more finishes

I have not been so productive over the last couple of weeks – life gets in the way of crafting sometimes! And then there are times where I just don’t feel like sewing. I usually knit because I can do that with my eyes closed and find it very relaxing.

Anyway, I have finished two things – one sewing, one knitting.

The first is the angel I made from a pattern and fabric given to me at our quilting group. I mistakenly thought they were for a secret Santa project but they are actually to sell when we have our Airing of the Quilts in April (our annual fund-raiser).

The angel was made on the machine but joined together by hand. 

There is running stitch around the sleeves, wings and dress as well as the banner.

The face is drawn on using a Sharpie with a fine point.

The rosy cheeks are coloured pencil.

The hair is some dark brown 5ply (sport) yarn that I had in my “scraps”.

I didn’t have any gold thread for a hanger so I crocheted a chain using 6 strands of embroidery cotton and a 2mm hook!















 My knitting finish is a baby blanket for our latest great-nephew (we have eleven great nieces and nephews; MIL has seventeen grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren).


The pattern is Bernat Baby Blanket; it is knitted in Belle Baby “Buttercup” (4ply/fingering, 75% bamboo, 25%  acrylic) on 4.00mm (US 6) needles. I used 6.66 x 50g balls to make a blanket that is 106cm x 112cm (41.5”x44”). The yarn is machine washable and can be line-dried, something young mothers seem to prefer to hand-washing and drying flat; I wonder why? LOL

My November to-do list looks like this:

1. Christmas Angel – finished
2. Cloth book – finished
3. Christmas Tree embroidery – to be worked on today
4. Baby  Blanket – finished
5. Very Hungry Caterpillar Quilt – more work on the quilting will be done today; this project will definitely not be finished this month!
6. Intarsia Blanket – finished
7. scrappy blocks – 16 blocks made; hopefully there will be more done today

Not bad after all!

The weather is going to test my motto (“never too hot to stitch”) today – it is the last day of spring and the forecast maximum is 40°C (104°F)!

Does gauge matter?

Answer: It depends on what one is knitting!

I have not knitted a garment for myself in a very long time. I know I knit to a loose tension (gauge) but this might be a little too loose!

I got 18.5 stitches to 10cm, the pattern calls for 24 stitches.

If I had just gone ahead and knitted this cardigan, the first time I washed it I would have a cardigan for a silverback gorilla! The yarn is 50% cotton/acrylic blend so the actual yarn shouldn't stretch too much (don't worry, I'll do a test wash before committing to a whole cardigan) but a difference of 5.5 stitches over 10cm will be a massive difference on my XL frame!

Obviously my retirement from paid work and being an empty-nester combined with a renewing of my commitment to my God (resulting in a revived spiritual life) has made me very relaxed indeed!

Posted from the Blogger app on my iPad using a photo taken with the iPad

the black dog

Edited to acknowledge the blog where I found the link.

I don't know about you but I have very close family members who suffer from depression.

I have had depression myself. It is an illness that is very hard to describe to anyone who has not experienced it.

I came across this video on Jan's blog. It gives the best representation of living with depression that I have ever seen. Please take a few minutes to watch it, especially if you know or suspect someone close to you is suffering.



Please reach out to those you think are suffering and ask them if they're okay!

Christmas is coming

There are signs that are hard to miss.

Like the decorations in the local shopping mall.
The ads creeping onto the television.
And family activities.


On 10 November, WM, DD, the Grandboys and I, went to my new church for fun and fellowship – to make a gingerbread house.


WM did the initial construction and icing.


DD soon joined in the fun of creating. Unfortunately, both WM and I were too busy watching the Grandboys to take a photo of her!

Older Grandson wanted to help (well, really he wanted to eat the lollies but settled for helping a little bit).


But, truth be told, Older Grandson was more excited about playing football with the big boys.


And I was thrilled with these boys behaviour towards OG. (Yes, I've deliberately cropped his head because I don’t have permission to put his face on the internet – but you can see the tenderness in this gesture).


Younger Grandson just wandered about, taking it all in.
The house needed some finishing at home.


And here is the finished house, all wrapped in plastic waiting for it’s chance to take pride of place at our Christmas festivities.



A few days later, DD and I got together at home to make the Christmas puddings. Despite the fact that we Australians could be sweltering in a summer heat wave, it is traditional in my family to have the full English hot meal, including the fruit-laden pudding (with custard, cream and/or ice-cream) for dessert.

A special part of the pudding-making is tossing in the threepenny pieces (which have been saved in the family from pre-1966 when Australian currency changed to dollars and cents). Threepences are made from silver and won’t contaminate the pudding. We once had three dozen threepences, we are down to twenty-one now – I wonder where the rest have gone? (or is that “too much information”?)


Younger Grandson just wondered what we were going on about! He was only five months old the last time we made puddings!


Here is Older Grandson having his turn at throwing in a threepence and burying it in the pudding mixture.



And here he is, helping mummy and Grandmum put the pudding mixture in the bowls.



Finally OG was allowed to eat some of the uncooked mixture.



To finish this post, in this time of madness, the so-called “silly season”, Younger Grandson has only one message for us all:

brought to you by the colour brown

Brown was the colour of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge over at SoScrappy blog.

I didn’t make any blocks in October so have been playing catch up.

I had enough scraps to make these 6.5” blocks:

two four patch

one nine patch

four strings

and thirteen improv.

I have more than enough improv blocks to make a quilt and have a layout in mind. I just have to decide on the sashing colour – it will be a neutral solid or semi-solid. Perhaps white? Black? Cream?
I’ll let you know how I get on!

Linking up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

drum roll please!

I have some finished objects to share with you.

The first is a Christmas present for our grandsons. Their grandad, my WM, is a keen gardener and Older Grandson particularly loves helping with the watering so I thought this “I Spy” book would be fun for them. Cloth books are appropriate because Younger Grandson still chews things and cloth books are more forgiving than cardboard!

I have a part-finish: today I completed the backing for the Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt. I plan to get this basted in class next Monday and quilted next week; that will mean another Christmas present done and dusted!

And now for the biggie!

Drum roll please!

After twelve months of on-and-off knitting, hundreds of ends to secure, 5.50 metres (220 inches – a little over 18 feet) of i-cord to knit and attach, my intarsia blanket is finally done!

Specifications

• Dimensions:  1.0 metre x 1.75 metre (40” x 70”)
• Yarn: 8ply (DK) acrylics
• Needles: 3.50mm (US 4)

Here are some close-ups of the striping pattern (which I love) and the multi-coloured i-cord.

Last week, I posted about my current WiPs. Here’s the list:

1. Christmas Angel – almost finished
2. Cloth Book – finished
3. Christmas Tree Embroidery #3 – a small amount of progress
4. Baby Blanket – at least 40 rows knitted; I am working on the seventh 32-row repeat (I’m not sure if I’ll need 10 or 11 repeats)
5. Very Hungry Caterpillar Quilt – backing finished today
6. Intarsia Blanket – finished
7. scrappy blocks – 16 blocks made: there will be a post about these on Sunday

At last, I’m making some progress!
ETA linking up Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday

adding to the stash (again)

I’m still on a yarn and stash diet. I haven’t fallen off the wagon. My rule was that I could buy any yarn or fabric as long as it had a specific (short term) purpose. There should be no adding to the stash just because I love something, or because it’s on sale.

I have not broken the rules with my most recent purchases.

Firstly, there was this fabric for my niece’s baby’s play quilt. All except the solid are from The Very Hungry Caterpillar range of fabrics.

The left photo is a glimpse of the top which I have finished and the right is the backing fabric (to be used in conjunction with the spots and solid).

The green in this photo is the backing and sashing fabric I have chosen to go with my Christmas Tree embroideries and the waves fabric is to be the backing for a cushion/pillow which I’m making as a gift.

I won these two sweet Japanese fabrics in a give-away on Val’s blog.

Val also included this little handbag charm – how cute! I didn’t see it until I went to take the photos today so a special thank you, Val, and please forgive me for not mentioning it in my email to you.

Carol, at FunThreads, sent me this little package of fabric for the I Spy quilt I plan to make for my grandsons. Thank you so much, Carol. It was very kind of you.

This is Older Grandson’s favourite fabric square.

I’d better move that I Spy quilt up the “to do” list, I think!

As for the yarn, I have purchased only two 100g skeins.

Yes, I know it’s acrylic and I said I wasn’t buying any more acrylic but I have a bag full of acrylic yarn to use up and a great idea in mind, so I purchased these two because they were on sale and because they were colours I didn’t already have in my collection.

I didn't buy this yarn but it is now in my stash. It is 100g of Crazy Zauberball – a yarn for making matching socks becasue two strands of yarn are placed alongside each other and dyed together -- giving a perfect match!

This was the prize for the most popular item in the One Skein Challenge at our knitters’ guild meeting last month. Thanks to all the members who voted for my Extended Swallowtail Shawl.

Time to get back to those WIPs  that I mentioned in my last post! One is now finished so there should be a celebratory post soon!

works in progress

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you would know that I have a large number of projects that I've started, many of which have fallen by the wayside.

I have tried to remedy this by determining a finish date for each UFO, and then working on those things which need to be finished first. Sounds logical, I know, but until I put it all in writing, I couldn't see the wood for the trees – or, more truthfully, the projects for the piles!

Since I wrote that first detailed list back in June, some projects have been finished and I've blogged about them. Some new projects have inevitably crept in – nieces have had babies or recently become pregnant, Secret Santa projects were unexpectedly thrust upon me, or I’ve fallen in love with a fabric, yarn or pattern (such as the three bags I've recently finished)!

But, thanks to the organisational skills of this app on my iPad, my WIPs are under control and at the moment there are six that I am actively working on.

In my last post, I showed you the first of two Secret Santa projects and the first of two cloth books which, naturally enough, need to be completed by Christmas.

Here is the second Secret Santa project in progress. Today I will stitch the turnings closed and do the necessary embroidery.

And here is part of the second of the cloth books – cut out, batting fused and pages pinned together. All I need to do is load another bobbin, change to my integrated walking foot and get stitching.

Also to be finished before Christmas, is this – the third embroidered Christmas tree. I plan to finish that before the end of next week because I need to turn the three into a wall hanging which will need to be hung soon!

I mentioned nieces having babies or finding out they were pregnant.

This unblocked lace knitting (still on the needles) is 4ply (fingering) bamboo/acrylic (machine washable – new mums love that); it is for our latest grand-nephew. His mother, our niece, is also our only god-daughter, so she gets something a little bit extra-special. I could have knitted it sooner but I was hoping to use some of the pink baby yarn in my stash!

It’s the Bernat Baby Blanket (Ravelry link) and should be finished in plenty of time to be given to the proud parents at the family Christmas party on 16th December. This baby, by the way, is my MIL’s 13th great-grandchild! (She has sixteen living grandchildren).

And on my side of the family, my eldest niece has just been surprised by an unplanned pregnancy. Her mother, my sister, told me a couple of weeks ago that D. really likes The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so there is a surprise play quilt in progress. Here’s a peek at the top. The spots are part of the VHC range; I can’t quite figure out why!

You may remember that I started an Intarsia Blanket in November 2011. Here it is in July this year.

I have finished the knitting. All that remains is to finish knitting the i-cord edging and sew it on, then secure a few hundred ends (they were woven in while I was knitting but the acrylic yarn slides so they need to be sewn back in the opposite direction).

 I know what you're thinking, why didn't I knit the i-cord on? The answer is simple, it’s too hot to sit under a blanket and knit, plus the weight of the blanket kept dragging on the i-cord, making it difficult to knit. I quite like hand-sewing, so this is the best solution for me. I did knit the i-cord onto the 200 open stitches at the top of the blanket.

Finally, there is a pile of scraps on my ironing board for making more blocks for the rainbow scrap challenge. This pile, as you can see is blue, which was the colour a few months ago – I had so many blue scraps that I could still be sewing with them into 2013. I might put away the blue (again), and get out the brown, which was the colour for October or black which is the colour for this month. My black scraps are few and will be mixed with white.

I hadn’t planned on making blocks but it was hot here yesterday and I already had dark grey thread and my quarter inch foot on my machine – what's a girl to do? 

I'd better go - I have things to do!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced blog.