Now That I'm 55....

Now that I'm 55, I have finally finished the embroidery wall hanging.  As a recap, the plan was to embroider 54 little squares whilst I was still 54, sew them all together and make a wall hanging.

Well, I did manage to get all 54 squares embroidered whilst I was still 54, but the sewing them together and making a wall hanging took a bit longer.

But finally, it's done and here it is.

I'm so pleased with it.  Each square is 3 inches square.  I used English Paper Piecing to join them together.  Each intersection of the squares has a button attached.

I love looking at it, and every time I pick a new favourite square.  Which one is your favourite?

So now I'm 55, I don't think I'll be making 55 of anything this year.  Maybe next year I might plan something around the number 56, but for now I think I've got enough stuff progressing without making any more work for myself.

I'll let you see what other things I've been making this past week in my next post.  In the meantime, happy crafting.

Where I'm At

April already, this year is just whizzing by.  It's a rainy day here today, so a quiet knitting day is planned.

I had a bit of a mad cast on, yesterday.  Having finished a number of projects earlier in the week, I felt I could treat myself to some new ones.

Firstly, I couldn't wait to start knitting some socks with the yarn Grace bought me for my birthday.  Just look at the gorgeous colours in this.

Totally delicious.  It's Wendy Roam Fusion in the Force colourway.  Here's what we have so far.

Toe cosies!  And even better, they match!  The colours are about to change to a lovely deep blue, so that's what I'm going to be working on this afternoon.

I've also cast on for another cropped cardigan.  Using this wool.

Yes the labels are correct, it was only £1 per 50g ball.  The wool has no label but it is soooooo soft.  I bought nine balls altogether when I was at Yarndale last year.  I've knit 6 rows of rib so far and it really is beautiful to knit with.

And then, just because I can, I cast on for another shawl.  Yes I now have more shawls than I need but I love knitting them and it's nice to have a variety of course.

I'm using Knit Global 4 ply yarn in the Summer Berries colourway - there's no way I can ever resist a colour that has "berries" in its name.  It'll be a simple feather and fan shawl, very easy to knit.

So that's my knitting projects all up to date.

As far as my stash busting goes, I'm pleased to say that March was a very successful month.  In total I busted 1410g of yarn, and that's allowing for the 200g of new yarn that found its way into the stash.  Obviously things were helped along by the generous donation of yarn to Grace, but it all counts.  So my running total of stash that has been busted since the weigh-in in February, is 2.165 kg - that's just under 5 lbs in imperial weights - so I'm very pleased.  It's 1/9th of my total stash.  It's all looking good for Yarndale later in the year!

I haven't mentioned my embroidery project for quite a while, so I thought I'd give a glimpse of where I'm at.  If you remember, I was embroidering 54 squares, while I was still 54.  And amazingly, I did get them all finished before my birthday.  I got into a lovely rhythm of a square a day, and it was a very pleasurable project to work on.

So now I have the task of joining them all.  I'm using the English Paper Piecing technique to make three inch squares.  I've tacked them all up and here they are.

Here's a close up of some of them.

Plenty of variety in them.  I'm now looking forward to planning the layout of the squares to make my wall hanging.  There's still a lot of work to be done, but it's coming along nicely.

And finally - gosh I have had a productive week - I made some spicy fruity biscuits.

They have nearly all gone, so delicious.  So that's me, keeping busy and enjoying my creative life.

Have a lovely weekend, may your days be filled with love and inspiration.

Embroidery Squares - the next instalment

I'm getting back on schedule with my embroidery squares.  I seem to be racing through them now - but it's quite a punishing schedule.

Since I last showed you the squares, I have completed another twelve.  Because there are so many, I've condensed them into three collages, so that we're not here all day!

These first four squares (starting in the top left hand corner and working clockwise) represent cross stitch (I actually did some chicken scratch embroidery because I wasn't in the mood for ordinary cross stitch); patchwork; lace and seaside (I love this one).

These second set of squares represent kite; lines (drawn thread work is always fun to do); felt and winter.

The final four squares represent beads; sunshine; butterfly and layers.  The butterfly square is probably my favourite, it's an orange tip butterfly.

Making the mini collages gives an idea of how the squares might look once they've all been joined together.  But that's a long way off, I'm just concentrating on getting them done for now.

I've got another two planned for this afternoon and I'm quite excited by how they will look.  Twenty five squares have already been completed so by the end of today I should be half way through this project.  I'm enjoying it so much, embroidery is a lovely relaxing activity for a blustery February afternoon.

I hope you have an enjoyable and relaxed weekend.  Bye for now.

Embroidery Catch Up

I bet you had forgotten all about my embroidery squares project - I know that over Christmas, I had.  My mission is to complete 54 little squares of embroidery which will be sewn together to make a wall hanging.  The significance of the number 54 is that it is my age, so one square for each year.

Now time, as usual is flying, and I'm concerned that before too long I will be 55, in which case I will have to make 55 squares.  And if I don't finish them next year, the total will go up again.  I fear I may have to be making 87 squares if I don't get a move on.

I'm not even a quarter of the way through yet, so it's probably a bit optimistic to expect to get all the squares completed by early March, so I'll set the deadline as the end of March and see how that works out.

I picked the 54 topics that I would use for the squares in advance and I do a lucky dip when I start each square, so that it's completely random.

This weekend, I disciplined myself to put the knitting to one side and focused on embroidery.  It really is a most relaxing pastime, which I always feel I should devote more time to.  Well, hopefully over the next few weeks I will be spending more time with the embroidery needle rather than the knitting needles.

So here are my latest squares.  Firstly "pink" -

The next topic was letters - but I decided to go for a single letter J.

That one was certainly quite time-consuming, so for the next topic of "sunflower" I kept it simple (and quick) with some felt, beads and minimal embroidery.

This last one is my favourite of the four.  The topic is "key" and I used blackwork to create a rather fancy key design.

So still a long way to go but it's a lot of fun and it's good to see the squares starting to pile up.

Have a good week.

Time for London

I seem to be playing a game of catch up at the moment.  There aren't enough days in the week lately.  This is because we've been away from home the last few weekends, so I'm not in my usual routine - not that I'm complaining, it's good to get out and about.

Last weekend we had a lovely trip down to London on the train to stay with Eve.  It was the first time we had seen her since her move there at the end of August so it was wonderful to be reunited.  She's settled in nicely into her flat and is enjoying her work.  It's so good to know she is happy - what more could any parent want.

Eve's flat is not far from the Tower of London, so we had a wander down to the river and explored the area.

It was a great weekend and I'm looking forward to more visits and more exploring.

Craft-wise, I've now completed another two squares as part of my embroidery project.

Creating the clock face was fun, it's lightly padded to make it 3D.

I can embroider time but I need to find a way of creating more time!

I've just completed one of the shawls I was knitting but there are no photos yet - I'll save them for another post.  Until then, I hope all is well with you.  Bye for now.

Still Not Knitting

Well, September has been a long month.  My "no knitting"  month has certainly been enlightening.  I've had to adjust to finding new crafts to fill my evenings and I've enjoyed the challenge.

One thing I wanted to try this month was spinning with a drop spindle.  I have had a spindle and some wool waiting to be spun for years, but I've never got round to trying it.  I wasn't sure of the credentials of the spindle I already possessed, so I bought a beginner's spindle when I was at Yarndale.  The wool I have hasn't been carded and looks a bit like roadkill!

I thought that if I can work out how to spin this I'll be ready to tackle anything.  My first attempts were pitiful - the good bits are when Grace was having a go, my bits are the lumpy blobs.

So I re-read the instruction leaflet I'd been given and tried again.

And what do you know, something must have clicked into place and it all seemed to go much better.

So now instead of blobs of chunky wool, I'm managing something that could pass for 4 ply.  I still need to work on achieving consistent thickness, but I'm getting there.

What joy to learn a new skill.  I'll keep practising with this old stuff and then invest in something colourful to spin.  Who knows, I might one day be able to spin enough to make a pair of socks.  How about you?  Are any of you proficient spinners?

This month, I've also been working on my 54 squares embroidery project.  I have another three squares to share with you.

For the first one, the prompt was flower.  I didn't want to just embroider a basisc flower so I thought I would use some ribbon embroidery as an alternative.  So here is my ribbon rose.

The next topic was fish.  I thought about embroidering a colourful tropical fish, but then I remembered that my star sign is Pisces, so of course I should do this.

The third new square I've completed had the prompt sequins.  So a simple trail of floral sequins was what I came up with.

I'm so enjoying this project.  It's fun to pick each topic at random and the number of squares is growing quite quickly.

My English paper piecing quilt is also growing very nicely, I'll share some progress pictures of that tomorrow.

So plenty getting done, despite not knitting.  But Thursday can't come soon enough now.

Piling Up the Squares

Lately I've been having fun working away on my embroidery squares.  I've stitched another three and I'm really enjoying this project.

The second topic out of the lucky dip jar was 'rainbow'.

I decided to use a blue background to represent the sky and embroidered the colours of the rainbow using a different stitch for each colour.

For the third square, the topic was 'yellow'.

Some yellow flowers for this one on yellow fabric (but I should have pressed the square before I photographed it).

Yesterday, I picked out the topic 'summer'.  I wasn't sure what to do for this one.  I thought about embroidering some seashells but decided in the end to make a mini cross stitch sampler.

Strawberries, butterflies and dainty flowers, I think this is a good combination to represent summer.

So that's a total of four squares completed, only fifty more to go!  But it's such a fun project, I think it will all be done in no time.