Bottling

 

Aside from sewing winter sheets for a friend, a time consuming and tedious task, I've been making marmalade and jelly. The grapefruits were given to me, but the guavas come from our garden. These are ready for my market table on Saturday. I may have time to cook a batch of tree tomato jelly too, though I need to spin a batch of yarn first. 

Recycling

 I need to prepare a project for tomorrow's craft group meeting. I had in mind some sort of woven basket using ribbon, to put sweets in. (Sweets, candy, lollies, whatever you call them!) Yesterday I experimented with skewers and cardboard, but the results were not very neat, won't work. I remembered seeing on Pinterest weaving around cut yoghurt cups. I don't have any yoghurt cups, but I do have some 1 litre milk bottles. Would that work? I think so.

I'll prepare the bottles. Weaving shouldn't take much time, so I'll take along felt in case people want to make felt flowers or something to decorate the baskets further. 

Another Cowl

 

I thought I'd add a lacy cowl to the collection.  I adapted a hat pattern that I've knitted before, Fishtail Hat Pattern by Gail Bable. I added a few repeats to the circumference and, of course, didn't do any decreasing. It's an easy pattern to memorise and I think effective.  Using a short circular needle, it was very easy to knit round and round

Wiggle

 

The pattern is called Just Wiggle It Cowl, by Susan Ashcroft on Ravelry.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it was next on my cowl knitting agenda! It's a clever pattern. The zigzags are created with slipped stitches, I think that's called mosaic knitting. So you work with just one colour at a time, and it's not as heavy as it would be worked in fairisle. The shaping is also clever. You increase on one side and decrease on the other to create a slant, so when you join the ends , by grafting, the stripes are diagonal. It was fun to knit, I may need to make another one. 

Goats And Troll

 

I was tasked with making a felt storyboard for the Three Billygoats Gruff story. Mmm, not as easy as the weather one. I tried printing out cartoon pictures of goats to use as a pattern, but they were all too complicated. In the end I had to take a deep breath and draw my own. I used it for all three goats, just varying their horns, though I think that strictly speaking they should vary in size. I was worried that the small bits like legs and ears would be vulnerable, so I appliqued each one to a piece of felt. 

 I looked up trolls on the internet. Goodness, there are a huge variety of trolls on there! The unifying factor seems to be that they're green. So mine is green, though how 'correct' it is, I have no idea. 

Round 10

 

 I think I managed round 10 of the Spring doily without any mistakes, hooray. 

Weather Chart

 

Last week I had a message from another of the teachers I did a project for last year, asking if I could paint characters onto wooden spoons for her to use as story props. Mmm, no. I explained that I'm a fibre person, who can sew and knit and tat, but that I avoid paint and glue if at all possible! So she sent me pictures of a weather chart and a Three Billy Goats Gruff storyboard to do in felt instead. Here's the weather chart. The green bit is a pocket to put the unused symbols in, the children will choose the appropriate ones for the weather on the day. Teacher has a song to go with it. 

Nearly

 

I made it most of the way through round 9 without a mistake, but I must have been hurrying to finish because I made a mistake on the final repeat. By the time I'd figured out what the mistake was, I'd already hidden the yellow thread. I think that the number of flowers on the outside is correct, so I decided to leave the mistake. It would be a mission to sort out, and then likely be more noticeable than if I just left it alone. 

Cowl

 

I thought I'd make some cowls for my market table. They should knit up quite quickly and I wouldn't have to charge a high price for them. I started with this one, which is called Free For All Cowl by Jen Peck on Ravelry. The edges are knitted-in icords. I thought that was a great idea while I was knitting, but when I joined the ends of the cowl, I realised that the icords pull in a bit. That's logical because they use slipped stitches, which means there are fewer rows of knitting in the icords than in the main part of the cowl. I think if I knit it again, I'll just do a narrow garter stitch edging on each side. Otherwise, I'm happy with it. 

One Sock

 

It's a bit bizarre to get an order for one sock. But there's a story. Of course. Last Winter I knitted a pair of grey socks for a lady. One of the socks accidentally ended up in the washing machine and was horribly shrunk. So she asked me to knit another. I did warn her that my chances of matching the socks were somewhere between nil and nothing. She said that was ok, she wears them at home on Winter evenings, so it's not a problem. I had two goes at matching the yarn. The first one was too dark, the second one too light. I decided that the lighter one was closer and went with that.

So I have fraternal socks ready for collection

Round 8

 

 I've finished round 8 of the Spring Doily. I don't think my fix is noticeable, and it'll be less so as the doily expands. Phew. 

There's A Law About It

 

Jane's Law says that if I'm going to make a stupid mistake, it will be on the easiest round! Round 8 is straight forward, shuttle and ball, rings and chains. I was working away, glanced back and saw that I'd missed a ring. I hadn't finished the round, but was much too far along to untat. I did a repair, which is not bad, except that I shouldn't have hidden two threads in one ring because it distorted the ring. I'll show the whole round when it's done and you can 'spot the mistake'. 

Another Pair

 

I've been knitting diligently and have finished the third pair of socks for the order I'm working on. Here they are all together:

Now that that's done, I can get on with the next round of the Spring 2024 doily. Appropriate on International Tatting Day!