February 'meh'

 Feeling at a bit of a loose end this week.  I have kept going with various hobbies but not feeling the joy this week for some reason.  Partly lack of energy and partly a bit 'been there, done that, have too many now'.

I did finish the baptist fan quilting on the Fat Cat Dresden Plate quilt.  This is a relatively modern style quilt for me, but I like the colours.

I hadn't trimmed down my backing and wadding so had relatively wide margins on the quilt frame to either side of the actual quilt.  So I pulled out some fabric pieces and quilted up a few rectangles that could be used for future small projects.

The top for the Gail Pan embroidered blocks wallhanging is now completed.  I auditioned various possible border fabrics from my stash and ended up using a reproduction fabric which works well enough I think.  It was a lot of work, with all the embroidery and having to recalculate the block measurements, but I'm pleased with it, and pleased to use up some of my Tilda fabric stash. So that's gone into the quilting queue upstairs.

Once the Gail Pan top was off my sewing table, I made another small project from my handwoven fabric.  It is still feeling very risky to cut into the weaving but once again it behaved fine. This time I made a storage basket.

I finished knitting DH's day-glo hat - I'm certainly not going to lose him when we are out anywhere.  He is very pleased with it, this photo taken when it is still a bit damp from blocking but he wanted to try it on.

The papercrafting/journal group I'm in on Facebook had another free organiser printable, this time decorated with sunflowers.

I'm not getting very far with the dollshouse carpet that I started, it is really fiddly and slow to see any progress, so I'm starting to feel like I might either throw it or perhaps put it away for another time when I have more patience.  I'm cross-stitching the other border on my handtowel, and have partly woven the next mat on my loom.

I've contacted Project Linus to donate two of my quilts from 'quilt mountain' and pulled out some others unsuitable for donating, to sell on ebay.  So I need to photograph those and work up some listings. 

Porto pics, and some WIPs

 I've been through my Porto pics now, unfortunately all the outdoor ones are pretty uniformly grey and wet, lol. After weeding out duplicates and duds, there are still 647 photos.  So here are just a few.

The riverside district, looking towards the doubledecker bridge

View over the river Douro, from the bridge

Inside one of the Taylor's port warehouses

The knitting shop

DH's yarn in his favourite colour

Inside the Livraria Lello, which bills itself as the 

most beautiful bookstore in the world

The Grande Museu Das Casinhas De Bonecas dollshouse museum foyer, 

looking towards the exhibit hall

One of the houses on exhibit, in Brazilian style

The absolutely stunning Arabian ballroom, inside the

Palácio da Bolsa

These are the Christmas socks now finished, knitted in yarn I bought in Salzburg and finished off on the trip to Porto. They are vanilla socks but the primary challenge with self striping yarn is ending up with two socks that match - and I feel I did fairly well on this pair.

I've added a green border and have started on the final outer border for my Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt - this pic is taken under artificial light so the colours look a bit off.

I've started a kit for a little appliqued basket that I bought at Mother's Dream quilt shop in Tokyo  (Reiko Kato).  It is a lot tinier than I expected, the basket itself will only be 5.5" long so the applique is quite fiddly.

I finished sewing the binding on the final quilt which was the pink doiley quilt.  It's a bit narrow on my bed. The scallops look nice apart from the 'valley' between them hasn't come out as neatly as it would have done with bias binding.  I've slept under it for a few nights now, it has a nice weight to it due to the doileys.

I've been toiling away on the second baptist fan quilting job which is the Fat Cat Dresden Quilt, I'm getting near the end of it now.

Before we went to Porto, I made my first project with the woven plaid cloth that I created on my little loom.  It's just a simple tray, but it was still a bit heartstopping to cut into the weaving.  It did not instantly fall apart and in fact behaved fairly well, with only a couple of the grey strands wanting to pop free.

I finished the cross stitch towel border on one end of the towel I bought in Prague, and have started on the opposite end now.

When I was at the retreat, several of my tablemates had a tool box converted from a small jewellery case available on Amazon, so I ordered one as well.  You can remove internal sections to your preference - I just ripped out the lefthand ring storage section, and moved the right hand partitions, then blinged it up a bit with scrapbook paper.

I've started a new weaving project using some cotton yarn from my old machine knitting stash - this will be three small mats in a houndstooth pattern.

I refolded all the quilts that had been relaxing on the guest bed, planning to put them back into their storage cupboards.  As you can see, the pile is higher than the door knobs. I realised as I refolded them all, that there are a few that I don't really want that could be donated or gifted.  There are also several decent vintage or antique quilts, which could be sold.  And there are several frankenstein rescues that I don't need to keep either, although I'm not sure what to do with them.  They were unloved vintage tops, many with severe problems, that I rescued from thrift stores on trips to America in the late 90s/early 00s.  I dealt with their issues as much as I could, sometimes resetting the blocks or adding modern borders, then turned them into quilts that I machine quilted (not very well) on my old domestic machine frame set up.  So they aren't suitable for donation to charities or charity shops as they would probably fall apart if machine washed (and I remember at least one of them, the dyes were running when it got wet). I don't really think they are suitable for sale either as the original workmanship wasn't great and my dodgy machine quilting has not helped, lol. Anyway, by removing all of the above, it reduced the stack to a much more manageable dimension.  I need to stop defaulting to making Queen-size bed quilts and try to re-train into making wallhangings.  Or maybe even minis.

Winter visit to Porto

 We like to go away together during the winter months, normally to get some winter sun and warmer temperatures than the typically grey and cold UK.  This year we tried Porto, in Portugal, famous for being the home of port wine.  We had checked that typical temperatures were 13-15C so we weren't expecting it to be as warm as previous destinations such as Malta and Cyprus.  However, we hadn't realised that Portugal is typically quite wet in the winter.  Also, this year, it has been battered by several severe storms that have caused flooding and much disruption.  When we saw the forecast for the week was 100% rain for the entire week, and 9-13C, it was a bit depressing but at least we knew in advance and could pack all our British winter clothes to stay warm and dry.

It was a nice week.  It's a very easy destination, the majority of people spoke English, signage is often bilingual, people were friendly, transport was cheap, and for UK prices we could get far superior meals to what we could get at home.  The old town itself, while picturesque, is a bit rough around the edges.  It is a UNESCO world heritage site but a lot of the old centre is dilapidated, or even derelict and abandoned, there are loads of construction sites (many of which don't look like they've been worked on for years) to navigate around, and many buildings are heavily covered in graffiti at ground level.  But there are some stunning historical sites to visit from the 18th and 19thC times of prosperity, and many amazing churches dating to much earlier.  As well as exploring the old town and visiting one of the port warehouses and attending a fado concert, we rode the bus out along the Douro river to the fishing port of Matosinhos for a lovely fresh fish lunch one day, and another day we rode the train to the neighbouring city of Braga.  That happened to be the day that Storm Marta hit, so the weather was particularly bad but Braga was lovely, with wide avenues and lovely squares lined with handsome period buildings.

I haven't downloaded the photos off my phone yet, so sorry, no pics this week.

I didn't find much in the way of craft shops. In Braga I found a couple of fabric stores mainly aimed at dressmakers, and a sort of indoor market that had some cheap craft supplies.  I didn't buy anything craft wise apart from some Portugal themed fabric and a knitting bag made in the same fabric, from a home linens store.  I was tempted by all the colourful ceramic reproduction tiles, referencing the many tiled houses in the old town, but didn't buy. DH found me a nice knitting shop not far from our hotel, called Ovelha Negra, which had a good assortment ranging from Portuguese yarns through to Rowan, Lettlopi, Opel and even some American brands.  I picked up some neon yellow Spanish 100% wool  called Mota, as DH admired the colour, so I will knit him a hat (and possibly fingerless gloves if there is enough left over.  

I did come across a dollshouse museum called O Grande Museu Das Casinhas De Bonecas, spotting their brochure in the tourist info (and not knowing about it in advance, as accused by DH), so we visited that as well.  They are fairly new, having only been open two years, and were delighted that we were visiting, I got the impression they are struggling to get publicity.  The museum was in a converted garage workshop, so quite a good size and well lit, a big white space.  The many houses are in plexiglas boxes for easy viewing.  They are specialising in houses that were sold for play, by big manufacturers such as Real Good Toys, Duracraft, DeAgostini etc. so it is not a destination for miniature collectors.  They are buying used houses or receiving donations, which they then renovate in their workshop and furnish with mostly cheap imported furniture. I enjoyed seeing the houses that looked like Portuguese or Brazilian houses, plus they had some of the Chinese kits that I have built, and also the Real Good porch kit that I built and converted to fit on my Canadian house.  They also had large collections of porcelain dolls, of the quality that came in part-work magazines, which aren't really my thing. But the hospitality was warm and included a hot drink, so we enjoyed the visit.

I was working on my Christmas striped socks and finished the second one near the end of the holiday, I just need to do the kitchener stitch to close the toe.  I also took a cross stitch magazine kit and did a little on it. I still need to sort out my goodies from the cross stitch retreat last weekend.

On retreat

 I was away this weekend at a two day cross stitching retreat up in Sheffield, the same one I attended a year ago.  The ladies I sat with last year have all stayed in touch on WhatsApp so it was like meeting up with friends.  They and most of the other attendees are serious stitchers, buying all the things and tools and enough charts and kits to keep them going for 200 years.  I remember being like that when I was younger, lol.  Now I am fully aware that I already have enough projects in waiting at home to keep me going for at least a few decades, so my shopping impulses are much milder.  I'm also just a dilettante with cross stitch, I enjoy dabbling at it but I'm not particularly good and I'm very slow.  Still fun to be away and with like minded people, and to see what everyone is working on.  I was working on my hand towel cross stitched border, and I took along a few other small kits that I've started such as the Houses of Great Britain series.  I've come home with lots of goodies: table gifts, a few patterns, a few free things off the swaps table. 

The handstitching of quilting binding continued this week - I finished off the poison green checkered Dresden quilt, and have almost finished the final pink doiley scalloped quilt.  Meanwhile I have done a bit more work on the Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt.  I did sash the blocks in the end, but with a subtle half-inch wide strip, just enough to give the eye somewhere to rest. Then I started pulling out possible border fabrics from my stash, trying out a lot of possibilities.  I think I have settled on this reproduction print and I'm probably going to insert a second narrow sashing of green just to give some definition. The colours aren't showing well in this photo taken in artificial light.

I finished up the final little American Country panel oval basket that I was working on last week.

I have a plastic tub of these little containers now, made up from the two panels I bought in Tokyo.  They are all cute and all seem like they should be useful, and yet I have not as yet been using many of them.  I may need to go to another craft fair in the future and unload some of my production.

On small dollshouse kits this week, I made up an old club project for a hatbox and shopping bags in printed cardstock.

I also found my notes, and shaped formers, from a class I took at Hove dollshouse week back in 1995, to make fabric covered containers.  I had always meant to get back to this and make some more, and like so many things, 'one day' never came.  So I had a go at making a few containers, which involves cutting pieces of thin cardstock to fit the wooden shapes, covering those in fabric, and assembling the liner and outer using the wooden shape as a temporary former.  It sounds simple but in fact I found it difficult to get a neat result.  I tried a little oval box, a rectangular casket and an open box. Also you need fabric with a very small print to be in scale, and I don't have so much of that type of print.  Needs more practice I think.

The next kit in the queue (my basket of small projects is almost empty now!) is a kit for making a dollshouse rug using bunka trim, from Little Trimmings.  Bunka is a Japanese? braided cord that can be teased out into a curly spiral of thread.  When glued down to a flat surface, it looks like carpet texture.  I've prepared the base, and coloured in the pattern with pencil crayons to help prevent white showing through, and prepared the pieces of bunka.  So now it will be lots of fiddly gluing, going to take a while I think.

I saw another retirement clock - I'm not going to get this one but it made me smile: