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.