Friday Night With Friends

 And here we are in September! Autumn is beginning and we are starting to clear the garden of plants that have gone over. Thinking about planting bulbs for the spring and feeling thankful for the rain we have had over the last few days and moistening our very dry ground.

Lovely to join in with everyone yesterday for another Friday of sewing. Thanks to Cheryll for organising and you can pop over here to see what everyone was working on.

As usual I started after lunch with my Stitch Journal. We have these little 'pebbles' to fill in this month and I am enjoying working in the round again. I especially love the ones that have finished up with a dimensional look, like shells or urchins. Black (and grey and silver) is of course this months RSC colour.

No work on my Boro flower panel this week - I got side tracked by a Stitch Club video from Textile Artist.org. They usually do a freebie in September and this one really interested me. It is by Deb Cooper who creates beautiful work using recycled fabrics, plant dyes and rust. Well, I do love a bit of rust so how could I resist.

Basically the technique uses fabrics and threads in natural fibres and neutral colours. I have spent this week putting together a small sampler - aprox 6" x 12" - using cotton, linen and silk fabric scraps and threads using a variety of stitches. Deb includes torn papers and found objects too. I must say I loved doing this and also love my sampler - so much so that I had to be really strong and strict with my self to move on to the next stage! Here is my completed sampler.

Next stage was to bundle it up with some rusty nails and a small lump of rusty metal I found in the garage

sorry about the poor lighting! And it is now soaking in hot strong tea for 24 hours.

Well, we were told 48 hours is better but I can't wait that long especially as you have to leave it to dry out before unfolding! Come back next week for the results.

Next up I needed to make a start on my RSC log cabins. The strips are cut but first I needed to embroider the little Joy in the Ordinary block from Jennifer. Here it is today after I pressed and trimmed it.

Tonight I shall be sewing log cabins.

Also this week I managed to complete two socks.

Now, I don't usually knit two socks at a time but when I started the ones on the left (which use Amethyst and Wildflowers yarn from West Yorkshire Spinners) they were going to be in this Treasure Socks design. However, after knitting the leg I decided it was all too tight, even though I had knitted very loosely. So I went back to my usual basic sock pattern. Meanwhile I had also started the sparkly sock on the right as light relief from the pattern. Anyway, that is the story of these socks, two down, two more to go.

So I think that is me all caught up and I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else worked on last night.

Have a good week.

FNSI May

It has been a busy day so I was happy just to collapse onto the sofa in front of the TV with some nice, mindless knitting.

Earlier I had taken a break for half an hour after lunch to work on my stitch journal - todays is the bulls eye bottom right.

Thank you Wendy for getting us together again this Friday - pop over to Wendy's blog here to see who else took part.

Yesterday I finally got my RSC blocks finished along with Jennifer's lovely Joy block.

These blocks are building up nicely now and I will soon have to lay them all out to see how they are looking.

Well, that is all from me for today. Have a lovely weekend everyone.

January Friday Night with Friends

 Good to be back stitching and sharing on Friday nights for another year. Pop over to visit Cheryll here to see who else was stitching along.

It is the beginning of the month and so it is Rainbow Scrap Challenge time and the start of a new year means a new schedule of colours. First up was green and Angela suggested dark and bright greens.

I have two projects that I am linking up to the RSC this year. The first is a daily stitch journal. I am using 2023 templates for my journal from Karen Turner. I followed Karens progress last year on Instagram and thought that this would be a fun thing to do. However, I am not so keen on her 2024 templates so am sticking with 2023. Yes, I know, an extra day in Feb this year so some adjustment will need to be made! I pulled out a variety of dark and light green threads and have popped them into a small pouch which will also hold my fabric so I can just grab it and my scissors if I need a 'to go' project.

And here is my first page with the first 5 days filled in.

These are all chain stitch variations.

I had a couple of patchwork ideas in mind for the RSC but when Jennifer  published her first block of the month pattern for this year I thought that it would lend itself to RSC. The theme is Joy in the Ordinary which rather struck a chord with me. So here is my version of her block - I have used the sager greens in my stash and will use the dark and lights later in the year.

I then made two more blocks as I plan to make a larger quilt with the colours in rows.

Well, that is the plan at the moment!

Also underway earlier this week is another pair of socks. This time using some yarn that I picked up in a Charity shop from a company called Riverknits which I had never heard of before. It's a 4ply 100% Blue Faced Leicester, colourway Starry Night. And looking at their website I bagged myself a real bargain!

Anyway, it is knitting up beautifully as you can see - I am using Winwick Mum's Easy Lace pattern, which is in her book More Super Socks.

It finally seems to have stopped raining and we are set for a week of dry but cold weather. Which is fine by me as it looks as though it is going to be sunny, so perfect winter weather. Hopefully some nice walks followed by some warming soups and casseroles.

Have a lovely week.