Almost a shower

The bathroom re-model has reached the point where the shower is mostly installed and the plumber wants us to test it tomorrow (when various goops have set hard since he applied them on Friday).  Ominously he said "and then you can let me know if there are any issues, like if you notice any leaks".  I felt like questioning this statement because it seems to me that there should categorically not be any leaks, but he does seem to have a bit of an Eeyore personality.  He's very nice but we've had all sorts of mini dramas with things not going quite right or bits missing from boxes and it is getting a bit tedious because he wants to tell me all about every small setback in great detail.  I'm trying to tell myself that probably lots of other tradespeople have issues that crop up and they just know better than to tell the owner about every little thing that goes wrong and it doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't a good plumber.  He was recommended by our neighbours who have used him several times.

So assuming the shower doesn't leak, and that he fixes the currently leaking toilet installation, he could be finishing up in this room mid-week and moving on to the bedroom ensuite where he will be replacing the existing leaking shower (lots of leaks here). Hopefully the second shower will go quicker because he doesn't have to move the sink or toilet or anything electrical.  I'm hoping he will be done by the end of the month or early November at the latest.  I've stripped out the bedroom of all decoration, pictures, vintage linens, and extraneous furniture in preparation for the dust to come. It's not going to be much fun having a builder traipsing through the bedroom every day but I guess no pain, no gain, eye on the prize yada yada.

On my day off this week I reminded the plumber that he had offered to drill a hole through the brick shed wall for me, which he did first thing.  Then I was able to wire up our new water feature.  It makes a lovely sound as the water trickles back down into the basin.  We were able to sit out on our new patio today because it's actually quite warm this weekend, and enjoyed drinking tea and watching the fountain.

I was knitting on a new pair of half-fingered gloves in sock yarn.  I've moved all my yarn back into my knitting room (although mysteriously it doesn't seem to all fit back into the shelves it came out of) and was struck by how much nice sock yarn I have waiting to be made into things.  So that's my new commuter knitting project, because I finished my Debbie Bliss Cotton Denim Cowl and have been wearing it.  The picture's a bit dark, sorry.

I also finished knitting the rest of the baby girl layette.  I'm just blocking the cardi so I can sew buttons on it.

I also picked up stitches and knit the thumbs longer on a pair of Fetchings that I made three years ago. They are nice and warm but my thumbs would get cold because the knitting didn't come up as high on the thumb.  I didn't have any matching yarn so went with a navy wool.

On the quilting front, I loaded the William Morris grid quilt back onto the frame and stitched out the outer borders.  Annoyingly, I failed to notice that my thread had jumped out of the upper tension disks on my machine, so when I turned over one border to look at it, I discovered lots of loops of upper thread poking out the back.  I debated whether to pull out all of that border strip but in the end I did a repair job by pulling the loose thread loops to remove the slack and burying the slack in the quilt.  I'm keeping this quilt for my guest room so if any loops pop out, I can always fix it again.  I've washed that quilt and it's drying at the moment.  When it's dry I will finish it with binding.  I did find that as I hadn't been able to do much frame quilting for almost a month what with the holiday and the electrician, I've slipped back down the skills ladder which is frustrating.

I had a nice visit to see the dollshouses of my three club members last weekend.  Although most of their houses weren't to my taste, it's still interesting to see what other people have made or collected.  It wasn't quite as nice for DH who had to visit with two elderly husbands while I looked at houses, one of whom who was sitting in a fug of pipe smoke but luckily decided to show DH the garden so he didn't suffocate.  It was very noble of DH and the three older ladies enjoyed themselves.  One of them had been to Miniatura and bought a new kind of hand clipper which uses Stanley knife blades.  I was quite interested because the standard hand clipper is more like a pair of garden shears and once it gets dull it is impossible or difficult to sharpen or replace the blade.  So I sent off for my own cutter which should be useful for cutting small wood strip. I haven't done any dollshousing for weeks now, what with all the gardening, quilting, holiday and building work.

Remember the tiny nativity scene I bought in France?  DH has painted it for me now.  I need to make a little stable to finish off the scene.  He did a great job as you can see.  The actual sculptures aren't very precise when it comes to facial features but they are so tiny that the overall effect is quite good.