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.