Archie The Wonder Dog

This is my final 'must catch up with Q3 finishes' post and I'm now pretending it's the end of September!  I had four knitting projects on my  Q3 FAL list , and have finished one of them.  At the start of the quarter, this is what Sarah 's socks looked like: This is the second pair of socks I knitted ( the first pair, which I knitted toe up, are here ), and I decided to go cuff down for these, so I needed to learn a stretchy cast on and chose the Estonian/Latvian cast on, which looked liked this when the stitches were on the needle: I needed to slightly change the plain stocking stitch leg and did *four rounds of knit, two rounds of purl, four rounds of knit (and repeated from the *) until the leg was long enough.  This gave me a garter ridge every eight rounds and added a bit of interest.  I was slightly shaping the leg, so the stitch markers are there to remind me to decrease every ten rounds (just after the two purl rounds, which nicely hid the dec...

Did I mention that I keep volunteering to make things for Mam?  It's no wonder my list just keeps growing, is it?!  In addition to the two cushions for her front room, she needed a new runner for her dining table.  We didn't want to use the same coral fabric as the cushions as it didn't go well with the cherry wood of the table (it made it look orange and cheap!) so we found a soft coral which still went nicely with the new carpet and curtains.   This is how it looked at the start of the quarter, when I made my  Q3 FAL list : I don't have many photos of the progress of this runner because it was another really quick make and didn't really make interesting photos (although that doesn't usually stop me!).  I often find it hard to remember to take photos because my sewing machine is upstairs and my camera and phone (which isn't really a phone because it doesn't have a sim card in it, I just use it as a tiny tablet!) live downstairs. Anyway, I st...

In my quest to catch up with myself and my quarter three finishes, I'm now pretending it's the end of August... Another repeat visitor to my  Q3 FAL list  (although it's only been on since the start of this year, unlike many others on the list) was this panel which I started at an embroidery workshop based around the paisley shape and traditional patterns and which was designed on the go by yours truly: The embroidery was done on Irish linen with a fine lawn fusible interfacing on the back to provide some stability, and stitches used include split stitch, back stitch, chain stitch, French knots, trellis stitch, lazy daisy, long stitch, Turkey knots, and fly stitch - my embroidery stitches book came in very handy!  In addition, there are four (decreasing) layers of wadding behind the wings to create a slightly padded effect. The first decision was the zip colour: I went with purple in the end and then the lining fabric was chosen (I even remembered to cut...

Somehow, and I don't know how but it seems to keep happening, I volunteered (?) to make Mam a pair of cushion covers for her newly-decorated front room (I left her to make the inners) and so we went to a local quilt shop for a metre of coral fabric (surprisingly hard to find but it goes nicely with the pale green of her new carpet as well as the sandy gold of her settee/chairs), went to another shop and bought half a metre of her new curtain fabric (we even remembered to buy zips and thread) and I got thinking.  I decided to keep it simple, and by the time it came to write my  Q3 FAL list , I had the cushion tops ready to layer and quilt: I layered them and then marked (with a hera marker) straight lines 6" apart (to keep me straight) and then quilted lines 1/2" apart across the cushions using a pale cream Gutermann sulky 30: Not the most interesting thing to do! I then added a contrast zip flap on the back in the curtain fabric and a zip: Adding the zip ...

It can't have been a surprise to see yet another Lola pouch (okay, two!) on my  Q3 FAL list  as I seem to be a bit obsessed with making them!  This time, I wanted to use these two fat quarters of shweshwe fabric: Although I didn't mention it when I wrote the list, these two pouches were intended for Sheila , who came, with Salley , for a flying (about 18 hours!) visit in August.  We had a wonderful time, albeit brief, and we got on as well in person as we do online!! Anyway, back to the pouches.  I didn't have enough of the indigo to make two complete pouches (as well as thinking that they needed a contrast fabric to enhance the shweshwe), so I used some remnants of AGF 'Indie' that I had in my scrap boxes.   I didn't have enough of red remnant to use on the base and the binding of either pouch, so decided to go with a contrast strip across the large pouch.  This is the joy of the Lola Pouch pattern : once you've made one, you can adapt it i...