The heat is on

Autumn is definitely here, and the house is starting to feel chilly in the mornings and evenings so we are putting the heating on for short intervals. It would get too hot (and too expensive) to have it on all the time as yet.  My walk to the station in the morning has transitioned in temperature from my late summer coat to my autumn warm coat, and the winter coats are waiting in the wings.  Hand knitted hats and gloves are also back on the equipment list.

I even bought a couple of early Christmas decorations at Matalan (shock, horror! I haven't even put up any Hallowe'en decorations yet!). So it seems fitting that I finished the Christmas House cross stitch, stretching the stitching over a bit of mat board cut to fit the frame and finishing the back with felt. It's quite cute, I'm pleased with how it turned out.

I wanted to get the next project in the cross stitch queue ready for stitching and chose a kit I picked up on a long ago American trip. It was a pre-printed canvas printed with Monet's Japanese bridge at Giverny, which you are meant to embellish with cross stitch to highlight various details. To cut a long story short, I ended up throwing it all out (what the gaming world calls 'rage quitting'). The threads were in pre-cut lengths tied in one big loose knot, and I spent well over an hour peering at them in good daylight trying fruitlessly to determine which of the many greens and blues matched the lengthy colour chart in the kit.  No matter what combination I tried, the number of strands would not match the stated number of strands for each colour, and there also seemed to be a couple of colours missing.  The greens were the worst, there were about 8 or 9 of them, all with stupid names that bore little resemblance to the actual colours, and some of them virtually identical. I became more and more frustrated trying to decide which was 'dark blue-green' versus 'dark green-blue' and trying to arrange a set of five corresponding to very light yellow green/light yellow green/yellow green/dark yellow green etc. etc.  I resorted to comparing the complicated chart to the printed picture, trying to decide which greens seemed darker or bluer than the others.  After about 90 minutes of this I realised I hated the whole project, was not going to enjoy the random counted chart since few blocks of colour adjoined, and the pre-printed colour panel was quite crudely done. When I looked online, there were other reviewers complaining about similar issues.  I decided life was too short, it hadn't cost too much back in the day, so into the bin it all went.  Result! Queue instantly shorter.  I am viewing this as a sign of maturity, in my younger days I would have finished it regardless of whether it was a good use of my time.

I stuffed and assembled the felt doll that I stitched a few weeks ago, and added the doll hair that I bought in St Ives last weekend.  She is looking cute, now to make her some clothes.

I've done a fair bit of sewing this weekend.  Having given up on finding a fabric to make a solid border for my 30s Sampler quilt, I looked around online for ideas and eventually found this tutorial for a scrappy wedge border. I had to get DS to help me with the math to calculate how many wedges I needed and how wide the coping strips around the centre should be.  I've got as far as piecing the main border strips so far and I think it looks good. Much more interesting than a piano keys style border. Apart from the math, it's easy enough to make and looks much more complicated that it is really.

Chain piecing the wedges:

This week I finally started a project I've been meaning to tackle for a while, which is another Japanese applique from the quilting books I bought in Japan.  I worked out a pattern to fit a snap purse frame that I have (which took three mock-ups before I got something I was happy with, the geometry of a purse frame bag is weird) and I'm appliqueing a group of flowers from the book on each side panel using fabrics I bought in Japan. This is the first time I've ever used my Hemline heat transfer pencil. It worked great on the first panel, but managed to smear on this second panel so there is a lot of faint pink showing outside of the applique which I'm hoping I will be able to remove somehow although it is meant to be permanent.

I've started machine knitting a fair isle mitten using the same pattern that I tested last month in acrylic, but this time using wool and a punchcard pattern. It's looking nice but so tedious to do because of having to continually stop knitting and do the thumb increases every couple of rows. I shall persevere.  I've also started pricking a new bobbin lace pattern for a butterfly mat and winding bobbins for it. I find pricking really difficult as it hurts my hand to hold the pricker for so long and photocopies often have random specks on them which may or may not be pinholes. So I have to do it in stages to give my hand time to rest.

We spent some time tidying the garden last Sunday and found TWO pigeon corpses, one is presumably Chompy and the other must be the next earthbound visitor.  A few days later DH found yet another pigeon corpse in the front garden. This is all very strange and not something we've had happen before in the five years we've lived here. I hope it stops soon.