Slow Sunday Stitching

My new yarn for my Grenadine sweater arrived this past week and I immediately wound it into a cake and got to using it. I love the transition from the multicoloured to the red.



I am two rounds away from casting off the body of the sweater and beginning the sleeves. I’m not sure whether I’ll work on the sweater more this afternoon or get back to machine piecing a quilt. I’ll decide after posting this.

I got as far as pulling out one of my hand pieced quilts this past week. I spread it out and looked at it and pondered what next needed doing and that was as far as I got. I seem to have lost my hand sewing mojo. I’m sure it will come back and so I will wait until then rather than forcing it and ending up with results I don’t like.

I don’t really have anything else to post about today, so I’ll go ahead and link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Design Wall Monday

I’m continuing to work on my quilt using large scale floral fabrics. It is now about 2/3 of the way done. I posted a picture of this to Susan’s Facebook page and she asked me if it had a name and said that she thought it looked like flower boxes. Up until then it didn’t have a name. Now it does: Flower Boxes.



The next picture of it will have to be done after it is finished. Our couch and my sewing table block the bottom of my design wall from the camera. When the centre of the quilt is finished it will measure about 70x70. It’s going to need at least one border in order to tame all the outer bias edges. My inclination at the moment is to use the solid light blue. But that will depend on if I have enough of it left.
I’m not sure yet whether I’m going to stay indoors and sew or go outside and enjoy the glorious summer weather. Right now, summer is edging out the staying inside. I just might wind a hank of yarn that came in the mail today and then go outside and knit. Yep, that’s it, decision made. I’m linking up to Design Wall Monday.

Slow Sunday Stitching

I’m moving very slowly today. On Friday we picked up our annuals for the open area under one of the trees in the back yard. Yesterday was the day to start planting them. We got about half of them in before it was time to call it a day. Or to put it more accurately, until my body told me very loudly that it was time to call it a day. Well today that same body is making all kinds of nasty remarks, mostly referring to my lack of brain to think that it was a good idea to spend hours digging in the garden under the tree that was full of non yielding tree roots in order to plant the flowers. My recliner rocking chair, tylenol and heating pad are keeping me quite close company at the moment.

I’ve made considerable progress on my Grenadine Sweater. I’ve divided off for the sleeves and also changed yarn colours. The photo shoot location for the sweater is proof that I’m not moving too far. A great shot of the sweater on my lap top on my lap. (grin)

I’ll publish this post and link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then go back to more knitting.

Slow Sunday Stitching

What a weird Mother’s Day this is. No one seeing anyone outside of our homes. Added to that it feels like it is still winter. I’m pretty sure I saw some snow flakes drifting down earlier this afternoon. But still, I’d like to say Happy Mother’s Day to everyone in spite of everything.
I’m continuing on with knitting for my slow stitching. I’ve finished a third pair of socks for Abbie, our grand daughter. They work up really quickly. I can do a pair for her in the space of three or four days, depending on how long I work at it. And they have the added bonus of being fairly mindless to work on, not needing a whole lot of concentration. These still need the ends sewn in.
After I finished those socks I gave myself permission to start a new sweater from the fade sets of yarns I purchased not long ago. I did up a tension swatch. I love this yarn colour and the flecks in  it. The pattern I  am doing is called Grenadine. It is emphatically not a mindless knit. It had a new to me cast on for the neck ribbing which I really like and will probably use from now on. It also has cable stitching and increases in various rounds. I got involved in watching a program last night and forgot to do the increases in the round I was working on. So now I am in the tedious process of unknitting single cable stitches. This is what it looks like so far. Not much to see just yet. Slow stitching goes even slower when unstitching of the stitching is required. I’m going to link to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then finish the unstitching required.

Slow Sunday Stitching

I’ve finished the Open Skies sweater, although it still needs the ends sewn in and blocking. The i-cord bind off on the bottom of the sweater is curling a bit. I hope blocking will fix that. I wasn’t able to do as much lace on the bottom of the sweater as the pattern called for since I ran out of yarn and there is no more of it  to be had in our area. It’s a good length as it is even without the extra inch or two of lace at the bottom. Here’s the front,



 the  back,



and a close up of the lace detail on the sleeve.

 I haven’t got any  further yarn wound up so I’m doing an almost instant gratification thing of making socks for our grand daughter. She saw me give a pair to her mom and requested some of her own. I’ve done a pair of red ones for her, but gave them to her before getting a picture. I started this one last evening and got  this far in a couple of hours.



Self striping yarn is fun.
We picked up a couple  of flats of pansies yesterday from the garden centre and it’s a lovely afternoon, so I think I’m going to spend a little time digging in the dirt getting some of them into pots. I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.