Coronasocks - the sequel

 I knitted a lot of socks in the early days of the lockdown. It was the only thing keeping me busy when my brain felt like it was in turmoil from all the strangeness of those early days.

Over the summer, I gave them a rest - partly because I have so many socks of my own, I couldn't justify knitting myself more.

But of course, the nights are drawing in. The weather is getting colder, and coronavirus is rearing its head again as England prepares to move into a new, national lockdown for a month, possibly longer. 

Seems like a perfect time to start knitting socks again, actually.

This time, they are for other people. 

I bought the wool (lots of it!) and have a variety of sizes to knit for - from a size 1 to an adult size 12! Most are bigger than what I knit for myself, so they're taking longer, but I'm OK with that. Two pairs have already gone to my mum, and two pairs are ready to be posted. 

I've also given a sock-knitting lesson to a neighbour - she picked it up really quickly (most people struggle to start with when they're trying to handle four pins at a time) so I'm looking forward to seeing how her socks turn out. 

I also seem to have set Squidgeling J off on sock knitting too, although she's found a rather novel way of knitting two socks at the same time on a magic loop, combined with a much more technical approach to making her socks fit perfectly, which takes away all the guesswork. She might have to give me lessons the next time she's home. Assuming of course, that's possible with the new lockdown.  

Great, eh? 

Only problem now, as we head into November, is that I've now lost count of how many pairs of coronasocks I've knitted to date! I haven't been taking pictures of them all, so I think - THINK - that I'm currently on my 23rd pair!!! I have one more gorgeous colourway to knit for myself at some point, but that will have to wait as I still have about four pairs to knit for other people first.

At least it'll keep me busy...

Soxploits - or a Coronasock update

The pace has slowed, but I've not stopped knitting... 

Since I last wrote about my soxploits, here and here, I've knitted even more. Think I might need help for this unusual addiction, cos I counted how many pairs I have in my drawer, and I reckon it's almost three dozen! Makes it easy to do a full wool wash of socks though.

Anyhoo, onto what I've created more recently. 

The first pair I knitted since my last update, I didn't keep. The wool was a bit of a pig to knit with for a start and I knew if I wore these, I'd remember the issues I had with them rather than enjoy wearing them. Strands of wool are twisted you see, and sometimes the 'twist' goes opposite to the way you naturally knit, in which case your lovely smooth wool begins to separate into thinner strands. Or the twist goes with the way you naturally knit, and in some cases ends up twisting the length of wool back on itself. As it did in this case. (Sometimes you can prevent this from happening by starting your knitting from the middle of the ball, but as I couldn't find that end in this particular ball, I was stuck.)

Anyway, the number of times I had to dangle my socks in thin air to allow the wool a chance to untwist itself... Ugh! The colours didn't knit up how I expected them to, either. The label states no two socks will be identical, and that's fine, but the stripes of each colour were so wide, one sock ended up green and the other pink. Didn't like that, either.

Fortunately, a neighbour had asked me to knit her a pair of socks (and for sock-knitting lessons once we're allowed to meet up) and as her feet are the same size as mine, I gave her these.

The next sock project was for a friend I met at Charnwood 2016; Bridget had two pairs of West Yorkshire Spinner socks already (you can buy them direct from the company) but she asked me for another, long enough to be welly socks. So...Passionfruit Cooler was the wool she chose, and when it arrived I got knitting. I used a different pattern this time - one which uses a 3.25mm needle instead of the 2.5mm I'm used to, because as this was a longer sock than I'm used to knitting, it might speed things up. 

When I got to the toe of the first sock I posted it to Bridget, to check the sizing. All good, so when she posted it back, I finished the toe off, knitted the other sock and sent them off. They looked a bit odd, because they were knitted all in rib; it's a very stretchy pattern but the garment always appears too thin to fit when it's off a body. I chose rib because I'd wanted to be certain that, if my tension was a bit off on the different sized pins, the socks would be more forgiving when worn. 

Pair number eleven completed.

My rainbows on the left and
Bridget's welly socks on the right.

And then I knitted my rainbow socks... Squeee! Again, West Yorkshire Spinners wool (they are my new favourite brand, I think) in shade Rum Paradise. And yes, I know it's pink rather than red before the orange, so it's not a 'proper' rainbow, but I just love the colours. 

I had to get a bit clever on these, otherwise the stripes would have been wider and then all out of sync when I got to the bottom of the heel and beyond. So I ended up only knitting three/four rows of each new colour down the heel (lots of ends needed to be sewn in as a result!) and by luck rather than judgement, it all worked out so my colours continued in sequence. Hooray! Pair twelve...

They are gorgeous to wear...

 

And then I went on to pair thirteen. I should've guessed there'd be problems, by the number. The lovely plain purple merino is gorgeous to knit and shows lace beautifully (I'd already knitted two pairs in this brand of wool) but could I get the lace pattern I wanted to knit right? Could I heck. I eventually chose a 'zig-zag cable' pattern, which isn't a true cable at all, and they worked out fine; the end result was worth the hassle.

 

And onto pair fourteen... Another WYS pair, in either English Rose or Peony, I can't remember which! It's a lovely pinky-purple tweedy effect when knitted, but boy oh boy. Previously I'd knitted almost a whole sock in it before deciding I didn't like whatever pattern I'd used and pulled it all back. The wool has been sitting in my wool bag now since before Christmas, and I've not felt inspired to do anything with it. The time felt right to have another go.

I found a basketweave cable. Didn't like the look of it. Tried a lace pattern. Didn't like that, either. Tried another...aaaargh! Nothing looked right! I needed something that complimented the tweedy effect, but...then I started playing. I made up a pattern, based on a widened and elongated moss stitch and at last, I was off. And finally, I have socks I like!

 

My next two pairs will be for an old uni friend and her partner, who live down-under; they'll be odds-and-sods versions so I'll share them when they're done, cos I never know what they're going to look like until I get going on them!

At least you won't be bored reading about socks again any time soon... There's some news to be posted later this week about an official book launch event for Tilda and the Mines of Pergatt, so keep your eyes peeled for that, and get your competition entry in soon!

Bye for now!

Coming out the other side of covid-19

So after almost 8 weeks of lockdown, the UK is beginning to open up.

There are very different views on this, as you might imagine. Some want things to happen quicker, to get the economy going again. Others are saying it's happening too fast, considering how many people have already died and combined with the fact that the all-important R rate is so close to 1, it will take very little to allow the virus to take hold again.

My own personal view is that as a country, we should have acted firmer, quicker. We should have continued testing and tracing in the early stages. We should have taken notice of predictions years ago that a pandemic was bound to happen sooner or later, and we should have been better prepared for it when it came.

However, hindsight's a wonderful thing.

Suffice to say that Family Squidge are very much still staying at home at the moment to see what happens in three weeks time... We have been bereaved once because of Covid-19, and we don't wish to experience any more losses.

So how are we coping?

We've settled into a routine of slow starts and late nights. As the Squidgelings continue to complete uni assignments and revise for exams, we tend to do our own separate things during the day and come together every evening for dinner. The highlight of the week is pizza night - often on a Friday - when Mr Squidge makes the dough and we all choose our own toppings. It's better than any takeaway!

I'm still posting daily positives on facebook so that even on the toughest of days - when I have no motivation or feel I've not achieved anything - I can look on the day and find something good. There's only been one day when I really couldn't find anything positive, and in posting that very fact I found it; the kindness and care of friends.

I'm still struggling to write. This is partly due to increased interruptions from the family, but mainly because I can't seem to concentrate. My brain seems to want to flit from one thing to another, which means that I have knitting, colouring, writing, quilting, and embroidery projects on the go at the moment. I'm plugging away a little at a time when I do have the brainpower and focus. I've been doing some critique for a couple of friends though - somehow finding things to improve is a lot easier in someone else's work than in my own at the moment!

Church is problematic. I've had times in my life when I've felt far from God - the advice is usually 'pray harder!' At the minute I feel as though I'm relying on others to pray for me, as I can't find the words. It's not as though there isn't any church at all - I've been astounded and moved by the way the church has mobilised itself to continue to meet the spiritual needs of Christians and the practical needs of people in communities at a time when the physical buildings are closed. My own church has a weekly online service, which is great, but it's not the same. Might never be the same again...

And I think that sums up this point of the pandemic in a nutshell for me. It's a very different life we're living at the moment, and we're nowhere near 'out the other side'. We've perhaps jumped over the first hurdle, and are beginning to adapt, but life will be lived on the edge for some time to come yet.

Photo: New Scientist

Pairfect Socks?

An update on my coronasock exploits...

I wrote a blog about coronasocks a while back - you can read it here, but do grab a cuppa first, cos it's a long one!

There I detailed progress so far; six pairs of coronasocks completed, and my first lot of sock wool hand dyed. I also finished a pair of socks that had been begun by a friend's mum-in-law, but I didn't count them as I was only completing someone else's project.

The good weather meant I had a break from socks after that. I spent time in the garden instead, did a bit of editing, and reconnected with Discworld. However, the last couple of days I've been feeling a bit rough. I don't think it's THE virus, but I have been fatigued and achey and out-of-sorts, so I'm keeping to home and picked up the knitting again.

I knitted my hand dyed wool.

My lovely rainbow-dyed hank

And I was very disappointed.

The  lovely rainbow wool didn't knit a rainbow at all...it knitted speckly. And there was LOADS of cream - the original base colour of the undyed wool - which made some of the colours knit as stripes. And the lovely vibrant colours...weren't. Well, not in the first sock.

First sock at the bottom, second still on pins at the top

The first sock came out all muted tones - the yellow and orange were really pale. The second sock - well, the colours were much brighter. I did toy with the idea of knitting a third sock and seeing which two out of the three matched best, but they didn't look too bad once they were finished; 

I've obviously got a lot to learn about placing colours on the hank at the dyeing stage if I want to get thicker stripes. Or limit myself to two or three only...

But that's Pair number 7 completed. Feeling a bit rough still, I started on Pair 8: Pairfect Socks. 

The theory behind Pairfect Socks is that the ball has enough wool for two socks, which will match perfectly, because a section of yellow wool is the marker for the beginning/end of the colour pattern repeat which is the end/top of each sock. 

It sounded intriguing and I rather liked the pattern as shown on the label.

The reality is...different.

For a start, if I knitted the socks up as on the label, they'd be knee-highs. So I had to keep breaking into the wool to take bits out. I could've just knitted through I suppose - but I didn't. Here's the first sock:

Spot the differences...

And here's the wool left over from it...

Not the most economical of ways to knit matching socks - I'll end up with exactly the same little balls once the second sock's completed, too. 

To be honest, I've never had much problem matching my socks when using non-pairfect socks, so I don't think I'll bother using this kind of novelty approach in future.

Ah well, you live and learn! And I'm off to knit coronasock number 16.

Corona socks

OK - this is definitely a grab-yourself-a-cuppa-first kind of blog! At least it might go some way to relieving your lockdown for a while...

Got your beverage of choice? (Mine's a G&T tonight!) Then read on...

I mentioned in a post from a couple of weeks ago that I was struggling to find focus in this current crisis, and my creative urges had led me to knit socks. This is partly because it doesn't take much brain power; I'm very familiar with the pattern I use, so if they are plain knit or some of my odds-and-sods socks, I can knit a pair to fit myself (shoe size 3 and 1/2) in two or three days if I'm not doing much else.

I decided to call them coronasocks - for obvious reasons, I hope - and so far, as we go into week 4 (I think - I've lost count) of 'stay-at-home' in the UK, I have made rather a lot of them. I don't mind showing them to you now, because half have gone to their recipients, and the others are being parcelled up to be put in the post this week. Take a gander...

Pair 1 complete - red, white and blue.

Pair 2. Odds-and-sods purple and green

Pair 3 - yellow and grey odds-and-sods. Really pleased with this colour combo

Pair 4 - lace-topped burnt orange

Pair 5 - odds-and-sods random

Pair 6 - odds-and-sods turquoise, though pink and purple snuck in too

I'm currently knitting Pair 7, another odds-and-sods pair in green and orange; one sock's completed and the other is at the heel.

I did have to order some more sock wool, as a friend has asked me to complete a UFO (UnFinished Object) for her, and while I was ordering that, I got tempted and ordered these:

The heathery-grey ball is really luxurious, and I wouldn't normally have gone for something quite so expensive. The pink is an Arne and Carlos Pairfect - the yellow strand you can see marks the start of the sock (you cut the yellow off first!) and there's another strand somewhere else in the ball which marks the start of the second sock. Now, I have small feet, so I will have to wind off lots of wool to get to the repeat, then wind it back into a ball the other way so I end up with two balls of leftover that match, so that's going to be interesting!

Incidentally, I do get a bit anal about matching up the repeats in patterns, even if they are fairly random. I end up with lots of little balls, so I decided the other day to join them all together into one big ball. There will be a pair of 'Surprise!' socks knitted, once I've wound a ball of about 60g....

The other thing I ordered was a skein of undyed merino wool. I have always loved hand-dyed yarns, but they can be very expensive. I'd looked up how to hand-dye using food colouring, which seemed a darn sight cheaper - I decided I'd have a go. It was a lockdown project.

Here's how I got on...

You can find all sorts of tutorials and videos telling you how to hand-dye - I used this one to take me through the process, but there are many others. So I'm going to assume that if you want to have a go, you'll look it up and won't need me to repeat everything in detail...

So... The food dyes I used are Dr Oetke gel colours, and I bought the full range of colours. The only colour I didn't use in this first experiment was the pink, but it was good to try all the others and see how they came out on the wool.

This is the wool in to soak for half an hour in warm water, to which 3 tablespoons of white vinegar had been added. 

I laid clingfilm over my work top, making sure there was plenty beyond the end of the hank. The skein had most of the water squeezed out of it so it was damp. I got a small art brush and started to paint the colours in blocks... 

I had to manipulate the wool to get coverage throughout, but needed to be careful - any dye on my hands or splashed onto the clingfilm, and a colour would get transferred to areas where I didn't want it to be.

Now I had in my head an idea...I wanted to try to create a pattern in the colours that, yes, would follow the rainbow, but would also end up knitting as solid stripes with speckles in between. So in the spaces, I jabbed a gel-dye-laden fork all over the place, making sure the colours overlapped a bit. Here's how it ended up; 

The next phase is to fix the dye. I realised I couldn't simply roll the wool in the clingfilm, or I'd contaminate my carefully separated colours - either because of splashes on the film or where the two sides of the skein touched. So I overlay another sheet of clingfilm over the wool, pressed it well down and then rolled it. I ended up with a rainbow coloured sausage!

My microwave is a powerful one (900W) so I blasted my wool for 3 x 2 minutes at 50%, with a minute or two in between each heating. I think the sausage was well and truly cooked - you can see the condensation inside the film.

Most instructions told you to leave the wool to cool, but I was too impatient... I unwrapped it. It was flippin' hot, so I got a bowl of cool water and as I cut the clingfilm away (it had gone a bit crispy and melted together in places) I let the hot wool go into the water. Looked like rainbow spaghetti!

It took three rinses until the water ran clear - I probably should have done a couple more as the red dye was still leaking a bit of orange when I squeezed it out ready to hang to dry. Found a coat hanger and - 

Ta dah!

Now there is always an element of pot luck in how the dye actually comes out. My speckled sections had worked pretty well with green, blue, and purple...

But came out as more of a gradient between the orange, yellow, and red.

                                          

I have no idea whether this was due to the wetness of the wool when I applied the dye; whether I put too much of these lighter colours on the wool when speckling; or whether these dyes act differently on the wool for some reason. 

It didn't come out exactly as I'd imagined - but it's not bad for a first attempt! 

So there we are. My first skein of hand-dyed wool. And it seems appropriate that it's rainbow coloured, considering how much the rainbow has been used as a symbol of hope in these difficult times. I'll let you know how it knits up...but I may not get round to it very quickly (my fingers are itching!) because I've started to get back into writing again for the first time in ages. Might be time to give the knitting pins a rest and focus on words for a while...

Feel free to share any lockdown projects you've got on the go with me - always good to hear what everyone else is up to, creatively.  

Corona continues...

It's Easter weekend as I write this, and I am sitting in the garden on Easter Saturday, having just done a 45 minute pilates session on the lawn.

It's quiet - no children playing in the garden yet. Someone was mowing the lawn a few minutes ago, and there is some traffic on the main road, but apart from that...birdsong. The crows are cawing at each other. The robin came and sang for a bit on the fence. Dunnocks were twittering in the pear tree as the blossom drifted down in a light breeze. Mummy blackbird landed on the fence about two feet away from me, but decided not to risk it. Blue tits are playing in the apple tree and the pigeon nesting in next door's holly tree came down for a quick strut. The local thrush is singing from some high point - 'rapido', '1,2,3' and 'brie, brie' he seems to sing. There's the lazy buzz of bees in the forget-me-nots underlying the birdsong.

It's already warm, and feels like a holiday. Yet this is not the 'staycation' I would wish for.

I have this strange sense of not doing enough. It doesn't seem right that I'm helping by sitting on my backside at home, doing nothing. Well, I say nothing - I'm knitting, (eleven coronasocks completed) cooking, gardening... There's a strange disparity - a world of difference - between me, staying at home, and the key workers who are going out to work every day, putting themselves at risk to keep things as normal as can be or while looking after the sick and dying.

I hope and pray that, this Easter, you'd be able to find resurrection hope in the middle of this awful time. And that you would stay safe and well until we come out of this on the other side...

Fighting to find some focus

Life is still very up and down, isn't it?

I've taken to posting my daily positives on facebook, because otherwise it's very easy to only see the limitations and negatives of these strange times.

Writing feels incredibly difficult at the moment. Not the blogs so much - they've almost gone back to being an online diary, like in the very early days of the Scribbles. But the novels...

I thought that as we have all this enforced time on our hands, I'd set about editing Tilda 3. Unfortunately I seem to be making things worse, not better. I can only do small chunks at a time, which isn't helping the story to flow. And yesterday... I had a particularly tricky scene to rework. I can see the action clearly in my head, but trying to write it from Tilda's deep viewpoint? By the end of two hours, it felt as though I was walking through treacle. I'd only got through two pages, and neither of them felt very improved.

I couldn't seem to get into Tilda's head at all, and it made me wonder whether there's an element of coronavirus crisis causing it? We're all going through so many changes so quickly in the current crisis, maybe I can't actually lift my subconscious focus from myself? Not that I'm being selfish - more that, like at other times when Life has got in the way of creativity, Life at this precise moment feels really big and scary and the effect that has is to shut down any creative juices that might otherwise be flowing. Survival mode, rather than comfy creative mode?

Except creativity hasn't shut down completely. I'm knitting socks again. They're relatively quick to knit, can almost be done with my eyes closed, and they don't require much brain-power, so it feels an easier outlet. The only difference is that these 'coronasocks' are being knitted for other people because I've got a drawerful of them already and don't really need any more...

Red white and blue for Squidgeling J, purple and green for E 

I'm also colouring in, which is why I took delivery yesterday of Jacqui Grace's book, Images of Hope. We all need hope at this time, don't we...? But I also like Jacqui's style and find it restful to create something unique, based on her work. Again, it's something I can do without using much brainpower.

One I did earlier in Words of Grace Devotional also by Jacqui

One waiting to be done in the new book

Hopefully, as this new 'normal' gets more normal, the focus will come back. I'll keep on trying to edit in between the colouring and knitting and who knows - maybe Tilda 3 will turn out OK in the end.

If not, maybe my next book will be all about knitting socks.

Stay safe and well. 

Socks

My home town has a historical link to hosiery. Sadly, the factories have closed now, and there's very little hosiery production - if any - left. We do have our 'Sockman' though, a quirky statue in the market place who sits admiring a single sock on his outstretched leg.

I'm doing my bit to keep the hosiery link alive though, as I've had a bit of a binge on the old sock-knitting front recently.

People often say they must be complicated to knit, and I'd have to say that yes, it takes a while to get to grips with creating a sock, but once you've got the knack, it's really quite easy. I have one pattern that I use over and over again - I know exactly how the end result fits my feet - and I've mastered the art of holding the four double ended pins so I don't get in a tangle.

They're an easy project. Portable, quick (I can knit a good half of a plain sock in an evening while watching TV), and rather addictive. There are so many beautiful colourways, they seem to grow really quickly when the wool keeps changing colour. I now have so many pairs of hand knitted socks, I can do a complete wool cycle wash, just for them! They are so much better for my feet - I have had chilblains perhaps twice since I began knitting socks about ten years ago. Previously, it was every single winter... Woollen socks (most are 75% wool) last a lot longer too - I've not thrown any out yet.

Also - complete bonus - they give me thinking time when I'm stuck on my writing.

So, if you're interested, here are a few I've made since the autumn...

The wool for these were all gifts. The centre and right pair are the most beautiful merino wool, so very silky to wear, and hand-dyed. The rainbow striped ones have a very thin silver lurex thread, which makes them sparkle. 

All of these have lurex thread in, too. The blue-purple I knitted for my mum for Christmas; had to undo the toes and take them back a little, as I'd guessed the size slightly wrong! But that's the beauty of these socks - they take very little effort to make them fit correctly. The red-green, I knitted for Squidgeling J, also for Christmas. The final ball is a purple-grey-pale lime mix that I'm going to knit for myself at some point. Have decided you can't beat sparkly toes...

I've only knitted one purple sock so far - that wool was a pressie at Christmas. The West Yorkshire Spinners random green was picked up on the way to Bristol; we have to stop to plug Sparky in to get us all the way there, and there's a shopping outlet with a charger AND a super little wool and yarn shop. So each time we've stopped there, I've been tempted by new colours and have succumbed to a ball. Or two. I liked the fact that in the case of WYS, I'm supporting the British wool industry as well - not many places hereabouts stock this particular brand. 

Now these have a story behind them; I was asked whether I'd be willing to make a couple of pairs for someone. She preferred handmade socks but was unable to source them from the family member who used to knit them for her. And - this shocked me SO much - she'd have to pay around £20 a pair if purchasing via Etsy. Seriously - £20 a pair! (Mind you, if the wool costs around £8 a ball minimum, it doesn't give the knitter much per hour of knitting...) I said yes, checked her shoe size and knitted up a pair of odds-and-sods fairly quickly. Forgot to take a pic of those, but she loved them, they fitted - hooray! - and I agreed to knit up two more pairs from wool she'd already bought. They're the ones in this pic. (The blue-grey ones are cabled, but shhhh, don't tell her! She's not picked them up yet.) 

Before you ask, no, I'm not going to make a habit of knitting socks for other people!! For a start, most people's feet are bigger than mine, so it takes longer. Secondly, if I'm knitting, I can't write. And thirdly, my fingers can get quite stiff if I do too much in a period of time (like two pairs in a week). 

I enjoy knitting socks, but I'm going to have to ration buying the wool. I have a bagful of leftovers - I could probably keep myself in odds-and-sods socks for the next ten years, without adding any extra colours. 

See what I mean? I did use some of the stash to knit little stars to use as decorations on my brown-paper-wrapped Christmas gifts this year, but it's not made much of an impression on the pile. 

Maybe I can allow myself to buy one ball a year? Oh, and if I'm bought a ball, I won't refuse it! 

The Big Knit

I've been knitting...

Not for myself, but for the Big Knit , a charity appeal whereby knitters make small hats to fit the tops of innocent smoothie bottles. Every hat knitted raises 25p for Age UK, .

I bought 20 20g balls of cotton from my local wool shop (the wonderful Knotty Knits and Kreative Krafts)  and looked up a load of patterns on the net.

Ummm...they're a bit addictive.

It takes about half an hour to make and sew up a basic hat. A bit longer if you're doing more of a novelty one, especially if you have to make legs or sew on eyes or make tails. Most of the patterns have come from the internet, having simply searched 'big knit patterns'.

I've knitted loads...

It's all in a good cause.

Back on the Wagon

For the first time in weeks - maybe months! - I'm writing again. Still working on the oldie, but beginning to get a feel for the voice of the MC, now that I know who she is.

It's been a while, and I admit to having procrastinated left, right, and centre while I've tried to work out the HUMUNGOUS plot problems I discovered re the MC's motivation.

I have procrastinated with quilting. With knitting. With facebook. With looking up vicar job descriptions (No - not me! Ours is leaving after nearly 20 years with us and as I shall be standing for one of the churchwarden posts later this year, I could be involved in the process of finding a new one). With jewellery making (Part 2 of Diary of a Rookie Silversmith will come soon - but it's taking me a LOT longer to complete the pendant I'm working on than I expected, thanks to my inability to solder properly.) I have written a short story. And I have read.

All of that's fine, but it took me away from the WIP in terms of writing time. Did it help any? Don't know really. I have had time to think about the story and the new MC, so perhaps the break did me good. But the sense of frustration in knowing that I'm NOT writing and I ought to be has been difficult to overcome. A 'can't see the woods for trees' kind of moment, where you know you need to crack on, but don't quite know where to start.

Hopefully, now I'm back on the wagon, I'll stay on it.

A sense of achievement

Remember I wrote recently about how my crafting had gone rather crazy?

Well, I've finished one project - hooray!! - and am pretty close to finishing a second.

The completed one is the rainbow lap quilt. I have to say that quilting experts would probably shake their heads over certain aspects of the manufacture of it, (I am not a quilting perfectionist, by any means; I cut corners, my cutting isn't 100% accurate, my stitching's a bit wonky sometimes...) but I like it, and it's just the right size for having over my knees when I'm typing in the lounge on a cold day.

Have to give a shout out to the fab staff at Quorn Country Crafts, who helped me to decide how to edge the rainbow square centre. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have ended up with the rather lovely rainbow batik strip border - even though they were a pig to sew, because they kept slipping on the machine and bits weren't 'caught' by the stitching on the right side. A nifty bit of hand stitching later, and any missed raw edges were hidden...

Loved that there were enough colours in the batik pack
for me to roughly match the border colours to the
central panel squares closest to them

They (the staff at QCC) are also a whizz at working out how much fabric you need to back the quilt, too, with only the minimum of excess material. I chose a teeny-tiny harlequin print in grey and white to give a neutral backing;

I have a few of the batik strips left over, so it's created a new project for me - a cushion cover, I think. Though I won't be starting it any time soon... And in the meantime, I might change my mind completely and do a scraps quilt - who knows?

The second project should be complete by the end of today: my socks.

I caught up on Strictly (Come Dancing) last night and managed to do all but the toe shaping on the second sock. I still think it's a really unusual colour combo - pinks, purples, orange and red - but you can never tell until you start knitting up what the self-pattern will look like. Once these are completely finished, my sister's asked me to knit her a pair, but as socks are much quicker to produce than a quilt, I might get those started.

So that's two crafty projects knocked off the list - and I'm afraid I added another one.

I know, I'm a glutton for punishment, but I was given a crocheted Christmas tree pattern by Knotty Knits and Kreative Krafts that I'd like to try. I bought glittery random wool in red, green, and white to have a go at it. Only problem is, I need Squidgeling J to teach me how to do the stitches before I can begin...

I don't think I'll ever be able to say I've got nothing crafty on the go, do you?

When crafting goes crazy...

Not had a chance to blog recently. My dad had a - thankfully - minor stroke a week ago. Can I just say how wonderful and amazing and caring our NHS was? And how grateful I am that Dad's stroke has left him with barely any issues at all...apart from forgetting his PIN number when he next went to the bank!

Even without that, life has been rather busy.

Mr Squidge and I went to see Squidgeling J at Bristol for the day - gosh, but there are some BIG hills down that way! Had a late lunch in Clifton, saw THE bridge and some very posh houses on the other side of the river, and left a little earlier than planned because J was recovering from a nasty virus, so we didn't get to visit the Bag O' Nails, a pub with cats. Seriously. The landlord owns 15 cats which have the run of the bar. But you have to buy a drink if you want to stroke any of them...

I also had an evening author talk - to a group of 15 church ladies, who all threw themselves into the writing exercises and bought a fair few books between them. So much so, I am having Granny Rainbow reprinted!!

It's also been half term, so routine goes out of the window.

But to get to the real reason for writing this blog... Crafting.

I love making things. I know that if I go too long without making something - whether it's something floral, stitching, knitting, writing - I get grumpy. Problem is, I often see something and go 'yeah, I'll have a go at that!' and something comes up, I get distracted, and I end up finding a half-finished something months later.

Which is where I'm at.

Project 1: I started a granny square blanket for the garden room, to cover the cushions on the rocking chair that's down there. I've got about half a dozen more rows to add around the border, and it's taking ages. Lots of sideways growth, but not much depth. Hence I get bored working on it for long periods, because there's not a lot to show for my efforts. (And the eagle eyed among you will see that I was so eager to crack on with it, I didn't even bother to sew all the central squares together properly before I began adding the border...)

Project 2: I loved this little jackety cardy, and started knitting it in the summer. I have two sleeves and half a collar to add. But...

Project 3: The dark nights are drawing in, which is normally a signal for me to get sock knitting. I knit my own socks because proper woollen ones seem to keep my feet a lot warmer than nylon, and I treat myself to a new colour combo every year, then make odds-and-sods socks from what's left over. I've even used socks as a tool to help my writing in the past... I'm about at the toe of the first sock. If I get organised, I can probably knit the other in a little over a day, but there are other distractions to be found...

Project 4: Big quilt. I bought the jelly roll back in April of last year, because the colours in the fabrics are the colours I have in my bedroom. And, if I'm honest, I'm finding that my rainbow quilt keeps me toasty warm in bed even without a winter weight duvet, so adding another toasty warm layer to the bed can't be a bad thing, can it? So far, I have stitched the strips together, but have no idea how I'm going to edge it to make it big enough to fit my bed.

And then, Project 5: Wonder what I could possibly need all of these for...?

Yup, another rainbow quilt. A random one this time. Well, more random than I'm used to. I started thinking about it back in April and started piecing it together in the summer, when I wanted a break from the kitchen refit (which is, can you believe, still not finished yet?). I'm now hand quilting in the coloured squares, picking up the curved petal-shapes which appear on the patterned strips. I have to say I'm really pleased with it so far. It's only going to be a lap-quilt though - much smaller than the original rainbow quilt.

Working my way round the outside squares 

Picking up the petal detail in each square

So five projects. Now, bear in mind these are all projects I've begun. Don't even get me started on the Christmas tree mat thing I bought last year but haven't done anything with yet. Or the pack of squares I have which I want to make into something quilted - but no idea what. Or for who. Or my mum's fabric that she must've bought over a year ago that we were going to make into a quilt... Or the wool and patchwork kit I was bought for my birthday...

If only I didn't have anything else to do except craft!