a whizzing week

What a busy week this was. It started last weekend when I gave up quilting the Granny's garden in favor of knitting winter run around socks. Even though we live in Africa and our winters are mild, our houses are set up for summer. 

We leave the windows open throughout the year and we do not have a central air conditioner. We have air au naturel. Fun in summer with a fan blowing, but in winter it can be just a tad nippy. We also have stone floors in most of the house which once again is delightful in summer, but can make you weep in winter. 

We have multiple rugs on the stone floor. The game in winter in to get to wherever you are going on these rugs. One little misstep and your feet get freezing. This is where house socks come in. they allow you to skid around the house and not have freezing toes. The truth be told the study is probably the coldest as there seems to be a sneaky draft that is at toe level. The socks are normally used when playing in the study. It really is not that bad. I have before run in snow without shoes on and that was way worse. That horrid feeling of losing feeling in your toes. I did the soles of the booties in a different colour to the tops. I like the pattern as even though it is crocheted it appears quite solid.

I need to get a second ball of wool for the pink booties. Whilst I was in the shop I spotted some cotton wool/ thread.... you know wool that is cotton.

I had never heard of this before, but the internet has shown me many new and interesting things. One of these were  kitchen towels made out of this stuff. With my theory of trying whatever you see, as not everything will be a disaster I bought some and knitted one.

The pattern is excessively simple, but good enough for a first attempt. Does anyone have a nice pattern for kitchen towels? Please let me know if you do. Cotton is not bad to knit with. I would have thought that it would have been harsher on the fingers. Well what do you think of my attempt?

The next thing I did was make 2 mug rugs. It is so much fun to make this small items. This next week I am going to use some of my stars that never made it into a quilt, and make them into mug rugs.

I did manage to quilt a little after work yesterday. Here are some pictures of the back and the front.
I must say that the silk batting is delightful. The needle just bops in and out and creates a very small stitch. The only thing is that it is a thin batting so it does not have a dramatic loft.

I love the natural battings, but, I have seen quilts that have polyester inners, and the quilting on them pops. Oh well I will have to live with understated stitches. I can almost see a self help group for understated stitches. Let them be a pushy as popping stitches  as well.

Have an amazing weekend, and I hope you all have a fun project to keep you busy.

Have a good one.

Sock it to me

This is what has kept me from quilting this weekend.  The yearly creation of socks has begun. I have completed one pair and still have one to go.

Previously we made Schlocks    We made a dozen pairs out of fleece and gave many pairs away. 

This time I found a cute pattern on the internet and decided to crochet this years socks. As you can see I am wearing a plaster as the constant pressure has made my poor thumb sore.

 My poor quilt sits in a wash basket and feels so forlorn. I may take a break from sock-creation and do a few stitches later on today.  Can you see the quilting? I have quilted about 12 flowers so far. There are 203 flowers in the quilt. *PHEW*

This cat has decided that I am peaceful enough to sit with. This is better than yesterday when I was trying to count the number of stitches and trying to remind myself that I knew how to crochet.

Hope you have an amazingly creative day. All that are in autumn, maybe you need to make some socks and all that are in spring, enjoy getting rid of you socks for 6 months.


Have a good one.

Schlocks made

The family has had a group project and we all got together to make schlocks. These are fleecy socks to run around the house in. We had one or two technical problems (if you don't cut fleece in the correct direction it doesn't stretch) which cause us to have to remake half of the batch again. The full effort took us 3 hours to make 5 pairs.

Dear Jane's progress was a bit slow this week what with having to go fetch a replacement for our smart TV that went funny. The poor thing was only 9 months old and decided to have a wonky picture  and smoke coming out of its back. It was still under guarantee but the trouble with living in a third world country is that you have to be quite firm on getting your first world habits satisfied. In the end we got a new set that had the same specs as the one that blew up. This however took up stitching time. The other thing is that is currently pretty chilly here and we always seem to hibernate during the coldest part of winter. We can't complain seeing as we only normally have about 8 weeks of chilliness.

Now Jane has 5 rows.

This weekend is a three day one which will be grand.
Hope everyone has a great weekend.

I have added some chick fabric in a homage to the fact that the original Jane was made on a farm.


Have a good one!