Merry Christmas and seasons greetings

Another Christmas, my first retired Christmas and possibly our last one with DS  still in the house with us before moving out, but who knows.  It was all very pleasant anyhow, far too much candy and a quiet day just the three of us.  At one point, after almost four hours of cooking, DH wandered into the kitchen where I was slaving and facetiously asked 'why don't we have this for dinner more often?'. Luckily for him I didn't have any knives to hand. I am normally a pretty basic cook and after decades of having to feed the family regardless of my own hunger or energy levels, I am a pretty unenthusiastic cook as well.  But for Christmas I do try to go as all out as I can and it all turned out pretty well:  turkey with two kinds of stuffing, carrots, brussels, peas, roast potatoes, candied parsnips, scalloped potatoes, sausages in bacon, yorkshires, gravy and cranberry sauce.  Urp.

I had chosen some nice crafty presents for my christmas list this year.  I have given myself a subscription to the Tilda Club: a roughly bi-monthly subscription from Australia which comes with a fabric pack and pattern.  I quite like Tilda fabric but don't often buy it as it is expensive here in the UK.

I chose a higher-magnification lens for my Optivisor and a replacement Little Foot quarter-inch piecing foot for my Singer Featherweight (because my old foot had perished after some 15 years or so, the plastic got too brittle). Maybe I will get to go to a quilting workshop with this machine this year, who knows.

DS paid for some nice packs of scrapbooking paper to use on my new cutting machine, and also a cute pair of scissors that look like the Eiffel Tower.

While the turkey was cooking, I had some time to try out the fabric cutting function of my Brother Scan N Cut.  This is a pattern called Winter Glow that was published recently in Today's Quilter magazine. I thought it would be perfect for cutting on the machine because it would be quite fiddly to cut the snowflakes etc by hand.  I scanned in the template sheet and used the software to turn the outlines into cutting files. It turned out to be a lot more work than I was expecting. The machine picked up a bunch of stuff my human eye had disregarded, like text labels, and then had trouble recognising some of the outlines.  I experimented for a while,  and got there in the end. I expect it gets quicker with practice.  Then I prepared some quilting cotton fused to Steam-a-Seam2 fusible web and put the fabric cutting blade onto the machine.  The snowflakes and candles cut perfectly, I was so pleased.  The holly leaf fabric started to move during cutting even though I had taped it down with masking tape in addition to the mat being sticky, and the star fabric only partially cut and I'm not sure why. So I had to do a bit of hand finishing.  Overall it may not have been quicker than tracing and cutting by hand but I feel like I learned a lot.  The pieces are just fused on at the moment, there needs to be freehand stitching embellishment added to it, three red buttons for holly berries and then quilted.  A fun little project.

A friend of mine was giving away a small older dining table so I said I would like to have it to use as a crafting station for the Brother Scan N Cut.  I've got it set up in the attic room.  It's nice to have more room around the machine to work now although I need to do something about the light fixture up there as the light is terrible.

Once I had the machine set up, I practiced using it to make some gift pouches and tags to go under the tree.

Just for fun, I made up three more of the Trimits ornament kits this week, a gin bottle with a slice of lemon for DH, a pair of mittens and a Christmas pud. These kits are like eating candy, just enjoyable sewing without the effort of cutting out or finding materials.

Earlier in the week I finished Block 7 of the Australian BOM. I hadn't properly looked at the picture on the pattern to realise how much of the 'cards' would be covered up by the ribbon spool. I could have saved myself a fair bit of time doing embroidery that ended up being covered up.  But it's a cute effect overall.  There are three buttons that will get sewn on as embellishments after the quilt is finished.

DH has been on holiday this week and on Tuesday we had a drive over to the charming market town of Olney for a walk around and to pay a visit to the museum to see their renovated bobbin lace room.  In one of the antique shops I spotted two medieval thimbles, which is just amazing.  I didn't feel any urge to own them, but amazing to think that hundreds of years ago someone was sewing with these tools. It feels like they should be priceless, not just £45, but apparently they are relatively common and found by metal detectorists or mudlarkers on the Thames etc.

I've started knitting a new hat, the Just Keeping Warm hat by Lara Simonson, after realising my warmest handknitted hats are all starting to look a bit pilly and worn.  The pattern calls for worsted yarn but I am knitting it in two strands of Rowan Scottish Tweed DK held together.  The yarn is gorgeous but quite scratchy, so I rarely wear the cardigan that I knit from it years ago.  I'll see if I can tolerate it better in a hat. I've currently knit about 16 inches of the band, and a couple of times have had to drop stitches down a few inches in one spot to fix a wrongly crossed cable, the result of trying to knit cables and watch TV at the same time!

I hope you are having a good holiday, seasons greetings and let's hope for a better 2022.

Seriously, what day is it?

  I am completely losing track of the days now and existing in a sort of eternal 'now'. I've resorted to decorating the weekend pages in my desk planner with washi tape, just to remind me that they are the weekend and therefore DH and DS will be off work. I still don't feel like I am doing retirement right, yet my days seem constantly full. I don't think I'm getting the balance right yet and probably spend too much time at my desk on one thing or another (some of them frivolous like gaming or surfing), and not enough time crafting.

I have been working away on block seven of the Australian BOM and have finished the embroidery now, so I just need to assemble the 3D elements and applique them on. I haven't taken a picture because it doesn't look like much yet.  As a break from embroidery, I am knitting the second sock of the vanilla socks I started towards the end of caravan season.

On Tuesday I had a day out to Birmingham to visit the Rag Market (a market with various fabric and haberdashery stalls) and nearby fabric shops such as Fancy Silks and Barry's.  The market on a Tuesday was pretty quiet with a lot of vacant or shut stalls.  One haberdashery stall was closing down and the owner told a customer there just aren't any customers any more. I guess COVID has hit markets pretty hard.  I still had fun looking at what was open. There are a lot of global influences evident, from fancy embroidered silks for saris to African wax print fabric.   I picked up some bag zips for .30p each, some flower motif trim from the closing-down haberdashery, a couple of pieces of quilting cotton I thought were cute, and some more Japanese-style fabric and jersey lining to try another Haori jacket and hopefully get the sizing better next time.

I enjoyed Turkish mint tea and fresh falafel for a snack in the market, and wandered up for a brief look at the German-style Christmas market (almost entirely food and drink stands which was disappointing, virtually no shopping).  I changed trains on the way to Birmingham in Leicester where I used to work, and had time to wander out to the front of the station and look out at the corner of the city that I walked through for 4.5 years to the office prior to lockdown. Strange that it ended so abruptly.

I'm about 3/4s of the way through piecing the next block of the Tilda Wreath Quilt. Predictably, as always happens to me with repeated block quilts, I am quite bored with it now but will soldier on because I don't want to put everything away until it's done or I will never get it out again.  I have purchased a seasonal pattern from Edyta Sitar called Tannenbaum and have pulled fabrics from my stash for that, it looks fun, but it has to wait.

I've been playing a bit more with my Brother Scan N Cut and tried a gift bag project which is a free download.

I've signed up for a couple of Udemy courses on using the machine and software which hopefully will get me more familiar with it.  I tried reading the 110 page manual but it's very dry. Also a friend is giving me a free folding dining table which I am going to set up as a Scan N Cut workstation in the attic.

I sold three dollshouse kits for smaller scale houses last week, which was good, gets them off my list and to a new home that wants them.  I was actually in my dollshouse room this week, I've started re-painting the Venice scene that I bought at the antique shop in Horncastle back in the summer, trying to make it look more realistic. It was hard to cover up the blue but I'm getting there. I have no training in painting or mixing colours but I am trying to make it look more like canal images I found online.

In between sorting out Christmas shopping etc. I have acquired a couple more small needlework antiques after being inspired by an online show & tell session on collecting needlework tools.  The first is a vintage brass etui, possibly 40s or 50s, with thread bobbins, a thimble and a needleholder.  The second is a leather case described as antique but I don't know how old it actually is. It seems to be a repair kit for travel or campaign, with sturdy threads, storage for tools and a slim pincushion.

We spent some time in the garden today, hacking back great armfuls of dead plant foliage and trimming back overgrown shrubs, then rescuing the drip hoses to take them inside the shed for the winter.  Despite some really cold spells, we still have some flowers improbably clinging to life and brightening the garden with some colour. We only got about half of the garden done, so will need to go out and do some more next week when DH is on holiday for Christmas.  It's hard to know what's going to happen over Christmas, whether we will have more COVID restrictions imposed or not. I had my booster shot on Wednesday and felt a bit rough for 24 hours plus had a very sore arm, but it's good to have had it done.

I hope you are all staying well.

Are we feeling Christmassy yet?

 This week the Christmasfication of the house has commenced.  DS's girlfriend is staying with us and she was a bit boggled at how many boxes and suitcases of decorations were coming down from the attic.  We went and got the tree this morning and decorated it this afternoon which was fun to do together. However I am struggling a bit to feel seasonal. I think it's partly the rainy autumnal weather, and partly because for the first time Christmas does not equate with  a week or so off of work and cheesy work Christmas cheer - for me at least, DH and DS are still looking forward to that.  

I made up another little Trimmits ornament kit from my advent calendar, another fun one to do. I've hung this and the robin I made previously both on the tree.

I also finished up the set of six wool felt mitten ornaments that I was working on last week.  I think I will try to hang these together somewhere else as they will get lost on the tree.

Right after finishing the mittens, Block seven of the Australian BOM showed up right on time so that is my handwork project now in the evenings.

I took a break from sewing the Tilda quilt pattern to work on my Haori jacket.  Although when I showed the finished jacket to my Japanese teacher online, she called it a 'Happi' which is a short jacket traditionally worn at festivals in Japan.  It's turned out quite well apart from I think it is too wide across for me, and could do with being a little bit longer to be more flattering.  It's comfortable and warm to wear thanks to the printed jersey lining.  When I was calculating the width, I was thinking that I wanted the fronts to almost meet in the middle for warmth. But that does make it rather wide across the back since you are working with rectangles.  The lucky cat heavy cotton fabric  I ordered online but the red collar print I actually bought in Tokyo and brought back with me.

 

Meanwhile the Tilda Wreath Quilt is up to two and a half blocks now.  I'm finding it difficult to sew the very small corner squares on accurately, resulting in some polygon shapes when four of them meet up - when they should form a square.  I will go back and try to fix some of the worst offenders.

I have finally reached the end of my Bucks Point Butterfly Mat and connected the end threads back into the beginning loops which as usual I found quite difficult.  Since taking this photo, I have trimmed off the various cast off threads from the work but the final threads will need to be carefully darned into the work to try to make the join as unobtrusive as possible.  I found when trying to make the final joins, I just didn't have sufficient magnification.  Even my 5x magnification Optivisor wasn't letting me differentiate between tiny fuzzy white loops from when I started the cloth stitch trail. In the end I propped up my phone in a tripod like a War of the Worlds alien craft and turned the camera on to 10x magnification.  Which worked a lot better apart from the camera kept shutting itself off after a minute or two. Ageing eyesight sucks. I started this in October 2019 so it's been two years - mostly because I only worked on it once a week.  I honestly was remembering it as being bigger than it is - when I finally removed the working cloth to reveal the entire mat, I was actually a bit disappointed. But hopefully it is going to look nice once I complete the finishing work.  Once it's completely done, I am going to start trying to learn Bruges lace from some books that I have.

If you are celebrating the holiday, how are your preparations going?

London

 It probably seems like I am gallivanting all the time now :)  I had a day out to London yesterday to visit with my friend Anita, over from France to attend the Kensington Dollshouse Festival, and I also dropped in to some exhibits at the V&A.  The trains continued their mediocre performance with short-notice industrial action cancelling the train I was meant to get so I was 30 minutes late to meet Anita - sorry! I think the lesson learned here is to assiduously check the 'live trains departure' lists online and not trust anything the timetables are saying. Even the Underground wasn't cooperating: the journey that took 25 minutes going east to meet Anita took almost 45 minutes coming back thanks to unexplained waits at stations and endless connecting tunnels, so I missed my one-train-an-hour-thanks-to-industrial-action home and had to hang around St Pancras station for an hour. So it turned into a very long day.

However, it was fun in the middle part.  It was lovely to catch up with Anita, a friend of some 25 years or more, whom I hadn't seen for several years. I hadn't been to the London show since I think 2015 so I was interested to see what it would be like.  Unfortunately due to COVID test requirements that had changed at short notice, there were very few European traders and the show itself was quite small.  In the old days it used to be over three floors, but this year it was only on the ground floor. I suppose we should be grateful we can go at all, considering what's going on the world.  It did make me feel old though: many of the traders whom I had always seen there have retired (or died!) and some of the remaining ones looked very elderly. I overheard one customer monologuing at a trader about how the glory days were gone in the hobby, when all the big names used to be at the shows, and how we were the last ones to see that and it's all gone now etc.  I suppose that's true - I first went to the show in I think 1989 just after I moved to the UK, and I went regularly through the 90s, when the top international names in the hobby would all be exhibiting. So you could see up close works of art costing hundreds or even thousands of pounds with incredible workmanship. Not that I had that kind of budget but it was wonderful to look.

I picked up a few things despite not really having a shopping list:

The chintz plate and stand is from Stokesay Ware and is for my Canadian house to symbolise my small collection of vintage chintz ware in real life.  The basket is by Francine Coyon of Vannerie Miniature in France, which along with the pierced caddy by Truly Scrumptious is for my Japanese house.  The Art Deco candlesticks and chip-carved spice box are also from Truly Scrumptious.  The former for my Art Deco roombox and the latter has found a home in my Gamekeeper's Cottage.

(excuse the poor flash photos, the light is so bad this time of year).

After saying goodbye to Anita, I strolled through Hyde Park on my way down to the V&A London museum in South Kensington.  There is a long fenced walk there called the Flower Walk, which was just swarming with urban wildlife. In between all the signs warning you not to feed them because it attracts vermin, were many people throwing food to the pigeons, parakeets (!), and everywhere fat voracious grey squirrels who would come right up to you hoping for food. The squirrels were actually a bit intimidating: at one point I had three of them surrounding me and eyeing me like they were considering climbing up my clothing. I also saw a very fat and large rat sidling along with little fear.

At the V&A I did a bit of shopping before visiting the Faberge exhibit, which was quite interesting despite the usual appalling traffic flow design. I really don't know what they teach in curator school but it sure isn't human behaviour.  The displays highlighted various points in his working career and culminated in a display of several of the famed Faberge eggs.  My favourite was the Winter Egg, absolutely exquisite in rock crystal and diamonds. Photos weren't allowed so this photo is courtesy of Wiki. The little basket of spring flowers carved from hardstones is the surprise from inside the egg.

After Faberge I went into the 'Bags:Inside and Out exhibit, which was a fairly random collection of methods with which humans have carried their possessions over various eras and cultures. Photos appeared to be allowed here, or at least everyone was taking them without any objection. I particularly liked this tiny opera bag which folds out to reveal all kinds of compartments holding opera glasses, a folding fan, hankie etc.

And of course no trip to the V&A is complete without a visit to the gift shop, where I bought this tea towel to use in bag sewing.

Crafts this week:

When I was at the Harrogate show a few weeks ago, I saw some lasercut MDF plaques at the Riverside Craft Warehouse stand including this one for the sewing room.  It was only £2 but I knew I would never get it home in one piece. So I ordered online when I got home, which was £3 plus £3 postage. So three times the price, sigh.  But I had fun painting it, and adding a bit of faux quilt as an accent, and it is now displayed in my sewing room.

I put another Trimits kit together: this one is a Robin decoration with a little embroidery trim.  I actually bought several Trim-its kits in a sale a while back, and kept them for my own advent calendar for December.  I've also got the Petite Properties '12 days of Christmas' 1/24th scale advent calendar to look forward to, which will start on the 14th of December.

oh, and in the Cross Stitch Guild magazine, they had a little feature on glass flower frogs; which are glass holders full of holes intended to sit in the bottom of a flower vase but oh so useful for holding sewing tools, pens etc.  I got a purportedly Edwardian example on ebay for a few pounds and it's now on my desk holding my pens and pencils. I'd never heard of these before.

I used my new Scan N Cut to scan in the applique templates from a Christmas pattern kit I won in a raffle I think many years ago, then got the machine to cut the shapes out exactly in card.  This photo just shows the cut outs for better visibility but you get the idea.  Then I could use the card templates to cut out the felt shapes accurately, genius.  I could have had the machine cut the felt for me as well but I think that would have just gummed up my tacky mats so I didn't go that far.

I've hand-stitched the felt appliques down and am part-way through adding the embroidery detail before making them up into xmas ornaments. I'm not loving the oatmeal mitten colourway but otherwise enjoying the little project.

Having previously tried a swim session at the public pool, confirming my hatred of public pools, I did force myself back to try out an Aquafit exercise session which, surprisingly, I actually enjoyed. So I've signed up to those every week in an effort to become more active. I hate exercising, but this was more like silly dancing in water for 45 minutes. I'm hoping to build up my stamina more in case I can do some travelling next year.

Right, I'm off to go put up some Christmas lights outside with DH - braving the cold weather and chilly winds!

A month into retirement, how did that happen?

 DS shocked me a few days ago by mentioning that I'd been retired for a full month now - I immediately pooh-poohed this because I knew it had only been a few weeks. Until he recited the dates to me to prove his case.  How did this happen?  How did one-twelfth of a year suddenly go past? I really don't feel like I've done very much yet.

I've just been in my sewing room cutting out pieces for my Haori coat from the lucky cat motif fabric I showed some weeks ago.  I'm using this video for reference, but have resized all the measurements to hopefully fit myself.  I've done a mockup of the upper torso to try it on for size, and tweaked my measurements a bit.  I'm using a nice printed jersey for the lining, and a contrast collar in another Japanese fabric.

I also started piecing together the Tilda Flower Wreath Quilt that I cut out a few weeks ago.  This is a modern quilt comprised principally of snowball blocks, so there is a lot of piecing to create just one block and I need to sew nine big blocks.  I started out by arranging my flower blocks in nine groups to try to spread the colours around.

Then I laid out the pieces for one block, mixing in leaf colours and flower centres, again aiming for a mix.

Sewing is basically endless chains of four squares as you add snowball blocks to each flower 'petal'.  Snipping the chains quickly became tedious so I took time out to knock up a crude thread cutter from scraps of wood and an old rotary blade, which speeds up the thread cutting process immensely. You can buy these in plastic but they cost about £17 or so.

I finally completed the first block, I like how it looks, sort of modern-cottagey.  It's going to be a time consuming sew, but I think it will look great when the quilt is done.

Another project I worked on this week was a little cartonnage sewing booklet, using the handwoven tweed fabric sample that I bought on our Cumbria holiday this summer.  I based it on a design I saw online but made up my own measurements to fit my little square of tweed.  The end result probably isn't terrible useful, and I should have made the spine deeper so that the book would close more easily. But it was a chance to practice my cartonnage techniques as I would like to do more of that in future.  I also found out that the PVA glue I bought in Wilko is far too watery for cartonnage and I basically had to start the interior over again after ruining the first pieces, luckily I had enough of the inside fabrics.  Choosing coordinating fabric was a bit difficult, the apparently-blue tweed in fact has tangerine and lime green and other colour strands running through it. I decorated the cover with a handmade ceramic button I had in my stash.

I finally conquered my fear of the box, and opened my new Brother Scan N Cut.  The machine comes with a little starter project to make a folding gift bag so I fired it up and made the bag.  I was surprised at how much I had picked up just from watching a few Youtube videos while I was making up my mind whether I wanted to get a machine or not.

The starter pack gift box

Then I downloaded a free pattern to cut out a little gift box which just fits the baubles I am giving my lace friends for christmas, so I made a few of those out of some scrapbooking paper I had in my stash.

Then I was tidying up my recipe box and was wishing I had more dividers, and realised I could just create a shape in the design space and cut them out on the machine myself.  

I still haven't actually read the manual yet but I did start on it today.

On the knitting side of things, I finally finished the second Lenton Rose sock.  For some reason I really struggled with the second one. I don't usually suffer from Second Sock Syndrome but I think because you have to work from a chart and can't just knit in a relaxed way, it wasn't doing it for me.  Also I don't think my two yarns have played well together, there is a definite tension issue going on which is not all my fault.  But they are nice and cosy which is good as the weather has turned quite cold here now.

On the retirement front, I have done a bit more decluttering and today we did a deep clean of DS's office, formerly known as the dining room, which hadn't had a proper clean since before lockdown.  So there were some major dust bunny collections underneath where DS doesn't normally hoover, plus lots of cobwebs and other sins.  We had a bit of excitement when we moved an antique Wernicke stacking bookcase that I keep sets of vintage china in, in order to hoover behind it. The base suddenly partially collapsed, leaving the four bookcase components teetering under the weight of all the china sets.  DS and I worked hastily to remove all the china to safety while DH held the bookcase up.  I've taken the base downstairs and glued it back together, and will add a few more glue blocks for safety once the initial glue-up has set.  Maybe I had too much weight in it, but books would have been heavy as well.  Probably just the c100 year old glue giving up.  I've been quite ruthless about not putting back some of the clutter, and have added to the charity pile plus listed a few things on Facebook. (which is always annoying - today I've had someone ask me to post the item I had listed as collect only, then complain about the postage price for tracked postage and why didn't I just send it cheaply via MyHermes, then announced she doesn't do Paypal only bank transfers so she's not having it after all since I am averse to handing out my bank details to random Facebook users because I'm just funny like that).

In the wake of the Harrogate show, and in the spirit of a more interesting retirement, I have now joined both the Quilters Guild and the Cross Stitch Guild.  It was an effort to join the former, I am still holding a bit of a grudge after a run-in with what was then a very hidebound and oldfashioned organisation 20 years ago when I used to run a quilting group.  I've been told that it's all completely different now and a new younger brigade has taken over, so we'll see.  You have to fill out a paper form and post it to them, and can't join online, so not so modern so far.  The Cross Stitch Guild seems primarily a marketing arm for their own designs but very efficiently run and I received a comprehensive welcome pack within a few days. They also run stitching weekends which I might be interested in attending

And I made cookies.  One of my aspirations for retirement is to learn how bake gluten free stuff.  Since I was never much good at baking normal stuff, and gluten free baking seems to require something akin to a chemistry degree particularly when you are also allergic to Xanthum gum as I am, this may be a bridge too far.  But the cookies were nice, even the normies (DS and DH) liked them.