A March Furtle

 With the clocks going forward from last Sunday and being able to see people outdoors from Monday, by today I’m feeling a bit tired having been out and about.  After these weeks of lockdown I’m not used to it! But it has been great to catch up with some family and friends.  I think it was a shock to my car being used everyday this week after some weeks when it’s hardly turned a wheel!!

This month has seen a lot of progress on a quilt that’s been hibernating for long enough (it has been on my Finish A Long list for at least 2 years). This is the Kingfisher Quilt, a design by Jodi of Tales of Cloth , hexie ‘flowers’ on low volume diamond shapes.

I’ve now hand quilted around the 'flowers' and quilting around the borders is in progress.  Just by doing the quilting bit by bit I’ve pleased with the progress I’ve made with this but I’m not quite sure what I’m going to use for binding.  More than likely I won’t be able to get the grey fabric on the border and there isn't any in my stash, so while I’m quilting I’ll have to think of how I’ll deal with that.  There may be some auditioning of fabric or maybe an online purchase if I see the right fabric. No hurry (yet).

I haven’t don’t much other stitching apart from making blocks for Siblings Together, which I wrote about here. I like making blocks, it’s the best bit of making quilts for me.

Knitting is still going ok with Sarah’s cardigan as I’ve joined the front to the back at the shoulders to make the ribbed collar, which is quite deep and took a good few days to do and I wasn’t sure it was draping well.  However looking at the pattern part of the front bands have stitches picked up on the collar so it may pull the ribbing out, so a little think to see if that works..

In between working on that I’m also making a cardigan for my youngest granddaughter, Cecily.  Her Mum wanted this in mustard, and I bought some Stylecraft Bambino in Mellow Yellow.  I've already knitted the back, fronts and today (1st April) I finished a sleeve during the knit and natter Zoom meeting.

The pattern is Sirdar 4493, which goes in sizes from newborn up to 7 years. which has a shorter cardigan (which I'm making here) or a longer 'coatigan'.  Its a good pattern with a fair bit of detail and the yarn is lovely to knit with.  The garter rows at the beginning of the pieces curl up a bit but I hope a little steam blocking might help uncurling.

Not content with these two knitting projects, I made a start on some socks.  These are toe up socks but using a provisional cast on, which I’ve not done before and wondered how that worked, but followed the instructions and it went quite well on the first sock that I started.  This is a pattern from The Knitter by Helen Kurtz and yarn I've used is West Yorkshire Spinners in Honeysuckle and Foxglove.  The second picture below is an photo from the magazine

I’ve still got plenty to keep me busy!

Joining in this month with Mini Archie's Furtle Around the Blogosphere.