Out with the old

 DS's departure continues to send ripples through our lives and our decor.  His room is ready for the new carpet now and the fitters are coming after Easter.  I fixed a couple of protruding floorboards and painted a neutral colour over the ugly modern tile hearth installed by the previous owners in front of the Victorian fireplace, and the electrician came and fitted the new light fixtures.  In the meantime, his mostly empty room is a useful staging post. I've been saying for some time that we should get rid of a bulky cane furniture suite that was crammed onto the attic floor and primarily used by the cat to sleep upon.  We picked the suite up secondhand and used them in the conservatory at our old house, but there wasn't a good place to put them in this house. There also wasn't anywhere to put them together to take a photograph for marketing purposes.

So today we manoeuvred the lightweight but bulky pieces down the narrow attic stairs with some considerable effort, and I hoovered all the cat hair off the cushions and wicker and posed an attractive shot for photography.  As there were multiple similar sets on ebay and Facebook going dirt cheap (or even free), I didn't price them too highly.  And a few hours later they were out the door and off to a new home for someone's mother-in-law who is apparently over the moon to have them.  So a win all around.

Buoyed by the success, we also took a big load of stuff to the charity shop including a very large unframed picture (also an orphan from the previous house). I have a sense of achievement - although to extract one of the chairs out of my knitting room required moving a big shelf stuffed with yarn, making it painfully obvious that I need to go through and rationalise all the odd balls and packs of yarn. A job for another day.

I've spent a lot of time this week working on the current month of the Australian BOM, which has a lot of stitching in it so is going to be a lot of work.  I haven't taken a picture because it is assembled in pieces which individually don't look like anything yet. I've been watching the second series of Bridgerton on Netflix while I stitch - not really enjoying it as all the characters seem to have turned into unlikeable caricatures and I don't think the romantic leads have any chemistry, but the costumes are still enjoyably bonkers.

 I felt a desperate urge to make something following a long zoom call with some UK quilters, dominated by a couple of dominating women who were endlessly monologuing - so I ran off a little gift bag on my Brother ScanNCut and felt better.

In contrast, last night I joined Chookyblue in Australia who was zoom-ing from a quilter's retreat with a room full of talented women, some of whom had driven 1100km to be there.  They all seemed to be sewing amazing quilts and having such fun, I was deeply envious.  I don't think there are many residential retreats like that here in the UK.

I finished off a project this week that I've been working on for a month or so, which was the renovation of an antique sewing box.  I bought the box cheaply on ebay because I wanted to try my hand at some restoration and this particular box looked attractive and like it was hiding secrets under the grime and decaying polish.  Which it was: I was thrilled to find my careful cleaning with some steel wool and wax remover gradually revealing the intricate marquetry in different coloured veneers.

I was able to clean the lid, refinish it and replace a couple of missing pieces of veneer, then clean and wax the box itself.  The lift out tray needed some loose joints reglued, the tray lids cleaned and in a couple of cases propped up with reversible inserted supports, and the fragile pincushions needed some subtle mending to keep the sawdust inside. I bought some real wool baize online and adhered that to the bottom (it's almost straight :)  ) I'm quite pleased with how it's all turned out. I don't know that I will actually use the box since the pincushions are very delicate, but perhaps if I collect more antique needlework tools in future then I could store them inside.

I saw a scrap quilt at the Quilters Guild weekend last week which looked like a useful way to use up squares.

I was primarily thinking of my scrap baskets but then I received another instalment of the Tilda Club this week which has a charm pack of Tilda Cotton Beach fabrics.  I felt like sewing something fairly easy, so I cut the charm squares into four x 2.5 inch squares and started sewing a  small version of the scrap quilt:

It could be a wall hanging, or maybe a cot quilt.  The Tilda fabrics have turned out to be rather relentlessly medium in value so it needs a border to spice it up a bit.

In the wake of finishing the Bucks Point butterly mat, I posted that I intended to learn how to make Bruges Lace this year.  So far it's been a pretty dismal attempt, the couple of books I have are confusing and tend to contradict each other and to be honest I've put very little time into it so far.  This week I have tried to do better and am making a coaster-sized medallion which will have a filling and an edging for practice.

Not so long until Paducah now!  I've arranged my COVID test and secured my official proof of vaccination letter, and also spent an afternoon preparing little packets of supplies for the supply lists for the classes I'm booked on.  I've also found out that a long-time blog friend (Hi Swooze!) is also going to be attending so we've arranged to meet up for the first time IRL. I'm starting to feel excited (apart from contemplating the very long travel day to get out there, I'm not looking forward to that part at all).

Heaven awaits...