Trying to remember how to retreat

 I'm off to a sewing retreat tomorrow so I've been trying to pack.  I haven't been away for an actual sewing/quilting retreat for a couple of years now, so it's hard trying to remember what I need to take.  I spent over 30 minutes looking for the legs to my extension table (which normally sits legless, flat on my sewing desk).  I did eventually find them in a place I'd already looked three times.  I also came across a sewing machine I'd completely forgotten I had: a Janome Gem that I ironically bought to take to retreats.  But I haven't used it for a couple of years either and I'd already packed up my big one, so I've decided to stick with the devil I know.  I'm a bit worried as I looked up reviews on TripAdvisor for the hotel where we are staying, and the reviews were really bad.  Lots of maintenance issues, complaints about the food etc.  I've bought a big bag of gluten free snacks to take with me just in case the food is inadequate.  Hopefully it will be fine.

I finally overcame my procrastination about selling my four good antique quilts (3 American and 1 British) and contacted an auction house last week.  They are happy to put them into an upcoming specialist textile auction in February, so I posted those off this week.  I'm hoping the proceeds will pay for the air conditioner.  I actually unpacked the air conditioner this week and tested it out.  It seems to work fine, although it is a lot louder than I expected considering it is supposed to be a quieter model. I ordered a longer exhaust hose and fitted that to it, so it should reach up to our stupidly high casement windows next summer.

This week's declutter was my sagging bookcase of knitting books, dating back to my years of passionate knitting interest about 15 years ago.

It took a long time but I went through them all.  The vast majority came downstairs to be donated.  I've been taking an armful with me every day to various charity shops around town.  I like to think that some local knitters will feel like they've gotten lucky finding so many nice books.

Most of them were either originally charity shop finds anyway, or cheap buys from a discount book warehouse that used to have a branch near my office.  I have kept back about 8 or 10 that are actually worth some money, so I'll be selling them.  I've kept some reference books, and several books where I think I will actually make something from them.  But the bookcase is much emptier now which opens up storage for the journalling stuff.

I finished weaving the 3 yard length of backstrap loom narrow braid.  The first couple of feet weren't useable as they were terrible. After I had built the braid clamp to hold the tension on the braid, it got better and you could see visible improvement.  But I still struggled to keep a consistent width and tidy edges.  It was an interesting experiment so I've decided to invest in a little inkle loom instead which maintains an even tension on the warp so it's supposed to be easier to have neater edges.  Also easier on your back.  I was finding it hard on my back to sit with tension on the weaving and sway back and forth as you need to.

I took a few of the more decent lengths and made a bookmark, a bag pull (which I clipped onto the christmas project bag I made last week) and a key fob - it is fobless in the photo because I didn't have any hardware narrow enough at the time, but I've since ordered some online and turned it into a fob.  I'm still weaving the grey placemats on my table loom, I've finished two and started the third of four mats.

I cleared my long arm frame and have loaded on the St Kitts batik scraps lap quilt ready for quilting.  I think I am just going to do a flower and vine pantograph on that one.  The main sewing this week was sewing up the Mini Poppins Bag, a pattern from Aunties Too which I bought at Festival of Quilts a few years ago.  I had stalled on making it because the frames you need to use to achieve the doctor's bag wide open function are really expensive.  They seem to be a proprietary size which isn't a standard size here in the UK, about 9" long I think (it doesn't say on the pattern).  Instead I bought a pack of cheap 10" frames online and bent two of them to be 9" long and cut off the excess with a hacksaw.  The bag turned out fairly well although it was quite time consuming to make.  Some of the directions are a bit opaque, and there is at least one minor error, but I got there in the end.  The fabric is from the Moda Flea Market range in two prints. The handles I picked up in Tokyo. It's very cute.

In knitting, I finished the second Norwegian houses ankle warmer so they are ready to wear when the cold winter hits.  I picked up the Shawl Neve by Tone Mette again.  It has been having a time out for several months because no matter what I tried, I couldn't get chart 5 to work.  In the end, I used Google Image Search to identify the lace pattern in that section, found another free pattern for the same lace pattern to see what their instructions said, and made my own replacement chart for the first part of the section.  So far it is going fine, although it's going to be a roulette wheel whether I get to the correct number of stitches by the end of the section to move smoothly on to chart 6.  I've also started knitting the Strata Beanie  by Nici Griffin, using up a bunch of odd balls of DK yarn.  It's a hat of protruding ridges, like those old teacosies, achieved by slipping every second stitch for 8 rows to gather the knitting vertically.  A fun knit once I managed to get started (not only can I apparently not count to 2, but I also managed to twist the round knitting into a moebius  several rows AFTER my start).  It should be really warm because of all the layers.