A milestone week

 It's done, I'm retired.  Still feels very strange to be saying that. I'm sure I will feel like I should be logging in tomorrow morning.  My last working day was Tuesday and then I was using up leave for the rest of the week.  I logged in Friday afternoon briefly, just to check if there were any last minute messages.  Then I spent an hour or so disentangling all the wires, unplugging equipment, and stowing the laptop and monitors back into their boxes, then dismantling the loaner desk.  So 19 months of homeworking is now reduced to this pile - someone from my old office is supposed to be collecting it tomorrow.

I received not one but three bouquets on Tuesday, every time I answered the doorbell I got handed another box, it was quite fun.  My team sent me a bouquet, my best friend on the team sent me a bouquet plus choccies, and my in-laws sent me a lovely bouquet with a small bottle of Prosecco.  So of course I had prosecco and choccies for lunch then just felt like going to sleep for the remainder of the afternoon.  :)

For this milestone weekend, I had booked us an indulgence of two nights at a posh hotel in a former country house, since international travel is off the cards.  We never stay at posh hotels so it was quite a treat for us.  We have stayed in former country houses before for work events and normally they have seen better days and look quite tired, and have been butchered with fire doors and ugly extensions.  But Kilworth House had the benefit of an extensive renovation about 20 years ago and a very sympathetic addition, and still retains 38 acres of grounds.  So it felt like being a guest at a national trust house. 

We reckoned our little caravan would fit five times into our bedroom

The breakfast room

We stayed two nights with a day out on Saturday with walks around the historic towns of Mount Sorrell and Lutterworth and on the estate itself.  I found a little wool and fabric shop in Lutterworth and picked up a cute fat quarter of Christmas fabric.

In a knick-knack shop I found a cast cement garden ornament in the shape of a tree house .

On the same day we also collected a secondhand  steam press which I found on Facebook Marketplace.  It's supposed to be in full working order, I haven't tested it yet.  I got it mainly for adhering bag interfacing now that I am sewing more bags.  Every piece of a bag typically needs woven interfacing such as Shapeflex fused to it, and then the main structural pieces often additionally need a second layer of more structural stabilisers such as Decovil or Bosal.  The Shapeflex has to be fused for 12 seconds at a time, in an overlapping pattern, so it can take a surprisingly long time to interface all the pieces of a bag with a normal iron.  According the bagmaking peeps online, a steam press makes it a doddle as the pressing area is so much greater.

So it's all over now, we're back home, with just the flowers and the pile of computer equipment to mark a very significant week.  And tomorrow morning I will likely feel a strong impulse to be logging on and working - maybe I will address some of my own paperwork.

Also this past week I received a very interesting delivery: an antique sewing box with contents that I bought online. I think I blogged several weeks ago about the secondhand book on antique sewing and needlework tools that I had picked up and how interesting it was. I subsequently ordered a few more used books on the same topic.  It's just so fascinating to see the historical versions of tools we still use today, plus the many fascinating compendiums and ladies companions and ornate tools.  I discovered online that there is a passionate collectors community for these tools and as a result have developed collection envy.  So when I saw this box at a fairly reasonable price, with interesting contents, I decided to go for it.  The box itself is in satinwood with veneered decoration and a mother of pearl inlay on the lid and around the lock. It probably dates to the end of the 19th century and is in reasonably good condition.  A couple of the partitions in the tray were loose, as were the tray supports, but I have reattached them.  The contents were a complete mixture ranging from two vegetable ivory pincushions likely also late 19thC right through to some modern Gutermann thread reels.  I had great fun sorting it all out and grouping like with like.  It looks like a luxury item to our modern eyes but probably wasn't at the time, underneath the veneer the wood of the box is only cheap-looking and the tray is lined with paper not silk.  There is no key.  

I have moved the modern haberdashery into my own stash, and left the antique contents in the cleaned up and repaired box fpr display. Quite pleased to have it.  DH now slightly worried I have started another collection.

Gale force winds and lashing rain have brought down various trees in the area, hopefully it will calm down for tonight and we will get a few trick-or-treaters.  Happy Halloween everyone!

Senior railcard but no bus pass

 I've just ordered my first ever Senior Railcard for the over-60s, how ageing is that? I don't feel like a senior, I feel like a 20 year old trapped in a middleaged plump body.  Annoyingly, the county I live in doesn't provide free bus passes right away for the over 60s, you have to wait until state pension age (currently 67) to get your 'Older Persons bus pass'.  I think I might get free prescriptions though, I need to look into that.  My last ever (possibly) Friday in paid employment passed quietly, there aren't a lot of people in the (virtual) office as it's half term break in various parts of the country this week and next.  I've been biting the bullet and deleting files that I've carefully amassed over the years I've worked there, I won't need them and they are of no use to anyone else.  Still hard to do though, it's difficult to get over the instinctive need to hoard useful information.  There has been a steady trickle of envious people wishing me well in emails and messages which is nice of them, I've also made a point of thanking a few people that have particularly helped me over the years.

We headed out to the caravan today again and loaded up the car to the ceiling with cushions and various other bits and bobs to bring home. We will add them to the vast pile in what was my machine knitting room but currently looks like a storage warehouse.  It was a good test as I want to get a 200cm tall IKEA bookcase for my sewing room, and the cushions are 200cm long, so now we know that an assembled secondhand bookcase will not go in the car without preventing DH from driving.  I had to hold the cushions away from him and bend them open so that he could see his wing mirror. But a flatpack bookcase still in its box would go in.  So I see a trip to IKEA in our future.  My current shorter bookcase is so jammed with quilting and other needlecraft books and magazines that it is completely useless, you can't find anything or even physically get books in or out.  There are probably a few that I don't need so when I am transferring contents between the two cases, I will see if I can have a clear out. 

This week I've been working on the Lowarn bag sewalong and have completed the top zip panel and handles up to the current point in the live video tutorials.  My zips are slightly wobbly as is the top stitching on my handles, but I'm quite pleased with my first-ever bag rivets which went in pretty straight. The final part of the sew-along is tomorrow evening so I may be able to finish this next week.

I also finished Block 5 of the Australian BOM  this week and am fairly pleased with how it's turned out.  I'm still struggling a bit with my bullion stitch, I often have an untidy loop at the end despite trying to hold the loops tight as I pull the thread through.  The five blocks done so far look nice together.

With Block 5 done, I've returned to hand quilting the 25 Block Applique quilt, and some more knitting on the Lenton Rose second fair isle sock - I'm almost finished the leg chart so the heel flap is coming soon.

Quite some time ago, before the pandemic, I acquired an old lace pillow quite cheaply at a lace day I think.  The moveable blocks turned out to be normal expanded polystyrene, not much use for lacemaking as it doesn't hold pins firmly.  I'd looked occasionally for better foam so that I could make replacement blocks, but nothing I could find at the DIY store seemed much better. I even once came home and got some pins and went back to some builders foam I spotted in a skip to push pins in to test it.  But when I was at the St Ives lace fair, I saw that Makit Lace were selling replacement blocks in high density foam for their own pillows.  So I contacted them to see if they would custom cut some blocks for my pillow which they were happy to do. I didn't need them covered as I was able to re-use the old covers, so the replacement blocks were quite cheap.  I washed the covers then sewed them onto the new blocks, so I now have a rejuvenated lace block pillow.

A bit more stash acquisition this week - after months of not buying fabric, I've had three deliveries lately haven't I.  But the budget fabric warehouse Fabric Guild near Leicester is sadly closing down and are clearing down their stocks.  I got six yards of the Hawaiian print for backing, and a half or full yard of the basic prints for the stash.  It was actually quite difficult as their website is only for limited periods of time to control demand, and therefore kept crashing as all the piranhas tore into the goodies, but eventually I managed to pay and complete my cart. I'm sure they'll come in useful at some point.

Eleven trips later

 Last night was our final caravan night for the season.  People do camp all winter but for us it doesn't seem worth it  to go away camping when the weather is cold and wet. We like to be able to go out and about, and on walks, and to sit outside. It's not much fun in lashing rain or freezing temperatures.  We were away last weekend and again this weekend, taking advantage of the autumn sunshine, for a single night to a small site not far from our storage yard. We had some lovely walks along the Grand Union Canal seeing lots of Victorian industrial heritage and randomly came across a steam-engine narrowboat that doubles up as a travelling sweet shop.

DH worked out that we've had eleven trips away in the caravan since we bought it in May. We feel it was a really positive decision to get the van, especially during a pandemic.  It's got us out of the house, out into the countryside and the fresh air, we've had several excellent rambles, seen some really pretty parts of the country and had some very relaxing times.  It's not all been perfect - there was a steep learning curve, some mechanical issues and the weather has been British. But we feel that we have become much more competent at it now and worked out how to do the kind of holiday we like. It's certainly been very convenient also to have DS at home to both house-sit and cat-sit.  Next year if he has moved out then we will have to find a cattery.  I've already pre-booked a few sites for next year, just in case the great British staycation madness continues and demand is still exceeding supply. We loaded up the car to come home this time and will make more trips back to the van to empty it all out for the winter then give it a really good clean out. Then we'll have to visit it once a month to rotate the tyres, check it's all staying dry etc.

I had some more green fabric turn up this week so I feel like I have a better representation of green in my stash now.

My sewing machine came back from its spa holiday apparently none the worse for wear for the courier trip.  In the meantime I had tidied up my sewing room a bit and gone through a pile of magazine tear-outs.  I found a pattern I had saved from Simply Vintage magazine Winter 2019 for unusual christmas tree ornaments designed by Megumi Mizuno, and decided to have a go at her cupcake threadholder.  My first attempt was an abject failure as the instructions were not only poor and containing errors, but the pattern given for the 'cup' part was completely wrong and did not produce a shape anything like the pictures.  I wonder if this pattern was translated from Japanese, to French, and then to English for the English edition of this French magazine. I looked online and found there was published Errata with a different and better pattern shape for the 'cup'.  I took my first attempt apart and salvaged the icing portion, and remade the cupcake over again. It turned out a lot better this time although the cake part is still not the same shape as in the magazine photos.   It's sort of cute.  I kind of regret choosing pink for the main cake part, for a while it was looking like a little boob.

I'm getting on alright with Block 5 of the Australian BOM.  All three of these will get the 3-D treatment and be appliqued to the background fabric.  I'm still working on the embroidery for the pink flowery pincushion.

I've cut out the fabric for the Lowarn bag sewalong that I am following, the next step will be to apply the stabilisers and then start sewing.

Six more working days!

Time rushes on

 Suddenly it's the weekend again - I don't know where the week went.  I seemed to be a bit more productive this week apart from feeling coldish - DH was as well which resulted in us taking our first rapid flow tests today.  Both negative thankfully and my nose still hurts a little from being swabbed. It used to be normal to feel a bit coldish for most of the winter but now you automatically start wondering if you've got plague.

After I had given the new desk two coats of beeswax  and reinstalled all the hardware, the boys brought it upstairs and we rearranged the living room a bit to accommodate it.  It actually looks really nice, gleaming softly under the lights.  It is now hiding a lot of my craft clutter. I can open the desk flap when I am watching TV and arrange all my  bits to hand, then hide it all away when I'm done for the evening.

I've been using the new desk arrangement to work on Block 5 of the Australian BOM.  I've tried using the Clover Wonderfuse for the applique on this block.  It is certainly much easier to sew through than the Steam a Seam Lite fusible web, and isn't gumming up my needle at all.  On the other hand it doesn't seem to adhere the fabric nearly as well, more of a clinging in place than a solid fuse but perhaps I didn't get the temperature right.

On Thursday I ended up alone in the house for the day as both DS and DH had gone to London for work. It felt strange, I haven't been alone all day since before lockdown, but it gave me the freedom to get a lot done without being distracted or feeling I had to make any meals.  The first thing I tackled was the disaster formerly known as my knitting room. It's basically been a glorified storage cupboard for years, I don't like being up there because it's generally too hot or cold, too far from the front door to hear the doorbell, too far from everyone else and the sloping ceiling makes me feel slightly claustrophic.  So it had been some time since I had done anything except dump old projects and grab materials for new projects -  there was stuff strewn everywhere and about 40 or so knitting needles waiting to be sized and put away in the right place.  It took over an hour to put it more in order but was quite satisfying.

I popped over to Aldi to buy something for my private luncheon and ended up coming home with various craft impulse buys as you do.

My sewing machine has gone off for its service so I spent part of the afternoon cutting out pieces for my next quilt, the Tula Pink wreath quilt.  I was using my June Tailor Shape Cut ruler, such an amazing tool for cutting lots of identical strips and squares, so much easier than just using a 24-inch ruler by itself.

I may have also done some online fabric shopping, to rectify the green deficiency I identified last week. The village scene fabric was an extra, I thought it was so cute.

Today I had a lovely surprise in the post which was a 1:24th retro caravan lasercut model kit from Seaside Miniatures - a retirement/early Christmas present from my friend Anita - thank you!  It will be fun to try to make it look cute and vintage.   I certainly won't be short of things to do in retirement.

On our lunch hour today, DH drove me and my overlocker over to the semi-local repair shop so that's two machines off to have some spa treatment.  The engineer was actually minding the shop so I could give it directly to him.  He seemed undismayed that I had taken the covers off myself for cleaning but looked a bit dubious about the prospect of finding where the leftover screw should go. 

I'm going to follow a free online sewalong for the Lowarn bag, so have bought the pattern, chosen some fabric and ordered the hardware. It a sort of mini duffle bag with a central zipped opening. There is a more advanced version with end pockets but I'm going to try the no-pockets easier version. The designer is streaming live Youtube videos for the tutorial. For once it is a UK designer so it's much easier because she uses materials you can get in the UK, instead of glues and interfacings that are only available in America or at sky high imported prices. Hopefully it will be fun.

When your camera photos start looking like your (ageing) eyesight

 Well, all the photos this week look poster-ised thanks to the camera somehow getting reset from automatic to god-knows-what. Apologies, although they do resemble what the world is starting to look like without my glasses on.  I only found out when I uploaded the week's snapshots so it's too late to go back and retake them all (also I'm too lazy).

So you will have to use your imagination a bit to make out what the strip-pieced star top looks like in its finished state.  As expected, it isn't that big, about 60"x70ish", so on my Queen mattress (60x80) it was only a topper.

I've had the week off (using up leave) so I made a real push in the first few days to sew the rest of the rows together (tedious) and press all the crossing seams open (even more tedious). But I'm quite pleased with the finished result and the soft colours, very cottagy.  Obviously it needed a border, both to make it bigger and to finish it off.  I had a trawl through my stash looking for something low volume that would go with the stars. I selected a small floral in similar colours with a slight period feel to it, I wanted a frame that wouldn't shout out, just support the stars from the background.  For now I've added it as a plain frame but perhaps after it's quilted, I will cut the border edge into scallop shapes. It looks better in real life than it does in this blurry picture.

I've cut matching binding strips and sewn a backing from some Tilda yardage, and added the quilt to the queue of quilts waiting for when DS eventually moves out and I can take over the dining room (his office) and set up the quilting frame.  I think there are 10 quilts now in the queue.  With that project off the cutting table, I've now booked my 'new' sewing machine in for its first service since buying it two years ago.  I did investigate local service places but for the same price I can send it back to where I bought it (Sew Direct in Wales) so that's now booked in for courier collection next week.  However I am going to try one of the local places for a service on my overlocker to see if they can bring it back from the dead.  I've discovered (after realising the Janome 6234XL overlocker looked identical to my ancient Janome 634D) that the 6234XL blades will fit my old overlocker. As the non-functional dull blades are one of  the main issues, along with tension, I thought was worth spending out on a service before spending hundreds of pounds on a replacement. DH is going to drive me and the overlocker over to the shop soon to drop it off. On the bad news front, I discovered a left over screw from when I took it apart.... oops.  Perhaps if I give that to the service people they can work out where it goes.

On the advice of Swooze, I gave the antique Mennonite top another rinse after detaching the blocks that were running, and still more dye came out so perhaps even the red plaid is running a bit as well.  I also found that the fabric, although a lot cleaner, is a bit rotten.  I'm tempted to just throw the whole thing out but I had a trawl through the stash to see if I had anything I could use as a border.  I didn't have any suitable reds and a black print just killed the pattern, then I thought green as a complementary colour.  It turns out that I have very few greens in my stash - loads of blue, fair bit of reds and pinks, almost no green fabrics.  I found one reproduction print that is the right shade of green but there isn't very much of it. I'll have to do some arithmetic to see how wide a border I could piece.  Must order some more green fabric online.

I've spent a lot of my week off working on the knackered arts and crafts bookcase/desk that I stupidly impulse-bought in Cumbria.  After watching a lot of Youtube videos where professionals use amazing products and expensive power tools to rejuvenate antique furniture, I thought it was worth seeing what I could do with my paltry skills and feeble tools.  I'd already taken all the hardware off so I gave the desk a good clean with sugar soap to degrease and take off the first layer of filth.  Then I spent a day poisoning myself and the other two household members with fumes, as I took off the wax finish with steel wool and wax remover.  Then I started repairs, harvesting period oak wood from the £5 mirror I bought for the purpose on Facebook.  I cut and glued in the missing drawer support, cut and replaced the 'heel' of the foot which had been previously cut off due to woodworm so the desk is now much more stable, filled some holes and cracks, glued up a few gaping seams, and managed to greatly reduce the opacity of a big black ink stain on the inside.  My dollshouse collection of wood stains has come in very useful for matching replacement pieces and fills to the original. The piece de resistance was designing and cutting a curlicue trim piece to substitute for the missing little door across the right hand upper cupboard.  We have no power tools that will cut a straight line, and no bandsaw, so it was all a bit of a bodge job using a power jigsaw and a Dremel tool sanding drum.  By no means perfect but it came out a lot better than I thought it would.  Unfortunately the grain of the mirror's oak is much broader than the fine grain of the desk, so my replacement piece is never going to look original.  Perhaps it's like restoring old houses where the planners insist the new additions look completely different from the old part.  I've now got to put the wax back on for a final finish which I've started on, before replacing the hardware.  Hopefully it's going to look better than when I started anyhow.

The donor mirror frame 

Curly doo-dah on the top right is mine

The foot repair

I had an enjoyable outing today to the Makit Fenland Lace and Needlecraft Fair, my first such fair since before the you-know-what.  I was a bit worried beforehand but the Lace Guild was holding its AGM at the same venue today which I wanted to support, so altogether I felt it was worth having a look.  It turned out to be fine: the majority of people in the hall and at the AGM meeting were wearing masks or face shields, there was plenty of hand sanitiser, and it's a fair which has always had wide aisles anyway so it was easy to avoid getting too near to people.  Between COVID and the UK fuel crisis, I wondered if there would be many vendors or customers, but I would say levels weren't that far below normal.  I think about 75% on the traders and maybe 60% or higher on the customers.  I also wondered if I would buy anything, since I haven't been doing a lot of lace lately, but I did get a bit carried away by the sheer pleasure of seeing new stuff and doing something 'normal'.  Excuse the rubbish blurry photos but this is my haul.

I found the bookmark sleeves I wanted to protect the bobbin thread picture I stitched last week, and on the same stall some plastic key chains and a coaster for inserting lace or anything else really.  There was a cute little turned wooden jar with beeswax in it, and some pretty old-fashioned needlework scissors.  On another stall I picked up some beginner books on needletatting.  I didn't get very far with needletatting when I tried to learn from online last year, mainly due to a lack of beginner-friendly patterns.  But it did seem easier than shuttle tatting so I thought having some instructional books would definitely help me.  The bobbins include my usual purchase from Margaret Wall of a Christmas bobbin showing a bunny hanging a stocking on a tree, a painted bobbin that looked like Japanese cherry blossom from another stall, and two timely souvenir bobbins: one for Lockdown Lacemaking 2020, and one for the first anniversary of the Lace Suppliers Spotlight Facebook page (another lockdown creation which helped small lace vendors keep going during the time where no fairs were taking place).  I also bought some Sublime Merino aran wool from a lady having a clearance after losing her husband, after listening to her spiel my tender heart was twanged and I bought something to support her as well.  I thought it might make a nice hat and glove set perhaps as a gift.

The fifth block of the Australian BOM turned up in today's post so I can get started on that this week.  While I was waiting for it to come, I've been working on the little house sampler cross-stitch, and continuing the hand quilting on the 25-block applique quilt.  I've quilted all 16 blocks around the edge of the quilt now so have started on one of the remaining nine in the middle.  

And suddenly it's October - how did that happen?  Time just seems to be rushing along all of a sudden, do you find that?