Sampler Progress

 A quick update on the progress my daughter and I are making with out Autumn cross stitch samplers. Here's Rose's first ...

She's finished the picture at the top - all those leaves - and is now doing the rows at the bottom. The gaps are where she's leaving the backstitch until last. I cant' be that organised ... or self-controlled.

I'm working downwards from the middle, backstitch and all.

Mine looks more complete because of the writing but I've still got that house and tree at the top to start. We keep telling each other it's not a race but ... Unless the border really slows us down, we should both be finished in plenty of time to start the Winter Sampler in December.

Still Knitting

Yes, I am still knitting, although it's not always easy. Anything complicated is too tiring but some of the knitting that should be easy has been giving me problems too. Earlier in the summer, I knitted a cowl based on my Nick's Boring Scarf Pattern.

This turned out to need too much concentration so I was glad to finish it. Then I went back to sock knitting. Now sock knitting is one of the things I count as automatic knitting - the sort of thing I can do while reading. It turns out that that's no longer the case. There's an awful lot of dropped stitches and sloppy tension behind these socks ...

I shall just have to persevere until sock knitting becomes automatic again.

I decided that what I needed was some simple knitting that would keep me going for a while but not be too boring but couldn't find anything that appealed to me. Then, when I was clearing out some old projects, I found this pattern from Woolly Thoughts.

Double Vision is a blanket that looks like it's made up of lots of colours but, in reality, you only need ten different colours. They are worked together in different combinations to give the finished effect. The original blanket uses bright, rainbow colours to give a stained glass look but I decided to use shades of yarn that I already had plenty of.

As you can see, the blanket is made up of right angled strips and I've knitted three so far. the colours look much better in real life; I had trouble taking a halfway decent photo. I'm enjoying knitting this blanket although I have to watch that I'm not dropping one strand of yarn - another automatic thing that isn't quite so automatic anymore.

I seem to be able to manage other crafts better than I do knitting at the moment. I've been enjoying exploring loom knitting, inspired by a very generous gift from a new loom knitting friend on ravelry.

This little lot arrived one day and was then followed up by this ...

This all-in-one loom is the one I'm using at the moment for my experiment with lace knitting. I started with a 'proper' lace knitting stitch pattern and then changed it around to make it easier and quicker for me to knit, while still giving me a texture that I liked. The result is a not-quite-the-same-on-both-sides fabric that still lies flat (and both sides are nice). The wrong side looks like a slightly flattened out version of the right side.

I'm enjoying knitting this. The yarn is James C Brett's Marble Chunky, shade 84 and I'm hoping not to have to buy another ball before the scarf is long enough. If I do though, I'm sure such a lovely colour will come in handy for something else - mittens to match perhaps?

Before settling on a lace stitch for my loom knit scarf, I played around with a slip stitch rib. It worked but was taking me ages so I translated it into a needle knitting project instead. This counts as my first new design since being ill. I know it's only a simple scarf but still, it's a start.

This will be the first year for a long time when I haven't published a big series of Christmas patterns. I still have the idea I had planned to use  this year so maybe next Christmas? In the meantime, we are having a Christmas KAL on my ravlery group so that we don't miss all the normal chat and support. People are knitting any of my old patterns that they haven't yet made and we are all sharing pictures and chatting about our progress. 

I wanted to join in but, obviously, I've knitted them all so I decided to make a variation of my Woodland Wreath. I'm going to make a more Christmassy version, picking out appropriate patterns from my other Christmas projects. I must have designed at least half a dozen little snowmen for a start! So far, I've covered my polystyrene wreath and made a start on the leaves.

The lighter leaves are the smaller, basic leaves from the original pattern and are intended to represent the honeysuckle that thinks it owns my garden. The darker ones are a slightly more rounded version and are the Irish Ivy which is working on the parts of the wall not already dominated by the honeysuckle.

This is the ivy that would traditionally have been used to decorate homes at Christmas as those spikey flowers would throw snowflake shadows in candle lit rooms. I'm going to add the flowers to my ivy leaves with embroidery - lots of french knots.

I'm going to knit some holly leaves too before I get on to the really christmassy stuff. I may even add lights to my wreath as you can get such nice little ones now. Do come and join us on this knitalong. If you want to knit a Christmas pattern not designed by me, that's fine too. Its just nice to have lots of people to chat to as we prepare for our lockdown Christmas.

Cross Stitch Progress

 One week in to our stitch-along and my daughter and I are both really enjoying working on our autumn samplers. The colours are beautiful and there are lots of nice little details. Rose is working upwards from the middle ...

Those dark shapes at the top are the start of what's going to be quite a big house. I'm not looking forward to getting to that part. 

The biggest chunk I've had to do so far is the apple tree.

You'll notice that Rose's stitching looks lovely and even in her hoop while I've gone for the crumpled look. The photos don't really do our projects justice; the colours glow in real life. The fabrics are shades of brown too, not grey. And now I've got five pumpkins to stitch ...

Cataloguing Colours

I'm feeling particularly achey this week (it would be nice if my immune system could work out that it doesn't still need to fight Covid) and it's been hard to do things. At times like this, it's easy to just concentrate on the 'must dos' like cooking and eating - not much fun when you're exhausted and you can't taste the food anyway. It helps to just try to think "what do I feel like doing?" and then go with that, even if it means starting yet another new project.

So, yesterday I catalogued 58 knitted squares. This is what happens when you're the mother of an archivist, you start listing your world. Actually, this was something I've been wanting to do for months. It all started with this ...

This is a Scheepjes Colour Pack of all 36 shades of their Stone Washed yarn and the 22 River Washed shades. Each little ball weighs 10g and is enough to knit or crochet a square. The yarn is a mixture of cotton and acrylic and is lovely to work with.

My plan was to knit a square in each colour, leaving just enough yarn to wind a colour peg for future reference. I used my favourite stitch pattern from my Frankie's Blankie, Quilted Lattice and just added a small garter stitch border as I went.

The two yarns in the pack are a bit different. The yellow is Stone Washed and is smooth and, although different shades are blended in each colour, this blending is very subtle. The orange River Washed square is fluffier and the blend of colours is much more noticeable. 

I blocked my squares as I went along and ended up with a big pile of them; they're about 13 cm or 5" square.

Mostly there was enough yarn left to wind a full colour peg but there are a few scantily clad ones too. I used up every bit of yarn.

My big idea for these squares was to use them to make a digital shade card, one that I could use for planning colour schemes for future blankets. This is where the cataloguing comes in. First, I separated them into the two types and then matched each square with its colour peg. I started with the 36 Stone Washed colours.

The next thing to do was to photograph each square separately and to name the images with the shade number and the name of the colour (I'd written this on the pegs). This took a while but was nicely mindless. I copied each finished image and then cropped those copies so that the square filled the image. These are the pictures I plan to use for designing.

So ... I use the free photo editing software Photoscape and one of the features they offer is 'page' where you can combine individual images to make one finished picture. There are lots of options for arranging your photos, including one with 25 even sized square tiles. Blanket planning, here we go! For numbers of squares below 25 I just crop the unused ones out at the editing stage; for bigger numbers I'd put more than one image together on a normal document. 

To test it out I made blocks of all 36 Stone Washed colours in order, twelve at a time.

Shades 801 - 812

Shades 813 - 824

Shades 825 - 836

Then I put together some simple diagonal stripes ...

You can also add borders to the individual squares to get an idea of what it would look like if edgings were added to the squares - perhaps in a crochet blanket.

Lots of fun to be had here. When I catalogued the River Washed squares, I noticed how much more intense the colours were than the Stone Washed, something I hadn't realised while knitting them. 

Stone Washed

River Washed

Interestingly, neither range has much in the way of true blues but there are quite a few turquoises and blue-greens. Not much yellow either but a fair bit of orange. Put together, I think they make a very useful colour palette. I'm tempted to try a crochet blanket first but, in the meantime, I've got to decide what to do with my 58 squares - not the easiest number to turn into a blanket.

Stitching

 During my Covid summer, I've been doing quite a lot of stitching. My concentration levels are pretty variable and it helps to have different projects on the go so that I can find something to do, depending on how well I feel. I have to break any activity down into lots of small stages now and that's how I approach my crafts too.

Early in the summer I made several small quilts, mostly from books by Kathleen Tracy, who is my favourite quilt designer. This first one is proudly labelled as my plague quilt as I made it when I was first ill.

Those were the days when I thought I'd only be ill for a matter of a few weeks. Such innocence.

This log cabin quilt and the next one are both from the book A Prairie Journey. I have all Kathleen's books except one (and now there's a new one coming out too) and they're really good. She combines beautiful, small quilt projects with some quilting social history, a perfect combination.

I also made a simple doll's quilt as part of a friends birthday present in June; it took me ages choosing the buttons to add to this one.

This next one is the biggest quilt I've made this year; it's very simple but the quilting seemed to take forever.

From the biggest to the smallest ... this little quilt came to light when I was having a sort out. I''d pinned it together ready for quilting and then forgot about it. 

I made this one to fit my small tea tray; quilts are great at soaking up tea stains.

The next quilts on my list are two half square triangle quilts. I made two sets of half square triangles, intending to sew them together into two quilts. Each would have exactly the same pieces but put together in different ways. So far, I've pieced this barn raising one which will be for my daughter.

I've also been doing a bit of embroidery, inspired by several books. One was this one by Lynette Anderson which I bought for the hexagon quilt on the cover. 

I only bought the book this summer and, so far, all I've made is this little coaster.

I'd like to make more of these.

I really like Gail Pan's stitchery designs which combine embroidery and patchwork. I made this bag from Patchwork Loves Embroidery for my daughter for Christmas back in 2016.

This summer I was a bit concerned that Rose (who is a very keen cross stitcher) was in danger of running out of kits during her extended lockdown so I put together a collection of little kits to keep her going for a while. And, of course, I had to make a suitable bag to put them in.

This one was from the same book as her Christmas bag. I think I might need to buy a new Gail Pan book soon.

I've been cross stitching too. Apart from the big sampler I showed you a few weeks ago, I've cross stitched a few birthday cards and, during Rose's visit, I finished this little sheep sampler.

This is a design from Jardin Privé, the fourth part in a series called 'Sheep's Story'. You can stitch all four parts together but I just chose this one; I liked the woman spinning. I had to change the backstitch on the spinning wheel though as the design had the yarn going all round the wheel. Not how a spinning wheel works!

My current cross stitch is very exciting as it's the start of a year long project that my daughter and I are doing together. We bought a set of seasonal sampler charts from Little Dove Designs and are planning to stitch each one in its proper season. We started the autumn one a few days ago ...

Rose is using 32 count linen and I'm using 16 count aida so our finished samplers will be the same size but the colours of the fabric won't be the same. I'm using DMC threads and she's using Anchor so there might be a bit of variation there too.

The idea is that we finish this sampler before December, ready to start the Winter one then. Once all four seasons are finished, we just have to order eight matching frames (!) and then we'll be able to display them in their season.

I've never done a stitchalong before and it's so exciting. We both started in the middle (obviously) but now we're working in different directions. I can't wait until our next show and tell when we can have a look at each other's progress. The colours are beautiful; I'll take some close up pictures to show you once I've done a bit more.