FNSI February

 Many thanks Wendy for our Friday Night Sew In - see who else took part here

My first sewing for the day, as always at the moment, was my Stitch Journal. The red page is slowly filling, well actually the month seems to be whizzing past and the page is filling quite quickly!

Yesterdays pebble was the stacked herringbone cross, lower middle. Such a versatile stitch herringbone. And while I am on a red theme here and as I will be linking with Angela for her RSC update here are my log cabins for the month with Jennifer's lovely embroidery (slightly altered to suit me) in the middle of one of them.

These were finished earlier in the week.

But back to Friday. I finally had a trip to a LQS, tucked away on a farm up in the Quantock hills and managed to spend a small fortune but came away with lots of goodies! One of which was binding fabric for my Red Manor House quilt. I machined the binding onto the quilt earlier in the week and have been spending some time each evening hemming it down. So that was my next Friday job. It's a long way around that quilt! I got quite a bit done yesterday but still more to do. Here is work in progress - I think about a quarter left.

Another purchase was the backing fabric for Wings and Pretty Things which has also been waiting quite a while for this next stage. I layered this up at my patchwork group on Tuesday afternoon.

As soon as I have finished hemming RMH I will start hand quilting this. Am so looking forward to quilting again!

Also while I had a large table to work on I layered up last years RSC top.

Those creases are from folding since I layered up - it was ironed before!! This one is for machine quilting and probably Linus so no hurry at the moment.

I think that is all my news for now so I will leave you with the first daffodils in our garden - later than most peoples, I think because they are in a part of the garden that gets no sun. Have a lovely week.

Friday Night with Friends, again!

 Lovely to get another chance to link up with stitchers around the globe for a creative Friday night. Many thanks Cheryll and you can see who else joined in here

I have been travelling this week and was a little behind with my stitch journal but got it all up to date Friday evening. Here is how my reds are looking.

While I was away I was able to crack on with my knitting on coach and train. The swallow sock has progressed nicely and yesterday evening I completed the decrease after the heel turn.

This is knitting up beautifully, however, it is now going to join the easy lace sock I finished last weekend in the UFO bag as I now have a commission for two pairs of socks which need to take priority. The first pair are in another WYS bird yarn called robin. Stay tuned.

I stayed a couple of nights at Frinton on Sea which is across on the east coast in Essex. It is unusual for a seaside town in that there are no shops or amusements along the sea front. Just apartments and houses looking out over a wide green to the sea. There are lots of colourful beach huts along the promenade. I had a couple of lovely walks along the prom and thought I had taken more photographs but it appears not!

It had been very windy the day before and you can see all the pebbles along the prom that had been thrown up by the sea.

You may need to click on this next photograph to enlarge it. In the mist is a huge wind turbine farm.

Thats all from me this week - hopefully I shall be back next week for FNSI. Have a great week.

FNWFs that wasn't!

 Well some of us were stitching along together yesterday! Never mind Cheryll - we are happy to go again next week and if anyone wants to join in then you can sign up now here 

First up for my Friday after a very pleasant day spent with family was my Stitch Journal. Having finished with January

I have moved onto the RSC colour of red for February.

Some of those reds are a bit more coral than red but they are beautiful threads and need using! Here are days one and two.

Next up some knitting. I finished this first lacy sock and I do love how the colours have worked.

As I have some travelling to do next week my next job was to make a start on a Winwick Mum basic sock that will be easy to pick up while I am away. More West Yorkshire Spinners yarn, this one is called Swallow.

And that was my evening - looking forward to next Friday now.

And while I am here another green finish for January - a new Swedish peg bag as my old one had finally, after many years, given up and need to find the bin.

I made this one a little smaller and it is perfect for my needs.

So that is me all caught up. Have a great week everyone.

Weekend Catchup

 I have been keeping up with my stitch journal. Gave the finished sections a good press before photographing!

Here is a close up of the latest sections.

Today's box is outlined but not filled in yet - random crosses I think will go in there. I have enjoyed using my greens but am now looking forward to February and getting out some red threads.

Friday was a good day. It started out with a brief visit to The Chookshed and a zoom chat with a few lovely ladies. It was early for me - 8am - so I think they had been on there a while. As always good to catch up. But it was such a lovely day here that as soon as I had some washing on the line we headed out to the coast. We went to Dunster beach on the West Somerset coast.

We took a walk first through the holiday chalet park - pretty much deserted at this time of year - and discovered a lake and a nature walk. I love this bridge over the lake.

And the ducks and geese swimming on it.

We walked back to the car along the coast path - the tide was out, just starting to come in. Too hazy for a view of Wales today.

Mr and Mrs Stonechat posed beautifully for me!

I never tire of taking pictures of these groynes.

Spot them in yesterdays journal block....

Earlier in the week I finished quilting the little cot quilt I have been working on . I found the flimsy recently and have no idea when it was made! Some years ago for sure. Anyway I decided it was high time it was finished off especially as I have a friend who can find a good home for it with a charity supporting young mothers. So Friday evening I set to and finished hemming down the binding - just a simple one using backing fabric brought over from the back.

I am hopefully going to run this through the washing machine this week so will do a proper photoshoot then. Nice to have a finish though in January.

Well that is all my news for now, hope you are all enjoying the weekend.

FNSI January

 And many thanks to Wendy for inviting us again, I look forward to joining everyone on the 3rd Friday for our get together.

I was a bit lax I am afraid on the photograph front. My first task was to alter a skirt - not exciting and certainly not worth a pic!

Next up however I started quilting a cot quilt. The top is one that I made back in the mists of time and has been sitting around waiting for attention. I got it layered up last year and thought I would make a start on the quilting while I had the machine out. I have done about half which took me an hour so I know that next time I get the machine out I need to set aside and hour to finish it off. Sadly it got packed away along with the machine before I realised that I ought to have taken a photo!

In the evening I worked first on my stitch journal. Here is an up to date picture. At the moment I am working on blanket stitch variations.

Then a little bit of knitting on my lace socks.

In other news, the crochet blanket is finished. Pleased with how this turned out and hope it will give someone a nice warm hug next winter.

We have had some cold weather over the last week or so with -7 a couple of nights this week. Mild today and more rain on the way!

I will leave you with a few of my favourite frosty pics.

Saturday catchup

 It's been a cold week here, mostly grey but there were a couple of lovely sunny days. At the moment we are promised snow for next week but we shall see.

It has been an up and down week but lovely to meet up with friends today for lunch at a local farm shop cafe. Good company and delicious food too.

However, I have managed to keep up with my daily stitch journal so far and amazed to find that we are almost halfway through the month already. Here is my progress so far.

Also this week I have put the socks aside and have been working on the crochet ripple blanket that I started last year. It has now grown quite nicely and last night, after I had taken this picture, I finished the ripples and started on a narrow border.

So hopefully a finish for my next post.

Have a good week.

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.