And breathe...

Yesterday was a day of chaos, and surprisingly exhausting.  The two fitters turned up promptly to replace our eleven failed windows, and the first surprise was that they wanted internal access to all the windows. The estimator had implied that it would all be done from the outside, so we had only cleared windowsills in preparation.  In between explaining to them which were the failed windows on various floors (I had to draw 'X' on panes with sharpie marker), I had to hurriedly clear internal access  with DH's help.  This was difficult in rooms full of clutter like the attic storage room and the former knitting room (chock a block with all the stuff I cleared out of the adjoining room to create space for my long arm), and my office. In fact we got so carried away that we hurriedly cleared away in front of my sewing room window, only to realise later that window wasn't being worked on!  However that did reveal a terrible amount of dust bunnies and unneeded clutter so more stuff to get rid of.

So we had a day of various windows disappearing in a flurry of hammering and dust cloths, men coming in and out, the noise chasing me from room to room.  Even the estimator unexpectedly returned unannounced via the back door and surprised me when I ran into him upstairs. Meanwhile the normal builder turned up and needed various windows opened for painting and also our driveway door - which  ended up having to stand open the rest of the day due to wet paint - which was rather nervewracking as it opens onto the road although we put plywood across it.  To add to all of this, the broadband suddenly went out mid-morning while DH was in a work meeting - a BT crew had started a few hours of work on the pole in front of our house. A Facebook purchaser came to collect another bit of stuff I was selling, the car had to go in to the shop for a few hours, I was making so many cups of tea for people that we ran out of milk and I had to run out for some more...  By the end of the day I was exhausted. Meanwhile DH was holed up in the spare room trying to work amidst all the noise, which was difficult but I think less stressful. Even the cat was hiding for most of the day. Then after they had gone, came the hoovering up of construction bits and putting things back where they belong.

no window!

So today we are gratefully enjoying a quiet house that noone is coming into (although I am expecting a few Facebook buyers shortly). Also it has cooled right down to more normal autumn temperatures which is a relief.

I haven't had time for much crafting this week, apart from evening embroidery on the vintage embroidered quilt blocks that I started in Japan. I have been working on creating a little cylinder-shaped fabric box with laced-on wooden ends. I bought the wood discs at Festival of Quilts last year, the stall that was selling them also had attractive kits for redwork inserts but I have used some special sampler-style linen that I bought from Jane Greenoff. I didn't have a pattern so it took a little while to get the circumference right. I've stiffened the fabric with Bosal foam and will sew on a magnetic closure. I sewed a little pocket at the back and I may add some felt inside the little for needle storage.

I spent a lot of time this week working on my Round the World trip scrapbook until my printer ran out of ink forcing me to stop until more ink arrives.  I suppose in some sense it's a waste of time, nobody else cares. But it's actually been somewhat cathartic, and also a bit of an enjoyable puzzle hunt to piece together what I was doing 35 years ago - it's brought back a lot of memories. Not so much of what I saw, but of how I felt then and the wanderlust I used to have. It makes me feel more motivated to work on my planning for my New Zealand trip next year.  I had fully intended to do a lot more world travelling, but then I came back to the UK and met DH and somehow life happened. It's nice to be retired and get a second chance.

Decluttering makes me happy and sad this week

 I'm feeling a bit sad today because DH is just taking most of the bits of my old quilt frame off to the dump. It was such a fabulous thing for me when I got it secondhand around 17 years ago and together we produced probably well over 50 quilts in two different houses. But it was tired, various pieces had failed and been replaced with bodges, my original bodges to the side frames were dodgy, my scaffolding pole reinforcements to the poles were failing - it's too old for any further support from Grace the manufacturers. So I had to accept that it just wasn't suitable for passing on to another quilter, it would cause them too much grief and they would be better off buying something newer.  On the positive side, it opens up a big wodge of space in my sewing room which I can certainly use to create more breathing space.

In a similar vein of old friends leaving for the dump, my Canon inkjet printer which was probably older than my adult son and had become extremely tempermental, has also gone to its final rest. It left a parting gift of a large gooey splodge of black ink which had apparently been leaking quietly out of the bottom of it for years.   I have replaced it with a new Canon which was suspiciously cheap but also includes a scanner.  The quality of the print jobs is so much better and faster.  

The new printer has facilitated me embarking on another declutter project which is to tackle my pile of ancient photo albums. I'm starting with two albums from my 'round the world' trip of 1988, full of faded photos back from the days when you had to send off a roll of film and had no idea what your pictures were like until long after you took them.  I didn't keep travel journals in those days, so the albums had no commentary apart from country names and the odd jotting on the back of a photo. However, as regular readers know, I spent a lot of time last year digitising my personal archives so now I have access to letters home and diary notes from the time period.  This is allowing me to tie together the commentary and the photos a little bit, and work out where I was and when.  The photos are not good quality in any case, so I'm just scanning some of them and printing them on regular paper to reduce bulk.  The result is going into some A5 notebooks I got on sale at Wilko (before they went into administration), which will have a lot more meaning and be a lot easier to store. I'm not trying to be artistic with the new book, it's taking many hours as it is.  But it is pretty cool to re-live my adventures of 35 years ago, when I was thinner, stronger, more intrepid, and had so much more energy.

Old albums (left) and new A5 book (right and below)

Back in 1988, fed up with my life in Canada, I put everything into storage and came to London on a working holidaymaker visa in June.  I did secretarial work for 3 months in London while sightseeing in the UK, then travelled via Paris, Venice and Istanbul to join an overland tour in Egypt for two weeks. Then I did a two week coach tour in Israel, then went back to Cairo to join another Encounter Overland camping trip from Cairo to Kathmandu.  I did a bit of solo travel in Rajasthan, then flew back to Canada via Singapore in March of 89.  It all seems so long ago now, and you wonder how it was even possible in the pre-internet days.  I used to pick up letters from home at Poste Restante bureaus in various cities, and I carried around various printed guidebooks, ripping out whole countries once I was finished with them to reduce the weight. And I was living out of a backpack, although most of the time I was also hauling an additional duffle bag with all my purchased treasures which I would periodically mail home. Once a hoarder, always a hoarder :) I still have the two cross-stitch pictures that I worked on the trip, stitching away on long drives in the back of the overland truck.

This week I've also been selling some decorative clutter on Facebook marketplace, sending some of my past finds off to new homes. This can be quite gratifying, as so far the buyers have been delighted with their acquisitions. A mother and daughter, the daughter will be taking my pretty vase with her to college. An older man who wanted my set of vintage soda bottles for the pub he built in his garden during COVID.

I finished sewing the binding on the sixth and final quilt, which I am calling Cottage Stars as I can't remember what I used to call it. This was a purportedly quick method of piecing stars using polygons which was a complete PITB to actually do, but I really like the end result.  Rather Brambly Hedge, I shall keep this one.

So now I just have four sandwiched quilts which weren't suitable for quilting on my old frame.  They might work on my new frame, but I have to build up my skill set first.  It's been too hot and I've been too busy to do much practicing yet. But I did order a cheap pegboard set from Rymans and hung it up to organise my new collection of longarm rulers.  Most of these came with the longarm, but four of the small ones I owned already thinking I would try to learn to use them on my domestic machine.

I've also broken apart the  (already loose) old hearth in front of the fireplace in the longarm room, that was in my way if I wanted to use pantographs. DH has kindly moved the massive pieces into the corner out of the way, and I've cleaned up all the rubble and broken mortar bits. So now I just need to find a new home for the yarn tree and the remaining yarn cones.  This house is starting to feel like one of those kid's games where you slide tiles around in a frame to make room for other tiles to move in their turn.

I completely finished the cross stitch bookmark and made it up, it looks good. I'm not a very neat cross-stitcher but pressing always improves the look. This was a free gift with World of Cross Stitching magazine, I think last autumn.

The big finish this week is the Christmas porch kit, now complete with a somewhat dubious snow effect which does not bear close inspection.This is what it looks like with the three sets of lights turned on: 3 porch lights, coloured lights along the railing, and clear lights in the garden tree.

The snow effect is initially a mixture of white 'snow' static grass that DH didn't want, glitter glue, PVA glue, white paint and some water.  Once that was dry, I went back in with clear glue and manually applied patches of dry white static grass to create more texture.  It was using what I had on hand, you could spend a lot more money for a more realistic result, but I think this does the job of creating a wintery mood. Thank you again to Anita for supplying some of the extra structural bits!

Other than that, this week has been all about the scaffolding: opening windows so the builder can paint them (which we have to leave open for hours, letting all the hot air into the house as it's been quite hot recently), discovering another failed window pane and having to organise its replacement, pulling out redundant cables from windows so the holes (and often surrounding rot) can be repaired, etc. Sometimes it feels like the builder is chasing me around the house: I'm about to go downstairs to my sewing room when I hear him letting himself into the basement to make tea or use facilities (I've set him up with a kettle and tea station downstairs), then once he leaves I go into my dollshouse room as it's furthest from where he is coming in/out only to have him start banging loudly on the dollshouse room window to pull rotten beads off, so I move to the sewing room and 10 minutes later he's outside the sewing room window painting the frame....  at least he is very industrious.  He's getting on well though so hopefully only a few more weeks. It needed to be done, some of the window frames were pretty bad and the seals were gone on the majority so it was only going to get worse.

'Oop North'

 We were away this past week in the caravan, travelling uncharacteristically far, up to a campsite on the Northumbrian coast near Alnwick.  We broke our journey each way with a night in Yorkshire: at Thirsk going up, and at Boroughbridge coming south.  In the north, we were camping in an AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) and it was lovely, particularly the unspoiled golden beach at Embleton Bay near our campsite. We had some lovely walks and were able to visit three castles in the week: Dunstanburgh, Bamburgh (of 'The Last Kingdom' TV fame) and Alnwick (now known for the Harry Potter scenes filmed there). DS kindly came and house-sat for us, since the house feels vulnerable now that all levels are accessible by scaffolding.

The small market town of Thirsk had some elaborate yarn bombing all over town, in the form of knitted hanging baskets themed to match the shops they were hanging in front of, eg. art shop, estate agent, butcher, craft shop etc.

The ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle

We walked to it and toured the ruins

Bamburgh Castle

Nicest from the outside as the interior was heavily rebuilt in

Victorian/Edwardian times

Alnwick Castle

We took the 'Film Locations' guided tour so I could fan-girl over the

Harry Potter locations. Also where the first BlackAdder series was filmed.

  

Boroughbridge, as it turns out, was the birthplace of Victorian explorer Isabella Bird. the Hall being the home of her maternal grandmother. I've read a few of her books and a biography. I suspect she was a rather annoying woman to know but there is no denying her fearless treading of paths not often taken by upperclass white women.

The coast with the sea in the distance

For leisure time in the caravan, I took along a wool felt kit by Corinne Lapierre to sew an embroidered felt cat.  The kit came with everything needed including stuffing.  Very cute.

I'm also close to finishing the cross stitch bookmark kit that I've been working on this summer during holidays. This was a free gift from a magazine.

So now it's back to scaffold-land.  The new double glazing panes are getting installed on the 15th, and then the following week I should be off to Shetland if all goes well (I've been reading worrying things about how often Logan Air cancels their island flights).

This Old House

 When I was at university, I used to watch the popular American renovation show 'This Old House', a pioneering programme before such programmes were popular, or indeed, before renovating/flipping old houses was popular.  It all seemed so romantic and wonderful to see all this history being rescued and cared for. The reality as an adult of course is that owning any house is a constant drain on your resources, and an old house particularly so.  Jobs such as 'a couple of windows appear to be rotting at the bottom' snowball into 'the whole house needs scaffolding' + 'multiple windows are rotting in various ways '; and now: 'there's not much point painting around the failed doubleglazing panes because they will only need to be replaced later'.  An audit of the failed 1970s double glazing panes has come up with 10 (!!) panes and the quote for that (by an intrepid young man who clambered around the scaffolding quite happily measuring windows) is over £1700.  Aaargh.  And of course the scaffolding needs to stay up (at our cost) until the panes can be fitted (4 weeks lead time) and after THAT, the builder needs to paint them all in.  Good thing DH is still working full time is what I say. :)

I finished the binding on the Janet Clare Spoondrift quilt.  It fits nicely on my hallway hanging system.

This was quilted with a panto on my old frame arrangement, and consequently the stitch length varies wildly.  Going forward, I will have the benefit of stitch regulation on my new-to-me Handiquilter Simply Sixteen which was delivered and installed this week.  I'm glad we decided to have the professionals do the installation, because it took him ages to get the frame levelled on our very wonky old floors (which as it turns out, have a decided slope towards the window).  There is just room in its current position for me to walk around the frame.  I had it mounted on castors so that I could move it to create more room on one side. But having watched what he went through to level it, I may never move it again. I've only banged my head a few times while practicing.  :)

I had some basic training on delivery and have read through the paperwork that came with the setup. So far it all seems pretty similar to my old set-up - only bigger, better, and so much more robust and well-engineered.  It came with a ruler table and some rulers, so I want to learn how to use those.  In order to use pantographs, I think I will need to dismantle the yarn storage tree and move it out of the way. Not sure where to.  I'm so pleased to finally own a quality frame that is permanently set up, it's something I've wanted for many decades. As DH pointed out, now I will have to change my quilt process from 'create a top then store it for a few years', into a unified process from planning to quilting in one journey.

I think my Christmas porch scene is now 'finished' apart from connecting up the lights and doing something with a snow effect.  As it's a Christmas theme, I can always add more to it in future. It will be a fun addition to our Christmas decorations.

The Latvian mittens are about 1.5 inches long now and I'm getting the hang of knitting with three colours but it's a slow process.  I tried a Norwegian knitting thimble for a while, but am now just holding two strands over my left index finger and one strand on my right index finger.  I'm a bit worried that the mitten may be a bit snug fitting, but I need to knit a bit more before I can decide.

And summer, such as it was, is almost over.  Hope you have a great bank holiday weekend!

Scaffolding and vertigo

 The last few days were very noisy as a pair of scaffolders arrived to erect scaffolding towers around the house, so that our rotten wood windows can be repaired and painted.  Various plants were squashed and we can't park in our own drive for the foreseeable future, but it's all ready for the handyman to start next week.

This is the view out of most of our windows now.

One of our tasks this weekend is to climb the scaffolding and wipe down all of the window frames and glass. Our windows almost never get cleaned because they are too high up for anything but the longest brush on a pole. And not only do the windowcleaners want exorbitant amounts of money to turn out for that, but at that height they are basically only slapping the glass with the wet brush and not actually effecting any cleaning. So we are wiping off the worst of the grime before the handyman starts. 

 Unfortunately, I have suffered vertigo since childhood and it has become much worse in my mature years.  I managed to climb up to the topmost platform in the picture above, but had to stay on my knees and couldn't stand up. And I definitely couldn't look down, and the slight swaying of the tower as DH moved around was making me dizzy.  I still managed to help with the work, but on the side gables where there is a further upper floor, DH had to climb up to the top platform on his own.  We've done two sides today, and will do the other two sides tomorrow.  We'll have to repeat the process once the handyman is all done his work, but just to clean the glass again so that will be quicker.

I finished sewing the binding on two more quilts this week:

The vintage top bought from an antiques dealer and quilted.

A hexie lap quilt with shaped side edges.

I tried to take part in an online FB workshop to make a little hinged box designed by an Australian designer called 'Boxed and bound'. I got everything cut out and ready, but unfortunately the workshop fell through due to a number of technical difficulties that the UK teacher seemed unable to resolve.  I didn't have assembly instructions but managed to complete the box on my own anyway by following cartonnage principles.  I got it mostly right and the box is quite cute, like a book. I used my Scan'n'Cut to cut out the card and decorative papers.

I've cast on for a Latvian mitten from the book Mittens of Latvia by Maruta Grasmane. The cast on went alright, with a single Latvian braid. But the chart is knitted in three colours, a hurdle I have tried and failed to jump in the past. I knit continental so I'm fine with two strands: I hold one over each index finger.  Three strands I find very difficult to wrangle. I've tried multiple ways of holding them, have watched many Youtube videos, and am still struggling. I'll see how I go.

Now that all the quilt binding has been machined on, I have turned to other projects on the list.  One such item, on the list since I bought my 'new' Janome machine four years ago, was to try out all the stitches that came with the machine.  I watched an interesting Youtube video about the domestic sewing machine industry and planned obsolescence the other day (can't find the link now) that quoted statistics from sewing machine servicepeople that something like 60% of home sewers only ever use zigzag and straight stitches on their machines.  It was tedious but I stitched out most of the over 200 stitch patterns to see what they're like.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much better some of them looked than the little icon printed on the machine index.  I used some pieces of firm twill fabric from one of DS's old lab coats and purposely didn't apply any stabiliser, so that I could see which stitches were more likely to pull or distort.   I have stapled the samples onto the wall next to my machine and I will endeavour to use more of the machine's stitches. It certainly makes me feel like doing a crazy quilt.

Another project in the queue was a sewing themed panel that I bought sometime in the last few years.  There was one big panel about 19x22.5" and several smaller panels of c 5.5".  I had a sort of plan worked out on graph paper so cut out the various panels and started sashing them up.  It worked out fairly well. I'm not sure what I'm making yet but I think it will likely be a wall hanging.  I'm going to make some 8-pointed star blocks like the one in the upper LH corner of the main panel picture.

I've been gradually progressing on the Christmas porch project over the last few weeks.  Adding all the bits is my least favourite part but I had a basket full of various Christmas items accumulated over the years from which to choose.  I've used two strings of colour lights on the porch railings and a string of clear lights on the garden tree, both of which will connect to battery packs in the finished item.  I would still like to add some snow but that's very hard to get looking natural, we'll see.

My bobbin lace friends came over this week and I managed to finish off another sample of Bruges Lace - this is a tri-lobed leaf about 2.5" high which came out fairly alright, just some tension issues with the pivot stitches.

And the exciting news this week is that, in a triumph of optimism over graph paper calculations, I have purchased a secondhand Handiquilter Simply Sixteen mid-arm machine which will sit on a 10-foot frame. It was a good buy because although it's an older machine, the seller had it all set up with all the accessories which would otherwise be additional extras if I bought a new one.  I went with the 16" throat also on the thinking that the machine is a bit smaller/less tall, so more likely to squeeze under the slanted ceiling.  I've ordered castors for the frame from Handiquilter so that I'll be able to move the frame around in the limited space depending on whether I want to work from the front or from the back.

  That meant that I had to empty out the attic room. Luckily, I had already put a lot of effort into downsizing my formerly-vast machine knitting stash.  So in a few hours, with DH's help, I was able to transform the room from this:

to this:

Due to the projecting fireplace and the slanting ceiling, I will only barely scrape the minimum working space around the frame. It's going to be a tight squeeze indeed and working conditions will not be optimal, but the machine will hopefully be great.  Kind of the reverse of my previous arrangements where I had a great room downstairs in the dining room to work in, with lots of natural light, but a heavily-bodged frame and basic straight-stitch domestic machine.  Really looking forward to having stitch regulation to help make my quilting look better.  With a 16" throat, I think I will be able to do up to around 10" deep pantograph designs depending on the quilt roll diameter.  The machine also comes with a ruler base so I could potentially learn how to use rulers.  The seller and I are jointly paying Handiquilter to dissassemble the frame at her house and deliver and construct it at my house, which saves a lot of aggro  and time for both of us.  It should be coming next week.

The cat is very excited about the new machine as you can tell