Winter wonder

 We had snow!

Just a few inches, but it transformed the garden into a winter wonderland.  It fell all day Sunday and lasted until Tuesday when it was banished by rain and warmer temperatures.  But as I type this, it is actually snowing again.  It's not settling though, too warm I think.  Monday morning I had to walk almost a mile in the snow to post something I had sold online, DH came with me in case of accidents, but for the most part it wasn't too slippy and we enjoyed the walk.  It was nice to get out into the snow but also nice to get home for a nice cup of tea.

I've done the main knitting on both the Jamieson Spindrift wristwarmers now.  The second one is blocking, and I completed the thumb steek on the first one using the crochet method shown here.  Having considered that, I wondered if my thumb would get cold just hanging out with no covering, so I am experimenting with picking up stitches around the steek and knitting a thumb. If I don't like it, I can just pull it out again.

This week I finished the bit of Torchon edging for the Christmas decoration kit.  I applied the supplied scrapbooking papers to one of the MDF shapes and have added some of the trimmings and my bit of bobbin lace.  I just need to glue on the gold snowflake properly.  I don't love the end result, I think it looks a bit rough and ready.  I'm not sure I want to make another length of the lace (which needs to be twice as long) for the other MDF shape which is a bell. We'll see.

After finishing the saddlebag last week, I poked through my box of 'kits in waiting' and pulled out the kit for a kimono wallhanging that I bought from a Japanese vendor at Festival of Quilts in 2019.  The kit included all the fabrics, the pattern (without seam allowances) and a sheet of fairly rough hand-drawn diagrams with a few English words on it.  I puzzled over the 'instructions' for some time before tracing off the separate pattern pieces onto tissue and adding a seam allowance.  It became clearer as I went along though, and I managed to complete the Kimono and am rather pleased with it.  The actual Japanese fabrics really make it, and the little details like the separate pockets, and contrast lining poking out from behind the sleeves and the hem.  It's fairly large at about 15" collar to hem - I think it would be cute sized down although even more fiddly to make.

Having enjoyed the kimono, I had another trawl through the box of kits and chose a kit for an applique binder cover that I bought at the Carrefour Europeen du Patchwork, Sainte Marie aux Mines, France a few years ago.  The trading name appeared to be Spanish, but the thick pack of instructions turned out to be in Catalan according to Google Translate.  I sighed, and got on with typing in the instructions to Google Translate, and writing down the English meanings.  When I got to page 3 though, I was puzzled to find that it appeared to be a repeat of page 1.  That's when I realised that I actually had two sets of instructions: one in Catalan, and one in French.  I was kicking myself as I can read French (at a poor level) so basically had just wasted a lot of time. Oh well.  So I've traced off the applique pattern onto Steam-a-SeamLite and  have sorted out all the small scraps of fabric (unlabelled) that came with the kit to match them up with the various pattern elements, and I am ironing them on in preparation for fusible applique.

I've spent a fair amount of time this week on the Japanese dollshouse garden.  It was rather nervewracking, I was trying to explain to DH why, but I don't think he got it.  It's just that every decision I make, and every change I effect, is whittling away at the Potential of the project.  The Potential being the ideal Japanese garden in all my holiday photographs and in my mind's eye.  The more the project takes shape as an actual concrete creation, the less Potential remains, and the more the pendulum swings towards possible  naff-ness.  At the back of my mind are all those foreign attempts at 'English thatched cottages' which exist in the dollhouse world - you can tell what they intended to make, but the end result can be extremely variable (like the one that had used faux fur for thatching...).

Anyway, I started out by applying paint effects to the driveway and cobbled terrace, until I was happier with those.

The next step was to install the larger trees and rocks.  The trees are some scenic trees I had in my stash, and I gave them a severe haircut with scissors to mimic the cloud pruned trees we saw in so many domestic gardens, I also decapitated an evergreen with some difficulty using wirecutters, to achieve the pruned look. I added the Japanese stone lantern.  Then I applied a variety of clump foliage and small stones along the edges of the dry gravel river and pond, to conceal the edges.  Meanwhile I was improving a couple of cloud pruned small trees that I bought in a model store in Japan by adding flock to the rather unconvincing dish-sponge leaves.

Next was the flocking, applied using the wet working method described in the previous post.  I tried to use a variety of colours but as it turns out, the glue darkens everything, so I don't think I'm quite there yet.  Once that all dried, I added the smaller trees, some clump foliage bushes and the bridge.

There's still a lot more detail to add and refine, and the pavilion to add, but here's where it's at so far: (I'm sure to a Japanese person, this all looks rather like faux fur thatch...)

Forecast is snow

 My virtual work colleagues, dotted around the country, have mostly been reporting snow the last week or so, but here in the Midlands we've just had rain.  But today apparently we may get snow, and already there has been one practice swirl of flakes. It is quite cold. we have to keep the heat on all the time now and there are still icy draughts sweeping around my ankles - one thing about an old house is that it is very well ventilated. I am yet again grateful that I am not commuting any longer, and I can choose whether or not to leave the house for my daily walk (staying in today!). I try to get out most lunch hours and walk at least a mile, I think it is beneficial for both my muscles and my mental health.  It's always a bit of a surprise to see other people when I'm out, we are so embedded in our little isolation bubble that it feels like we have always lived this way. Thank goodness I am retiring within the year, I fear I may no longer be in the right mindset to return to a physical office.

I had an extra day off this week, and amongst other things, I finished the Mountain Saddlebag.  It's not perfect but I am relatively pleased with it. I bought the cat fabric in Nippori fabric town in Tokyo so it was nice to use that in a project.  The bag is stiffened with Decovil Light and Bosal foam interfacing. The handle is a purchased one I had in my stash.

I've continued to potter away on the Japanese dollhouse garden.  My faith has been wavering slightly as we are still in the stage of 'looking worse' but hopefully it will get better.

For the thatch effect on the pavilion roof, I was going for the ancient decayed look that we saw on so many temples and buildings in Japan.

Three tiers of 'thatch' applied and a haircut to tidy it all up

Texture added with 'coarse dirt' and 'foliage' scatter.

Paint effect applied to the whole thing, and some highlighting.

This is the sort of look I was aiming for.

I cut into the foamboard to start embedding rocks in strategic places, to become driveway edging and stepping stones. Then I added the driveway edging blocks - these weren't quite tall enough so I had to lift them up by laying them on a little bed of filler tinted grey. This is when I started getting a bit depressed at how messy it all looked.

Then I got to the really anxiety-inducing part: trying to 'pave' the driveway.  My experience with trying to glue down any kind of scatter (sand, grass flock etc.) is that you paint the glue on, sprinkle the flock, the glue dries, then 90% of the scatter falls off leaving you with a streaky mess.  This time I have turned to the experts who build wargaming terrain.  Wargaming terrain can look amazingly realistic and detailed, yet has to stand up to the rigours of having models moved around on it, being transported to and from venues, or even having heavy battle tanks driving around on it.  So I watched several terrain videos such as this, and this, to try to learn how to do it better.  The unlikely solution (unlikely because I didn't really think it would work) is to use the wet-working method.  For this method, you start the same way I usually do: painting the area with dilute PVA glue and sprinkling your scatter.  The difference is that they keep adding more and more scatter in different textures and shades until they have achieved their finished look.  At this point most of the scatter is of course just sitting there, not held down by anything except gravity.  After letting the first glue layer dry, they then wet the whole area with a spray bottle containing water with a flow agent additive, such as Isopropanol (I think this is rubbing alcohol in America?).  Then they spray the area again, this time with dilute PVA glue, until it is all sopping wet.  The flow agent attracts the dilute PVA mixture into all the cracks and crevices. Once it all dries, they are left with a hard scatter layer which is purportedly rugged and durable.  At least, the presenters were knocking the boards with their fist on camera and nothing was falling off.

Getting your dollshouse sopping wet is obviously not an option, but it was something I decided to try on my garden board which I hoped was thick enough not to warp under the treatment. Surprisingly I was able to order Isopropanol on Amazon for delivery, despite it being a flammable product.  I started out with the 'cobble' effect in front of the front door, using aquarium gravel. When I got to the part where I flooded the loose cobbles with dilute PVA, I have to admit I had very little faith.  But having let it all dry, the black gravel bits are held onto the board. Not with a particularly strong adhesion, but I expect that's because rocks are not porous. Encouraged, I then tried the method on the sand for the driveway - this is currently drying so fingers crossed.  I added some more dilute PVA to the aquarium gravel while doing the sand, for good measure.  Once it all dries then I will add some paint effects to both areas.

We took down the outside Christmas lights this morning, so it feels like Christmas is officially over (although I still do have a couple of Christmas houses on display because I like them). I'm still wearing my Christmas sweatshirt because it's so comfy and warm, but expressed my concern to DH about how long I could get away with wearing it.  He looked at me and asked "Why, because you're worried about what the other people in the house think?" He has a point. I guess the usual rules are out the window.  I've perfected my camera angle on MS Teams so that I am viewed only from the neck upwards, so that I can wear whatever to work (I will admit, this is sometimes pyjamas). I've also positioned the camera to the side, so that it is unclear what I am looking at - which allows me to look at something else of much greater interest than the boring team meeting.

I've been borrowing my son's ancient laptop that he used at uni several years ago, to watch videos and Zoom calls while in my sewing room - because the screen is bigger than my tablet and shows more participants.  But the fan was horribly noisy, like an industrial vacuum cleaner about to launch into space.  I looked into buying a replacement but it turns out there is a global shortage of key components for laptops and everything is terribly expensive at the moment.  So on my extra day off, I sat down with a screwdriver and a good light, and took the laptop apart.  Luckily it wasn't difficult, it was obviously designed for it.  As well as being filthy inside, it turned out the fan was almost completely jammed with a thick felt of dust and hair, like something you'd find in a tumbledryer.  I'm surprised it hadn't just exploded.  Much cleaning later, and reassembly, and  now the laptop purrs most of the time with only the occasional louder fan kicking in.  Then I spent most of the rest of the day downloading upgrades, cleaning up the disks, upgrading to Windows 10 (it was Windows 7) and installing an antivirus license.  The result is a much more usable device which I now claim as mine (DS doesn't know that yet but I put the work in! I'll fight him for it...).

False alarm

 I was in my sewing room a few days ago when DS came down to tell me something, but instead asked "what's that burning smell?"  I couldn't smell anything but when I came out into the hallway, there was a strong acrid smell of burning plastic.  Cue much alarm as the three of us hunted around the house for something burning, inspecting plug sockets, opening and shutting doors ("Not in here!"), sniffing inside cupboards and out in the garden etc, while I contemplated shutting down the nearby gas boiler as a precaution, despite the freezing temperatures outside. I put DS up a ladder to sniff around the top of the boiler but he pronounced it smell-free up there.  After a while the smell dissipated, without triggering the smoke alarms - leaving us none the wiser but still worried.  Today DH noticed a burned out ancient lightbulb outside my sewing room and when he went to replace it, discovered a burn mark around the plastic fitting. Mystery solved. It wasn't burned out when we were hunting the smell, that must have been its dying moments.  And that constitutes the exciting news in this household during lockdown...

I've been puttering away on the Japanese dollhouse garden.  One of those projects where it looks worse before it looks better.

Fine-tuning the pavilion to fit into the corner, and 

front posts installed.  The nearer post is cut from a dead branch

found on a walk. The little window has cross bars.

The beginnings of the roof.

Not a cat's hairball, but the beginnings of a thatch effect on the roof.

Tatami floor fitted into the pavilion and framed in with strips. Technically

there wouldn't be tatami out in the exposed weather like this, but

it's always sunny in dollshouse land.

The beginnings of a stone water basin (paperclay applied onto a rock)

My spacer beads arrived, and are being painted to become driveway edging stones

I applied some weathering with paint washes to the resin toy bridge.

This week I finished the main tube of the first Jamieson Spindrift wristwarmer.  It's a bit lumpy because I haven't blocked it yet, I'm trying to decide whether to cut the thumb steek first, or block it first then do the thumb steek.

I also finished the ABC chart for the Little Houses cross stitch sampler and have started the next chart for DE.

I've cut out all the pieces for the Mountain Saddlebag pattern and fused the interfacings on, I'm hoping to do some sewing on that this afternoon. Otherwise this week I've continued the handquilting, worked a bit of lace for the Christmas decoration, and continue to sew my bucks edging to the mat fabric.

What have you been up to lately?

Same old, same old

 We are in lockdown Mark 3 now, but it really makes very little difference to us.  It's surprising what has stayed open, including the fast-food style cake shop in town.  I saw a couple of customers in there the day after the lockdown was announced, and I felt they each deserved a t-shirt:  "I risked my life for a piece of inferior cake".  On the same day, I got DH to email his parents to say that we did NOT want them to take the risk or expense of posting our Christmas presents (that we were formerly going to drive down to pick up). To which they responded that they would look into posting them. After another 'definitely do NOT do that', they have reluctantly opened them for us and sent us photos which we are perfectly happy with.  It may not be until March or April that they are in our hands, but that's fine of course.

We've also been having an extended cold snap of freezing weather.  DH and I went out to do some tidying up and hacking back in the garden today, and despite being well bundled up, I rapidly lost feeling in my fingertips as they went numb in the cold.  DH swapped me his nice warm gloves which reinstated my circulation.

I finished the second try at the mini knitted rabbit and I am more happy with this one although I still don't feel I've got the face right.  I did the version with knickers instead of tights.

I chose some of the rocks we collected last week for my Japanese dollshouse garden, and of course the two big ones I wanted to use were white.  So I painted them black and dry brushed them with several other colours.  They looked fairly realistic in the end: it's the big one at the back, and the big one on the left.

I've made a start on the dry garden although it is a work in progress.  I used Tetrion filler and an improvised comb to create a  raked gravel type of pattern, then used Mod Podge to apply a light coating of sand on top.  I've painted a first coat of grey over the sandy filler but it needs more work.  I also need to repaint some of the rocks where I unavoidably got grey paint.

I've made a start on the tea pavilion.  I couldn't find a photo of the one I am remembering from Japan, which was a small affair in a samurai house garden, that you climbed up stairs to enter.  The space is quite small so I have sketched out something that is a cross between a tea house and a waiting pavilion, and I've started to cobble it together from stir sticks and foamcore board.

I'm kind of making the garden up as I go along, not sure how I am going to do the 'earth' and planting yet.  And I think I need to do the driveway first, otherwise the plants will be totally in the way.  I'm waiting on some plastic beads I ordered online to arrive, which I am hoping will be the raw material for driveway edging stones.  I've tried my hand at making miniature gardens before, it is very difficult to achieve a realistic result, but hopefully it will be alright.

I've started knitting some wrist warmers, using the leftover Jamiesons Spindrift yarn from the Scalloway Tam that I knit a couple of years ago.  I'm using the same chart that I used for the hat and I think I might try the steeked thumbhole that I used on DH's xmas gloves (which he really likes by the way and is wearing a lot).

After Christmas, Facebook pimped me a cut-price offer on the Bag of the Month Club, for a three month subscription.  You receive one bag pattern each month, supported by video tuition and a Facebook group.  The first pattern is for a saddle-bag type handbag which I might have a go at.  I've ordered the hardware and interfacing which has now arrived.  I have some nice cat fabric I bought in Japan which I thought would make a cute bag when I bought it. I'm just finishing up the plaid dress first.

I hope you are staying warm and safe.

Another year - who knows what it will bring?

 I have a weekly virtual meet-up with some lacemaking friends, and a couple of them were talking about the vaccine being rolled out the UK.  They both seemed to think that we will see a visible difference by summer, one of them thought by Easter.  I don't know if I am being overly pessimistic or just realistic, but I am doubtful we will see much change over the entire year in terms of restrictions and precautions.  I suppose for the vulnerable shelterers who have been trapped in their home, a vaccine may mean they can emerge to greater freedom.  DH and I checked one of the many online vaccinne calculators which showed us at over 23 million down in the queue, and likely not getting a vaccine until June at the earliest. 

Anyway, enough of this doom and gloom - how was your Christmas and new year's? Today I got up a little earlier (8:20am instead of 9am) to start phasing back into my work schedule for Monday (boo, hiss). I've also started taking down Christmas decorations and piling them in the front room to await packing and storage. It's been a very relaxing break, with lots of crafting and television watching.  .

I've done some more work on the Japanese dollshouse outer structures.  I tiled the entranceway roof to match the main roof, using leftover scraps of tiling and decoration from the main build.  The round decorations at the peaks are actually the wheeled section cut from a plastic toy truck bead found  in my bits stash.

I wanted to have a little lean-to outside the kitchen door, but it had to be sized to still allow the hinged front section to open fully.  I played around with the opening section and some masking tape until I could see what I had to work with, then sketched out a simple lean-to.  I built the side wall first then added a roof.

After filling in the end wall, I could start tiling with leftover wooden shingles from the main build, so that the roof matches the other overhangs.

In between rounds of shingling, I looked through my 1/24th scale kits for furniture to use in the lean-to. The house is an odd scale at 1:20, but I thought these two inexpensive Model Village kits would work because a lean-to could conceivably have odds and ends of old furniture.  The shelf unit is meant to be a deeper shop counter, but I cut it down to make it more shallow and added more shelves.  

Shingling complete, and the 'window' fitted with angled privacy slats

The finished lean-to construction, with furniture included for effect.  I've added a few knives to the table, perhaps they do their butchery outside.

The privacy wall in situ, with the lean-to visible in the background.

With the wall now constructed, I could start thinking about the garden.  We saw so many lovely gardens in Japan and I took literally hundreds of pictures.  But the constraints are severe here:  it's quite small and shallow, an inn needs a driveway, I don't have the depth to create a convincing water feature, and the garden has to lift away from the main house to allow the house to be opened up.  I cut some lining paper to fit the garden area and started roughing out ideas.  You may remember the bridge was bought several months ago at a garden centre gift shop.  I looked at a lot of our travel photos for ideas, and online as well.  I really wanted to do a proper tea house and surrounding garden but there isn't room.

I decided on a driveway (the brown in the photo) without a turning circle - perhaps the inn was built before cars were in common usage.  To tie the inn into the garden, I will have a demarcation in the gravel in front of the main entrance (the dark grey semi circle).  There will be a walkway leading away through the gap into the wall around to the servant's entrance.  For the garden portion, I am going with a dry garden - we saw a lot of those as well and the features can be shallow. There will be a small viewing pavilion in the corner.  I transferred my main sketch to the baseboard and painted in the areas which will be covered in scatter/texture later on, and cut my sketch up to use as a pattern to cut the foamboard you can see in the picture.  Since taking the picture, I have trimmed the foamboard in places and given it a base coat of dark green paint and glued it in.  DH and I also went on a rock-collecting expedition a few days ago, trawling the edges of local car parks and construction sites for potential garden feature candidates.

I tried out my Christmas present of my Janome ruffler foot on the skirt of a dress I'm sewing.  It's quite a neat little gadget, with an arm that creates tucks as you sew.  It seems a bit temperamental: I ruffled two identical strips of fabric and one came out longer than the other. But I think that's because I had overlocked the edge first and the overlocking was interfering with the smooth feeding of the fabric.

I finished knitting the mini bunny rabbits, then sewed them up and stuffed them this week.

I'm not that happy with them. I think I went down too many needle sizes and consequently some of the knitting is very tight.  The heads are completely different sizes, and the finishing up could be better (I think I might give them a steam which should help).  Now that I understand the pattern, I have started over again with the next size up of needle (2.5mm for this DK yarn) and am trying to do a better job second time around.

I finished my pink capelet off with an extremely girly ribbon bow - it's lockdown, who's going to see me anyway? I feel a bit Victorian in it.  It's surprisingly warm as well.

Look what I got in the post just before Christmas. They are purportedly Japanese needlework scissors, I thought they were very pretty when I saw them online, but I was picturing little thread snips - these are actually quite a bit bigger than I was expecting.  Still pretty though.  Hopefully my giant man hands will fit into those dainty loops.

I've started a small Torchon lace strip to decorate a Christmas ornament kit I acquired a few months ago.  The kit has two MDF shapes (a Christmas light, and a bell) with scrapbooking papers to cover them and some ribbons and things. The idea is that you work a strip of simple lace to go around the MDF shape.  I couldn't remember how to do Torchon lace since I've only been doing Bucks for some years now, but I got one of my reference books out and made a start.  There are no instructions but by trial and error I think I have now got the correct number of bobbin pairs and am working the correct stitches.  I'll just cut off the starting inch and a half of messy mistakes to hide the evidence when I'm finished.

This week I also tackled a long-standing annoyance which was my Youtube subscription list.  I had about 250 subscriptions and the notifications had long since ceased to work - I've tried everything I could find online to get notifications turned back on  but perhaps I've just exceeded the viable number of subscriptions. Anyway, I could never find anything and it was all completely disorganised.  I stumbled across a Chrome extension called PocketTube.  It is free although you can become a Patreon to unlock additional features if you so desire.  About 30 minutes of work and my Youtube subscriptions are now organised into clickable subject folders that even show me how many unwatched videos they contain, and I have unsubscribed to some of the chaff.  Much better.

Happy new year everyone!!