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Hello and thanks for visiting my blog. I have been knitting on and off for 50 years and I recently learned to crochet. I love looking for wool bargains and making them into something useful. I mainly knit for charity. I occasionally knit for myself and family members if I find a really good pattern or if they ask nicely!!

Sunday 26 November 2017

A start, a finish and a big donation...



I received another bag of lovely donations from Hubby's colleague. Pastels predominate because she used to knit for her grandchildren, who are now older and wiser and more into grunge. I can't remember the last time I actually BOUGHT a ball of wool.

The wool is mainly dk which suits me perfectly except for the fact that I am currently trying to blitz my 4ply yarn. Here is a photo of a corner-to-corner baby blanket that I have been knitting for quite a while. I am using blue and white 4ply and loving the stripes. Sorry, they don't show up well in the photo. The only problem is the lack of daylight at this time of year. I have learned the hard way that knitting this blanket in artificial light leads to mistakes. I managed to knit a blue stripe instead of a white one, not once, but twice. I tried to live with it, but couldn't, and had to rip back a couple of inches each time. That is no fun when you are crawling along in the 4ply lane


So, my modus operandi now is to knit the blanket whilst watching the midday news. It distracts me from all the doom and gloom which, in turn, distracts me from the endless 4ply knitting. Then, in the evening, I knit with dk yarn. The photo shows a hat that I was able to knit in a couple of days. It's satisfying to be able to finish something quickly. The blanket looks like taking me the rest of the year. I only manage to knit a few rows per day because I have to concentrate. I don't want any more mistakes! 

Here is another photo of the same hat together with one I finished months ago but never got around to photographing. These will eventually go off to Operation Orphan. I will knit more hats until I have enough to fill a reasonable size box. There is no rush as they tend to dispatch the warm clothing donations during the summer. That way,  they are in situ and ready when winter arrives.



Monday 13 November 2017

2 more shirt cushions...



Here are two more cushion covers that I upcycled from Hubby's shirts. I have now made four of these, which is probably enough for now. Three of them will be gracing the sofa bed in the spare room when we have visitors over the Christmas holidays. I'm hoping that one or two of the visitors like them enough to ask me to make some for them. I love making these, but there is a limit to how many a sofa can take before looking weird.

Most of Hubby's shirts are blue. So I have been lucky to have these other colours to tone in with my furniture. However, I do have my eyes on some particularly lovely denim type shirts that would make useful bags. One day...

PS: I know this is primarily a "woolly" blog. I'm still beavering away using up my 4 ply yarn. But it takes me so long to finish anything that I like to sew something quick just so that I have something to blog about. I'm not a huge Facebook fan, but I recently joined an upcycling group on there and some of the ideas are very clever.