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.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 The good thing about slow stitching is that it is slow and relaxing. The bad thing about slow stitching is that it is slow and progress from week to week can be difficult to see. I picked up my Peppermint Purple blackwork stitch along and am two weeks from being caught up. I love the looks of this and it will look fabulous framed and on my wall so I want to stick to it. Each week on Wednesday there is a new square or rectangle released. My plan from here on is to try and get it done each Wednesday rather than fall behind again. For the next two weeks I will do the new release and one of the squares from October. 

I am mostly concentrating on knitting this Anisia Sweater. 

It is a very challenging knit requiring quite a lot of concentration. I am enjoying the challenge, but at the same time I am looking forward to finishing the yoke and separating off the sleeves and doing some fast and easy stockinette stitch. According to the sweater pattern, part of the yoke design continues down the sleeves. I will decide when I get to the sleeves whether or not I will do that.

I have joined a small group of ladies up here in Muskoka who are forming a Prayers and Squares group. Thank you to Carol, who reads my blog and saw that we had moved here and suggested my name to them. It’s a small group and given my introverted nature, that is a good thing. They meet in a church which is a 30 minute drive from home here. What a glorious and beautiful drive it is too! Although I may change my mind about that should I end up caught in a snow squall sometime this winter. I took a couple of boxes of fabric with me last Monday, leftovers from my fussy cutting obsession from 5 or 6 years ago. The ladies had a grand time teasing me about turning perfectly good fabric into swiss cheese. I had a great time laughing along with them. I am looking forward to seeing those fabrics get new life into new quilts rather than being stuck in  boxes.

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

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m a little late in writing and posting this today. We had the family down for a visit in our little space this afternoon, so of course that took precedence. Funny how we can all live in the same house but not actually see each other all at once all that often. 

I’m working on multiple slow projects lately, getting some further along and others finished.  

I’ve finished the scrap sock yarn scarf that I was making for my husband, but unfortunately don’t have a picture of it. Once I finished that I decided that I needed to make myself a Muskoka winter hat. I found a pattern that combines worsened weight and and bulky weight yarn knitted together to make a double layered hat. It’s called Heartfelt Hat. Here’s the outside where the bulky yarn shows the gold colour. And then the inside with the gold carried behind the rest of the yarns, making it the very warm and thick hat. My husband says it looks like cheeseies on the inside. It was a very quick knit. I have some yarn left over so I may make myself a pair of thrummed mitts with it.

In addition to the hat I’ve been working on my Peppermint Purple stitch along. I’m caught up into the month of September now.

And then I’m working on the beginnings of a new sweater. It’s by a new to me designer. The sweater is called Anisia. It doesn’t look like much at the moment. It is very challenging. I love all of her designs and the texture she achieves in her knitting. There may be more of her patterns in my future.

That’s it for today. I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.