Knitting, sewing and reading

After having finished the Christmas Wish stitching I needed another handwork for the evenings in front of the TV. I had bought a ball of deep purple wool for mittens to be felted, and I started knitting them on number 8 needles. It was fun and fast, and soon I noticed that I need another ball to finish the other mitten. Easier said than done, because deep purple was an autumn/winter colour, and now the shops have new colours for the spring. Deep purple was nowhere to be found.  I wanted the mittens to look like a pair, so I unknit the mittens (one with thumb and all), and started new ones with stripes.

The yarn will shrink about 40 % when washed at 40C, I just must remember to put plastic bags inside the mittens so there will be a place for my hands left between the layers!

I like using these thick needles. They make the knitting go very fast, and tonight I can start knitting both thumbs.

My other "not sewing project", the tatting, needs a lot of practice. On Thursday evening in sewing class I asked our techer Anne show me what I was doing wrong, and she showed me nice and perfect stitches. It looked easy, but when I started trying again, it was as difficult as before. The only thing that helps is practice! Be patient, I will show you pictures when there is something to show.

Last night I started sewing a draft stopper for our kitchen door. Snow doesn't melt on the threshold, as there is just a little space between the outer and inner door and it is so cold outside. I used 1.5 m of fabrics from my stash, and some of the contents of an old bean bag.

 

The bag is chinz from my sister P, and the inner bag with two compartments is from her polyester department. The dust container of my Dyson vacuum cleaner is full of those beans; I must empty it inside a plastic bag outdoors to get rid of the little white bastards. This morning's temperature was -23C (-9.4F), and the below freezing point temperatures have lasted uninterrupted from late December. The coming week is Winter holiday for schools in Southern Finland, traditionally guaranteed to be a snowy and cold week so the children have a chance to ski and skate.

 I'm currently reading Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome.  I heard about the Swallows and Amazons from Melanie last year, followed her excursions on Lake Coniston in Ransome's  wake, and read through all her links. I borrowed the first book from our local library, but most of them were never translated, so I wrote to Santa and he sent me the first four books for Christmas. Darling Melanie sent me last week a book by the photographer Jon Sparks, Arthur Ransome's Lake District, and now I can see the actual places of the charming adventures the books are about. They are much better than Enid Blyton's Famous Five, which I was reading when I was young.

I have not only been knitting and reading and playing with the beanbag: number of string blocks for Stephanie's challenge is today 63.

 

I was afraid I was running out of solid dark blue fabric, but when I was getting the chintz from my green box I looked in the dark blue box on top of it, and found not just one but two suitable candidates for the missing blocks. Hip hurrah!