Round 4 Begun

 

Round 4  of the Spring doily is out today. To begin with, I used green for the chains and yellow for rings, but I decided I was making things unnecessarily complicated for myself and changed to all yellow. I also realised that it was a mistake to try to use shuttle and ball, two shuttles work better. I notice in the Renulek photos that joining picots are very small. But when I tried to do that on round 3, my circle didn't meet up! So I'm not making my picots that tiny. I wonder if it's because I'm using Milford thread that is very tightly wound? I don't know. 

Now I need to get back to preparing for tomorrow's craft group meeting and Saturday's market! 

Spring Doily 2024

 

The first rounds of Renata's Spring Doily 2024 have been published on the Renulek blog. I have neither the time nor the thread to tat the whole doily, but I'd like to tat part of it. On Sunday I found my shuttles and all the things I needed and set to work. It went horribly wrong:

Oops. I went back to spinning wool. But Diane's multicolour version renewed my resolve and today I had another go, as you can see in the top picture. I tried to pay more attention to tension and have successfully completed three rounds, ready for the next round to be released tomorrow. 

Storybook Rabbits

 

I had a message from one of the (trainee) teachers I made felt story aids for last year asking if I could make two rabbit puppets for her. Her deadline was pretty close, but luckily she was happy to have the turquoise rabbit I had in stock, instead of the blue she visualised, so I was able to help. The pink rabbit is mum, so I made her a bit bigger than the other one, and gave her a necklace. 

I had a message from one of the other teachers last week, asking for advice about making her own props for story telling. I was happy to help, but I do wonder why she didn't learn that when she was training! 

Shirt Two

 

I reversed the colours on this shirt, so that it's not identical to last week's shirt. Same pattern, of course, and same adaptations. 

Leaves

 

I sold a pair of fingerless gloves last week, so I thought it would be a good idea to replace them. I used the 'spearmint' yarn that I spun last year, August. I knitted some of the batch of yarn and put the rest on my market table as yarn. It's still in the basket, so I may as well knit it up myself. The pattern is  called 'Leaves', by ValKnitting. 

Another Pair

 

I've finished another pair of socks for my sock basket. Oddly, one sock looks slightly paler than the other. I dyed the skeins together, so I don't know why that is. 

Back To The Sewing Machine

 

Jack tore a shirt last week. I'm quite pleased with my mending:

But it's nevertheless a sign that it's time to make more shirts! The original pattern is from Burda Moden magazine, but I've made so many changes to suit Jack's requirements that it's scarcely recognisable. No buttons, long pockets, that sort of thing. 

One Pair

 

It will take me a lot longer to fill the sock basket than it took to fill the puppet basket, but I've made a start and finished knitting the first pair. 

Short Time Out To Tat

 

I don't have any urgent deadlines to meet at the moment, so I thought I'd take a bit of time to try the wide picots that muskaan wrote about in yesterday's post. I had planned to try different ways of achieving the effect, but I had a run in with YouTube, so I followed Ninetta's video, which is on Google docs. The link is on muskaan's post. Aha. I like the effect. Of course I would have to practise a bit before I actually used the technique, to get a smoother look, but I'm happy with the experiment. 

Now I must go and prepare for tomorrow's craft group meeting. 

Update and Baskets

 Thanks very much to those who let me know that they haven't been able to access my patterns on Keep&Share. Sorry about that, I thought it was working well! You can email me, on the address on the side bar or ikorro at hotmail dot com and I'll send you the same PDF that is on Keep&Share. 

I use baskets on my table at the monthly market, to display my work. I've now filled the puppet basket, but the sock basket is looking dismal:

Summer is beginning to wane, so it's time to fill that basket again. On Monday and Tuesday I spun enough wool yarn for two pairs of socks. I dyed the skeins this morning:

I bought another basket a few months ago. Couldn't resist!

Puzzling

 My patterns and tutorials are hosted on the Keep&Share website, a free hosting service that works very well. Every week they send me a report showing the number of views of my patterns. They vary, of course, but mostly the figures are in single digits. The most popular pattern isn't mine at all, it's Grace Tan's Jane's Bookmark Cross. Here's the puzzling bit - last week some of the patterns had views of over 100 and this week they're in the 300s! How does such a huge increase come about? Some of them are rather obscure, like the 'Beaded Knitting Using a Chart', which is seldom looked at.  It's not a problem, far from it, but just a puzzle. 

A post without a picture is a bit dull, so here's a photo of paper flowers we made from doilies at Friday's craft group meeting:

The Basket Looks Better

 

Right, I've made some more puppets and the basket is no longer empty. I think that'll do for now.