As I was going to St Ives

I had a fun day out yesterday with three of my bobbin lace self-help group members.  We travelled east to the town of St Ives in Cambridgeshire to visit the Fenlander's Lace Group Exhibition at the Norris Museum in St Ives.  A small but perfectly formed exhibition, very professionally mounted and with excellent signage. I wonder if someone professionally skilled in museum work or communications was involved? It was only one room but we still spent almost 40 minutes exclaiming and discovering things we hadn 't noticed first time round.  There was a wide range of types of lace and the exhibit labels often said what thread was used and where the pattern was from.  Some very high standards of lace as well as some that we felt we might achieve some day.  I was attracted particularly to some attractive modern examples of Flanders lace, a lace I've never tried. It was all very impressive, they must be a very inspiring lace group to belong to.

After a fortifying cup of tea, we crossed the road to head into town and immediately stumbled across a great quilting/sewing shop called Escape and Create.  A good size by British standards with more fabric upstairs, they had so many lovely fabrics that I was tempted off the wagon and ended up at the cutting counter with a few finds.

a future bag with lining?

Two christmas fabrics

As we headed further along the road, we found another craft/haberdashery shop, Star Dancewear and Crafts that had yarn (I bought some bulky yarn for use as doll hair) while across the road there was a good old-fashioned toy shop that had quite a range of cheaper dollshouse furniture and accessories (I did not buy anything).  Coupled with all the lovely old buildings, the farmers market that was going on in the marketplace, the live jazz band playing in the sun on the river bank, and quite a good pub lunch, I have decided (and informed DH) that we should probably retire here!  DH said it will probably all be under water soon being fenland, the way things are going with climate change.

Last weekend I took some time out from the quilting queue to do a little fun project, which is a tiny little snap purse kit that I bought at the St Marie aux Mines quilt show in Alsace a few years ago.  It's made from two yo-yos sewn together then sewn into a tiny keychain purse frame.  You hide the frame stitches on the inside with ric-rac. Very cute, although not incredibly useful. I suppose you could keep a few coins in it, or a thimble perhaps?

On my day off, I persevered and got the rest of the hexagon blocks for the London hexagon quilt sewn and trimmed.  Predictably I had not calculated the right number of background triangles and had to cut a lot more, luckily I had enough fabric.  As the quilt may end up going to DH, I suggested he might want to design the quilt layout himself.  He was a bit taken aback but set to and laid out all the blocks in 13 rows of 9 or 10 blocks each.  He's done a good job of distributing the lighter value blocks. There are some juxtapositions that I might have changed if I were doing it, but I let it be as it is his design.  Now I've started sewing the rows together.

I sewed the buttons on my leaf yoke jumper but haven't worn it yet as the weather has stayed warm..  The last few weeks I've been knitting on a curious teddy bear pattern that someone at my machine knitting club gave me after I admired the example she was knitting.  It is knit all in one piece, with no seams to sew apart from the final gusset between the legs.  All the shaping is done as you knit, and you leave stitches on waste yarn for the limbs, picking them up and knitting onwards in turn.  The pattern is all written out with no pictures or diagrams, so it has been quite a challenge for me since I can't count.  For example I managed to get the short rows on one arm reversed so that his arm was curving to the back like a dolphin so that had to get unravelled. I also had to order another ball of yarn since he has come out much bigger than I expected and I had used up an entire 50g ball of DK yarn before finishing the second leg or arms.  But he is finally all knit now and I have started stuffing him last night.  I did his head first so that I could check the eye placement and embroider his nose/mouth.  Getting the facial features right on toys is so critical, the tiniest adjustments completely change their character.  I'm not unhappy so far although I wonder if I should have used dark brown instead of black yarn.  The eyes are safety eyes.  He is designed so that he will be in a sitting posture.  I plan to take lots of pictures to attach to the pattern in case I ever want to knit him again!  Whoever designed him is obviously a knitting genius.

I picked up my Christmas House cross stitch this week and made a push to get going on the final attic room.  It will be nice if I can get it all finished and into its house frame in time for christmas.  I was quite tempted by some attractive Advent panels at the fabric shop yesterday but I really do not need any more advent calendars as we already have at least five of them.  Are you doing any Christmas stitching?