Slow Sunday Stitching

 The days and weeks are flying by, aren’t they? It’s the  middle of January already. How did that  happen so quickly? Most days now are spent slowly, working on hand projects and some days on machine sewing quilts.  Our prayers and squares group is back to meeting again and we have started a new quilt. It’s based around a panel showing a couple of eagles flying over a river.  Here’s the rough Electric quilt graphic of what we are doing. The panel was purchased here. I believe it is from Northcott and called the Spirit of the Skies Panel. The whole scene reminds me of so many beautiful areas up here in  Muskoka. I love that I have the Electric quilt program to use for helping to design these quilts for this group.

In between the stints at the machine and computer I’ve been working on my slow stitching. The latest pair of socks is finished. It’s a good thing too. I’ve been wearing two pairs at a time in an effort to keep my feet warm. I need to dig out some more sock yarn and start another pair. 

I’ve also gotten a little more done on my cross stitch. I’m almost finished the lettering. The whole thing says “the peace of the hills is about me and the leisure of the summer clouds is mine”. Not much more to do before I can get at the second light house.

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

Slow Sunday Stitching

 It’s a snowy Muskoka day today. A perfect day for staying inside, enjoying the wood stove and putting lots of stitches into slow projects. I finished my Anisia sweater this past week. I looked back through my blog, one of the reasons why I keep it up, in order to find when I started this sweater. I thought I’d been at it longer than this, but apparently I started it in October of 2021. So it took only 3 months to do. Somehow it seemed a lot longer than that. I love everything about this sweater. The detail in the design is fabulous. I love how the lace design at the neck forms little scallops. I will be doing more of her patterns for sure. Her name is Valentina Bogdanova. 

To give my knitting attention span a break, I started another pair of socks using yet more yarn left from another pair that I think ended up as a gift. With self striping yarn I often buy 2 balls of yarn. It’s easier to get them with the stripes matching that way. So there was enough of this yarn left for another pair. And if I do happen to run out before I get to the toes, I’ll patch in another colour.

I finally got myself sorted as to where I left off with my Harbour Village cross stitch yesterday and managed to put in a few stitches. The lighthouse is almost done. It needs some black outlining, but I think I’ll wait and do it all at the same time, since there is another lighthouse on the right hand side of this row. The lettering is done with one strand of floss over one thread of the linen, so it is going to take a while to get back into the swing of doing it.

I’m linking up with Kathy and the group of Slow Sunday Stitching

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I finished off a couple of slow stitching projects this past week. I started a pair of thrummed mittens for my husband a couple of days before Christmas, with no real  thoughts of having them done by Christmas Day. And that was correct. But I did get them finished yesterday. A good way to start the New Year off right, with some finishes. He normally only wears gloves, but he discovered that gloves aren’t quite warm enough for the cold Muskoka winter days. 

The other finish was my Peppermint Purple 2021 weekly stitch along. I’ll need to find a frame for it at some point, but I’m reluctant at this point in time to go into too many stores for non essentials.

So I’ve packed up all my DMC floss that I was using for the stitch along and have dug out my Harbour Village cross stitch sampler. It’s going to take some studying to find out where I am in the next row. But finding it and digging it out is a start in that direction.

The other Slow Stitching finishes I had over the past month have been a couple of Christmas themed embroideries. I made them up into pillows which were given as Christmas gifts. The pile of unfinished projects is slowly going down, which feels really good.

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 My slow stitching is slow going. As most of us who are creatively bent, I have been working on Christmas gifts. The rest of the time I’ve been working on finishes for the Prayers and Squares group I belong to. My slow stitching time has been relegated to the evenings. And some of those evenings I have been so tired that all I can do is vanilla sock knitting, (a highly technical name for knitting plain no pattern
socks). We had a power outage here last weekend which meant knitting by candle light, not ideal conditions for knitting complicated lace sleeves on a sweater. Also not ideal conditions for finding full skeins of sock yarn. I did manage to find a couple of skeins of yarn that I had previously used for socks although I figured there wouldn’t be enough for a full sock. And there wasn’t, so I’ve added in some other yarn to do the toe.

 I think it works, and it has the added bonus of using up leftover yarns. I have enough of the yarn for the toes to do the second sock so the pair will match.

As for that sweater, I do have the first sleeve all finished now and the second sleeve has about 8 of the required 15 inches done so it’s almost there. 

I’ve got a couple of quilty finishes but I will try to do them in a separate post later this week. I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Quilty Catch up

I’m finally getting around to writing that post about all the quilts finishes I’ve had in the last month or so. Some friends and I are doing a UFO challenge and then there have been a few others as well. My chosen quilt for November was very old Disappearing Nine Patch. The block piecing was started way back in 2010. I sewed the blocks together a couple of years ago and then quilted it the spring of 2019 before I sold the long arm. This quit has a twin to it. They are going out as Christmas gifts this year to a couple of boys. I found a good place for taking pictures.... the back of the wood pile. A couple of clamps hold the quilts quite nicely. This one has a fun back to it as well.

I mentioned a while ago that I have joined a group of ladies making quilts for the Prayers and Squares ministry. I’ve been working on some quilts for them. I did up a top using some scraps of mine and sewed them into a 36 patch quilt. It’s been set aside waiting for quilting and the appropriate person. We had a couple of requests lately, one of whom is a child who likes unicorns and purples. One of the ladies in the group picked up this panel in a store and the we brain stormed what to put with it. We decided on pinwheels.

This is another quilt the top of which was donated to our group from the Owen Sound group. It’s been quilted and bound and needs the ties put into it.

The other finish that I’ve had lately is my Summer Kitchen quilt. One of the bedrooms here is minus a door. I hadn’t finished the piecing on the quilt before we moved, so it got sized and designed specifically to cover the doorway. I had some leftover embroidery blocks and also some stars, so I pieced those into the back. I quilted it on my domestic sewing machine and wasn’t that a challenge. It’s the first one I’ve quilted since selling the long arm. These pictures are actually from before it was layered and quilted.The backing fabrics are leftovers from those that were bought for the top. I’m trying to not generate too many more scraps. 

That’s it for my catch up post. Hopefully from here on I will record quilt progress as regularly as hand work progress.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 How did that week go by so fast? I mentioned last Sunday that I had some quilty finishes that I would share later in the week and somehow the week got away from me. I’ll try to do better this week. I want to keep my Sunday posts mostly about hand work. 

I’m making good progress on all my current hand work projects. My socks are almost done. An hour or so today should finish them. I like having a pair always on the go. They are mostly simple mindless knitting, good for late evenings when I don’t want to have to think or pay close attention to what I am doing. This sweater on the other hand, takes thought and concentration to keep track of where I am on the sleeve pattern. But I like the results. It’s slow going, but worth it. I have to tick off every line of the chart as I do it otherwise I will end up totally not knowing where I am at. And then there is my Peppermint Purple stitch along. There are only 5 spaces left to fill and then it is done for the year. As it stands now, I’m not planning on doing any stitch alongs next year. I have other cross stitch pieces that I want to work on that will keep me occupied for most of the winter. But I will wait until this is done before picking them up. I really want to get back at the Harbour Village piece that I started. But I suspect if I set this aside and work on something else, this won’t get finished. So I will exercise a small amount of self discipline. The harbour Village piece has waited this long, so it can wait another month. 

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m continuing on with my current slow stitches, my Anisia Sweater and the Peppermint Purple 2021 stitch along. I had to set the sweater aside for a few days while I waited for the yarn shop up here to be open. I broke the needle size that I needed for the bottom ribbing on a Saturday evening and the shop was closed Sunday and Monday. And of course I couldn’t have nothing to knit on while I waited, so I started a pair of socks. I got to the store to buy the needles I needed and got the bottom ribbing done so it was then time to start the sleeves. And as much as I searched everywhere, I couldn’t find the needle sizes in double pointed that I needed for the sleeves. So back to the store I went for double pointed needles. I managed to find in my needle stash every size except for the ones I needed. I don’t know if I had them and lost them or never had them to begin with.  Anyhow, all is good again. I am thankful for a local yarn shop that is well stocked and only 5 minutes away. It is called Knitting Three Together. So here is the sweater with the sleeves started and the body finished. For the socks I grabbed a ball of wool from my stash that had all kinds of fun bright colours to counter act a bit the very dark grey days we’ve been having lately. And then the stitch along project is here. 

I have yet to do this week’s square. That is on my to do list for part of today’s stitching. I’d rather not fall behind again if I can help it.

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

I actually have some quilty stuff to talk about, but I’ll do a separate post about that later this week.