FNWFs December

 Many thanks to Cheryll for organising our Friday night get together. Sadly she is now moving to Facebook only - Facebook and I do not see eye to eye - so I will no longer be joining in but it has been fun over many years.

As usual I started my afternoon with my Stitch Journal and added a Christmas tree as that was what I did next. Here is my SJ week.

And here is my tree complete with lovely new tree skirt!

After that I moved on to some relaxing knitting. Earlier in the year I spotted this ball of yarn in a tiny shop in Cornwall and fell in love with the colours.

Not bothering to read the label I snapped it up. Of course I later realised that it was going to knit up in wide stripes which is not my favourite😢but I still love the colours and with some bamboo in the mix it has a lovely sheen and a soft feel.

And what about the other Ryegrass sock I hear you ask? Well I realised that I needed some new socks PDQ and the Ryegrass were taking too long, hence the new start. I can knit these while watching television and I did all that stocking stitch last night so hopefully I will soon have these finished.

Otherwise this week I have been working on the bag to store my Stitch Journal in at the end of the year. It is now finished. The stitching did somewhat distort the fabric....

                                              

......however the bag looks fine when it has the stitch roll inside and I am calling the slope on the flap a 'design feature'. The stitched fabric has a lovely feel to it.

That is all from me - back to getting out decorations and writing Christmas cards now. Have a great week.

Frosty mornings

 We have had a couple this week. I had to pop out to the car first thing this morning and found these beautiful feathery shapes on the windscreen.

Aren't they gorgeous!

This week I have mostly been using some accumulated oddments of thread in my Stitch Journal - those bits of expensive thread that are too long to throw away!

And as it is the end of the month, a view of the month in stitch.

You may remember that I am using what I think was a nightdress case as the background for my roll. I unpicked the case and cut it into three 6" x 48" strips and have stitched on two of the strips. It seemed obvious to use the third strip to make a case for the finished roll. I have doubled up the strip and sewn it together and am now embellishing it before I fold it into 3 and make it into a small bag.

I plan to work my way along the strip in a rainbow of colour.

The tree skirt is finished. I used this Hatched and Patched pattern.

It is 19" across although the pattern gives dimensions of 20". However, it would be easy enough to extend the segments for a larger skirt. This will be perfect for my small tabletop tree.

Also finished this week is my first Ryegrass sock.

Not the sock I am most proud of although I do love those colours. I got bored with the slowness of the pattern halfway along the foot and you can see I finished it off with stripes. You will also notice the colour mistake when I swapped from pattern to stripe - I spotted it as I started the toe and was not about to undo it! I have done the rib for the second sock - maybe I will start on the pattern tghis week. I need to get in the habit of doing one 8 row pattern sequence a day.

I have also done some more quilting on the Dresden quilt - no pics though as you have seen enough.

We picked up a job lot of garden pots at our local house clearance depot recently, for a very reasonable price. Included was this welly boot pot which I gave a good wash and planted up with Cyclamen and ivy. Love it on my front door step.

And finally it is Advent Sunday and my Advent calendar is in position poised for tomorrow morning. The first of my Christmas decorations - the rest will come out of hiding later this week.

Happy Advent to one and all.

FNSI November

 And I have to admit that FNSI completely passed me by - but then I don't join in on Facebook so probably not surprising. Facebook is something I check first thing in the morning to see if anyone has a birthday and then I move on to more interesting things!

Anyway, my Friday was productive. After a little Christmas shopping in Taunton's Independent Quarter where there are some delightful shops including a new cheese shop which I made a beeline for, I spent some time with my sewing machine.

If you remember, I have been embroidering a little Christmas roundel each month this year and now is time to make up my Christmas Tree Skirt. It all went together pretty easily yesterday afternoon and in the evening I started appliqueing the roundels. Here it is so far.

I do like how it is looking although if I was starting again I might use a variegated blue thread with a little silver for the embroideries. Finished pictures next week.

My Stitch Journal picture for the week.

Now that the ripple blanket is finished I have started quilting my RSC Dresden Flower quilt which is nice and warm on my legs these chilly evenings. I ditch quilted around the blocks earlier in the year and am now just adding some hand quilting to the flowers. These work up quite quickly.

Also making a reappearance this week are my Ryegrass socks although I have no picture. Am hoping to have the first one finished by the end of the week.

We had two beautiful frosty but sunny days this week. Such a lovely change after all the grey and rain, which we are sadly back to today. Should have taken some frosty pics, the car was covered in white which sparkled in the sun.

We had a couple of days out this week meeting friends but nowhere photo worthy although we did have a nice couple of lunches. Maybe next week, hope you have a good one. 

My week

 A quiet week here with just one day out to meet friends for lunch. And I seem to have had a quiet week on the sewing front too. However, I have kept up with my stitch journal and here it is for the last week.

I have started on a new theme today - but you will have to wait until next week for that!

My Christmas tree skirt rondel for the month is complete - only one more of these to do.

And this sock is coming along nicely - I haven't touched the Ryegrass one.

I opened up some of my solar dye jars this week and I am pleased with the results. This first one is avocado stones. This time I chopped the stones and cooked them for a bit in the microwave with some water then used that in my jars. It has given a nice soft browny pink which I like.

This next one is from fresh buddleia flowers (lilac) which has given this lovely dark yellowy green.

And in this last jar I used new leaves from our corkscrew hazel which has given a nice warm yellow.

I have tried to adjust the colours in my photos to give as accurate a colour as possible but the last one didn't want to play nicely. So I am very happy with those. I have a feeling that the laces, which are new, need a run through the washing machine to remove some sort of dressing as they don't seem to be taking up much dye.

I have been playing around in my sketchbook with ideas for my sketchbook cover - Chookshed Challenge #7 - and come up with something I like. I have just used shapes from the sketchbook and their placement needs to be adjusted.

The trouble I am having is that in my mind this cover has always been white which of course is totally impractical! So now I am thinking that the base should be a mixture of turquoise and terracotta, two colours I associate with the middle east, maybe kantha stitched with these designs embroidered on top. Still a work in progress as you can tell.

Anyway that is me up to date - I need to go and rummage in my fabric boxes. Have a great week.

Saturday Catchup

 And we have another mini heatwave here in UK - clear blue skies and 30+ temperatures for a few days. I have been making good use of the extra time indoors and completed the stitching on the cover panels for my book. My Chookshed Challenge for the month.

I had an afternoon to myself and had planned to trim all the panels and get them stitched together.

But by the time I had them all trimmed I was too hot to think about lugging the machine out of it's hidyhole, so now that is a job for next week.

My Stitch Journal has progressed and I am taking inspiration from the garden at the moment.

I have completed my little stitchery roundel for the Christmas Tree skirt

and have been knitting my way through more cricket and football. Have now turned the heel on my second sock and am on the home straight!

I am off to find the fan again - hope you have a great week. xx

FNWFs June

 Lovely to be joining in with Cheryll and friends again yesterday evening - not much time to sew during the day as I am decorating.

So as usual I started with my stitch journal and here you can see my progress over the last week with the blue buttonhole variation and it's cretan stitch filling being last nights contribution.

Then I moved onto sewing a few more Japanese folded squares. I cut these out earlier in the week to add to the bag I already had. I don't remember sewing these before but I am glad I am not making many more as some of them are proving tough on my hands!

These are the ones I have made this week - that pinned one is proving to be particularly tough so I am leaving it til the end incase I can do without it. Still trying to work out when I first made these but I know it was a long time ago as I was using polyester batting and I have not used that for a very long time!

I have embroidered my Tree Skirt roundel for the month - this was a simple one.

And I have done some sock knitting and am nearly to the toe now - hopefully a finish this week.

So that was my Friday night, and my week.

Hope you all have a great week.

FNWFs May and other things!

 The car was booked in for a service on Friday afternoon so I went along with some quilting to do and sat in one of their comfy chairs drinking their very good - for a machine - coffee. Two hours later, all was well and I had completed quite a bit of quilting. Sadly I cannot show you as it is 'secret stitching'!

In the evening I worked on my stitch journal - that last lollipop tree was my Friday stitching.

And my stitch journal pictures for April

Many thanks to Cheryll for getting us together on Friday - always lovely to see what everyone is doing.

This week has seen a couple of new starts, first up a new pair of Winwick Mum basic socks. And by the way, if you have knitted a pair of WM basic socks over the last year then there is a great giveaway - this is the link Winwick Mum you need to read through the post for details.

I am using King Cole Zig Zag yarn which I have never used before so am looking forward to seeing what pattern emerges as I knit.

Another new start this week has been a Ripple Blanket using Lucy's lovely pattern I aim to use up some of my autumnal DK wools. No hurry with this one, just as and when. Maybe not so much over the summer should we get any warm weather!

On the subject of which, it has been a warm week here with temperatures of 26/27 degrees. Most un April/May like. Cooling down now though but it has not rained for a while.

Completed this week was my tree skirt roundel

these sew up nice and quickly.

I just had to initiate a major search for my Chookshed Challenge #8 as it was not in the box I had expected it to be in! However, having found it I now also know where #5 is, when we get to it!

So this is my #8

and it just needs making up into a cushion cover. It's just under 18" square so a decent size. I made it many years ago when I was trying out applique and never finished it because I didn't have a home for it. But I think I may have found one now. The fabrics were all Procion dyed with hand applique and hand quilting.

That quilting looks amazingly neat and tiny but the fabrics were all cotton lawn which makes for easier stitching.

So I think that is all I have to tell you this week - hope you all have a good week.