Slow Sunday Stitching

 I hope everyone reading here has a great day today. As everyone should know it’s Mother’s Day, a great day to celebrate all the women in our lives. We don’t have any specific plans that I know of. It is a gorgeous spring day out today. Warm and sunny and too early in the season yet for the bugs to be bad, so I will be spending a lot of the day outdoors. We put in a large number of perennials across the front of the house this past week. So today I am going to slowly go to each one and give it a drink of root fertilizer to give them the best chance of surviving. Especially I am hoping that the dwarf lilac and the rose that we put in will survive. There are also a couple of clematis vines and then lots of different flowering perennials.

On Friday our son-in-law came home with the supplies to build 2 raised beds for vegetables, each measuring 4 feet by 8 feet by 24 inches tall. They are now built and in place and halfway filled with materials we found lying around the property.... rotting logs and pine needles and leaves. We are going to let that sit and settle for a week or two and then fill them the rest of the way with good growing soil. We are hoping to get lots of good vegetables out of them this summer.

In the meantime I have been slowly working away at my Ariya sweater. The second sleeve is almost finished down to the cuff design. Perhaps another week or two will finish it. I think my next knitting project is going to be much less complex. I’ve had enough of reading graphs for cables and lace to last me for quite a while. I don’t have a great picture of the whole sweater right now. It is currently partly inside out because the sleeves are worked inside out. But I can show a picture of the lovely sleeve bottom and a better picture of the top cabling. 

I’ll finish off this post now and link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then I think I will head on back outside and continue giving the plants their root stimulants.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’ve made some progress on my Ariya sweater. The body is done and one of the sleeves is half way there. It continues to be the only slow stitching project I have going. I’ve got a close up of the cabling at the top and the detail at the hem line as well. Perhaps once it warms up outside I might pick up my cross stitching. Somehow cold weather and knitting seem to fit together. We’ve had a few warm days, but it is still a long way away from feeling like spring. The snow is almost entirely melted now, but there aren’t any signs of much growth on any plants yet. A few hosta spikes are beginning to show and that’s about it. I’m itching get out into the garden. We’ve started the outline of a new garden bed and found an old stump of a tree that we were able to move into it.  We are also researching the best way to do some raised beds for vegetable gardens. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday browsing through garden centre web sites dreaming of perennials and shrubs but it is still way too early here to be actually doing any of it. The ground is still frozen in spots. Patience has never been one of my strong characteristics. Once there is actually something to show, I will likely get pictures and have something more to post about other than the very slow progress on my knitting. 

In the meantime, I will link up with the other slow stitchers to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’ve added in some new type slow stitching lately. I’ve started back in to sewing my own clothes. The older I get, the harder it is to find clothes that fit. I’m short, and my top half and bottom half are different sizes. Unless I pay big money for specialized petite sizes, nothing fits properly. Within the last few years a  large number of pdf pattern companies have come out that have customization for sizing already built in to their patterns. I am in the process of making myself a dress that I can wear during the summer. It has some hand stitching in it, for the hems and the facings and the buttons. It took a while to figure out the button hole function on my sewing machine, but I think I’ve got it now.

I’m continuing on with my Aryia sweater. The sleeves are split off and I have about 7 inches of the body done now. 

I have to get to 10 3/4 inches before I start on the pattern for the bottom of the sweater. Another couple of evenings should get there.

I’ve also been working on the monthly UFO challenge a group of friends and I are doing. My goal for this month was to use up the nine patches I received in a swap hosted by the guild back in about 2012. I succeeded in that goal. I got 2 lap sized quilts out of them. This one is from a page ripped out of a magazine that I’ve had for ages. This second one was designed in the Electric quilt software. The edge border is from 2 inch squares that I have had hanging around in a box for years. Some of them are quite old, so it was time to move them out. Of course, there are lots of 2 inch squares still left to be leader/endered into something else eventually.

I’m going to link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then get back to cutting out a new top for me to wear whenever the weather warms up. The date may say spring, but it is still looking like winter out there, including the snow that is currently falling. 

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m still working almost exclusively on my Ariya Sweater for my hand work. There are 43 rounds in the second chart for the yoke of the sweater and I am now on round 27. I work on it mostly in the evenings while binge watching movies or TV on the computer. Recently I’ve been watching Cadfael Mysteries with Derek Jacobi. I like mysteries but I don’t like the ones that have lots of blood and gore. It doesn’t seem necessary to the solving of the mystery and is just disturbing, so I’m selective in the mysteries I watch. There isn’t much to see in the picture of the knitting. 

It is difficult to get a decent picture while the stitches are all bunched together on the needles. But hopefully you can get the idea.

I’ve been working on another of my UFO’s over the past few days. A large number of years ago, perhaps as much as ten years ago, The London Friendship Quilters Guild held a nine patch swap. I’ve already made one quilt from them, which was finished back in 2014, but I still had quite a few nine patch blocks left. This month is the time to use them up. Back before we ended up packing and storing away our stuff prior to our move to Muskoka, I had started cutting and sewing pieces for this quilt. The picture is from a magazine put out by the no longer existing Quiltmaker. All the quilts in the magazine were nine patch quilts. I’m making this quilt, although a smaller version of it. My version will have 12 blocks and just a plain outer border. I have 7 blocks done already. It shouldn’t take too long to finish it. If I remember correctly I used strips from my 2 inch bins to get the rail blocks and the sashing, just going for lights and darks without too much matching going on. Hopefully it won’t take too long to finish, considering I have half of it pieced together now. And by the looks of the pile of nine patches, I am going to have some left over, which means I’ll have to figure something else out to do with them. There just might be enough to make 2 of these lap quilts. 

Anyhow, I’m going to link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 Slow progress is progress, right? That’s what slow stitching is all about..... taking time to enjoy the process rather than just rushing though. I’m working on knitting my franken-socks and my sweater. I have one sock finished. I thought I’d post a picture of the sock and the 3 yarns I’m using. Even if it isn’t the prettiest pair of socks I’ve ever made, they will  still keep my feet warm and cozy. Way back when we first started our english paper piecing  business that we have since sold, I bought a digital scale so we could weight our products for shipping. We kept the scale and it is sensitive enough to be able to weight yarn. I’m able to take my leftover yarns and weigh them and then divide them up to get accurate amounts for the 2 socks.

I’ve made some progress on my new sweater as well. I’m on round 23 of the first yoke chart. It’s turning out as pretty as I hoped it would. 

And finally, I have a UFO finish. This started its life in 2014 as a rainbow scrap challenge. It was intended then to be a full sized quilt. However it stalled out and sat in its zip lock bag for 7 years. In that time so much has changed, and the need and ability to make full sized quilts no longer exists. So it is finishing its life as a lap quilt that will be donated to the Prayers and Squares group. There are still 24 six inch bow ties left that need to become something. I just thought..... maybe a table topper. I never used to make those but now I’m finding I like them. Yep that’s it, that’s  what I’ll do and then they are completely used up.

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

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I just checked the date of my last post and discovered that it was a month ago. WOW! I knew it had been a while, but not that long. I wish I could say I’ve been busy and have lots to show.... alas that is not the case. The opposite is true, hence the lack of posts. I’m running out of sock yarn leftovers, and so am working on the last of my “frankensocks”. This one will have 3 different yarns in it. I’ve got the top part done, using 2 different yarns and alternating the yarn every other row, similar to doing a fade type sweater.  The third yarn will be worked into the foot in the same way until I run out of the light yarn.

I did start a new sweater but have very little progress to show on it yet. It’s another of Valentina Bogdonova’s designs called Ariya that has the very complex lace and cable charts for the yoke. At least this one doesn’t also go all the way down the sleeves. 

I can only work on this when my concentration levels are good.

I also picked up my cross stitching again and made a little bit of progress. When I last showed it I was here. Now I have the lettering done and have started on the second lighthouse.

It is bright and clear and cold out here today. There was a clear cloudless sky last night. The moon was so bright that the trees were casting shadows. The sun is so bright today that it is melting some of the snow on our deck, even though it is -16C out there. Where it has melted there is fog coming off it, just in small amounts and not enough  to be able to capture on film. Just enough to be able to sit and marvel. We have some bird feeders out and are getting regular visits from blue jays, chickadees, nut hatches, gold finches in their winter colours and slate coloured dark eyed juncos.

 A group of friends and I are doing a UFO challenge. Last month I managed to get my UFO which was a temperature quilt started in 2020 all the way to having the quilting finished. Now it waits to be trimmed and bound. I found a fabulous fabric in my stash that was just waiting for its perfect use. I couldn’t bring myself to cut it up into small pieces. 

This month’s UFO is some very old bow tie blocks. According to this blog I started them in January of 2014 and did some monthly for a while during the Rainbow scrap challenge that year. Sometime during that year they got left by the wayside and languished in their bag until I dragged them out this month.  I am going to work with what I have and do a small 48x60 lap quilt. I think I ended up with 4 colours.... pink, green, bright blue and aqua.

And I think I am now all caught up on the not very much happening in our lives. I am going to link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

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