Knitting for the Winter

Finishing the mystery quilt top apparently took all my quilting energy for a while, so I have just been knitting for two little girls, Miss Yellow

and Miss Purple,

these too for her,

and for their mother Silver Darling.

The brilliant colours of our Autumn are almost gone, and almost composted too already.

Remember this view from May, when the forest around our place was cleared so the trees can grow better, and Mr K. asked if he could clear away some trees they had cut down? 

Well, they were happy to say yes, and so he did some harvesting, and now there is this nice pile of logs seasoning and waiting for further sawing so we can burn them in our fireplace, not this Winter but the next one, and maybe some years after that too.

Today was the first day with ice on the ground at places all day long, and even the shallow parts of the ponds had a thin ice cover. Visiting swans were there together with the usual ducks, they must stay until the cygnets have learned to master their wings for the migration.

Mystery Quilt top Finished

As I mentioned earlier, I was having problems with my mystery quilt dimensions. For a slim, tall man I wanted the quilt to be clearly longer than it was wide, and Kaaren's design kept the difference at 4" only. Therefore I decided to add my own row to both ends, and a 1" solid border to frame it.

I had enough 2" squares in my sorted scraps, so I made 4-patches in blues and reds with white.

After adding another thin brown border all around it was time to use the French Braid snake. It was just the required length +3"!

For the 4 ½" cornerstones I designed a tree block, and finally added a 3" border in the  same blue fabric as in the cornerstones around the houses.

I'm pleased with the size of the quilt now, and therefore I'm not going to add the 6½" final border with Prairie Points but stopping here.

I delivered the baby hats this week, and now my evening project has been knitting these just so,

and these for two little very well behaving boys

who are grandchildren to my big brother. He had a big birthday party and I gave him this Bear Paw quilt you already know from my exhibition last Spring. On his fishing trips to Alaska he has seen bears, so I thought the pattern would be perfect for him. Not to mention that I wanted to make some bear paw blocks.

This has been a good Autumn, with not too much rain and some really wonderful sunny days, like this two weeks ago

but now the same trees have shed most of their leaves, and we are having real frost of -5C on clear nights.

These trees are aspens, the birches are almost bare already. All flowers have been cut down, Ericas replace them for the winter.