Christmas prep

I'm being more organised about Christmas this year than usual.  I've already posted a couple of gifts and today we went and did a pre-emptive shop for the kinds of things that turn scarce in a few more weeks when the supermarket shelves begin to look like they've been ravaged by wolves.  DS and I did a little menu planning for when the inlaws are going to be here and now we've stocked up on treats, crackers, chestnuts, a couple of roasts and some wine.  The roasts have gone in the freezer obviously.  We also popped over to the DIY store to pick up some gutter hangers for christmas lights.  We won't be able to string the lights in the trees this year like usual, due to our ongoing problem with teen vandals, but we think we can string them up higher on our porch guttering out of reach.

I've also started a new bobbin lace project which is a bauble wrap in Torchon Lace.  This is a pattern from a Lace Guild publication I bought last winter called 'Take a Box of Baubles' which has several patterns in various laces for decorating Christmas baubles.  Hopefully it will be a relatively quick project and I'll get it done in time for decorating the Christmas tree this year.  I have a box of red baubles I got in the sales last year so I'm doing the lace in white with gold sparkly gimp to contrast with the red. I got the filling pattern wrong in the first two side triangles but now I know what to do for the rest of the wrap.  The first two triangles will be a design feature.  :)  I'm kind of proud of myself that I sort of remember how to do Torchon spiders (the oval cluster in gold) but I had to look up how to do Torchon ground stitch.

 This is the picture from the book:

I sewed another block for my 30s sampler quilt.  This is a smaller block at 9 inches square, compared with the previous blocks which have been 12 inches square.

You can start to get an impression of what the quilt will look like now that I've done several blocks but there are many more to go.  It will be quite a busy quilt, not everyone's cup of tea but I like scrappy quilts.

I'm still marking diagonal lines on the applique quilt and still struggling to achieve lines that look parallel and evenly spaced.  There are a couple of places where cumulative error is really showing, so I may have to go back and try to do better there.  I'm on the last row of the 25 blocks.

For the Japanese dollshouse, this week I worked more on the balcony/porch room.  I've decorated this one with Japanese prints on the two side walls, taken from a colouring book that was quite cheap from a discount shop.  I'm currently making the sliding windows and doors to finish off the porch.  Then it will be construction of the balcony and railings, always a bit tricky.  This will be my third set then there will be one more set left to make when I build the lefthand porch.  I've opened up to kit 81 now so the big box they came in is much emptier than it used to be, only 39 kits to go.

I also finished the second 50s style TV and made a couple of cushions for the low chairs which match the dressing table mirror cover.  This is Japanese fabric that I bought in Tokyo when we visited a few years ago.

Sadly we had more vandalism this week.  We don't know when they did it, probably at night, but they had a go at pushing over one of our brick gate pillars.  They succeeded in cracking off the top couple of feet of the pillar, but it's still being held in place because of the gate post fixed into it.  It looks terrible but I think we might just leave it that way for the winter.  Partly because it's not great weather for mortar setting plus the mortar would be vulnerable to further vandalism, and partly because perhaps if they feel a sense of achievement they might leave us alone for a while.  It's certainly encouraged us to take further measures for home security, some of which we perhaps should have done earlier like we've now installed a door viewer.  I've also ordered some trellis which we will fix at the side of the house to make it harder to climb over our garden gate wall. After some investigation I have additionally ordered a budget CCTV system which looks like it is going to be time consuming to set up and install although it has good reviews on Amazon for being comparatively straightforward as these things go.  Hopefully it will act as a deterrent. Poor old house, it's been standing since the Victorian era.  Bet the Victorians would have had better ways of dealing with ignorant teenage yobs.  Where's a good workhouse when you need one?