Old crock proximity warning

 I've been feeling like I'm turning into an old crock this week.  I pulled something in my back from lugging all the buckets of water around the garden (hosepipe ban so we can't use the hose) so have been struggling with physical tasks for several days - I even had to ask DH to help me put my shoes on earlier in the week. But it seems to be calming down now.  I also had a funny turn in the garden with a sudden dizzy spell after getting up, and felt odd for quite a while afterwards.  Neither of which are positive occurrences and certainly not what you want just before you fly off solo. Bleah.

Last Sunday, prior to doing my back in, DH kindly drove me over to the Lamport Hall quilt show.  Run by Grosvenor, this is their second year there but I missed last year as I was away.  It's a fairly small show with only one medium marquee of quilts to look at, I was able to look around in an hour.  It was held in the courtyard of the stable block of this stately home, which I've visited several times before to attend antiques fairs.  Luckily it wasn't too crowded on Sunday as the stable stalls in particular are very tight spaces and even on Sunday I was having to queue to get in and out.

old horse stalls

There were several dressmaking fabric stalls, a few knitting stalls, but several quilt related vendors as well.  Nice to see some smaller traders who don't go to Festival of Quilts, plus there were some bargains to be had. I got six one-yard pieces of fabric at £5/yd that I will sew together for backing, some bargain packs of zips and magnetic fasteners, and some deals on continuous zipper tape.

This week I've been quilting my Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt on the frame, trying to get it finished before I leave.  Then I can load up the St Kitts quilt when I get back.

When I was in Cornwall, I saw a cute little red gingham zipped pouch on a keyring, I think they wanted £16 for it. So I thought as we all do, "I could make that".  And for once, I actually did. This is made using the free Tilda toiletries bag pattern, I cut the 'Small bag' measurements in half.

I made a start on my Cynthia Howe 1:48 Bliss house kit but soon ran into a problem: the supplied printed artwork was too small for the wooden pieces.  At first I thought it was just the base artwork, so I painted in the bare corners to match.  But then I realised it was all the artwork.  I still had my invoice from 10 years ago and she is still trading so I thought it was worth a shot to contact her.  Sure enough, she confirmed that they had a bad batch from the printer 10 years ago but no way of telling which customers had received them in their kits.  Most people had contacted her some time ago, but she is still happy to have the artwork reprinted and will send me the correctly sized artwork. So that's good.

Thanks to my new magnifying lamp, I  have been getting on well with my French monogram from the book I bought on my gite holiday. I'm stitching on waste canvas, applied to the vintage French linen tea towel I also bought on my gite holiday.

I've done a bit more on the Sashiko spools embroidery.

I've prepped a cross stitch kit to take with me to Norway - this was a cover kit from CrossStitcher magazine and I thought it looked vaguely Nordic with the brightly coloured houses.  

I started to prep a knitting project for travel as well but then realised I am very likely going to be buying Norwegian yarn so instead I will just take a few sets of DPNs and plan to buy a hat or mitten pattern.

I pieced a backing for my St Kitts quilt - I had barely enough of the palm tree fabric leftover from a long ago wall hanging made after our Hawaii trip.  I also unpicked the hem on the batik I stamped on our batik factory visit, and incorporated it into the backing as well.  This is in the queue to be quilted on the frame, so I also pieced some old sheeting all around the printed fabric to give me enough fabric to pin onto the frame and clamp at the sides.

After getting back from Cornwall, I changed out the quilt hanging in our hallway for a beach-themed wallhanging I made a very long time ago.  When DS was little, we had several lovely holidays on the Isle Of Wight and our favourite beach was the little one at St Helen's - which has the old stump of a church tower shown at the left, and a martello tower out in the Strait.  Pieced from various seaside fabrics with fusible applique to add fussy cut elements.

We had a surprise in the lawn waiting when we got back from Cornwall.  While the lawn wasn't getting mowed, a couple of roses have sprouted - presumably from leftover rootstock from when we moved a big Chianti shrub rose out of the lawn bed and over to another flower bed a couple of years ago.  So these won't be Chianti roses but will be whatever rootstock the Chianti was grafted onto.  They are surviving the drought just fine (unlike the lawn) so I will probably let them grow and see if they are something nice.

I fly on Thursday to Bergen in Norway and will be gone three weeks.  I'm not sure if I will be able to blog while I am away or not, hopefully I can managed a few posts.  The weather looks like it is going to be very autumnal: 15-17C currently with wind and rain.  Bit of a change from the UK heatwave!

To the seaside in Cornwall

 We've been away in our little caravan, down to Cornwall again as we liked it so much last year.  In contrast to last year's rainy blustery weather, this year was blue skies as the UK continued to experience the heatwave.  It wasn't too bad the first part of the holiday, low 20s, but was going up to high 20s by the end but with the benefit of a strong coastal breeze.  But at least we escaped the 31C at home. We seemed to spend a lot of time at, or near, the seaside this year which was lovely.  Didn't actually swim as the Atlantic is pretty cold and there were strong waves in places, but we paddled up to our waists and just enjoyed hanging out and the beautiful views in places like Bude, Tintagel, and St Ives Bay. I even found a few places offering gluten free Cornish pasties, one of them quite good so I mail-ordered some more from them for the freezer when we got home.

Polzeath beach

Our amazing pitch, right above the coastal path

I was able to visit the famous Cowslip Workshop quilting shop, outside Launceston.  It wasn't very big but crammed full of all the latest fabric lines.  Almost no prices on display which I don't like, and it was a bit overwhelming trying to look around as everything is so crowded together, in the end I only bought four fat quarters.  Interesting to see though it made me feel bad about how old a lot of my stash is.  I buy things I like with the best intentions to use them, and then suddenly it's five years later and they are still sitting there on the shelf.

I came across a cheap kit for a pincushion in a charity shop, probably an unwanted gift, so I bought it and it kept me busy for a few evenings in the caravan.  Everything was included, even the stuffing and the button, just had to hand-sew it.

Cornwall is a very arty place, lots of artists and artisans, galleries and shops selling crafts.  I got this cool re-made Victorian glass tile at a stained glass workshop.

And this hand-painted key holder from the gift shop of a historic house we visited.

I was also knitting on the Shawl that I started in St Kitts, and continuing to embroider the Spools sashiko panel in the evenings.

On the recommendation of my cross stitching friends, I've bought a Halo Go 2 folding daylight magnifying lamp.  It's amazing, like having the eyesight of a 25-year-old again.  I had been struggling with my cross stitch the last few years, even with magnifiers of different types and having a standing lamp next to my chair.  But this magnifies as well as illuminating the work with bright LED daylight lighting, fantastic.

It was nice to get home to my sewing room again, although the garden had really suffered in the heatwave without water.  We have a hosepipe ban in place now, so I had to lug buckets of water around to all the thirsty plants.  I lost some pots of Mexican daisies, and a few other plants are looking pretty sickly, but most things have perked up again with some water.

I was determined to use up some of my fabric stash so I made a few project bags, trying out some online tutorials.  For the first one, I used a piece of stitching I bought years ago from a woman selling off her deceased mother's prodigious cross stitch output, adding a vinyl front so you can see the stitching.  The bird fabric I bought from Cowslip was perfect for it.

For the second, I used a set of three Simplicity fabrics I bought as a pack some time ago.  Project bags are a great way to use feature fabrics.

I haven't had time to use the 3D printer much, although I did print off some cute 'wicker' baskets, including one to go next to the fireplace in my McKinley.  I've pulled out a Cynthia Howe kit for a 1/48th scale Bliss house replica as my next project but haven't done anything with it yet other than spray sealer on the wood.  I'm partway through warping up my little loom to make some more placemats, and I was happily collecting journalling supplies and scrapbook paper from some of the charity shops in Cornwall for my junk journal stash.  I've done a bit of longarming on the Gail Pan quilt but it's been mostly stitch-in-the-ditch which I'm not very good at on the longarm so I am procrastinating.

The heatwave seems to have broken somewhat now - while it has still been going up to 26C in the afternoons, it is cooling right down in the evenings which is lovely and gives the house a chance to cool down.  I don't mind it so much when I just have to stay indoors for a few hours in the afternoon.