Some finishes this past week:
Here's a picture of the finished machine knit Christmas Stocking that I blogged about last week, which looks less disproportionate now that it is blocked but I still feel like it should be fatter and shorter.
And this is a machine knit Tuck Stitch Baby Blanket that I tackled after finishing the stocking. It's not lying entirely flat because the edges want to curl even though I've wet blocked the blanket and lightly steamed it. There is a fine line between edges lying flat and actually 'killing' the acrylic with steam so it goes all floppy and I didn't want to risk it. This pattern is billed as a 'quick easy charity knit' but was actually a bit of a marathon, almost 600 rows on 198 needles using the patterning mechanism which gives the machine carriage a lot of resistance. So it was more like a full upper body workout. Conscious of having torn a muscle in my chest while machine knitting many years ago, I did the knitting in two bouts with a good rest in between, and I did some of it standing up so I could use my legs to help with pushing the carriage. It went fairly well apart from the cone of acrylic having two knots in it which I didn't notice in time before they knitted into the fabric.
I finished stitching the needlepoint scissor keep and turned it into a fridge magnet as planned. I found the final seam on the roof quite fiddly and I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I've decided to live with it. This will probably join the companion thatched cottage I stitched several years ago which lives with my collection of house-shaped fridge magnets.
On Saturday I stayed home for a Lace Day - I was meant to go out to a Lace Day but the weather wasn't great and I felt tired and anti-social. So I stayed home and had a lace day on my own in the study watching YouTube videos while I laced and drank lots of tea. I did another chunk on my Floral Bucks edging and then when that got too depressing because I don't really know what I'm doing, I switched over to the Bucks Point motif that I started a few months ago and not only finished it off and joined it up, but even sewed it onto the costume jewellery brooch that I bought to go with it. It doesn't look too bad. I might wear it to my next Lace outing even though it's a bit on the big side.
I cut out and stitched another 6.5 inch block for the 30s Sampler. My Janome does seem to be behaving itself better although still not what it once was.
Last weekend I started applying the black card covering to the roof of my Japanese dollshouse, after first sculpting down all the bumps of my bodged roof supports using a Dremel rotary tool. The card went on much more easily than I expected. I knew my roof supports weren't very even thanks to the problems I had with assembly, but the card was stiff enough that I could use it as an indicator for which supports needed propping up with additional bits of wood glued on. I also added a few extra supports in the middle of the long front and back eaves for extra strength, and reinforced the valleys from underneath or above with extra strips of card.
Then I opened up several chapters' worth of shingles. Disappointingly, I have the same problems as the other two bloggers. At least two-thirds of the shingle strips (which are made out of some kind of resin) are warped, some of them quite badly. As there is no practical way to clamp the shingles to the roof card once you are away from the eave area, this is a big problem.
I tried weighing them down under heavy books/weights for a day or two which helped somewhat but did not cure the problem. Also, some strips are not the same size as the others, just slightly longer with the ridges slightly farther apart. I suppose it is going to add to the hand-laid tile look but it is also just storing up problems for the future by creating uneven edges. Trying to clamp the roof is quite frustrating. The first few rows can be clamped directly to the eaves. The next few rows after that can be clamped by virtue of clamping a stick to the eaves that extends onto those rows. But further up the roof there is no way to directly clamp. I’ve experimented with suspending a heavy weight (an iron mallet hung by a wire) to press the tiles down, which is partially successful but not entirely due to the shingle strips being tapered rather than all one thickness. The whole thing is annoying because if the shingle strips were identical and all flat, then shingling the roof would be a fairly quick job.
I’ve had to park the project for the next few days because I’ve run out of glue. I prefer to use UHU glue, which is a universal adhesive that dries clear. It used to work better back in the day when it had nasty solvents in it, but it is still fairly effective for applications where you want a strong grab on something that can’t easily be clamped. At the same time, it stays repositionable for a while and is not so strong that you can’t pry something off if you change your mind. And the new formulation is fairly fume free. Unfortunately it is getting harder and harder to find UHU glue. Few High Street stores stock it now and neither does Hobbycraft. Our stationers shop used to have a few tubes but now that shop closed down. I tried several places over the weekend including two DIY shops without success and in the end I’ve had to order it off Amazon for delivery later in the week. As a substitute I tried an equivalent product made by Gorilla Glue but didn’t like it at all. It smells strongly of solvents, dispenses with difficulty as almost a gel so also doesn’t spread well, and the promised strong contact grab in two minutes does not materialise even after waiting five minutes. It’s also messier. I’m already resigned to having to paint the roof once installed because the tiles are not all the same shade of black, so it’s not the end of the world to get some glue marks on them first.
This week I’ve finally made a start on the crocheted afghan kit I bought at Black Sheep Wool last summer. I’m not much of a crocheter and normal metal hooks hurt my hands, but now I have a set of the nice ergonomic hooks with the rubbery handles. The yarn is all Stylecraft acrylic, and the afghan is basically a giant granny square with each round in a different colour. To get started I watched several Youtube videos on how to crochet granny squares, with many variances between them and also with my instructions, on how to go on, how to weave in ends etc. I am going forward with a starting chain of five, clusters of trebles separated by one stitch along each row, two stitches between the clusters on a corner, and finishing with two trebles then slip stitching into the third loop of the starting chain. I’m worried that with my amateur tension, my square is going to go wonky. So far it is lying flat but the edges are starting to look a bit frilly. It is fun changing colours each round, but my elbow is hurting a little from the unfamiliar repetitive movement.
The replacement smaller kissclasp purse frame arrived and I sewed on the fabric body that I made over the Easter weekend out of the Japanese quilting book and using some of the fabric I bought in Japan. The fit is much better in this smaller 12.5cm frame apart from the sides of the body were too deep for the frame, so I had to slipstitch those closed to prevent gaps. I guess the moral of this story is don’t make your purse body before you have the frame – although in my case I thought I did have the right frame. I’m tempted to make another purse to fit the larger frame I started out with, as there are also Youtube videos on how to draft your own pattern to fit a frame.
The garden is just bursting into life at the moment, with visible changes from day to day. We’ve finally had some rain which has really made a difference. I’m particularly pleased that several of the bearded irises I had to move to the back garden two years ago, after some vandal tore off all the flowers in our front garden, have thrown up flower spikes this year for the first time since the move. The one year old climbing rose on our new pergola has obligingly produced multiple side shoots from the stems I have been training so we will hopefully get a good show this year. We had some lovely blossom on our little edible cherry tree and apple tree but the big storm last week got rid of most of that. We've already got cornflowers blooming, and borage, and some other perennials I can't remember the name of. The tulips and daffs are pretty much over now so I emptied out the pots I planted back in the autumn, but rescued some daffs to replant in the border. Is your garden looking nice?
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