Batten down the hatches

Britain is currently being battered by Storm Ciara, with winds up to 60mph predicted in my local area.  It's being taken quite seriously, nationally there is a speed restriction of 50mph on the railways in case of debris on the lines, travel is being discouraged, some flights have been cancelled, events such as marathons have been cancelled etc.  Here in our old house there is a constantly fluctuating roaring noise of the wind sweeping across the chimney shafts, which you can't get away from as there is a chimney/fireplace in virtually every room.  The cat doesn't like it and is looking unhappy.  I don't like it much either and it's going to go on all day.  So far the garden seems to have survived, let's hope the roof shingles stay on as well.

I had fun sewing a couple more Teacup zip pouches.  It was easier having proper zips although I still found it tricky to get a neat result in the zip area.  Quite fun choosing teacup fabric.

The red one has gone to DS who is going to add contents and

give it to his girlfriend for Valentine's Day.

I've done some more quilting on the Let's Bake Quilt, having now moved into the interior.  With the walking foot, I stitched around the cooker area, cookie sheet and the recipe card, then I fitted the free motion foot and started some medium-sized meandering.  It's taken some tweaking on the new machine to find some settings it seems happy with, and of course it's difficult because you are having to meander around the appliques and fit into narrow areas.  Consequently my texture isn't very even but hopefully I will improve.  A lot to do yet. I'll do some more today.

I've been working on and off on the Sublime Eden machine knit waistcoat which like many simple things has proved difficult to get it to look good.  The pattern doesn't call for any edge finishes.  As the yarn is a wool/cotton blend, it is a bit floppy and doesn't roll as much as unfinished knitted edges normally would.  The bottom edge in particular looked terrible as the machine cast on had left a stretched out floppy edge.  After some experimenting with various crochet finishes, I have slip-stitched a flat crochet chain around the bottom which at least makes it lie flat now.  I'm not happy with the armhole edges, which are just half-heartedly rolling inwards and also looking floppy, although it doesn't look too bad when arms are filling the armhole.  It's the shoulders that have been a bit of a disaster.  I originally did my normal grafting stitch which gives a neat, semi-invisible finish.  But due to the 'steps' in the decreases, this created a lumpy shoulder line which looked terrible.  I should have taken that stitching out but instead I did a straight line of backstitching below that seam, which has resulted in a much straighter shoulder line but left a lot of bulky seam allowance inside which can't be pressed flat due to the original seam line.  I think I am going to have to sew it on the machine to secure ends and cut the excess seam allowance off.  That will have to wait while I have the machine set up for free motion quilting.

Having stitched five of the little cross-stitch gift tags from the free kit, I decided I didn't like the remaining three patterns (two of which looked like far too much counting) and made up the tags ready for next Christmas. Now I just need to put them somewhere that I will find them!

I'm in the final stretch of the giant granny square crochet afghan.  I think I have three more rounds after the one I'm on, and then the border.  Of course each round is taking longer as it grows, even though it's still not very big - more of a knee rug than a blanket.  I'm looking forward to getting it finished and the crate of yarn colours out of the living room.  Still hand-quilting the 25-block applique quilt, as I will be for some time to come.  And yesterday I went to Lace group and worked again on my Bucks Point butterfly mat, although it took a while to remember how to do it since I haven't really worked on it the last few months at all.

And I finished my playthrough of Dark Souls Remastered, actually getting all the way to the end.  Buoyed by this small success, I have returned to Dark Souls 3 where I had previously been stalled at a difficult boss (Aldrich) and after multiple more attempts managed to beat not only him but also Yhorm so Dark Souls 3 is back on the playlist. I'll see how far I can get.  Playing video games is a guilty pleasure because I always feel like I should be doing something more productive like studying Japanese.