All Seven Colours

 

When I've finished with grey, I'll go back to cream. I considered changing the order of the colours in the next repeat, but I like this colour progression, so I think I'll stick with it. The label on the yarn says they're 'pullskeins' which I assume means you're supposed to work from the middle of the ball. I found the middle end on the cream, but not on the others. I didn't try all that hard because I've found that when the middle of a ball is hollowed out, the ball tends to collapse and get in a muddle. I'm sure that's especially true of such large balls. So I think it might be better to just work from with outside end. 

A Rabbit

 

This one is made from fleece fabric, rather than toweling, like these ones. He looks a bit fierce, I hope the softness of the fleece counteracts that impression! The pattern comes from Crazy Little Projects, the tutorial is here.  Sarah and I have a table booked at a market on Saturday morning; fingers crossed it goes ahead this time. 

Starting A Big Project

 The handwoven wool cover I've had on my bed for well over 20 years has become so scruffy that I've had to give it to Rag the border collie for his bed. I've been pondering a replacement. Fabric? Crochet? This pattern? That pattern? I came across the Grace blanket pattern, a free pattern on Ravelry by Lucia Stepankova, and really liked it. I had seen some colour-changing (ombre?) yarn in my LYS (local yarn store) that I thought might work. But when I visited the store on Friday, it turned out that there wasn't enough of that yarn and I didn't like the colours anyway! Hmmm. How about making my own colour changes instead of leaving them up to the yarn dyer? 

After a discussion about quantities with the owner of the LYS, I bought 7 large balls of acrylic yarn, each in a different colour. The Grace blanket is a square, worked from the middle. The original is a baby blanket, worked in a finer yarn than mine, but that's doesn't matter. I looked on the label, which says to use a size 4mm hook, but I thought the work was a bit too stiff, so I upped it to 4.5mm. 

In terms of dimensions, progress will get slower and slower of course, but I've got off to a good start. 

Sloth Sometimes Pays

 

I made another owl towl yesterday. Making these faces involves changing the thread colour frequently. To begin with, I changed the top thread and the bobbin each time. At some stage I changed just the top, leaving the bobbin as it was. Then I realised that was a good thing - if the bobbin is in a colour that matches the towel, the sewing on the underside is less visible: 

Aha, win-win. 

Zebra Towel

 

He was quite a lot of work, but I think he turned out pretty well! When I'm working on a pattern, from scratch or adapting from Crazy Little Projects, I look at cartoon images of the animal. I'm not trying to create a realistic animal after all, and I think cartoonists are good at picking out the salient features that make something or someone recognisable. 

Fruit Salad

 

I made a fruit salad using fruits from our garden - rhubarb, cape gooseberries, granadillas (or passion fruit), strawberries and tree tomatoes. It was delicious, served with chocolate ice cream. 

Bath Buddies

 

I've made some more bath puppets. I didn't use a specific pattern for these, though I did take inspiration from images on Pinterest, an element from this one and an element from that. There was some dithering as I decided how to do each one, but overall I'm pleased with the result.