Merry Christmas and seasons greetings

Another Christmas, my first retired Christmas and possibly our last one with DS  still in the house with us before moving out, but who knows.  It was all very pleasant anyhow, far too much candy and a quiet day just the three of us.  At one point, after almost four hours of cooking, DH wandered into the kitchen where I was slaving and facetiously asked 'why don't we have this for dinner more often?'. Luckily for him I didn't have any knives to hand. I am normally a pretty basic cook and after decades of having to feed the family regardless of my own hunger or energy levels, I am a pretty unenthusiastic cook as well.  But for Christmas I do try to go as all out as I can and it all turned out pretty well:  turkey with two kinds of stuffing, carrots, brussels, peas, roast potatoes, candied parsnips, scalloped potatoes, sausages in bacon, yorkshires, gravy and cranberry sauce.  Urp.

I had chosen some nice crafty presents for my christmas list this year.  I have given myself a subscription to the Tilda Club: a roughly bi-monthly subscription from Australia which comes with a fabric pack and pattern.  I quite like Tilda fabric but don't often buy it as it is expensive here in the UK.

I chose a higher-magnification lens for my Optivisor and a replacement Little Foot quarter-inch piecing foot for my Singer Featherweight (because my old foot had perished after some 15 years or so, the plastic got too brittle). Maybe I will get to go to a quilting workshop with this machine this year, who knows.

DS paid for some nice packs of scrapbooking paper to use on my new cutting machine, and also a cute pair of scissors that look like the Eiffel Tower.

While the turkey was cooking, I had some time to try out the fabric cutting function of my Brother Scan N Cut.  This is a pattern called Winter Glow that was published recently in Today's Quilter magazine. I thought it would be perfect for cutting on the machine because it would be quite fiddly to cut the snowflakes etc by hand.  I scanned in the template sheet and used the software to turn the outlines into cutting files. It turned out to be a lot more work than I was expecting. The machine picked up a bunch of stuff my human eye had disregarded, like text labels, and then had trouble recognising some of the outlines.  I experimented for a while,  and got there in the end. I expect it gets quicker with practice.  Then I prepared some quilting cotton fused to Steam-a-Seam2 fusible web and put the fabric cutting blade onto the machine.  The snowflakes and candles cut perfectly, I was so pleased.  The holly leaf fabric started to move during cutting even though I had taped it down with masking tape in addition to the mat being sticky, and the star fabric only partially cut and I'm not sure why. So I had to do a bit of hand finishing.  Overall it may not have been quicker than tracing and cutting by hand but I feel like I learned a lot.  The pieces are just fused on at the moment, there needs to be freehand stitching embellishment added to it, three red buttons for holly berries and then quilted.  A fun little project.

A friend of mine was giving away a small older dining table so I said I would like to have it to use as a crafting station for the Brother Scan N Cut.  I've got it set up in the attic room.  It's nice to have more room around the machine to work now although I need to do something about the light fixture up there as the light is terrible.

Once I had the machine set up, I practiced using it to make some gift pouches and tags to go under the tree.

Just for fun, I made up three more of the Trimits ornament kits this week, a gin bottle with a slice of lemon for DH, a pair of mittens and a Christmas pud. These kits are like eating candy, just enjoyable sewing without the effort of cutting out or finding materials.

Earlier in the week I finished Block 7 of the Australian BOM. I hadn't properly looked at the picture on the pattern to realise how much of the 'cards' would be covered up by the ribbon spool. I could have saved myself a fair bit of time doing embroidery that ended up being covered up.  But it's a cute effect overall.  There are three buttons that will get sewn on as embellishments after the quilt is finished.

DH has been on holiday this week and on Tuesday we had a drive over to the charming market town of Olney for a walk around and to pay a visit to the museum to see their renovated bobbin lace room.  In one of the antique shops I spotted two medieval thimbles, which is just amazing.  I didn't feel any urge to own them, but amazing to think that hundreds of years ago someone was sewing with these tools. It feels like they should be priceless, not just £45, but apparently they are relatively common and found by metal detectorists or mudlarkers on the Thames etc.

I've started knitting a new hat, the Just Keeping Warm hat by Lara Simonson, after realising my warmest handknitted hats are all starting to look a bit pilly and worn.  The pattern calls for worsted yarn but I am knitting it in two strands of Rowan Scottish Tweed DK held together.  The yarn is gorgeous but quite scratchy, so I rarely wear the cardigan that I knit from it years ago.  I'll see if I can tolerate it better in a hat. I've currently knit about 16 inches of the band, and a couple of times have had to drop stitches down a few inches in one spot to fix a wrongly crossed cable, the result of trying to knit cables and watch TV at the same time!

I hope you are having a good holiday, seasons greetings and let's hope for a better 2022.