It’s been a while

The bougainvillea are blooming in Cora’s garden. I thought I’d share some color with you.

Since Mom passed, life has been more challenging than I thought it would be. The quietness of the house is the hardest thing to deal with. I didn’t realize how much energy Mom brought to the house. I know Dad feels it, too.

Dad and I are trying our best to deal with it in our own way. Dad keeps at his word-find puzzles and exercises with his caregivers. Let’s see if he will be up to doing some holiday drawings.

I’ve been busy trying to finish off half-finished projects and work through my fabric and yarn stash (I have more than I can ever use in my lifetime).

Odd-shaped scrap potholders

These are scraps from a donated quilt I made. I use as many scraps as possible to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Charity Knit Hats

It is one of four charity hats I’m making using the marling technique to use up my yarn stash. The pattern is It’s a Snap from Tin Can Knits.

Scrappy strips basket

I’m using skinny strips, white binding (from the donated quilt project), and embroidery thread on this scrappy project.

I’m also working on quilt #8. It is for a friend’s friend, who gave me scrap fabric from her mom’s stash and asked if I could make her a quilt. I’m shooting for the end of November to finish the quilt so I can hand it off when I see my friend.

#8

That’s all for now. My sewing machine will be going out for service, so I will have more time for knitting and crocheting projects.

What a stash!

This box was full of stuff

Got an unexpected gift of yarn from a friend of my cousin, it was her aunt’s stash. It came in box filled with plastic project jars filled with patterns, yarn, needles and notes, bags of yarn, many different sizes of needles, and a yarn ball winder. What a great surprise.

Lots of the project in the jars were partially finished projects with notes annotated on patterns. She loved fuzzy yarn of good quality and I thank her so much for her love of good needles that have become part of my ragtag collection.

I’m worked through the collection to see what I could finish, what I needed to frog to because of a missing parts, what would be give-aways, and what mom wanted for her stash. I found a partially finish hat in one of the project jars and that was first to be finished off.

Partially finished brown beanie

The brown beanie was almost done, lots of notes and a great donation knit for my pile of hats to Kuakini Hospital. The yarn had a nice feel to it would keep anyone warm. Pattern was pretty easy, after I read the notes on the pattern to figure out what she altered in the pattern.

Lots of annotations

Mom decided to try her hand on some fancy yarn. I suggested doubling it with another yarn so it’s easier for her to knit. She could pass up it up. Let’s see what she comes up with.

I think it was those dots of color that sold her.

After the brown beanie, I decided to frog bag project in tones of brown. She knitted together Crystal Palace Merino Stripes and a sueded yarn. It was 3/4 of way done but there wasn’t any more of the suede yarn left. I think that’s why she probably stopped. The merino stripes is a fuzzy yarn only a crazy person (me) would have frogged it. After a bit of gentle tugging and pulling, I think I have enough for a pair of mittens. I love the antler toque pattern from #tincanknits that I bought the mitten pattern.

This color way quite beautiful–medium to dark to light

This is as far I have gotten one side just need to finish off the top of the hand section then do up the thumb. This may be my project for my upcoming trip and maybe a hat or baby blanket.

There’s are much more to this stash but I that’s far as I got with doing anything to them They are living in their project jars or waiting to be organize in a new needle folder. More to come on the knitting front. May more yarn from trip. Hah! Because I just don’t have enough.