The Little Things

Hello everyone. I thought I would squeeze in one last blog post before Christmas. I find the extra work and change of routine involved with the festive season puts extra pressure on my already fragile health which, for someone who has always loved Christmas, is rather sad. The greatest pleasure I get at this time of year is from the quiet times when I don't have to deal with people or, in fact, do anything much so I thought I'd share some of the little things that are helping me at the moment.

I love all the decorations that I've collected over the years, many of them made by my children or myself. My daughter spent a day the other week putting them all up for me and I'm really enjoying them. The tree in the picture above is my 'special' tree which is in the latest room to be decorated. When I say the latest, the rugs arrived a day before the tree went up. It's basically a spare bedroom but, as you can see, I've saved a cosy reading corner complete with my Mum's rocking chair.

One of the most exciting things about finishing this room is that we've finally been able to get all my Mum's quilts out of the bin bags they were languishing in and on to the big set of shelves we bought to house them. I'll start showing them to you in the new year but, in the meantime, I've been able to put some of the Christmas ones up on the wall at last. This one, behind the rocking chair, is my favourite.

Opposite the reading corner, in the alcove by the fireplace, is the little stained glass robin quilt Mum made us years ago which I love.

The dolls house on the table below it is one I've had for many years but have never had time to decorate and furnish. I'm hoping to make a start on it next year now that I've got a space to work on it. For now, Father Christmas is trying to work out how to get down the chimney.

We have always had baskets of Christmas picture books out at Christmas. There are two more baskets of them under the piano downstairs but I have got one basket up in this room.

After a bit of a struggle, we managed to hang my Christmas Bunting above the fireplace and then Rose decorated the mantelpiece with pretty things and gingerbread men lights. I'm not sure what the lace knitted fairy thinks she's up to.

Tolly cat isn't a little thing and he's definitely not just for Christmas but he does make me smile. He loves the patchwork coverlet I've put over the bed (to keep cat hairs off the clean bedding underneath). Here he is in a quiet moment in between hunting all those little hexagons. And yes, he really does do that.

As well as the quilts, I have a lovely collection of Christmas stockings that my Mum made me - a new one every year. We hang these on doors around the house. This one is on the front room door this year.

It was one of the first ones Mum made and, as you can see, it's a collage of photos of the children at Christmas when they were small. I also have this beautiful cross stitch stocking which Rose gave me a while ago - this one's on the airing cupboard door.

There's another tree in the front room and more decorations. It was a bit dark to take good photos this morning (it's gloomy most of the day at this time of year) but here are an assortment of knitted things on the piano.

You might recognise some of them as old patterns of mine. The round candle quilt above the piano is another one of Mum's and the little knitted cone snowman was a present from my friend Pat a few years ago.

The front room mantelpiece is pretty too. It's a mixture of old, treasured things, some new and a bit of knitting.

That's my Christmas Wreath hanging between photos of my much-missed Granny as a toddler and on her wedding day.

I've been enjoying my cross stitch this year and there are two new ornaments on this mantelpiece. Here you can see my pyramid shaped Christmas tree; the tree is different on each of the four sides.

I also cross stitched what was called a Christmas pincushion but decided to use it as an ornament stand instead ...

The village scene continues round all four sides and then there's a big snowflake on the top. Again, my apologies for the bad light in these pictures. You get the general idea though. At the other end of the mantelpiece are my cherished tiny crib, a cross stitch gingerbread house and a very pretty old tin. The tiny quilt propped up by the radio is another one of Mum's. She made them into fabric postcards, complete with a terrible poem on the back.

Something else I'm really enjoying this year (as I do every year) is getting out my Christmas china to use. I've collected so many pretty festive mugs that they don't all fit on the shelves. You can see a few of them in this picture.

Choosing which one to use each time I put the kettle on makes a cup of tea a bit special. The teapots on the dresser have their Christmas cosies on too ...

... and I've knitted new ones for the smallest ones this year. Here they are on the tray I use every day which I've lined with one of Mum's Christmas placemats so it's ready for Christmas too.

As a family we really enjoy our advent calendars and, this year, we've each had three different ones. We share pictures of them every day which is nice as we are all in different places. Firstly, we have paper advent calendars. Mine this year was a Brambly Hedge one. Here it is on my bedroom fireplace.

There's a bit of a competition each day as to which of the three of us has the prettiest picture but with festive mice I think I'm winning this year. While we're in this room my little criss-cross shelves are Christmassy too.

My little beaded Christmas village has grown again this year. I think I need to make some stands though so that the houses and things can stand at different heights. New to it this year are (I think) another building, some trees, a post box and a couple of street lights. Next on the list will be a church I think. I'm also very fond of this book which I read again the other day ...

We always have an advent jigsaw each year too. The pieces are divided between 24 envelopes and put together one day at a time. There was much hilarity when Jack's first day consisted almost entirely of white snow pieces! This is how my puzzle is looking after nineteen days.

The third set of advent calendars is the result of my concentration this year on improving my tatting skills. Over many months I tatted three sets of 24 snowflakes, three in each pattern. We have one set each (they're different sizes) and we add one to our snowflake trees each day. I'll write about this project properly next year but here's how my tree is looking today.

So, I may not be able to do very much or celebrate with friends and family as I would have done before the Long Covid but, when I think about it, there are lots of little things around me that make me smile and give me comfort. I hope that wherever you are and whatever your situation you all have a Happy and peaceful Christmas.

Sam's Blackbird

As a change from all the yarn based craft, I thought you might like to see a little quilt that I made recently as a birthday present for my daughter's partner.

It measures about ten inches square, the same size as the robin quilt I made for my daughter Rose earlier this year.

The robin was paper pieced but I couldn't find a paper piecing pattern for a blackbird that I liked. It didn't help that I wanted it to look something like this ...

Rose took this photo of a blackbird helping himself to some of their wild strawberries this summer so I wanted the blackbird on the quilt to be a strawberry thief too. I decided that I had to applique the blackbird but first came a lot of very bad sketches. Should he have one wing or two? One foot or two? Visible feet obviously, we're not talking disabled blackbirds here. Decisions, decisions.

Having decided on one wing and two feet, I set about sewing the black pieces to a square of hand dyed green fabric. I inherited my Mum's quilting fabric and I can nearly always find just I want amongst it.

Then I had to embroider the legs, beak and eye which took a lot of experimenting. I can't get at my stock of black seed beads at the moment (they're in one of the piles in the room I'm currently decorating) so his eye is actually a glass toy eye, threaded through a tiny piece of felt and mangled on the back of the fabric so it lies flat. The beak is layers upon layers of orange stitches; I kept adding more until it looked about right.

If you look closely you can see that the blackbird is holding a tiny strawberry in his mouth which I cut out of printed fabric. I added a few stitched leaves and then had to embroider a few more straight stitches in black to fill in the shadows in is mouth. 

That was the trickiest part of the project finished. Naturally, Mum had several pieces of strawberry patterned fabric so it was easy to find something for the borders. The quilting thread I chose was hers too; one of the range of variegated threads from YLI. It's sold as machine quilting thread but it works beautifully for hand quilting too which is what I do.

I drew rough leaf shapes meandering around the blackbird for my quilting design. I just use an ordinary pencil for this and make it up as I go along. I also quilted round the blackbird and gave that wing a bit of texture too.

Then I quilted the borders with straight lines and added a binding to finish the quilt.

As you can see, the quilt hangs from a wire hanger. In order to be able to take the hanger off if wanted, I only attached the fabric sleeve at the top of the quilt and then used snap fasteners to close it below the bar of the hanger. This was something I worked out when I made Rose's quilt. You can't really see the bottom of the sleeve in this photo but it's about where the little strawberry button is. The button serves no purpose but I thought it was nice.

I even managed to find a piece of fabric with little blackbirds on for the quilt label and then, as a finishing touch, I printed out Rose's photo on fabric and sewed that to the back too.

Sam was very pleased with his blackbird quilt so that was good. Now I need to turn my mind to the next mini quilt ...

Christmas Eve Eve

It's the day before Christmas Eve so that makes it Christmas Eve Eve - right? The presents are wrapped and hidden away until tomorrow evening when they can go under the tree. In the case of the cats' presents, they have to be hidden until the last moment or all the other presents will have been licked by the time we get to them (I make them catnip toys each year and, yes, I speak from experience).

The advent calendars are nearly finished. Just one more chain to add to my crochet Advent Chain tomorrow.

The last chunk of my advent jigsaw is going to take  a while I think. Look at that big space.

I've already bought the two puzzles to turn into next year's advent jigsaws for my son and daughter. I found them in a charity shop for £2 each; I know how to spoil them, don't I?

The decorations are up, although for a while these included that traditional favourite the mattress in the hall as my new bed and mattress were delivered last week.

Luckily, one of my son's friends came round yesterday to help him move it up two flights of steep stairs to my new bedroom where it can stay until we can put the bed together after Christmas. Speaking of the bed, apart from the slats and the headboard, it all fitted into this box.

Mmm ... doesn't seem very likely, does it? I shall report back once we get it open.

I've been going through my list of all the things I've made this year and it's quite a mixture. I'm going to write a blog post about my lists of the year soon - oh yes, there are several - but I can say that I always start off my Christmas preparations in January by knitting the set of mini stockings that go on my Christmas presents. Here's my one of this year's, hanging on the tree; I make an extra one for myself if I remember.

The problem with being so far ahead is that it leaves me feeling smug and I then forget to do anything else for months. Ah well, maybe I'll be more consistent next year. Actually, I have already designed next year's mini stocking and knitted two of them ... One of the things I really must do in 2024 is to sort out my various mini stocking patterns and get them all published properly.

Anyway, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful and Happy New Year. I shall leave you with a few candles on my son's house warming quilt which regular readers are probably sick of the sight of.

If in doubt - label it

I think having an archivist daughter is starting to rub off on me. Having (sort of) finished my new room of requirement / craft room, it bothered me that it still wasn't quite right. Apart from obvious things like the lack of curtains (I want to make patchwork ones which means it's all very complicated), I was still having trouble finding things.  

So, I spent several weeks working round the room, checking what was where, re-sorting if necessary and then adding lots and lots of labels. I started with the fabric store, just adding little printed labels to the bottom of each shelf so that I knew what was in each of the baskets.

This immediately made me feel much happier. Even though I don't need to know what's in the baskets until I go to the them, just the fact that I can see the labels when I glance that way makes my brain feel much more comfortable. I was really surprised by how much difference those little labels made.

Most of this fabric was inherited from my Mum who was a wonderful quilter. Hence this sign ...

We were saying how the fabric shelves could be used like a free shop for either of the grandchildren to take stuff from as needed so my daughter made me this sign. Isn't it nice?

I'm nothing like the quilter Mum was but I have been stretching myself this year by making the biggest quilt I've ever attempted. I normally only make small quilts but I wanted to make one for my son's coffee table in his new house. He inherited the table from his Grandma and it's a big one so the quilt needed to be big too. I'm pleased with how well I'm getting on with it; I had to use a hoop for the quilting which I hardly ever do but I'm nearing the end now. I'm quilting the border and then I just have to bind and label it.

Anyway, back to the labelling. My big Knitting Kallax was already labelled so that just needed a quick tidy and clean in passing.

In the corner next to it is my knitting bookcase which houses all my patterns - 17 files of them and that's not counting the Christmas specials - as well as some old knitting books and patterns (in the suitcases).

That shelf full of files holds the 17 main files while the rest are either on the shelf above or on top of the bookcase. The collection of notebooks on the second shelf from the top is my hotchpotch of pattern notebooks where I scribble down notes as I work on designs. They are numbered in order but are really quite a mess. One day I'll add dates and things to the pages.

Next to this bookcase is my little fireplace which still has my Rainbow Gnomes on the mantelpiece. I've added a lovely wooden magnetic puzzle from Myriad Toys that my son gave me years ago as I think it goes well with the gnomes.

The wall opposite the big Kallax shelves is the window wall where I have two of my three tables. One is an old Regency card table which I can open up to make a big square table; this was very useful when I needed to pin Jack's quilt earlier this year. The other table is our old kitchen table with the top painted white.

You can just about make out the Ten Stitch Rectangle on the card table, one of several samples I'm knitting for a pattern. Next to it is my very, very useful (and now tidy) craft trolley. I can really recommend this; it's sturdy, comes on wheels and you can get various attachments for it. The only extra I've added so far is that lid.

I know, it looks like I've got curtains but these are just the old net curtains from my son's house tied to the curtain rail for the summer so that I could keep the worst of the heat out on hot days.  I use the big white table all the time; those granny squares are some of my samples from my How to Knit a Granny Square pattern. I came across them yesterday and thought I might have another play with them.

On the other side of the white table is another set of cube storage. The tall 1 x 4 unit is from IKEA but the 2 x 3 unit next to it is from Habitat. Their 'Squares Plus' range is a perfect match for the IKEA Kallax (the 'plus' is important as they do a slightly smaller range too) - useful when you want a combination that IKEA don't do.

You can't see the bottom row of cubes in this photo as they're hidden by the table but they're all full of WIPs. There are knitting and crochet projects as well as weaving and various needlecrafts - some I definitely will finish and some I'm not sure about. Before I labelled and sorted this unit, it was a real mess. Everything I didn't know where to put ended up stacked in those two empty cubes or piled on top. This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago and it's still tidy. Today there are just some flowers and a mini weaving loom on the top and an empty little basket underneath.

The next two sets of shelves are the ones that took the longest to sort and label. These are two of the deep Billy bookcases from IKEA which house a huge mixture of craft supplies and books.

The bottom shelves on both are taken up with quilting books and supplies (with my badge making machines tucked in behind them). The next shelf up on the left is for cross stitch while there's more quilting on the right hand bookcase, as well as my 3D beading stuff.  The third shelf up on the left is for weaving while hardanger, blackwork and needlepoint are on the right.

It gets increasingly bitty as you go further up the shelves. From left to right on the third shelf from the top are loom knitting, my Sizzix machine and dies and weaving books. Then come the tatting supplies and embroidery. The next shelf up on the left has all my miniature making things; you can see the little house that I wrote about here a couple of years ago. Since then I have made some furniture for it but there's still more to do.

On the right hand shelf are my button making supplies - I love making buttons - and then all the bits and bobs for toy making. The top shelves have felt, fimo, resin and lino printing things (have you noticed that I can't resist a new craft?) and then anything else that wouldn't fit is on top of the bookcases.

For those of you still awake, you'll be glad to know we've nearly finished going round the room. The last bit of sorting and labelling was my desk drawers.

I used to have what I loosely call papercraft supplies all over the place and they took up a surprising amount of space. Not any more. All sorted, labelled and put away.

These are just a couple of the drawers. The boxes are smaller versions of the big IKEA  Kuggis boxes that I've used in other parts of the room. These are brilliant. They come with lids that double up as trays which is a real bonus and the different sizes can be stacked together too.

Not all the desk drawers are full of little boxes. There are drawers of card and paper and one with my sketchbooks, pens and paints in too. It's amazing how much can be fitted into ten not especially big drawers.

I have to say that having my craft things organised like this has made a huge difference to how I work but it's also meant that I'm doing different crafts again. I keep being tempted to make another button, work on my latest little beaded Christmas house or tat another gift tag. It's also really good to be able to tidy up properly. My Long Covid brain can't cope with muddle so being able to put things away is very important. As my Granny would have said "a place for everything and everything in its place".

So yes, I am still able to make things as well as label my supplies. In recent months I've crocheted another Lazy Vee blanket for a new baby (baby Esther, born last month) ...

... and knitted a re-worked version of my old Raggy Doll pattern for another, slightly older baby.

This is one of the many patterns that I want to update with current yarns and much better instructions and pictures. I shall have to knit another doll to do that.

Having crocheted the Lazy Vee blanket I was inspired to turn the same basic idea into a triangular shawl so that's waiting to be written up now. Like the blanket, it uses two colours in single row stripes but with no need to cut the yarn. 

The variegated yarn is King Cole Bramble DK, a yarn that I absolutely love working with. I used it in a different shade for Esther's blanket too.

A little while ago I sewed a couple of Japanese knot bags, just to see how they worked. I had great trouble with the instructions that I found so worked out  my own way in the end. You thread the long handle through the short one and then the little bag can hang from your wrist.

I saw some lovely versions online with flat bases but these would have made the sewing even trickier. Of course, this isn't true with knitting ...

This will be my next published pattern. Two sizes of knot bags, knitted in fabric / linen stitch so they don't need lining and with flat bottoms, stiffened with plastic or buckram. They're knitted in the round until you get to the handles which have to be worked back and forth. Just so as you know, taking a photo of a bag on your own wrist is very very difficult.

I hope you've enjoyed this little tour of my room and are inspired to add labels to everything you own! Next time I'll show you some 'before' pictures of the next room that we're working on. Oh yes, there's another one ...