You know you're getting older when...

DS reminded me today that his girlfriend has invited him to a friend's wedding this summer. He's never been to a wedding so I was briefly mentioning a few things to think about, like appropriate clothing, when I realised that I can't remember when I last went to a wedding.  I have been to several funerals over the years as the previous generation passes onwards, but I honestly can't think of the last time I went to a wedding.  I think it might be as long ago as the early 90s when a friend got married in France and we went over there for the ceremony. Not surprising I guess, since our age group are now all in their 50s.  Although a 57-year-old friend at work is getting married soon for the third time so I guess it's never too late. Don't know her well enough to get invited to that wedding though!

Continuing the theme of being old and staid, we've had a nice bank holiday weekend (yes, another one) with visits to antique shops yesterday in Olney, and today to some lovely open gardens in the very pretty village of Newnham, near Daventry, open under the National Garden Scheme for charity.  I've just come in from planting out some Lady's Mantle and Sweet Williams that I picked up at the plant sale there for a very reasonable £2 per medium sized pot.

Wonderfully done full-size hobbit door that someone had installed into 

a wall supporting a raised terrace next to their driveway.

Because why not?

beautiful stairs made from recycled decorative bricks

Lovely gothic cottage with a garden full of lupins

I saw many nice things in the antique shops but actually came home with some relatively modern things: a beautiful cross stitch and embroidered sampler dated 2010 with a South Africa framer's mark on the back, and a hanky with a tatted border.  I don't like the way the sampler has been framed, the mat board colour isn't great and they've floated the mat with spacers between it and the linen which creates odd shadows.  I might take the frame apart and see if I can improve it.  Or perhaps get a mat in a different colour cut for it.  We also found a plain but sweet round tea tray with two metal handles and I had a dig around in my box of vintage doilies to find a nice ecru crochet doiley that fits perfectly.

In another shop in Olney called My Little Vintage (full of treasures) I saw a wonderful collaged box being used to display a needlefelted robin.  The box itself was not for sale but was full of wonderful vintage cotton reels, buttons and needle packets.  I would love to make something like it for myself. I have sometimes seen vintage reels for sale at antique shops, now that I want to buy some I will probably never see any again...

I've decided against randomly buying a sewing machine sight unseen, so will wait until we can visit a showroom with a lot of machines to try.  I've got the Janome back again so there's no real rush now that I've decided not to go for the 8200QCP sale which ends 3 June.

I finished another needleturn applique block, a Dahlia, for the 30s Sampler Quilt. 

I'm a bit excited because now I only have three large (12 inch) applique blocks to complete and all the blocks for the top will be done.  I've started the first one which is a classic wreath. I like doing needleturn applique but it is quite slow, and getting everything ready for stitching is a bit of a faff.

I finished the Roses teacosy that I was working on last week.  I did seven red roses and one pink rose (not visible in this picture).  I'm happy with how it's turned out and it has already had a trip out to the garden to keep my teapot warm while I was doing some knitting.

I've done a bit more on the red and white Sanqhuar glove and am just about to take the thumb gusset stitches off onto some waste yarn.  I've also done a bit more on the Floral Bucks edging sample.

You will have noticed I haven't been mentioning the roof of doom from the Japanese dollshouse much lately.  That's because putting the shingles on is the most boring and tedious job which at the same time is soul destroying because the shingle strips themselves are so variable and the shingle ridges aren't lining up.  It's a very slow process of heating the resin strips with a hairdryer until they will bend without breaking, then bending them to fit the roof curve and letting them cool down, then cutting and sanding them to fit which is a trial and error process that can have 4-5 iterations, then finally gluing that one strip on so that I can start all over again with the next strip. So basically between the wonky alignment, glue blobs and glue strings, and resin dust everywhere, the roof looks like cr*p.  Both the other bloggers gave everything a coat of black acrylic paint at the end to tie all the varying shingle colours together into one roof so I will have to do that as well.  Also the instructions, which for most of the build have been copious to the point of being ridiculous, have suddenly dried right up and even miss out steps. I guess they weren't making any more money at the end of the part-work series so why bother.  So it is a bit of guesswork to decide what needs to be done before other things get done.  If you can't tell, I'm not enjoying the process but it's going okay and I am slowly progressing. I like how the wood trim on the gables has turned out, I improved on the inserts that came with the kit and added a plastic beaded trim which I painted to match the wood.

In between doing the above and boring things like going to work, I have wasted a stupid amount of time playing one of my son's video games, Dark Souls 3.  I'm pretty rubbish at video games due to ageing reflexes and an inability to understand the simplest statistics,  but I have enjoyed struggling through some open world games like Skyrim or doing the Lara Croft reboot. Dark Souls is in a different league and is known for being very difficult (and no 'easy' mode either which is what I normally go for as I would rather explore than fight). I think I'm persevering partly to entertain DS (typical commentary: "That's right!! You somersault him to death, yah!") and partly because I don't want to give up.  I expect I will have to give up anyway at some point because even DS is finding the higher levels difficult and he is a far superior player. I can't help thinking how much further along some of my craft projects would be if I had instead put that time into them instead...