Extreme gardening

 Well, by mentioning the Spring word in my last post, I obviously jinxed the weather and we are once again in freezing temperatures with occasional dustings of snow.  I have been waiting to do some February jobs in the garden on a non-work day.  It was at least sunny today despite being minus 2 degrees C, so we bundled up and headed out.  DH sprayed the roses with fungicide (which I'm really hoping didn't just immediately freeze and possibly damage the plants) while I dressed the beds with bone meal, and pruned the roses and summer flowering clematis, and tried not to get frostbite in my extremities. It's probably too early given the temperatures but since I work in the week I decided to just get it over with. I wanted to divide the rhubarb but the ground is just too hard so that will have to wait.  Hopefully once things thaw again, our efforts will give things a good start for the S-word.

I had a go at the February Bag of the Month pattern, which was the Hope Bag by Mrs H.  This is a hardware-light little handbag which builds on skills learned from the January pattern (such as sewing an internal zip pocket) and adds new techniques such as a inset top zipper closure and rolled handles.  I fumbled my way through a first effort which turned out not too bad, and I've cut out pieces for a second version.  I've ordered some bag feet from Empress Mills plus more interfacing, so I'm waiting for that to arrive before I can carry on (hasn't despatched yet despite placing my order over a week ago...grrrr).  This is a nice size to be a little lunch bag, or a little knitting bag.  Isn't this Moda fabric pretty?

I spent some time knitting half of a sock foot this week, using some handpainted yarn I received from Rosie's Moments in a Squirrel Nutkin-themed mystery sock box a couple of years ago.  The yarn is many shades of caramel-brown autumnal shades.  It came with a cabled sock pattern, with cables that are meant to look like little owls.  However it became clear after half a foot's worth that the yarn was completely concealing the owl effect, leaving the cables just looking messy and unbalanced.  So I pulled that out and retrieved my Little Box of Socks by Charlene Schurch and Beth Parrott, which has some good patterns for hand-painted yarn. I chose the Faceted Rib sock and have made a start on that instead. It's a simple four-row pattern with slipped stitches on two of the rows.

I haven't done much on the Japanese dollhouse garden this week.  I improvised a ramshackle dust cover from some scraps of perspex I had lying around, made even more ramshackle than it needed to be by my lack of anything effective to cut the perspex with.  The jig saw just shattered it, the little scrollsaw couldn't cope with the thickness, a Stanley knife made little impact.  I ended up grooving a line with a cutting disk on a Dremel tool and then snapping each piece off along the grooved line.  It's not pretty and by no means airtight, but hopefully it will stave off the worst of the dust settling.  Then I spent a tiring few hours tidying up the dollshouse room after the build, as I have a bad habit of covering every available surface (including the floor) with discarded materials and tools until I end up working on a three-inch bare patch remaining on one corner of the desk.  I also re-organised my extensive collection of terrain materials, trying to get everything out of their crumpled leaking packaging and into labelled plastic containers.  And I've made a start on a little ladle for the basin, adapting a 1/24 teacup. It's very cold in the dollshouse room however, which is not enticing.

Otherwise I'm still hand-quilting the applique quilt, I've done a bit of cross-stitch on the house sampler, I've started a free kit for a cross-stitch angel christmas decoration, and I'm in the home stretch of stitching the bobbin lace edging to its fabric.  And I've spent far too much time playing an old video game called 'Dishonored'.