Lurgy

Lurgy is a useful British word which means an unspecified infectious illness, quite often used in the workplace to refer to cold germs making the rounds.  I've had a colleague sitting to my left coughing and having sick days off for the last few weeks so it was inevitable that I would succumb to the lurgy myself. Having toughed it through Monday and Tuesday at work feeling progressively worse, I realised Wednesday morning that I was going to have to stay home.  After phoning my manager to report sick, I sat down in my new chair in the living room 'just for a few minutes' to gather my strength while I watched a bit of TV.  Well, I barely moved all day and ended up watching about 13 hours of television. In fact I found out our TV has a function where it offers to auto-shutdown after so many hours, I didn't even know it did that.   Luckily DS was home and kept me well supplied with drinks and snacks, and I kept my hands busy even though the rest of me didn't want to move.

I seamed together all the pieces for my Practice machine knitted T-shirt so I could hang it on the machine and knit the neckband.  It is now finished but has turned out too big as I have lost weight since I created the t-shirt pattern 15 years ago, but it was still a useful exercise to practice the pattern and also now I can tweak it to make it smaller before I knit the actual t-shirts in good yarn. I think I will also make the neckline a bit shallower as it seems quite deep.

I also did quite a bit of stitching on my Hawaiian applique quilt which is showing a fair bit of progress since I also took it on the Yorkshire holiday.  I knit some more on the sleeve of my Que Sera Cardigan, and finished the latest block in my 25-block applique quilt.  I think this is Block 17 with fussy-cut flower centres.

I ended up still feeling sick on my day off, Thursday, and stayed home again Friday although by then I was feeling like I had turned the corner and was getting better.  I had a bit more energy so on Thursday I stuck a lot more shingles onto my dollshouse roof - I've started the gazebo roof which is the trickiest bit with lots of angles to cut.

I went out with DS to vote in the referendum.  The result is quite a shock, I never thought we would actually be leaving the EU.  On Saturday at quilting we were half-jokingly discussing what it might mean for hobbyists: increased prices due to the falling pound, customs duty levied from more destinations, higher costs for craft holidays abroad.

Friday I was feeling more energetic and tottered out to the garden to put netting on the strawberries which are starting to turn red and get eaten by things.  I also put some net over our small edible cherry tree which looks like it will give us a bigger crop this year compared to last year's single pie.

And I applied a coat of buffing wax to the marble-topped table we bought at Newark that I had already cleaned up.  It looks a lot better, still pretty battered but much cleaner and with a nice sheen to it now. The marble cleaned up fairly well also although it is pretty scratched up. I wonder if it is possible to polish marble at home or if it has to be done by a professional? This has gone into our living room for the moment where it looks very nice with a Wedgewood bowl on the bottom tier.

I did a fair bit of sewing on Friday. I finally put the red sashing border onto the Let it Snow quilt which had been pinned on my design wall for the last few months, so I could take it down and add it to the large collection of tops waiting to be quilted hanging in the corner of my sewing room.  I think there are 6 or 8 now since I haven't quilted anything since the winter of 2012 before we packed up the house to put it on the market.  I've been slowly working my way through my list of ancient UFOs and I'm down to three:  the 25 block applique quilt, the Hawaiian Applique Quilt, and a four-panel picture of Venice.  The Venice picture was a group project I ran back in 2007 in my quilting group after I saw at a quilt show the then innovative idea of splitting up a photograph into parts and giving each part to a participant to create a quilted scene.  Four of us took part, and the other participants ended up with quite nice pictures of an African portrait, a Belgian street scene, and a Monet painting of a barn.

I was never that happy with what I got back for my Venice picture and in retrospect I think I should have chosen a simpler subject without so much fussy detail.  I did get as far as stitching the four pieces together, which involved some fairly wobbly seams to try to get detail to match across the seams.

I decided I still wanted to finish it but I needed to stop procrastinating about coming up with some clever design concept, and just get it done.  After squaring it up, I added some trim to the boat cover which spanned three panels, to bring that together, and I used one of the embroidery stitches on my machine to add some 'carved' detail to the plain brown door second from the left.  Then I stitched over the balcony struts of the second-from-left panel to make it more realistic and to blend it in better with the balcony in the leftmost panel.  I trawled through my stash for greenery to cut out and fuse to the various windows boxes, and also came across a couple of lanterns I could add.  I'm not entirely happy with my greenery which looks too heavy at the top of the windows, so I may add some more over top of that in a lighter green.  I'm planning to stretch this picture over artist's canvas rather than quilting it (because of all the layers and lumps), so I stitched a neutral grey cotton border around it.  I'm calling it done now apart from adding a bit more greenery and getting a canvas for it.  Another one bites the dust.

Saturday was my monthly quilting day at the LQS, and although still not entirely well I was looking forward to an easy day of assembling my Bear's Paw Quilt.  I had given my 20 blocks a good press on Friday, and also pressed the setting squares and triangles that I cut out 15 years ago.  So I got all set up and sat down at the machine to sew my first seam feeling very relaxed.  Until I held a setting triangle up to a Bear's Paw quilt and realised the triangle was too small.  I put a setting square on top of a Bear's Paw block and it was too small.  Eeeek!  Turns out all my Bear's Paw blocks are 11 inches square unfinished, and all my setting squares and triangles were 10.5" square.  Which to be fair is what my 15-year-old photocopied instructions specified: 10.5" squares and triangles.  So either there was an error in the book or, what is more likely, is that I decided for some reason to make the block slightly bigger (perhaps to match my Thangles papers?) and did not make the corresponding correction to the setting squares.  Which is the kind of thing I would do, being numerically challenged.  Luckily I did have some 15-year-old yardage of the white on white background which was set aside for outer borders. So I spent my first 45 minutes of the day looking up Pythagorean theorum on my phone and trying to work out if I had enough fabric to cut out new squares and triangles. Turns out I did, barely. So I recut all the setting squares and triangles, and went into the shop to see if they had anything that would match the old background that I could use for borders.  Amazingly they did still have the 15-year-old print only in a beige colourway.  They are going to ask the supplier if it is still made in white, and order some for me if it is.  Meanwhile I got on with assembling the quilt centre and trying not to chop my points off.  I do love a blue and white quilt, so crisp and fresh.  All 20 blocks are a different indigo African print, I really like it.  The next step is to cut up a kazillion half-square triangles (already stitched luckily) and pull the papers off so I can assemble the sawtooth inner border.

After I got home, DH and I put together a metal half-arch that had arrived in the post. I ordered it after seeing a similar one at a garden I visited with my garden club. One end attaches on the wall while the other end rests on the ground. I realised it would be the perfect thing for this neglected corner of our garden. DH did a huge amount of digging to truck dirt across from a hole dug in our patio-to-be to fill in the upper end of this old path, to create a new garden beside our new gazebo.  Then this morning we built a jerry-rigged retaining wall out of old bricks and backfilled with dirt.  I've planted out a bunch of salvia and penstemon I've been growing from seed although I don't know if they are going to get enough sun there.  The remaining bit of path looked a bit lost but when we mounted the arch onto the neighbour's wall suddenly it's like a little room.  There is a clematis growing up the post on the right of the arch so I've trained it onto the arch where hopefully it will keep growing upwards. This afternoon we had a cup of tea sitting on the bench and enjoying the new perspective on our garden.

I'm feeling a lot better now so back to work tomorrow, sigh.  Roll on retirement I say.

Consolidation

This week I've working on various purchases from the past few weeks. It's fun to do the shopping and accumulating, but it does make my To Do list longer.

I cleaned up and painted with Smooth Black Hammerite the old Victorian gas lantern we bought some weeks ago, and also painted the wrought iron bracket DH spotted in the Newby Hall garden shop which is perfect for the lantern. Then I screwed the bracket onto the side of our brick outbuilding and hung the lantern. It looks quite striking and really adds some interest to a dull corner.

I've gone over the wooden base of the marble topped table we got at Newark with sugar soap wipes and rubbed it down with fine steel wool and wax remover which removed a lot of accumulated grime. I'm letting it dry before I touch up some bare spots with wood stain and then re-apply buffing wax as a finish.

I discovered an online framing store which will cut picture framing to your own measurements, so I've ordered some unfinished frame pieces to go around the stained glass panel from Newark, to stabilise it and allow me to mount it in a window. It just seemed easier than having to find a local source for picture frame moulding then try to cut my own accurate miters.

The twice-upholstered chair has returned, and it is so much better. The new fabric is a much better choice, and the new upholsterers removed all the inappropriate rock-hard padding and turned it back into an elegant chair with a much more comfortable seat.  The back is still a little bit hard but the guy said that with use it will also soften, and at least the horrible lumbar roll is gone so you can sit in it like a human being and not like some kind of lab experiment gone wrong. I'm trying it out as my new knitting chair.

While we were in Yorkshire we also picked up eight roman blinds which had been made for me at a curtain shop I discovered last year when I attended SkipNorth.  Unlike many shops near where I live, this shop was happy to make blinds using my own fabric (which I sent to them by courier) to my measurements, and also to hand stitch them instead of running lines of visible machine stitching along the face fabric to hold the rod pockets. They were also cheaper. We've been in our 'new' house two years and all this time we've been living with the stained and fraying old roller blinds that came with it. Today we put up the new roman blinds in three rooms and suddenly the rooms look like how I've been seeing them in my head for two years.  We've got one more room to do which is the lounge, but we need to move the sofas to do them so we didn't get to that today.

The new blind over the window seat picks up the green of the wainscoting and the raspberry red of the cushion.

The dining room looks sumptuous with chenille fans with a hint of old gold thread glinting in the light.

The bedroom looks so pretty in a William Morris fabric,  This is the description: "Tangley' a cotton chintz dating back to 1837 was produced by Bannister Hall on behalf of William Morris in 1868 and furnished Queen Victoria's private rooms at Windsor Castle. Soon after Morris was printing his own designs but 'Tangley' would still have been used mixed with Morris patterns in interiors and could still be used in this way today. Now printed on linen 'Tangley' appears to capture the block printed texture of the original and depicts a beautiful flowering peony tree."

DS is home now for the summer and his opinion is that I've turned the whole house into a giant dollshouse project. He may be right.

Crafts

I put some of the dollshouse things I bought in York into various houses, and also put together some kits.  This was a Jane Harrop laser cut kit for a  1:12 French wine crate, which went into my French gatehouse.

And these are two Petworth Miniatures laser cut kits for 1:48 bar stools for my 1:48 cowboy saloon.

I finished, for the third time, and re-blocked my Now in a Minute Shawl.  Starting with the chart for Wedge 3, I repeated charts several times to achieve a long taper with a greater outer circumference, so now I can wrap it around my shoulders and it will stay in place. It's still a bit of an odd shape but it's wearable and I like the colours.

On Thursday I made a little 1:12 scale ring pillow using the bobbin lace dollshouse doiley that I made a few months ago, for an online wedding-themed miniatures swap. It's gone off in the post to its new owner,  I hope she likes it.

And I've done a bit more shopping.  You've probably seen those foldout craft cabinets advertised in quilting and needlework magazines, full of clever drawers and shelves, and with the promise that everything will fold away and be tidy and hidden.  They usually cost a fortune, and I would never buy one because I wouldn't want to put everything away out of sight anyway.  But look what I found at a charity shop for £35.

Clever, isn't it?  Although pretty functional in appearance, it's in good condition. I decided it needed to come home with me and be appreciated.  I might keep my bobbin lace supplies and threads in it as currently they are housed in a plastic crate and an assortment of odd containers. I like clever furniture, so much more interesting.

TV knitting this week has been the Multi Way Wrap and the Que Sera Cardigan on which I finished the body and have now started a sleeve.  Commuter knitting continues to be the Lallybroch Sock and I have made it to the top of the ribbed cuff and am about to start the moss stitch folded cuff.

Oh, and I've been shingling the Victorian gazebo porch. The shingles that came with the kit are really rubbish with a lot of warped and miscut shingles. Luckily they provided lots of them. I just hope they don't warp even more when I get around to painting them. You can see the green colour on some of the shingles which I pre-painted before using them.

A Yorkshire holiday

We arrived back yesterday from a pleasant holiday in Yorkshire, during which we drove a hired motorhome and stayed at three different campsites.  I feel very relaxed despite a busy day today doing multiple loads of laundry and catching up on chores and paperwork. I'm sure by mid-morning tomorrow back at work it will all have worn off and depression will have set in, lol.

I had planned the holiday around the Yorkshire Dolls House and Miniatures Fair which I had never been to and had often read good things about. It is a medium sized fair inside the York racecourse buildings, very friendly, lots of parking and a decent cafe. The programme lists 82 dealers and I was pleased to discover C J Miniatures who specialise in smaller scales and are the UK agents for Petworth Miniatures of Canada who do 1:48 laser cut furniture kits. I picked up some 1:48 stool kits  and resin baskets for my cowboy saloon and a bistro set for the balcony of my New Orleans House. There were other new-to-me dealers including Severn Models who produce beautifully precise brass etched miniatures in 1:48 and 144 scale - I bought a couple of sets of his new 144 furniture line.  For my gingerbread shed project I found a garden trellis, a shelf and some shingles from J and A Supplies. I found a 1;24 Venetian style mirror at Elite Petite Interiors for my Fairfield house, and some printed cushions (one of these is for the writers studio also). Delph Miniatures were selling a bunch of seconds and I picked up a very reasonably priced modern bathroom suite which I can't see any fault in - this might be for my future McKinley house build. Some people were saying the fair wasn't as big as usual but I quite enjoyed it.

We were quite pleased when the parking attendant said we could leave the motorhome in the parking lot until they locked the gates at 8pm, so we headed off along the river for an enjoyable afternoon in York poking into bookshops and walking the medieval walls. I also visited the two York knitting shops: Knit and Stitch, and RamShambles. Ramshambles were having a 40% sale on many items and I fell victim to some gorgeous Rowan Hemp Tweed which they were practically giving away. I'm thinking hat and gloves set.



After a nice dinner we made sure to be back early at 7:10pm to retrieve the motorhome, and weren't best pleased to discover we'd been locked into the now empty car park.  After a fruitless search for a security person I had to call the non-emergency police line, where a very helpful operator soon had us freed by a stone-faced security guard.

The next morning we went back into York (parking at the Park and Ride this time!) and visited two model shops for DH and I found some Plastruct right angle strips which I am hoping will cover up the angles on my hexagonal shed tower more neatly.  We also visited the York dollshouse shop Miniature Scene, where I picked up a couple of bound books and a magnifying glass for my writer's retreat. Across the road was a Doll and Teddy Bear shop which had an odd assortment of antique toys, dollshouse furniture, dolls and bears, and I found a little vintage metal cooker which will fit perfectly into my French gatehouse kitchen.

Then we headed off to to the pretty village of Helmsley where I had booked us in for Afternoon Tea at the award winning Black Swan Hotel, which was served in their lovely garden being serenaded by vintage music from the nearby afternoon tea dance.   It was a bit like going back in time, and we each had a three-tier cake rack full of goodies, and of course a pot of tea each. Absolutely delicious and we felt very pampered. And full.

The next day was spent at Castle Howard, with lovely gardens and some very impressive interiors where I fell in love with several pieces of furniture such as this lovely bed. I felt very inspired by all three houses we visited, lots of ideas for my dollshouses and even for our real house - although we wouldn't have room for this bed!

On the way there we drove past a little business park where the words 'wool' and 'fabric' jumped out at me - funny how that happens. Poor DH had to drive another mile to find somewhere with enough room to turn the motorhome around but it was worth it as we found some bargain fabric to recover the Edwardian screen we bought last week, at Wath Court Fabrics and I found this Silk Cotton DK in the large new Little Lamb Wool shop. She only had four balls of the violet which I didn't think was enough for a summer top so I bought a ball of pink with the idea of introducing a stripe. It feels gorgeous and soft.

In the evenings relaxing in the sunshine I was stitching on my Hawaiian applique quilt and doing a lot of knitting.  I made a good start on the Multiway Wrap in a simple garter ridge pattern.

And I did a little more on my lace shawl project:

But mainly I was re-knitting the second half of my Now in a Minute Shawl. After working on it all week, I finished it for the second time on Thursday night and was pleased to find that I can now wrap it around my shoulders without feeling like I am being garotted. However, I still don't think it is long enough so I ripped back for a third time just the final colour segment, and started re-knitting to try to achieve a longer taper.  I'm certainly getting my money's worth out of this project!

On Wednesday we headed over to Newby Hall with the main intention of visiting the exhibition of Caroline Hamilton's dollshouse collection (at least that was my intention - I expect DH would say something different). The dollshouses are in a purpose built new exhibition space, well displayed behind glass with good lighting and explanation cards available. I really enjoyed my visit, and went back again after we had been through the house and gardens. Unlike today's perfection and myriad of scale supplies, a lot of these houses were started back in the 80s and 90s when I too was making do from adapted materials like gift wrap and book marks, so I recognised many of the contents. I also really liked how every house tells a story and it made me feel I should try a lot harder with my houses which I tend to furnish as if I lived inside them all, lol.

Newby House itself is absolutely exquisite, gorgeous Robert Adam interiors and Chippendale furniture, a real gem of a house.  The gardens are extensive and equally lovely. Highly recommended if you are ever in the area.

Thursday started out with a visit to Nunnington Hall, which is a pleasant Tudor-ish house with smallish gardens, which houses the Carlisle collection of miniature rooms. These are detailed and beautiful rooms well displayed in exhibition space in the extensive attics. The scale is 1/8 which I thought would be large and clumsy but they were really lovely.

and there was a peacock wandering around fearlessly, although he wouldn't put his tail up no matter how many pictures I took of him.

The rest of the holiday was a mix of good meals, relaxing in sunny gardens, white knuckle drives along narrow Yorkshire lanes not constructed for motorhomes, gorgeous scenery and lots and lots of Yorkshire tea.We did get some rain on our final day which happened to be our outdoor activity day in the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We were visiting How Stean Gorge, a natural wonderland around a deep river gorge. After walking the gorge in the morning, we did a walk up to Middlemoor church with view in every direction.  In the afternoon we took part in canoeing and caving activities.  Yes, me, the Queen of the couch potatoes, crawling through a muddy cave, lol!  The cave, called Manchester Hole, was quite spectacular, with a stream running noisily through it and the only light coming from our five helmet lamps.  There was a fair bit of crouching through low ceilinged bits and climbing up muddy slopes to see the stalactites up close, and we were absolutely knackered at the end of the day, not too mention soaked and muddy. I'm not sure I would do it again but it was quite an adventure. We didn't go all the way through, our beginner group turned back after the fossil cave and re-traced our steps. I managed to keep water out of my wellingtons but DH wasn't so lucky. Showers were definitely in order that evening!

So that was our summer holiday for this year.  I really enjoyed our first trip in a motorhome and I think I would do it again.  DH isn't so sure as he does all the driving so it's a bit more work for him, but we both felt like we had a really good holiday.  Are you planning to go anywhere nice this summer?

Crafting and shopping, these are a few of my favourite things

And not shopping for clothes either, I mean the good kind of shopping for crafts and antiques, lol.  Last Sunday DH drove me over to the Bramble Patch quilt shop in Weedon. They were displaying a small exhibition of antique quilts which included some pretty American quilts, plus there was a sale on older FQs for £1.50 each and buy 10 get one free.  Several of the sale fabrics were a bit ugly/weird but I was able to pull out 11 decent FQs in a 30s palette from various manufacturers. Pretty pretty, don't know what I will make with them but have added them to my 30s stash.

After the quilt shop we visited The Village antiques emporium in Weedon and also an architectural salvage barn which was full of dusty treasures. We picked up a rusty fireplace grate with gothic detailing and a marble block, both decorations for the garden, and I found a Royal Albert china dish in pretty vintage colours.

But those visits pale into insignificance compared to the last few days which we spent at the Newark International Antiques and Collectors Fair, which bills itself as the largest event of its kind in Europe. And it was big!  I think it would have been even bigger except the capricious English weather decided June was a good time to drop to 10 degrees C with an icy wind so I am guessing some stallholders and customers decided not to bother going. Luckily at the last moment I had catered to my paranoia by throwing in my heavy winter coat and hat, which I hadn't been wearing the last month, and I was sure glad to have them as the majority of the stalls are outside.  We were there from 9am to 4pm on Thursday, stayed overnight in a Premier Inn near Lincoln, then went back for another couple of hours on Friday which we had booked as a day off work. We were absolutely knackered Thursday night, it is suprisingly exhausting to spend the whole day on your feet, slowly walking the site and scanning constantly looking for treasures. Even my eyeballs were sore, lol!

But we did very well, finding some things from our list and a few things that weren't on it at all. There is a wide range of price points and there were disappointments when something we loved turned out to cost several hundred pounds. But there were also bargains especially on Friday when the remaining vendors were eager to get rid of stock. There were vendors and customers speaking many European languages and lorry loads of antiques changing hands from various countries.  I just love seeing all the furniture and curios from a bygone age, it's like being in a giant museum where you can touch everything and even take some of it home. There were some lovely antique linens to admire, and several stalls selling vintage haberdashery and needlework collectibles, and some gorgeous antique worktables, and several hand-cranked handsome Singer sewing machines.

So what did we get?  We found this super Edwardian folding screen to hide the modern eyesore of our television in our otherwise vintage-feeling front room. I will recover it in a blue fabric to match the living room.

And we found a bargain 1940s tray which we will use for carrying tea things outside to our new gazebo.

This isn't an antique, and I wasn't expecting to find it at an antiques fair, but I had been looking for one. A stand was selling metal garden obelisks at a good price and this will look very nice in our garden with perhaps a clematis growing up it or a rose.

On the floor in the above picture you can just see an Edwardian stained glass panel wrapped in a blanket, which I forgot to take a separate picture of. It needs some renovation and a wooden frame to stabilise it, then it will go in my bedroom side window so the light can shine through it.

We spotted this table on the second day and the dealer let it go for a good price, it needs some TLC but is basically sound and has a marble top. As you can see, our tastes do rather lean towards 1850-1945.

And I found this pretty lady from 1935 on a bargain table, apologies for the fuzzy picture. She has a similar face to one that I already have so can be a companion piece.

On one stall I stumbled across a big box of modern lacemaking bobbins which they were selling for the outrageously cheap price of .50p each, so I picked out 45 of the best ones including some very nice painted bobbins which probably originally cost more like £8 each. They said the bobbins were part of a house clearance and they just wanted to get rid of them.

Another stall was more shabby chic than antique but I picked up this wire decoration to go inside our new gazebo, like a faux window.

I spotted this empty 1940s flatware canteen which is in pretty good shape and still has its key which I'm sure will come in useful for something.

It was quite a fun trip, although tiring, and I expect we will go again another year as it was less than a two hour drive. I shall enjoy finding homes for our new acquisitions around our house.

Crafting

On the drive to and from Newark, and on Thursday night, I was knitting on the Now in a Minute Shawl, the one I had 'finished' last week.  After wearing it a few times, I decided it was just too disappointing. I love the colours but the shape (which I measured and it had come out similar to the pattern) just didn't drape well.  Because of the narrowing of the shawl on one side, there wasn't enough length on the outer perimeter to allow the shawl to drape securely around the shoulders. To keep it from falling down from one shoulder, I had to wind it so tightly around my neck that it felt like a garotte.  I got the scissors out  to the tip of it and ripped out half the shawl, back to the start of the fourth wedge, and retrieved the various sock yarns from the attic so I could start re-knitting it. I am repeating the third wedge chart instead of following the instructions which would narrow the shawl, and I am also going to knit each colour until I have the same number of outer edging points rather than changing colours each wedge like I was doing. I will have to taper it eventually but not until I have achieved a sufficient circumference.

I also did some sewing this week on my Lace pillow transport bag.  It's all done apart from adding a zipper to the top.  There's a nice pocket on the front, and I added some Bosal foam to the base of the lining to give the bag some shape at the bottom. I've made it wider and deeper than the original instructions so that I can easily fit in two lace pillows, the pillow stand, pattern books and my tool bag. When I made the first bag a few years ago I found that the handles felt a bit flimsy. Jenny Doan's instructions are to fold the handle fabric over a one-inch strip of wadding, which doesn't add much strength and when my old bag was heavy I could hear stitches popping in the handle. So for this handle I substituted a two-inch strip of curtain-weight fabric folded double instead of wadding, and the handles feel much more substantial.  It was fun to make this bag and I like the colours. I look forward to using it for my next lace day.

Speaking of lace, I finally finished my miniature bobbin lace shelf edging.  I made it as two strips joined in the middle, then cut the ends very short and glued them to the back of the lace since it's for a dollshouse. Then I attached it to the shelves of my kitchen dresser in my Victorian kitchen using tacky wax. I think it adds a nice homemade touch to the kitchen, hopefully Cook appreciates it!

It's supposed to get warmer over the weekend, it's hard to imagine it could get much colder in June!