I made a thing

 This week I made a thing!  I'm not sure what to call it:  a sewing tray? an applique organiser? a tool tray?  It started with Facebook showing me a live video stream by Annie Unrein of ByAnnie.com bag patterns fame.  She was doing a trunk show of several of their patterns which was interesting and reminded me of when I hacked her pattern 'A Place for Everything' a few years ago to make a bobbin storage bag. Her trademark is to enclose the raw edges in binding which both finishes them and adds stability.  Watching the video made me want to try something else in that style.  I've been wishing for a few years that I had something to transport short-term handsewing projects around the house, like when I throw together some tools and fabric for an applique project.  I've been using makeshift solutions such as cardboard boxes and plastic trays.

So I sat down and doodled out the kind of thing I wanted, and then sort of made it up as I went along.  I quilted the flower fabric I bought last weekend onto some Bosal foam stabiliser, backing it with some chambray that used to be one of DH's shirts.  I purposely chose the chambray because it will be a neutral background against which my applique pieces and templates and so forth will be clearly visible.  I wanted a low tray that I could easily reach into, but at the same time I wanted lots of pockets to hold tools, rulers, packets and so forth.  I liked the storage offered by the ByAnnie pattern 'In Control' which she showed in her video, so modelled my pockets after that to a certain extent.    There is a small vinyl zip pocket on one end, then  fabric slip pockets on the other three sides.

When I thought about what else I might want in a sewing tray, I added to my design  a pincushion, a needle-holder, a vinyl thimble pocket, elastic to hold varying sizes of thread spools, and a trash pocket for containing trimmed off fabric and thread ends.  The pincushion, needle-holder and trash pocket are attached with velcro so they are removable for use outside the tray (or emptying the rubbish out). The trash pocket is stiffened with Decovil.

The final touches were to add webbing handles, which flop out of the way when the tray is set down, and a slip pocket underneath (secured with a snap) which holds a firm base of heavy card to give the tray stability.  The reason I didn't make a drop-in base like Annie favours is that I've experienced before the annoyance of small items like needles and needlethreaders disappearing  underneath a loose base, so I wanted a clean tray with no such crannies.

I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out and I think it is going to be really useful for future handsewing projects. I even wondered briefly about submitting it to a magazine, but then I would have to make another (better) one and photograph all the steps and work out proper instructions, and I don't really want to make another one right now. It's been very satisfying to work out how to make this one, it's not perfect but then it doesn't need to be perfect, only useful and nice to look at.

Before I started designing the tray, I finished off another cotton blouse.  I went full Laura Ashley on this one. It's quite fun taking my basic self-drafted pattern and just riffing on it to add details.

And look what turned up in the post....could it be another Chinese dollhouse kit?  Yes it could be.  This one is to make a surprisingly small model in a Japanese style which they are calling the Kyoto Onsen.  Aspects of it are a bit crude, but overall it is quite cute and only 12 inches high.  Facebook tempted me with it (curse you Facebook) and I decided to give myself a lockdown splurge. Hopefully I'll have better luck with the lighting on this one. And no, I haven't yet accessorised the interior of my own Japanese dollshouse, so feel free to report me to the dollshouse police.

I'm getting on well with the pleasantly mindless knitting of the Drops sock yarn shawl, enjoying the random pattern created by knitting with two different colourways in alternate rows.

The long dry spell continues so I've had to start watering the garden this week.  It was almost too late for one of my bonsai trees, which in the space of a few weeks had completely frizzled up since the last time I had looked at it.  There are still a couple of green leaf clusters so I'm hoping it's not dead.

I'm sad to report that our baby bird family is no more.  DH found the mother dead on the lawn one morning (it wasn't our cat because she was shut inside) and when I went to check the babies, they were dead in the nest.  It's very sad. We had marvelled a bit at how much time the mother spent on the ground hunting food and had been keeping an eye on our own cat at times.  Perhaps the mother got a bit over confident, or overly hungry?  I don't know. But now I have to look out the kitchen window every morning at a dead nest which is depressing.

But if  I look the other way, I can enjoy our little cherry tree which is now in full bloom, and very pretty.  We've sat out with a few cups of tea out near it, just enjoying looking at it and being out in the sunshine. 

Risk assessment

 The UK has gone a bit crazy this week since non-essential shops,  and pubs/restaurants etc. were allowed to re-open this past Monday.  Lots of news stories about enormous queues of people waiting to get into Primark (a budget fast fashion store), people hitting the pubs at 8am to breakfast on alcohol and so forth. Even in our small town it is noticeably more bustling in the shopping area and there were queues both within and without several barber shops I passed on Monday (which annoyed my hairdresser when I told her, as they are only meant to be taking people by appointment to minimise risk).  Yes, I finally got my hair cut and coloured this week, I feel years younger when I look in the mirror and definitely a lot tidier. My hairdresser is being quite responsible and only letting limited numbers in the salon at a time, spacing us well apart, everyone has to wear masks etc.  Yes it is a risk, but I've had my first jab and I don't plan to go again for some time.

I guess it's all about personal priorities.  The senior leader of my office announced in our office newsletter how pleased she was to go out to dinner at a pub the first night of opening, so here is a senior manager who obviously thinks it is worth the risk to her to go and eat (probably indifferent) pub food in a public restaurant.  I think that is pretty non-essential and risky, yet I was willing to go to the opening of a new fabric shop in Thrapston today to see what they had, which she would probably find ridiculous.  But I was in control of my movements, could stay away from other customers (apart from one persistently stupid woman who kept coming too close to me until I finally told her she was making me really uncomfortable and she was all surprised), didn't touch very much, and paid from behind a plexiglass shield.  And the shop was pretty big and airy.  It was fun to be back in a fabric shop and having a look, but they didn't have much I wanted.  I picked up a new thimble and new seam ripper as I've managed to puncture one and break the other, a cute pack of fat quarters, some sale floral fabric, and several packs of elastic in various sizes.

This makes me laugh

It's been lovely weather lately, brilliant sunshine to the point where I've had to water the garden because everything was getting so dry.  We went out for a walk this morning by a river in a nearby village, and we spotted this nesting swan on a little island. 

Our own nesting blackbird has hatched at least two babies that we can see.  I took advantage of the mother being off the nest having a snack, to sneak a picture on my phone of the quite hideous youngsters having a nap.  We sometimes see their heads and beaks protruding up over the nest as they beg for food.

Crafting this week was mostly working on the gifts that I wanted to send my pregnant Japanese teacher, so I finished up the rabbit (from a pattern by Little Cotton Rabbits) and play quilt and sent them off along with the hat and booties.  I've knit the rabbit before, it's a great pattern but there are a lot of pieces and it takes a fair bit of time.  It came out pretty well, the head was perhaps a bit disproportionately large, but hopefully she will think it's cute.

I went back to knitting the Autumn coloured sock but was getting a bit bored with that so started on a free Drops pattern for a simple garter stitch triangle shawl, knit in two colourways of variegated sock yarn instead.  Because why not.  I have so much sock yarn anyway, and I don't knit nearly as many socks as I used to.

Bit of family drama this week when our cat  once again didn't come for four nights.  She has a genius for getting herself shut into places so we thought that was probably what had happened.  We put up posters again, I phoned the local vets, we walked around looking for bodies and calling for her in case we could hear her etc.  She suddenly showed up while I was in the middle of a particularly boring online work meeting, so I was able to ditch that and rush downstairs to meet her along with DS.  She was hungry, thirsty and absolutely filthy to the point where I had to give her an actual bath a few hours later but otherwise seems to be fine.  We've kept her in since then but she seems back to normal now.  Of course, she managed to get herself shut into the downstairs cupboard the next day.  I think in her tiny brain there is no risk to getting into enclosed spaces because of course someone will come and let her out once she decides she's ready, or so she thinks - and she is an absolute ninja at sneaking in when you aren't looking, even though I am always looking because I know she will try.

The cherry tree that we planted after our second trip to Japan, is just coming into full blossom and looking really pretty.  It's still a young tree but it's got more branches now so is looking fuller.  Hopefully it will continue to put on more and more branches and become a a real umbrella of blossom. I wonder when we will be able to go Japan again?

I hope you've been able to enjoy some of the lovely weather this week.

Feeling ridiculously happy about getting out of the house

 A friend gave us some free tickets to visit Wrest Park, an English Heritage garden (and house, but house closed for lockdown) some way south of us.  It seemed a fairly safe outing so despite poor weather being predicted, we headed off there this morning. We were both a bit like kids let out of school, feeling ridiculously happy just to see new places and be on the road and out of our own town.  The garden itself was predictably pretty bare at this time of year, but how lovely to look across vistas instead of town streets, and it was so quiet, and we saw loads of birds down by the river. It wasn't terribly warm, but the rain held off until the drive home.  We walked around for about an hour and a half, occasionally just sitting and taking it in, and enjoying a cup of tea from an outdoor kiosk.

The Long Water, with posing swan

We also made an effort on Easter to break out of our rut, and went over to an attractive village called Finedon, just to have a little walk around the town and the green.  I was delighted to find an extensive yarn bombing installation on the green, with multiple trees being decorated with a mixture of knitting and crochet. It appears several local groups and individuals have put a lot of work in during lockdown to make it all.

In my own knitting, I've finished a little hat and bootie set for my Japanese teacher.

I've started knitting her a bunny as well, and while I was at it, decided to run up a quick baby quilt.  I'm going to back it with an IKEA printed pink fleece blanket that I bought years ago for this very purpose but never got round to using. She's supposed to be having a little girl, thus the pink theme. The fabric is by Tilda, which I got in a sale a few years ago. I'm hoping it will appeal to her Japanese sensibilities, being a bit understated.

I've been on a bit of a sewing kick this week.  I made some felt daffodils to celebrate spring/Easter.

I hacked the Tumbleweed bag pattern that I made a few weeks ago, simplifying it to turn it into a single-compartment doctor's bag. In an experiment, I made my own rectangle bag frames from coat hangers to see if it was do-able.  It is definitely do-able, but the coat hanger wire doesn't feel as rigid as the purchased frame did. I feel like I have to be a bit delicate with opening and closing the bag, because if I am too rough then it might bend the wire.  But if you could find sturdier metal wire, it would be money saving to make your own frames.

I made a wired hairband to match the vintage dress I made a few weeks ago.  I used garden wire for this, on advice received online, but it feels a bit bulky. In this case, I could do with thinner wire!

I am conscious that the magnolia blossom may not be around for long (particularly as we had some bizarre snow showers at Easter) so I went out and snapped some more pictures of it, so pretty.

Work has continued to be tedious, but could be looking up.  I've been asked to help train someone who is learning how to do the kind of work I actually like doing (they have been promoted from a lower grade).  A trainer will manage the actual training, but I will be checking the trainee's actual casework and feeding back to her.  I'm kind of looking forward to it as I've not done any checking before so it will be something different, and it's the kind of work I like doing myself. It will go on for 10 weeks and will probably start in a few weeks. I hope I can do a good job and don't make any embarassing mistakes.  

I've started looking for videos on Youtube about mental preparation for retirement and watching them.  It's difficult as there is only about one of those videos to every 20 videos on financial planning. I was thrilled to get an email recently that AQS is hoping to go ahead with four quilt shows in 2022, including Paducah which is the show I had always planned to visit again once I retired. I hope it is possible for them to put the show on, and for me to go, but who knows.  The world would have to change a lot for it to be safe, because it will probably be an absolute mob scene of show-starved quilters desperate to buy all the things.  I saw a headline predicting that all travel is going to be really expensive once we can do it again, due to the economic impact of the pandemic. At the moment, I am just very excited to have a hair appointment for this coming week, with salons re-opening on Monday.

yay, 5 day weekend!

 Work has been fairly tedious lately so I am very pleased to be on a five-day weekend:  my non-working day plus the Easter bank holiday weekend in the UK. I've spent lots of time in the sewing room and have sewn another dress for myself using Michael Miller quilting fabric that I got on sale, and the same dress pattern I've used before.  I felt the fabric had a bit of a vintage vibe so I went with the fun polka-dot collar. It will be nice to wear if the weather ever improves.

As is traditional for bank holiday weekends in the UK, the weather is chilly, grey and overcast, but earlier in the week we had two days of astonishing summer weather: 21C, hot, sunny - everyone I saw on my daily walk was in shorts, spaghetti strap tops etc. The three of us were able to enjoy our work lunch hour together in the garden, with the nesting blackbird eyeing us warily from afar.

I took advantage of the long weekend to ask DS to move his 'office' temporarily off the dining table, so that we don't have to crowd to one side like we've been doing for a year now. We've been enjoying eating off the unencumbered table, but I also took the opportunity to spend four or five hours over two days erasing  pencil lines on my 25 block applique quilt.  As well as the diagonal lines I drew for the background quilting, there were some placement lines around some of the appliques that I wanted to remove. It looks better now.

 I mostly used a normal fabric eraser, but I also tried out a Sewfine Aqua Eraser, billed as the gentle way to remove ink and pencil marks from fibre.  It was recommended, I think in a quilting magazine, as a good way to remove pencil lines without discolouring the quilting thread. The pen is basically a microfibre tip kept moist by a water reservoir within the pen.  The reservoir is filled with a plunger-type end that you pull to draw up water.  I wasn't that impressed with the tool, the fabric eraser did a better and quicker job of removing the pencil lines. However, the pen was useful for confined areas between two appliques where the fabric eraser was too big to be useful. I suppose the pen would be good for removing water-erasable marker lines if you use those - I no longer use a water-erasable pen anywhere that will show, due to the many reports of the lines reappearing later in time.

My Japanese teacher is pregnant, so I've switched knitting gears to baby things, and parked the second Autumn sock for now.  I've pulled yarn (sadly acrylic) from my stash to knit a baby hat and some matching booties, and I will knit a toy bunny - all patterns that I have knit before in the past so hopefully will all go okay.  She's not due until August but I will need to post them to America so I would like to get them done.

Our magnolia tree is looking glorious, although you have to choose the viewing angle carefully to avoid sight of the bright blue portaloo in the next door lot for some construction they are having done. Some years we only get to admire the magnolia for a few days before the weather shreds the blossoms, so far this year it's lasting.  There are also buds of white blossom on the pear tree next to it, and there are fat buds on our sakura ornamental cherry.

Lockdown has been partially relaxed in the UK this week, you can now visit another household if you stay outdoors.  DS is eager for us to drive him over to see his girlfriend, but first we will need to make the trip down to see the in-laws.  Don't think it would look good if we prioritised the girlfriend!  I'd rather wait for some warmer weather though before I have to spend two hours sitting out in the in-law's garden.