Time rushes on

 Suddenly it's the weekend again - I don't know where the week went.  I seemed to be a bit more productive this week apart from feeling coldish - DH was as well which resulted in us taking our first rapid flow tests today.  Both negative thankfully and my nose still hurts a little from being swabbed. It used to be normal to feel a bit coldish for most of the winter but now you automatically start wondering if you've got plague.

After I had given the new desk two coats of beeswax  and reinstalled all the hardware, the boys brought it upstairs and we rearranged the living room a bit to accommodate it.  It actually looks really nice, gleaming softly under the lights.  It is now hiding a lot of my craft clutter. I can open the desk flap when I am watching TV and arrange all my  bits to hand, then hide it all away when I'm done for the evening.

I've been using the new desk arrangement to work on Block 5 of the Australian BOM.  I've tried using the Clover Wonderfuse for the applique on this block.  It is certainly much easier to sew through than the Steam a Seam Lite fusible web, and isn't gumming up my needle at all.  On the other hand it doesn't seem to adhere the fabric nearly as well, more of a clinging in place than a solid fuse but perhaps I didn't get the temperature right.

On Thursday I ended up alone in the house for the day as both DS and DH had gone to London for work. It felt strange, I haven't been alone all day since before lockdown, but it gave me the freedom to get a lot done without being distracted or feeling I had to make any meals.  The first thing I tackled was the disaster formerly known as my knitting room. It's basically been a glorified storage cupboard for years, I don't like being up there because it's generally too hot or cold, too far from the front door to hear the doorbell, too far from everyone else and the sloping ceiling makes me feel slightly claustrophic.  So it had been some time since I had done anything except dump old projects and grab materials for new projects -  there was stuff strewn everywhere and about 40 or so knitting needles waiting to be sized and put away in the right place.  It took over an hour to put it more in order but was quite satisfying.

I popped over to Aldi to buy something for my private luncheon and ended up coming home with various craft impulse buys as you do.

My sewing machine has gone off for its service so I spent part of the afternoon cutting out pieces for my next quilt, the Tula Pink wreath quilt.  I was using my June Tailor Shape Cut ruler, such an amazing tool for cutting lots of identical strips and squares, so much easier than just using a 24-inch ruler by itself.

I may have also done some online fabric shopping, to rectify the green deficiency I identified last week. The village scene fabric was an extra, I thought it was so cute.

Today I had a lovely surprise in the post which was a 1:24th retro caravan lasercut model kit from Seaside Miniatures - a retirement/early Christmas present from my friend Anita - thank you!  It will be fun to try to make it look cute and vintage.   I certainly won't be short of things to do in retirement.

On our lunch hour today, DH drove me and my overlocker over to the semi-local repair shop so that's two machines off to have some spa treatment.  The engineer was actually minding the shop so I could give it directly to him.  He seemed undismayed that I had taken the covers off myself for cleaning but looked a bit dubious about the prospect of finding where the leftover screw should go. 

I'm going to follow a free online sewalong for the Lowarn bag, so have bought the pattern, chosen some fabric and ordered the hardware. It a sort of mini duffle bag with a central zipped opening. There is a more advanced version with end pockets but I'm going to try the no-pockets easier version. The designer is streaming live Youtube videos for the tutorial. For once it is a UK designer so it's much easier because she uses materials you can get in the UK, instead of glues and interfacings that are only available in America or at sky high imported prices. Hopefully it will be fun.

When your camera photos start looking like your (ageing) eyesight

 Well, all the photos this week look poster-ised thanks to the camera somehow getting reset from automatic to god-knows-what. Apologies, although they do resemble what the world is starting to look like without my glasses on.  I only found out when I uploaded the week's snapshots so it's too late to go back and retake them all (also I'm too lazy).

So you will have to use your imagination a bit to make out what the strip-pieced star top looks like in its finished state.  As expected, it isn't that big, about 60"x70ish", so on my Queen mattress (60x80) it was only a topper.

I've had the week off (using up leave) so I made a real push in the first few days to sew the rest of the rows together (tedious) and press all the crossing seams open (even more tedious). But I'm quite pleased with the finished result and the soft colours, very cottagy.  Obviously it needed a border, both to make it bigger and to finish it off.  I had a trawl through my stash looking for something low volume that would go with the stars. I selected a small floral in similar colours with a slight period feel to it, I wanted a frame that wouldn't shout out, just support the stars from the background.  For now I've added it as a plain frame but perhaps after it's quilted, I will cut the border edge into scallop shapes. It looks better in real life than it does in this blurry picture.

I've cut matching binding strips and sewn a backing from some Tilda yardage, and added the quilt to the queue of quilts waiting for when DS eventually moves out and I can take over the dining room (his office) and set up the quilting frame.  I think there are 10 quilts now in the queue.  With that project off the cutting table, I've now booked my 'new' sewing machine in for its first service since buying it two years ago.  I did investigate local service places but for the same price I can send it back to where I bought it (Sew Direct in Wales) so that's now booked in for courier collection next week.  However I am going to try one of the local places for a service on my overlocker to see if they can bring it back from the dead.  I've discovered (after realising the Janome 6234XL overlocker looked identical to my ancient Janome 634D) that the 6234XL blades will fit my old overlocker. As the non-functional dull blades are one of  the main issues, along with tension, I thought was worth spending out on a service before spending hundreds of pounds on a replacement. DH is going to drive me and the overlocker over to the shop soon to drop it off. On the bad news front, I discovered a left over screw from when I took it apart.... oops.  Perhaps if I give that to the service people they can work out where it goes.

On the advice of Swooze, I gave the antique Mennonite top another rinse after detaching the blocks that were running, and still more dye came out so perhaps even the red plaid is running a bit as well.  I also found that the fabric, although a lot cleaner, is a bit rotten.  I'm tempted to just throw the whole thing out but I had a trawl through the stash to see if I had anything I could use as a border.  I didn't have any suitable reds and a black print just killed the pattern, then I thought green as a complementary colour.  It turns out that I have very few greens in my stash - loads of blue, fair bit of reds and pinks, almost no green fabrics.  I found one reproduction print that is the right shade of green but there isn't very much of it. I'll have to do some arithmetic to see how wide a border I could piece.  Must order some more green fabric online.

I've spent a lot of my week off working on the knackered arts and crafts bookcase/desk that I stupidly impulse-bought in Cumbria.  After watching a lot of Youtube videos where professionals use amazing products and expensive power tools to rejuvenate antique furniture, I thought it was worth seeing what I could do with my paltry skills and feeble tools.  I'd already taken all the hardware off so I gave the desk a good clean with sugar soap to degrease and take off the first layer of filth.  Then I spent a day poisoning myself and the other two household members with fumes, as I took off the wax finish with steel wool and wax remover.  Then I started repairs, harvesting period oak wood from the £5 mirror I bought for the purpose on Facebook.  I cut and glued in the missing drawer support, cut and replaced the 'heel' of the foot which had been previously cut off due to woodworm so the desk is now much more stable, filled some holes and cracks, glued up a few gaping seams, and managed to greatly reduce the opacity of a big black ink stain on the inside.  My dollshouse collection of wood stains has come in very useful for matching replacement pieces and fills to the original. The piece de resistance was designing and cutting a curlicue trim piece to substitute for the missing little door across the right hand upper cupboard.  We have no power tools that will cut a straight line, and no bandsaw, so it was all a bit of a bodge job using a power jigsaw and a Dremel tool sanding drum.  By no means perfect but it came out a lot better than I thought it would.  Unfortunately the grain of the mirror's oak is much broader than the fine grain of the desk, so my replacement piece is never going to look original.  Perhaps it's like restoring old houses where the planners insist the new additions look completely different from the old part.  I've now got to put the wax back on for a final finish which I've started on, before replacing the hardware.  Hopefully it's going to look better than when I started anyhow.

The donor mirror frame 

Curly doo-dah on the top right is mine

The foot repair

I had an enjoyable outing today to the Makit Fenland Lace and Needlecraft Fair, my first such fair since before the you-know-what.  I was a bit worried beforehand but the Lace Guild was holding its AGM at the same venue today which I wanted to support, so altogether I felt it was worth having a look.  It turned out to be fine: the majority of people in the hall and at the AGM meeting were wearing masks or face shields, there was plenty of hand sanitiser, and it's a fair which has always had wide aisles anyway so it was easy to avoid getting too near to people.  Between COVID and the UK fuel crisis, I wondered if there would be many vendors or customers, but I would say levels weren't that far below normal.  I think about 75% on the traders and maybe 60% or higher on the customers.  I also wondered if I would buy anything, since I haven't been doing a lot of lace lately, but I did get a bit carried away by the sheer pleasure of seeing new stuff and doing something 'normal'.  Excuse the rubbish blurry photos but this is my haul.

I found the bookmark sleeves I wanted to protect the bobbin thread picture I stitched last week, and on the same stall some plastic key chains and a coaster for inserting lace or anything else really.  There was a cute little turned wooden jar with beeswax in it, and some pretty old-fashioned needlework scissors.  On another stall I picked up some beginner books on needletatting.  I didn't get very far with needletatting when I tried to learn from online last year, mainly due to a lack of beginner-friendly patterns.  But it did seem easier than shuttle tatting so I thought having some instructional books would definitely help me.  The bobbins include my usual purchase from Margaret Wall of a Christmas bobbin showing a bunny hanging a stocking on a tree, a painted bobbin that looked like Japanese cherry blossom from another stall, and two timely souvenir bobbins: one for Lockdown Lacemaking 2020, and one for the first anniversary of the Lace Suppliers Spotlight Facebook page (another lockdown creation which helped small lace vendors keep going during the time where no fairs were taking place).  I also bought some Sublime Merino aran wool from a lady having a clearance after losing her husband, after listening to her spiel my tender heart was twanged and I bought something to support her as well.  I thought it might make a nice hat and glove set perhaps as a gift.

The fifth block of the Australian BOM turned up in today's post so I can get started on that this week.  While I was waiting for it to come, I've been working on the little house sampler cross-stitch, and continuing the hand quilting on the 25-block applique quilt.  I've quilted all 16 blocks around the edge of the quilt now so have started on one of the remaining nine in the middle.  

And suddenly it's October - how did that happen?  Time just seems to be rushing along all of a sudden, do you find that?

Limbo-ish

 I've been feeling a bit in limbo this week and it's been hard to concentrate.  A bit like when you are counting down the days to a big slightly scary trip, or perhaps a minor surgery or scary dentist visit -  everything else seems to pale in significance as you wait for the 'big' thing to arrive.  Work seems particularly tedious since all the waffly meetings and endless recycled discussions seem even less relevant than usual.  I am having to suppress a strong urge to shriek, when someone once again questions why our productivity is not hitting our targets, "COULD IT POSSIBLY BE BECAUSE WE WASTE SO MUCH TIME IN THESE EFFING MEETINGS!!!!?????"  I am clinging to some sense of professionalism by my fingernails.

Still feeling like a bit of embroidery while I wait for the next block in the BOM, I dug around in my collection and found a freebie giveaway from a long ago Lace Day to make a bobbin bookmark.  You prick holes in the provided card then stitch thread between the holes to make a picture.  Deceptively simple but harder than it looks to stitch card without bending it or leaving too much slack in the thread, and of course any slight wobble in the holes shows up glaringly.  It doesn't look too bad though.  I will look out for a plastic bookmark sleeve to put it into.

For some light relief last weekend, I sewed a little length of bunting in cheerful colours, copying a picture I saw online.  It's not perfect in execution, my machine was struggling with top-stitching through the bulk of the trim at the points, but it's fun. I've pinned it up over my mirror in my bedroom.

I'm making a push on the tedious strip-pieced star quilt and have now assembled all 36 strips.  They were getting into a tangled mess so after a bit of thought, I hung a laundry airer on my door and draped the strips over that in numerical order.  I've started assembling the rows, which is also tedious since almost every seam junction needs to be pinned so they match up properly.  The end effect looks nice though, I like the soft colours.  I think it will probably benefit from a border but I'll see what it looks like on the bed when it is assembled.

After the bunting, but before the quilt piecing, I took my ancient overlocker apart to investigate why it isn't working very well.  I managed to unscrew and disassemble all of the exterior cosmetic covers and doors, and the base, leaving only the metal exoskeleton like some kind of sci-fi film robot.  I think I was hoping there would be some obvious glob of thread fluff that would explain all the issues it's been having, but there wasn't.  There was a decent amount of fluff which I cleaned all out, I also drizzled oil onto every moving part that I could spot.  Then I managed to put it all back together without any screws left over, although the screws have not necessarily gone back in where they came from as they were different shapes and I stupidly didn't keep track of what came from where.  I plugged the machine in afterwards and ran it without thread, it immediately sounds much smoother and quieter, whirring rather than rattling, so perhaps the thorough cleaning and oiling did it some good.  I need to thread it up to check how the sewing quality is, but since I normally pull the threads through rather than threading from scratch, I am putting that fun job off for now.  I still think I probably need a new one though.  I did a bit of research online, there is no comprehensive bricks and mortar overlocker supplier anywhere near me.  There are a few models on display here and there but I will probably have to rely mainly on reviews when deciding what to get.  I would like to buy from Sewing Machines Direct in Wales, whom I bought my main sewing machine from, so am looking primarily at their models but they don't seem to have much in the midrange.  I'm wondering about the Jaguar machine (formerly Frister & Rossman) but I'm not familiar with that brand.

Another ancient thing I tackled this week was an unfinished quilt top that I bought on my first trip to America in the early 90s, I think from a Mennonite quilter that we visited on our tour. She was selling off some old period fabric and unfinished blocks and I bought a bag of scrap fabric which I have dipped into occasionally for scrap quilts and I think also this top. I think the blocks are a variation on the Anvil pattern. This top was stiff with dirt and stains and a weird brown colour overall, I assume it was really cheap which is probably why I bought it because I don't love it, and it's been living in the back of a cupboard for decades.  I didn't think of taking a 'before' picture, sorry.  The top  is pieced out of a variety of light scraps in original 30s prints (probably feedsack prints), and three different red fabrics, so could be from mid or early 20thC. I strongly suspected the red colour was going to run.  To tackle the weird brown colour,  I soaked the top for 24 hours in Retro Clean as recommended by Kelly Cline for vintage linens.  The water immediately turned brown and went darker and darker.  After 24 hours, the lighter fabrics around the red plaid that makes up the majority of the blocks had become much whiter and clearer, losing most of their brown tint.  However the two other reds used in blocks at the two ends of the top are obviously running as their light fabrics are now a delicate pink, and one red has faded almost to a pink now when before it wasn't too different from the red plaid.  So probably only the red plaid blocks are going to be usable.  It's drying now.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.  I could either piece more blocks in coordinating fabric to make it bigger, or perhaps just add a border to make a throw.

What's your oldest UFO that you've been hanging on to?

Things are moving on

 I gave my notice at work this week.  My manager looked tired and envious and said she would go if she could.  I'm not telling very many people yet but I did tell my friend on the team, who is very jealous and accused me of abandoning her - she is desperate to go as well but is hanging on to pay for some home improvements and to help her adult kids out.  I have to use up all my leave and flexi before I go as they won't buy it out, so I will actually be leaving a little earlier than I thought. I think I now have 18 working days left.  

I interviewed four financial advisors and have chosen one, an apparently sensible woman whom I hit it off with.  So I've started to feed her the information she needs like scanned pension statements and currently I'm trying to work out what our daily expenses add up to.  This is not the woman who needed to be nagged - that one turned out to be a tired looking mother who talked about her kids but really had no questions or information for me, and when I asked about her fees she didn't even know as her company has recently been absorbed by another.  The fourth interview, a man, was a total disaster: I didn't even get to finish my first few sentences before he jumped in because he knew exactly what I needed and told me so in a 10-minute monologue that was so boring I actually started looking at Facebook while waiting for him to run down. In the end I had to literally wave my hand to get his attention so that I could ask a few questions, I only got one out before he started talking over me and launched into another lengthy monologue. Having had enough of that, I made 'I'm leaving now, thank you so much' remarks at various points but he was completely oblivious.  In the end, I literally had to pretend that someone was at the door and bid him a hasty farewell.  oh my god.  And he had lots of good reviews.  Perhaps he writes them himself.

DH surprised me this week with a cross-stitch picture of our caravan that I had no idea he was even working on. He bought a little kit of a caravan xmas card on impulse, and then realised he could redesign it to look like our caravan.  He borrowed some threads from my stash and worked on it in secret.  I've added some fabric borders and stretched it onto card, and turned it into a fridge magnet.  It will be a nice memory of the holidays once we are into winter.

I finished sewing the Clothkits blouse this week.  It's turned out alright.  My old overlocker has made the seam allowances look like a dog was chewing on them - I am thinking of treating myself to a new one as a retirement present.  The sleeves are a bit too long and the back neck a bit too high, but otherwise it fits me fine  To me it looks very 1980s but I like the print details on the neck and cuff frills. I didn't know I could sew a button-up blouse so I feel a sense of achievement.  I kind of wish I had traced the pattern off before I cut it out now. But on the other hand, I am unlikely to be wearing a fancy blouse these days since I don't go to an office any more.

I found I was kind of missing the embroidery this week so I dug out a felt kit I bought on sale a few years ago.  It contains wool felt and embroidery thread to make a little bird house and two birds.  I wasn't keen on the birds but I thought the house was cute. 

The wool felt turned out to be somewhat flimsy and some of it didn't feel great quality.  I was sceptical that the house was going to turn out as nicely defined as the picture.  I went to look at their website which has a lot of cute things but I was amused to see their sample of the birdhouse kit (pic below) is indeed quite bulgy. It also costs more than I paid for mine.

I tried my best with the embroidery. The pattern doesn't include any actual embroidery design so you have to free-style it based on the single picture on the front of the kit. I ignored the instructions to cut out the pieces first because I found it much easier to embroider the felt while it was all one big sheet. I used some of the stitches I've learned with the BOM, like colonial knots.

To compensate for the flimsy felt, I backed the embroidered felt with fusible woven interfacing before cutting out the pieces.  Once I had the house mostly assembled, I put a piece of card in the base to help with stability, and added some aquarium gravel for a bit of weight before firmly stuffing the remainder. I'm fairly pleased with it, it's colourful and cute.  It could be a hanging ornament, or a pincushion.

Sumo has started again so I did a lot of the stitching on the birdhouse while watching the highlights each evening recorded from NHK Japan.  I've also done a bit of cross-stitch on the Little Houses sampler and even a bit of hand quilting on the applique quilt.

A big time suck this week has been a new-to-me video game called Ashen, which is quite similar to Dark Souls.  As usual it took me a while to get into it, I always go through a period at the beginning of a new game where I hate everything that's different and of course my character is weak and feeble so my rubbish fighting skills leave me totally exposed.  But now that my character is levelling up and I have some decent weapons, I'm enjoying running around and exploring.  Due to my age no doubt, I find after an hour or so of gaming that my right hand is seizing up so I'm having to limit my gameplay which DS thinks is hilarious after a childhood of being told that he is doing too much gaming.  Just wait, karma will get you one day when you're older too...

Well, I'm not doing that again

 I had my first craft group day out since the pandemic today, and found that actually it just feels far too soon.  It was the first Saturday meeting of the lace group I used to go to, although they have already held a couple of meetings on workdays.  Attendance was low  and people trickled in gradually  due to confusion over whether it started at 1:30, 1:45 or 2pm, but it was the almost total lack of COVID precautions that really got to me.  I was the only one of the first four arrivals to be wearing a mask, and there was no social distancing in place.  I asked on entering what the COVID policies were and received a baffled look, and the reply that it was up to me, I could do whatever I felt comfortable with, if I wanted my own table or to wear a mask then feel free.  There were lots of management signs around the hall with instructions about sanitising hands etc which were ignored, and people were mingling freely.  I took a table by myself but both of my mask-free neighbours on adjoining tables had coughing fits during the afternoon off and on so it just all felt really dodgy, plus one of them announced she had only received her second COVID jab a couple of days ago (!) so it wouldn't even have given full protection yet.  I had brought my own hand sanitiser so was able to sanitise after using the common pen to sign the attendance book etc. but didn't see anyone else bothering.  It's funny because DH and I  have been out and about several times in the summer and I thought I was okay about being out in public, but I guess the difference is that normally I am in control of my own movements and of the distance I am maintaining from others, whereas here I was somewhat trapped by social convention not to behave too differently from the others. It just felt like the risk vastly outweighed whatever benefit I was gaining, as I didn't know any of the others particularly well.  I got DH to pick me up early and  I don't think I will go again for a while, maybe not until infection rates hopefully calm down next year.  It is very surprising to see people at an organised event behaving like everything's fine and back to normal, particularly given the age demographic of lacemakers.  However they did take my phone number so they'll be able to let me know if we've all been infected by someone at the meeting...  I was working on my Bucks butterfly mat and have made a good start on the final repeat.  I've had to order some more of the Madeira embroidery floss that I am using as a gimp as I just do not have enough for the final butterfly.

I tried on my first Lenten Rose sock and was pleasantly surprised to find it fits okay, perhaps slightly loose but that's better than being too tight which is always the risk with a fair isle sock.  It is surprisingly difficult to take a picture of your own foot.

I finished block 4 of the Australian BOM - the only addition will be a large metal scissors charm to be sewn on in the far distant future after the quilt is quilted.  The next block will be block 5 which will be one-quarter of the way through the 20 block quilt.

Feeling pleasantly caught up on the BOM, I turned my attention to the Clothkits blouse panel that I bought secondhand a few weeks ago.  Although technically in my size, the designers expect you to have a waistline which I do not, so I've cut out a size 16 in the shoulders and an 18 for the tummy. It's a bit odd to be cutting on printed lines since fabric is fluid and not necessarily square, so a purportedly straight printed line may not actually be straight in ruler terms. It also means that the printed lines can show through to the right side so I had to add a bit of concealing fabric when I did the collar facing as there were printed lines on the seam allowance too close to be trimmed away.  The blouse is a bit cartoon-y /folksy in style, but it's sort of fun to see how it will look since I only have a diagram not a photo of the finished article, which makes it like a mystery sewing project. There is a very clever 'bust' dart which is actually in the shoulder, with the dart line hidden behind one of the pin tucks which makes the shaping invisible.

I have plodded on with the strip-pieced quilt and have made it to strip 32 of 36.  For a break from the tedium, I sewed together a few strips so you can start to see how the polygons combine to make stars.

I had a new experience last weekend which was tabletop wargaming.  DH has spent a good chunk of lockdown painting all the models for a Games Workshop game called Blackstone Fortress.  To celebrate the big finish, we sat down as a family to try playing the game.  It's all completely beyond me (and DH to some extent) but luckily it was child's play for our resident expert DS, who raced through the rulebooks, set it all out and told us what to do.  I was dead weight, just rolling dice when I was told to, but I managed two hours of being on best behaviour before pleading to be allowed to knit on my second Lenten Rose sock in between turns. It was a fun thing to do as a family and the other two enjoyed themselves. My character survived (unlike DH's) and even took out some of the bad guys.

I pulled some quilts from my collection to display on the metal stand I bought last week, they look nice.  I just need to find the right place to put it as all our rooms are getting rather crowded.  Too much coming in to the house and not enough going out (mostly my fault to be honest). The front and rear quilts are 30s quilts I bought when on holiday in America, the middle quilt was an unfinished top I picked up there as well and after rearranging some blocks and adding a border, I quilted it myself.  The little one on the shelf is a wallhanging I made many years ago from a magazine block of the month.

The spell of hot weather has continued, punctuated by occasional heavy rain, which has been nice even though I am generally stuck indoors for work. 23 working days left to go!  I interviewed my first financial advisor yesterday, whom I'm sure is very good but I think gold-plate standard as his initial assessment fee was twice what I was thinking I would be paying overall, and then the annual fee was going to be half again more.  I've got a couple more interviews next week although I may set up a couple more as one of the interviewees only got back to me when the referral site checked with me whether she had or not, then obviously nagged her so that I got an email the same day at 9:35pm. We'll see.

Why am I scared?

 The paperwork for my final salary pension arrived this week, confirming that I will get the money at the time I expected (there was no reason to doubt this but I think I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop). So now I feel it's okay to give notice to my current employers that I will be leaving at the end of October.  I'm thinking I will do that in a couple of weeks on the 15th, so giving six weeks notice (I have to give a minimum of a month) which seems reasonable.  But for some reason I feel quite fearful of taking that step. I guess there is a certain element of burning bridges, no going back etc.  I'm worried my manager is going to be shocked. And I hate being the centre of attention so absolutely am not looking forward to being singled out for daring to, getting to soon to be departing and the subsequent impact on the work and production figures, everyone wanting to know how come I'm going, why don't I want a big virtual party (shudder) etc.  And to a large extent it's probably because I have been working for about 37 years apart from breaks for education and having a child, I've always had to work, and I think deep down it just feels really wrong that I won't be working in future.  Especially when DH (and DS) will still be working for many years to come, which is going to be weird when they are both still working from home.  It is going to be strange. I expect I'll get used to it.

This week I finished Block 3 of the Australian BOM and actually got caught up!  Block 4 arrived two days later.  I wanted to wait until the Clover Wonderfuse web arrived but it appears it is shipping from America (even though I ordered it on Amazon) and won't be here for another couple of weeks. So I'll probably go ahead with Steam a Seam 2 Lite again for Block 4.  I don't feel Block 3 turned out as well as the first two blocks.  It's alright but a bit clumsy.  I am not ruling out the possibility of re-doing some of the earlier blocks at the end of the process, if I get a lot better at embroidery.

I finished the first Lenten Rose fair-isle sock.  I don't know what happened with this but for some reason my tension is rubbish.  The deep pink yarn is smoother and the stitches aren't too bad, but  stitches in the light pink yarn (hand-dye indie brand) are all over the map. Presumably it is sticker than the darker yarn?  As it was fair isle, I was trying hard not to over-tension my floats and I may have gone too far the other way as the sock is quite loose on my sock stretcher so likely going to be big on my foot as well.  I used to be good at this...

I also finished knitting and assembling the penguin which was a free magazine kit so not the greatest quality.  I like knitting toys and it's sort of cute - very reminiscent of Pingu if you've ever seen those stop-motion shows.

Some stash acquisition this week:  We went to Cambridge with the caravan last weekend for the bank holiday. One of the things I had pre-booked was a visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum, which is in a stunning building and had an interesting gift shop as well.

In the gift shop I bought this tea towel which is digitally printed with an image of an embroidered band sampler from 1720, and is so realistic that when I first saw it in the shop I thought it was actually stitched.  I bought one for me to use possibly for sewing a bag, and one for m-i-l as a gift.

Today we went over to the storage yard to do a few bits on the caravan, and then as we were nearby we stopped into Daventry to the Bramble Patch quilt shop. It's quite a large shop by British standards. I don't normally visit there as everything is full price and expensive, and in the past I was unimpressed with their service, but they do stock all the latest fabric ranges.  There was a class being taught in the large hall which made me feel a bit sad and nostalgic, I haven't been to a class for so long.  Even before the pandemic, because they are often expensive and generally to make a thing, and if you don't want the thing then it's a bit pointless.  I looked it up and the people I saw today had paid £50 each just to work on their own project with the company/assistance of a teacher from the shop for the day.  I can work on my own projects at home for free, lol.  I think I still miss not having a quilt club to go to, after running my own for so long before we moved.  

But I picked up some thread, some decorative buttons and some sale fabric bundles: a scrap bag of Lewis & Irene Bunny Hop remnants, and a pack of six FQs for £10 which is much more my kind of price than the going rate of £3.50 or up for new fabric.  Near to the quilt shop is a secondhand bookstore which we also visited but there are a couple of antique shops in the same building.    On one antiques stall I got some cotton lace which I'm sure will be useful for something and wasn't expensive.

Also at the antique shop I spotted this great triple tier metal towel rail which came home with me. I'm hoping to display some of my smaller quilts on it, or perhaps some of my vintage linens. Isn't it cute?

29 working days to go!