Furtling in April

 It’s been a busy month a few trains rides (on different occasions), explorations, a few quilt blocks, a few washcloths, a finished cardigan and a pouch in the making. 

First of all a finished cardigan - tada! 

This the Harvest cardigan, a free pattern by Tin Can Knits . I knitted this with Aran yarn by King Cole, Fashion Aran Combo, which I bought in a wool sale at the end of February.  I didn’t need as much yarn as I thought so I have one 100g ball and a few bits left.  It was nice to knit with and didn’t take me long to do (I was knitting other things in between).  I’d like to make another.

I’ve been making washcloths and a dishcloth too. I couldn't see the point in making pretty dishcloths before, but I have enjoyed making these from the Kitchen Sink Shop on Ravelry Garlene has a newsletter to sign up to for free patterns, or pay for a collection of patterns on Ravelry.  But I’ve also made a plain corner to corner square one with plain dishcloth cotton from Poundland (though it’s £1.50/100 gram ball, not £1.00!).  

These are the pretty patterned ones.  The yarn used is Hobbycraft's Only Natural yarn.

Here's the plain dishcloth one.  The theory is that it can be washed in the washing machine with the teatowels, table cloths, etc. This has taken 35 grams, so making 2 others slightly smaller than this size I will get 3 cloths out of the ball.  Hopefully this will be a greener solution to the J-Cloths we currently use, though they last longer than they used to and can be cleaned in the dishwasher from time to time.

To knit this dishcloth I start with a single stitch and increase by knitting front and back into the 1st stitch in each row until I reach about 50 stitches (the one I made was 54 stitches), or the desired size.  Then decrease by knit 1, knit 2 together at the start of each row and carry on until down to the last 2 stitches, then knit both together.  I've knitted squares in acrylic yarn before for charity blankets.

I nearly forgot, but I made a cake! It amused the ladies at Knit and Natter when I was asked what I was making.  This is a pattern from 50 Toys to Knit magazine on Readly and is a pattern by Lynne Rowe.  I made this for my cake stand and hope to made a few more. There is a crochet cupcake, but I don't know where I got that pattern from.  I will need more cakes I think.

On the sewing front I haven't done very much.  No progress this month on the black/pink quilt, which is hibernating at present.  I have made a couple of Siblings Together blocks for Kayleigh.

and made some blocks for the current block drive

They look pretty! I'm thinking this a good one for using larger scraps.

But I have started a small project from Instagram (hashtag) springmysteryproject by Stitching Notes and Nordic Crafter and have got as far as stitching a tiny ladybird.  There is a little more embroidery and the zip to insert too and hope to get that done this weekend.

Also in progress is my stitch book and I have made a yellow page.  This is two pieces of log cabin joined together and tacked into the book.  I have added a Suffolk Puff and there are a couple of hexagons to add that are currently clipped to the top of the left page.

So that's all the knitting and sewing for this month.

Now the trains - 2 miniature railways in one week - Moors Valley Railway near Ringwood. This was my youngest granddaughter, Cecily, enjoying the ride

Then we went on a ride on the railway at the Bath and West Showground, which was a surprisingly large layout.  Lovely to feel like a kid when riding on these little railways.

We went to London and hadn't been on the Docklands Light Railway before but we have now. We were right at the front!

More of that in another post.  

I'm linking this to Mini Archie's April Furtle Around the Blogosphere. 

April Musings

 We’ve been out and about over Easter and having family time with my youngest son and family, as his birthday was over the Easter weekend. Being as his birthday was on the 16th, it either comes over Easter holidays or Easter has come and gone! 

Just along the road from where he lives there’s a postbox with an Easter topper.

During this last week we visited Wimborne as we had an appointment there and we took the opportunity to visit the recently refurbished Museum of East Dorset.  This is a lovely small museum of local life with a long garden, which was lovely to walk around in the sunny weather. 

Inside was a collection of Victorian cards.  The building once was a stationers shop, which was owned by John Lowe and on his death the shop was closed and sealed for many years.

Some Valentines cards were called Acid Valentines, a beautiful card with a rather barbed greeting! 

We had a wander through the building and took a few pics

The was a wall hanging with printed panels.

This bar window was in an outside yard, with the sun shining through.  Love the pattern on this.

A rag rug in the kitchen in front of the range. So it was good to spend time at a local museum.

Anyway, back to some sewing and a new small project inspired by Instagram.  This is the Spring Secret Project by two ladies, Irina and Larisa who go under the (hashtag) sipteaandepp. It is a little pouch with some EPP and embroidery. This is how far I’ve got. Sorry, the photo isn’t brilliant - will do better next time!  The pouch is quilted by machine. Hand sewing the wedges together and since I took the photo there’s a little embroidery to add, which I’m. In the process of doing.

Sadly over the weekend there has been a large Heath fire not far from where I live, people who lived in the vicinity of the fire has to evacuated for a while but fortunately it didn’t get as far as the houses.  But it did cause extensive damage.  The vegetation might recover, but wildlife lost will take longer.  This was in this morning’s Guardian Newspaper.

My Stitch Book

 I really liked making my Sew 4 the Soul book from 2020, which I posted about here, that I wanted to make another stitching book.  Taking the previous book’s construction I used this method again of joining signatures (pages) together and joining at the ‘spine’ with blanket stitch.  The signatures are made from joined pieces of wadding as I keep wadding scraps and will sew into larger pieces.

I was originally going to follow Roxy’s Creations themes for a Book of Stichery each month and the first month (January) was lace and bouncing bunnies.  Roxy’s  Creations, however, use an old book cover ans adding fabric pages onto paper pages.  Well I do have the bunnies on that set of pages but I seemed to have settled on a colour theme of pink and is raw edge pieced.  I then decided I would have a colour theme for each page set with different technique and it would set my own boundaries. Thanks to my friend Brenda for the wooden pink rabbit on the last hand side.

My second set has a neutral colour whites/creams with kantha stitching and will have flower appliqué, which is currently pinned on at present.  

The third set are green fabrics sewn in with stitch and flip technique, with the addition of selvedges. I’m considering whether to stitch leaves on this one.

The fourth page used hexagons in blue, most of which were part of the 100 hexies 100 days project of 2018.  Included in this were hexagons from a piece of ombré rainbow fabric.  Unfortunately I had to cut off the bottom row to fit the pages. I’d also decided to go from dark to light across the page.

There are more pages to add fabrics to and they are from my scrap box mainly but I don’t mind taking from my stash.  I’m not using new items, just using what I have and I have plenty of fabric and thread.  The only new thing bought has been this lovely magnetic needle minder, purchased at the WCE Dorset Day.

To all these pages there will be embroidery stitches and embellishments to be added, which I can go back to whenever I want.  I’ve got an assortment of buttons, sequins and other bits and bobs to add.  

So this will be a slow project in between other makings and I expect it to take about a year and is proving to be a relaxing and enjoyable piece of sewing. 

Its like Buses!

 I don't blog for a while then two come along in the same day!!  In fairness, I did start the last blog post yesterday and finished off today.  I thought I'd post about a day out to Brooklands Museum, where we went on Wednesday.  There is currently a series called Secrets of the Transport Museum that is shown on the Yesterday channel.  David and I went with our friend.

The site was originally owned by Hugh and Ethel Locke-King who proceeded to build a large racing track (most of which you can see today, but only a short part of it can be used) and was used for the early days of motor racing at the beginning of 20th century.  Aeroplane manufacturer Vickers took over the land and built a factory for making planes during the First World War.  There is more about the history here.  In hall there are historical artefacts to do with aeroplane manufacture including some sewing machines, made by Vickers to make the canvas for early planes.

There were buildings dedicated to racing cars, bicycles and motorbikes as well as planes. 

I was interested in this pattern on one of the cars

This one above was James Hunt's car 

I can't remember who drove this one, but in a few short years the shape of the cars changed quite a bit.

I was fascinated by the trophies awarded to racers, some of them were really large and must have taken some lifting and how the winners found anywhere to put them, I don't know, but some were really impressive.  This one pictured was at least 3' tall!

Then it was the buses, this is what David really wanted to see - the London Bus Museum.  Both of us having grown up on the outskirts of London, we were quite familiar with Routemasters, and single decker RF buses with London and London Country liveries.  I remember taking one of these single deck buses from Slough to Heathrow Airport when I worked in the hotels as a teenager.

And I couldn't not take a Routemaster bus picture

We had some time outside to see the planes, one of which was one of the Concordes.

Lastly we went into the Maclaren exhibition hall, but I was only interested in taking a photo of the Lego version

It did say how many bricks it took, but I didn't take much notice, its probably a lot!

It was a good day out and a place we've been meaning to go to for ages now done.

It’s April!

 Here’s my monthly marker for this month

The main thing I’ve been working on this month has been my kaleidoscope quilt of which the middle block is the Dresden Plate block which has set off the other 8 blocks and now I have a completed quilt top.

I’m making decisions about the backing and I have enough wadding left from finishing the black orange quilt in February.  I have enough long strips and width strips of the remaining pink fabric to make the binding so I’m hoping this will be finished this month.

March has been about making small things and there were mini workshops as West Country Embroiderers with origami butterflies, a bird card and little boxes.

I’ve made a small Kantha stitched piece of a daffodil for a card.

Also on the sewing front I made 2 blocks for Siblings Together Bee which was this lovely block 

And also an ATC for the TG swap.  I usually make 2 cards, one to keep, one to swap.

The theme on the card above is daydreams, my idea is looking up at the sky though the trees.  I free machined the branches, added a 'confetti' of green fabric onto Bondaweb and ironed on.  I put some fine net on top and added free machined leaves.  I hope it looks like a daydream and not a nightmare!

My brown cardigan is progressing well.  I’ve reached the bottom of the body, where there is a deep garter stitch border instead of ribbing.  This is the Harvest Cardigan pattern by Tin Can Knits and I’m using King Cole Fashion Aran Combo, which I started at the end of February.

At the end of March we went for a day out at Brooklands Museum, which has featured on a programme on Yesterday channel’s Secrets of the Transport Museum series.  An enjoyable place to go even if not too much of a transport fanatic.  Really liked the London Bus Museum there, reminded me of the buses we used when living around the Slough are many moons ago. 

Anyway that was it for March.  I was going to do a post about my stitch book but will do that a little later this month.

Joining Mini Archie’s Furtle Around the Blogosphere, here