Year in Review

The start of the new year is the right time to look back at the past year and to make plans for the new year.

At the beginning of last year I thought I would try to blog once a week since I hadn't been blogging much (I find that it is a good place for me to keep track of things that I make.) I thought that I would last  a couple of months, hoped I would last one, and I can't believe that I blogged every week for a whole year! Only one week was a prescheduled post because I was going to be out of town. Once again I hope to keep it up this year.

I made a few big projects last year that I am really proud of, two of them involving wool that I was given from a local farmer (they were destined for the composter). I washed, combed, spun and dyed about 5 raw fleeces (some fleeces yielded more than others).

I crocheted a Granny Stripe blanket with two of the fleeces. This was my first major crochet project, and the first wool blanket I have made.

I wove fabric and made a garment with another raw fleece (handspun tunic). I hope to do it again this year.
I also started sewing garments (with commercial fabric) this year which I hope to keep up (I love sewing and don't really need more quilts).

I pieced a couple of quilt tops and lots of quilt blocks, but only finished one quilt this past year. It has to be one of my favourite quilts (the latest one always seems to be).

The biggest change that we had this year is that we bought a farm. Living in a rural setting is wonderful!

There is about 6 months of snow a year where we live, being out here has made us all really enjoy winter. There is so much more for us to do than just going for a walk around the block. It will be interesting to see what the warm weather brings us too.

A more recent thing that has happened is that we seemed to have been adopted by a cat-

She has always been around since we moved here (shy at first), we just assumed she was one of the neighbours (one 1/2 a mile away and the other about 1 mile away, the previous owners never mentioned a cat). Around Christmas we didn't see her for about a week, she was always very thin but came back even thinner. We watched her stalking birds - unsuccessfully (a black cat isn't very camouflaged when her surroundings are all white), plus it  was very cold, so we decided to let her live in the garage (there was a cat/dog flap in the door already, a couple of us are allergic to her otherwise she would probably be in the house).

Even before we fed her and gave her a warm bed she would follow us on walks - she seems better than a dog at staying close. She is still very leery of us, but is free to come and go.

As for my plans for this year, since we downsized our home it has made me reevaluate what I make, although a life time of being a maker is a hard thing to change.
I would like to experiment more with spinning, especially with raw fleece.

I'll finish with a couple of snow pictures (since it seems to change every day).

the snow was amazingly sparkly 

partridge tracks

All the best!!♥︎

Opposing Ply Yarn and Bags

A couple of weeks ago I dyed some fibre to spin for socks.

This is my favourite 80/20 Merino/Nylon sock blend. I decided to spin opposing ply yarn for the first time, since it is supposed to make hard wearing socks.

Normally singles (the individual ply) are all spun with the twist in one direction and then plied in the opposite direction. With opposing ply yarn one of the singles is spun in the same direction as the final plying direction. This tightens up that one single during plying (more twist creates a tougher yarn). I spun a 3-ply yarn, so two of the singles were spun with a Z-twist and the third was with a S-twist, then all three were plied with a S-twist.

This is how the yarn looked fresh off the wheel. The top yarn is the opposing ply, 3-ply yarn - that one ply added a lot of extra twist to the yarn. The small skein at the bottom is a 2-ply with the leftover Z-twist singles, and made a nice balanced yarn.

The yarn relaxed after washing .

You can see in the above photo that one of the plies is tighter.

I started knitting a pair of two-at-a-time, toe-up socks with the yarn. I am finding that the yarn is a bit 'rougher' than regular 3-ply yarn I have made with the same fibre (just a bit hard on my hands). I am surprised how even the knitting looks considering how un-even the yarn looks.

I also have another pair of socks on the go made with the same fibre - cuff-down this time (this is my favourite way to knit socks, but I wasn't sure of the yardage for the red/orange ones, so it was safer to knit them toe-up). They are all 64 stitches on 2.5mm needles. It will be interesting to the effect of the different yarns.

I made a Bendy Bag from Lazy Girl Designs this week. This is the second one I have made. They are a great size - perfect as a project bag for a pair of socks and wonderful for chargers, earbuds and cables for electronics when I travel - so of course I needed two. I have the pattern as part of a Craftsy Class that is no longer available. With the bit of the fabric that is cut out of the bag I made Bendy Bits bag.

I bought the fabric when I went to Japan last year, and I happened to have bought a little rabbit charm that matched perfectly - I love rabbits and came home with a few rabbit items, the avatar for my blog is a rabbit too.

All the best!♥︎

Knitted Bracelets

This past week I was given a small amount of dog hair from a friend who has Kerry Blue Terriers, to try spinning it. The fluff was easy to spin (the yarn soft, with a nice shine and halo), and since she is not a knitter, I wanted to make her something with the yarn (I only had a little 9g skein).

After a search online I found a knitted cuff from a Craftsy class "Knitting with Beads with Laura Nelkin". The pattern is Pioneer Cuff by Laura Nelkin, a super quick knit, and part of my Year of Craftsy.

I had so much fun making it that I had to make one for myself out of a leftover bit of handspun.

Now I am making myself another beaded bracelet (this one is inspired by another Laura Nelkin bracelet). I am using some handspun linen. Hooked on knitting with beads!

I finished a couple of other things this week - 

A skein of yarn for socks (this is a merino/nylon blend that I had dyed).

I also finished the pillow I made with the piece of embroidery my Dad made.

I put a long warp of crochet cotton on the loom to have something to weave over the summer. I am making this first table runner with leftover handspun yarn from the Granny Stripes blanket.

I just wanted to mention something that happened this week -

I ordered a couple of knitting books (both were highly recommend and I am really pleased with them),

but the box they came in had a big warning sticker. Maybe it is the digital/ebooks age, 2 books are considered heavy now!

All the best!♥︎

Finished Embroidery

This week I finished off a piece of embroidery I had started a couple of weeks ago.

It was inspired by the Craftsy class 'Fabric Play: Sewing Mojo Minis' with Suzy Williams of Suzy Quilts (part of my Year of Craftsy). It started as a simple free form Log Cabin block, and I knew that I would add embellishments to it to make it my own.

drift wood, feather, tiger eye beads

It includes machine embroidery, fabric painting, lots of hand embroidery for texture.

shisha mirror cut from an old mirror

The centre of the Log Cabin is a scan of an image from a book that I printed on fabric (nothing fancy, I just ironed a piece of fabric to some freezer paper and ran it through the printer). The one thing that this piece doesn't have that I usually attach to my regular Crazy Quilting is buttons - stepping out of my box!

old lace, beads, fabric painted appliqué 

I attached the piece to stretcher bars to hang it - keeping it simple.

This week I also pieced a couple of quilt-along blocks. The large one is Wandering Lover, the first block from the  2018 BOM Antebellum Album by Barbara Brackman over at Civil War Quilts - it is a 12" block. The small one is the first block from the sew along called 1880 Sampler over at the Temecula Quilt Company blog - it is a 4" block.
I don't plan on finishing these blocks as the quilt-along quilts,

I plan on adding the blocks to other leftover blocks that I have to make an Orphan Block quilt (you might recognize some blocks from a couple of quilt alongs last year that I didn't like how they were progressing).

This week I really concentrated on knitting. I finished knitting the body, saddle shoulders and started on the neck band for the Tealeaf Sweater. I will knit the sleeves last because the neck band is quite wide and I want to make sure of the sweater's fit when I am knitting the sleeves (they are knit top down and the sweater has drop shoulders).

All the best!♥︎

Something New

Recently I was talking with a friend about starting new projects (the start of the year seems to always bring an abundance of quilt alongs, knit alongs, spin alongs...). She suggested it would be a good idea to remember being excited about projects we already had on the go when they were new, and to work on them for a week at a time to get them done. Brilliant idea!

So for the past week I worked on a project that I started exactly two years ago - a Pineapple Quilt. All the pieces had been cut and I had pieced 18 blocks before I got sidetracked by a few new quilt alongs that year (two of them I finished, and a third has morphed into another project). This week I finished piecing the rest of the blocks!! It was amazing how the thought that I was just doing this for one week made piecing these so much better (these blocks were not a joy to put together - 14" blocks, 53 individual pieces per block, they would have been better if they were 10" blocks).

I pieced 31 blocks last week. These are 49, 14" blocks in a 7x7 layout, the quilt will be 98" square. Sewing the blocks together and quilting will wait until another week!

For my 'Year in Craftsy' this week I dyed some fibre following a 'recipe' from the class Next Steps in Yarn Dyeing with Sarah Eyre.

I happened to have the dye colours called for in the recipe, and it was the first time I have dyed fibre this way (in citric acid in a shallow roasting pan).

It came out so nice, and definitely a technique I will try again.

the full bobbins

finished yarn

This a Merino/Nylon blend for socks, which always spins so easily.

All the best!♥︎

Crochet Scissor Case

This week I made a little scissor case.

I was pleased to follow a crochet chart for this. It did take a couple of time to figure out the rows, luckily it is just small - the chart was different from the well explained Craftsy class pattern.

It was also the first time that I have crocheted around fabric - this is felt so it was easy to poke holes into.

The weaving that I started last week is progressing nicely, I've woven over 1m so far. It is nice to have something on the loom that I go just go work on when I have 5 minutes.

One of the Craftsy classes that I watched recently was 'Fabric Play: Sewing Mojo Minis' with Suzy Williams which inspired me to start the follow project -

So far I pieced a stylized log cabin block, painted fabric, added free motion embroidery with the sewing machine, and hand embroidery. I'll keep adding hand embroidery and embellishments.

Another Craftsy class I watched was 'Quick & Delicious Meals using a Vitamix Blender' with Nicki Sizemore, and I made a jar of  peanut butter!

All the best!♥︎