The purloined letter

The big exciting news that I thought I would be sharing with you in this post was going to be a picture of my machine quilting frame assembled for the first time in four years.  However, due to stupidity that has not happened yet.

I did try.  I unearthed my binder of instructions and started reading through it on a couple of my journeys to work. Then Tuesday night I asked the DH and DS to carry up the heavier boxes of components and the long box containing the poles.  I scrabbled around my sewing room trying to remember all the hidey holes where I had stashed the various bits. There was a bad ten minutes where I just couldn't find all the long table supports until I remembered a cranny behind my fabric shelves tucked in beside a bookcase. Wednesday night DH nobly volunteered to help me put it together.  By then I had realised the plastic tracks that carried the carriage were missing, but I thought I had everything else.  Following the instructions, we put together the end leg assemblies and then we were ready for the frame ends.  Only, they weren't there.  They weren't in any of the boxes or bags.  A long depressing search  ensued.  I went through the sewing room multiple times, we excavated the junk room in a hot and sweaty search involving much banging of my head on the low slanted ceiling - which did produce the plastic tracks stowed away in our plasma TV screen box - but no sign of the frame ends anywhere. I  trawled through every other room where they might be, but no sign of them.  As these are the main supports for holding up the poles that support the quilt, they are absolutely essential.

The only thing I could think was that somehow, somewhere, during one of our multiple moves three and a half years ago in and out of self storage, the removal company's storage, and the trip up to our new town, they went missing.  I even contacted customer service at the Grace Company in America to ask if they by any chance have two frame ends for a Next Generation quilting frame tucked away on a back shelf, and they said they would look.

Here comes the stupidity part.  I had snapped a photo early in the process of all the components on the floor of the dining room, for the blog.  It was only when I was loading the picture into this post, in preparation for a good moan about missing parts, that I spotted in the picture the metal bits to the left of the box of poles.  Yes, those are the missing frame ends. Mystified, I went back to the dining room and moved the box of poles, and there were the frame ends underneath it!  So the missing parts had been in the dining room during all the hours of searching.  We had looked in the box of poles a couple of times, but never thought of looking underneath it. Duh. Now I have to email Grace again and call them off. (smacks head several times).  At least we can finish putting the frame together.

The rest of the week I have been doing a lot of bobbin lace. I had signed up for one day of a local Bucks Point lace course tutored by Jackie Poulter, who turned out to be an energetic and excellent teacher.  I wanted to have a decent amount of my edging done to show her when I got to class, so I spent some hours this week pushing on with it. The class itself was very good and I learned a lot, but I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it.  I'm not used to making lace so intensively for a whole day, plus I felt pressured to get to a certain point with the pattern so that Jackie could show me how to turn the corner.  I'm also finding doing this pattern is making my eyes very tired and I'm not sure if it's because my prescription has changed or if the focal length between my eyes and this large 24" pillow is a challenge to my bi-focals. Anyway, I got on well and enjoyed seeing what everyone else was doing.  This is what it looks like so far. It's quite a pretty pattern.  I hope it isn't too many years before I finish it and have a completed mat!  But this segment, which is perhaps three inches long, has taken perhaps 18-20 hours so far.

Even the sewing this week has been about lace.  I made a large round cover cloth for the 24" pillow I am using, the cover that I am holding open in the picture above to reveal the lace.  The cover cloth protects the pillow surface from the movement of the bobbins and from getting dirty.  I also sewed a large bag to hold the 24" pillow because it was too big to fit into the bag I made in the spring to hold my smaller cookie pillows.

After making the 1930s decorative paper last week for the hairdressing salon, I was having a look at it on Thursday.  It's in pretty rough shape.  Eileen was only partway through it and then it suffered neglect while she was ill then got tossed about on its journey to my house.  I've decided to glue the front on and cover the top of the salon with plexiglass to let the light in. So after taking these pictures, I glued and clamped the front onto the three sided room box.

And that's about it this week. I'm still crocheting around knitted GAA squares, and have done about five repeats on the Debbie Bliss cotton denim cowl during commuter knitting.