A few more things ticked off the neverending lists

 We had the roofers in on Thursday at long last, to fix our leaking skylight.  Funnily enough, although it took about four weeks of 'forgotten' appointments, chasing phonecalls and message trading to actually get them here, miraculously their invoice for payment arrived through the letterbox the same evening that they did the work.  But anyway, they did a great job and hopefully we need no longer fear the  rainfall  (we will still fear the torrential rain after the flooding episode....).  It turns out that whomever fitted the velux-type skylight for the previous owners did an absolute bodge job so it had probably leaked from day one. Once the roofers took the slates off, I poked my head out so they could show me.  The frame had been installed with a gap all the way around it between the skylight and the roofing felt, so nothing to stop any water that found its way under the slates from getting into the roof void.  Over the years this had damaged the felt which then deteriorated, exposing more and more of the underside of the roof.  In two places the gap had grown as wide as my fist and the wood lathes underneath were rotting.  That's why the water was pouring in when it rained heavily, as compared to three or four years ago when we just got the odd drip.  

Anyway, they've replaced the rotten wood, and lapped on new roof felt to seal all the holes and seal properly to the window frame, so hopefully it is all watertight now.  It rained yesterday at a medium level and nothing came inside anyway.

After the repair

In order to prepare the traffic route for the roofers to reach the attic floor, as a precaution we took down all the pictures from the walls along the way, emptied and moved two bookcases and a third full of photos, and moved a cabinet full of photos and boardgames.  We did that last weekend then this weekend we had to put it all back again.  DH had to share DS's dining room office on the day, which it seems they both found companionable. I spent the day on drink-making duty and roofer management, while otherwise doing some sewing.

In the wake of finishing the top for the Janet Clare BOM quilt, I made myself fold and put away all the fabrics I had pulled from stash for the quilt. And then I even cut up all the smaller leftovers into the sizes to fit my scrap system.  I keep my scraps in quite a small pail now, and the pail was full. I'm trying to avoid a scrap mountain building up like in the past which then takes days to process. Not sure what I'm going to do next, think I might whip off a quick tote bag and then look at what's next in the project queue.

After finishing the Ness of Brodgar fingerless mitts, I had a look at my knitting queue to choose the next project.  I had a skein of hand-dyed sock yarn with co-ordinating mini skein in the Coast colourway from The Wool Barn, purchased at Fibre East last year.  So I'm knitting a pair of vanilla socks using my usual pattern. It feels oddly comforting to be knitting socks again.  I was on a real sock-knitting kick for a few years but haven't done any for a while now.  I can knit the vanilla pattern without really having to look much at what I'm doing, and the repetitive action is somewhat meditative. The yarn is lovely, with subtle flecks of colour evoking sand and water.

I'm trying to make a push on handquilting the 25 block applique quilt in an effort to get the frame out the living room before Christmas.  I'm almost at the end of the penultimate row now.   Although obviously we won't be having anyone round for Christmas but it would still be nice to be able to decorate the room without working around a giant white pipe construction.

I've decided that there is a miniature black hole at the other end of my strip of Bucks Lace edging because it seems like no matter how much I do, it is still not long enough to go around the edge of the fabric centre.  Everytime I hold the lace up to the fabric to measure it, there always seems to be the same shortfall of 3-4 inches even though I've made several repeats since the last time I measured.  One day it will be finished, I'm a bit fed up with it now.  We aren't having so many long meetings at work now so I'm not getting as much lace time in as I used to.

Yesterday we spent a few hours winterising the garden, another thing ticked off the lists.  We cocoon the big fountain to protect it from frost and move a lot of the other ornaments and furniture into the shed for the winter.  I also got DH to open up both compost containers, shovel out all the usable compost so I could use that to mulch a variety of semi-hardy plants, then he turned over what was left to mix it up more.  Our compost is not always very successful but it seemed to be a good batch this time. Maybe getting wet in the flood did it good?

I succumbed to family pressure and bought in some Halloween candy just for us to eat as we won't be open to trick-or-treaters this year for obvious reasons.  My waistline will not thank me.

Now I can't unsee it

 So I was happily finishing off my Janet Clare BOM quilt top when DH wandered in to the sewing room.   "What's going on with this block?" he asked right away, pointing at a block which until that moment I had been perfectly happy with.

Yes, I had sewn this block, pressed it, sewn it into rows, and sewed the rows into a quilt top, without ever noticing that three of the little squares are turned the wrong way.  "Oh, you look so sad now!" exclaimed DH before wisely deciding to be elsewhere.  So guess what I'll be unpicking while I watch TV tonight.

Apart from that minor debacle, this is now a quilt top and I'm otherwise fairly pleased with it.  It's come out looking rather masculine in style, perhaps DS might want it at some point in the future.  He already has at least four quilts but this one would be a bit more mature than Noah's Ark.

To cut all the two-inch strips for the vertical sashing, I used my Shapecut Plus strip cutting ruler.  A somewhat pricey bit of kit that makes cutting multiple strips a complete doddle.  I don't use it that often but it's the perfect tool for cutting 15 two-inch-wide strips in a couple of minutes, and they are all completely accurate.

Another finish this week was the Ness of Brodgar fingerless mitts which will be DH's christmas present (although now that he has tried them on, he didn't want to give them back).  This was my first time trying a steeked thumb hole.  It gives a very neat and firm thumbhole edge that won't stretch out of shape, and of course means you can knit the whole mitt in the round.  It does create a bit of bulk due to the layers, but in a location which isn't going to interfere with movement. Over time the steek should felt to the mitten with usage. The symbols on the mitts are taken from some of the finds at the archeological dig.

an inside view showing the crocheted steek, which is whipstitched down.

I have been able to hand in my badge as the local representative of the Kitchen Door Police, after I installed an automatic door closer on Friday (thank you Amazon).  This purchase was prompted by finding the cat opportunistically nibbling the chicken thighs I was thawing for dinner earlier in the week.  Five years of trying to keep the cat out of the kitchen, daily reminders to the family to shut the door, multiple daily checks that the door was shut, and all I really had to do was throw £15 at the problem.  Of course now every time I go into the kitchen I first wonder what the heck is wrong with the door and why is it so hard to open, before remembering.  I'm sure we will be able to re-train eventually.

Our little maple tree in the garden is putting on a fiery show that brightens up the border even on a gloomy autumn day.

We took advantage of a dry day to store the garden sofas in the shed and put away the table, but there haven't been any frosts yet so the bird baths and fountains are still outside.  Won't be long now I guess until it all has to go under cover. Winter is coming...

What if you had never seen an elephant?

 I remember seeing a medieval illustration of what they imagined an elephant might look like, having never seen one and just relying on hearsay and travellers tales. As you might guess, the animal looked pretty bizarre.  Well, my first week in my new job has felt a bit like our leader has been told what an ideal team looks like without ever having had to create one, or work in one, herself. So she thinks we need a Vision, and a Strapline, and we need to look at Enablers and Blockers, and do teambuilding exercises to get to know one another etc.  Which sounds great on paper.  The reality is being sent away as a small sub-group with just 45 minutes to come up with a Vision and a Strapline, without being told what those look like or why they are important (I of course have been exposed to these in the corporate world, but for many of my fellow civil servants this was their first experience of such things).  One of our group hurriedly googled what these new things were and read out a short summary, then we randomly jotted down words like 'collaborative' and 'creative' and 'challenge' (with our over-worked under-informed deputy leader desperately writing things down and going 'ooo, that's a good word' etc) - before we returned to make our unimpressive report to the main group, which itself was running out of time so our output has apparently (and deservedly) vanished without a trace.

We've had a week of similar sessions: either for the full team (which were great for me, no cameras on so I've been knitting on the Brodgar mitts, working on my Bucks point lace edging, and practicing my kumihimo braiding) or equally pointless smaller sessions.  I'm not really complaining because I've had a pretty relaxing week without having to do any actual work.  This coming week we will start taking some real work, but I'm not sure how that's going to go because some of the underpinning IT structure hasn't been put in place yet. The most interesting issue is that we're all from different office locations, and have all been trained to do the same things in different ways, and of course we all think 'our' way is the best way and other offices aren't doing it properly (which they aren't because my office does it properly :)  ) so I forecast a few rocky roads ahead as we try to hammer out a consensus on what and how we will actually do things.  But I'm still pleased, it's got me away from my previous dull and miserable team and has been a nice change of pace, it's nice to make a fresh start and talk to some different people.

I finished the pink dress and turned to my Janet Clare BOM quilt blocks, putting up all the blocks I had sewn onto the design wall, coyping the layout from the magazine.  Obviously there were some gaps where I had chosen not to make, or hadn't got round to making, some of the monthly blocks. I realised that the designer's layout (as shown in last week's post) was alternating 'picture theme' blocks with pieced blocks.  I found my more literal mind felt it was important that the boats be in front of the beach huts, and the  seagulls should be above the boats, and the fish should be underneath all of those.  So I started rearranging and ended up with my picture theme blocks in the middle two rows, and my pieced blocks in the outer rows like this:

So it looked like I needed three more picture theme blocks and one pieced block.  I started looking online for ideas and found a picture of a starfish block (from a bag pattern), and got the idea of downloading clipart for a sea anchor.  I had a look on my old BlockBase programme by Barbara Brackman for marine-related block themes and of course found Storm at Sea. From the magazine patterns I decided to make the Map of Britain block and the Nautical Flags block.  So after a few days of cutting and sewing, and some rearranging, I now have this layout:

It's not perfect but I think I am fairly happy.  I'll leave it up for a few days to percolate and will start searching out fabrics to use for the vertical sashing, hopefully I can use stash.  The blocks are 12" finished so the quilt will be 72" square or about a Double in size. The colour palette is very restful (and blue is probably my favourite colour) and I like it.  I still need to do the designer's trademark 'black scribble stitching' around the raw edges of some of the appliques, I will probably do that tomorrow and possibly start sewing the vertical columns.

We actually got out of the house today and drove over to Sywell Country Park, on the site of an Edwardian drinking water reservoir.  There are some interesting old brick structures left from its industrial days, and a path all around the sprawling outline of the reservoir of about 3.5 miles in length.  We went all the way around, and apart from navigating past a few groups of  Covidiots hogging the path, it was a very pleasant (albeit windy and a little rainy) walk which felt really good for us both mentally and physically. This picture is taken near the entrance, the reservoir itself stretches far off to the upper right in two long tributaries, and most of the path is through woodland. There was a tearoom doing takeaways only, a playground and some interesting history information boards.  In some parts of the walk, with only swans and cormorants for company, it felt like you were really in the wilds. Have you had a change of scene lately?

My dress is almost done! Errr, no, it isn't actually.... Grrrrr

 Yes, I did the final try-on for my dress, thinking that all I needed to do was sew the buttons on - the finish so close I could taste it. Then I realised that my shoulder straps were sitting far too wide on my shoulders and needed to be moved, and also that the bodice facing  was showing through in a very unsightly way to the 'good' side of the dress.  So instead of being finished, I had to spend a couple of hours unpicking two shoulder-strap-buttonholes (which luckily I hadn't yet cut open) and that has left marks on the dress so I needed to wash those areas to try to remove the marks (which was not entirely successful).  Then I needed to make new buttonholes.  In order to solve the show-through, I've had to sew a shaped inner bodice lining to go between the facing/lining layer and the shell layer which I am currently slipstitching in by hand.  Sigh. THEN I can sew the buttons on and it will be finished.  I think I might be coming to the end soon of my dressmaking kick, I'm starting to feel the craving to get back to quilting.

Today's Quilter magazine showed up with the final instalment of the Janet Clare BOM quilt.  It offers two layout options, neither of which I like that much.  You can arrange 24 blocks in four columns with sashing, or make a 25th block and mush them altogether with no sashing.

I guess the vertical column one is better, but what I don't like is how some of the blocks were designed so that the corner detail matches, causing the two blocks to blend together. But only for a couple of pairs of blocks here and there, so it seems disjointed and interrupted.  I didn't sew all of the monthly blocks because I didn't like some of them.  I guess I will have to lay out what I've made and see what I need to make to fill the gaps, then think about a layout.  Ideas/suggestions welcome!

Although our basement has dried out fairly well (and we have an appointment now for mid-November for the new flooring to be fitted), my sewing room has been smelling dank. I was disturbed to find a lower shelf damp to the touch last week, so I've bought a little dehumidifier now.  It's really little - I was expecting from the online picture to receive something about the size of a food processor. Instead it is smaller than a kettle.  But it hums quietly away and collects about a third of a cup of water every day which hopefully is doing some good.  I assume that the flooded void underneath has not dried out very well, it probably doesn't get much air movement down there as there are only a few airbricks into it.  I don't want my fabric to go mouldy. I'm tempted to cut a hole in the floor but that's probably not a good idea and it would wreck the modern laminate flooring.

Our big news this week is that DS passed his final professional exams!!  He was really stressed out, convinced he had completely failed one of them, and that test turned out to be his highest mark.  So he just has to do another six months to complete his program and he will be a Chartered Accountant!  We are very proud of him, it was such a difficult challenge for him having to do online coursework and motivate himself to  keep studying at home.  Our son the Chartered Accountant...

Also this week I murdered the apple tree that fell over in the flood, after picking the final apples from it.  Not only did I murder it, I then dismembered it so that DH could take the remains to the dump.  I felt really guilty because this year's apples were the biggest and best we've ever had from it, almost completely disease free.  But the garden looks so much more open with the tree gone, it was leaning far out onto the lawn trying to get sunlight, and it never seemed to get its roots properly anchored. There just wasn't room for it in that space and there was nowhere else to move it to.  We had one last apple pie and some apple sauce from the final crop.

DH went out to the car to get something, and came in with some bubble wrap he had found in the glove compartment.  He was going to throw it out when he realised there was something inside.  Two things actually: two very tiny bonsai ornaments that I bought a year ago from the bonsai nursery when I did my bonsai course, to use in my Japanese dollshouse.  Obviously I put them into the glove compartment for safekeeping then promptly forgot all about them. They will look nice on some of the ornamental shelves in the tatami room (one day).