Giving myself permission

 I don't know if you are like this as well, but I often feel like I don't have permission from myself to go and do something fun until I have cleared certain hurdles.  This can result in several days on the trot without getting more than a few hours of evening crafting in front of the telly in terms of fun.  Meanwhile I am trudging through the daily chores, crossing  longer term jobs off the job list, or clearing projects that are ahead in the craft queue.

This week I finally made it to the Australian BOM  month one instalment!  (this is at a point where month three will show up any day now).  First of all, I had to tidy up my sewing room from that last dressmaking project, and repair a few things and do a bunch of ironing that had piled up on my sewing room ironing surface. I even hoovered up the considerable debris that had accumulated on the floor from the last several projects.

Then I sewed a Block Keeper Album out of all my bigger scraps of wadding using an orphan Moda block as the cover, that I made from a Moda Tin Box Sampler tin many years ago.  A block keeper is a place to stash the blocks you are making for a quilt project - it keeps them flat and safe.  The wadding grips the block and holds it in place.  The few examples I could find online were a lot smaller, but I calculated that I needed about 14 doublesided pages for the Australian BOM quilt.  I was able to cut several 'pages' out of wadding scraps and then started piecing bigger scraps together to make pages, and ended up with 11 pages before I ran out of big scraps so that will have to be enough.  I stiffened the cover with some ancient heavy interfacing and bag liner that I had lying around.  The whole album is a bit of a frankenstein effort, but it does the job and used up a bunch of scraps.  Then I could fish out the project background fabrics and stabilisers I had precut, and store them safely  in the album  while I start the blocks.

I spent some time sorting out the supplied embroidery threads into colours/number groups, and assembled my supplies to tackle the first month's instalment.  I have rarely tried embroidery in the past and know little about it, so I also included some scrap fabric  hooped up and scrap threads, for practicing with.  It's all gone into the handsewing basket I made a few months ago.  So I settled down in front of the telly and put Youtube onto the Firestick to watch video tutorials for the various stitches.  So far I have learned stem stitch, french knots (properly) and bullion roses. It feels quite exciting to finally be started on this project although I now realise it is going to be much more of an embroidery project than a quilting project.  Each month is mostly hand work so it will take a lot of time. 

Another project I tackled this week was to make a caddy for the passenger car door of our car.  We've had several long drives lately related to the caravan, and I was getting very tired of my water bottle constantly toppling over and not being able to find things in the door cubby.  I stiffened the caddy with Bosal foam interfacing, added an inner gusset to hold the water bottle upright, and an external little pocket to hold a pen and in future spare knitting needles perhaps. The main part of the caddy is open for holding snacks, maps etc.  I made the pattern by pressing lining paper into the bottom of the door cubby and running my fingernail around the edge to crease a line, as the door cubby is an oddly shaped cavity that is fat at the front and tapering towards the back.

I had some more stash turn up this week:  the Singer site that I bought the sewing-machine-shaped pincushion from was having a sale on Tilda fabrics, so I bought a pack of Woodland fat eighths. Then I bought some Tilda blue solid fabric from Empress Mills for background.  Tilda have a bunch of free patterns on their website and I am going to see if I can eke out my fabric enough to make the Flower Wreath quilt.  I will have to have a trawl through my stash for some toning solids to use for the leaves. Aren't they pretty?

One of the best things that happened this week was the heat wave finally breaking on Thursday night.  Friday was literally 10 or 12 degrees cooler and I actually put on a half-remembered object called a 'cardigan' for a while.  Last night I was finally able to sleep without having to have all the windows open (street noise) and my door open (cat invasion) and actually get some sleep.  Hurrah!

I forgot to mention last week that I had intended on returning from the caravan holiday to pick all the numerous cherries on our little edible cherry tree, as they were just about ready before we set off.  I think I posted a few weeks ago that the tree is too big to net properly now, but I was willing to let the birds have a few.  Well, on our return when I headed out to have a look, the bluddy birds had eaten every single cherry off the tree apart from one very low-hanging lone cherry - nothing but pips left.  So no cherry pie for us this year. 

Hot stuff

 We're just back from a week away in the caravan to Cumbria where it was quite rainy earlier in the week. But suddenly Cumbria jumped onto the UK heatwave bandwagon and Friday was so hot that we spent most of the afternoon sitting in the shade of the awning.  Nice airconditioned car ride back to the roasting caravan storage yard yesterday (30 degrees C) and the high is going to be the same again today.  I hate hot weather, I just feel like I can't do anything and I don't sleep well either.  But we did have a lovely relaxing holiday, still really enjoying caravan life. It was our fourth visit to the Eden Valley and we enjoyed re-visiting our favourite secondhand bookstores, doing some lovely short walks, delicious fish and chips from the Shap Chippy and visits to two country houses: Blackwell Arts & Crafts House overlooking Windermere, and Hutton-in-the-Forest near Penrith with a gorgeous walled garden. We tried out our new caravan awning, which had a steep learning curve and required a do-over the next day, but it doubles our space and was so useful to have.

The little campsite, which we had mostly to ourselves all week.

A view in Morland Gardens

Lake Windermere seen through the window of the White Drawing Room

in Blackwell Arts and Crafts House

High Force waterfall in County Durham

A view in the lovely gardens at Hutton-in-the-Forest

Trying out the panorama function on my phone camera, in the 

hills above the village of Dent (with DH)

I picked up a fairly random selection of cheap craft books in the secondhand book stores, including two books of embroidery stitches which I am hoping will help me with the Australian BOM embellished blocks.

We visited the village of Dent, as in the "terrible knitters of Dent" fame and toured the little heritage centre which was interesting but didn't really include much information about the local handknitting industry.  Apparently Blue-faced Leicester sheep were common in the area and I picked up two luscious balls of BFL DK-weight yarn in the shop, actually from Yorkshire but I couldn't resist as they are so soft and have that lovely woolly smell. Two 50g balls should be enough for some socks or a hat or mitts.

We re-visited Farfield Mill in Sedbergh for lunch and to tour the artists galleries and workspaces, many of which are textile related: knitting, weaving, proddy rugs, tapestries etc..  There was also a display of lace by the South Lakeland Lace Makers, and quite an assortment of spinning wheels and weaving looms used by workshop participants, as well as a huge industrial historic warping loom and two commercial weaving looms in the basement. I picked up two sample pieces of hand-woven tweed about 7 inches square, in lovely soft colours, one for me and one for m-i-l, which I thought would make a nice small item such as a needlebook cover.

I didn't get to any craft shops this trip, but I took along some projects of my own:

I'm almost finished the felt teapot mat - the pattern suggests a laisy daisy flower embellishment on each pot but I'm not sure I could do them all the same size and it will bug me if they are untidy. There is a matching blue backing to sew on to hide the messy reverse side of the stitching.

Also almost finished the cross stitch birthday card, just need to finish the word 'Happy'.

I turned the heel of the Lenten Rose socks and picked up for the patterned gusset.  I immediately had to pull back one row because I was automatically making the decrease at the top of the heel flap like every other pair of socks I've ever knitted.  But unusually, this pattern seems to keep the decreases at the bottom of the heel flap. I decided that would be better tackled at home in front of the telly rather than in a moving car so did not progress any further yesterday.

Now that we're back, I'm hoping to clear the decks in my sewing room and make a start on the Australian BOM blocks.  Tomorrow is the ridiculously named Freedom Day in the UK, which is sharing the news with all the alarming rises in infection rates.  We continued to be as careful as we could while we were on holiday, avoiding other people, sanitising after touching most things, wearing masks etc, and we aren't planning on reducing our precautions any time soon.  It doesn't look like I will make it to France for the pre-retirement visit to the Quiltmania show in Nantes, as the government is changing the requirements for overseas travel almost daily.  Hopefully next year.

Climate change and new things

 I've recently become aware of the appalling temperatures on the west coast of Canada where I grew up, after DH saw it on the BBC site and told me.  It is just unbelievable and I feel so sorry for the people that are suffering.  When I was growing up, it never seemed to get particularly hot, maybe occasionally up to 30C but that would be really unusual. So nobody had air conditioning, back then anyway.  One of my first paid jobs as an adult was for a small NGO not for profit environmental charity, which produced learning materials on climate change.  Back then it all seemed a touch hippy dippy and 'sky is falling' rhetoric, but it has sure turned out to be true, very unfortunately.  Meanwhile summer is having a bit of a power failure here in the UK, it's warmish in the low 20s, muggy, and frequently overcast and rain showers.  But I would rather have that any day than 44 degrees C, that kind of heat is just insane. When I was in Egypt it was only up to 38C and that was so punishing we had to hide in the hotel through the middle of the day.

Here is the photo I forgot to take last week of month 2 of my Australian BOM, and the pack of accompanying embroidery threads.  Looking forward to getting started on this, hopefully next week.

I haven't been doing a lot on my fair isle Lenten Rose socks, don't know if it's the mugginess but knitting hasn't been attracting me lately. But I have finally finished the first chart for the leg and am about to start the heel. The back of the heel will be a solid colour and then the gussets are in a pattern which is unusual and I'm looking forward to working that out.

I've mostly been working on the cross stitch birthday card that I started on holiday, because the intended birthday is in early August.  Slight hiccup when I absentmindedly started stitching with 3 strands instead of 2 strands (because the teapot felt mat is stitched in 3 strands).  Not only did this create a lumpy area of cross stitch, it meant I ran out of the green colour too early.  It wasn't until I ran out that I realised what I had done, so too late to unpick.  I have sourced a close match from my existing stash of threads, the elderly recipient probably won't notice.

I finished reading the Nerylla Taunton Antique Needlework Tools and Embroideries book that I got secondhand on the last holiday.  I really enjoyed it, great photos placed close to the relevant text (so no flipping back and forth which is a peeve of mine), ingenious and beautiful solutions from the past to storage and function issues that we still face today as sewers/sewists.  In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I looked for a few more books online and hit a goldmine of secondhand old books on a charity site.  So I've got lots of reading to look forward to.  I would be tempted to start a (another) collection if everything to do with antique sewing tools wasn't so expensive.  So alternatively, I feel tempted to create a modern equivalent.  I've had a bit of a look online, very few craftspeople are recreating fine needlework tools which is surprising as you would think there would be a huge market for fine tools that aren't made out of plastic, and pretty containers to put them in.

The sumo is  back on TV so I'm enjoying watching that apart from I can't really do crafts like normal for tv watching, because the matches are over so quickly. If you glance down at your knitting/quilting/cross-stitch just for a second, you've probably missed the moment they throw their opponent out of the ring.  My new Japanese teacher thinks it's hilarious that this (late) middle-aged British person is into sumo, she lives in Osaka (where the major tournaments are even held once a year) and she isn't interested in it at all.  She asked why I like it, but I lack the vocabulary so could only say it was interesting and exciting and Japanese culture. She looked a bit baffled but that may be my accent, lol.

It sometimes feels, as an almost-pensioner, that things are changing too much and not always for the better (still don't like using a mobile phone for example yet everybody wants you to use one for everything) but a new thing has recently entered my life which I love.  And that thing is Command strips.  I think these may be relatively recent in the UK because I had never heard of them until we got the caravan and I started seeing them mentioned on caravan FB groups.  I expect everybody else but me knows that these are strong adhesive products which can be easily removed leaving behind no holes or residue.  But the range is just astonishing, everything from a heavy-duty waterproof hook we have put in the caravan shower to hang coats on (as the shower is only used occasionally), hooks of all different sizes and purposes and weight loads, hook-and-loop strips for attaching things to surfaces, and I've just found out they also do cord wranglers so you can stick one on, say, your food processor and coil up the electric cord.  There seem to be dozens of Youtube videos on all the home organisation hacks you can do with Command strips, like using them to run electric wires along walls and furniture (instead of those awful nail-in hooks that our house is decorated with), hanging baskets on cupboard doors, turning walls into wardrobes, hanging pictures without peppering the wall with holes trying to get them level...we live in strange and wondrous times.

Facebook has my number

 The Facebook algorithm has definitely got my number in terms of marketing me things - I am probably on their 'Weak of Will' list with an asterisk next to my name for 'especially easy to sell to'.  So many tempting ads for fabric, comfy clothes and shoes, needlework things and so on and so on.  Last week my pretty new kimono jacket turned up, I have a pair of granny sandals in transit as we speak, and this pincushion arrived yesterday.  I'm so ashamed....

We've just been out in the garden having a preparatory play with our new awning poles.  Yes, we finally managed to buy the awning which is custom made to fit the odd curved shape of our caravan, and are looking forward to having some extra room on our next holiday.  It's a good thing we did the advance peek, as it turned out that there was a fist-sized bag of bits that needed to be assembled into clamps that fit on several poles, and one pole was a bit compressed and had to be eased back out with a hammer. I'm glad we didn't have to cope with all of that after a long tow to site.

Also in the garden this morning, I planted up the little cast sink that we bought on our last holiday. We were just driving along a country road on the way to the Lincolnshire seaside when I spotted a sign outside a big house for garden ornaments.  It turned out to be a real cottage business with a pretty big inventory, and I picked up this plain little sink for only £12 which I thought was pretty good compared to what they cost in garden centres.  This morning we went over to the garden centre and bought some alpines for it.  I've probably crammed in too many but they look so nice together.  I'll probably have to take some out next year if they all survive and keep growing.

 Our little strawberry patch has produced two good-sized bowls of strawberries, even beyond all the berries attacked by birds, slugs and woodlice who got in there first.  So we've had a few bowls of summer goodness - strawberries and cream, yum yum.

The cherries are ripening on our edible cherry tree.  The tree has grown too big to be covered easily in netting now, so we may have to fight the birds for the cherries.  The rhubarb has produced intermittently after the slog of dividing it in early spring, hopefully next year we will have a good crop.  The pear tree has quite a few pears growing on it.  I kind of miss the apple tree that we lost in the flood, but on the other hand that corner of the garden is getting a lot more sunlight now.

"Where are the crafts??", I can hear you asking.  I've been wishing I had a bigger sewing room because my limited workspace has been tied up with sewing a new facemask for DH, altering a fitted sheet to fit the caravan bed, altering a blouse and sewing a dress.  What I would like to be working on is Months 1 and 2 of the Australian BOM, both of which have now arrived including the bag of embroidery threads.  DS is talking about possibly moving down to London to be closer to his work once his office fully re-opens.  I know it is more than time for him to leave the nest and he will get his second jab soon, but I wonder what he is going to be able to afford down there.  But anyhow, that will leave his room vacant.  We are definitely going to redecorate it so it can be a better guest room, but as we rarely have guests, I have my eye on it as a supplementary sewing space.  Unfortunately, DH was thinking the same for his modelling.  We may have to fight it out...

Meanwhile I've been carrying on with the usual long-term projects:  cross-stitch on the birthday card, a few rows on the fair-isle socks, the next block of hand-quilting on the applique quilt, and some more work on the big Bucks Lace butterfly mat.  I will be a football game refugee tonight while DH watches England play, so I'll probably head down to the sewing room for some more work on the dress.

I counted up and made myself a special calendar: I have 53 working days left until the end of October, allowing for holidays.  It seems both a long time, since work has been especially tedious lately, and also a short time as I am feeling a bit bombarded by pension information now that the providers of several little pensions from short-term jobs are all writing to me to see what I want to do with my various pots.  I have no idea what I want to do with my various pots, I have math anxiety and very little financial acumen.  At the moment the files are  all in a big pile on my desk waiting for a day when I am feeling especially brave, or at least not procrastinating with craft projects or online stuff like usual. Decisions, decisions...