When "stuff" stashed becomes useful

Last August, in what seems like an age ago now, I decided to make a concerted effort to use some "stuff" that was in my stash to make something useful, rather than just continue to carry it about.


One of the things in my stash was some red heart acrylic yarn that I'd bought while I was living in the US and had been having a small foray into the world of knitting. I'd bought it as I liked the colour and thought it would be good to make a cabled jumper out of - I still like the colour, but I now know better than to knit something like a cabled jumper out of cheap acrylic yarn. The surplus yarn has been sitting in my stash ever since and the jumper not worn.


A plan formulated itself to knit/sew some sort of picnic blanket, using the red heart yarn, some fleece that was also taking up space in the stash and some waterproof material that I'd acquired at some point along the way.


I cut out the fleece and started knitting the squares, then became pregnant and started to hibernate.


Enter Mum, who came to visit me while I was hibernating and helped me organise my crafting stuff into a newly acquired IKEA shelf unit. She saw this (and a couple of other) half started project and volunteered to knit more squares. We frogged the jumper and she was sent away with the yarn and needles.


When she came to visit just after Frances was born, she came armed with the squares she'd knitted and the yarn that was left. We started to put it all together and she knitted a border for it too. Over the following weeks I've slowly been sewing it together and yesterday, while Frances was napping, managed to finally complete it:

It's not the time of year for picnics, but it's finished and can be used inside as another blanket for Frances to wriggle on. It has a lot of texture in each square as they're all knitted using a different pattern, and also the contrast between the knitted and fleece squares which will hopefully be interesting for little fingers. It's also washable and has a waterproof backing, so perfect for sitting on under the apple trees next year.


It's also very pleasing and satisfying that some "stuff" has been used from the stash.

Retro knitting

A little while ago I ended up with quite a few old knitting patterns - I quite like the idea of making some of them despite how cheesy and old fashioned the patterns themselves might seem.

My first foray into retro knitting has been a hat for Frances - the bottom left of the following:

Made from just over one ball of Garnstudio DROPS Merino Extra Fine yarn and without the pom pom. It's a bit big for her yet, so probably won't be worn by her until next Autumn. In the meantime polar bear has been wearing it on his adventures.

It's about time I blogged something...

Life is good.


Our move to Turku went very well.


We've had both sets of our parents come to visit already and are due my sister-in-law in December.


Frances is doing very well, she's what could undoubtedly be called a happy, contented baby (without being on a strict Gina Ford regime).

We've decided not to put too many pictures of her up on the internet.


The usual focus of this blog is craftiness - there hasn't been a huge amount of crafting going on since Frances has been born, but I'm sure that will increase as time goes on.