On Track

 

I'm on track with Round 19.  Saturday was a busy day, so I made that the two repeat section, leaving me five repeats today and five tomorrow. 

Washcloth Bear

 

When I was thinking of things for my revamped market stall, I thought of a pin I pinned a long time ago, a teddy made by folding a washcloth.  With a few practice goes, I had the hang of it. I thought it might be fun tomorrow for the craft group in a retirement home that I help with too. So this morning I bought some facecloths. I couldn't find small rubber bands for the ears, so I've used red pipe cleaners instead. Hopefully I'll be able to find rubber bands before the market. They disappear into the fleece, so are less prominent than the pipe cleaners. It's a very quick project, so we'll make gift cards, decorated with buttons, to go with them. 

Perseverance Pays

 

No sooner had I written about being interrupted than friends called in for tea. I confess, I kept tatting  as I drank my brew and chatted. Even the pecan cup cakes didn't put me off.  Ta-ra - I managed to finish round 18 before round 19 was published. Just. I'm hoping I can do my five a day on row 19, but life does sometimes get in the way. 

Half Way

 

The stitch count on round 18 is easy, but you need to pay attention when joining, the pattern of rings is unusual. I may be able to finish the round today, if I'm not interrupted and don't make mistakes! I'll see how it goes. 

Leo

 

Leo looks a little apprehensive here. Hopefully  when he's being worn as a hooded towel he'll look much bolder! The tutorial shows a mane made of fleece fabric, which would be sensible, but as I didn't have fleece in a suitable colour, I used yarn instead. 

Progress

 

 I managed to put some time in yesterday and get most of the way around Round 17. It's an easy round, but of course at this stage it does seem to go on for ever. I found a mistake in the previous round, but decided I could live with it:

Fixing the mistake would have taken a lot of time and made a mess, and it was possible to ignore it. Sometimes you have to let things go! 

Throwing In The Towel

 I have to accept that right here, right now, there's not much demand for my beadwork. Perhaps there will be in a post-Covid world, I don't know. It's becoming increasingly fatuous to sit at markets and sell very little. The lady I share a table at markets with, Sarah, makes soaps, in a wonderful array of scents and colours. What goes with soap? Towels. Almost ten years ago, I had a session of making hooded towels for children. I looked back at my blog, found some entries, like this one, and checked that the links to the tutorials still work. They do. So I'm throwing in the (hooded) towel and going to make some bathroomy things for the next market at the end of June. 

Mr Dinosaur turns out to be quite difficult to photograph! I need a small model. The tutorial is here. Of course, it's quite possible that there's no demand for zany towels either, so I won't get too carried away. I've bought enough towels to make four. If nothing else, they'll alter the conversations I have at the market.

Experimenting

 

A friend offered to give me some plastic bottles to reuse. I wasn't sure whether they were suitable for jam making, though I have bought jam in plastic bottles. I decided that the only way to know for sure was to try it. I could end up with a mucky mess and lose a spoonful of jam, but I'd know!

 I've been making rhubarb jam this morning. I washed the plastic bottle along with a couple of glass ones, put it in to the oven to heat up with the others and put the plastic lid into boiling water to heat. I put a spoonful of the cooked jam in, waited a minute, all good, so I filled the jar and put the lid on. So far, so good, though I'll leave the jar to get cold before I move it again. 

The rhubarb jam is a wonderful deep pink colour and has a nice tart taste. Here's the recipe here.

Hot Off The Press

 

The blocking press that is. Round 16 is done at last. I'm quite excited to see it spread out like this, after it has been a jumble in my lap for nearly two weeks. I probably won't manage to finish round 17 before 18 comes out, but that's no matter, I'll get there. 

Bit Boring, I'm Afraid

 

I've been working on masks again, I've just delivered another ten. Same as before, so not very exciting.

I did whip up a few tatted earrings for last Saturday's market. I even sold a pair! 

The pair on the left are muskaan's pattern, which is here. The others are my dewdrop pattern, link on the right side bar. The pair I sold were dewdrops, with red beads. 

Cape Gooseberries

 Jack is growing Cape Gooseberries in his vegetable garden. He had visions of shelves full of gooseberry jam. Alas, the bushes are not producing well. But he did manage to bring in 300g of fruit yesterday:

I opened up the little paper shells to reveal the fruit inside:

And managed to make one jar of jam:

I haven't put a label on because I'm pretty sure we'll eat it before we've forgotten what it is! 

Lagging

 

One way and another, last week was rather hectic, so I didn't get a chance to start round 16 until yesterday. I thought I might do a double 'batch' and catch up, but no, it's too complicated and time consuming for that. So I'm going to aim for five repeats a day and then try to catch up on a simpler round. 

Changing Tack

 

My plan was to tat earrings for a market on Saturday. Beaded crochet rope doesn't really lend itself to the making of earrings, but I'm told they should be good sellers at a market, so I thought I'd try tatted earrings and see what happened. Mmm. I got an urgent order for masks. Obviously a definite order that is going to be promptly paid for must take precedence over speculative market items! Whether I'll get time to make a few before Saturday remains to be seen, but the masks are done and have been delivered. 

Round 15 is done

 

For the record, I've finished round 15 of the Spring doily on schedule and am all ready for round 16 when it comes out tomorrow.