Sneak peek of the new quilt

Now that  the blue and white baby socks are all knitted, I came back to my colourful yarns. I found four balls of this lovely yellow in a shop and knitted a pair of socks in adult size, and went on in a smaller adult size. Because there was still yarn left, I knitted a third pair in a child size. Each pair has a slightly different heel. After having knitted three pairs I still had those two tiny balls left. I thought they will make a nice stripe in a new pair of socks in a different colour.

I was putting the rest yarn in my storage box where I keep this type of yarn, and guess what? I found two more balls of the same yarn I had bought last year because I really liked this colour, and the rest from the first pair I had knitted. That means I can knit two more pairs in a child size!

When I arranged the blocks for the blue and white quilt of my previous post, I played with them a little and came up with an idea. I really liked working with big blocks for a change, and the plaids look better in them too. So I took this lovely grey flannel I have been hoarding for many years, and a pile of other than blue shirts, and made these blocks:

Next time I will show what became of them.

We had some sunny days and migrating birds started coming. This small thrush, redwing, is a welcome guest we have not seen in many years.

Yesterday's weather brought new snow. We had already decided to keep filling the bird feeder until the weather gets warmer, and now with the snow it is essential to take care of our little friends.

Luxury scarf

The messy little knitting was like the ugly duckling who grew up to be a beautiful swan. After damp stretching my scarf grew in all directions, shows now an almost perfect lace pattern and will be proudly worn in the cool April weather.

The free pattern Nurmilintu by Heidi Alander can be found here at Ravelry, also in English and in several other languages.

My blue and white quilt top is finished. The herringbone pattern looks a little like knitted stitches too.

Here is an Easter Bunny for you. I don't like the little brown eggs he leaves behind so I bought us some Mignon eggs from the shop.

Happy Easter!

Half Square Triangles

Completing the Paper Lantern quilt top in a short time made me think I could keep on piecing simple quilt tops that don't take a year. While I was suffering from a nasty cold. I thought of all the shirts I have waiting in cardboard boxes, cut apart and ironed, sorted according to colour. Blocks have been cut from them, but there are large bits left. The blue box is full, especially because I didn't use any blues in the big Shadow Plaid quilt. Dolores is making a red and white quilt to celebrate Canada's 150 years of independence, so I thought I could do the same in blue and white for our 100 years.

I cut the fabrics in 7" squares and made them into HSTs. Ironed and trimmed to 6½".

Much time and 107 squares later:

The 8" Bias Square ruler is perfect for trimming any HSTs. I place the diagonal line on my diagonal seam, and the squares will be not only the correct size but also look correct.

The trimmed squares waiting for the next step.

After the baby sock project I needed something different, so I dug out the scarf I have started maybe two years ago. The yarn is lovely and very fine, 800 metres for 100 grams, alpaca and silk.  The lace pattern is very difficult to follow when the knitting looks like this:

I laid the project aside all those months ago after I had to unravel a whole lace repeat of 18 rows. Now I tried again and I think it went right this time. I didn't want to take the risk of running out of yarn in the middle of the last lace repeat so I knitted less garter stitch between the lace rows. Naturally there was some yarn left. I need to get some kind of urethane board so I can stretch my fine scarf into shape. I'm back to sock knitting again!

Yesterday we saw the first robin of the spring, and today came the first finch. I don't have new pictures of the newcomers so I will show you the treecreeper hiding on our oak in February:

Have a happy weekend!