Cairo in Northamptonshire

The temperature on Thursday went up to an unbelievable 36C/97F which is one degree hotter than it was when I went to Egypt on a long ago holiday. What is happening??? Very fortunately and completely by chance, I had booked Wednesday off as a single day of holiday followed by Thursday as my day off, so I was able to hide indoors on both days (29 degrees on Wednesday).  We are very lucky with this house that the lower floors stay relatively cool so I slept in the living room both nights and stayed in my sewing room in the basement both afternoons. It was so hot that the train tracks to London warped and some of the overhead wiring became damaged, causing huge travel disruption on Thursday so DS ended up having to stay home. He made it to work on Friday but when I tried, my train had been cancelled so I tried the next one and it was indefinitely delayed because it hadn't actually left London yet due to the ongoing problems causing only 50% of outbound track being available. I gave up and came home so it's turned into a five day weekend.  Way Hey!  I'm very happy today because we are back to lovely British rain and cloud and only 19 degrees.

So I've had loads of time to work on crafts and even do some mending like sewing snap tape onto the bottom of a weird continental duvet cover I bought that just had loose flaps at the bottom with no closures.

The Japanese dollshouse roof of doom is now finished in terms of construction after seven months of slog. Some of the trim has been hard to glue on due to the ridges of the shingles, so I ended up shaving flatter paths down with the sanding drum on my dremel tool. The final bits of trim hide the internal valleys where the gables meet each other and I ended up using hot glue to fix those because nothing else would fill the large awkward gaps inside the angle. Now the big clean up starts of all the glue smears, overspills, strings of glue etc. etc.  Plus I expect the underneath of the eaves will need some touching up after all the clamping it's been put through.  Then the whole roof needs to be painted black. I'm not sure what paint I should use on the resin shingles, I'm not sure my ordinary crafter's acrylic is going to stick.

The hexagon quilt has moved on as well.  I finished sewing and pressing all the half- hexagons and have been designing the quilt on the wall. I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. I don't think the actual quilt centre is going to be that big once it's all sewn together, so I'll definitely need some borders.  Some people make an inner frame and let the hexagons spill over into the outer border but I don't think I want to do that. I might applique the hexagons down onto an outer border. I have some matching fabric from the same line as the panel I have cut up.  But I need more cloud fabric.  I'm visiting Festival of Quilts for the first time in years so I will have a look there for both cloud fabric and border fabric for the 30s Sampler quilt.

Speaking of places I haven't been for a few years, DH kindly drove me down to the Fibre East show in Ampthill today.  Now that I don't have a season ticket to London, it is more of an expensive proposition to get the train there, plus I don't know if the trains are still disrupted today.  I had a lovely visit, the show was heaving with people and was bigger and better than I remember it being.  So much pretty pretty yarn.  I stayed strong for quite a long time, keeping my own stash firmly in my mind, and just buying a couple of shawl patterns for using up stash.  But I fell off the wagon at The Wool Barn stand in one of the marquees, faced with their lovely ice cream colours and merino/nylon sock yarn which feels so springy and soft. I also picked up a little hand turned wooden needle holder from Rosie's Moments which I will use in my bobbin lace accessory box.  It was interesting to see how things have changed: there seemed to be less spinning and weaving but several needlefelting stands, and also several crochet stands.  I was very tempted on one stand that had several multi-colour crochet blanket kits and patterns but reminded myself that I'm not doing very well with the simple kit I'm working on at the moment. Also I don't enjoy crochet the way I do knitting. Lots of people selling pretty handmade project bags and pouches  too. The only downside was the steady rain which made it muddy underfoot outside and a bit of a scurry to get between the various buildings without getting too wet. So I've had some fun just now looking on Ravelry for patterns to go with my purchases.

Yesterday on my unexpected day home I finished my Torchon lace beaded bracelet and darned in the ends. There were more ends than there should have been due to running out of thread on some of the bobbins, but I was able to hide them fairly successfully and it looks nice. I'm not sure I would wear this to the office but it would definitely be something to wear to a lace day or a lace fair.

I'm stuck on a difficult boss in the Dark Souls 3 video game (Aldrich) and I asked DS for some advice. He was a bit reluctant so I apologised if he found watching his mother playing video games as exciting as watching paint dry.  He said it wasn't that at all, it was more like watching a puppy drown. Ouch, and here I thought I was getting a bit better...

At least with all this hot weather, hopefully it's helping our damp wall from the leak to dry out. Although we now have a new issue: something has been living/moving around in the ceiling above my sewing room.  It's been quite creepy to hear little footsteps and the occasional flurry of scratching/digging. It sounds too big to be a mouse so I am thinking possibly a rat.  I can't see how it is getting into the house though, I've had a walk around and there are no obvious holes. I bought a couple of traps yesterday and set them outside, hidden under washing up tubs with a brick on top and access holes cut in either side to keep the cat away from the trap.  Google seems to agree that poison is best avoided due to the high risk to pets/wildlife/me and apparently you really don't want a poisoned rat putrefying in the house (smell).  The joys of an old house...