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!