Summer time

 We had a mini heatwave for several days, up to 29C a few days. While I hate hot weather, I remain incredibly thankful that it was only 29 and not 42C like previous summers or what's going on in Greece. But because of the hot weather I didn't go out very much, and I had to switch to longarming in the morning before the attic room got too hot in the afternoon.  The garden has needed regular watering and I've also spent a few hours hacking back the weeds that have sprung up since before our caravan holiday.

I finished the Lone Star reproduction quilt apart from blocking and binding.  It feels really good to have finally got this quilted - I bought the kit at Houston  22 years ago so it's been on the UFO list a really long time.  It turned out fairly well, I don't love my design in the border but it's not too visible on the right side. But the continuous curve quilting on the star went well.  I then spent a few hours clipping off all the micro-tacks that were basting the quilt, very fiddly.  I like the Micro-stitch gun because it's quick, the tacks don't rust, they don't add bulk to the roll on the frame, and you can stitch over them.  But they are a PITB to remove.   I had basted the quilt on my old frame because I thought I would be quilting it at my sit-down machine - I didn't know I would get a longarm. The quilt has been through the washing machine now on a cold cycle and is drying outside - I was very relieved that the washaway blue marker I had used for the straight lines all came out. It had been on there so long that it had turned a very dark green.

I've given the longarm and frame a good clean and loaded up the next UFO, which is the Giggleswick Mill quilt by Di Ford.  It's another reproduction quilt, featuring half-square triangles that I can do continuous curve on again, and broderie perse applique which I guess I'll have to stitch around. It's not as old, I put it together in 2020 from fabric I had bought a few years beforehand. (the photo dates from when I based the sandwich on my old frame)

I've sewn the binding onto my Little Red Houses quilt so I'm handstitching that down during evening TV time.  Because I decided to cut scallops into the side edges, I couldn't use the straight of grain binding strips I had pre-cut - and I didn't have any more of that fabric.  I found another fabric to use on the scallops which is unobtrusive, but the junction between the two different fabrics at the corners looks a bit untidy. 

The Cathe Holden fabric that I ordered has shown up.  Three different prints from her 'Curated in Color' line, and two fabrics from 'Junk Journal'.  I love the Curated prints, all three are different collages of antique ephemera.  Not sure what I'll do with them, you would lose the effect if you cut them up. It needs something where you could use a big piece like a totebag or a frame quilt. Perhaps I will just keep it and pat it affectionately from time to time.

I've spent a fair bit of time on the Mckinley dollshouse this week because it's nice and cool in the dollhouse room.  Most of that has been prep and painting, so I don't actually have a lot to show for it yet. It's going ok, I still don't feel like I know where I am going with it. 

The other big time-suck this week has been the unexpected early birthday present from my son of the 'Shadow of the Erdtree' DLC for Elden Ring.  I thought I would have to wait a long time until it went on sale.  I hadn't played Elden Ring since I became Elden Lord in October 2022, so it's taken a while to get going -  because I couldn't remember anything about my character, my skills or my inventory.  I chose to go back to a save from before finishing the game, so that I could go straight into the DLC without having to complete any preliminaries.  So far I am having fun exploring the first map region.  Luckily they have already patched the DLC to downgrade the difficulty, which will help me - I'm an explorer not a fighter :)

Caravan time

 We were away this past week in our little caravan, staying near Malvern for 4 nights and then moving to a site near Stratford for 3 nights.  So lots of walks through historic town centres, lots of tea rooms, some ice cream, and various secondhand book stores.   

In Warwick I came across the Quilter's Den, a nice little shop with a good variety of fabric and what looked like a nice classroom in the back.  I wasn't planning to buy anything but then spotted this charm pack of Moda 'Junk Journal' by Cathe Holden which I loved immediately.  As soon as we got home, I went online to see if I could order yardage (Quilter's Den didn't have any) but as always seems to be the case when I find something I love, the fabric line is long gone.  I've managed to order about five of the fabrics from a combination of British shops, and British and German etsy shops.  Darn it.  The designer also did the Flea Market range some years ago which I also really liked. There were some American shops that still had some of the line, but the postage costs 2-3 times the cost of the fabric and that's before customs charges.

While we were away, I finished the 2022 Shetland Wool Week hat that I started in Latvia. It fits fine.  The brim design splits between corrugated ribbing and an inset band of fair isle, which makes the brim feel a bit flimsy and it wants to curl up a bit but blocking helped.

And this week I finished the penultimate Little House cross stitch in my alphabet sampler.  One more house to go then the sampler will be finished. I don't even remember what the livingroom looked like without the sampler floorstand frame set up next to my chair.

Our first campsite was near the Three Counties showground and the big Royal Three Counties agricultural fair happened to be on, so we went along to check it out. There was loads to see, all kinds of animals and exhibitions, but  I was disappointed that there was no handicrafts competition - although I did see several people spinning yarn from their sheep, or goats, or lamas.  One tent did have various floral exhibits, including a competition for attractive displays of floating flowers which were very pretty - a nice way to display cut flowers.

I've done a bit of work on the dollshouse today, and my little electric palm sander died partway through. I suppose I did buy it in 2007 and have used it for various dollshouses and other projects over the years. Surprisingly the basic Mouse sander only costs £1 more now than it did in 2007, so I've ordered another one. I've also ordered some wallpaper and wood mouldings.

Tackling the queue

 I spent last weekend enjoying several hours of sewing, it was really nice to be back in the sewing room.  This week I've been tackling various projects that have been in the queue for a while.

I put together a hand-appliqued wall hanging of Japanese style tea cups and tea bowls, based on a pattern from Today's Quilter but I redrew the shapes to make them more symetrical, and seamed squares together instead of using one background piece.  I still need to embroider the 'rim' onto each cup.  This was a case of having recently ripped the pattern from the magazine, then shortly afterwards coming across the Moda 'Kimono' layer cake on sale last year, which was perfect for it. Love these blue fabrics!

Another Japanese-inspired make was this kit for foundation pieced little kimonos that I bought at FoQ last year.  They went together really easily and the pattern is perfect for these ditsy Japanese-style fabrics.

I even made a start on the Hatched & Patched pincushion kit that I bought in New Zealand!  I've done the embroidery and applique but need to add some buttons for wheels on the caravan.

I added a skinny border to my Lori Holt My Favourite Things large wallhanging. I had bought the fabric to use as a backing, but it worked for the border as well - reminds me of a vintage style fabric. It was a bit of a struggle to find a suitable border that would pop the quilt colours rather than overshadow them, this was the best choice from my stash. So this quilt has now moved upstairs to the longarm quilting queue.  Once it's quilted, I will probably trim down the side borders a bit so it will fit onto my hallway hanging system.

I discovered the Edyta Sitar Little Red Houses quilt in the back of my sewing room, waiting for its binding.  I think I parked it before I went to New Zealand.  So I've trimmed up the borders, and marked and cut eight scallops down each side using the Easy Scallop Template Set by Darlene Zimmerman - a useful bit of kit that is the right tool for the job.  Next will be sewing on the binding.

I started knitting the second Latvian mitten, and realised that what I was knitting was turning out so much better than the start of the first mitten when I didn't know what I was doing. So I was gloomily thinking that I would have to knit a third mitten.  But then I realised that I had just reached a plain black row on the new knitting, at the end of the cuff, which would be the best place  to graft if I wanted to replace the cuff on the old mitten (which was the worst bit - all tight and lumpy).  So I snipped the corresponding black row on the old mitten, and carefully grafted the new cuff into place stitch by stitch.  It was quite tricky, especially with black wool which is hard to see.  But eventually the old cuff fell away and the new cuff was in place - magic!  I had to go around and tighten up the new stitches until they matched the old mitten, but now it is hard to tell that it ever happened.  I've cast on again for a second mitten now.

And I've returned to the longarm to keep quilting on the reproduction Lone Star quilt.  I've completed all the continuous curve quilting on the star itself now, but I still have some background quilting and then the border to do.  It's so much easier to quilt this on the longarm than it would have been at the domestic sit-down machine.

Another long-time queue resident is a big dollshouse kit to build a Greenleaf McKinley victorian-style dollshouse which measures approx. 31" square by 9" deep - it's designed to hang on the wall like a display shelf.  I bought the kit in 2011 when Greenleaf had a 25% off sale.  They shipped it to the UK to me.  And there it sat in a closet for a few years until we moved house in 2013.  And it's been sitting in my dollshouse room here for 10 years.  I need to either build it or sell it.  I dithered a bit because I can remember how much I used to like the house years ago but now I'm not so into miniatures. But I've decided to have a go at building it anyway, I'll see how I get on. I won't clutter up these pages with the build, I'll put them in a separate blog.  I've had to move a couple of my other houses upstairs to our dining room, to make room for a secondhand table to do the building work.

Latvian mittens

 I got back from Latvia earlier this week- from a knitting holiday to learn about Latvian mitten knitting in the Kurzeme region.  The land-only tour was organised by Sena Klets shop in Riga, and it was really good.  Everything to a really high standard, good hotel, good bus, and great workshops with native master knitters in various locations.  The only thing wrong with the week was the extreme heat all week: up to 28/29C where we were staying in Liepaja and I think it hit 31C in Riga.  I hate hot weather, and air con was not common, and broken in the hotel. I thought I might be safe in May but no. I survived.

The focus of the tour is on educating about and promoting Latvian knitting traditions as well as traditional Latvian culture, and it did a great job.  It seems that the traditional handicrafts are more respected here, you can study them at degree level for example, and every town we visited had 'craft houses' and applied arts studios where artisans worked and taught traditional crafts such as weaving, knitting, braidmaking, ceramics, metalwork, amber jewellery, crochet, basketweaving etc.  We had workshops at a number of these craft houses, casting on 40-stitch samples in the round to learn techniques specific to mittens in the region such as triangular motifs, variations on the Latvian braid, Latvian fringes, scalloped edges, twisted edges, and so forth.  We also got to see many traditionally knit mittens, gloves, colourwork socks, lace shawls, some museum collections, and enjoyed a lecture on colourwork traditional socks from a museum curator.  So much inspiration and colour.  I took loads of photos, and also picked up some of the great value mitten yarn from Sena Klets to have a go at home.

A teaching sampler of various Latvian braids

Improv quilt seen at one of the art studios

Traditional Latvian folk music performance

Latvian costumes

Examples of colourwork sock patterns from the Suiti culture in Kurzeme

Lace shawls on display at one of the workshops

A display of traditional weaving at an arts studio

Back in Riga after the tour, there was a huge craft fair held at Riga's Ethnographic Open Air Museum.  Over 250 traders, who must be curated in some way because every single stall was exhibiting handmade goods produced to very high standards - none of the tat or unrelated general merchandise that creeps into UK craft shows.  Even the food stalls were all craft beer stalls and real Latvian food freshly made. It was probably the best craft fair I've ever attended. There was every kind of Latvian artisinal craftwork: basketry, hand-carved spoons, woven linens, traditional costume elements such as skirts and jewellery, lots of ceramics, handwoven rugs, blacksmith forged work, stained glass, hunter's stalls selling furs and items made from bone, linen clothing, even one stall of bobbin lace, jewellery, and of course many knitting stalls with amazing handknit lace shawls, handknit mittens (going rate 30 euros, or 45 for a lined mitten), handknit socks, some wool, hand knit and machine knit garments, an entire food area of Latvian delicacies from smoked pig snouts through to handmade pesto and cheeses and on and on. Many of the traders were wearing traditional costumes, and/or crowns fashioned from fresh flowers or greenery.  I bought a small handwoven rag rug for my bedroom and a handwoven table runner, and enjoyed looking at all the treasures on offer.

Handwoven fabrics for making traditional skirts

A wooden church in the open air museum

Inside a traditional wooden house in the open air museum

When I got home, I spent some time collating all the knitted samples together with their printed instructions, my own notes, and photos I took at the time.  And I've cast on for my second mitten.

Samples and notes

Hand knit lace socks with embroidery that I bought in a souvenir shop

Some examples of handwoven baskets and a coaster set with amber that came home with me

Adorable mini mittens I bought at Sena Klets

Riga

 I'm in Riga, the capital of Latvia.  Handknitting is part of the cultural heritage here, particularly mittens and socks, so I've been enjoying coming across handknitted items for sale in souvenir stores, knitting shops and street stalls in the very photogenic Old Town.

Just before I came, I finished off my first Latvian mitten body (not the thumb) so I've brought that for show & tell on my knitting tour next week. It also gives me a baseline for what I'm looking at on sale. 

'Tines' knitwear boutique in Riga  had a nice display of handknitted mittens, most of them priced at only 35 euros.  After the struggle I had with my mitten, that seems like peanuts although I could see that the quality of the knitting wasn't very precise. I guess they are knit fast for sale. There was the same design I have knit (from a book called Mittens of Latvia) and I felt slightly vindicated to see that the knitter had also had problems with their tension knitting the four-colour design.  They had a limited range of wool for sale. Not far away, a shop called Pienene was also selling handmade items including more mittens branded with the Tines label, only they were marked up to 56 euros there.

Sena Klets specialises in traditional costumes and crafts and had a wide selection of mittens and socks, and other knitted items such as gloves, wrist warmers, boot toppers etc. The mittens here were knit to a much better standard and were priced from around 49 euros up to around 60 euros depending on complexity.  I've got big hands and had to try quite a few on before choosing the pair that I purchased in a pretty lavender design.

They also have a lot of mittens on display on the walls, which I think may be antique, or, the knitted samples for the book Mittens of Latvia.  Again my mitten design was included only much more precisely knitted than mine.  There are also displays of traditional folk costumes and wool for sale so the shop is well worth a visit. The wool is excellent value, only 4.40 euros per 100g.

Hobbywool is another shop, which turned out to be the source of the Knit like a Latvian books and the Hobbywool kits to knit mittens.  I had one of their kits years ago and ended up throwing it out after several false starts due to the very skimpy instructions and what appeared to be an inadequate amount of yarn.  It was aimed at someone who already kniws how to knit a Latvian mitten. While fighting with the kit, I also bought the Knit like a Latvian book and found it not very informative either - particularly on crucial aspects such as how to knit with 3 or 4 colours in one row.  So I didn't buy anything at Hobbywool but they do also sell knitting yarn.

The Knitting Shop Dzijas is also in the old town, it stocked a range of imported yarn, mostl acrylic.