Finishes in May

When working on the Emil and Ida dolls, I started this doll for one of my grand nieces.

She has a nightgown made of the remains of one that her grandmother or I have had when we were little.

I made her a quilt so the new little mom can put her to bed too.

She has now arrived in Germany and her new home. Dolls are allowed to travel unaccompanied by mail. My sister has organized adoptions for over 20 of my dolls there. The German Unicef doesn't have the fabric dolls on their fundraising program.

My bed socks have been worn very thin over the years so I knitted a new pair with a free pattern I found on some blog I can't find again. The rest of this pink yarn with the rests from other pink socks I have knitted this season were just enough for the other pair where I added two rest balls of white.

Three dolls with clothes, a doll's quilt and two pairs of socks. I must have sewn some fabric masks as well, at least these on the upside down photo.

Day out with Daughter

Last week I had a very nice girls' day out with my daughter. We went to see an art exhibition showing textiles and collected items by Anu Tuominen. We had seen her potholder color circles in Jyväskylä too, and I have posted about that here.

You may have noticed that I'm a keen knitter nowadays, so this sock was my favorite in the exhibition this time. It is called "The Measure of a Woman? (A heel of a sock)". Knowing how to knit a heel of a sock may still be considered here as some kind of a basic skill every woman ought to have. I think this multi heel sock could happen if you knit and watch TV and don't concentrate on your knitting properly!

Another version. She also had a square sock with three heels all turning the same way.

Here are most of the color circles. Potholders recycled, found or bought from charity shops.

For some reason this piece had a girl's name, Pirkko.

I have only shown here some of her textile pieces. There were also wonderful works using other materials like old dining plates, ski shoes filled with pussy willows, crayons or color pencils, nesting enamel bowls, you name it.

After the art we had some lunch, spent some time at a big book store and finally had coffee before she took me to my train and went to work. Lovely feminine boost day for me.

My sewing machine has been away from home for service but came back to wait for a new part, so I have tried to keep up with my own challenge of making nine-patches almost every day. Here are ten new ones in random colors.

This week's color is red...

... and here are my seven new nine-patches.

Other projects have kept me busy, so there is nothing nice to show. We have had a sorting out week, thee big plastic bags are filled for the charity shop, more than that has been binned, and the paper recycling container has been fed with old magazines and shredded documents.

On Friday morning I slipped on a frosty spot and had a great fall, for the first time in decades, I think. Naturally the first part to hit the ground was my titanium knee! Luckily nothing was broken, metal doesn't feel pain, so I just have a swollen knee and I'm waiting to see if it will turn black and blue or not. Oh, and later I looked in the mirror and noticed that my glasses had cut me a little by the nose and I was bleeding there, but no harm done to the glasses either. 

Green patches

This week all my 9-patches are in greenish shades. I try to keep it limited to my plaid shirt collection, mixed with some solids and some stripes.

This no-snow Winter is confusing for the nature. Blue tits are looking for suitable houses for their nests already, but their normal house-hunting season is in April/May.

The first snow bells are open in our garden, at least a month too early.

New blocks and a finish

 A finished project for January! When I was making the QAYG blocks for Australia, I had to disqualify some of my blocks. One for using the same fabric in it twice, one for too heavy batting and one for using the finished size (10½") for cutting the backing which made a too small block. So I just needed to make one more block, cut them all to 8" and so I had this bright new cushion for a kitchen chair.

This week's 9-patches are in red and blue.

In the evenings I have crocheted some granny squares for Oz Comfort Quilts, and I will send my parcel tomorrow. The grannies are 10 rows making 10" squares.

We have still no real Winter as you can see. We had two new visitors, European Roe deer, never seen in our garden before. Sorry for the reflections, this was taken through the kitchen window when we all were having breakfast. The boy, on the left, has little antlers.

That little snow from Friday is gone again. No snow means depressingly dark days, cloudy days with rain instead of crisp snow with proper frost, blue sky and sunshine. I'm thankful we have not had those slippery wet ice conditions, but would love to have at least some weeks of real Winter before Spring can come.