Knitting Tour 2017

Like every year in July, I need a knitting project for the many hours I am going to spend with Mr K. watching the Tour de France cycling race. This is the first pair of socks I finished - yes, I know, you have seen three similar pairs already but again the heel is different and this time the leg part is longer than usual.

Next I wanted a pair for little feet, for some 3 or 4 years old person who might love roses and red.

The next pair is again a pattern I used last year already, but I like the bubbles and I like these colours together.

The next pair is on the needles. Today's ride is not a bad one, moderate hills only.

I'll leave you with another picture of our Flammentanz rose, without socks this time. Have a nice weekend!

End of Tour de Baby Hat

 The cyclists have reached their destination and so has my knitting. There is still one hat on the needles, but

66 hats are here, all ready to be delivered to the maternity ward for new babies. Some of my hats ended up rather large so I decided to take them to the Red Cross collection point where they take donations for the refugees who come to our cold country with so little. Winter clothes are needed, and anything for little babies.

Our grandson has naturally grown out of the white outfit I knitted before he was born, so I made him a new set. The hat covers the ears and forehead, the size is for right now so I can see myself knitting a Winter version very soon. The mittens are without thumbs, but the next pair must be with thumbs so he can hold his shovel or make his first snowballs. The socks are once again train socks (if you click the link, you find the English translation of the pattern, and the story behind the socks).

I made him two bibs too now that he is eating delicious food with a spoon.

September means often the beginning of new classes or hobbies, for me too. I'm taking a class in yarn techniques, just once a month for an evening. Last week we started with Bavarian crochet. With the big holes this will be no good as a potholder, but when it grows a little, it could be a nice dishcloth.

For dessert a picture of my flower box in August to remind of the Summer that is clearly ending.

Flying Geese, Dresden Plates and more hats for babies

After a lot of cutting and sewing, all 88 geese are flying in a nice formation around the houses of this mystery quilt I'm making after Kaaren's design.

The corners have blue Dresden Plates appliquéd on yellow table cloth (really, this was a self-made tablecloth for a Summer party some years ago).

I like trying new blocks in a small scale, like just four Dresdens. I only have made a Dresden plate block once before in my life, when I made a bag after Stephanie's pattern.

Then of course I have been knitting. The broadcast from the Vuelta is usually just a little over an hour so these baby hats are not strictly Grand Tour hats. I simply like to keep my hands busy when I'm watching something not too demanding or interesting on TV, and so there are 11 new hats for my bag to be taken to the maternity ward. I try to make them for every taste, for boys and girls, small heads and bigger ones. It is fun to try out new patterns, and I happened to develop a new one too: the white hat in the middle was going to be 2 tog, yarn over, purl 1 but I started accidentally with ssk, yarn over, purl 1 and so the zig zag pattern is softer than 

in this yellow one in the middle of the front row. Oh, I see these make together already 21, my goal for the Vuelta. I still have some yarn left, and the Vuelta ends on this coming Sunday.

Maybe 70 hats instead of the intended 63 would make a nicer number?

Building houses, knitting hats

Last month Kaaren of The Painted Quilt started a new Mystery Quilt-Along. As soon as I saw her house blocks I knew I was going to sew this quilt some day. As it happens, the new project left all nice quilts on my list behind and here I am, with steps 1 and two done and step 3 on my cutting table.

Like almost always, I'm using old shirts as my main fabrics. Here the brown sashings are unused fabric, and the red plaid of the outer border is a leftover piece of  something I have bought for a backing.

Last weekend the last of the grand cycling tours, Vuelta a Espana started, and so did the last stage of my knitting project for the maternity ward babies at the local hospital. My personal goal is to finish 63 baby hats in all by the end of the Vuelta, one for each cycling day of the three tours.

The weather is still warm but we can feel the Summer is ending. After the exceptionally cold June and not warm at all July we had some lovely warm and sunny weeks in August. Now we have thunder and rainy days, but sometimes the sun comes out too.

Shadow Plaid quilt top and Tour de Baby Hat 2015

Finally the Shadow Plaid quilt top is finished, with all four borders and extra rows in the centre.

I'm quite pleased how I managed to get the corners right, only one corner needed some adjusting to make the bias squares meet. The next big step will be the layering of this large quilt and quilting it on my machine. I don't know about the Queen and King sizes, but this will cover two beds nicely. It feels good to have the quilt at this stage after maturing the plan for so many years. It wasn't even an UFO really, just some squares cut and some unlucky bias seams sewn.

The Tour de France is over for this year and I can have some free time again ;o). It just happened that I knitted one extra baby hat. This baby boy yarn only needed 64 stitches and about 70 rows so I often started a second hat and didn't keep count on the finished hats every day. The finer yarns I used for the lace patterns needed about 90 stitches.

All Tour hats in a group photo. Now I only need to knit 20 hats in August during the Vuelta which is not so interesting to watch as many of the stages are on big open roads.

Tour de Baby Hat, second day of rest

The cyclists are reaching the Alps and enjoying their well earned rest today. Many have been hurt in crashes during the first stages, many continue the race with bleeding limbs patched on the road and later properly. Last night I experienced some dangerous moments with hard cheese and a cheese slicer:

My grip slipped, and I sliced away the scar on my thumb from a previous cheese slicer accident some years ago. There was a lot of bleeding, but luckily I just missed a proper vein. This picture is from this morning, with a new dressing on the wound. I'm just showing you how far I was with the next baby hat before I had to stop for the night.

Here are the week's hats, the last bits of the light green and the white I used during the Giro, and a collection of the tiniest rests in the green, blue and multi colour hat. On the right is the first hat with the Sirdar Kisses baby acrylic, the second one is on the needles. I found a bag with six balls of this yarn, in green and blue shades. This will look a bit boring but keep me busy for the rest of the Tour and beginning of the Vuelta d'Espagne.

In celebration of the 50th year since I hurt my knee I'm on the waiting list for a knee replacement. My old stick from the school days didn't look too great, so I decided to do some yarn bombing. I didn't want to look like an old granny with a walking stick, so I crocheted some bright granny squares to cheer up my stick and maybe to get a smile or two when I limp around.

Close-up of my grannies:

I was wondering if the doctors would give me a smart looking knee after all the years I have been walking around with chubby knees and a huge scar in one, but I can forget about mini skirts for the rest of my life: they will only replace the damaged surfaces of my old bones and add another scar to the knee. Now it is just waiting for Winter and my turn on their long list.

Tour de Baby Hat, first day of rest

Here is the rest of the "Giro pink" yarn with the rest of the very light pink.

Then I moved to a rainbow ball of yarn - the cycling world champion always wears a "Rainbow jersey", a white shirt with five coloured stripes.

Finally a group photo of the first baby hats of the first nine days of the Tour de France watching. Today the cyclists are resting, and tomorrow I'll be visiting DD Kaija in Jyväskylä.

The Shadow Plaid quilt centre is finished, and after taking this photo I have added the two first borders. I just need to cut more squares to make the pieced border, so it may take some time...

Tour de Baby Hat 2015

Last Saturday was a big day: the first day of this year's Tour de France, 3,360 KM of cycling during 21 days, with just two days of rest, and the 100th anniversary of my father. I have a tradition of making some crafty project during the long hours spent in front of the TV. It has been baby hats in 2012, and some baby blankets too, it has been Scandinavian Christmas quilt stitching in 2012 and 2013, last year probably sock knitting, and this year it will be baby hats again, like  during the Giro d'Italia earlier this Summer.

My last Giro hat, the red one in this group photo, ended up too large

so I un-knitted it and knitted the yarn again, with less stitches and using this cable pattern:

I also prepared for more busy days and knitted some hats during other spare moments, so here is a hat for day one

and day two

and day three, which was yesterday.

With the cable hat of the Giro group, they kind of spell my name:

Today's hat with the last bit of this red and the last bit of the Giro pink is on the needles and will be shown in my next post. Yesterday's big crash needed my attention more than the knitting. I hope today will be a better day for the cyclists and for my project.

Meanwhile I have been busy making more coasters for the Villa Cooper:

My Shadow Plaid quilt is coming together nicely, but I keep cutting more and more squares to make bias squares. Unlike Stephanie, who has her Supreme pattern testers (including yours truly), this author has obviously not had her pattern tested. The pattern tells me to cut 216 dark squares, 144 light ones and 72 medium ones to yield 432 bias squares, which sounds like an awful lot. But after I have made 12 blocks consisting of 4 nine-patches each, I have used 12 x 4 x 9  = 432 bias squares. The next step is to take the leftover bias squares (which I naturally did not have) and make two strips of 24 squares for the sides, and later I would need 96 bias squares more for a border, and 4 for the corners. 148 bias squares are missing from her list! I think that too is a lot. I don't know if her yardage estimates are accurate, because I have naturally used odd pieces of old shirts, and luckily I have lots and lots more of them. The book is called Mad about Plaid! and it is by Debbie Bacon.

The peonies are in bloom again, and so heavy with rain.