apple time

I've just finished eating an apple fresh picked from our tree in the garden.  It's a funny little dwarf tree that wants to sag to the ground, but the apples are lovely: big and juicy, crisp and just the right balance between tart and sweet.  It was here when we bought the house but we did move it from one side of the garden to the other.  I thought it was young and would grow taller but it only seems to want to spread horizontally so now I'm thinking it's not a tall variety after all. I've also made a few pies from it and there will be more to come.

I sewed another New Look t-shirt last weekend using the leftover whale jersey fabric from the dress I made, and wore that to work once, but it's already getting a bit on the cool side for short sleeved t-shirts.  My sewing room was then tied up for a while because I was using my cutting mat to cut out cardboard panels to make homemade shoe organisers from this prosaic YouTube video. When I re-organised my walk-in closet alcove, I put in a 40cm wide Ikea shelf unit to hold shoes, but they were all piled on top of each other in each shelf opening.  Now I have rough but serviceable cardboard pigeonholes so each pair has its home.

After tidying up all the leftover cardboard scraps and debris, then I cut out the pieces for block 3 of my 30s Sampler Quilt and sewed it together.  I've pulled fabrics for block 4 but haven't cut it out yet.

On my day off I did some work on my Japanese dollshouse, finishing off the join between the new floor and the base units and retrieving all the various sub-kits that I had skipped over while pressing on with the structural components.  I'm going to sweep all those up now so I've started with the stairs from chapters 56 and 57. I've done a preliminary assembly and a dry fit inside the house. Surprisingly the stairs fit fairly well, I just needed to shorten the upper stairs by about 3/16th of an inch so that they will finish level with the upper floor.  Next job is to paint and varnish all the components.  Then I can glue in the main stairs and landing, and assemble the railings. 

I've continued to work on the Torchon Lace Square which I started on the holiday.  It's intended to decorate a pincushion so I'm hoping to get it finished in time to use on my next lace course.  It's been a few years since I did any Torchon lace so I don't really remember how and I'm sort of making it up as I go along (and making mistakes) but once it's on the pincushion hopefully noone will notice :)

TV knitting is still the lace edging on the 10 Stitch Triangle Shawl plus I did a bit more on the wallpaper sweater.  Commuter knitting is still the Itineris Shawl using the Batik Swirl yarn. I went down to London to a small concert Friday night and I knit my way through the warm-up act, waiting for the main performance. It was very pleasant to listen to nice music while knitting away. It was a  late night though, I didn't get to bed until about 12:40pm which is really late for me, so I was quite tired yesterday.  I spent a lot of the day quietly watching YouTube videos while I wound 66 pairs of bobbins for the lace course.  To save my wrist, I took apart my bobbin winder and attached the bobbin holder to an electric power drill, essentially electrifying the winding process which made it a lot easier and quicker.

Hope you've had a crafty week!