The mute/no camera buttons are your friends

Work has rolled out yet another complete-waste-of-time innovation which is supposedly going to make us more productive.  This time it is a fancy spreadsheet with literally about 15 tabs, each one customised to show details about the team such as who is in/on leave, key issues, action items, and even a mood board where we can click on a smiley face to indicate how we are feeling (no, they do not have the emoticon that I would like to click).  This is all information that we already had systems in place for. In order to make maximum use of the new toy, we are now having daily morning team meetings in MS Teams so that our enthusiastic jobsworth promotion-hungry colleague can talk us painstakingly through all the tabs that he has joyously updated.  What this really means is that every morning I get a mid-morning break with my mike muted and my camera off where I can catch up on Facebook and email, and even tackle a bit of personal paperwork.  I make sure to have a fresh cup of tea ready as well. You would think the powers that be would have better things to focus resource on in the current environment...

I've been plugging on with the hand quilting on the 25 block applique quilt in a desultory fashion, and am now in the last 20% probably of the diagonal lines.  I think there is going to have to be a certain amount of remedial work afterwards, as some of the diagonal lines are not very straight and their spacing is pretty off.  When I drew the lines a few years ago, I was trying to have a diagonal line pass corner to corner through each square, with the lines in between evenly spaced.  That didn't work out too well as the squares are not an identical size (they're meant to be). I don't think minor differences are going to be too noticeable but there are a few gaps that are obviously too big, so I may need to pull those lines out and try again.

I'm having another try at the needletatting, this time really trying to check my work and count accurately.  I've had to pull parts out a few times when I got it wrong, including having to completely re-do the centre motif, but I am slowly progressing. At least with needletatting, you can generally undo your work, which isn't always the case with shuttle tatting.

I spent some time this week altering a dress that I bought online.  When I bought it, I thought it was a sun dress over a blouse, from the way the model was posed in the picture.  It turned out to be an actual dress, with the 'blouse' an integral part.  But the shoulder straps were strange things that started from a front waist button, travelled all the way up over the shoulders and down the back to another waist button.  This looked odd and was obviously going to be infuriating when they continually fell down.  So I opened up the seam at the bottom of the 'blouse' and tucked the straps into the seam at the front and back, and closed it up again.  It works quite well now.  I am a bit annoyed at the obviously crooked placement of the gingham in the bodice, which makes the waist look like it's crooked even though it's not.  But there's no way to fix it without major surgery so I've just left it.  I like the dress, sort of a vintage vibe.

I found I got on much better with the disposable rectangle mask that I tried, so I've made a simple fabric copy.  I was in the mall again on Thursday to go to the chemist, and there were more people wearing masks and some signs outside shops asking that customers wear them.  But I've a couple of friends who work in retail and they both had stories about unpleasant customers not wanting to wear masks or use hand sanitiser and taking it out on the shop girls.

I've been procrastinating about studying Japanese much more since returning to work, partly because I've had enough of concentrating on a screen by the end of a work day.  I've bought a Steam game called Learn Japanese to Survive: Kanji Combat in the optimistic hope that it will prove an easier way to learn kanji, or at least a more fun way.  We'll see.

Our pear tree has been shedding more windfalls and the birds have been pecking away at the fruits still on the tree, so I decided to go out and pick everything I could reach.  Before we bought this house (with the pear tree) I didn't know that pears ripen off the tree.  The first year I kept waiting for the fruits to ripen and they just seemed to go from green to rotten in a couple of days on the tree, I thought they would be like apples.  But no, you have to pick them then keep them cool for a period of time and they will then ripen.  Perhaps because the weather has been so changeable, there was much more variation in ripeness this year.  Some were over-ripe, some were ready to be picked, and others were definitely still green.  I brought them all inside regardless to the basement, although I don't know how many we will get through.  DS doesn't like pears and DH is only lukewarm about them.  The last few years I gave away bags of pears to my lace friends when they visited but that isn't an option this year. I don't want to make perry or chutney, so I end up making pies until even I am sick of them.  Oh, and it turns out that encouraging our climbing rose to scramble charmingly through the branches of the pear tree was not the best idea in the world:  my arms are all scratched up now by rose thorns.  May have to re-think that one.

Remember shopping?

Still adjusting to the new normal.  I went to the post office on my day off and ventured into the mall for some non-essential shopping at the chemist. Obviously I wasn't the only one totally baffled by all the traffic lanes marked in yellow tape on the mall floor because they have now taped (quite roughly) lots of big red directional arrows on top of the yellow tape and stationed two 'traffic wardens' at the confusing intersection who were telling off shoppers trying to cut across lanes. And yesterday we took stuff to the charity shop for the first time in months and then DH stunned me by suggesting we go to Matalan so he could get some shorts.  He's even contemplating going to the barbers. So it's starting to feel sort of like getting back to normal apart from trying to avoid other shoppers and maintain social distance.  Next week face coverings become mandatory in shops so we practiced in Matalan.  I've discovered my pink close-fitting mask makes me feel a bit panicky at times, totally irrational but my brain starts telling me I am over-heating and/or suffocating.  I may have to switch to a less-adequate rectangle mask to get more air to my brain.

The weather has been very changeable, feeling like spring/summer/autumn all in one day.  Yesterday morning it was a bit autumnal so we went out and dug up the elderly leggy lavender border and planted out replacements, purchased again from Aldi.  July is not an obvious month to be planting things out but hopefully with all the frequent rain showers and sunny spells they will establish themselves okay.  Oh, and after I had dug up the old plants, cleared away all the weeds and added some soil improver, I turned my back for a few seconds to go and fetch the new plants. I turned back around to find my cat using the newly-cleared bed as a toilet. Despite there being an entire garden around her and a litter box inside.  Stupid cat who thinks she's the boss of us.

My new 4.5mm metal tips have turned up and I'm knitting a short-sleeve top with a cable yoke using Jeanie' which is a cotton/acrylic blend, in a dark denim blue colour.  It seems to be knitting up fine although a mild tendency to split stitches from time to time.  The pattern wants you to knit front and back in pieces but I'm knitting it in the round to avoid the 'rowing' effect I get on purl rows.  I've added two false side seams using a purl stitch a la Elizabeth Zimmerman.

I seem to be on a dress-sewing kick, and have spent a fair bit of time this week working on another sun dress using this floral fabric from Rose & Hubble which I found on sale. It's a bit whimsical as it is not sunny outside and I have to stay out of the sun due to skin cancer issues yet I am enjoying making a sun dress nonetheless.  I've seen a few threads online about the things we are finding ourselves compelled to do during lockdown, which are helping us cope even though we don't entirely understand the compulsion. Apparently a lot of people are compulsively shopping which may explain why I keep buying dress fabric...

Other than that, time has been spent on the cross-stitched houses project, trying a new bit of needle-tatting (still can't count), and working some more length on my Bucks Point edging.  I've also discovered a new vlogger Tokini Andy teaching Japanese based on the Genki books so I've been catching up on his videos. The university where I was taking Japanese evening classes hasn't announced whether the October course will go ahead or whether it will perhaps only offered online, but I am trying to keep up my studies on my own. With my memory it often feels like "one new fact in, two old facts exit the building" but as DH points out when I'm getting depressed about that, I still know a lot more Japanese now than I did two years ago. Who knows when I will ever get back to Japan to use it. Are you booking any holidays this year?

The Borrowers have taken my 4.5mm needle tips

I have two full sets of Knit Pro interchangeable needle tips:  one wood, and one metal. I need the 4.5mm metal tips to start my next knitting project in a cotton/acrylic blend.  Can I find them anywhere? No, I cannot.  Having trawled through ground zero of the needle disaster zone, comprising a litter of needle tips around the storage racks they are meant to be in, plus about 30 cable needles all tangled into a giant ball of mess, I widened my search to the pile of prior projects waiting to be dismantled and put away. It turned out there were a lot of these bags of old yarn and needles, it seems that it has been some time since I actually tidied up in the attic room, months and possibly even over a year. DH was waiting to watch TV so I gave up and did cross stitch instead last night, but today I headed back in for a full search and rescue operation.  I tidied away all the old project bags and yarn, extracting all the needles, picked up all the secondhand book finds and magazine pattern rip-outs, tidied away the spilled out yarn bags etc.  Then I moved the huge mess of needle tips, normal needles, DPNs and the tangle of cables and cable needles and storage pouches onto my little desk, fetched a needle size gauge and settled down for a long sort out.  It was actually fairly therapeutic, sizing up all the needles and tips and putting them back where they go, and measuring the cables to pack them away in the various pockets of their storage folder.  It took quite a while, and by the end of it all, still no 4.5mm tips.  They appear to have vanished. Stupid Borrowers.  So I've ordered another set which will come next week, and in the meantime I guess I'll use the wooden tips and hope it doesn't affect my gauge too much.

I need to carry out a similar archeological excavation on my sewing room, which is buried under multiple layers of projects.  I've spent a lot of this week altering a too-small dress to fit me, but while I was doing that, someone online kindly pointed out that one of the HSTs is twisted in my Giggleswick Mill Quilt top, in the bottom LH area.  So I've had to take that area apart and I'll fix it hopefully tomorrow.  Thank goodness they spotted it before it was quilted.  I made a quilt many years ago where I similarly twisted an HST in the sashing in a really obvious place, and I never noticed it.  It was finished, quilted and bound and had been hanging on the wall for a few months before DH noticed and pointed it out.  I couldn't face trying to fix it and ended up giving the quilt away.

As well as the dress alteration and the quilt, I've acquired a few more dress-lengths of fabric to sew dresses (and the accompanying lining fabric and patterns etc), the Disappearing 4-patch quilt I want to make, the pile of fabric I'm pulling from for the Janet Clare BOM, and the pile of fabric I was using from the Japanese book which I might still make something else from.  I don't have a lot of spare storage in my sewing room so I ordered some cheap folding stackable crates from Argos.  I've put each project collection into one crate and stacked them in the corner, which feels much more organised and also reducing the risk that something vital will go walkies.  Once I'm through with a project, I can fold the crate flat out of the way (or fill it up with new stuff).

I don't actually have any photos this week because it's just been more cross stitch, swatching for the new knitting project, a bit of bobbin lace, hand quilting, and altering the dress. I have had two minor DIY achievements:  I managed to sharpen my own overlocker blades, and I took apart my video game controller and fixed a sticky button.  My overlocker (serger) is quite elderly now as I bought it when DS was young in the mid-90s to sew clothes from knits for him.  The blades had become quite dull since the last long-ago service.  When I looked online, the upper blade was running about £24 while the lower blades were apparently unobtainable apart from a questionable one on eBay for £45.  After searching for a while, I did some lateral thinking and started searching on how to sharpen an overlocker blade.  I didn't find anything specific but I did find this video on sharpening small blades.  The sharpening stone he was using happened to cost £40 which is a lot of money but at the same time a lot cheaper than a new set of blades so I decided to go for it.  I had no idea what I was doing, just tried to copy his motions as much as possible. Having pushed the two blades back and forth a little on the wet stone, I put them back in the overlocker to see if there was any improvement.  Success!  it's now trimming fabric cleanly again and even deal with the slippery fraying lining on the dress alteration.  I would hope that I can keep sharpening the same blades for a while as well.

I did go and get my haircut today, it didn't feel any more risky than going grocery shopping which we also did tonight.  Such a relief to have my hair trimmed up above my eyebrows and off my neck, it was driving me crazy and starting to look like a mullet.  The salon was plastered with posters announcing all the precautions they are taking and the rules for customers, it all sounded very sensible and reassuring.  Except that the practice seems a lot less rigorous: while I was waiting I watched a couple of the young girls cleaning the seats and work stations with a few apathetic squirts of cleaner (no wiping) which hardly seems the 'thorough cleansing' promised by the posters. And while all staff were wearing plastic visors, none of them were wearing face masks so if they sneezed for example it would all come out round the sides. Customers are all supposed to wear masks but there was a pretty wide variety from the medical to the homemade, most being poorly worn or lifted up so the person could talk (that's not how it works!!!) Anyway, fingers crossed I didn't pick anything up.  I haven't made another appointment, I'll see how long I can go without.

Do you have Borrowers in your house?

Trivial or comforting?

My hairdresser is reopening and I've been offered a hair appointment next week.  My son is astonished that after months of our strict regime, I would even consider potential contamination for something that, in his view (said view through a mop of hair that a Beatle would be jealous of) is completely non essential.  I did accept the appointment but he's making me doubt my decision, pointing out how dumb he would feel if he got the virus just to get a hair cut.  I am not a vain person, apart from wanting to avoid looking prematurely aged due to grey hair, but I would like to eliminate the daily minor discomfort of my shaggy mop falling down on my forehead.  Plus it just seems like a nice normal thing to do, something routine and familiar.  I don't even particularly like going to the hairdressers and yet I have been dutifully reporting in for an hour or so every five weeks for years.  I know the virus is still a risk, but on the other hand that risk is going to continue for some time and perhaps we need to establish a new normal.  I don't know what I"ll do.

I sewed together the Hey Teach cardigan and have been wearing it around the house, it's been just the thing for the blustery days where the temperatures aren't too low but the drafts make it feel cold.  Apologies for the slightly out of focus photos, stupid auto timer.  It's a little bit too wide across the back.  After I tried it on the first time, I pulled back the cast off on the neck ribbing and cast off again more tightly on smaller needles, which has tightened it up so it's a better fit.

I finished the broderie perse centre on the Giggleswick Mill quilt, and moved on to the first set of borders which had a gold strip on either side.  When I had the borders prepared I pinned it up on the design wall for a look, and was really disappointed with how bland the centre looked.  The gold strips were just killing the low contrast centre motifs.

So I had a trawl through my remaining Giggleswick fabrics, and then through the rest of my stash.  Why is it that no matter how much fabric you have, you inevitably don't have the colour you want?  I had one red fabric that would have been perfect, but not enough of it.  I had another odd-shaped remnant of a patterned burgundy that I thought might just be enough for a single border.  The strips are meant to be 1 1/4 inches wide but the burgundy had an obvious design motif that had to be centred, and there wasn't enough fabric to do that and cut 1 1/4 inch wide strips.  So I cut centred strips out of the remnant and pieced them into the 26 1/2" strips I needed, and pinned them on the design wall.  I liked them much better, now it 'pops' the pinks in the centre fabrics.  Trouble was the new strips weren't wide enough.

So I cut a piece of template plastic 3/4" wide and drew a placement line down the centre lengthwise.  Then I worked my way along the burgundy strips and drew on the wrong side where the stitching line should be, to end up with a 3/4" border with the design motif centred.  I unpicked the first gold border and carefully stitched the new burgundy border in place on my drawn lines.  Then I mitred the first border corners. Already it was looking better.

After that I stitched on the prepared triangle borders. You can see the changes in alignment that gave me so much trouble a few weeks ago.

And then finally the outer pillar border with its narrow inner gold strip.  I mitred the corners, the motifs worked out really well on one corner, not too bad on two corners, and not great on a fourth corner, but it looks like the designer had a similar result on her sample.  The finished quilt top is 70" square, so only just a double.  It's the fabrics that make it - love that outer pillar print.  The photo makes it look like the border is ruffling, it's not, it's just sticking to the design wall flannel in a funny way.

I just need to cut some binding strips then it can join the queue awaiting quilting.  I had the pleasure of looking through my queue for my next project:  I need to make a couple more blocks for the Janet Clare block of the month then I am going to use some of my Aldi fat quarter stash to make a disappearing four patch.  I've pre-rinsed the Aldi fabric to remove some of the stiffening treatment, to my surprise the fabric underneath isn't too bad and none of the colours ran which is great. I wasn't expecting much at 6 FQs for £3.99 (or £2.99 on sale).

I have not made any masks until now but since DS and I would have to wear one if we ever go back on the trains to work, and it's looking like masks are going to become increasingly expected if not mandated, I caved and searched online for a 'comfortable face mask' pattern.  I went with this pattern which is actually a photo tutorial of someone else's pattern.  It was quite straightforward to make out of quilting cotton.  I went with elastic around the head because I think it would just be too uncomfortable around the ears.    They are cotton and therefore washable.  They are relatively comfortable as they are shaped to your face without crushing your nose, but even elastic around my head bothers me a bit. I made two black ones for DS and DH.

and a pink one for me.

Our little cooking cherry tree produced a bumper crop this year, these are one litre yoghurt pots.  I put the usual netting over the tree as the cherries started to redden, but it was a challenge now that the tree is bigger, I don't know if I will be able to do it next year at all.  Perhaps we could build some kind of fruit cage.  We were watching an enterprising blackbird fluttering all around the netting, trying to get at the goodies inside.   It took me about 40 minutes to pick all of these while carefully untangling the netting from the little tree.

So today I made a deep dish apple and cherry pie - I'm not much of a baker as you can see, but it was sure tasty.  The cherries are very tart, and I probably didn't put in quite enough sugar, but they have a lovely cherry flavour.  I've got enough cherries left to make another pie as well.

The other night I sat down and made some hotel bookings for 2021, for the replacement trips to France and Estonia.  I went for the 'free cancellation' price tier just in case.  Who knows whether we will be able to freely travel by April 2021 or even summer 2021?  We can hope.  I have also, in the wake of Boris' announcement, booked a Carlisle hotel for a week later in the summer, also with free cancellation in case Boris changes his mind. We've really enjoyed our previous holidays in Cumbria.  I don't know what kind of holiday it is going to be, with all the social distancing and many things probably still shut , but at least we will be able to go for walks and have a change of scene.  Something to look forward to, and we can wear our new masks.