Time to put the woollies on again

I've been wearing some hand-knitted hats and fingerless gloves in the mornings for my walks to the station as it's been quite chilly.  I gave all my hats, gloves and knitted socks a wash back when the weather was warm so they are all nice and fresh now to put on. It's definitely feeling autumnal.

Somehow I don't seem to have got much done this week, not sure why.  No dollshouse work, no quilting.  Knitting went a bit backwards as I decided the join between the knitted on edging on my Ten-stitch triangle shawl was just too untidy so I pulled it out and started again.  Now I am doing a slip 1, knit 1 from the shawl edge, and ssk. It makes a chain edge on one side which looks better.  I've also done a few inches on an older knitting UFO, the Leaf Yoke sweater.  It's knitted top down so the interesting bit was all at the beginning, now that I'm knitting the body  it is quite tedious, like knitting wallpaper.  I've reached about the bottom of my rib cage so far, so still a fair bit to go then I'll have to do the sleeves.

The only completed item this week is a simple t-shirt sewn from  New Look pattern 6217.  I saw some finished t-shirts online from this pattern and it was being praised for being a simple quick wardrobe basic. So I thought I would have a go, even though my track record with dressmaking is quite poor.  I looked at a few blogs to see what modifications were being made, and I cut out and sewed a throw-away toile using a drop cloth from Poundland (another tip garnered online).  That was too tight, so I cut out a larger size and tried again.  That still didn't fit quite right so I ended up taking a pleat in the back and slashing the front to let in more room (I carry my weight at the front).  That seemed to do the trick so I cut it out in a silky drapey jersey and overlocked the seams, stitching the hems with a twin needle and walking foot on the normal machine.  The result fits quite nicely, it's soft and drapey and looks smart (it looks better on me than it does on the dummy).  I wore it to work yesterday and felt good in it.  So  I might make a few more now that I have a pattern that fits me.

I've started a new little bobbin lace item which is a three inch square of simple Torchon lace, designed to cover a pincushion.  It should be a relatively quick project, although bobbin lace is never particularly quick really. It's a project that was handed out at my lace group so several people have made it/are making it.

I'm still plugging away at Japanese language study albeit with intermittent depressive periods where I question why I am wasting my time.  The vocabulary I am able to recognise has grown a lot.  The vocabulary I am able to write is less but still impressive considering I started from scratch and I'm writing in Japanese scripts.  Unfortunately my ability to speak remains at almost zero.  I had this same problem when I was learning French in school many decades ago.  My brain seems to consider that foreign languages are something that may need to be understood but are never going to actually be spoken by me.  I even went on a French immersion course for six weeks after uni and still managed almost zero speaking. DH says I shouldn't feel like a failure because I'm only learning Japanese to make our future holiday experience better and he points out that I have learned a lot already.  It's just really hard to find an hour every day where I can concentrate and don't have to stop to make dinner or because I'm too tired. わたしは　にほんごを　べんきょしていません、ブログをかいていますから。