Hiding in plain view

 I was idly thinking the other night of when the dining room was taken up with my machine quilting frame, and all the quilts that I had quilted. Then I started wondering where all those quilts were, and with a jolt suddenly realised that a bunch of them were still waiting to be finished with binding.  Of course, they are hanging in plain view in my sewing room but had just become part of the wallpaper - and what with all the travelling and car shenanigans, I had forgotten all about them.  So I investigated and found that I had six quilts waiting to be finished with binding (and four others waiting for sit-down quilting).  One quilt even already had the binding machined on, and just needs the other edge hand-sewn to finish.  One quilt was washed and trimmed ready for application, another two were washed.  So I chucked the final two into the washing machine, one at a time, for a rinse and spin; then hung them out in our intermittent sunshine to dry.  I machined the binding onto the trimmed quilt and have started the hand-sewing, and trimmed up another one.  Unlike some quilters, I don't mind binding, but it will be a lot of handsewing to get round six bedsize quilts.  I have tried completely sewing binding on by machine in the past but I'm never happy with the result I achieve, it's never as neat for me.

Before I re-discovered the quilts, I was finishing off the Edyta Sitar Houses Quilt.  I'm fairly pleased with how it's turned out.  I've photographed it on a double-size bed but it's been sewn to fit my own queen-size mattress - I just couldn't be bothered to tidy my room up for a photo.  I used some yellow floral backing fabric as the 'wallpaper', but I used the reverse side so that the background would be fainter than the quilt blocks and not compete with them.  So how many times did I forget that was my decision, and sew with the right side of the fabric showing?  Many many times.  Once it's quilted (one day) I may cut a scalloped edge along the two plain sides.

I also pulled out one of the little kits I bought in Tokyo - this one for a little 3D Sunbonnet Sue.  She is intended to be a sort of bell-shape that fits around a cord and ring that could hold house keys.  I think I will turn it into a needlebook instead, so I need to add some felt inside the two halves.

In knitting, I finished the Lace Cowl that I took to Japan as one of my travel projects.The pattern is Giselle Lace Cowl by Julie Harris Designs, and the yarn is a lovely hand-dyed wool-silk mix.  I've never tried to block a cowl before and wasn't sure how to go about it.  In the end, I blocked it flat in a volcano-shape, holding the sides out with two blocking wires and pinning out the bottom edge. I didn't want to stretch the ribbing.  It seems to have worked ok.

The weather has continued to be showery and warm, with the result that everything in the garden has been growing like topsy (including the weeds) and it was turning into a jungle.  We went out today and spent almost three hours doing a major hack-back of the hazel tree, the bamboo clump (which is worryingly starting to press on the sides of its bamboo-proof pen), climbing roses, ivy, our gigantic Black Elder, a bit of the Photinia and Magnolia and a few other big shrubs. It's not really the right time of year for pruning but it was all getting to be too much, with trees growing into each other and starving the shrubs underneath of light. And the hazel tree was growing over onto next door's roof and gutter.  DH had to make three trips to the dump but was very pleased at how much more the new estate car can hold compared to our old hatchback. Things feel more under control now but there are still so many weeds.  The older I get, the more sympathy I have with people who turn their gardens into a low-maintenance zone.

The car has a tow hitch now, a high-tech detachable swan neck which was required because the new car has rear parking sensors. The poor installer had to take the whole rear of the car off to fit a new crash beam with the mounting points, and then feed wiring through the interior - all in our very cramped driveway until enough shoppers drove away that he could set up on the roadside instead.  It should all be ready to go now, but we're going to take it out to the storage yard soon to connect to the caravan and check it all works ok.  Probably take the van out for a little test tow as well to get used to how it handles on the new car.

I've been looking into New Zealand as a travel destination, which is surprisingly complicated.  It's not a a budget destination at all, and group tours are astonishingly expensive.  The usual recommendation is to hire a car/motorhome/campervan but as I don't drive, that's out for me.  There are only limited train routes.  There are bus companies but there are a lot of negative reviews for them on TripAdvisor as apparently they have been hit by the global staff shortages and are cancelling lots of buses at short notice leading to stranded passengers. At the same time, there are a huge number of places to see, it sounds wonderful but how do you choose? As a destination, it's a relatively active one - even if you aren't planning to hike or undertake adrenalin activities (no thank you), you need to be fairly mobile.  So it's one to do sooner rather than later in my retirement. The other issue is getting to NZ - there is no way I am up for a 24 hour flight so I would have to break my journey somewhere.  I could stop in Tokyo again, which would certainly be easy and familiar, but I was just there.  Decisions, decisions.

Returning to status quo

 Many thousands of pounds later, we are almost back to normal after the car being written off.  I was able to locate a secondhand version of the preferred tow car models we were looking at - an hour's drive away in Cambridge though.  So we hustled over there last weekend to have a look at it and a test drive. It's a 2021 reg and has a bunch of top of the range stuff we don't need, but the price was right and DH liked how it handled.  So we bought it, and it was delivered Thursday - by which time I had sorted out new insurance for it (much more expensive than our old budget car) plus the settlement had been paid out by the insurers for the old car.  I spent a few more hours looking for someone to install a tow hitch, and managed to get that booked in for next week.  And we've given back the insurance replacement car. So it's starting to feel like we are back on track.

Meanwhile we should have been on holiday this week with the caravan so I have a clear weekend. I decided to stage a home sewing retreat instead and spent most of yesterday sewing.  I pulled out one of my stash of kits, this one a thatched cottage doorstop I bought online from Amber Makes on Etsy. It's a digitially printed panel although she encourages you to applique the windows and doors for texture, and to add some hand embroidery to the flowers, which I did.  It was hard to stuff it so that there aren't any empty corners but without it turning into a ball-shape. But the end result is cute. I weighted it down inside with a small bag of decorative flower gravel.  The panel also includes a smaller pincushion version of the same cottage, but I haven't made that up yet.

front (above), rear (below)

Then I did some work on my Edyta Sitar houses blocks.  I've had these up on my design wall for a few weeks, trying to think what to do with them.  I also had pieced the last two pairs of big/small houses (previously cut out at a sewing retreat).  I suddenly had the idea of creating a 'bookcase' with a collection of dollhouses displayed on the shelves.  I ordered some brown tone-on-tone fabric online for the bookcase but when it came, it was a lot darker than the screen image and looked terrible.  I've now found some red batik in my stash which I think will work.  The next issue was trying to size up what the designer calls 'blocks' (partial rows of houses sewn together) so that they were all the same width.  This turned into a can of worms: when I measured, all eight of my 'blocks' were a different length with the variation being as much as four inches.  This is partly due to the quilt design which intersperses spacer strips randomly between the houses and between the two halfs of each house row. And partly due to my sewing of course - I guess piecing the blocks over various hotel sewing retreats did not contribute to accuracy. The instructions do not actually give final block measurements - you could calculate these by subtracting all the seam allowances but I decided life was too short.

So I picked the shortest block and then worked through all the other blocks, shortening them to the same measurement by removing spacers or trimming spacers down. I hope I am progressing the quilt and not ruining it. I now have eight 'shelves' of big houses that are pretty much the same length.  For the little houses, I took off all the spacers and just sewed them together.

It feels like things are moving onwards but another issue is that I am going to have a very tall and narrow quilt unless I add fabric onto the sides.  I'll get the bookcase part sewn together and see how it all looks.

Earlier in the week I pulled another kit out of my stash and put it together.  This was for a circle purse in Japanese fabrics and was a kit I bought from EuroJapan at FOQ last year (I just checked their website and apparently they ceased trading earlier this year).  It's a simple idea: random-cut strips of fabric sewn together and decorated freehand with sashiko stitching.  I didn't like the thread colour in the kit, so I used some of the sashiko thread I bought in Tokyo.  You bind two circle sandwiches of outer/wadding/liner, then hand stitch the zipper in and the remainder of the two sides together.

I've added the purse to the Japan shelf in my new display cabinet.  DH was starting to complain a bit about all my little collections taking up most horizontal surfaces around the house. So I found a vintage display cabinet on Evil-bay and we picked it up on the way back from looking at the new car last weekend.  I have relocated various treasures into the cabinet so DH is happier.

I've been working occasionally on the dollshouse christmas porch, gradually installing the posts and railings, and some decorative brackets I found in my stash; then moving on to battery operated lights and some decorations.  Still a work in progress but looking more like a porch now.

I tried out a U3A (University of the Third Age) coach trip this week, my first one since joining U3A last year. It was easy to find the place where the coach was picking us up - just looked for where all the grey-haired elderly women (two of them on walkers) were standing.  We went to visit Barnsdale, a garden famous from being the home of the television staple Gardeners' World for many years when the late Geoff Hamilton was the presenter. It wasn't a very sociable trip as everyone else apart from one other woman had come with friends. But it was interesting to see the garden. I don't really remember it from television (after 1996 the show moved elsewhere) but it is divided up into 38 mini-gardens on a wide variety of themes: a beginners garden, an Italian garden, a plantsmen's garden, a cottage garden etc.  The gardens were built during the TV shows or for Geoff's books and are still run on his organic principles (he was an early pioneer of organic gardening). Perhaps because of that, most of them have a somewhat scruffy appearance - not many weeds but a lot of plants left to go to seed or that had grown into each other. Certainly not a manicured garden but quite interesting to wander around in, and I like the cottage style of garden.

Marathon knitting week

 I'm back from Estonia and the knitting workshop, which turned out to be quite intensive. So much knitting every day just to keep up - I developed a half-inch wide blister on my left ring finger partway through the week from clenching the metal double-pointed needles and had to wear a plaster/band-aid the rest of the week. We were learning how to knit Estonian gloves, which together with mittens played an important role in their cultural traditions. Mittens were given as gifts at weddings and funerals for example.  The fabric is quite dense and thick - we were knitting with wool equivalent to 14 wraps per inch on 2mm needles - so that the gloves will be warm and sturdy. I'm not a particularly fast knitter, so I was having to panic knit compared to some of the other participants, just so I could keep up with the various workshop stages of the glove.  My resultant sample glove has terrible tension and is full of pattern errors and strange lumps, but I managed to cover all of the various techniques and took lots of notes which I have since consolidated into improved instructions.  This is what my glove looked like by the end of the workshop.

So on my cuff, I tried out a braided cast-on, followed by a Kihnu braid, followed by a wrapped little dots pattern, then threw in some fair isle, garter ridges and some cables.  I was riffing off some of the examples I saw in books and for sale in shops.  My main pattern is from a book of Kihnu Island patterns, and the smaller finger pattern is also from there.  

Once I got home, I bought some 4-inch glove needles and finished the little finger. I also ripped back the thumb top to have another go at getting the pattern right. My pattern repeat is 20 stitches, and as well as the thumb having one full repeat + one partial repeat, you then decrease the top in four different places.  Trying to work out how to knit the pattern repeat while stitches were disappearing in four different places, while wrestling with 8-inch metal needles that kept falling out of the stitches, just about made my head explode.  I tried three times and gave it up as a bad job while in Estonia, but it's fixed now.  And finally, I duplicate stitched over some of the worst pattern errors, and gave the glove a good steam to plump up the wool which improved some of the tension issues.  This is the final result, still far from perfect but it was a good learning experience.  I don't love the colours so I doubt I will knit a second glove to match, but I had to choose wool from what the teacher had available and I wanted two contrasting colours.

As well as knitting, I did a few days of sightseeing in Helsinki (Finland) and in Tallinn (Estonia), plus the workshop participants got to see some of the south-eastern area of Estonia along the Russian border.  Estonia reminded me so much of Canada, miles of green forest punctuated by lakes and rivers and bogs. The south-eastern area is sparsely populated with many old wooden buildings and log-cabin style barns. What was really interesting is the very vibrant craft traditions which are still very much a part of regional folk costumes and decor.  We saw lots of weaving and old floor looms on which they weave fabric-strip rugs, ornately decorated woollen blankets, and the very fine decorative linen weaving used in the sleeves of the traditional costumes.  Narrow woven braids are another  constantly seen craft, used for belts and to decorate costumes and items - these are woven in a variety of ways including tablet looms, inkle looms, rigid heddle looms etc.  They make a coarse torchon-ground based bobbin lace in coarse linen thread and red cotton thread, which is used to decorate costume items.  Crocheted items include white filet lace and colourful folk medallions sewn onto costumes. And of course knitted gloves and mittens were everywhere.  Tallinn had all the usual tourist tat souvenir shops but also had several artisan handicraft stores with really high quality items on sale.  

I bought a lovely handwoven cotton shawl, which is incredibly soft and drapey.

I bought a metre of handwoven woollen skirt fabric (top) from the women who had woven it on community floor looms. I will have to find a special bag pattern to use it with.  I also bought the little zipped pouch  (bottom) which is sewn from a woven woolen skirt fabric.

A handmade tote bag with scenes of Tallinn - for some reason the cat decided she

needed to roll around while I was taking pictures.

A little pincushion lady wearing an Estonian costume (see the bands of simulated weaving on her sleeves), and some little handmade strawberry pincushions that were for sale in the same shop - I bought these as gifts.

I bought a book of mitten patterns taken from historic examples held in the collections of the Estonian National Museum, and a little booklet on knitting Haapsalu shawls.  I knit a Haapsalu shawl years ago from some much bigger books that were hard to follow - this booklet seemed to be a clearer synopsis.

Some 'Finnish house' earrings, and a traditional embroidery motif key chain

An enormous fabric shop I came across in Helsinki centre, all dressmaking and home dec though, no patchwork fabric.

Some antique dollshouse furniture c 1860, on display at the National Museum

of Finland in Helsinki

Knitwear for sale in Tallinn

A floor loom with a fabric-strip rug in progress

Seto-style bobbin lace

Another floor loom with rug in progress

Seto bobbin lace

Some colourful woven woolen braid belts

Woven wool rugs

Tablet weaving a woollen braid

I'd never been to Finland or Estonia before and knew virtually nothing about either country, so it was a really interesting holiday with lots to learn. I enjoyed Helsinki but it was eye-wateringly expensive. Finnish historic wooden house styles reminded me of what we saw in New England on a holiday 10 years ago.

I also saw this adorable playhouse in the garden of one of the old houses near Linnunlaulu Bridge. I want one.

For once my travel to and from my holiday went without a hitch - no delays, no COVID, no panic running through airports.  Like the good old days.

Since I got home, I've been doing the usual unpacking, laundry, gardening etc.  As well as finishing the sample glove, I finished off a set of boxes I had started before my travels.  I saw a blurb in a magazine for an Etsy digital printed fabric that you could cut up to make sewing-themed storage boxes.  It reminded me that I had purchased this sewing panel at FOQ last year.

Then I had a look around on Youtube for storage box tutorials and eventually came across this video which uses cardboard inserts to create rigid sides.  I was able to cut my panel up into three strips without losing too much of the pattern and made one big box and two smaller boxes.  I cut up a delivery box for my cardboard but it hasn't given a very crisp outline - the boxes would look better with heavy chipboard inserts for example.

I can also now post the test bag I sewed before my holiday, which is the Passport Folio designed by Mrs. H for her Patreon group at Swoon Designs.  It's designed to hold a family's passports and insurance cards, plus there is a zip pocket and another hidden slip pocket.  I added a pen loop inside. I'm not going to lie, I really struggled with this make because we were sewing the test instructions before a video tutorial had been created, and the pocket instructions were like fabric origami. But I got there in the end with some help from fellow testers. The Folio is really cleverly engineered in how it is constructed, with the various pockets folded up from larger pieces of fabric. My Jack H2 industrial machine sewed through the multiple layers for the final topstitching like butter.

We've still got a replacement car for probably another week.  The search for a new car is going slowly - we've looked a few brands that are recommended as tow cars but new versions are both very expensive and hard to get - Skoka quoted 23 weeks from factory for delivery.  Secondhand ones are of course available but we would want to buy an approved used car with a warranty and currently there is nothing in our area.  We need to get a move on as soon we won't even have a car to go and look for a new car.