Saturday, March 16, 2024

Multiple Projects

 I seem to have a lot of projects on the go at the moment. 


I've made a start on Round 6 of the Spring doily.

I have an order for another 10 tatted lavender 'bunches'. I've done 5 of them. Yesterday at a knit'n'natter session I tatted two and a half flowers, but still need to finish them off. There's a link to the pattern on the right hand side of the page. I read through it to remind myself before I started tatting!


I've finished the pair of brown socks:


And started spinning wool for the next pair:


I have an order for two puppets, fox and crow, which need to be delivered on Monday, so I've made a start this morning


Right, all that should keep me occupied for a while. I also prepared a project for yesterday's craft group in an old age home and must prepare another one in the coming week. 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Sweetcorn

 


We've been enjoying scrumptious sweetcorn from Jack's garden. They're beginning to get overripe now, so yesterday I prepared some for the deepfreeze:


I'll use them for fritters or muffins later in the year. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Brown

 


I'm working on a pair of brown socks for a man. I use two skeins for a woman's sock, and wasn't sure how much extra a man's sock would need, so I spun four skeins. I mixed yellow, blue and red dyes to get brown, put the skeins into the dye bath and it looked more beige than brown. So I hauled the skeins out, added more dye and then put them back. Whether it was because of that, or because the dye bath is a bit small for four skeins, the dyeing came out very uneven. The skeins looked horrible, frankly:


But knitted up, it looks fine, I think. I rather like it. You can see in the top picture that the sock looks 'brown' without the variations being obvious.  Here's a close up:


Phew.  I think that three skeins will be fine, so dyeing for the next pair for the order will be a little easier.


Saturday, March 9, 2024

Round 5


 I've done this week's round of the Spring doily. Shuttle and ball were fine for this round.  I know I have a tendency to make mistakes when things are easy, so I made sure to pay enough attention while enjoying the simplicity of the round. 

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

One More

 


I sewed another 'bespoke' shirt for Jack yesterday.  I see there's enough fabric left for another shirt, but I think I'll leave it in the stash for now. Three new shirts will be enough to go on with.


This portulaca plant is so pretty this morning that I couldn't resist taking a picture of it. 

Monday, March 4, 2024

Round 4 Is Done

 


I finished round 4 of the Spring Doily yesterday afternoon. I like it! 

I played yarn chicken, which was a bit silly, it would have been quicker to join in another thread. But with a lot of thread left on one shuttle and not much on the other, it was tempting to try to avoid a join:


The market went quite well on Saturday. I sold a hooded towel, which is a good sale, and a number of smaller items. I also got an order for three pairs of men's socks, so I must get on with spinning wool for those. 

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Round 4 Begun

 


Round 4  of the Spring doily is out today. To begin with, I used green for the chains and yellow for rings, but I decided I was making things unnecessarily complicated for myself and changed to all yellow. I also realised that it was a mistake to try to use shuttle and ball, two shuttles work better. I notice in the Renulek photos that joining picots are very small. But when I tried to do that on round 3, my circle didn't meet up! So I'm not making my picots that tiny. I wonder if it's because I'm using Milford thread that is very tightly wound? I don't know. 

Now I need to get back to preparing for tomorrow's craft group meeting and Saturday's market!