Cabin Fever

I didn't go out much this week. It's almost like I've gone into hibernation. I have all my supplies here and flit from one project to another; then rest a bit; then play on my phone or laptop a bit; then do something else. Probably searching for a rush of dopamine.

I have been trying to whittle down the inventory in my freezer so have been eating bits of this and bits of that - mostly leftovers. The extra space makes it much easier to see what is in there. I went grocery shopping yesterday for the first time in a week. 

I have all the big triangles and granny squares done on my Persian Tiles blanket. I mostly work on it in the evenings whilst watching TV. The other night I only counted 29 octagons so started crocheting another one. The next day I discovered I had miscounted and there already were 30. So I have started sewing everything together and attaching some of the edge triangles.

I sewed an octagon in the wrong place but I decided not to sweat it. There is enough variety and contrast it doesn't make any difference. Oops! I just noticed a second misplaced one. Oh well. 

Draping it over me while I sew it together makes it nice and cozy. I'm now toying with the idea of only adding a 5th row and not bothering with a 6th row or 5th column. With all 30 octagons it weighs almost 3kg (5lb).

I do a bit of stitching on 'The Light of Winter' every day. It is a great piece for social stitching as there are lots of areas that just get filled in. I finished the 'snow' on the other side of the walkway and started the border. 

Tomorrow is a stitch day at Marilyn's so I should be able to get a lot of the roof done and finish filling in the windows. I know my brain won't let me just do that so will probably stitch another motif, too.

I did a bit of culling in the basement yesterday and emptied several bins with stitching and other craft projects. I actually discarded several stitching projects that were just too dated and no longer interested me. Languishing in the basement all these years was a pretty good indicator. A couple of them were kits that had lots of floss. If the pattern said it was DMC, I spent some time last night incorporating the threads into my stash. I used my DMC thread colour card to make sure the dyelots matched. 

It the dyelot didn't match, or if there were non-DMC threads (i.e. Anchor), I set them aside to give to my friend whose granddaughter has started making friendship bracelets.

When checking the price on Amazon, I was shocked at how much the colour card has gone up in price. I believe they're exported from France to the US where hefty tariffs are levied. Then shipping to Canada, we probably pay again. And then there's that pesky conversion rate from the US dollar. It seems to me that the cost has almost doubled. It would be interesting to find out if it could be directly imported to Canada from France. I'm glad I already have mine.  Just a note, there is also a printed version but it doesn't have the actual threads so it's not as useful as the one cited above. 

I just found one at a much more reasonable rate from a Canadian Etsy seller. The shipping is only $4.50, too! There was only 1 in stock but it's certainly worth doing a Google search for things like this.

Poppy and I will be heading to Madrid for our knitting tour in a few weeks. In addition to sight-seeing and woollen-based activities, we'll have a couple of knitting classes with Carol Feller and a couple of days at Madrid's big knitting show - Love Yarn Madrid festival. 

Skip and I did an Irish knitting tour back in 2013. Carol Feller was one of our instructors at our hotel in Galway. It was a really interesting workshop as her book, 'Contemporary Irish Knits' had just been published and she had most of the garments/models from the book there for us to look at. It was so interesting to hear her talk about how she designed each one - challenges she encountered and how she overcame them. Then we got to knit a decreasing honeycomb swatch from the book we each received. For the workshop, we also received a ball of Donegal Tweed yarn from one of the few remaining Irish woollen mills.

For the Madrid show, I took a look at the classes that were offered in English but nothing really 'grabbed' me. Steven West is doing a couple of 1 hour lectures about colour selection. Not sure if I'm all that interested, although it would be cool to inhale the same air as him - LOL. Just not sure if I want to spend €40 for this. I took a look at the classes offered in Spanish and the only one I would have been really interested in - an excursion to the Prado Museum - was sold out as it had very limited availability for only 20 participants. 

We will be visiting several other museums including the Costume Museum. We are scheduled to spend all three days at the yarn festival so I'm wondering if one of those days I could go visit El Prado. 

We are also looking at stitching retreats. Jen1 found this one near Renfrew that runs 4x per year. It looks to be set up for quilting but I'm sure they wouldn't object to us stitchers. There is also The Gathering Threat Retreat from August 14 - 16 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Ottawa that looks even more appealing. Of course, we would pop into the Paisleys Quilt shop about 30 minutes away in Carp. Looking at all the William Morris and French General fabrics on their website intrigued me very much - not that I need any more fabric - LOL!

It's so fun to plan and have these crafty events to look forward to.