Cairo in Northamptonshire

The temperature on Thursday went up to an unbelievable 36C/97F which is one degree hotter than it was when I went to Egypt on a long ago holiday. What is happening??? Very fortunately and completely by chance, I had booked Wednesday off as a single day of holiday followed by Thursday as my day off, so I was able to hide indoors on both days (29 degrees on Wednesday).  We are very lucky with this house that the lower floors stay relatively cool so I slept in the living room both nights and stayed in my sewing room in the basement both afternoons. It was so hot that the train tracks to London warped and some of the overhead wiring became damaged, causing huge travel disruption on Thursday so DS ended up having to stay home. He made it to work on Friday but when I tried, my train had been cancelled so I tried the next one and it was indefinitely delayed because it hadn't actually left London yet due to the ongoing problems causing only 50% of outbound track being available. I gave up and came home so it's turned into a five day weekend.  Way Hey!  I'm very happy today because we are back to lovely British rain and cloud and only 19 degrees.

So I've had loads of time to work on crafts and even do some mending like sewing snap tape onto the bottom of a weird continental duvet cover I bought that just had loose flaps at the bottom with no closures.

The Japanese dollshouse roof of doom is now finished in terms of construction after seven months of slog. Some of the trim has been hard to glue on due to the ridges of the shingles, so I ended up shaving flatter paths down with the sanding drum on my dremel tool. The final bits of trim hide the internal valleys where the gables meet each other and I ended up using hot glue to fix those because nothing else would fill the large awkward gaps inside the angle. Now the big clean up starts of all the glue smears, overspills, strings of glue etc. etc.  Plus I expect the underneath of the eaves will need some touching up after all the clamping it's been put through.  Then the whole roof needs to be painted black. I'm not sure what paint I should use on the resin shingles, I'm not sure my ordinary crafter's acrylic is going to stick.

The hexagon quilt has moved on as well.  I finished sewing and pressing all the half- hexagons and have been designing the quilt on the wall. I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. I don't think the actual quilt centre is going to be that big once it's all sewn together, so I'll definitely need some borders.  Some people make an inner frame and let the hexagons spill over into the outer border but I don't think I want to do that. I might applique the hexagons down onto an outer border. I have some matching fabric from the same line as the panel I have cut up.  But I need more cloud fabric.  I'm visiting Festival of Quilts for the first time in years so I will have a look there for both cloud fabric and border fabric for the 30s Sampler quilt.

Speaking of places I haven't been for a few years, DH kindly drove me down to the Fibre East show in Ampthill today.  Now that I don't have a season ticket to London, it is more of an expensive proposition to get the train there, plus I don't know if the trains are still disrupted today.  I had a lovely visit, the show was heaving with people and was bigger and better than I remember it being.  So much pretty pretty yarn.  I stayed strong for quite a long time, keeping my own stash firmly in my mind, and just buying a couple of shawl patterns for using up stash.  But I fell off the wagon at The Wool Barn stand in one of the marquees, faced with their lovely ice cream colours and merino/nylon sock yarn which feels so springy and soft. I also picked up a little hand turned wooden needle holder from Rosie's Moments which I will use in my bobbin lace accessory box.  It was interesting to see how things have changed: there seemed to be less spinning and weaving but several needlefelting stands, and also several crochet stands.  I was very tempted on one stand that had several multi-colour crochet blanket kits and patterns but reminded myself that I'm not doing very well with the simple kit I'm working on at the moment. Also I don't enjoy crochet the way I do knitting. Lots of people selling pretty handmade project bags and pouches  too. The only downside was the steady rain which made it muddy underfoot outside and a bit of a scurry to get between the various buildings without getting too wet. So I've had some fun just now looking on Ravelry for patterns to go with my purchases.

Yesterday on my unexpected day home I finished my Torchon lace beaded bracelet and darned in the ends. There were more ends than there should have been due to running out of thread on some of the bobbins, but I was able to hide them fairly successfully and it looks nice. I'm not sure I would wear this to the office but it would definitely be something to wear to a lace day or a lace fair.

I'm stuck on a difficult boss in the Dark Souls 3 video game (Aldrich) and I asked DS for some advice. He was a bit reluctant so I apologised if he found watching his mother playing video games as exciting as watching paint dry.  He said it wasn't that at all, it was more like watching a puppy drown. Ouch, and here I thought I was getting a bit better...

At least with all this hot weather, hopefully it's helping our damp wall from the leak to dry out. Although we now have a new issue: something has been living/moving around in the ceiling above my sewing room.  It's been quite creepy to hear little footsteps and the occasional flurry of scratching/digging. It sounds too big to be a mouse so I am thinking possibly a rat.  I can't see how it is getting into the house though, I've had a walk around and there are no obvious holes. I bought a couple of traps yesterday and set them outside, hidden under washing up tubs with a brick on top and access holes cut in either side to keep the cat away from the trap.  Google seems to agree that poison is best avoided due to the high risk to pets/wildlife/me and apparently you really don't want a poisoned rat putrefying in the house (smell).  The joys of an old house...

Catching up

I'm a day late in posting because I was just too tired last night after a long day of setting up the house for the 'party', hosting and catering, then putting everything back where it belongs afterwards. Although I expect it will be weeks before everything we squirrelled away in the big tidy up gets found and makes its way back to its usual position.  The event went fine, after a concerning start where nobody showed up until 20 minutes after the time they'd been invited.  They trickled in gradually and eventually we had nine people who still managed to eat most of the food we'd laid in for the potential 25 guests which was fine. After a rainy couple of days, it was dry enough to sit in the garden so that's where everyone ended up.  The garden and house were much admired which was nice. There were some proposals that it should become an annual summer event - not sure about that.

(above and below) DH's models set up in the dining room as a display for his modelling friends

DH says I have to tell you this is the 44th East Essex Regiment (with some 95th Riflemen)

In between cleaning, de-cluttering and shopping for all of that, I did do some crafts.  I forgot to blog last week that a major milestone on the roof of doom on the Japanese dollshouse had been reached, with the completion of the main tiling at long last.  This week I have moved on to the decorative elements which will hide all the various seams and cracks. These are built up from glued on wooden strips with plastic trim, then everything gets painted black afterwards.

I also forgot to blog the final post-blocking photos of my red and white Sanquhar gloves which turned out really nicely. I felted them just a little bit when I washed them, and the fit now is quite good and the stitches have evened out nicely. I'm pleased with them although I don't think I'll be wearing them for a few months!  It's supposed to be 31 degrees C tomorrow.

I spent several hours in the week rehabilitating the embroidered fire screen that I pictured last week.  I took it all apart, cleaned it, wiped it over with dark oak stain to touch up the scratches and worn bits, glued the broken bits, cleaned the glass, and washed the embroidery (which turned the water brown multiple times). Then I had to press and stretch out the embroidery carefully and stitch on some toning fabric to hide the worst of the stained portion at the bottom. Then it was re-assembling it all, this time with a bit of calico behind the embroidery so that it isn't directly on top of the plywood (which I think is where a lot of the staining came from).  It looks pretty good, not perfect but a lot better than it did. Hopefully the original stitcher would be pleased.

Otherwise I've been working on ongoing projects:

The crochet granny square blanket is getting bigger but starting to flutter a bit around the outer edges again.

I've reached the halfway point on the Misty Meadows shawl so the next half is just the reverse image.  It looks a lot more stripy in this photo than it seems in real life.

I'm about halfway along the first edge of knitting the sawtooth border onto the Victorian Lace Shawl. Obviously this won't look like much until it's blocked at the finish.

I've had several goes at the hexagon mountain of the One Block Wonder  quilt. I think I started without about 20 plates each with five hexagons, and I'm about halfway through now.  There is a growing pile of hexagon halves joined to each other by thread which is waiting to be pressed.

This is my new sewing machine, which is behaving well. I'm still not completely happy with how it is set into the sewing table, I may have to have a re-think about that. The little seam roller gadget came with Today's Quilter Magazine as a free gift and it's perfect for finger-pressing the first seam of the hexagon half before I add the third piece.

New sewing machine

The great unboxing event took place last Sunday.  To begin with, I set the new machine (which I am mentally labelling 'the beast') up on top of my sewing table because it is bigger than the cutout that allowed the old machine to sit flush with the table surface.  All the accessories were present and accounted for (I eventually found the buttonhole foot hiding in the hitherto unseen storage compartment) and the lights came on when I turned on the power. 

I decided the best way to test the machine was to make something, and as it happened I had seen a free online tutorial for a zip pouch the night before. I pulled out a bunch of selvedges I had been collecting and had a go at a pouch.  I didn't have the nine-inch zipper called for so used a longer one cut down, but that's made the end-zip corner poke in a bit strangely.

The machine worked well.  It's very similar to my old one in terms of function but smoother and faster. I haven't been brave enough to try the Accufeed yet.  The main difference I am noticing is that it starts off stitching fairly slowly, no matter how hard you press the pedal, and then speeds up to quite a fast pace, faster than my old one.  Later in the week I trimmed down the set-in surround piece of my sewing table to fit the new machine so that I can drop the machine down to table level, but the working surface of the machine isn't completely flat so it's still a work in progress to get a level sewing surface.

The zip pouch didn't test the quarter-inch seam capability so, while the 30s Sampler Quilt awaits its border, I moved on to a new project which is a One Block Wonder (OBW) quilt using six beach panels from Timeless Treasures.  I saw a quilt like this on the OBW Facebook group  a few years ago and bought the panels to make my own version.  So this week I have cut the panels up into 60-degree triangles and arranged them all on paper plates ready for sewing, five hexagons to a plate.  There are a lot of plates.

So now I've started sewing them together using the quarter-inch foot and quarter-inch seam setting on the new machine. After sewing a few, I thought I had better test the quarter-inch accuracy with the usual 'cut a 1.5 inch strip' method, and discovered that it was a bit too fat.  So I've moved the needle one stop and it seems pretty good now.  Just about 150 hexagons to go...

I wanted to show you an embroidered firescreen we picked up at the charity shop.  The style of the woodwork suggests early-to-mid 20th century to me, and the embroidery reminds me of some of the table linens I've collected from the early 20th C.  I rather liked it and the woodwork isn't too bad, but the stitching is in poor shape.  I'm going to take the frame apart and give it a good clean and try washing the stitchery to see if the staining will come out .  If not then I might give it a border in a different fabric.  Somebody a long time ago put a lot of work into this and I think it's rather sweet.

Next weekend we're hosting a daytime party of sorts for the members of DH's club so we need to deep clean the house this week.  We rarely entertain so aren't very practiced at it.  I've been counting mugs, forks and wine glasses to see if we have enough, it's surprising how much is hidden away at the back of cupboards. Hopefully it will be dry and they can go out in the garden. DH isn't sure how many people are coming, it could be 6 or 35.  We've agreed we will plan for 25 so either we will have a lot of leftovers or we'll be sending DS out to the shop during the event for top-ups. I'll have to clean out all my craft projects from the living room so people can sit in there :)

Sayonara

My Japanese class finished this week and I've received my certificate. I feel ridiculously happy about getting my two evenings a week back because the last few weeks have really felt like a treadmill. I signed up for the course hoping that it would be a better way to learn than doing self study on my own (which hadn't worked very well) but it wasn't a huge difference.  Some things were better explained by the teacher, but the hoped-for practice in speaking did not materialise and not much listening practice either.  Now I have to decide if I will continue in the autumn to the next level (in which case I need to do regular homework all summer) or just give up  and have all my time back again for other things. The autumn class would only be once a week but would be more demanding in terms of homework apparently.  It feels like a losing battle with my ageing and poor memory, I think my brain doesn't feel it is necessary to retain a language it isn't using.  And yet I can remember how to do craft things decades after first tackling them - obviously my brain prioritises craft over language study :)

I did finally get to do a bit of patchwork this week.  It felt odd to be sewing for the first time in a few weeks. I finished the final steps of the jigsaw assembly of the 30s sampler and the pieced part of the top is now together.  In this pic I am trying out the new border fabric I bought with a highlight accent but I'm not happy with it.  I'm going to Festival of Quilts next month so perhaps I might find a better border fabric there.

I finished sewing together the machine knitted cushion topper and took it along to my machine knitting club for the competition.  It didn't win but the judge seemed interested in it and it got some positive feedback from other members.  In the subsequent raffle I won a Brother 8310 linker attachment for my knitting machine which I am quite pleased about, it binds off the stitches on the machine for you when you turn a little hand crank. So I look forward to trying that out.

Still haven't unboxed my new sewing machine but I'm hoping to do that tomorrow.  I read through the manual when we were away last weekend and it seems quite similar to my existing machine only with the AccuFeed and some extra stitches.  There's a CD to watch as well which I might do tonight. Of course first I will have to gather up all the paraphenalia associated with my current machine and put that somewhere safe along with said current machine, to make room for the new stuff.

I'm almost finished the second red and white Sanquhar glove, I'm just finishing the thumb.  I've darned in all the ends on the first glove (quite a few as you re-attach for each finger) but not the second glove yet.  This week I have also resuscitated a hibernating project which is the  Shoulder Shawl in Cherry Leaf Pattern by Jane Sowerby from Victorian Lace Today, which I started three years ago.  After knitting the centre section, I couldn't find an edging I liked so the shawl got parked.  I've now found a sawtooth edging in an old issue of Vogue Knitting and have done some repeats of that and it looks ok so that's my 'new' commuter knitting project now.  Since I haven't been watching nearly as much TV due to the late nights with Japanese, I haven't done much on the crochet afghan or the Misty Meadows shawl this week.  And I haven't touched my dollshouse roof since before we went to Cumbria.  Bad dollshouser...

I almost called this post 'Goodbye Corporate World' because yesterday I bundled up the three remaining work suits I had hung onto 'just in case' since becoming a civil servant back in 2015, and took them to the charity shop. I doubt they would even fit me very well any more, but the main point is that 3.5 years out of the corporate mainstream and I think I am pretty much ruined for it now.  I'm too used to going to work in weather-appropriate smart casual clothes to my much-lower-stress job which has flexible arrival/departure hours and best of all, very few meetings or deadlines.  Next task will be to clear out some of the corporate work shoes which I never wear any more either.

Today I helped as a volunteer steward at the Lace Guild's exhibition at Delapre Abbey. It was a great opportunity to see some fabulous lace, there are some really amazing feats of technical perfection and innovation.  So far I don't think they've had the attendance they were hoping for, partly due to how it was advertised perhaps? and perhaps because you have to pay £8 for admission to the Abbey.  We only had about a dozen visitors to our rooms throughout the day.  I know the volunteer organisers have done a huge amount of excellent work behind the scenes on organisation and setting up.  Unfortunately most of the labelling (which I understand was supplied by the Lace Guild) is terse and mostly doesn't explain anything about the lace itself, just what category it was entered in, and there isn't much to explain or popularise the hobby to non-lacemakers visiting, no handouts or explanation of the entries. We stewards explained to each visitor that it was handmade lace, an exhibition from a competition etc. but a couple of big A2 posters like museums put up would have been nice, explaining for example 'what is hand-made lace' with brief descriptions of the various types in the exhibition, 'who makes lace today' etc.  I was working/demonstrating on my Torchon beaded bracelet but I'm running out of thread as I didn't wind enough on the bobbins, and I had foolishly left my thread spool at home.  I made it to going home time just as one bobbin ran out completely.

I heart air conditioning

We had a mini heatwave over the weekend which hopefully is now over. It went up to 31 degrees yesterday.  We were away at a lace weekend (DH kindly agreed to drive me as it was difficult to reach by public transport) and I was quite worried because last year the same event was held in non-airconditioned classrooms which were like ovens, and every night was an ordeal in the sauna-like bedrooms with windows that only opened a couple of inches.  This year it had moved to a new venue which to my delight was almost fully air conditioned.  So while DH was out in the heat yesterday looking around the area, I was happily making lace in a lovely cool classroom and even putting a cardigan on occasionally.  Margaret Wall came along to sell her bobbins at the event and I bought this lovely bobbin handpainted with lace.

I was trying another piece of Floral Bucks lace, this one out of Alex Stillwell's book.  It's much simpler than the edging I have on my other pillow, but still had some puzzles to solve.  I'm fairly pleased with how I got on, achieving a full repeat over the weekend and picking up lots of tips.

On the way up, we stopped into the Ferrers Centre  in Leicestershire which had been recommended by a colleague.  It's a converted Georgian stableyard with several artisan studios and a nice tearoom.  It was rather hard to find, being pretty much in the middle of nowhere and quite poorly signposted, but we got there in the end.  I was pleased to find a little quilt shop in a corner unit, Country Cottage Crafts.  I'm still looking for a border fabric for my 30s Sampler Quilt but the shop assistant just looked blank when I asked about 30s-style fabrics.  I did find this, which has geometric shapes that are reminiscent of 30s.  It looks alright with the quilt top, not sure I love it.  I'm going to give it a few days and see if it grows on me.

I was out last Sunday on a coach trip with my gardening club to visit the Rose Festival at  Peter Beales Garden Centre  and the Water Gardens at Gooderstone (both in Norfolk).  Peter Beales are multi-Chelsea Flower Show award winners and the show gardens were stunning - albeit rather cluttered up with marquees and people for the craft show cum festival going on. I'd like to go back again another time when it's not so crowded.  They were offering 15% off for the festival so I came away with a lovely flowering carpet style red rose which I now need to find somewhere to plant in the garden. Apparently they grow 1100 varieties of roses and there is lots of companion planting as well.

The Gooderstone Water Gardens were quite charming, very naturalistic, with little formal planting.  Various canals and ponds were excavated many years ago and then planted all around, and there's also a nature trail through the adjoining Fens.  These two swans were resting right next to the garden path and weren't the least bit bothered by the visitors.

The best bit though was a kingfisher hide on the edge of a big pond.  When we were Cumbria, DH glimpsed a kingfisher briefly near our cottage, and I looked fruitlessly the rest of the week to see one.  After only a few minutes in this hide, a PAIR of kingfishers flew up and landed on a branch not too far away, and one obligingly hung around to have his photo taken by everyone in the hide. Beautiful birds.

Our strawberry patch has started producing this years crop and we managed to save some from the slugs and woodlice.  We never get more than a few handfuls but they crop most of the summer.

I've had very little time lately due to an exam in my Japanese class and all the time away from home, but I did modify the punchcard for my self-designed machine knit cushion and did a tension sample which was obviously off because this is the end result which came out half a repeat too long.  It's the right width though, so I'm going to sew across to secure the stitches and cut off the excess, then turn under the edge.  I'm fairly pleased with it.  The cushion I bought at B&M has four buttons so I may cut them off and resew them through the knitting, otherwise there would be odd dimples.

A week in Cumbria with much craft acquisition

This week we headed north to the Eden Valley, returning to the same nice cottage we hired last year.   We intended to travel via Sewing Machines Direct in Wrexham so that I could look at a potential new sewing machine, but we almost didn't make it: the M6 motorway was closed because of an accident, and every detour we tried to make was similarly blocked by roadworks, traffic queues, convoys of lorries, tractors and on and on.  DH was getting quite grumpy and there was a lot of muttering about how much quicker it would have been if we weren't going so far out of our way.

But we made it to Wrexham eventually after about five stressful hours including a break for lunch.  It was well worth it (to me anyway): loads of machines and a very knowledgeable staff person who listened to my requirements and talked me through the two Janome machines he thought might suit.  I chose this supplier after reading many positive reviews on the UK Quilters United Facebook group and I wasn't disappointed (at least, not so far :)  ).  There was absolutely no pressure, I could try out the machine as much as I liked and ask questions, and was offered a good price with free delivery.

So this coming Monday, my new machine should arrive.  I went for the Janome MC8200QCP Special Edition, as it seemed to echo the desirable features of my current machine (Janome 6500P) with the added bonus of Accufeed and an 11" throat. Hopefully it will be a reliable workhorse for many years to come.  DH is surprised I'm not more excited but having been through the new-sewing-machine learning curve several times in the past 25 years, I am bracing myself for frustration and potential troubleshooting.  Maybe I'm wrong and it will all be brilliant - let's hope. I am looking forward to having a reliable machine that doesn't stuff the fabric down the needle plate at the start of a seam.

We had a lovely week, with fairly variable weather. The landscapes are so beautiful up there.  We went for three easy walks, one of which was in the Teesdale valley to visit three waterfalls: High Force, Low Force and Summerhill Force.

Low Force - we walked up alongside it after taking this picture

DH standing in Gibson's Cave behind Summerhill Force

After the Teesdale walk, we stopped in Middleton-in-Teesdale to visit a craft gallery I had picked up a leaflet for, and saw some very elaborate yarn bombing along the main street.  I'm not generally a fan of yarn bombing but some of these  creations had a huge amount of work in them.

Another walk was alongside Ullswater in the Lake District.  At the start of the walk near Patterdale, I was intrigued to see a handwritten sign at the corner of a lane of cottages, saying 'Wool Farm Shop' with an arrow.  We walked a little way down the lane but couldn't see anything.  After the walk we asked at the tearoom, and they said there was a little shop at the end of the lane and the lady who owned it had just poured out the tea for Prince William and Kate when they visited the area few weeks previously!  So after lunch we took the car and drove down the lane for some way, wondering if we were on a wild goose chase.  Then we spotted  this sign:

 
And we drove some more until we came to a farm.  The road appeared to end there, but there was another sign urging us to keep driving.

So we drove through the farm and on down more lane, feeling like we were on a treasure hunt. Eventually we ran out of road altogether and we were there!

The wool shop is a small room in an outbuilding, featuring hand knit lacy shawls in mohair, sturdy woolen socks, woolen hats, and a small selection of upmarket independent brand yarns in wool, mohair and one lovely wool-silk blend.  The owner was away but her amiable husband let me look around.  I treated myself to a Doulton Border Leicester pack of mini skeins with an accompanying pattern for fingerless mitts, as a souvenir of our adventure.

We visited two excellent second hand bookshops in the week: one in Penrith and one in Sedbergh. Both had decent craft sections where I enjoyed much browsing, that's where I got the charted initials book in the middle below.  We also stopped at Fairfield Mill in Sedbergh which has a specialist textile secondhand bookshop where I got the other two books. They had a fabulous range of books but were very pricey. Lots of American books and books I recognised from the 90s patchwork boom, but most of them were priced much higher than I was willing to pay.

We came across a decent fabric shop in Penrith, Just Sew, where I picked up two cute patterns in a linen-canvas weight tapestry fabric for bagmaking, and a cute sewing-themed cotton fabric. I'd like to make more bags and containers, it's just finding the time.

We stopped into a plant sale that we passed, being held at Dalemain House which we visited last year, very grand.

I bought a clematis there for our garden and also this unusual bit of garden art from Westmorland Folk Art, who specialise in making items incorporating reclaimed materials. That's a bit of a brick that the hand-forged flower is wrapped around.

Also for the garden, an ex-chimney pot that we discovered in a stableyard barn at Winderwath Gardens amidst a museum collection of what purported to be 'secondhand tools for sale' - but I think a lot of them dated back to the Victorian era. DH had a great time finding various rusty instruments of torture designed for lawn edging or spiking amidst the cobwebs. The chimney pot is enormously heavy - we wedged it into the side of the car with a plastic box of paraphernalia that DH keeps in the car so it wouldn't roll around, and by the end of the holiday the chimney pot had successfully pulverised the plastic box into multiple pieces.  Luckily we have a sack dolly at home so DH was able to manhandle the chimney pot into the garden where I planted it with some bedding plants today.  I used some lobelia which hopefully will trail down the sides.

Another day we visited Brougham Hall which has a courtyard of small artist studios including Gwen Bainbridge Ceramics who had several lovely pieces of white bisqueware decorated with 'lace'.  I bought a single lovely plant marker, which has such a tactile feel to it. Far too nice to put in the garden.

I took lots of projects with me so in the evenings at the cottage I was knitting the Misty Meadows Shawl, crocheting the Giant Granny Square Afghan, doing a bit of bobbin lace on the Torchon beaded bracelet, and I took along a little cross stitch needlebook kit that came on a magazine recently. I was also studying Japanese as we have our end of term exam coming up this week.

The night before we started the holiday, I managed to finish the final block of the 30s Sampler Quilt (not sure why it looks so crumpled in this picture) so now I can finish putting the centre of the top together.

And last but certainly not least in this litany of extravagance, the wonderful sideboard that we bought the previous weekend was delivered while we were away.  We love this style of furniture which luckily for us is so far from the modern taste that examples of it are ridiculously cheap. This cost less than a disposable foam and chipboard IKEA sofa, it's unbelievable. The marquetry is lovely and the mirrors have deep bevelled edges, each gallery is flanked by posts with turned finials.  After I cleaned and waxed the piece, I had a good rustle through my collection of vintage linens looking for mats the right size to fit the various areas. Our dining room looks very elegant now.