Spring projects

Raspberry filled chocolates came to my mind when I knitted these socks for myself. Not that I could actually eat any milk chocolate, but I still remember the taste. I had cherished this yarn for many years and finally decided to use it.

At Villa Cooper a client has asked if I could make a small pouch like the ones for headphones I made last year

but with the zipper at the top edge. I tried, but making them look neat is more difficult this way.

For this lot I used the smallest scraps of Japanese fabrics from the big stash my DD Kaija left for me.

Spring is here but the only flowers in the garden so far have been the snowdrops, crocuses and now in bloom the Scilla Sibirica. I bought these Easter lilies at the florist for Easter. In the garden they will be up in a month or so!

Splendid Spring

While I was on a short trip to Germany, our snow had melted away and the first spring flowers in the garden and by the roadside came out. I have tried to catch up with the Splendid Sampler QAL. This one was finished weeks ago:

Some blocks took their time, like this one with a stitched doily:

Some other came together more quickly.

Today is a lovely sunny day but still very cold for bare hands, especially after hanging some laundry on the line to dry in the fresh air.

I took all these pictures around nine this morning so the shadows are still long.

Migrating birds are returning to Finland, and after the trip we greeted many newcomers, like finches, robins and song thrushes.

The paper-pieced block above seemed awfully difficult but it really wasn't that bad.

The rhubarbs and this newest block somehow matched perfectly. 16 blocks done, two to go for now. 

Polka Dot quilt top

Yesterday I pieced this top. The red framed blocks had been waiting for inspiration in a box for many years with the white fabric and all those dots and tiny checkered red and whites. I will add a border if there is enough fabric.

There is so little snow left, but now the weather forecast  says there will be more snow and colder weather by the end of next week. I hope the solar eclipse day will be a clear one! I have never really seen a solar eclipse, the previous one in 1990 was so early in the morning on a partly cloudy day that there was no real difference.

The snow around my snowdrops is gone too.

You may remember Kaija's art exhibition in February? Here is my loot, Sch..., , encyclopedia, and Triple equation. I placed them so that I can see them from my usual place on the sofa. I'm proud of her and happy to look at these treasures.

Strings finally finished

Here is the quilt I started early last year and and showed in my last post with the safety pins.

Now it is quilted and has a binding in the same blue as the inner border. The backing is a checkered flannel.

Today we had a big step towards Spring: in the morning mist we heard and saw the first whooper swans flying in a large circle above our home, looking for open waters. In the afternoon we saw maybe 20 of them in a flooded field; the lakes are still covered with ice. The first snowdrops have raised their buds through the snow in our flowerbed. Water is running in the rainwater pipes Mr K. installed last Summer, so the yard will soon stop being muddy. In the afternoon the sun was shining from a cloudless sky. I know we may still get lots of new snow, but it can't last too long.

Squares

This is the beginning of my Rona cardigan with the Rowan yarns I showed a while ago. I have been testing all colour combinations and the three different square patterns that make the biggest part of the cardigan.

 

 

These are all my favourite colours.

I still need to practice on this square to get it the same size as the others. I love the 3D flower!

This is a new project, to support the New Children's Hospital 2017 charity. Villa Cooper will have a closet full of bird theme items donated by the members of our club. The proceeds will go 100 % to the fundraising, just like the price of my Happy Scrappy Spring quilt.

 

I decided to make a low price product, a mug rug. Little birds appliquéd on linen with a heat and bond type material, and just machine stitched a couple of times around the edges with straight stitch.

 

I kept the shapes simple but noticed how easy it was to change the look by changing the wing angle

 

or playing a little with the legs to give a busy look.

 

Luckily I had an almost full reel of 20 mm bias binding to finish the edges. I made some careful measuring and sewed the bindings in loops before attaching to the square. Easy!

 

Look, there is a hint of green in the young birches!

 

March is between Winter and Spring

This morning the sun was up before 7 for the first time. The night had been clear so the temperature dropped just below freezing point and tiny diamonds of ice sparkled on the ground. New snowdrops are showing their buds.

 

 

My crafty mood has still been enjoying the warmth of wool yarns. The red train socks are my this month's socks for the babies in Järvenpää, but the two multi coloured pairs (yarn design Kaffe Fasset!) are going to the young couple across the street: their two little boys will be big brothers to new twins at the beginning of the Summer!

 

 

I chose the yarn carefully after the new maternity package colours were published some weeks ago. Here you can read about it in English and see this year's contents, fashion and colour choices. This package is highly valued and  all the items are of good quality. At the time when my three babies had their packages, almost everything was made in Finland. Unfortunately the textile industry has moved after cheaper labour  to other countries, but the designs are still of Finnish origin and the quality requirements are strict.

 

This is a more wintery picture of our great tits and a blue tit on the right, taken at the beginning of March. This morning, when taking pictures of the socks and snowdrops outdoors, I heard the beautiful song of the blackbird for the first time. It is an early sign of Spring too.

 

 

Happy Scrappy May and some Autumn leaves

This week has been fun and busy. We visited our daughter Kaija on Monday and Tuesday and enjoyed the first really warm, no-coat-on-in-town days. DD has been binding some amazing books lately, and she has her own study too, finally. I have been working on two quilts again, and finished the May stitcheries for Happy Scrappy Spring BOM designed by Kaaren at The Painted Quilt. You can click the pictures to get a better look.

 

I still need to make the sashing to go between the two first rows.

 It has not been just fun: I can't open The Bee in my Bonnet blog to get the mitten block instructions! I had only written down the measurements for the leaf blocks of row 7 when I lost the connection. Well, I have some measurements for the mitten blocks too, so I can start cutting, but that's it. I hope the problem will go away so I can get the remaining instructions for five more rows. I think I can manage borders and backing on my own. This has been such a fun quilt, so I really would like to finish it the way it was designed.

Nest building time has brought unusual visitors to the remains of last winter's bird seeds. Birds that are very common here but just not here at the edge of the village, like jackdaws and crows. I took this picture for you, Melanie, because you had not seen hooded crows very often before you saw them here. The map in the link shows that they are in fact rare in Western Europe and England, just like their all black cousin, Carrion Crow is rare here.

It has been so warm that we have been having our afternoon coffee on the veranda, equipped with binoculars (Mr. K), camera (me) and two bird books at least. On Thursday we spotted this little fellow, only because there are not yet leaves in the apple tree. After having consulted the books we decided this is the Lesser Whitethroat, Sylvia Curruca. I took several pictures, catching sometimes just the tail, or part of the wing through the twigs, but putting all the details together we could identify him. It is really hard to see the colour of a bird's legs, or to say there are or are not shades of a certain colour on the back or wings. Luckily the camera catches every detail.

 

Wish me luck with the missing rows for the Bee in my Bonnet. Hvae better luck with your projects!

Rows of the week and some spring pictures

This week I have been making mugs and Flying Geese. My geese are flying North now in Spring. We have seen some migrating cranes and geese. It is always something special when you see such big birds. My fabric geese are tiny and a bit blurry because I didn't think too much when choosing the fabrics.

 

 

I had to make some left-handed mugs as well. This quilt in progress is last year's row-along by Bee in my Bonnet, and I'm using mostly recycled fabrics and leftover scraps from dressmaking. Here are my six first rows. Next week I'll be raking leaves and knitting mittens!

 

Within the last few days our birches have dressed in light green lace. It looks so lovely after the long, long winter. Even the wind sounds softer now.

 

 

Wild white anemones cover the forest ground. The perfect pretty flowers to pick for Mother's Day tomorrow. When I was little, we used to pick the blue ones, liverwort, if they were out, because that's what was growing in our nick of the country.

 

I planted some Anemone Hepatica from my childhood home last summer in our yard, and I hope they will thrive here. Now the flowers are very pale, but if you look close enough and click for a bigger photo, you can just see a few of them. 

 

Mr. Pied Flycatcher is guarding his new home. It looks like many of our birdhouses have nest builders at work. Mrs. Flycatcher chose Silver Birch wallpapers for this house.

 

 

Our first daffodils are out! The little ones are Tete-à-Tete daffodils from my hanging flowerpot from last year of the year before. I buy them for Easter already in bloom, and when the snow is gone I plant them in the garden.

 

 

Wintery crafts and migrating birds, or waiting for the Spring

The Spring is taking its time to arrive in our nick of the world. On Saturday we had some new snow again, you may see the white lines of wet snowflakes in this picture. As you can see, there is not very much snow left from the winter between the trees.

This kind of weather suits well for wintery crafts, so I knitted a pair of mittens after a traditional pattern from Northern Finland. I wanted to try this pattern, but in natural wool colours and not in the suggested bright colours you can see on the magazine's picture of their modernised mittens. The yarn is thick so the mittens were knitted in no time on 5 mm needles.

I have also been working on Scandinavian Christmas block 3. The cross stitch frame is finished, and most of the embroidery. The blanket stitching around the appliqué is on my list now. Mr. K said the other night that there is quite a lot of work in that piece of fabric, and I couldn't agree more!

We have had some sunny days too, and the yellow daffodils I bought for Easter can stay out in the night too, as the night temperatures are keeping around freezing point, not too much under. 

 

New birds keep arriving these days. This dove came to taste our sunflower seeds. There seems to be a lot to eat on the ground under the bird feeder, when the bigger birds like jays mess around and look for peanuts on the tray and drop what they don't like!

 

A flock of finches has been there too. They are mainly insect eaters and really need the energy they can get from the seeds, as it is far too cold for almost any insects yet.

 

Every day there is a little less snow, maybe a new green point of a future daffodil to be seen. The snowdrops I showed in my previous post, and at the moment in my header, are still in bloom. Meanwhile the also looked like this

when they came out again after we had some 15 cm or 6 inches of snow at Easter. I could do without the snow by now. Really. Then I could start sewing other than woolly and christmassy projects too.

Another PIP, and signs of Spring

It has been over a week since my last post. I have been having a cold and an ear infection and not too much energy. That reminded me of a very relaxing project and a great stash buster: Chenille or slash cut doormats and pot holders. I have two boxes with selected recycled fabrics and knits marked Chenille Blue and Chenille Green/Red. I took the blue box, with two base fabrics already pieced from Mr.K's old chino legs. On top of one of them, on the wrong side, I layered and cut to size my old skirt front of black T-shirt tricot, sleeves and one front half of Mr. K's shirt with stripes, most of one of his father's thin dark blue woollen sweaters ruined in too hot washing, all parts of one dark blue shirt, and the rest of the first stripey shirt, with the biggest pieces for the top layer. It was over 4 metres worth fabrics! I basted the layers together, marked some guide lines at 45 degrees angle and stitched on my machine like this (picture of the reverse):

I used a jeans needle and my walking foot, and relaxed and stitched. After two sessions the stitching was done and the cutting began. This time I only cut the beginnings of each row at both ends and trimmed the edges and added the binding. But after that: cutting and cutting, between the stitched lines. Just remember: never ever cut the backing! I'm happy to own a pair of Fiskars Soft Touch spring action scissors which made the cutting easy. My Clover chenille cutter wasn't sharp enough, it only could do a couple of layers at a time, maybe because of the knits I had used.

With the cutting finished and binding in place, I tossed the doormat in the washing machine. Voilà!

The perfect wavy surface!

I only had to trim some corners pointing up from the uneven layers. I love this way of making use of even the ugliest fabrics and washing catastrophes. It makes a practical doormat, machine washable and soft. Some friends in the sewing class have also made bathroom mats in lovely soft light colours, or mats using almost only old jeans. They fray beautifully. This project is my fourth finished PIP this year. I'm glad Stephanie reminded everyone of those old unfinished projects in process many of us seem to have in our cupboards, bins and boxes. Finishing them frees energy and storage space.

Yesterday morning I noticed the first brave snowdrops had pushed their heads through the snow in my flowerbed! Some day the snow will be gone. I'm waiting.