Tea Bags

 

I undertook to make 40 little calico bags to put bath tea in. What bath tea is, I'm not absolutely sure, but calico bags I can do. It could be a trifle tedious to work on such small bags individually, so I spent some time working out a production line method. The dimensions of the bags were length 9 or 10 cm, width 5 or 6 cm. I drew a grid of blocks on my fabric of 22 cm by 8 cm and cut just the long side. I hemmed that on both edges:

I then cut the short sides to make rectangles.  I folded them right sides together, with a piece of ribbon between the layers:

After sewing the right hand seam, I tucked the ribbon right in so that it wouldn't be caught by the left hand seam: 

When I had a whole lot of these little parcels, I took them to a sunny spot for finishing off - snipping threads and clipping corners before turning them the right way round.

Hand Towels

 

 I've been working on hand towels, as I wanted something less expensive than the hooded towels on my market table. 

I bought this book many years ago, second hand and inexpensive because it has some water damage. It spent many years in storage and I've never really used it. So I thought I'd make knitted lace for the hand towels and use the book! 

The green one is a very clever pattern. When I started reading the pattern  and it said 'cast off 3 stitches', I thought uh-oh, it's going to involve casting on stitches, which will mean constantly turning the work. No, not at all. To bridge the gap, a yarn over is done in the following row, and then knit one, purl one, knit one into the  yarn over on the row after that. So there's no turning in the middle of rows at all.

I sold the owl towl and the hippo on Saturday, before they even got to the market! A friend of mine bought them for her grandchildren. It may be just as well because a new lockdown was announced today and I don't know if there are going to be any markets for a while. 

Owl Towl

 

This is the owl towl, making five hooded towels altogether. I'm going to leave it at that and see what sort of reception they get at the market at the end of June. 

Ta-da Spring 2021

 

Thanks very much to Renulek for this beautiful tat along design. Mine is tatted in size 40 Anchor Artiste, and used just over 50g. It measures 64cm (25 inches) across. I started tatting it on the 29th January and finished on the 7th June. What else can I tell you? This is the sixth Spring doily that I've tatted. I've given all the others away, but am planning to keep this one. 

How Many Is That?

 

I've just finished another 10 masks for an order. I wonder how many that is? I haven't been keeping track. I don't always blog about it either, so the blog doesn't form a record in this case. Must be over 100 anyway. You'd think everyone would have a mask by now. What happens is that people leave their masks at home and then aren't allowed in to the shop without one, so have to buy another one! 

Nearly

 At one stage I thought I might finish the Spring doily with one ball of size 40 thread. No. I ran out on the final row. It's no problem, I have another ball, just interesting to see how far one ball will go. I'm slightly behind where I planned to be, but getting there. 

Oops

 

 Oh my goodness, that's the third major mistake I've made on round 20 and I'm only seven repeats along. I will have to snip rings not chains again, there's too much to untat. Clearly I need to pay more attention!