I was very lucky this Christmas and was visited not once but twice by Secret Santa and both times brought something lovely. Firstly a handmade pincushion, some pins and a stitch ripper (only Santa would know how often I use a stitch ripper). These will be used regularly and will make a lovely addition to my sewing box.
Secondly, someone must have mentioned to Santa that my lovely husband was buying me furniture for my study as a Christmas present and that i would need pretty boxes to store bits and pieces in and display. This set is perfect. It has already been filled with a whole host of bits and pieces and put on display in one of the new units.
Every time I open up the boxes or use the pincushion I will be reminded of the generosity of people who took the time to find exactly the right gift for me. I can only hope the people who received my Secret Santa gifts were as pleased with what they received.
After finishing the hat and the scarf in this yarn I found I still had a couple of balls left over and no real plans of what to do with them. As I was putting the yarn back in the stash I became distracted by all the magazines and patterns and books collected over the years. I just had to have a sit down and a browse and I came across this pattern for slipper socks. It seemed perfect for the left over purple yarn and the stitches were cast on before i had a chance to change my mind. The pattern is from Simply Knitting Magazine Spring 2008 issue is designed by Kirstie McLeod. The yarn is Patons Symphony which is an acrylic/nylon mix. This should be a nice, quick knit and the slippers on my feet by the end of the weekend.
A little bit of white yarn a little of red yarn, a few rows of each and already it's saying Christmas
A few more rows of red yarn, increase a bit, decrease a bit and then cast off.
Fold in half, sew up the middle and suddenly there are mini Christmas Stockings to decorate the tree. They are the perfect size to stuff with a mini box of raisins or sweeties. They do become addictive to knit. Quick and easy to do, I might just end up with a tree full of them.
I've linked this post to
Patchwork Timeswhere lots of other people are showing the interesting stuff they have been getting up to
Anybody who knows me knows I love to read, that a book is never far from my hand or I will have an audiobook playing if I can't be reading. The problem is that it is very easy to fall into a reading rut, the same authors, the same genres,not being brave enough to try something completely new. Every year I look for a reading challenge to participate in but usually they are about quantity and I never have difficulty with the idea of reading a lot but I have found something different for 2013 and I have signed up for the Goodreads Literary Exploration group's Insane Challange which consists of reading at least one book from all of the following genres over the course of the year
Adventure
Auto-Biography/Biography
Chick-Lit
Childrens Book
Classics
Cyberpunk
Drama
Dystopian
Educational
Erotica
Espionage
Fantasy
Graphic Novels
Gothic
Hard-Boiled
Historical Fiction
Horror
Humour
Literary Fiction
Magical Realism
Mystery
Noir
Non Fiction
Paranormal
Philosophical
Poetry
Post-Apocalyptic
Romance
Science Fiction
Steampunk
Supernatural
Thriller
True Crime
Urban Fantasy
Victorian
Young Adult
Some of these I've never even heard of before and will have to go searching to find books that fit the categories. If anybody has recommendations for good books in any of the genres I would love to hear them.
Wish me luck
The old walking foot does not fit the new Janome sewing machine. At some point I will have to splash out and treat the new machine to some feet all of its own but right now that is just something else to add to the wish list. Instead armed with screwdriver in one hand, instruction booklet in the other and hoping for some luck I went back to the broken Singer to see if anything could be done to fix it. After a lot of poking, prodding, cleaning, removal and replacement of bits I crossed my fingers and switched on the machine. Everything whirred and hummed as it should so the next step was to thread it up and actually try to sew something Thread wound onto bobbin no problem, bobbin dropped into place just as it should. Cotton reel on the machine, thread it up correctly, put some scrap cotton under a new needle and off we go. It works perfectly, no fuss, no nonsense no skipped stitches. I ran it through its list of stitch designs and it was happy with them all. I swapped the general sewing foot for the walking foot, took a deep breath and started to stitch. No problems.
I layered up the quilt squares I had made as a test for the Janome and did some very basic quilting on them, the quilting line is 1/4" each side of the seam and give the effect of a square inside the 2"squares with a smaller square at the intersections. Four done so far with another eight to go. They will be joined using a technique learned in a
Craftsy online course taught by Ann Petersen.
I have been exteremly lucky and the tumble I took while carrying the sewing machine seems to have left both of us with no long term damage and as i was treated to the Janome to keep me sewing while the Singer was fixed I now have one machine always set up to piece and another to quilt.
I've linked this to
Patchwork Timeswhere lots of other people are also showing what they have been up to recently. There is some very interesting stuff to look at over there.
The last Foodie PenPal reveal day of 2012 and I have a lovely parcel to show everyone. My penpal this month was Susie and she blogs
here. In her note to me she said she hoped I wasn't disappointed as the parcel didn't have any "food" in it. Susie, I am far from disappointed, it is a really fun parcel and it will allow me to be very creative with the contents.
I mentioned that I always enjoy receiving tea in my parcels and that I like anything flavoured with cinnamon so Susie sent me my all time favourite cinnamon tea, can never have too much of this one in the cupboard, and some Jasmine tea. I am really looking forward to trying this out, seems to me a perfect excuse to persuade Leigh to bring a Chinese takeaway home with him soon especially to go with the tea ;-)
I told Susie that i like to bake and so she put together this little baking set for me. It consists of the sweetest set of heart shaped cases I have ever seen plus heart shaped sprinkles and three icing bottles, each one having a different shaped nozzle. I have some Christmas parties coming up where everybody takes something to eat and I'm already planning some mini cake nibbles with this lot.
Every month I look forward to receiving my parcel and I have never yet had one that disappoints. I'm so glad i joined up as it has given me so much enjoyment. If you are interested in being part of this scheme and are in Europe you can find out more about it at
thisisrocksalt, Carol Anne's blog or for everybody else information is at
The Lean Green Bean.
We are having a Christmas break but foodie penpals will be back to usual in January.
I've linked this post here, please go have a look at all the lovely things people send each other.