Archie The Wonder Dog

Item sixteen on my  Q4 FAL list  was a medium-sized rope basket to keep a pair of shoes/boots in - it's a tiny porch and I'm sick of tripping over my shoes on the doormat! As you can see, it's a bit mis-shapen and coggly, but the fact that it's rope and so doesn't hold its shape* works in my favour, I think. Also, it's never seen from the side (the porch is too small for that unless you touch your toes and look three inches in front of your nose) and it looks less coggly in real life, I think. Here it is with the small one , where the shape (or lack of it) is much more obvious.  (As is the fact that one hank of rope was clearly a slightly different shade!)  It has 80m of rope in it, about 1000m of thread (I lost count!) and took quite a while to make.  It also involved lots of wrestling and sewing with my head (or half of it) in the basket so I could actually see the foot.  All I need to do now is turn the remaining hanks into a basket to st...

Item fifteen on my  Q4 FAL list  was a small rope basket to keep my keys in.  This is the first rope basket/bowl I've made and although it's not perfect (and that's one of the appeals of them, I think), I'm quite pleased with how it looks. I used a piece of navy leather to hide the end and it's definitely something I'd do again, probably with a bit more finesse! It's the perfect size for my keys - small enough to be unobtrusive, but large enough to fit a couple of sets of keys in and not have to fish around. Aurifil spool for scale I had enough rope left from the (20m) hank ( this one, from Yorkshire Trading ) to make a small mat for the porch windowsill - these elephants (made from recycled pop tins) have always lived on it, but their feet leave grey marks on the paint, so it was either make something for them to stand on or paint their feet with varnish (probably the nail rather than wood variety!).  However, someone has spotted its potentia...

Item fourteen on my  Q4 FAL list  was a hot water bottle cover for my niece.  I made one for myself earlier in the year which my niece saw and fell in love with.  Here's mine: For hers, I decided on a slightly different approach as mine is quite difficult to get the bottle in and out of (I should have added more than 1.5" all round when drawing round the hot water bottle, particularly round the neck!) so I thought a pouch style would be easier. Here's the penguin: Here he is with the background added: Here he is with the echo quilting (five rounds was more than enough for me so I embroidered over some of the background stars with dark blue coton a broder but that's in the next picture, not this one): And here he is finished: I added poppers to the flap to made it easy to open/close and now want to add them to everything!   Here's how it looks with a(n empty) hot water bottle in it: All in all, I'm reall...

This month seems to have been a bit of a quiet month.  Mainly because I unexpectedly had a hat and scarf to knit just as I'd nominated my #StickyProdAlong2019 project and sworn I wouldn't start anything else until it was finished. Oops! Here's the hat: I love the crown on this pattern And here's the scarf: Both are knitted with Rowan felted tweed.  The hat is the Iced Hat pattern and the scarf is based on this project  (the stitch is cartridge rib ) but I made it shorter and folded one end over to create a loop for the other end to go through (59 sts, 36.25" long, fold over 4.75").  This has helped reduce the bulk and make sure that Mam doesn't have to deal with dangling or whipping scarf ends while walking Eddie. There has been a lone LV scrappy trip block, which brings the count to 21: Sorry about the night time photo - I didn't press it until late afternoon yesterday! Quite a lot of progress on the penguin hot water b...

Hello!  How is it the end of October?!  I mean, really, where does the time go?!  This month I have been very diligent: I finished the third and fourth  pairs of socks from my Made By Penguins  lucky dip.  Here they all are together: Another four LV blocks have been made: A pair of socks in double knitting yarn (very quick to knit   up) have been finished, albeit with a slight adjustment as this is all the yarn I had left after finishing knitting the second sock: I don't care how good you are at Kitchener stitch, that is not enough yarn to do it! (There was a grand total of 13" left from the fist ball - one length of 8" and one of 5") After doing a bit of pondering, I decided to pull back the final 'knit to the end of the third needle' round and the last needle of the previous round (so one whole round just not, technically, the same round!) and that left me with enough yarn to graft the toe closed: They don'...

One of the advantages of having something very close to being done at the start of the quarter is that you can get an easy finish under your belt while you're still reeling from the length of your newest FAL list.  The previous pair of socks fell into that category, but these weren't quite as far along. They were quick to knit, though, because I kept having to knit until the next pop of colour and then the next and the next and the next and before I knew it, they were ready to have their toes grafted! At the start of the quarter, the socks (well, the sock - this is the first one) looked like this: And now they look like this: They're knitted with yarn from Made By Penguins  and I can wholeheartedly recommend Lisa-Lou's yarn.  And yes, the yellow is that bright!  As with the previous pair, I think there must be some UV reactive dye in them because the colours are even brighter in sunshine than they are in normal 'inside' daylight - I love standin...

I have three pairs of socks on my Q4 FAL list and this is the first of them to be finished. At the start of the quarter, they looked like this: And now they look like this: The yarn is from Made By Penguins and is absolutely gorgeous, both to knit with and look at. And yes, the socks really are that bright in real life!  I suspect they have a UV reactive dye in them because they glow in sunlight - Mam will have ReadyBrek Man feet this winter! This is item 12 from my Q4 FAL list  and I'll be linking it up when the time comes. Needless to say, Mini Archie isn't letting me rest on my laurels: I has mine beady eye on you... Thanks for popping in!  (Don't forget that next Thursday is Furtling Day !)

I've managed to squeeze in a final finish this quarter and it's one which has been languishing on my FAL list since Q1 2015 - I think it had given up all hope of being finished, but I knew I'd get to it one day.  It is item two on my  Q3 FAL list  and I'm linking up with mere hours to spare! This is what it looked like at the start of the quarter (and the start of every quarter since Q1 2015!): The best photo I have of it - a blurry one.  What a surprise! The reason this made a reappearance on my FAL list (it was finished for the first time in Q2 2014 - here's the 'It's finished!' blog post from then ) is because the bobbin thread kept snapping.  Initially, I was going to re-quilt each line (one at a time so I could keep the binding on) with a heavier thread, but the thought really didn't appeal, which is why it has remained untouched for so long.  A couple of weeks ago, I got it out, had another think and decided that I could add...