Marriage rush hour

 DS, having now reached that age when all his friends are getting married, is off attending a wedding this weekend with his girlfriend. My Japanese teacher said Japanese call this age 結婚ラッシュ, which translates to something like 'marriage-rush hour'.  Having him away is giving me a foreshadowing of the empty nest which is fast approaching and I feel a bit sad. I know he has to go out and be an independent adult though. And it's certainly helping my ongoing decluttering because in addition to his own things getting packed up, I've been finding other stuff we can give to him to help get him started - like the redundant IKEA bookcase from my sewing room and some closet organisers from our last house.  I've realised that I only know how to cook for three people, it's going to be really difficult to readjust my thinking to quantities for two people.  Luckily we have a decent-sized freezer.

We're off to check the caravan today, which we do regularly while it is in winter storage. We're also going to try to swap out the almost-empty gas canister for a full one, ready for the upcoming season.  Apparently there were severe shortages of gas last season due to the huge demand during staycation time, but we were able to get through the entire summer with the canister that came with the van since we usually have electric hookup on site. The storage site exchanges gas canisters so hopefully they have our size in stock and we can do that today.

I finished the little red cotton baby cardigan and will be sending this off to California to my friend for her little girl. I think it's too big for her at the moment but she will grow into it.

I blocked the vanilla socks that I posted last week, and you can see the ankle stitch patterns much better now. I've been wearing them as bedsocks and they fit quite well.

I've spent several more hours this week finishing off the spinning tool holder that I cut out on my Brother ScanNCut.  The whole thing has taken ages and needed a lot of refining/sanding to get everything to fit together, due to the inherent error factor when gluing multiple layers together.  I really don't feel the end product is worth all the time it took, but somewhat to my surprise it does actually spin fairly well (it pivots on a central dowel). I'm going to keep my ScanNCut tools in it.  I don't know if I will make anything else from that USB - I will certainly calculate in advance how many pieces need to be cut out before choosing anything.

I finished Month 9 of the Australian BOM. The cat popped out of nowhere to photobomb the pictures. There was a lot of work in this block because of the applique.  I've started Month 10 which is just embroidery and it's going a lot faster.  I think we are getting near the end of the embroidered blocks and will be moving on to the pieced fabric sections soon.

Still no sign of the webbing straps that I need for the ripstop nylon backpack so instead I have made a start on the Kavi mini backpack pattern.  For me this is quite a technical build with various hardware pieces to install, various types of stabilisers , and my first experience sewing with cork fabric.  The cork (which is a thin layer of cork adhered to a knit fabric background) is actually not bad to work with, my machine seems to be sewing through it easily as a double layer.  For six or eight layers (when you are sewing folded straps to already constructed flaps for example) I've had to switch up to the Super Stretch needle that the engineer recommended to avoid skipped stitches.  Despite trying to be careful, I'm having my usual issues with visibly wobbling top stitching but overall it's going well so far (touch wood).

My computer, after a short-lived rallying following a hard reset of the router, is starting to play up again. I'm also getting warnings that the CPU is not compatible with the coming Windows 11. I don't know, maybe it's time to get a new one. This one is five years old which I suppose in dog years is getting on.  At least it will still let me play the video game except that I've worn out my controller (one of the buttons stopped working, allowing enemies to bash me at will while I ineffectually mashed an attack button that wasn't doing anything) so I've had to order a new controller. Thus two days of withdrawal symptoms but the new controller should come today and I can get back into it. Also the Osaka sumo tournament starts tomorrow so lots of TV time over the next few weeks watching those highlights on NHK. DH is baffled that after a lifetime of loathing all sports, I have chosen sumo as my sport to be interested in.  We went to the Osaka tournament in person in 2019 which was my first time actually seeing the matches, and I just found the whole thing so fascinating.  The cultural and religious aspects, the apparently simple rules (unlike, say, the arcane aspects of football), the lack of weight classes which can see comparatively tiny wrestlers fighting behemoths (and often beating them with clever technique), the discipline involved - and the short matches which suit my sometimes short attention span. I hope to go to another tournament in person if I ever get back to Japan (which still hasn't fully opened its borders).