Frances

This is Frances Lorelei, I suspect she will hinder my knitting and blogging for a little while!



Born 4th September, 3.5kg. Mother and baby doing well - Father worn out!

Race update - and the winner is....

A pretty close run thing, but Andrew's jumper has won. Last ends woven in today and after a little bit of a light blocking I declare it the winner.

We had our friend Mina to visit last week along with her son Theodor, who's about 8 months old. She asked if I could help her develop her rudimentary knitting skills - I'm not sure if I was that much help, but she went home with some yarn and needles that she was encouraged to buy and a pattern for a baby hat that she practice cast on for while she was visiting. She's since set up a ravelry account, so hopefully she'll keep going. I cast on for the same baby hat and have nearly finished it - it just needs some i-cord making for ties.

Now we just need the baby.

Race progress

The jumper vs baby race is really hotting up:

Baby is at about 8 months.

And as far as the jumper is concerned, the sleeves are done and I'm onto the yoke. Another inch or so and I can start doing some decreases. I'm looking forward to the decreases as it's an awful long way around at the moment.

So, the race is hotting up and it's all to play for.

Mr Smiley Tree

I've been meaning to blog about Mr Smiley Tree for ages. Someone at some point has done something to this tree that means that after there has been rain a smiley face appear on the bark.

We had a thunder storm yesterday evening and then some more rain during the night, so he was all smiley this morning. It's nice to be able to look out of the kitchen window and see his happy smiling face.

Resurrected quilt - finished

I knew it wouldn't be long before the pink lily opened and yesterday it did just that - very pretty. It's a shame it doesn't have a heady lily perfume, but I certainly won't complain as the flower is beautiful.

Yesterday was a productive day as far as crafting is concerned as I finished the quilt that I resurrected. A very satisfying feeling that a long languishing project has been progressed and finished and will be of use in the not too distant future.

It's also satisfying to know that I only had to buy the batting in order to finish it off, everything else... the sashing, binding, backing etc came from my stash.

Here's the back - I did put the three leftover squares there.

I machine quilted it as I knew if I started down the route of hand quilting I'd never finish it. I also kept the quilting very simple and just did a border around each of the blocks, which I think highlights them quite nicely. It won't win any WI prizes as it's quite puckered, but I'm not going to enter it any competitions, so that's OK. It'll be fine to be lay on, crawled on, played on and eventually slept under.

flower update

I thought it was about time to have an update on the flowers that I've been growing this year - we've had a bit of a mixed success as a few things that I either planted this year, or which should have survived the winter, didn't.

The sweet peas are doing well - I'm sure they were meant to be a mix of colours, but have ended up being mostly on the purple side. I love the smell of sweet peas, I'm sure these ones won't stay outside for much longer, but will be cut and put into a vase.

I planted a few more lillies this year, which have started to flower (excuse all the weeds) - I can't remember what variety they are, but they're a really vibrant red/orange. The pink lilies from last year and a little bit behind, but their buds are starting to colour up, so it won't be long before they're flowering too.

And last, but not least the dahlia that I grew last year has survived its hibernation in our dining room cupboard and is putting on a show again - it poured with rain last night, so the older of the flowers is a little damaged, but it's still doing well, and there's at least one more bud coming.

I tried growing some dahlia's from seed this year, I was under the impression that they should flower in the same year as germination, but I'm not holding my breath (they're in the pot behind the flowering dahlia in the picture above and are only a couple of inches high, if that).

This week I feel like I'm turning a corner on Andrew's jumper: sleeve number 1 is done. Progress is definitely being made.

Resurrected quilt

While David has been at work this weekend I decided to have a bit of change of craft project. When my Mum came to visit back in March one of the things we did was organise my sewing supplies - in the organising, one of the things we came across was a languishing quilting project. I've been trying to figure out when I must have started it, and think it must have been sometime in the late 80's! I seem to have a habit with quilting and patchwork of starting with a very manageable sized project and extending it into something that stalls because it's too big/complicated.


It started out being this:

First change was to not want to do any applique, so these blocks were changed - so far so good, and then I think I must have gone on a family holiday somewhere in Scotland and came back inspired to try to piece together a border composed of Celtic knot work - this is obviously when it got out of hand.


We found about 4 blocks of knot work and 15 blocks of normal patchwork. My Mum's suggestion was to go back to the original plan and make the quilt up as per the book using the blocks I had as it would turn out about the right size for a cot quilt.


I've listened to this sane suggestion and have produced the quilt front:

I've still got 3 blocks leftover, which I might put on on the back just so they have somewhere to go, and the Celtic knot work, which I think might languish a bit longer!