Cat Toys

 

I heard that a local animal shelter needs cat toys. That seemed like a worthwhile goal for my craft group, so I trawled through Pinterest for ideas, combined this and that..... Last week we made pom poms out of tulle and cellophane. The cellophane will make a noise when the cat plays with the pom pom. This morning we made mice and fishing lines. I need to use up the rope, so making a line for the fish to hang on seemed like a good plan, and plaiting three bits kept every one occupied for a while. 

 

The bottom pictures shows the samples I made yesterday, just to be clearer. We'll make something else for cats next week and then donate them all. 

Mr. Hippo

 

I sold a unicorn towel at the last market, so I needed a new towel to fill the space on Saturday.  Mr. Hippo is hot off the sewing machine. Now I need to whizz up some bath puppets, my stocks are nil after I left the remaining ones at the gift shop down the road. 

Four To Three

 

I knitted while watching cricket yesterday and made good progress on the socks. It was a little embarrassing to discover afterwards that images of me knitting had been flashed around the world on TV, but there you go. Anyway.... I wasn't sure I had enough brown wool for both socks. I took yellow wool along with me, thinking that I'd use yellow if the brown looked skimpy. But then I had a better idea, and simply stopped using brown, continuing with the three remaining colours. Here's a closer look:

You can see it if you look for it, but I don't think it's glaringly obvious. 

By the way, Sri Lanka beat Ireland in the cricket game!

Four Stripe

 

I've knitted several pairs of socks with three colours in helix stripes, so I thought it was about time I tried four colours. I was a bit concerned that the colour change over coincides with needle change over, but it's fine, the stripes actually look smoother, which I think implies that I have been pulling my yarn too tight at the change over. Hmmm. I learn. 

Tatting Order

 

Lavender won out over poppy and flame lily, I have an order for ten 'bunches' of lavender, to go on top of funeral urns.  They're taking longer than I expected, but I'm working on it! I may deliver five and then take a gap before doing the other five. The butterfly is Jane Eborall's Very Small SCMR butterfly, which can be found under Doodles on her pattern page.

The Pair

 

I've been keeping sock knitting for times when I wanted something to do that didn't require too much concentration - visitors for tea or Friday's 'nit and natter session. But yesterday I decided I'd had enough of this pair and spent all afternoon knitting in the Winter sunshine to finish them off. The colours don't show very well on my monitor - they're yellow, orange and brown, helix stripes. 

Teiko Revisited

 

In 2016 I worked my way through the book The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito. I've given away many of the motifs I tatted, used them for this and for that, but there are still a few lurking. The other day I came across a fragment of Edging number 80 and thought it would be well worth tatting a usable length of it. It's surprising that this structure isn't used more in tatting. It echoes the ripple patterns of knitting and crochet. All are pleasing to the eye. I did consider leaving off the decorative picots, to make it sleeker and more modern, but in the end went with the pattern as written. 

In Which There Is Tatting!

 

One plus about not selling knitwear at the market is that my stocks are still in good shape so I can indulge in some tatting! This is muskaan's Antiks Snowflake. It will be included in the IOLI Bulletin in the Fall edition, but muskaan kindly gave me a sneak peek. I have to say that I didn't realise how bad my split chain was until I took a photo! My bad. It's an interesting snowflake to tat. I like the little triangles on each side with the thrown off ring. Clever construction, well explained. 

More Helix Stripes

 

I'm knitting another pair of socks with helix stripes. I wanted a colour combination that is different from the other things in my knitwear basket. I dyed a skein of each colour in the microwave. I've worked a short row heel:

Feedback And Working On A Pattern

The craft group really enjoyed making snap bags on Friday and they turned out well:

The lumpy ones have sweets in them - it was a good way to carry home the sweets that have been donated to the group. 

On Saturday I went to a morning market. It was a gloriously sunny morning - too sunny for selling knitwear! I did sell a hooded towel, two bath puppets and some pickles, so the morning was definitely worthwhile. I was a bit disappointed not to sell any wool, but there you go, another time I will sell more than I expect to. 

This morning I've been typing out the pattern for the flame lily I tatted. I scribbled figures on a scrap of paper, but that is going to get lost, so I thought I'd put the pattern on here. Of course it is taking longer than I bargained for. And while I wrote down instructions for the petals, I didn't write down how I tatted the stamens. I will have to work it out again. Which just goes to show the importance of writing it all down! 

Snap Bag

 

I'm busy preparing for tomorrow's craft group. We're going to make snap bags. I was given a snap bag some time ago, and used it merrily without knowing how the opening snapped together. Then I came across a post on Pinterest that revealed the secret - pieces of metal tape measure! 

My neighbour gave me a broken tape measure, so I'm all set. I've done the sewing by hand, because that will be how the craft group members must sew it, but of course they're normally sewn with a sewing machine. I've also simplified slightly by using ribbon to grip for opening, rather than the traditional triangle of fabric. That's because I didn't want to have too many layers to hand sew through, and because folding a square into a triangle with no raw edges would probably boggle our brains. Now I'm off to make a pattern for those who can cut their own fabric, and cut some fabric for those less capable.