodbridge.  It's a nice area with some very scenic views over the various rivers, we visited a few shingle beaches and did the usual mix of antique stores, stately homes, historical sites, ice creams, town walks, farm shops etc.  The weather was mixed, and we ended up coming home a day early as our last full day was just going to be heavy rain all day. It was also a pain that Suffolk is currently undergoing a perfect storm of roadworks, road closures and diversions as dozens of construction crews prepare infrastructure and level crossings in advance of building a new nuclear reactor, while at the same time the Council is undertaking a huge road resurfacing project.  It made going anywhere on the already sparse rural road network slow and occasionally frustrating.

I took the lace knitted shawl along that I had started in St Kitts, and finished it - but I haven't blocked it yet.  I also took along the seaside cross stitch that I was doing in Norway and got quite a bit done, then finished it once I got home.

Today I sewed it up into a little zip pouch, although I had trouble keeping the end corners neat with the stiff canvas.

I came home with a few secondhand craft books, including an interesting book on sewing with Japanese fabrics, and six of Elly Sienkiewicz's Baltimore album books.  I was thinking the other day that I felt ready for another applique project so maybe I will find something in those.

Once we got home, it was straight into major housecleaning for the upcoming family visit.  It's taken four days but we are finally ready for her visit tomorrow.  Quite apart from wanting the house to look nice for a guest, we found that the more we cleaned, the more we discovered that needed cleaning.  All those places that you don't often look at, like the tops of skirting boards, dirty marks around light switches and door handles, cobwebs in the ceiling corners, marks on the tiled floor etc..  We are now wondering why we live in such a high maintenance old house instead of a featureless modern box like on the television home shows. And I have a form of RSI in my right arm from all the wiping, scrubbing, mopping etc.  We also did a bunch more decluttering - DH is much more amenable to getting rid of things now that he has had to help his elderly parents move out of their cluttered home.  I don't think the house has looked this good since shortly after we finished all the moving-in renovations. It's entirely our own fault that it took so much work, we have been quite lazy about housework for a few years now.  We need to be more diligent.

I used some of my Norway fabric to sew another stand up project bag.  I didn't think it would need interfacing as the Norwegian fabric is like a heavy cotton or very light canvas, but in fact it came out a bit floppy.  I was able to slip a bit of interfacing in after the fact before I sewed the zip on, but it was tricky as I didn't want to melt the vinyl with the iron.  I still have plenty of fabric left, I will have to think of other things to make with it.

Before we went off in the caravan, I finished stitching my Sashiko spools panel from Hobbyra Hobbyre in Tokyo.  I am a novice at sashiko so the stitching is by no means expert.  I'm planning to sew some spool blocks at an upcoming sewing retreat to piece around the panel to make a wallhanging.

As a side effect of cleaning the house, I tidied up my sewing room.  I've been feeling frustrated for a while now that I have too much fabric for the available storage space, resulting in large bins stuffed full of fabric, or big carrier bags, that you can't look through easily or even see what you have. So then I don't use it, and forget what I bought.  I pulled out a few bins and discovered a whole stash of solids that I didn't even know I had, I have no recollection of why I put them all into a bin but it explains why my shelf of solids seemed a bit sparse when I was piecing the St Kitts quilt (which I have now loaded onto my longarm frame but haven't started quilting on yet).  I folded all the big pieces onto cardboard so they will stand up inside the bins and be visible, and I folded up all the smaller pieces and put them in a rectangular basket.  So that's an improvement but not really addressing the overall problem.  I bought a few more plastic baskets today with the plan to excavate the two big carrier bags of reproduction fabric next.  Similarly, my attic room where I keep my knitting, lacemaking and now junk journalling stashes is a complete disaster.  In fact, we are just shutting the door to the attic while our guest is here and we are going to pretend that floor doesn't exist.  That room also needs a major overhaul.  I think what I really need is a new craft room the size of a small aircraft hanger...

Recording travel memories

 I've spent a fair amount of time each day this week, working on my Norway travel journal.  Although I still haven't made my mind up on what is the best way to record my trip memories.  While I am actually travelling, I keep a little digital journal of what I did each day, with photos, and share it with DH so he can see what I've been up to.  When I get home, I have various choices of what to do with that journal.  I feel like I need to make some sort of written record as my memory really isn't that great, and a few years later the details of a trip become very fuzzy unless I have a written record and some photos to trigger my memory. And I want a printed option as I know to my cost that digital documents are ephemeral and depend entirely on your storage medium not failing or your cloud provider not going out of business. So I've tried various options: printing the journal 'as is' in a photo book (easy but expensive particularly for longer trips); summarising each day's options into a scrapbook with photos I print and ephemera (fun to look through, but lacking details); or lightly editing the journal then pasting it into a scrapbook along with photos I print myself.  The last is what I am doing for Norway, it is satisfying to create but each day of the trip is taking me about an hour or more to add to the scrapbook so it isn't a fast process.

I did finish quilting the Gail Pan embroidered blocks wallhanging on my quilt frame.  These photos are straight off the frame.  Normally I wash quilts to set the stitches and fluff up the wadding, but I'm a bit worried about colour fastness with this quilt which has a strongly coloured border and backing, and a number of different DMC embroidery thread colours.  I think I may just steam it instead. Although there are a number of imperfections (stitching in the ditch on a frame is hard), I am fairly pleased with how it has come out and the quilting density is relatively even so it is hanging fairly well.

I've been playing with the Norwegian backstrap band weaving  with the help of a book by H Torgenrud and of course Youtube videos.  The book advised an initial warp of 3 yards, which I am somewhat regretting as it makes it a bit unmanageable when you are still learning and having to get up and down a lot to make adjustments and fetch things you forgot.  I'm also finding it a bit hard on my weak back - you have to sit fairly upright and sway a bit backwards and forwards as you weave and beat down the fell line.  But it is fun, it's like magic seeing the warp-faced pattern emerging, solely created by the initial warp colours - the weft only shows on the edges. It's sort of easy, and difficult, at the same time. My first several inches are all over the park in terms of width and evenness but I am getting the hang of it now and achieving a more consistent and narrower width.  One item I had to make almost immediately was a band lock - the wooden gadget that secures the end of the band to your waist so you can have tension on the warp threads.  I started out with just a plastic clip but it kept slipping.  You can buy band locks online but they are like £24 so I had a rummage in the basement to find some bolts and a couple of pieces of hardwood to drill holes into, and it's working great. Ideally you would have a hook-topped bolt but our local DIY store didn't have them and Amazon wants you to buy them in packs, so I improvised instead.  You can see my 3D printed heddle and shuttle in the photo.  It's a very portable set up, so in theory you could take it with you anywhere that you can secure the other end to something solid.  It would be much easier with a shorter warp though.  If I got better at it, I could take it when we go off in our caravan next summer.

I finished stitching my sashiko spools panel and it is currently drying - a cold water rinse made the stamped lines disappear like magic (to my relief). Once it is dry, then I can measure it and calculate the sizes for the pieced spool blocks that I want to surround it with, to turn it into a wallhanging. Or a table cloth.

Our young relative is arriving next weekend, so the cleaning and decluttering continues. DH shredded a whole box of paperwork from his parents but I asked for some of the more vintage pieces of paper (with old style typing on them, or old style certificates) which I will potentially use for junk journalling.  DH drove me to a craft destash sale in Burton Latimer where I was able to pick up some very cheap plastic storage boxes which hopefully will help me sort out my journalling corner which currently looks like a bomb went off in a stationery store.  (I was strong and resisted coming home with anything else other than some cheap Bosal stabiliser and a little pack of bag hardware). We've decided to just shut the attic door and pretend that floor of the house doesn't exist when my relative comes - it would just be too big a job to try to sort all my stuff out.  I don't know how I am ever going to downsize to a more manageable new house.  I need to go through my large collection of knitting books in the attic this winter and downsize that. 

It's raining

 After almost two months with no rain, and multiple heatwaves, it finally started raining where we are this week.  Our garden was desperately in need of it - the lawn was very dead, and even several of the bigger shrubs were starting to crisp and brown.  DH managed to keep pots alive and the roses, by hauling up to 50 cans of water every few days while I was in Norway (there is a hosepipe ban so we can't use the hose).  So very pleased to finally be getting rain although I expect it will be quite a while before the reservoirs fill up sufficiently to use hoses again.

A bit of a milestone this week, DH's elderly mother has at long last moved into a flat near to DH's sister.  It's been a rocky road for a few years as both the in-laws became increasingly infirm and unable to live independently, frequent medical appointments, and having to have carers in, and his father ultimately having to go into a home, then several failed attempts to get a flat - although DH's sister took the brunt of most of the arrangements.  So now their house will be able to get sorted and put on the market, to help pay for the care home fees and the flat rent.  This has resulted in a lot of their clutter ending up at our house, and having to get sorted and taken to the dump, or to the charity shops.  I've been doing a lot of decluttering this week and de-construction of glory holes and longstanding piles, because we have a younger relative coming to visit in a few weeks and I don't want her to think we live like we do, lol.  It's amazing how long things can stay put - you put them aside 'temporarily' to deal with later, and two years later they are still in their little pile and have become part of the wallpaper.  Our basement is now tidier and cleaner than it has been for years.  The accretion of various projects and craft supplies around my chair in the living room has been cleared out and I even hoovered my sewing room!  

I said last week I had finished my Norwegian hat, here it is. The true colour is somewhere between the two photos in value.

I came across a free tutorial sewalong by a studio called Molly and Mama to make a Pentagon Bowl using English paper piecing, so I had a go at that using some of my Tilda fabrics.  Basically you sew two covered pentagons back to back, leaving the cardstock inside them, after assembling each layer into a bowl shape.  So it's fairly sturdy.

I also sewed myself a waist bag for travelling, using a free tutorial by Miko Craft. I wanted something very lightweight so I used a single layer of ripstop nylon, with no stabiliser.  The whole thing rolls up and fits into a stuff sack the size of an egg.  So I can carry it in my daypack in case I need it - if I am sightseeing all day without jacket pockets because it's too warm, then I need somewhere to put items I am using constantly like hat, sunglasses, camera, maps etc.  I did take photos but then accidentally deleted them, sorry.

When I was in Norway, I saw several examples of the traditional craft of bandweaving the colourful narrow braids used on their traditional costumes. They are woven on a backstrap loom using a small heddle.  You could buy a beginners weaving kit for £50 at some of the shops in Trondheim and Tromso, but I looked at it and thought I could probably 3D print the components.  Sure enough, someone on Makerworld has created a file for various sized heddles and shuttles.  So I printed off a heddle and shuttle this week to have a go at weaving a simple band.  I've started threading the heddle but am not yet ready to weave yet. I also found a file on Makerworld for a plate of sushi so I printed off a few plates of that for my Japanese dollshouse.

I've been trying to do some handstitching every day, working on my Norway cross stitch and my cross-stitch monogram.  I saw an interesting video today called "The real purpose of making art that no-one sees" by Margarete Miller which addresses the issue of makers constantly being told "you could sell that!", or "What are you going to do with it?" or "Don't you have enough X yet?" etc.  Our cultural bias is that something is only valuable if it can be sold, or if it has a beneficial use/purpose.  I've been doing a lot more crafts since I retired, which has increased my struggle with this tension between making and purpose.  I enjoy making things.  It's good for my mental health to make things.  I now have the time (and money) to make the things I've been wanting to make for years.  However, most of the things I make are not things I need - and at a time of life when I am trying to declutter. They may be things that nobody needs. The UK mindset is that handicrafts have little value so it's very difficult to sell creations for anything like what they cost to make - and I want to be making things, not running an online shop.  Only certain types of items are suitable for donation - to be used or to be sold by a charity for funds. I don't know the answer.  I do know that I feel deterred now from making things that I used to really want to make - like large dollshouses, large quilts, knitted jumpers (don't wear them), bobbin lace (no purpose to it) and so on.  Especially after the huge amount of time we have spent on decluttering the in-laws house, and our own house.

I am gradually going through my Norway photos, and have deleted maybe 400 so far.  It's difficult to make decisions when you have 40 photos of the fjord but they are all beautiful in their own way, and they are digital so there is no longer the cost of printing.  I've also printed out some details of my itinerary, to make up a little travel journal as a record of the holiday.

Back from Norway

 I got back Thursday night, so today was the third day of putting stuff away, laundry, ironing, hacking back the garden and catching up on paperwork.  I have downloaded 3,000 photos from my phone but haven't gone through them yet.  I'm sure there are a lot of duplicates to whittle out and also a lot of failures - my eye would be seeing beautiful coastline through the grey overcast day and my smartphone was seeing dark silhouettes against a brighter sky.  Plus the inevitable photos of my feet, my finger, my boarding pass etc. to get rid of.  It is nice to be home again, see DH, talk to DS, visit my craft room, and gloat over my Norway loot.  Also nice to wear clothes that weren't in my suitcase.  The best thing is I have missed the latest UK heatwave - it was up to 35C for several days while I was away, meanwhile I was enjoying 13C-15C and overcast drizzle which I am more than happy with.  It was a great trip, albeit very expensive, and I can definitely see myself going back again.

I managed to visit around a dozen knitting shops, but was relatively restrained in what I bought due to being realistic about my knitting speed and lack of space in my case.  I got two books about the lovely Selbu designs for mittens, and some Rauma wool to knit a pair from each.  The white book is in English, the black booklet is in Norwegian so I'll have to use Google Translate.  I also got a kit for a third pair of Selbu mittens in Hilesvag wool featuring the typical Norwegian star/Selbu Rose pattern.  My last purchase was a kit for a cute pair of socks with Norwegian houses on them.

Garnhuset yarn shop in Trondheim, just one of the many enormous yarn shops I came across during the holiday. (the crowd is lining up for a Pokemon release at the next store along).

I didn't get much fabric, although quilting is definitely a thing in Norway. I went to a couple of sewing/quilting shops in Trondheim.  Quiltegarden was a beautifully laid out and well curated shop with lovely displays.  But it was all recognisable brands like Moda, Laundry Basket, ByAnnie bag patterns, and of course Tilda.  But Tilda not any cheaper as her fabric is all printed abroad then imported back into Norway. I asked the owner if there was any Norwegian fabric but she said no, they have a few designers but they don't produce fabric, too expensive.  Prices in the shop were similar to the UK at c £20-22 per metre. 

 However I did find some light canvas fabric printed with Norwegian motifs at the other shop in Trondheim, Abbys Textiler.  I found the cute spool tin at a knitting shop, and the cross-stitch motif runner and placemat was on sale at a home interiors shop in Oslo.

I added a zip to the placemat and turned it into a simple pouch. It was nice to be back at the sewing machine.

And of course I got some tourist tat: a teatowel, little tray, a mug, some fridge magnets, postcards and a fleece lined cute tourist hat that I was glad to have in Roros, when it was unexpectedly 5C with added windchill.

I found this postcard in a knitting shop.

And I saw so many beautiful textiles on display in tourist shops, museums, recreated interiors in open air museums, etc.  Norwegian sweaters on sale were typically machine knit unless they were in a yarn store, and very expensive: starting from £250 and going up to over £600.

Sami Hats in a museum display

The bunad is the traditional Norwegian folk costume based on historical rural clothing, worn by men and women and still very popular today. It features rich hand-embroidery, high-quality wool or linen, and custom silver or gold jewelry. The Husfliden shops in many Norwegian cities specialise in creating these works of art, and also sell the materials for them. I wasn't there at a festival time so I didn't see anyone in the wild wearing a bunad apart from museum staff, but I saw several on display in Husfliden or in museums.

I mentioned that I had started knitting the Norwegian Star Beanie by Sandra Jager on the trip, this is how far I had got by the time I came home, and I just finished it this morning so it is currently blocking.  There is something wrong with the third chart for the crown decreases, like many others listed on the projects page I just had to wing it.

I also took along a magazine kit from CrossStitcher magazine because it made me think of colourful Norwegian houses, but I didn't get a lot done on it.

It's good to be back!