Round 5

Round 5 of the Spring doily was released yesterday and I started on it promptly. I'm less prompt with  blogging about it because our power was off from 4 pm to 8 pm yesterday and 8 am to 12 noon today!

I don't do front side/back side tatting, but I am trying to keep all the colour blips on one side of the work. With size 40 thread and pastel colours, the blips are not startling, but it seems a good idea to keep them consistent.

First Steps

The 'floating' section for next year's competitions is smocking. The brief is to make a sun dress for a toddler. I don't know much about smocking, but I'm happy to learn! My first step was to look smocking up on Google. I came across definitions of things I'd rather not know about. And then there were links that took me down the rabbit hole that is Pinterest.

I recently read an anti-Pinterest rant on Facebook. It is true that it can be difficult to track down the origins of a specific image and that links often lead to collections that are not necessarily helpful. But I think Pinterest is marvelous, especially for researching a new craft topic. If one link leads nowhere, you can look for another. The 'more like this' section is useful for that. I have learnt a lot through Pinterest. I often come across crafts I've never seen before and then go off on a sleuthing trail. Anyway, there is a lot of smocking on Pinterest and I hope it will lead me to tutorials I can learn from.

One thing I saw there was smocking on gingham. I thought that might be a good place to start, so yesterday in town I went on the hunt for gingham. The fabric I found has squares that are on the small side, so this may be a misstep, but I'll see how it goes.

Quick Quick

I must write this now, while we're connected to the internet. South Africa is experiencing severe power restrictions, we have rotating power cuts of four or more hours at a time. When my power is on but my eastern neighbour's is off I have no internet either, because our signal is routed through them. So I had better take my chances!

Yesterday I got all the ingredients out to make rusks and then pfft, off went the power. No rusks. On Sunday I did manage to cook peach chutney in between cuts:

I lived for more than 20 years on a farm in Zimbabwe that wasn't connected to the grid. We had electricity for four hours a day when the generator was on. But we had a wood stove and gas appliances and were geared to living without electricity. Here we rely on electricity and it's a bit disconcerting to spend long periods without it. There are many people a lot more inconvenienced than I am; we are all hoping the problems are soon solved!

Rounds 3 and 4

Rounds 3 and 4 of the Spring 2019 doily can be found here.  I like having the picture of the whole doily as well as the individual rounds, it makes it easier to plan colour placement.

Still More Green

Having finished a blanket and a cardigan, I find that I still have a significant amount of bright green wool:

My resolve to use it all up is being severely tested! I've decided to make another blanket. There's another packet of yarn in the 'destashing pile' I was given, a fuzzy sort of acrylic:

Combining it with the green would relieve the green a bit, but as they're so different, combining them is not necessarily easy. I did some experimenting and found that the pattern I used for the first blanket worked best:

This time I'll join the squares as I go from the beginning. I'll make it the same size as the first one to begin with, I can always add more squares if I STILL have green left over.

Seeing Red

In a good way, of course. The tomatoes in Jack's vegetable garden are ripening quickly. I've been cooking them up with onion, dried herbs et cetera and then freezing them in moulds. I line a small plastic dish with cling wrap, fill it with the mixture and then put it in the freezer:

Once it's frozen, I can take it out of the mould and use the mould again:

Done

I corrected the back and finished off the cardigan. I think it turned out well. It should be perfect for Autumn, with its short sleeves. The pattern is Cropped Lace Cardigan with Matching Hat by Gail Tanquary. I won't be making the hat though. The yarn is Wolnit Primula, pure wool, decades old, that I'm trying to use up.