Bleah

 Our car has been written off as not economical to repair. This triggers withdrawal of our replacement car within 6 days, so we will end up with no car at all.  This also means we have to cancel our next booked caravan holiday.  All because some stupid woman made a very regrettable decision to drive when she wasn't sober.  My only consolation is that her car is almost certainly written off as well - it was a lot more damaged than ours. The insurers are at least offering a decent payout, almost as much as we paid for the car secondhand 2.5 years ago. The flip side of that is that car prices in general have gone up a lot.

If things go according to plan, I am off to Estonia on Wednesday for a knitting holiday so we can't really start the process to buy a replacement car until I get back. DH wondered if the Russian events would affect airspace but so far (touch wood) it still seems ok to travel. I feel unhappy at socking a bunch of money into a new car in a year where I spent a lot of money going to Japan, and we have to scaffold our house in August to have all our windows repaired (several are rotting) and repainted which is also going to cost a lot.  Once we get a car, we will have to get a tow hitch fitted which took at least three weeks I think last time round.  So I don't think we will be getting a lot of use out of our caravan this summer.

Anyway, I was away at a lace weekend which took my mind off  all the car cr*p.  DH kindly drove me to the hotel in the replacement car. I was concentrating on elements of Bruges lace and was just making small samples to try out various techniques. It was really nice to have the time to really focus  on lace - I don't do much at home because there always seems to be something more important or appealing to do. I enjoy lacemaking but it's not my main hobby.  The woman sitting across from me guessed that she probably spent 10 hours a week on lacemaking, I probably only manage about 5 hours a month. No wonder it's taking so long to learn Bruges lace.  The lacemakers were a nice bunch and the hotel had pretty decent air conditioning which was great on such a hot weekend.

My samples and rough notes on them

We were gifted a laser-cut pillow name tag (just visible pinned on my pincushion above), and this very cute handmade pincushion.  Someone must have put in a lot of effort making over 50 of these!

This past week I finished the vanilla socks that I knit on the plane to/from Japan. I've put them away until next winter when I will use them as bed socks.  They were a good fit until I washed them - then they bagged out a bit. I'm wondering if the hand-dyed yarn base might be superwash, I'll have to find the label and check.

I spent a day working on a tester bag that I can't reveal yet, but I also finished my self-drafted sling bag that I posted about starting a couple of weeks ago. This is based on the 'Jenny Bag' by Sally Tomato for Missouri Star Quilts.

I was reasonably pleased with how the bag turned out. I didn't get the gusset length quite right, it was a little bit too long so I had to gather it in a bit at the bottom but it looks ok.  The bag feels lightweight and holds the essentials for a trip to the shops.  Unfortunately, when I took it for a longish walk around town, I didn't find it very comfortable.  I had already guessed that the shoulder strap would want to ride up against my neck, which is why I introduced the soft shoulder patch. But in the video, Jenny wears the bag across her lower abdomen, which is a comfortable position for mine as well.  However when I walk, with every step, gravity inches the bag down until it reaches the lowest point of the sling loop.  Not only is this not comfortable because then it's hanging at my side or banging on my hip, but it pulls the soft shoulder patch out of position so that I have webbing up against my neck.  I spent most of my walk fidgeting with the bag and adjusting the front and rear straps trying to find a solution.  But I think ultimately the sling design is a failure.  I don't know if I will keep it for potential gifting, or salvage the hardware and webbing from it to use in another project. It's a shame to waste the Japanese fabric though.

I've also put up onto my design wall the red and white Edyta Sitar house blocks that I was working on at the retreats last year. I still don't know what I want to do with them.  I have a couple more of the full-size and miniature blocks to sew. I still think it would be nice to somehow combine them into a single quilt but size-wise there isn't an obvious solution.  I'm leaving them on the design wall hoping for a lightbulb moment.

I need to think what craft projects I want to take on my Estonia trip. I'm still knitting the lacy cowl that I started in Japan, but it's not very good plane knitting as it requires a chart. And the lighting never seems good enough on planes or in hotel rooms for me to do cross stitch. I will probably take the embroidered quilt blocks again, they were pretty good for working on in hotel rooms as they are mostly just stem stitch.

Tuesday afternoon I will be participating in the Shetland Wool Week online ticket bloodbath - they will be released at 3pm and apparently sell out within an hour typically.  I hope to book various tours and a few classes but it's going to require fast keyboard work and a co-operative credit card company for success.

Oh, the irony...

 Several people have commented, in relation to my 7-week trip to Japan, 'oh, you're so brave'. I brush this off of course because there isn't much courage required to travel in a first-world country which in several respects is more advanced than the UK (public toilets, I'm looking at you).  Ironically, we've just had a week away to Suffolk in the caravan which required much more bravery and adulting than my entire Japan trip.

We got down there fine and got the caravan all set up.  Then the second day of the holiday when we were exploring the nearby town of Woodbridge, we were rear-ended at a traffic light by a driver who was subsequently arrested by the police for driving under the influence.  Luckily no-one was badly injured, we had come to a stop at the red light so were just badly jolted and spent the week feeling a bit sore and stiff. The other driver's airbags inflated so they were ok, just very shocked and out of it. It took about three and a half hours to go through the whole process of police and ambulance arriving, giving statements, getting checked out by paramedics, contacting the AA for recovery of our vehicle etc.  Recovery was complicated by our car  being full of camping stuff, so in the first instance we got them to take our wrecked car back to the campground so we could unload it.  The rest of the week was punctuated by hours on the phone, or on hold, or waiting in our caravan, as we slowly proceeded through milestones like getting our car recovered to an insurer-approved garage, getting a replacement car, and then the really tough nut to crack which was getting a subsequent replacement car fitted with a tow hitch so we would be able to tow the caravan home at the end of the week.  The insurers were unable to provide the towcar but luckily the AA came through for us. In between the endless phone calls (I've filled half a notebook with all my records of the various calls), we did try to fit in some holiday.

Coastal Suffolk turned out to be lovely, we'd never really been before.  We were camped not far from the river Deben and had some lovely walks.

Woodbridge, and many of the local towns, are full of historic buildings dating back to Tudor times.  We visited Aldeburgh one evening after waiting all day at the campsite for our car to be recovered.  After a walk through the town, we tried out some of their famous fish & chips which we ate on a bench looking over the beach. I was really enjoying my fish until a seagull suddenly swooped down and snatched it right out of my hand!  We went back and got another little piece of fish, and ate that one in the car in safety.

We had a hot, but very interesting walk around Sutton Hoo and visited all the exhibits.  DH hadn't been before and I had only had a rushed coach trip, so we enjoyed our visit.

We visited a gorgeous garden called Helmingham Hall, based around a moated Tudor brick mansion, it couldn't be more romantic.  I also loved their twin brick gatehouses.

one of the gatehouses

the mansion

After being held up for almost an hour in the car park by yet another phone call with car providers, we hurried to the medieval town of Lavenham, which has over 350 listed buildings, many of them gorgeous. A Blue Badge tour guide showed us around and told us about the history, really interesting.

The crooked house

In the magnificent Lavenham church, built on the profits of the wool trade, there were many needlepoint kneelers depicting local scenes.

And of course Lavenham is particularly famous for De Vere House, better known nowadays as the home of Harry Potter's parents in Godric's Hollow in the films.  According to our guide, the filmmakers blended De Vere House with the equally scenic guild hall up in the market place for the film.

Da Vere House

So strangely enough, despite all the stress, we did enjoy the holiday.  I don't know when we will get our car back as we have been warned there are global parts shortages causing much delay.  The AA will take back their tow car on Monday but our insurers are supposed to be supplying yet another replacement car.  The replacement will not have a tow hitch so we may have to cancel our next caravan holiday booking. Fun fun fun.  Once again we are certainly getting our money's worth out of our AA membership.  I thought this third year of caravanning would finally go well after the car had various things replaced (that had resulted in AA call outs the previous two years).  At least the caravan itself behaved very well and was a comfortable home during the many hours we spent waiting for calls and vehicles.  And the garden survived - it was in the 30s C last weekend and sunny all week in Suffolk so we were worried we would come back to a shriveled mess, but it seems to have rained in Northamptonshire at least once while we were gone.

Mental jet lag

 I've been home a week now, and while my sleeping schedule is back to normal, my brain seems to be stuck in lower gear. My thinking feels sluggish, I frequently forget what I am doing or what I went into a room to fetch (more often than usual for middle age), and generally I feel apathetic.  Perhaps it is some feelings of  anticlimax after months of preparing for the trip and then seven weeks of travel challenges? Perhaps I'm still recovering from the stresses of travel and language difficulties? Don't know, but I hope I snap out of it soon.

I've been trying to clear the decks in my sewing room to make room and time for all the new projects I brought home (and the previous purchases that are in the queue waiting for attention).  I sewed a backing for the Australian BOM quilt so it is ready to be sandwiched for quilting at some point in the future and I could put away all the materials from it.  The Sampler wallhanging that I made in the shop class last summer had been hanging around waiting to be hand-quilted (because that's what the teacher wanted us to do) - I abandoned that plan and quilted it by machine instead using my walking foot.  The outer 'border' is actually wide binding, the first time I've tried to do such wide binding.  On my first go, I did the corners the way I normally would, which didn't work at all.  After consulting Google, I ripped the binding off and did it again properly although my corners are still a bit lumpy. I can't remember which website I consulted, but this site shows the same technique. I'm glad it's finished. I don't love it, I like the Victorian theme I went with but it's a bit 'matchy matchy' for my tastes.

About a third of my design wall was covered with pinned on patterns and pages of things I didn't want to lose or might want to try. I took all that down and sorted through them.  One of them was an AQS article on making christmas ornaments using selvedges. I have a bag of selvedges I've saved up, so thought these might be a way to use some up.  The bell was my first attempt, sandwiched around Bosal foam. It came out a bit small.  The stocking was my second go, I finished the edges which looked better and added some christmas light beads I had in my stash. DH was a bit puzzled as to why I am making Christmas decs in June. Also it hardly used up any of my selvedge stash.

I'm finding my normal day backpack a bit heavy and bulky after only having my lightweight travel backpack during the holiday.  I wondered if a sling bag might be a smaller option when I'm just going to the shops.  Missouri Star happened to do a video on the 'Jenny Bag' from Sallie Tomato, which looked like it might work for me. However, the pattern is only available in hard copy and it was sold out.  But the bag didn't look too complicated so I drafted my own pattern based on hers and have been working on my version using some lightweight canvas I bought in Japan. This is the front and back and there will be a gusset joining them together, with the raw edges finished with binding.

This week I chose yarn from my stash and knit this year's Shetland Wool Week hat, called the Buggiflooer Beanie. It was fun to be knitting in colourwork again.  I'm blocking it over a bowl, the corrugated rib is underneath so as not to get too stretched.

We went to see DS at his apartment last weekend, so that I could hug him and give him his presents from Japan (a shoe bag I sewed from fun Japanese fabric, cat shaped salt and pepper shakers, and some cat post-it notes).  We went out to lunch and then to the Milton Keynes mall, where I finally got to visit Neil's Fabrics in the marketplace who often advertise their discounted fabrics on Facebook.  There are bins of £1/metre fabric outside, mostly stretch fabrics or dressmaking fabrics. The wooden hut is quite large and lined with fabric rolls inside.  There are some Rose & Hubble quilting cottons, some cheaper printed cottons, polycottons, a good selection of plain jersey fabrics, and quite a lot of dressmaking fabrics.  I didn't buy anything but it was fun to look.

While I was in Japan, I never came across any gluten free bread - it does exist but only in bigger stores I think. I really missed being able to have toast, sandwiches etc. I also reflected that it was pretty dumb for me to own an older bread machine that only makes normal bread, when I am  now gluten intolerant. I used to make bread for DH and DS occasionally, but DS has moved out now.  So when I got back from Japan, I ordered a new model machine that has a gluten free cycle, and we gave away the old machine which was at least 10 years old and possibly even 20 years old.  I've only tried the gluten free recipe which came with the new machine so far, but it makes a lovely loaf of yeasty fresh bread. It is wonderful on the first day, but doesn't keep well at all even in the fridge.  I will try freezing some slices next time. Meanwhile I am enjoying fresh bread warm from the machine for the first time in at least a decade.

I've slogged on with the garden, trying to do at least an hour of weeding most days. I have found some absolute whoppers: weeds a metre high, huge patches of chickweed, creeping buttercup everywhere, self-seeded perennials where I don't want them - I've filled up probably 20 plastic trugs and DH has been to the dump twice. Plus clematis and roses flopping all over the place that needed tieing up, things needing staking, or cutting back. It's looking more like a garden now, and the roses are doing well.  It's supposed to turn hot this weekend though, up to 30 degrees, which will be hard on things.