Happy international lace day

Although a quick Google shows that most calendar sites think that International Lace Day is in September, I went to a local event celebrating it today.  It would have been quite a nice day except that it was way too hot, over 30 degrees, and even in the 'shade' of a marquee it was uncomfortably warm and letting in the UV rays enough to burn my skin.  I had to give up and come home early.  I suppose it's better than being rained out.  I got an inch or so done on my Bucks Point edging but was so grateful to get home to our relatively cool house.  It was nice to see some of my lace friends there.

I've progressed well on the second balcony  room for the Japanese dollshouse kit, and it's almost finished.  I'm just finishing the railing and need to glue some trim on the top of the ceiling piece.

I've looked at the next five or so kits and they are to construct the next staircase, which I don't want to do until I have the third floor in place so I can finesse the fit; and to add roof overhangs to the two balcony rooms, which I don't want to do until I get them hinged in place in case I have to finesse (bodge) the fit of those.  So I think I will likely jump ahead to hinging the balcony rooms onto the house, then do the roof overhangs, then move straight on to building the third floor. Once that's in place I will return and build the staircase.

I finished the first Peerie Floores fingerless mitt a while ago and have been knitting on the second one, which is almost finished.  This is the first one which hasn't been wet blocked yet to let the yarn bloom, so the stitches still look fairly uneven.  It will look much better after it's been washed.

It took a fair bit of tinkering to work out my replacement thumb design and to decide on the ribbing pattern and if I wanted any decreases.  The second mitt is going a lot faster because I wrote down what I did.  Being hopeless at numbers, my usual design approach is to knit a bit, see if I like it/how it fits, and if it's not right then rip back and try something else.

I started a new quilting project this week which is based on a pretty vintage-style tea cosy that was in a back issue of Handmade magazine, using some of my 30s repros.  The next step will be to add some embroidery and I'm thinking I might sew on some of the tatting bits I bought at the last lace show.

It was fun to pull fabrics for this, I started out with more of a green combination like their picture but found myself gravitating towards blue and pink. I think picking fabrics is the most enjoyable part of a project, apart from finishing - it's the fun part for me anyway.

Our little cherry tree produced its annual handful of cherries early this year, presumably due to the hot weather, so today I baked an apple pie and added the cherries in for some colour and extra taste.  Our strawberries were cropping a small bowlful every couple of days for a few weeks but are finished now.  Last year they flowered again and we had sporadic handfuls through the summer.  The pear and apple trees are both heavy with fruit.  I learned my lesson from last year's extreme apple tree sagging (to the ground on one side) and staked our little tree  in the winter to hold it more upright. The branches are bowing under the weight of the fruit but the trunk is staying more upright.  The new flower bed that we dug last year is looking good although I may rearrange some of the plants in the autumn as one of the plants (a yarrow) that I moved in must really like finally getting some sunshine because it's grown about 15 inches taller than it ever did before.  So it looks a bit odd at one side of the bed, it would look better moved into the middle.  It's been way too hot to use the patio and watering the garden is turning into a real chore. 

I made a list of all my outstanding knitting project kits, after the wave of yarn shopping over the past six months or so, and it is rather a long list.  I need to get knitting, and possibly stop buying yarn for a while (gasp).  I bought a cute badge at a show once which says something like "No I don't have enough yarn, you're the one with the problem!"  But I may possibly have a small problem... :)