2021 Week 15

 A quick project - inspired by the lovely Plum I decided to make a tray liner!  the red and white match my favourite mug (thank you Jackie) and the biscuit tin!

And husband helped me make a thread storage shelf for the embroidery threads - the 1000m spools fit nicely into a plastic draw in the Ikea Trofast units that make up most of the sewing room

But the 5000m spools are too big to really fit on the spikes, and generally don't behave

Ikea made shelves as an alternative to the drawers and I had a few that were not in use.  With the help of a length of broom handle and various bit of equipment in his shed we bodged this shelf

And it works perfectly !!

The lengthened denim dress has been finished and worn and photographed!

I met with a friend in the garden - I had finally finished the felt OLIVER for her grandson, and the felt animals needs to be positioned so I could hand stitch them on.  It was lovely to catch up and nice to have some hand sewing to do

Lisa sent Jackie and I this pic of her blocked crochet - don't they look fab!!!!  I think my blanket will be much harder to do!

With no crochet of my own to do, I thought I'd have a go at fingerless gloves!  Problem number 1 is that I can't cast on - my crochet is too tight!  So I used a huge hook and created three chains and forced the hook back into them to cast on three stitches . . . then turned the whole lot through 90 degrees and started adding rows of trebles, three at a time, until I had a band that was long enough.  

I then turned it through 90 degrees again and started adding to the side (2,1,1,2,1,1,2,1,1 to make it the right circumference and made it up to ten rows, I then missed 2 stitches and zigzagged back and forth for 7 rows then started with complete rows again.  there was a lot of frogging to make them the right size (left needed to be much tighter than right as I am, ahem, digitally challenged) but they will keep me warm next winter!

In other news, I finally finished this for a customer, just need to add a name

And there is a Ginger ready for St George's day next week

Apart from that the sewing room is an absolute tip, I've eaten too much, and I'm fed up with looking at this computer screen so I'm going to go and sit in the sunshine for a bit!  Hope everything is Ok in your corner of the world

2021 Week 14

 Hello lovely people in blog land, how is your corner of the world?  Mine is doing OK!

Our savings are invested in premium bonds and husband loves to check each month to see what we've won - just look what we won on 1st April.  Convinced?  Sadly it was an April Fool's joke!

I made some Easter Gingers for my sitting room window, and dropped some more Easter Egg versions to my little Ginger Fan club members

Along with lovely Thank You cards and messages I got 2 photos  of Ginger Collections!  Don't they look great!

Our village We're all in this together" group celebrated it's first birthday, so needed a ginger

And oldest daughter celebrated her (ahem) 30th birthday - she got a crochet blocking square, crochet hooks and a storage case for her hooks

Youngest daughter was given some second hand netball bibs (could mum please fix the elastic straps!) so i also made her a bag to keep them in - I love the name of the team!!!

If you want a good book I thoroughly recommend this one.  The first 90% was great but I was getting anxious as to how she could possibly wrap it up before the end then Oh My Gosh!  I cant tell you in case you read it, but if you do please let me know, I'd love to be able to talk to someone about it!!!!

And "someone" sent me a card, a little pouch and some chocolate for Easter - thank you Jackie!  I cant begin to tell you how much better my life is for having you in it (and what utter cr@p it is that we cant meet up!)

I spent a morning with young D who has been learning machine embroidery for her skill section of the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme (Rest In Peace, sir, I hope you knew what an amazing legacy this scheme would be)

She designed this bunny

and we tried to stitch it out but my old portable machine clearly needs a service, 

so I stitched it out at home for her

I have a collection of much loved Chambery summer shirts - some are nearly worn out, and others have shrunk in the wardrobe (!)  One was neither - it's problem was that it was too short.  So I took a deep breath and cut up all the shrunk ones, and the bits of the others that had some life left, and lengthened the short one

There are raw seams top and bottom, but I'm rather chuffed with the method I used to join the strips as there are no vertical raw seams

There was some darker Chambery left when I'd finished and I had some yardage that was slightly too dark for the shirt too (left over from this previous adaptation:)

 

And there was a denim pinafore that I loved but was too short to wear with leggings and too long to wear with jeans - so flushed with success I'm lengthening the pinafore too!

And finally a finish (that's gone back on the to-do list!)

The binding fabric arrived, and the quilt was bound . . .

And then I realised one of the spirals was missing on the left hand side!  Luckily it's still do-able even after the binding has been added - phew!

2021 Week 12

So what have i been up to?  Work (of course!) but apart from that . . . I stitched these five Easter panels from Kiwi Designs: rather than making them into a panel I made them separate - they could maybe be used as mugrugs? 

Briana nd Niki have been creative - the old (original 1960s) flat porch roof has gone and been replaced by this one - and because he's just as much a hoarder as I am, he could find the tiles that came off the roof in 1995 or so to make room for velux windows and use them on the new porch roof!!!

A friend became a granddad, so a good excuse to finish an I-spy quilt!

The pre-school children came into church to hear the Easter story and hunt for felt Easter eggs - it was lovely to see this lad in the fleece that I embroidered for the uniform holding and egg that I'd embroidered for their trip to the church

My Crochet blanket is growing: but as the weather improves I'm doing less - it might have to be put away unfinished until next autumn.

I took a sneaky trip top Cliveden House - just walking the grounds but it was a beautiful days and I may have bumped into two friends who were coincidentally there too

I was asked to make a Ginger commemorating ANZAC day (end of April).  This photo

became these Gingers

via  a game of thread chicken!!!!!  (I won, phew!)

Scratchy cat seems to think this blanket might be hers!!!!

2021 Week 10

 Hello from week ten - time is whizzing by but also passing slowly 

Should I blame age, menopause, COVID or just the ground hog-ness of life at the moment?

Anyway, a scan through my photos show that I have been doing some making so that's a good thing!

I'm making a felt banner for a friend's Grandson ... It would have helped if I'd made the R in the same colour felt as the other letters!  Some creatures are embroidered on, others are made separately and granny and I will work out where best to put them (as soon as we are allowed to meet, and I've remade the R!)

St David's was welcomed, of course, by a Ginger, as will Mothering Sunday this weekend

 

There are plans afoot for St Patrick's Day and beyond!!!

My crochet is growing, as is my neatness - the early edges are all over the place but the last half has been fairly straight.  I think there was a pattern to start with but I'm just randomly adding a different colour and starting different stitches!!!

I've got Lisa some crochet bits for her birthday (I don't think she visits the blog!) and Jackie suggested I make her a hook folder - I thought I'd invent one that goes in with the books on a book shelf

With a zipped vinyl pocket and sections for lots of hooks and stuff.  Just need to finish it in the next few weeks

I have had a few requests for Gingers: holding a much loved teddy bear

Representing a local coffee morning (that has been Covid closed for a year :-(

And a washer-upper at the coffee morning

I was also contacted by a mum who was given this by her (late) grandmother when she was little, and now her daughter loves to play with the shapes and sort them out . . . however the T went missing a long time ago, could I possibly help?.

I was going to just make a small tree but when I saw the details on the other letters I saw I had to up my game a bit

So this one has apples in the leaves, a fairy door and fairy bunting around the tree.  Mum is very happy, lets hope little miss loves it too