Sayonara

My Japanese class finished this week and I've received my certificate. I feel ridiculously happy about getting my two evenings a week back because the last few weeks have really felt like a treadmill. I signed up for the course hoping that it would be a better way to learn than doing self study on my own (which hadn't worked very well) but it wasn't a huge difference.  Some things were better explained by the teacher, but the hoped-for practice in speaking did not materialise and not much listening practice either.  Now I have to decide if I will continue in the autumn to the next level (in which case I need to do regular homework all summer) or just give up  and have all my time back again for other things. The autumn class would only be once a week but would be more demanding in terms of homework apparently.  It feels like a losing battle with my ageing and poor memory, I think my brain doesn't feel it is necessary to retain a language it isn't using.  And yet I can remember how to do craft things decades after first tackling them - obviously my brain prioritises craft over language study :)

I did finally get to do a bit of patchwork this week.  It felt odd to be sewing for the first time in a few weeks. I finished the final steps of the jigsaw assembly of the 30s sampler and the pieced part of the top is now together.  In this pic I am trying out the new border fabric I bought with a highlight accent but I'm not happy with it.  I'm going to Festival of Quilts next month so perhaps I might find a better border fabric there.

I finished sewing together the machine knitted cushion topper and took it along to my machine knitting club for the competition.  It didn't win but the judge seemed interested in it and it got some positive feedback from other members.  In the subsequent raffle I won a Brother 8310 linker attachment for my knitting machine which I am quite pleased about, it binds off the stitches on the machine for you when you turn a little hand crank. So I look forward to trying that out.

Still haven't unboxed my new sewing machine but I'm hoping to do that tomorrow.  I read through the manual when we were away last weekend and it seems quite similar to my existing machine only with the AccuFeed and some extra stitches.  There's a CD to watch as well which I might do tonight. Of course first I will have to gather up all the paraphenalia associated with my current machine and put that somewhere safe along with said current machine, to make room for the new stuff.

I'm almost finished the second red and white Sanquhar glove, I'm just finishing the thumb.  I've darned in all the ends on the first glove (quite a few as you re-attach for each finger) but not the second glove yet.  This week I have also resuscitated a hibernating project which is the  Shoulder Shawl in Cherry Leaf Pattern by Jane Sowerby from Victorian Lace Today, which I started three years ago.  After knitting the centre section, I couldn't find an edging I liked so the shawl got parked.  I've now found a sawtooth edging in an old issue of Vogue Knitting and have done some repeats of that and it looks ok so that's my 'new' commuter knitting project now.  Since I haven't been watching nearly as much TV due to the late nights with Japanese, I haven't done much on the crochet afghan or the Misty Meadows shawl this week.  And I haven't touched my dollshouse roof since before we went to Cumbria.  Bad dollshouser...

I almost called this post 'Goodbye Corporate World' because yesterday I bundled up the three remaining work suits I had hung onto 'just in case' since becoming a civil servant back in 2015, and took them to the charity shop. I doubt they would even fit me very well any more, but the main point is that 3.5 years out of the corporate mainstream and I think I am pretty much ruined for it now.  I'm too used to going to work in weather-appropriate smart casual clothes to my much-lower-stress job which has flexible arrival/departure hours and best of all, very few meetings or deadlines.  Next task will be to clear out some of the corporate work shoes which I never wear any more either.

Today I helped as a volunteer steward at the Lace Guild's exhibition at Delapre Abbey. It was a great opportunity to see some fabulous lace, there are some really amazing feats of technical perfection and innovation.  So far I don't think they've had the attendance they were hoping for, partly due to how it was advertised perhaps? and perhaps because you have to pay £8 for admission to the Abbey.  We only had about a dozen visitors to our rooms throughout the day.  I know the volunteer organisers have done a huge amount of excellent work behind the scenes on organisation and setting up.  Unfortunately most of the labelling (which I understand was supplied by the Lace Guild) is terse and mostly doesn't explain anything about the lace itself, just what category it was entered in, and there isn't much to explain or popularise the hobby to non-lacemakers visiting, no handouts or explanation of the entries. We stewards explained to each visitor that it was handmade lace, an exhibition from a competition etc. but a couple of big A2 posters like museums put up would have been nice, explaining for example 'what is hand-made lace' with brief descriptions of the various types in the exhibition, 'who makes lace today' etc.  I was working/demonstrating on my Torchon beaded bracelet but I'm running out of thread as I didn't wind enough on the bobbins, and I had foolishly left my thread spool at home.  I made it to going home time just as one bobbin ran out completely.