Happy St Catherine's Day!

Today, the 25th of November, is St Catherine's Day, the patron saint of lacemaking. The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford marked this with an event including historical talks about lacemaking around a display case full of antique lacemaking equipment, and a display and demonstration by the Isis Lacemakers.  There were also slices of Cattern Cake available, which was traditionally baked by lacemakers on this day.  It had an interesting taste, sort of like honey cake flavoured with caraway seeds. I found a recipe here on another blogger's page if you want to try it out.

Historical talk around the antique lacemaking equipment

After visiting the event, we had a pleasant day out in Oxford, which included several secondhand bookstores, dropping into the wonderful Oxford Yarn Store on North Parade, having lunch from the Vietnamese stall at the North Parade Saturday market, enjoying a hot drink and treats at the new Bodleian cafe, and some Christmas shopping at Marks and Spencers.  It's such a beautiful city.

I've continued to work on the ensuite decoration this week.  The green paint is all done and I've cut and screwed on the dado rail, and I'll do the final coat of paint tomorrow.  I've put back up all the hardware now (towel rail etc.) and purchased a bathroom cabinet which DH has put together for me. The floor is being installed next Thursday so I'll wait until that's down before doing the final coat on the white portion, in case the flooring guy unavoidably makes marks on the wall while he is wrestling with vinyl flooring in a confined space. Even though it's not finished, it looks so much better than it used to.

On the quilt frame, I finished pin-basting the 25 block applique quilt and now I'm getting ready to load on the Star Sampler quilt.  I'm a bit intimidated since the plan was to up-skill on the simpler quilts before tackling this more complicated quilt, but what's actually happened is I didn't use the frame for weeks because of holidays, the electrician, illness and replacing the tracks.  So not too sure about the skill level however we'll see how it goes.

On the knitting front, I have finished the first Raindrop Mitt.  I knit it a bit longer than the pattern as I don't like having cold fingers.  I've started the next one now.

In commuter knitting, I'm on the second finger of the second sock yarn glove and I was knitting a bit on that on the way to Oxford today before the roundabouts starting making me feel car-sick.

Now that the bathroom renovations aren't taking up quite as much time, I've actually done some sewing this week.  I sewed up an oilcloth apron for DS as a Christmas present.  And I made six fabric storage boxes from this free tutorial: one for me and five as Christmas gifts for my lace ladies.  These are quite straightforward to make but I'm pleased with how they turned out and they are a useful size, about four inches square.  I made mine out of 10-inch Moda Layer cake pieces left over from a previous project (I think probably the Star Sampler above) and wadding scraps, so it was a 'free' project. They are made completely by machine including sewing on the buttons. I hope the recipients like them.

I've been pulling out the heavy duty woolies this week as we've had a cold snap, down to about 1 or 2 degrees Celsius in the mornings. So enjoyable to wear handknit hats, gloves, jumpers and indoors some of my felted slippers in the colder weather!