Spring: don't blink or you'll miss it

We seem to have jumped right from winter to summer, with temperatures reaching the mid twenties over the weekend.  The garden has basically exploded into bloom, with plants visibly changing in the course of one day.  The poor magnolia tree looked fabulous for about three days and now is rapidly shedding all its petals which is a shame.  But it has been very nice to sit out in the garden and listen to the soothing sounds of the fountain we installed last year, now unwrapped from its winter cocoon of hessian and fitted cover.  I've finished spreading mulch now and am already wondering if I should start watering regularly as our sandy soil is looking dry.

Having discovered audio books on Youtube after someone mentioned them on Facebook, I managed to get through quilting all the rest of the diagonal lines in one direction on my Indigo Bears Paw quilt in about an hour and a half this week while listening to the first few chapters of Neil Gaiman's North Mythology  on headphones.  Listening to the stories took my mind off the mind numbing boredom of the quilting process.  I've now started drawing on the lines for the other direction of the crosshatching and plan to listen to more stories when I do that stitching.

I've done some work on converting my bench grinder into a disk sander.  I took off the grinding disks and cut some chipboard replacement disks which aren't completely round but aren't too bad and the grinder isn't visibly wobbling so I think they're alright.  I've bolted the grinder to a baseboard and sent off for some hook and loop sanding disks and some hook and loop tape.  So I just need to make the table now for offering up work to the sander and I'll be in business

I have not been very enthusiastic about working on the Japanese dollshouse this week because I have not enjoyed working on the staircase.    It was just too fiddly, so many pieces and nothing fit properly so there was a lot of adjusting and testing, and at times it felt like trying to build a 3-D jigsaw while holding the pieces in mid-air.  The ground floor section of the staircase is now done and in place at last and it looks alright but the railings are fairly fragile so I'll have to be careful not to knock them. I made a few more pieces of furniture in between working on the staircase and now I am making six more tatami mats for the second bedroom.

I'm on the decrease section of the Scalloway fair isle tam now, or I should say, I'm on my fourth attempt at the decrease section.  The directions for the decrease don't match what the chart is showing at all and I tried twice before giving up and turning to Ravelry for help.  There I discovered other knitters commenting on how rubbish the decrease directions are, and explaining how they did them.  My third attempt didn't work because I tried to get away without having to unravel all the way back to the start of the decrease section.  So far (touch wood) the fourth attempt seems to be ok so I should be finished soon.  There will be a fair number of ends to darn in.

Yesterday I went to the Denton Lace Day where I met up with several other lacemakers that I knew.  It was a smaller event, quite quiet, but I enjoyed my day with good company and I managed to get over two inches done on my Bucks Point Lace Edging (to which news DH replied: "Is that good?") which worked out to a little less than half an inch per hour even though I was working industriously.  I think it is going to be a while before I have enough yardage for a mat.  I also got some secondhand lace prickings  in return for a donation, being given away by an older lacemaker who was de-stashing.  And there was cake.  For the last hour I pulled out the 10-stitch triangle shawl and did some more knitting on that.  It's about the size of a shawlette now but I want it big enough to drape well over my shoulders.

I'm starting to think about our 2019 holiday now, because we will probably go abroad again, and I'm thinking we might go back to Japan.  I did look into several other destinations on my bucket list, and ordered various brochures, but Japan just ticks so many boxes.  The language difficulty is an issue, but I think that's outweighed by how many fabulous things there are to see, how clean and safe it was, how easy to get around, and the flight is do-able.  I did look into New Zealand seriously, but I can't be doing a 25-hour flight and we can't take enough time off work to break the journey in both directions, so I think NZ might have to wait until we are both retired.  I will definitely go back to Fabric Town in Tokyo for more exploration and fabric shopping, and of course Tokyu Hands (at least one branch if not more). Then I think we will try to go somewhere new that isn't on the well-trodden tourist trail, perhaps Shikoku.