Crafty Saturday.

Dad and Lad have gone to a wargames show, so us Girls (that's my just-turned-six year old daughter Mairi and me) have decided to have a crafty day in.

Lately Mairi has developed an interest in bits of fabric..she cuts these up into ponchos and capes and such, with bits of ribbon to tie them on. So far so good. However she's quite aware that there's more to it than that, so yesterday she nagged me into giving her a needle and thread.

First attempt...a pouch for her button collection. (I sewed on the button.)




Second attempt. I found this scrap of fabric in the Scrap Store and she decided she wanted to make a bag from it. There was much discussion about the design (I wanted her to hem the edges and turn the seams but she said it was HER bag, lol) and then she did 90% of the stitching and 100% of the design, including finding the buttons and bow in her bits box. Looks pretty good, no?





Bits Box? I was round visiting thereyougothen (who is recovering from her op) last week. On hearing Mairi was starting to show early signs of stash building, she donated this lovely (but sadly empty!) chocolate box. Every stash has to have a chocolate box, no?




Anyway, I have to admit I'm thrilled at this sudden blossoming of interest in fabric from my daughter. She gets the genes from both sides...admittedly I'm the first fanatical crafter in living memory on my side of the family, but her paternal great-granny was a professional seamstress in the costume department of the Kings Theatre in Edinburgh, and Hubby's mother was a superb seamstress too. I've got some of their stashes, come to think of it, rescued from clearing out my late SIL's house.. The sequinned cuff sections in the stash box came from one of them. I'm sure they'd be very pleased to see their great/grand-daughter following in their footsteps!

What have I been doing? NaKniSweMo, of course......no problem!

#

(Might have had a few gauge issues though....)

Store Cupboard Challenge.

Over at The Yarn Yard, Natalie is having a Store Cupboard Week, which basically means cooking from your store cupboard etc and buying as few extra foodstuffs as possible. I do this to a greater or lesser degree every so often too, and find it a good way to break out of the usual routine meals, plus of course clear out the cupboards and freezer a bit. So I think I'll join her for a week or so.

I will have to buy a few things, of course. I still have some vegetables on the allotment and a pile of things like potatoes and onions in store, but Mairi's favourite cucumbers only come from the supermarkets. There are still apples and pears and raspberries to be picked too, but the kids like bananas and grapes more! So, I've drawn up a rough shortlist of things I'll let myself buy.

Milk and soya milk. (Mairi doesn't drink the cow variety.)

The white bread that the kids like. I can make the crunchy variety for hubby and me. I'll need to buy yeast though.

Fruit and veg that I can't grow'

Tea bags.

Orange and apple juice for the kids.

Anything that's on offer that's too good to miss. I have two legs of lamb in the freezer that cost £3 apiece, for example, and there's 2lbs of cooking apples through there that cost 20p in the reduced to clear section of Tesco. That sort of thing!

School dinners.

Yoghurt.

Breakfast cereal.

Cat food.

Few other basics like tinned tomatoes, ketchup, eggs and baked beans.


Err...what else? I've got a freezer full of meat, lots of dry staples like rice, noodles and pasta, lots of exotic jars of this and that which need used up. (Don't we all?) We've got plenty wine as well. I don't think stuff like loo rolls and detergent fall come into this challenge either. The kids (and Hubby) will grump at no junk snack foods, but I'll bake a couple of times for that.

Anyhow, I usually work with cash for the weekly household budget so I have taken this out the ATM as usual but only placed half of it in the housekeeping purse. We'll see how I get on like that. I'll do this for a week at a time, I think. I've got a feeling that one week will be easy, two more difficult and we'll be onto curried cat food by the end of the month, lol. But the stores need a clear-out, so we'll see how we go.

Today's menu?

Lunch. Soup and bread for adults, pasta and cheese with salad for the kids.

Dinner. Pork chops, potatoes, cabbage and peas. Apple and bramble crumble.

And I'll dig out a couple of packs of stewing beef from the freezer to defrost and make some sort of casserole tomorrow, to use up the assortment of veg in the fridge.

Yarn content later!

November Resolutions.

I've decided to sign up for the second annual NaKniSweMo. Basically this is a challange to knit a complete 50,000 stitch sweater in a month, as inspired by the National Novel Writing Month, here.

Ahem. No way am I going to manage a 50,000 stitch sweater in a month. 50,000 stitches divided by 31 equals 1613 stitches per day, or about 16 rows of yer standard aran sweater. No, it doesn't sound too bad, but sometimes here I don't get the chance to knit for several days. So I'm going with the slightly looser interpretation of the "rules" in the Ravelry NaKniSweMo KAL, in which it's the sweater and the spirit of the challenge that counts. Rather like Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics, in which some folk knitted Starmore sweaters while others knitted garter stitch scarvves...it didn't matter, it was the personal challenge that counted.

So what am I making? 3timesChic sweater by Bonne Marie Burns, in the disgraced Rowan Plaid. It will probably work out at less than half the 50,000 stitches suggested, but it will still take me a fair old while to make. Enough challenge for one month for me!

(The other reason for choosing this sweater is that the frogged Raindrop from which this yarn came was one of the UFOs targeted for completing this month. Knitting the yarn into something completely different counts as finishing a UFO, surely??????

October was a productive month, as it happens. I finished my Campfire Socks....



I'm within thirty rows of finishing the Anastasia Socks....



And the first of the Regia Cotton Color socks...



I made my first felted bag...



...and my first willow basket.


I started a beaded scarf using my own handspun (there's about 9" of it now.)



And I made a cake.



I also did quite a lot of shopping! I've now got several projects in the "pending" pile. But that will be for another time. Plenty of posts coming this way, because I've also signed up for National Blog Posting Month, lol.

(Edit: Or rather, I've tried to sign up for National Blog Posting Month. Confusing. I think this might be another thing I do in the spirit of things, rather than tick every rule box!)

From Grenoble.

I read Yvette's Blog every day. It's quite funny how we first got in touch...she bought a second-hand Louet S10 this summer and during her search for information on it stumbled across my post about mine. One chat led to another and then we discovered that not only are we both Scottish (though she lives in France) we used to both work for sister branches of the same company, Remnant Kings. She worked for Remnant Kings West, I worked for Remnant Kings East, which later got changed to Kings Fabrics. Coincidence or what? Anyway, we've got a lot in common, and that's a good reason to read her blog. And perhaps even meet up next time you're in Scotland, Yvette? See you at K1Yarns?

Anyhow, Yvette ran a blog contest in aid of her birthday (eirily close to mine, though I'm nine years older) and I was one of the lucky winners, yeah! Thanks to the Royal Mail though my parcel didn't arrive till last Friday, and because life has been hectic and I'm a terrible blogger sometimes, I only managed to get the pix done yesterday.

(Apologies for the quality, it's been driech here. No light.)

It's amazing what knitters can stuff into one small envelope. I don't do Secret Pals because I'm amazingly absent-minded, but when parcels like this one arrive it's just like getting surprise birthday presents.




Sock yarn. This Blue Faced Leicester from The Natural Dye Studio. I haven't encountered any of their sock yarn before. (Though I do have a lot of their natural dyed silk tops in the spinning stash.) Firm, sproingy and very soft, and in a beautiful colourway.I will take my time finding a really nice pattern for these socks, methinks.



Yvette also sent me some patchwork fabric!



And some truely wonderful stitch markers, plus markers for wine glasses..



See the little knitting charms? Aren't they cute!




You can also see in the top picture a wonderful little pile of patches, labels and what the sewer in me can only describe as useful bits. Mairi, who has started to make her own Barbie "clothes", has already pinched several of these for her growing stash. It does make a crafting mother very proud when her six year old daughter has already grasped the concept of building a proper stash!

And yes, there was chocolate as well. Was.....

A last look at the bottom one of these three patchwork pieces.



Now this made me laugh. It's always nice when you realise that someone has actually been paying attention while reading your blog. I've been drooling over Yarnstorm's Allotment Quilt ever since I first saw it. But having been out of the quilting loop for over twenty-five years (I still have half a handsewn quilt top up in the attic somewhere) I was at a loss as to how to track some of the fabrics. (Actually there were clues in the Yarnstorm post, but this particular blogger clearly pays less attention than Yvette.) Anyhow, after much searching, I finally identified the piece that Yvette sent me as being the Martha Negely Vegetable Stripe...and finding it has opened a real Pandora's box of new temptation, in the form of quilting fabrics. Did I ever mention I used to be a fanatical sewer and dressmaker? (Before the kids.) What else was I doing working in Remnant Kings all these years ago?

Thanks, Yvette. For both the parcel and for reminding me of a long forgotten but much loved hobby. And, given the amount of shopping for patchwork fabrics I've been doing over the weekend, for reminding me so much that I feel compelled to start a new quilt!

(Ohh, but the craft budget doesn't thank you!!)

For Hubby..

The words "Washing up" never occurred to me as I looked at this, honest.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Having your cake.,...

You rather have to congratulate the designers of quilting fabrics. Not only do they (presumably) eat cake, they put it on their fabrics as well.

This one is called "Icing Stripe" and is by Martha Negley, an American designer who works for Westminster (Rowan) fabrics. (As does to Mr Fassett.)




There is a chocolate version as well....



Yeah, I bought some...well, some of the top version anyway, because I found it at £2 per yard. The chocolate version is too pricey for me, sadly. I've gone a bit doo-lally over quilting fabrics over the last few days. So even though I found a great USA Ebay shop that undercut UK prices by about 70% for the cream version (even with postage factored in) the craft piggy bank is looking a bit empty, alas.

But isn't it yummy?

Breast Cancer Awareness month.

Over at Janesprobablyknitting, Jane has finished and published her pattern for her "Have you Checked your Breasts" socks.

They're lovely socks and the pattern is free...however Jane has also set up a voluntary donations button for donations to Breast Cancer Care and asked that you consider making a small donation to this very worthy charity in return for downloading the pattern.

Also, the socks are knitted from a new colourway of The Yarn Yard sock yarn, and Natalie is going to include a free mini skein of the raspberry yarn used for the ribbon detail in this pattern with every skein of yarn or roving ordered, in any colour, not just this one. So even if you don't like this colourway of sock yarn you could customise your own colour combination, or even spin your own sock yarn. I've seen The Yarn Yard sock yarn and rovings, btw, and they really are gorgeous stuff.