The eBook Winner is ...

... Tammy! Congratulations! I will share these flowers with you, and with all the nice people who made the blog book tour with ten stops and ten possibilities to win their own copy of Stephanie's new book Uncommonly Corduroy.

 

 

 

The flowers are from my sister. She came to get the pompom hats for her granddaughters and swapped my purples and yellows for the purple and yellow primroses.

 

 

You have heard my complaints of no real Winter this year, just the cold period in January. Last week (one of the last days of February) Mr K. noticed the first snowdrops in bloom in our garden, and I took the picture on March 1st, when we had a sunny moment:

 

Normally they make their way through snow in mid April, like this in 2012:

 

 

This makes the Spring about 6 weeks too early. It doesn't feel like Spring though, just feels like the Winter is having a hard time dying. We have had some snow a few times now, not enough to cover the grass on the lawn, puddles everywhere and dull skies. Luckily the amount of light is increasing rapidly and in about two weeks we all will have the full 12 hours of daylight. After the Spring Equinox we up here will keep getting more and more light and longer days until the Summer Solstice. That is a comforting thought.

Last Stop of the Book Tour Uncommonly Corduroy

Earlier this month Stephanie from Loft Creations had her first book published, and for nine days we have been visiting blogs showing some projects included in this book. The last stop of the blog Book Tour Uncommonly Corduroy is right here.  You are most welcome!

 

The tour began naturally at Stephanie's own Loft Creations, and we have visited her pattern testers she calls Supremes. If you missed a post, here are the stops once more:

 

 

February 19  --  Stephanie at  Loft Creations

February 20 -- Martingale at Stitch This

February 21 --  Candace at  Squash House Quilts

February 22 -- Carrie at A Passion for Applique

February 23 --  Mary at Mary on Lake Pulaski

February 24 --  Char at  Cloth Stitched 

February 25 --  Mary at Needled Mom

February 26 -- Linda at The Quilted Pineapple  (Linda will be sharing up close and personal details about quilting on corduroy)

February 27 -- Margaret at A Sampler of Stitches 

February 28 -- Ulla at Kotkarankki  - that's right here.

My modest contribution to the book was testing a bag pattern. As a hobby quilter with English as a foreign language I must make an ideal tester: if I can understand the instructions, anyone can. The pattern was named Ethel and MJ, bags for twin aunties. Here is Stephanie's own version, one bag for each auntie. Polka dots are for the designer, I guess. You must get the book to find out why one flower is red and the other is pink!

 

Image from Uncommonly Corduroy by Stephanie Dunphy, Martingale, 2014; used by permission. Photo by Brent Kane. All rights reserved. 

 

I made just one bag:
 

 

Instead of corduroy, I used some upholstery fabric rests for the sides and cotton/linen curtains from my childhood home for the centre and the handles. Recycled heavy corduroy pants would also work fine for a bag project like this where all the pieces are large. I have not yet seen and touched  this lovely 21-wale corduroy Stephanie used for her quilts and bags, but if it is anything like the "baby corduroy" I have used for making a dress for my little daughter years ago, you will love using it. Naturally your normal quilting cottons are also a good choice, the firm stabilizer between the layers will guarantee for good looks.

 

The bag has an inside pocket for keys or a train ticket. The lining and pocket are made with quilting cotton. As usual, the instructions are easy to follow and the parts go together like a dream.

 

 

 

Two matching buttons, one for closing the bag and one for the flower. A funny coincidence: these buttons were a gift from Stephanie many years ago and now they found a perfect place on the bag made after her pattern. 

 

The book is full of great projects, guaranteed Loft Creations quality. I hope the Supremes' versions seen together with Stephanie's originals on this tour will help you see how they would look in your own fabrics. Use up your stash! There are bags in various sizes for every taste, beautiful quilts, wall hangings and even a scarf. The books offers useful hints for bag making at the beginning of the book, and a chapter about sewing with corduroy. Every project comes with a little story. I think my first project from the book will be one of the other bags.

 

The publisher Martingale has given 10 eBooks to give away on this blog book tour. Now you have a last chance to win your own free eBook copy of Uncommonly Corduroy by leaving a comment here on this post. Please make sure you are not a "noreply-comment" so I can e-mail you about the win. I will draw the winner on Tuesday the 4th of March. If you want more chances to win, you can go back to the other blogs of this tour listed above and see if their draw is still open. If you prefer a hard copy, you can get it directly from Martingale here, or from Amazon here, or you can buy a signed copy from Stephanie, the link is on her right sidebar.

THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED! THE WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON WEDNESDAY THE 5TH.

February's baby socks

Last month I took the challenge  to help the pensioners' club in Järvenpää to reach their goal to gift every new baby in town with a pair of Train Socks. My plan is to knit a pair every month. I thought I knew the pattern by heart after my red pair in January. Well, the number of stitches and the number of rows is right all the way from top to toe, but this time I made knit 1, purl 1 for the parts that should have been knit 2, purl 2.  Better luck next time, and I don't think the baby will mind.

 

 

I may have told you that we keep a record of the bird species we see in or from our garden. This is about the 5th year, and the total number of species is 54, most of them quite common yard birds coming to feed on the feeder or to nest in our birdhouses. Some we have seen only once, but most of them are regular visitors. We offer them sunflower seeds and crushed peanuts, a bundle of oats (you can see the lower part of that bundle in the top right corner here), a special mixture of bird seeds and a "sausage" made of tallow and seeds. This year we have had a great titmouse invasion, they come in large numbers, ten or twenty at a time, but until today we have not seen one single willow tit since December. We don't understand where they have gone, because blue tits, coal tits and long-tailed tits keep coming just like every year. I keep hoping they simply find their food in the forest where they live because there is so little snow.

 

Have you noticed the blog book tour that is going on, showing projects from Stephanie's new book Uncommonly Corduroy? At every stop you have a chance to win your own eBook copy with 17 project patterns: quilts, bags and more. My turn to show the project I tested will be on Friday the 28th, and that will end the blog book tour. You will find the schedule on Stephanie's blog.