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.