Had my jab

 I had my COVID vaccination Monday afternoon, the Astra Zeneca variety.  The screeners spend a lot of time telling you about how you might have various side effects of the flu type.  I only had a sore arm for about 30 minutes and was fine the rest of the day, so went to bed feeling pretty relieved.  Only to wake up feeling cold at 1am, which deteriorated into violent chills for over two hours - and by violent, I mean my entire body uncontrollably jerking and convulsing like I was having electric shock treatment, and my teeth literally clacking together.  I put on several more layers of clothes and still couldn't get warm - and it was even difficult getting dressed because of all the jerking and twitching.  Luckily I had some paracetemol, which is what the screeners had recommended, and after taking that, things finally subsided about 3am.  I dozed off, only to wake up an hour later burning hot and feverish.  Also wide awake for some bizarre reason.  So all the layers had to come off, no more sleep, I gave up at 6am and got up and had breakfast since I was also quite hungry.  I napped a few times during the next day and felt stiff, sore and exhausted all day, bed at 8pm.  So the learning point here is make sure you have paracetemol before getting your jab!  Of course, DH had the other kind and had no problems at all other than a sore arm, but several of my work colleagues have had similar issues with both types of jab.  It's better than getting COVID though, and apparently the second jab (mine's in June) isn't as bad. Let's hope.

I finished my March Bag of the Month bag.  It's not perfect but I feel a sense of achievement to have gotten it finished and it looks fairly alright. It's definitely the most complex bag I've tackled so far.  I think I could do it better if I made another one, but I don't know if I will since I don't need another one.  The bag is an example of how much nicer things look when you spend out on the correct type of zipper, the nice metal zipper ends finishing the ends of the top zipper, the mesh, the vinyl, the frame etc.  Bagmaking is not a cheap hobby.  But oddly satisfying to turn quilting fabric into a robust practical item. I like all the compartments and pockets.

Also this week, I tried sewing a simple summer blouse that just pulls over the head, in cotton broadcloth.  It's come out a bit short and I think next time I might put some darts in the front, but it's cute.

We've got a blackbird nesting in our garden!  When DH first spotted her hopping into the rose and ivy stems on the back fence, not that high off the ground, we thought it was a pretty risky place to build a nest.  That's until we saw our cat perched directly above her on the fence top, obviously wanting to reach her, but totally unable to because of the thorny rose stems that shelter her, but don't give any purchase for a cat's weight.  This photo is a bit blurry because it's taken on extreme zoom from our kitchen window.  She is probably sitting on eggs now because from time to time she gets up and fluffs herself and pokes about underneath before settling back down.  We were out doing a bit of gardening today and we were careful not to go too close, we could see her watching us from the nest.  We've never had a nest that we could see before, it's quite a delight.

The sumo is back on in Japan so I am knitting on the second Autumn colour sock while I watch the highlights in the evening.  My online Japanese course came to the end of the textbook so now I am revising for the tests which will be released starting next week I think.  I've completely forgotten everything we did in the earlier chapters so I'm not expecting to do very well. It's also very tempting to spend too much time playing video games:  I finished Dishonored twice (to get both endings) and am now on Dishonored 2 which I'm enjoying.  But it's very bad for time-sucking: I sit down after dinner thinking 'I'll just play for 40 minutes or so while I digest' and suddenly it's 10pm. DS thinks it's hilarious after all the nagging I did when he was younger about spending too much time playing computer games...

Brave New World

 Today I joined the Newbury Bobtails Online Lace Event, held on a Zoom call (presumably a professional subscription as there was no time limit) for three hours. It was organised very much along the lines of a traditional lace day.  The 50 attendees, many from Newbury but others from as far away as Penzance and Edinburgh, were welcomed; heard presentations from the three online suppliers; listened to a very interesting presentation by Jen Best of  Beaker Buttons on the history of buttonmaking in England and in particular of Dorset buttons; viewed two presentations of lace and craft creations by the Newbury Bobtails group; and we could join various breakout rooms if we wanted to chat in smaller groups or ask a supplier a particular question.  Considering the average age of lacemakers, and the fact that the lacemaking world (at least in the UK) hasn't really seemed to embrace the Zoom age, it all went much better than I had expected - with a minimum of 'you're on mute!' and only the occasional monologue from someone who thinks we all need to know about how her Ipad isn't showing her the breakout rooms.

Towards the end, the chat turned towards the greater uptake of online communication over the past year, and how tools such as Zoom are enabling people to attend events that they probably couldn't have made it to physically, the cost saving of not having to pay petrol and accommodation, and the time saved by being able to attend from your own living room.  There appeared to be general agreement that even once things get back to some semblance of normal, it would be a shame to give up the newfound technology. It was acknowledged that for some, whether technophobe or with accessibility challenges, online meetings are not the answer. So the way forward might be a hybrid of both approaches. My workplace is thinking along the same lines, and is developing a hybrid working policy for people to combine home and office work, and is even looking at whether being attached to a physical office location has any meaning any longer.  Why can't you live in Leicestershire, but be attached to the Cornwall office, or take training from the London office? I suppose it all relies on trust to a certain extent. Certainly the Goldman Sachs CEO is said to be completely rejecting homeworking and labelling the past year as an 'aberration', and is said to want everyone back in the office. I wonder how many of his staff will be looking for new jobs with more realistic employers?

My in-laws have gamely struggled with the new world and over the last few years have learned how to use email and skype, more or less.  So we were a bit surprised when they started fiddling with their laptop screen camera in our most recent Skype chat, resulting in a view of just my f-i-l's shiny scalp for the remainder of the call.  On enquiry, it turned out that they wanted to see a better angle of the three of us, and they were adjusting their screen view in the belief that it would adjust the camera at our end....

One of the online replacements I've been enjoying is the Lace Suppliers Spotlight group on Facebook, a sort of constantly changing online Lace Fair.  Various suppliers can sign up to be the spotlight vendor for 24 hours.  I've bought a few things over the past several months, and this pretty pair of bobbins from Margaret Wall arrived today.

And during the Newbury Lace event today, I heard about The Online Wool Show, a similar online showcase for UK knitters, which I look forward to exploring further.

I finished the first Autumn hand-painted yarn sock and am a couple of inches into the second sock.

I've spent a fair amount of time this week wrestling with the third and final Bag of the Month pattern, which is for a two-tier bag called 'The Tumbleweed Toiletry Tote' from Blue Calla sewing patterns. It's definitely the most complex bag so far, and the first which seems to be causing more people to have issues.  It's not helped by densely formatted PDF instructions which I find hard to keep my place in, and I've been reduced to literally sewing along with the video instructions - which is not typical for me at all.   Although labelled as a toiletries bag, people are making it as everything from a handbag to a knitting bag.  I've followed the hack to add some extra pockets inside so I can use it as a craft tote. It doesn't look like anything at the moment as I am in the midst of attaching the top compartment to the lower compartment.

Don't forget to fill out the National Census tomorrow!

We seek him here, we seek him there

 The last few weeks I've been pottering occasionally in my dollshouse room, trying to turn the Chinese glass globe dollshouse into something I could live with.  The actual house was far too naff to pretend to be a serious dollshouse, so it just looked wrong in the glass globe - not to mention the imminent danger of all the 'snow' falling out the open back.  I'm talking about this ornament which you haven't seen for a while.

I removed it all from the glass globe and tried to think how else I could display it while still hiding the electronic circuit board that controls the lights.  Pawing through my box of bits, I found some old ribbon spools and realised that I could combine a couple of those into a suitable base.  So I did that, painted the new base and decorated it with ribbon, and cut a window in the base to access the electronics.  The lights had stopped working which I had assumed was because the impact-activated 'knock switch' must have got hit when we had the flood, and the lights had exhausted the batteries.  But I found a loose wire which had broken off the circuit board so thought that must be the fault.

I glued the house onto the spool and started adapting the surrounding trees and fence to fit onto the spool.  I realised the yellow outdoor bench was over-sized so I cut the legs shorter.  But when it came time to glue the bench onto the front yard, could I find the bench?  No I could not.  All miniaturists know the drill: you search your immediate work area, you search yourself in case the item is sticking to your sleeve or has fallen on your lap.  Then you carefully stand up and start searching the floor directly underneath where you are working.  Then you move the chair and get down on your knees and start looking in every direction.  Then with a torch.  Then you start looking further afield in case you have accidentally kicked said item into a distant corner.  Then you start accusing the cat, and walking randomly around the basement in case it was sticking to your clothing but then fell off at another location.  

Eventually after about 10 minutes of fruitless searching, I gave up and decided I would have to live without the bench.  I returned to the house and to puzzling out the electrics.  Of course the minute I turned the house upside down (I had already looked under it previously), there was the little yellow bench nesting in all the wires hidden inside the cavity.  How? 

Sadly the lights seem to be kaput.  I had ordered fresh batteries, and I re-soldered the broken wire.  The circuit board/battery pack are working because they will light up a spare bulb.  But none of the three bulbs in the house itself will light up.  I can't see any broken wires, so I assume they just burnt out after the flood. As they were glued in while the house was being assembled, it would be difficult and destructive to change them out.  So I've just left them for now, but it's disappointing.

Anyway, it looks a bit more like a cute Christmas ornament now.

I finished the second Hope handbag this week, in a pleasing colour combination that I quite like. I shall have to find a use for this one, perhaps as a knitting bag.

An unusual craft project this week was to repair the cat's scratching post.  After about 18 months, these become so shredded and broken that I usually order her a new one.  DH suggested that maybe I could buy more sisal twine instead.  This indeed turned out to be a thing, with Amazon selling 'repair kits' for scratching posts.  I sent off for a skein of twine and was able to rejuvenate her post with a bit of hot glue and some staples.  She has a tall post so I was only able to recover the most damaged section at the top, but she seems quite happy with it and used it right away. 

The Autumn hand-painted yarn socks have made it past the heel so a sock is within reach.

Other than that, I've worked a bit on the Little House cross-stitch sampler, finished hand-quilting another block on the 25-block Applique Quilt, and I've made a hesitant return to my Bucks Lace Butterfly mat.  It's been quite hard to pick the latter up after a break of several months, and I've been wishing my past self had made better notes on such fundamentals as how long to cut gimp threads to go around the butterfly wings. But I'm slowing getting back into it.

A real treat this week was to book almost all of my leave allowance at work, since for the first time ever I am not having to hoard leave like a miser - due to planning to quit/retire in the autumn. I don't even need to save leave days for christmas, hee hee hee.  Since I haven't taken much leave during the past year, I had quite a bit saved up.  So I've applied for a week every month from June to September and am looking forward to it.

In other news, I've had a letter inviting me to make an appointment for my vaccination.  When I went online to look, the nearest centre was several miles away in another city so I haven't booked yet. DH had his done in our town, which I would prefer.  The website says to keep checking back for new appointments so I will try a few more times to see if I can get something closer that won't require DH to take as much time off work to drive me.  But it feels like progress to have the opportunity.  I wonder how long it will be before DS gets his?  Hopefully before his office re-opens and starts pressuring him to get back on the train.

Have you had your jab?

Daily non-essentials

 During my weekly online call with my bobbin lace friends, the conversation turned to how much money we seem to be saving during lockdown.  One of my friends lost her job not long before the pandemic, but was saying that somehow she seems to have more money in the bank every month these days despite not receiving a salary.  We put it down to the lockdown inhibiting all the random daily purchases of non-essential items.  Certainly I used to regularly buy things to and from work on my commute; snacks or lunch ingredients on the way in, rewards and consolations on the way home, occasional magazines for the train, chance purchases in charity shops etc.  Or if you popped to the shops for item X on a Saturday, you might end up picking up several other potentially useful things on the same trip. Thinking about it, on haircuts alone I have likely saved about £350 over the past year as I would normally go every six weeks for a colour and trim.  Of course we are in fortunate positions financially, all in our later years and some of us retired already. I feel so sorry for the people whose livelihoods have been decimated by the lockdown and I wonder how many of the smaller shops and businesses we take for granted in the neighbourhood are going to survive.

I of course have been compensating by increased online spending.  My Empress Mills order finally turned up so I was able to finish my first Hope handbag by adding the feet.  I'm not really that convinced about putting bag feet on homemade bags.  They look nice, and add a professional touch.  But homemade bag bases tend to sag around the feet and touch the floor anyway, even when stabilised like this one with an inserted plastic base.

Now that I've got more interfacing, I can go back to the second Hope bag that I had cut out, and get on with it. However, since it's been about three weeks since I sewed the first bag, the pattern is no longer fresh in my mind.  Also the March bag of the month has been released now.  It's quite a clever bag with a doctor's bag type top section and a zippered-on train case type bottom section, and it can be converted to hold craft supplies. I'm looking forward to having a go at it.

Another online purchase is an actual roll of clear vinyl so I won't have to cut up duvet packaging any longer.

A small finish this week has been the magazine kit Cross Stitch 3-D Angel.  When I finished the stitching and actually looked at the instructions, it turned out that I had done it wrong.  The wings were meant to be stitched onto the reverse of the plastic canvas and then the two sides of the angel wrapped around each other.  I have improvised by stitching the wings together at the back and then folding them forwards and stitching them to her dress, and I think it looks fine.  I need to glue some fabric or felt to the back of her wings to hide the untidy stitch ends there. It will be a cute tree decoration next year.

The big finish this week was the Yoko Saito Japanese house box.

Each log has been given a bit of definition by threading some wool yarn through each channel from the inside.

Then you stitch the outside and the lining together, and turn through.  I cut card rectangles to slide into the base and into each side pocket to stiffen the box.

The assembly was surprisingly arduous.  The seam allowances are very small, and perhaps my card a bit too thick, so it was challenging to close up the top of each wall with slip stitching while trying to keep it looking neat.  Even more difficult was the seaming of the four corners of the box. I had to use a circular needle which was difficult to grasp and hurt my fingers, and which was really a bit too thick so it didn't want to push through the bulky seam allowances at each edge.  And again difficult to get a neat result.  I don't think the designer would think much of my end product!  DH also helpfully pointed out (when it was finished, so far too late) that the biggest window is set one log lower down than all the other windows because I drew it wrong when I made the pattern. 

But overall I'm quite pleased with it, it looks typically Japanese in terms of construction and colour choices, and the traditional house shape is similar to houses we saw in Japan.  Like these houses in a small village in the Iya valley on the island of Shikoku.

Gratuitous shot of my cat being as cute as possible in the hopes of convincing me that it is in fact two hours later and really her supper time.