Blue light

On cloudy days the light here is blue. Even when I take the photos outdoors there is often not enough light. This quilt top is mostly blue, with light blue backgrounds and dark green sashings.

This picture was yesterday. Today I have spent a lot of time on my knees, and the quilt layers are now sandwiched with safety pins, just waiting to be quilted. My machine can manage a quilt of this size but not any bigger. I can quilt about an hour a day without cramps in my shoulders. I wonder why I can't keep them relaxed when I'm quilting; my shoulders just seem to seek my ears within minutes when I quilt on the machine.

Last Saturday we had a planning meeting at the Villa Cooper. The Christmas Shop was taken down, so I can only show you a view to the garden where our yarn bombing from last Summer still looks great. The renewed veranda will get a dark colour in the Spring.

We usually have small exhibitions in the closet under the stairs, sometimes collective work and sometimes from just one member. The exciting news is that my quilts have their turn in April, not just in the closet but also on the walls around it. I'm planning to borrow some quilts back from their owners, and make some new, small items to go on the shelves of the closet. Here is a picture of our Old Toys exhibitions over a year ago. As you see, quite a lot of space to fill with table runners and potholders!

New quilt, same old shirts

Here is a new project I have started this year. I looked at my endless stash of men's shirts, chose 12 of them from the blue and grey box, just blue ones, and from another box the last bits of the light blue suit shirts from my father. Sorry for the poor quality of my photos, but we still have only six and a half hours of daylight and many cloudy days.

I made HSTs and ironed and cut and ironed and sewed and ironed ... and now I have 8 blocks at this stage:

and the remaining 4 blocks at different stages of sewing and ironing. At least the blue shirt bundles in the box look flatter than the red, brown and green ones. I'm already making plans for a next quilt to use those colours. This must be at least the 5th quilt I have used the same shirts in.

In the evenings I have been knitting burb cloths for a baby, these two using Sugar and Cream cotton from Stephanie, thank you, 

and three will be in this 100 % bamboo yarn from The Flying Mitten:

First Finish of the Year 2015

Happy New Year everyone!

Naturally this doll has its beginning in the old year, babies take their time. He is my 65th Unicef doll, once again for my sister in Germany. She has by now taken care of the vaccinations of the babies of almost a whole village, as each doll is adopted for a fee that buys all the vaccinations for one real child.

As this doll is not for little ones to play with, I could make his shirt with tiny buttons, and the hair is a machine sewn fringe hand sewn on the head, not recommended for children under 3 years either, but looks a lot better than  individual strands of wool yarn sewn directly on the head, like a ryijy rug.

The knitting pattern is one our grandmother used for our mittens, with a new look from the self striping yarn. I used the same yarn for his socks.

We have started a new bird spotting list at the beginning of the year, and already one rare friend is on the list: the Eurasian treecreeper. We have put special special birdhouses for them in the forest but they have not been used yet. Almost every year we notice this little bird climbing up the oak we see through the kitchen window, or in the silver birches in the garden. They don't come to the bird feeder.

My last Christmas flowers. I hope you like the scent of hyacinths!