Blimey, It’s the End of March

 How did that happen? This year is whizzing by a break neck speed! It’s the Easter weekend already and tomorrow will be April.

So what has kept me busy this month.  First, a finish at the beginning, which was my second Sungold lap blanket in the Dahlia stitch, which I posted about here. The two blankets came in useful recently when we had a cold night the early last week without heating as we had the boiler replaced.  Here’s a pic of both blankets together (the first one was finished last month) and there was still some yarn left! 

I did a small crochet make to replace a cactus that I had neglected (I’m not good at keeping houseplants) and dug out my book of Crochet Succulents by Emma Varnam to make a small ball cactus with a little pink flower.  I had to make the crochet ‘soil’ to fit into the little planter with fewer rows to fit it, but it looks good and I will make two more to fit in the planter. There is a real plant next to it, hanging on for dear life! This was a quick make which only took an afternoon.

Another bit of knitting done is this clown, Mr Fortywinks, which I’ve mentioned on the blog in my last post just a few days ago.

Now on the needles is Florrie the Chicken Mad Fox. She just looked so cute. I’ve got as far as making the body parts other than the legs and am currently making Florrie’s Cardigan.

This was a kit from Lucy Locket Land, the pattern by Julie Williams of Little Cotton Rabbits. There is a lot of detail.   I would like to make a sheep one later.

So that yarny stuff, but there has been some stitching.  With the middle of the month being International Quilting Day I did some quilting of some blocks which will eventually be joined Quilt As You Go style.

Some of the blocks were made last year, some several years before and it was time to start making the blocks into a quilt,  but as yet not joined together, but getting there.

I made myself a big bag, just like the large red one I’ve made way back in 2008, but this time in blue. A good size to take to workshops. I made a large sew and flip quilted panel and cut off part of the panel to make gussets for the sides.  A good contrast for the inside of the bag helps to make things easier to find.

A joint effort this month was to recover the dining chairs and there are 6 of them.  They were recovered several years ago in vinyl fabric, which was crumbling.  It’s getting harder to find furnishing fabric by the metre, but found in Westbourne (between Bournemouth and Poole) this crushed velvet effect fabric. It’s smartened them up a treat. (That’s not a real dog, just our doorstop).

I have been doing some paper crafting this month with the Townswomen’s Guild i Group making a couple of cards using folded squares of double sided card, onto mirror card. I didn’t have plain 12” card for the base so used a patterned on which was white on one side.

My ATC for this month is ‘Alphabets’ and I made this using cut out letters from magazines (one crochet, one quilting) on a painted (not by me) background. I covered over with Modge Podge to make sure the letter ps were really stuck down. The border top and bottom were the stitch diagram from the crochet magazine.

I did make a doodle version, but decided not to send that. It may be something to have another go at sometime though.

No wonder this month went quickly.  Next month I hope to have a finished fox and the quilt blocks progressed further, but April we will be on holiday for 8 days in Holland.