Changing seasons

 Although still February, spring is definitely feeling like it's just around the corner.  The weather has been warmer with daytime temps up to c 11 degrees C and some lovely sunshine. The magnolia tree has fat buds on it, the garden sports a lovely carpet of snowdrops and one early daffodil, a few crocus have appeared, the irises are pushing up new sword-shaped leaves and the hazel tree is covered in catkins.

Meanwhile in the dollshouse room it is still Christmas.  I've added the remaining wall cladding and some edge trim to the Christmas porch vignette, glued the steps into place and added the remaining trellis on either side of the steps.

I finished the first house of the CrossStitcher SAL.  I like it but I'm a bit disappointed that the colours are so different from the magazine photo even though I am using the specified canvas and threads. I guess they photoshopped theirs to make the image pop more. I like the printed colours which seem warmer.

I've moved on to the second little house which has relatively similar colours but features a typical Harrogate House.

In the sewing room this week, I made up a padded laptop sleeve to give my laptop some added protection while it is riding on the plane in my daypack to Japan.  I will confess that the reason for the pink bar at the bottom is because initially I cut my panels too short so I had to extend them. :)  There is a concealed velcro tab inside to hold the laptop in place. The reverse side is the same fabric print but in a beige colourway.

I also completed another bag test for a simple book bag but I can't show that yet as it is still embargoed.  I was working on that during a charity fundraiser zoom call with Chooky in Australia - Friday evening for me but very early Saturday morning for them.  I sewed the final seams upstairs on my industrial the next day, when the bulky layers were becoming too much for my domestic Janome.

When I was having my big charity fabric clear out, I remembered that I had several 'Little Quilts' Sunbonnet Sue panels.  Early in my quilting career /early 1990s, I thought the Little Quilts designs were so cute, and I made a few small wallhangings out of their book. I'm a bit surprised to find the company is still going.  Anyway, I had a full panel of Sunbonnet Sue, and had inherited three more from my friend who passed plus some partial panels.  So I held onto those after the clear out and have cut them up to see if I can make a charity quilt out of them.  Each panel features a main wallhanging, a small doll quilt, and some freestanding figures.  I have four main wallhangings, five doll quilts and six sets of figures. So I'm thinking something like this.  

I cleared out a few more big collections of paperwork from the attic. I had two big sacks of jobhunting stuff: notes from jobhunting courses, interview techniques and my prepared responses, a huge binder of all the cover letters I wrote for applications, their replies, my notes from any subsequent interview; numerous versions of my CV etc etc.  All of it gone now because I don't need to do that any more!  Thank all the gods, because it was horrible.  While I am not ruling out ever working again if I get bored with retired life, I have digital versions of my CV and that's not likely in the near future.  Two more big sacks held the remnants of my corporate career: all my payslips, all my salary review letters, all my performance reviews over the years (many of these covered in handwritten angst as I agonised over perceived slights, lack of parity with colleagues, comparison with the cost of living etc.), my various promotions, examples of the corporation communications and publications I used to work on.  It's a strange feeling because I can remember it all being vitally important and yet now it isn't at all.  So that was a lot of shredding to do for all the personal information.  Our little home shredder can only be run for two minutes continuously so big shredding jobs have to be broken up over several days.

The benefit of the clearout was to empty a second cupboard in the attic which I can now expand my quilt collection into.  I refolded all the quilts on the guest bed because DS is coming home to visit soon, and they are now all stowed away back in the attic. But they definitely benefited from having their rest for several weeks, virtually all the creases had dropped out.  I fold quilts on the bias for storage after reading that tip somewhere, it is much better for preventing permanent creasing.

I've managed to give myself mild RSI in my right hand from too much videogaming, so I had better give it a rest today.  My first Dark Souls game was when my son introduced me to DS3, which is notoriously difficult.  It was a huge struggle for me and eventually I had to give up about 2/3rds of the way through when I couldn't progress any further.  Since then I have played several other Souls and Souls-like games and I would like to think my skills have improved. So a few weeks ago I started watching DS3 walkthrough videos to see if I would be able to pick up my DS3 game again and progress it.  I came to the conclusion that I would have to start over because I've just forgotten too much of the game.  So that has turned into a massive time suck even though I have been trying to limit myself to less than two hours a day. I am doing a lot better, very satisfying to triumph easily through areas that I can remember giving me a lot of trouble the first playthrough.  But my right hand takes the brunt of the controls and I have definitely overtaxed it.

Losing at shingle chicken

 I did some more work on my dollshouse porch this week.  After installing the lights, it was time to glue and screw the roof into place on top of the porch posts which was a bit like wrestling an octopus - I had glued pins made from toothpicks into both ends of the posts so they had to fit into holes in the porch and into the ceiling under the roof, while the roof had to fit into the corner of the structure and be approximately level, meanwhile with my fourth and fifth arms I had to get the drill in place to finish screwing in the screws to reinforce the wood glue.  I got DH to help so he forced the roof into the corner while I screwed. Surprisingly it all came out ok, then I clamped it up to dry overnight.

As part of my Christmas present of porch bits, my friend Anita had very kindly included a roll of 'real asphalt shingles' which according to the box should have covered the area of the porch roof.  I measured placement lines 1/2" apart according to the instructions, and started glueing.  It was very kind of Anita to give them to me, but I have to say they were rather frustrating to use as the shingles were all different widths. So it was impossible to get them neatly lined up with the next row covering the previous row's seam between shingles.  And the more rows I applied, the smaller the roll was getting.  I held my nerve and kept glueing, but did eventually lose at shingle chicken 1.5 rows before the finish.

So before glueing down the final strip, I scanned the final partial strip of shingles with my ancient desktop scanner to create a .jpg, which I then imported into my Brother ScanNCut software to create a cutting file so I could cut the extra 1.5 rows out of black card on the machine.  I glued that in place and then touched up the new shingles with paints to blend them in a bit better.

Then I gave the whole roof a 'frost' effect with drybrushing, because this is going to be a winter scene.  I'm fairly pleased with it. I'm thinking there might be snow eventually as well but we'll see.

I tackled an alteration project this week that has been sitting around for a while.  Back in the end of summer sales I bought two double cotton gauze skirts from Matalan with the idea of combining them into a dress. I had bought a casual dress pattern by Waves & Wild called 'Kinjarling' after seeing another lady wearing various versions of it at the bag retreat back in October.  I wanted the bodice for my project so I sewed a toile in old sheeting but found I needed to size up to get a better fit.  Then I cut up one skirt and sewed it into yardage so I could cut out a bodice and sew it.  I took the waistband off the other skirt and sewed it to the bodice, then I opened up the skirt side seams and sewed in pockets using the Kinjarling pocket pattern.  The end result isn't bad: a comfortable loose-fitting plain dress which I will try out as a travel dress because hopefully the double gauze isn't going show the wrinkles too badly. If it works out, I might sew a full version of the pattern in a different fabric.

Another sewing project this week was to make an additional cover for my Christmas present Kindle.  The Amazon cover that I had bought for it is slim and sturdy, but quite scratchy and hard-edged so uncomfortable to hold.  I looked at various other covers on Amazon and tried one, but they were all so bulky and heavy that you are losing the whole benefit of the slim e-reader. Similarly the various Youtube tutorials all produce fairly bulky covers or were sleeves that you had to remove the kindle from in order to use it.  I tried making a Mk-I version that slipped over the corners of my existing cover and was held on with elastic down the spine, but even that small amount of bulk prevented the magnet closure from working and the edges of the cover were flipping upwards.  For my MK-II version, I just went with a slipcover on top of the scratchy cover, and to hold it shut (because the magnet closure still wasn't happy) I added some elastic.  The elastic has the added benefit of fitting over the hand to make it easier to hold.  I'll see how it goes.  At least it looks better and is more comfortable.

I had some happy mail this week.  I've ended up on the mailing list for the Oh Sew Sweet Shop somehow, I think because I bought some ByAnnie stuff from them at FOQ. And last week they emailed me with a new Northcott fabric line called 'Tea for Two' which features a digitally printed photographic large panel of a china cupboard full of vintage china which I just loved.  I love pretty vintage china and have several pieces of my own. So I had to have it, and along with that I bought some of the coordinate fabrics so I can throw a few borders around the panel and make it into a wall hanging.

One of the coordinate fabrics is another photo-realistic digital print, this time of white lace against a light grey background.  When I received it, I realised that it might actually work as a background for the borders of my Australian BOM quilt.  I took it downstairs and tried it out with the embroidered panels, and I think it might work.  Although there isn't much pure white in the quilt, there is some, and there are also some soft greys.  As far as I could tell with a flat lay, the white lace fabric is popping out the white and bright colours in the quilt panels making it all look lighter and fresher - whereas the sepia tones of the kit fabric or my replacement were bringing out the yellow/browns.  So I've ordered a couple more metres of the white lace fabric to see if it will work better once I get the scalloped border made.

Despite the above stash acquisition, this week I have been working at decluttering the sewing room.  I went through every single fabric shelf and collection (apart from the ones I had already sorted out) and pulled out all the ugly fabrics, all the panels, all the ancient fabrics that I had bought 20 -30 years ago and never used (some of these were secured with pins that were so rusty I had to use pliers to pull them out!), the hideous backing fabric purchased only because it was cheap, the inherited fabrics from other people's stash, the leftovers from long ago quilts...  I went through all of it and made a lot of decisions and the upshot was two big sacks of fabric and panels which are being collected by Project Linus tonight to be made into charity quilts for children in hospital.  

It feels really good and there is so much more room in my storage area now.  I don't know why I was keeping half of it, out of sight out of mind mostly.  A lot of the panels came from a friend who passed about 10 years ago and they weren't my taste, and some of the ancient stuff I can remember buying on my first trip to Paducah c. 1992!  Part of the problem was that early in my quilting career I had a penchant for big print fabrics or theme print fabrics - which are really difficult to use because if you cut them into pieces then you end up with radically different coloured pieces. And there are only so many bag linings, and quilt backs and feature fabric tote bags you can make. I also used to get a lot of cheap fabrics on sale at the Fabric Guild when it was a physical store in Leicester back in the day, buying based on the price tag rather than the aesthetic.  I think (I hope anyway) that nowadays I am a lot more discerning and while I still buy things not knowing exactly what I will make out of them, I at least have a general idea.

For example, today I went to the Textile East Fair in St. Ives (Cambridgeshire) with some friends, and while it wasn't a huge show, I did get this layer cake of attractive Japanese-style fabrics because I had literally just seen a project I liked in Quilter's Companion magazine the night before that uses either these same or very similar fabrics. So now I have another project to add to the queue.

This week I did some more work on the second Bruges Lace flower which is pretty similar to the first one, and going along fine.

And I have upped my game on the gifts I will take to Japan with some taller cellophane bags that come with these attractive bows to secure them. I've also added in a little Union Jack memo pad behind the three tea bags.  I've shown this to one of the Japanese ladies I chat with online and she was quite taken with it, so I think we are almost there.  She suggested that I add a printed note with my name 'a gift from ...' inside so I might do that.

I'm still unpicking the quilting lines on my son's quilt that is falling apart - it is an incredibly tedious job and I could probably have made him two new quilts by now, but I make myself do 20-30 minutes every night. One day it will be ready for new quilting.

I may have chosen my knitting project for Japan. As MeMeM suggested in her comment last post (I can't reply to them as they are set to 'no reply' in Blogger), I've found a lacy cowl pattern called the Giselle Lace Cowl by Julie Harris Designs. It looks quite fancy but according the the instructions is actually straightforward.   I have some hand dyed merino/silk yarn from the Wool Barn that I bought at some long ago fair in a duck egg blue which I think would look nice. Although it says the merino element is superwash so I don't know if that is going to inhibit the lace from blocking well - anyone know?

Carting another old friend off the charity shop

 I'm a bit sad because today we have downsized an old pine mirror/dresser combination that was my first ever antique furniture purchase - way back c. 1986 in Canada.  I loved it dearly for many years, and it was my only full length mirror through a few apartments before being shipped to the UK to use in our first (and subsequent) houses.

I sometimes listen to decluttering videos while sewing, and one presenter struck a chord with me recently - she said that an item might have been important or precious to us in a previous season of our life, but in our current season it may no longer be required.  I do tend to hang onto things for a very long time, past their sell-by date so to speak - like the machine knitting magazines that hardly anyone wanted - just because at one point I cherished them. (I learned a lesson from that experience actually - I took several years of Designer Knitting magazine along to my recent sewing retreat and unloaded them to good homes on the donation table). To get back to the mirror/dresser, it had no place in our current house and for 8 years has been sitting up on the attic landing collecting dust and just being a place where we piled stuff.  So I decided to donate it to the charity furniture shop. And to be honest, when we took it apart to get it into the car, it was clear that it wasn't in great shape, it needs some repairs.  The charity shop took it but were a bit dubious - I hope it can find a loving new owner who will fix it up and enjoy it, I hope if they can't sell things that they at least give them to someone else and not throw them out. But I'm glad it's out of the house - if nothing else, we had a lot of trouble getting all the heavy pieces down all the stairs and into the car so better to do it now than in 10 years when we are even more feeble.

We went to check on the caravan in the storage yard today, and then DH took me to Bramble Patch in Weedon, probably one of the UK's larger quilt stores although modest by American standards.  I was looking for a replacement fabric for my Australian BOM kit  quilt border.  I looked carefully at all the offerings and mentally shortlisted about six of them.  I was just starting my second pass around when one of the staff started following me and trying to 'help' by asking lots of questions and pulling out unsuitable bolts of fabric. It was very distracting and she really wasn't taking the hint that I didn't want the help.  So I settled on the safest choice instead of taking a chance on something a bit more interesting, but I still hope the ecru floral I have chosen (on the right in the pic) is more interesting than the bland background fabric (on the left) that came in the kit.  The pink floral protruding from the bit of pieced quilt is what the scalloped border will be made out of, which is appliqued on top of the border fabric. I would have loved to get something more romantic, like a faded pink chintz, or barely-there stripe, but they didn't have anything like that.

I put away the re-homed red fabrics and the pile of FQs this week and have realised that my fabric collection now exceeds my available shelf space.  I think the last few years I have been taking in more fabric than I have been using up, partly because a lot of my stash is so old now that it never seems to go with anything.  I should probably pull out a lot of old stuff and donate it to Project Linus.  But energised by the mini-clearout, I actually got out a couple of the quilts I quilted on the frame, pressed and trimmed them, and sewed their binding onto one side by machine.  I finished the smallest one completely as it is only a tabletopper panel I added some borders to, but it looks cute in the hall.

I tried out an online cross stitching Zoom call this week.  I was stitching on the first of a 16-part Stitch-Along being published in CrossStitcher Magazine.  As you may have gathered, I have a weakness for houses in all forms, and this is a sampler of 16 typical British architectural buildings.  So instead of sensibly finishing the Little House Sampler that has been on the backburner for a couple of years while I did the Australian BOM, I have started a new project. As you do.  I don't need a second house sampler so I am going to turn this one into a little book instead.

I don't think the other Zoom participants are my tribe though, they were like English Channel swimmers compared to me paddling in the shallows with a bucket and spade.  Several of them were working on enormous projects fully three feet wide, they track their number of stitches on iPads that tell them what percent they are done and their estimated finish date, they have huge collections of patterns and projects, they were sitting in front of complicated needlework frames with specialist lights.  And here's me just holding my little bit of canvas in my hand.  And I was going backwards for part of it after realising that I had been using the wrong colour for a while. Just a dabbler, that's me :)

As it has warmed up a bit outside, my dollshouse room is no long so uninvitingly chilly, so I went down to work on the porch lights a bit.  I've decided to keep it simple, and found a bit of old handrail which has a channel along the bottom to hide the wires of the bulbs.  So I drilled a hole through and glued the bulbs and wires in, and drilled out the bases of three of the Christmas light fixtures.  Since taking these photos, I have painted the handrail part black, and glued on the Christmas fixture with silicon glue (so that I can remove the top part if I ever need to get at the bulb.  Then I will feed the wires through pre-drilled holes in the wall and glue the other end of the handrail bit to the wall.  The wires will be extended either with copper tape or more wire, and connected to the transformer to light the bulbs.

I also finished the Tilda Club tool belt this week. I was a bit skeptical about this when I first opened the packet, but actually I think it might be pretty useful.  It's quite comfortable to wear, and the elastic loops are loose enough that it's easy to get the tools in and out.  I have quite a limited cutting space and I am constantly losing my rotary cutter, pencil, scissors etc. because I have put fabric down on top of them. This way everything will stay to hand. As well as being stiffened with wadding and woven interfacing, there is a piece of Bosal foam in the back section to keep it all fairly rigid. The belt is adjustable to you can wear it higher or lower depending on what's comfortable.

A bit of acquisition this week: some matching sewing tools I stumbled across on Amazon after seeing the scissor holder in a magazine.  The scissors aren't very sharp so I substituted a pair of my own snips after taking this picture. It's handy that the sheath and scissors are connected - a bit like a scissors fob but actually being useful.

Now that the calendar has changed to February, it feels more than ever that Japan is looming on the horizon.  Yesterday I was feeling a bit panicky and anxious about it - which I know must seem ridiculous since it is something I am choosing to do, but I tend to be quite a worrier about details: what to take, what not to take, what are the rules, what is the etiquette, what if I am taking too many bags etc. etc.  I am slowly working through my To-Do list, like buying some bits of clothing, a Japanese SIM card, hiring a pocket wifi etc.  I think what triggered the worry session was trying to choose craft projects to take with me, and completely dithering about how many to take, how much things weigh, will I have time at the language school or be too tired in the evenings, will the light be too bad, what if I don't take enough things to do....  so far I have packed a little cross stitch kit which I am still second-guessing myself on as the chart is fairly complicated and maybe the little scissors I have packed will get confiscated even though they comply with the TSA and international guidelines of having short blades. I have also ordered some embroidery floss and prepped some of the quasi-redwork panels that came in the vintage-style wallhanging kit I bought in Paducah, because that is mostly backstitch and would be easy to do in poor light or hanging out in the living room of the shared house.  So I just need to choose a knitting project now - usually I take socks or gloves travelling because they are small and simpler, but for longer trips like this one I usually take a shawl because you get more knitting time out of one ball of lace yarn.  Thing is, I already have about 20 shawls and don't really need any more.  Sweaters are out because they require too much yarn (bulk and weight).  Maybe a lacy pair of socks?

As a palate cleanser, I sewed up a quick little trinket tray from this tutorial, using some Japanese fabric.  It folds flat and will be useful for corraling small items in my hotel and shared house rooms.

I've also started trying to come up with some gifts to take with me but I'm not there yet.  I've watched several Youtube videos on the giftgiving culture in Japan, which has a lot of rules.  The main advice is something consumable from your country, and that the packaging is much more important than the actual contents.  I ordered some individual Yorkshire tea packets, some cellophane bags and some UK stickers to see what they would look like combined into a little gift.  I think I need a taller bag so there is more of a 'top' to it, and a more impressive ribbon - I put two packets in but maybe I should put three.  These will be goodwill gifts to give to neighbours, teachers, maybe fellow students, but I don't think they look sufficiently attractive yet.

All of a sudden, the days are staying lighter for longer, and we have a nice show of snowdrops out in the garden. Meanwhile the daffodils have started to push up long green leaves, and the magnolia tree has some growing buds. It is starting to feel like spring is just around the corner.