Decorating instead of crafting

At long last, three weeks later than the original estimate and almost two months since starting the whole job, the plumber has finished in the ensuite as far as he can go without a new floor being laid. We had a celebratory dinner out on Tuesday night in appreciation at getting the house back.  This was after I had done 90 minutes of hoovering up dust in the hallway from every horizontal surface including the cornice, and retrieving all the furniture and pictures from where they had been squirreled away.  Wednesday night I repeated the process for the bedroom. It's so nice having all our things back and reclaiming the space. Then it was the turn of the ensuite and the decorating could commence. 

The ensuite was basically a white box beforehand, and after the plumber left it was a scarred, dented and filled-in grubby white box.  So it's been a week of priming and painting woodwork in which DS helped out as well, painting several coats of white over the new lining paper until it matched the original walls, and deciding on a decorating scheme.  I've gone with a two tone effect, I've cut dado rail to fix along the wall and I'm painting the lower panel white for a faux wainscoting effect, and the upper part of the wall in a seafoam green.  Painting is a pain because there are so many items to be cut around, and because the ceilings are so high yet there isn't room to manoeuvre a ladder properly.  It's also surprisingly difficult to paint a smooth line of seafoam green along the top of an old wall which wobbles as it meets the ceiling, especially when you can't reach properly.  However it's all going fine and I've got the first coat of green on in this picture. I'll do the second coat today.  The shower is cool to use, like getting into a teleportation pod in the corner, so much nicer than the old leaky box.

I've chosen a new floor of tile effect vinyl and they're coming to do the estimate this week, but they warned that fitting might be three or four weeks as they are very booked up in the run up to Christmas.  Who knew that November/December was a prime time for a new floor?  Perhaps people feel the need to spruce up before the relations arrive.

So not a lot of crafting this week.  On my day off when I was having a break from decorating, I did load another quilt on to the frame.  This is my 25 block applique quilt which I'm just basting on the frame, and will quilt either at the sit down machine or possibly by hand.

I ordered a cheap £20 flatpack metal rack off Amazon, which arrived yesterday and DH put it together.  This is so that I have somewhere to store my bobbin lace pillows in progress, which need to lie flat so the bobbins don't get all muddled and be out of the way so the pillows don't get damaged.  DH said it was a bit of a pain to put together but the end result is surprisingly sturdy. It's plenty wide enough for my 24" pillows and about a foot deep so I've placed it a little away from the wall to get more depth.

Other than that I've been knitting:  still knitting the twisted rope border on my GAA Afghan, still knitting my second fingerless glove in commuter knitting, and I've started the Raindrop mitt from the pattern and skein I bought at Nottingham. And I've done a bit more cross stitch on my long term UFO.

I have to share a photo of my new beauty, which was an impulse buy yesterday at the antiques mall in Market Harborough.  We'd actually gone into Harborough to visit the secondhand bookstore but spotted the antiques mall on the outskirts and stopped in to see what they had.

This was on display and I instantly fell in love, it's so different than the normal vintage machine, with its leonine curves and fiddlehead base.  The wooden stand has a marquetry inlaid ruler and a little drawer.  The dealer said that it's in working order but I haven't tested it yet.  I loved all the gilt decoration even though it's completely worn off on the arm where one would naturally carry the machine.  With a torch you can see where the word 'Robina' used to be on the arm.  I did some research on the internet and this machine was made in Germany by the Hengstenberg company, probably in the 1880s.  It does a lock stitch and should have a long thin bobbin inside a shuttle case, which can be wound with the mechanism at the lower right. I haven't had time to investigate yet, I can see I have the shuttle so hopefully there is a bobbin inside.  Apparently this machine is similar to the Singer 12/12k model so I've found that manual online and printed it off. It's a beautifully made piece of engineering and I feel so connected to the women who have owned it in the past.  I'm looking forward to playing more with it and cleaning up its case once the decorating is done. I'm not really planning to use it, it will be a display item, but it would be great if it worked as well.


We have a new garden ornament as well, which oddly was found on an antique dealer's stall even though it's not an antique.  It's a windmill in the shape of a large sunflower, constructed in coppery/rusty metal that glints in the sun.  We have a windy garden, so this will be in almost constant motion.  Both the inner and outer petal rings rotate, and the head pivots as the wind hits the fan tail, so it is constantly in motion.  I've positioned it where we can see it from the kitchen, it's a real focal point in this winter season when not much else is growing.  I'm not sure what the cat thinks of it, she spent a long time sitting on the fence staring at it.