Some finishes

I finished a few things this week which felt good.

I finished the Japanese zipped pouch and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Very typically Japanese in the fabrics and design, and a nice clean finish inside and out.

I also finished knittin the Fishtail Lace Cowl, which was a pattern from Simply Knitting magazine that took 1.5 balls of a Debbie Bliss aran yarn.  I've wet blocked it and it's still drying, but I look forward to wearing it. We have an older home with quite a few cold spots and drafts so I do like to have a neckwarmer of some description on even when I'm indoors.

I finished the Japanese Scroll wallhanging  that I made with the panel and fabrics I bought in Tokyo.  I didn't put any wadding inside so it hangs nice and flat like a scroll. I stitched 1/4" away from all seams and in the ditch around the panel, and added a little hanging sleeve. It's displayed on a little side wall in the study, a bit reminiscent of the alcoves displaying hanging scrolls that we saw in Japan.

I finished Block 21 of my long term 25-block applique quilt project.  I felt very inspired by only having four more blocks to do, so I actually put in a morning on my day off to choose the four block patterns, make the templates, and trace out the layout details onto the four background squares. So now I have four block kits which hopefully will speed things up because it's all that prep work that I find tedious. I like doing the hand applique.  So I've started the 22nd block now.

And I'm on my last curlywhirl of the outer ring of my Idrija bobbin lace doiley so the end is in sight as I will soon be back to where I started and can do the final joins.  Then I will just have a little flowery thing (these are technical bobbin lace terms you understand) to do in the centre, which I think is just plaiting and picots but I haven't really looked up how to do it yet.

Having parked my dollshouse shed project, I've moved on to renovating a big dollshouse, the Willowcrest,  that I built about 10 years ago but never completely finished.  It was a long term build so had its own blog here, which I will be updating to record my finishing touches.

It's lovely and cold here right now, going down to a few degrees below freezing at night with dry sunny days. I like this weather which reminds me of the years I lived in Ottawa in Canada. It got a heck of a lot colder there (minus 40 celsius) but was generally very sunny. I've been out digging in the garden lately, loosening the soil and pulling out perennial weeds before the bulbs (hopefully) come up.  There is already one little clump of snowdrops blooming in the sunniest spot, and lots of green tips starting to poke up through the frosty soil. Several hellebores (Christmas roses) are blooming as well under our hazel tree, while the sun-starved winter flowering jasmine is putting on a good but stunted show next to it. Our little ornamental cherry is blooming as well. It did that last year and I thought it was just confused because we had such a warm winter, but now I am thinking it is actually a winter-flowering variety. And the Viburnum Tinis in front is also blooming, it seems to like its spot and has gotten a lot bigger in just a few years. But generally the garden looks pretty bleak and bare. I planted a bunch of new tulips and daffodils in the autumn, I hope they will come up in Spring but I never seem to have much luck with bulbs.