Don't treat a gift as a burden

I occasionally listen to a podcast called 'Happier in Hollywood' which is hosted by two established screenwriter/producer women in Los Angeles. It's an interesting blend of tidbits about what life is like in the Hollywood stratosphere, what it's like to earn your living as a writer, how TV shows get made, and a dollop of LA new ageisms.  They are fond of creating and/or quoting aphorisms, and one of them is 'Don't treat a gift as a burden'.  So I am trying not to treat my ongoing bathroom remodel as a burden, because I am grateful to have our lovely house, to have finally found a plumber to do the work, and to have the money to pay for the project.

However.  Not a whole lot of crafting this week because of the chaos. I've also had to stop using my quilting frame pending the as-yet-unscheduled arrival of the electrician - since we will need to partially disassemble the frame to reduce weight so that we can move it out of the way of the fuse box.  I did complete the pantograph across the complete middle of the William Morris grid quilt, so I just need to put it back on the frame to do the borders once the electrician has been.  I have continued to work on my cross stitch UFO in the evenings, in commuter knitting I am close to finishing the Debbie Bliss cotton denim cowl and I've started to quilt on the sit-down machine on a Hawaiian wallhanging that I put together after our trip to Hawaii back in 2009.

I did complete one new project which was to make a storage box for the growing collection of kits and patterns awaiting their turn in the queue.  This is an upsized version of a free pattern on Craftsy called Sturdy Fabric Basket (I don't think I can link directly).  I added a handle of thread spool beads from my stash.  After taking this photo, I pressed a better crease into the corners so it looks more rectangular.  I used Peltex heavy fusible interfacing for stiffener but you can also use fusible fleece.

I've been using some of my downtime to tidy up some of the glory holes in my sewing room, and it seemed like a good opportunity to make a pretty storage basket.

While I was tidying I found both a hexagonal frame I had picked up at a boot sale quite cheaply (because it contained a hideous faded pressed flower arrangement) and the completed cross stitch houses I bought at a de-stash sale last year from someone's deceased mother's collection.  Fortuitously one of the house pictures fit beautifully into the frame so I now have a pretty picture for my bedroom.

Otherwise I've been doing a lot of gardening this week.  DH and DS finished digging out the new bed last weekend, so on my day off I spent three hours digging up several plants from around the garden and moving them into the new bed.  Hopefully with the current warm and damp weather they will become sufficiently established to survive the winter.  A lot of work but it doesn't look like much yet.  I've left a big gap over on the right for a rose bush that I have on order.

Yesterday I spent another couple of hours ruthlessly digging up plants that haven't worked out, including the difficult job of untangling a thorny rambling rose from the fence support which was awful because it kept snagging on everything around it including my clothing. It was in the garden when we bought the house so I moved it and gave it a chance but it vastly outgrew its allotted area and had only a meagre white flower.  That all got chopped up and went to the dump. Today we are going to go plant shopping to start planting up the borders around the new patio.  I've also ordered a little water feature.  I find it very difficult to design borders, I wish there were recipes for flower beds like they have in America so you could just pick a picture you like and it would tell you the plants to buy.

On a more prosaic note, I've been meaning to blog my new spectacles.  I've been increasingly suffering from middleaged vision issues, and lately my bifocals (chosen to allow me to knit and watch TV at the same time) have not been letting me focus on things within about 18 inches like threading needles or working at my sewing machine.  I was at Specsavers for something else and discovered that I could buy a pair of close up prescription reading glasses for £25 all in - frames and lenses!  They are brilliant for using the sewing machine, working bobbin lace, or if I am just doing cross stitch without watching TV.  On a tip from a fellow dollshouse club member, I've also invested in a few pairs of £1 reading glasses that are 3.5 magnification, from the pound shop, which are great for one-off situations like reading the fine print on a medicine or to read the stamped-on size on a sewing machine needle. Her optician had actually recommended them to her for similar reasons, for ad hoc situations where your normal glasses don't cope.

I hope you've had a good week and can see to do your craft work!