Christmas is in the freezer

 I've not really enjoyed cooking the full Christmas dinner for a good many years now, it's so much work and by the time it's ready, I usually don't even want to eat it. I've always enjoyed the leftovers a lot more, which can be enjoyed without putting the effort in.  But we're trying something different this year. My m-i-l told me that they had ordered Christmas dinner from the upmarket frozen food supplier 'Cook'. This sounded great, so I've ordered one as well.  It comes with a turkey crown and several sides and works out about £17 per person which is cheaper than a restaurant, and hopefully will be much less work for me.  You could specify when you wanted it delivered - being of a paranoid nature, I had mine delivered this week so I know it's in the freezer ready for the big day (and if it hadn't worked out, I would have had time to buy supplements). It duly turned up and is now taking up a shelf and a half of freezer space which feels well worth it.

Christmas is now rearing up everywhere, and we went to a couple of Christmas fairs today.  At the first one, held in a big church, one of the craft tables was selling £1 bags of assorted ribbon which seemed like quite a good buy. My ribbon stash has been getting a bit low, so I brought home four different colours.

We stopped into Lidl, to pick up a few of the Christmas tea towel sets I had seen posted on Facebook - only £2.99 for a christmas print and a matching solid towel. The post I saw was sewing tote bags and stockings out of them. Not sure what I'll make with mine.

We went to another big fair at Workbridge, a charity in Northampton providing employment opportunities to the disadvantaged. I was surprised but pleased to see a whole stall selling macrame items in big soft cream cord - all the 1970s favourites were there: the owl with big eyes, the braided spider plant holders, fringed wreaths etc. Is macrame coming back? They actually looked quite good, I was tempted by some macrame christmas trees but remembered I am meant to be decluttering. Finally this afternoon we went to a food fair in a community centre - they also had a craft table which included some cute trees made from yo-yos/suffolk puffs sewn in decreasing diameters, threaded onto a stick which was set into a small pot. Very cute.

This week I have finally stopped procrastinating and started practicing daily on my longarm. After warming up with some free motion doodling, I had my first ever go at using a ruler for longarm quilting.  I was quite nervous but it is actually easier than I expected - right up until you stop paying attention and suddenly veer off the ruler into space.  I drew some boxes in chalk onto my practice cloth and tried out the rulers that came with the machine, and watched various Youtube instruction videos.  I also sent off for two more Handiquilter rulers which will be christmas presents from the family.  

When I ran out of practice cloth, I loaded up my first actual quilt which is the charity quilt I assembled from the Little Quilt panels from my stash.  

Then I used the straight ruler to try to follow all the sashing lines, had a go at continuous curve quilting on one of the corners, and am currently trying out arcs in the border.  It's been good practice for everything from learning how to start/stop neatly,  winding bobbins, adjusting tension, to how to roll on the quilt. There are some real wobbles in several places where my concentration lapsed, but hopefully the eventual recipient won't mind. Ruler work is very start/stop compared to using pantos, but I was enjoying it when I could get a smooth line.  There seems to be one place in my table which isn't quite level - the machine suddenly zooms sideways half-an-inch when I reach it. The engineer had a lot of trouble levelling the frame on our Victorian floorboards I remember. I also had a incident where, in mid-line, the tension suddenly went haywire and I ended up with several inches of birdnest on the underside before I realised what had happened. I'm guessing that the thread jumped out of the tension disks but who knows. It's been pretty good since.

I've been progressing the Blue Ribbon embroidered blocks quilt as well.  With great care and holding my breath, I trimmed up the embroidered blocks successfully to size.  Then I could put together several units of the quilt. It turns out I have loads of background fabric, so I am able to proceed with my plan to add some nine patch blocks on the right hand side, and I've cut those out but haven't sewn them yet. I've never had a quilt kit with such a generous portion of fabric - you could almost make two quilts I think out of what they've provided.

After making loads of little bits and furnishings, I have finally progressed the Chinese dollshouse kit to the stage where the instructions start you working on the actual house walls. I was worried over what glue to use to adhere the sheets of artwork to the MDF walls. The translated instructions suggest 'latex' whatever that means. I didn't fancy my chances with PVA glue, so I went with regular wallpaper paste in the end.  It has worked well in terms of fairly flat artwork, and gave me time to adjust the artwork to the best fit onto the not-always-the-exact-same-size MDF pieces. But it means that the paper isn't anchored solidly to the wood, which might pose issues when horizontal surfaces are glued to vertical ones and only attaching to the paper surface. Hopefully the floors will be adequately supported by partition walls. It's fun to start seeing the house taking shape.

Various walls drying out after pasting (the ironing board cover is filthy because I rescued this board from the side of the road to use as a spare table, I need to replace the cover)

Starting the house assembly

A little gazebo for the garden

The cross-stitch robin christmas ornament has progressed, but unfortunately I went a little wrong on the robin's back, then forgot I had, and proceeded to go even more wrong with the right hand side of the wreath, to the point where I am basically just making it up now. So it was with relief that I received my issue of CrossStitcher magazine with a cute free kit for a Santa Letter on aida fabric. Abandoning the robin for a while, I am cleansing my palette with the easier magazine kit.

Black Friday, which was never heard of in the UK until a few years ago since we don't celebrate Thanksgiving, has turned into a fairly big deal here, with many retailers now participating.  I picked up various things that I wanted to get anyway:  some tiny folding reading glasses, a pair of quickdry trousers and some SD cards for travelling; a new fitted sheet; a set of pots and pans to replace our 30 year old worn out saucepans; and some trainers. 

It's finally turned fairly cold, only 2 degrees C today, although we still haven't had a killing frost so the garden is still looking decent.  The cold is a bit of a problem - I ordered an arsenic test at long last, so that I can test the green decorative paper inside the needlework table I bought last summer to see if it is arsenic green and therefore poisonous. But the test instructions state that in order to work properly, the test needs to be conducted at an air temperature of between 22-28 degrees Celsius. Not going to happen in this drafty old house in winter, so it may need to wait until the summer unless I can think of somewhere else to go that would be warm where I could get out what looks like a chemistry set without being suspected of poisoning the water supply.