New baby quilt, and yarn projects

Once I had the box with my father's old shirts out in the daylight when I repaired mother's old quilt, I took a better look at the ready cut 3½" strips and felt like making a little quilt with them.

It needed some more cutting but the 3½" squares for a 90 x 120 cm quilt were easily found. Now I have just the last white shirts left, and some striped squares. The blue fabrics for the star came from another project bag, the Business Class and Stained Glass quilts I made using my son's shirts.

This size is convenient for machine quilting on my domestic machine, so the quilt was finished in no time.

I even had the blue binding left over from some other project, and a light blue flannel with a baby print was in my stash of backings.

Octopus family has five new members!

Here is a closer look at the tubular cast-on I praised in my earlier post. It is easier to make every time I try, this is my third attempt now. I have tried it in a different way earlier, and I'm convinced this new to me way that involves crocheting suits me better.

The new pair of socks. 200 g yarn, two pairs of socks and still some yarn left.

Patched patchwork and new socks

A couple of years after my father died I made a light quilt for my mother, using father's old suit shirts. It looked like this, very light, but with a flannel backing warm like a hug for mother's little naps.

I took it back after my mother, and now after years of use it looks sad like this:

This one shirt seems to be more delicate than any other.

I read about repairing old quilts here , and decided it was time to save the quilt. I still had the last rest bits of the shirt collection in a box, so it was easy to pick new strips and hand sew them in place.

The new strip is grey, and I did the machine quilting on it the way it was before.

The weather is cooling down (and warming up again, like today), so I took out my sock yarns and bought some new ones, and started knitting for the Winter.

I really like this simple pattern with vertical stripes, used my muted colors and favorite heel together with the tubular cast-on. It makes the top edge look very professional!

After two pairs in the heavy yarn I picked a lighter one, and a brighter color, and finished this pair yesterday. The pattern is a simple knit 4 purl 2, moved two stitches forward after every four rows, and it looks like a cable pattern which I'm not very good at. Fake cables!

Today I'm trying to decide whether to knit another pair with this yarn and a different pattern, or to pick some other yarn or two. One color is tempting, it is so easy...

Forest Adventure of the Unicef Dolls

Hi again, we have not been here on the blog for a while, but this week we had a great day in the forest and Roger was Prince of the forest with a fern crown on his head.

There was a fine spruce, behind him in the first photo, so naturally he had to climb it.

Roger was so proud of his crown that Susan made me a flower wreath to wear, and put some flowers in her hair too. My wreath was so big and heavy that it was not very comfortable. I can imagine that gold crowns are not comfortable either, and therefore you hardly see princesses playing out in the palace garden with crowns on their heads. Maybe they wear them for dances and things like that only.

The yellow leaves reminded of another fairy tale where gold coins fell from the clouds like rain. Some birches are all yellow already, the Summer has been to dry here, and hotter than ever.

I felt special with the heavy flowers around my head, but the common yarrow was not the best flower for this purpose. Auntie told us that she had made a real mess with dandelions on her trousers when she was 8 years old and  tried to make the world's longest garland with her best friend. Dandelion stains are not easy to remove! Anyway, the garland was at least 15 meters long. White clover would have been perfect, no stains and a sweet scent, but their time is over for this summer.

After a long day out we were really tired, but luckily we had not been too far from the house, you can see the lawn behind our little hill.

Now we want to say hello to our new English friend Arthur, who may be reading this blog post. Hi Arthur! It is nice that you have the same first name as Uncle Ransome, who invented us all.

So, this was Titty again. Enjoy your Summer, or your Winter down there on the other side of the world.

Best Regards,

Titty