Why is technology so complicated

 So this week I discovered that my hard drive was about to die and only had 4% health left.  It doesn't seem that long agao that my other hard drive on the PC died and I struggled through a long replacement learning curve, so I wasn't doing that again.  The PC wasn't suitable for upgrading to Windows 11 anyway.  So I did some research (using my laptop instead) into what are considered current minimum specs and tried to buy something with some futureproofing elements.  I got a Dell XPS 8960 which arrived promptly the next day.  Cue three hours of trying to get the data off the old sick PC using the completely useless Dell Migrate tool before giving up and just copying over the most recent backup files.  Then more hours of recovering non-backed-up files off the sick PC, and working out what applications needed reinstalling blah blah blah.  Trying to work out what the connectors are on my old monitor and the even older second monitor so I could buy adapters to fit the new PC (VGA and DVI-D as it turns out).  Crawling around under my desk unplugging and replugging in peripherals as I switched between the sick and the new PCS.  The long and short of it is that I've wasted most of my time and brain power this week on technology so not so much crafting.  It's also made me realise that in another 10 years or so I probably wouldn't be able to manage the transition to a new PC, and I will become one of those older people reliant on their children to make the technology work.

I've loaded another quilt onto the frame and started stabilising it with stitch in the ditch.  This is the kit I bought in Paducah with the embroidered panels that I stitched while travelling in Japan last year.  I also embroidered the 'rims' onto the Japanese cups wallhanging and sewed a hanging sleeve onto it in preparation for binding.  I sewed binding onto the Australian BOM quilt. 

I've been working on my dollshouse. I've started a new cross stitch kit for a christmas ornament that came in CrossStitcher magazine.  I have tried and failed twice to get gauge for a knitted hat pattern called the Christmas Kep - I've sent off for some smaller diameter circular needles to try again.

DS came home for the weekend and encouraged me to try one of his video games: Baldur's Gate 3, which has a DnD style turn-based combat which after Elden Ring feels to me like watching paint dry, but he says it has a good story line.

I hope your technology is working better than mine has the last few weeks.

Best laid plans

 I thought I was going to have a really productive day today, as DH was heading out to visit his parents.  But no.  First I wasted almost an hour fruitlessly searching for a xmas gift that I stitched for a friend, which has vanished into thin air. I've searched where it should be about five times, and looked everywhere else I can think of.  Nope.  Well, at least I could tackle why my Kindle Paperwhite had decided it didn't want to connect to the wi-fi.  One hour and multiple resets, multiple lengthy password entries and a full factory reset of the Kindle later, I finally tried re-starting the fully functional broadband router which had nothing wrong with it at all.  But for some mysterious reason, that made the Kindle agree to connect to it once again.  Aaaaarghhhh!!!!! and with the factory reset I've lost every custom setting I had made including all my folder collections.  

At least I've finished something: Four years after I started, I've finally finished the ABC Sampler from Little House Needleworks.  There are a few counting issues but overall I'm pleased with it, and glad that it's finally done and can be moved out of the living room along with all its accoutrements. I really like the folksy design style of it, and the subtle colour variations of the Classic Colorworks dyed threads.

As an initial display option, I've laced it around a stretched canvas board.  I may get it framed at some point.

I loaded the Envelopes quilt onto the longarm frame and quilted it fairly quickly using a large scale hearts panto. I couldn't find any postal-related pantos but thought the hearts would tie in with 'love letters' and sending good wishes through the post.  What I didn't realise, because I was quilting it sideways and the hearts tipped in both directions and it's the first time I've used this panto, is that the pattern is actually overall directional.  So my hearts are actually upside down compared to the envelopes.  It doesn't show much on the front though, and I will probably be giving this quilt away anyway. I'll label the panto as directional for the future.

Meanwhile, I've started embroidering the 'rim' of the Japanese cups but I'm struggling a bit with the best way to do it.  I started out with a single back stitch in two strands, and that was so subtle that it didn't show at all.  So I tried doubling up with a second line of backstitching in a lighter colour, which is better but still not great and looks a bit untidy.  I think I'm going to try out stem stitch in a lighter colour with three strands and see how that looks.

It's turned a lot colder here now, hovering around 7-11C, so I headed out a few days ago wearing the fingerless gloves I bought from a maker in Shetland during Wool Week.  But the fingers were really quite short, and I found my uncovered fingers were getting really cold.  So I dug around in my stash to find something that would match the gloves, and it turned out my Urudale yarn left over from my own glove project toned in fairly well.  So I unravelled the cast-off on each finger and picked up to knit each finger a bit longer.  I wore them today and they are a lot better now. This photo is really washed out for some reason.

The vintage sewing table is finally finished and back together.  I put five coats of the Finpol onto the top, using the special brush that I also bought from them (which annoyingly was shedding hairs into the finish) and it came out so much better than my first attempt.  It's not perfect, but it looks a lot better than the very damaged finish it had when I bought it.  Now I need to think where the table is going to go and what I will use it for.

I sewed another Double Wedding Ring block.  I feel like I will be 100 years old when this quilt gets finished.

The rest of the week I kept busy with my dollshouse build, sewing binding on the Australian BOM quilt and trying to do some bobbin lace every day because I have really been neglecting the lace for several months now.  A few days ago I heard my first Christmas song on the radio, it feels like it gets earlier every year.  Meanwhile we are still having to rake leaves up every weekend as our trees dump their autumn foliage.

This and that

 Various crafty activities this week.  I tried out my Icelandic hat on a trip to the post office and realised it was still too short despite my tinkering with the crown decreases.  So I ripped it back to the ribbing again, and reknit it one more time with an extra zigzag to increase the length. I also went up a needle size to 4.5mm to make it a little looser.  I did the crown decreases as per the pattern since I already had the extra height.  It's much more comfortable now and I've worn it out a few times, nice and warm.  That's the nice thing about knitting, you can usually have a do-over.  And it's a nice souvenir of my trip.

I managed to produce a second Double Wedding Ring block so I now have two somewhat wonky blocks. I need 16 blocks - two down, 14 to go. 

After quilting the Tilda cot quilt (which I am now binding), I loaded the Japanese tea cup wallhanging onto the frame.  I meandered in the dark border then used my channel locks to quilt a series of vertical lines through the background, 'hopping' over each teacup as I came to it by doing some tiny stitches on either side.  I still need to quilt around each cup then I can take it off and do the hand embroidery to add the rim line to each cup. I like the way the cups are standing out from the background in a 3D effect.

I forgot to blog last week that I had a go at the Kiss clasp box based on the one I saw at Festival of Quilts last year.  I had bought a clasp at the show, and I drew up a pattern for a simple box shape modelled on the one in this video.  The video was helpful in showing how the frame is glued onto the fabric shell.  I used Bosal foam to stiffen my box shape, and hand sewed the corners.  It was a bit tricky to glue on the frame, having an extra pair of arms would have helped.  I used some bulky yarn as I don't have any paper yarn.  It turned out pretty well, apart from a design flaw, and I am using it to store my lacemaking tools in.

This is the design flaw - the frame I picked has big chunky metal balls for the clasp.  These of course make it incredibly top heavy, so all's it wants to do is this if it's empty:

So the lesson here is, don't buy a frame with a big clasp.  It would also be good to get a deeper frame, then you could have a bigger box.  This one is only about two inches deep.

I stripped off the French Polish from the antique sewing table top with meths, so I'm back to bare wood again ready to try again with the new Finpol polish.

And last weekend, we had an outing to Witney Antiques in Witney, west of Oxford, to see their amazing exhibition ‘Choice and Precious Work’: The Needle and Beyond, 1650-1770'.  The shop itself was amazing, they specialise in museum quality embroideries, mostly samplers, and I've never seen so many antique embroideries in one place.  And in such amazingly good condition.  They had an Elizabethan embroidered panel that looked like it had been finished yesterday - only £220,000 and it's yours!  I was rather staggered that there are people that spend the price of a semi-detached house on a piece of embroidery but apparently the shop is well patronised by a global clientele of collectors.  To be honest, I probably wouldn't have felt comfortable even going into such an obviously posh shop normally, but the exhibition set up in the large back room is open to the public.

Part of the shop (no photos allowed in the exhibition)

The exhibition of 17th and 18thC embroideries, needlelace, samplers, and other handmade textile related objects unbelievably showcases the work of schoolgirls.  We were lucky enough to be shown around by a PhD specialist in antique embroidery and her stories were so interesting that even DH was absorbed in what we were seeing.  So much of the stitching was so tiny and fine, you just couldn't believe it was done by girls of perhaps 11 years old, probably in candlelight.   The most mindboggling piece was probably the two bobbin lace pictorial panels made around 1660 from human hair instead of thread.  They were framed behind glass but looked so fragile that you were afraid to breathe near them.  Many of the items came from just two or three families who had kept the examples of family needlework safe over the centuries.  It makes me think of all the craft items I've let go over the years - no archive of work from me.  There was a real egg that had been embroidered with needle lace by punching small holes into the egg shell to allow the needle to pass through, nutmegs (once more precious than gold) covered in embroidered casings, quilled picture frames, early decoupage, quite a few Quaker works with tiny stitched Bible sayings, and so much more.  I wish I could have taken photos but it wasn't allowed.

Witney itself had some nice old buildings, so after a fortifying pub lunch, we had a walk around town and down to the lake which was once a huge gravel quarry.  A nice day out.

French polish fail

 I attached the refinished table top to my antique sewing table.

Unfortunately, it became clear that my  attempt to finish the top with French Polish was a complete fail.  Not only is it patchy and streaky, with visible brush lines, but it hasn't dried properly.  Just handling the top while I screwed it on was leaving big fingerprints in the toffee-like finish.  I looked it up online and apparently this is likely due both to the brushed on coats being too thick, and the French polish I used being too old.  Apparently old French polish may never dry, ever.  A week later and mine is better than it was but still imprinting with finger prints.  So the duff polish has all got to come off again from the top.  I've ordered a different French polish product called Finney's Finpol Easy Polish which is supposed to be a lot more foolproof.  Also a polish mop which is a special brush that isn't supposed to leave brush marks.  Sigh.

On the happier side, I finished quilting my Australian BOM vintage needlework quilt and I'm pretty pleased with it.  These are pictures straight off the frame, so it hasn't been trimmed up yet or bound, and there are still a few more embellishments to stitch on to it.  I learned a lot doing this quilt, about using rulers and pantos, and stitching around applique, and got much braver about trying freehand filler designs. 

Once the frame was empty, I loaded on the Tilda Pinwheel small quilt and easily quilted it with a pantograph, much more straightforward!

Another finish this week was my Iceland Lettlopi hat.  A rinse in lukewarm water has fluffed up the yarn nicely, it should be fairly warm.

I have been trying to shingle my dollshouse roof and ran into trouble, and had to re-do parts of it a few times until my son helped me with the math.    I still need to finish the ridgelines.

I made myself a gluten free afternoon tea as a special treat, just using GF products purchased from the supermarket aisle.  It was quite fun and I enjoyed it, but it did still upset my stomach - probably from xanthum gum which I am also sensitive to, which is used by a lot of commercial GF food manufacturers as a thickener.  Still felt like a treat at the time though. Fun to break out the good china, and my handmade patchwork tea cosy.  And the quilted  autumn placemats that I made up from a panel I bought in the Cinque Terres on my Italy trip.