Quiet Time

I might gift myself a quiet day today. It's delicious-looking outside... not hot, with a gentle breeze... and nobody wants to do any deep cleaning on a day like that, or work to a deadline, or even fuss over supper, amiright?

Much nicer to sit and do some gentle work on a blanket so it's ready for the cool winds of autumn.  

Surprisingly (to me) I did make progress on this blanket over the course of the week, with two new stripes done!

 

There are ten stripes in each repeat, each made from three repeats of the same pattern I used in single repeats for the last, very very busy-looking, blanket. And I plan to do six repeats in total before I start the border, because I am a glutton for excess hot-weather crochet apparently. 

So far, I have two full repeats plus the two new stripes, which I have decided is pretty good going into July, even though there is much evidence to the contrary. Sometimes it's important to look at the positives, or else manufacture some. 

For example: it only takes me about two hours to do three repeats of the base pattern, which means it's quite plausible I can get through an entire 10-stripe repeat in two weeks, just watching a movie every day, something I definitely deserve to be allowed to do. And really, I only have three more 10-stripe repeats outstanding, which adds up to six weeks, which has me finished before we even hit September.

I barely have to try to make that make sense. All I have to do is ignore all the heatwaves coming in those particular six weeks, ha! And focus on how gorgeous it's going to look with our drapes, when it's done.

Today, though... I think I will focus on all the trailing ends I need to take care of before it's any fun to go on. 

 

And that means taking some quiet time with the blanket on my lap and a darning needle in my hand, out in the shade of the porch, listening to the birds and the insects and any passers-by enjoying the day a little more actively than that.

Hope your day is lovely however you spend it, and thanks so much for spending this bit with me. See you next Saturday! 

 

Unfinished business

Today is the first quiet one after a busy few weeks, and I thought I'd grab the chance to wrestle with some scattered knitting projects, starting with this random basket of mystery items.

Only when I looked more closely, I saw that all they need is to be wet blocked and tucked away for cold weather. YEESH.

So I nosed around some more and quickly found a pair of socks with yet-to-be-grafted toes.

Also these socks, same.

I mean really, what was I thinking?? To get so close and then just stop. 

Not unlike how I finally got the cushions out for the "new" (7+ years ago) porch furniture so we can actually use that summery crafty space again. Mind you we also have actual garden space for summery crafting, thanks to Pete and his ongoing efforts in the garden.

 

But I like the porch, with its solid flooring. No gaps, like the deck, and no dirt as on the flagstones. Or at least, not as much. If you've ever dropped a darning needle outside you'll know what I mean!

 

I usually need to concentrate hard on grafting so I get the needle movement right, but today it felt totally natural. 

 

Maybe I'm getting used to the process, or maybe it's just the peacefulness of sitting outside, where the sun is beyond the shady shelter of our roof and the breeze is soft enough to cool without blowing anything away. Either way, I grafted this toe without any stress at all.

Yesterday we ran into a neighbour on the street and stopped to chat a while, and then we remembered the porch and invited him to come sit with us for a bit. We had the BEST catchup and all noticed how sitting out there chatting, none of us looking at screens but enjoying the long leafy views, was relaxing and just plain nice. This is a discovery most people don't have to make - it's too obvious! - but after neglecting this space for so many years it was a delight to have the reminder.

The second toe grafted as easily as the first, even if it does have a blue stripe its partner does not.

Such a gorgeous day here. I've come inside to type up this hug, and through the open windows I'm hearing birds and insects, and young children playing and laughing. Hope it's as lovely where you are and that you have some restful time coming your way soon. I know I do, because I have some ends to run in...

... and another pair of socks to graft shut.

As always, thank you so much for stopping in and I'll see you next Saturday!

 

 

Cardigan conversion and hot weather readiness

Okay there was NO craftiness here at Hugs this week, where all my time was weighted toward house cleanup and long walks. Plus shopping for summer.

This lightweight floral cardi was an earlier purchase, but it needed some help if I was going to wear it to an event this coming week amid both heat and humidity. My favourite combo! Not. 

It's super cute on and will top my coolest linen floaty pants with some much-needed colour. It's also designed for airy gaps between the crocheted buttons. And there is no. way. I am wearing a T underneath. No extra layers in a hot humid scenario!

So last night, unconvinced it was worth dragging the sewing machine out of its cupboard for an interrupted line of tacking, I curled up under a good light and hand stitched this baby shut between the buttons. 

I did a blanket stitch for the closure seam...

SO RESTFUL. 

...and then for good measure, went over the topstitching using a running stitch with back stitch thrown in. I don't know the name of that one but is also very pleasant to do.

Do either of the runs of stitches show? Yes. 

Do I expect anybody to approach me with a magnifying glass? No.

 

Meanwhile, the hot weather has well and truly arrived here in Toronto. Some people love summer but for me it is the Time of Dread. I am a sweater weather person, ya know? Though I do appreciate the fact that most of our food exists because heat does. 

As I write this our windows are open to let in all the remaining scents of blossoms and greenery released by an overnight rain. I say 'let in' but really I mean 'give in to' because it is gusty out there! But sunny and so much less miserable than yesterday. 

To supplement our a/c this summer we bought a new table fan which is excellent (it's a Lasko Whirlwind, if you too need a compact but powerful fan that will oscillate or not per your whim.)

And to make our long ravine walks less uncomfortable than they've been with my heavier trail shoes, I bought a pair of really airy ones that got me home cool and pain free the first time I tried 'em! (Merrell Maipo 3 Aerosports, if you are looking for similar.) 

Oh! and here's a tip I got from Tom Bihn, after the urethane lining of my beloved and much-used Daylight Backpack started disintegrating into dandruff that coated everything I packed into it, owing to my not realizing I needed to waterproof the outside again periodically: that kind of lining melts off if you use rubbing alcohol on it! No pix of that project because it's a boring black backpack, but whew. So glad to have this thing cleaned up and back in circulation. Now to buy the waterproofer.

 

Yesterday I overhauled our front hall, putting boots into the back of the closet, pairing up the water shoes and putting them in grabbable locations, and weeding out the running shoes whose soles are officially past their best-by date. The results: amazing! but also a little sad because man that is a lot of shoes we go through. Almost feels like justification for more Birkenstocks, which can be resoled indefinitely, and the cork sides resealed. Ahem.  

(I kid. Even I am prepared to admit I have too many Birkenstocks.)

But I don't regret buying the pale pink suede Tulums that match my new cardi-top! 

They look a little frumpy in this pic maybe, but with long floaty pants they are really quite elegant. And so, so comfy. If I can't have sweaters, I can be consoled with the comfy.

Hope you're having a lovely day with a good weekend lined up, and thank you as always for spending some time here with me. See you next Saturday when... let's face it, you're not gonna see blanket progress, that's for sure!!

 

Back in fashion or... not

This week I got out of town to see a friend, who presented me with this gem from her local thrift shop:

She knows me so well. And she was even willing to pay the cover price...

...which made the actual checkout price of 44 cents a lovely surprise!

Seriously, though these old 1970s knitting brochures are usually good for a laugh and not much else, this one has some intriguing designs.

Here's the centre spread. See anything you like?

The scarf on the right, perhaps? or the mittens along the bottom?

This helmet and mitten combo was super common in the 1940s but I kinda love seeing it on a 1970s kid who's cool enough to carry it off. (ish.)

That gathering at the wrist is super practical for snow festings, too.

Okay... let's be honest. This looks like a boy who's loved by his gramma, and is willing to humour her all the way out of her sight, till her gifts are lodged in a hedge for later pickup. Still like these pieces though.

 

Also, colour me intrigued with these gloves, which are knit on two needles and have a fetching wrist strap: 

 

In case you're wondering, as I did, how this magic is worked... there's a handy illustration:

Start from the pinkie, work your way across to the thumb, stay there long enough to cover the other side of the thumb, and work back to the pinkie. Now I'm wondering if they're comfortable and I can think of a good way to find out!

 

Okay let's get to my top faves: a turtleneck sweater, and the bootie slippers from the back cover:

Here's a closeup of the sweater that shows what struck me most: the garter stitch upper bodice and matching turtleneck!

That'd be kind comfy in soft yarn, don't you think? And warm, like having a shawl already wrapped around your sweater. I'm not sure how it would look on, but I'm really tempted to give it a go.

The bootie slippers, however, speak for themselves. I love the coarse stitch on them.

 

On the flip side, I'm bewildered by the idea of a tassel on the back of a shawl, just low enough to be a lump to sit on (or maybe it's meant to draw attention?) and alternative bootie slippers that lace up like a hot girl girdle. Seems deliberate, since the slip in element of slippers are the whole point of them, though when they're shown in colour, in bright yellow and orange, I guess they're meant to evoke high cut sneakers?

 

These cushions on the other hand are right in style. Everybody likes a nice textured pillow nearby when curling up for a nice long binge-watch.

That's it for me today - gotta get outside and pitch in on garden duty! Hope your weekend's lovely, either super peaceful or super fun according to your needs. Thanks for spending this bit of it with me and I'll see you next Saturday!

 

(oh... and I did do some in-car knitting around that visit with my friend, and made a lil progress with my summer stripe socks!) 

 

 

 

Busy bee

A real busy bee is actually accomplishing things, so I'm more of a faux version, but I'm okay with that. Spring is so fleeting, after all! Put on your smell-o-vision and imagine a blend of honey and vanilla, and you can appreciate these blossoms with me:

Come July with its leaf-withering heat I'll forget how gorgeous this flowering treeshrub can be, but right now it's the best ever.

I forgot to share my amazing score at the recent local rummage sale. No vintage linens this year but with luck you'll share my love for Susan Cooper and feel the wait was worthwhile:

 

Yep, Greenwitch AND The Dark Is Rising, in the paperback version of the same hardcover edition I read as a kid at our library! Same cover art, anyway. I personally prefer the updated paperback artwork for this newer edition (on the left) over the originals above and the ones in our local shops currently (on the right)

Still, the spine flop and print size on the new-to-me vintage ones are excellent so I might have to chase the rest of that set too!

 

Meanwhile, my sewing efforts continue, now in the form of stitched up sleeve rolls. I've been doing a cheat and running them through the sewing machine, but I've been stymied by this particular T, which I soooo want to wear, because I don't have any thread in its shade of green. 

I'm wondering about hand stitching the sleeve roll-ups with more of a tacking situation from behind, in my more plentiful off-white, so it doesn't show. Anything's better than constantly having to roll them up manually, as their natural length is exactly right to look maximum weird on my arms, but it would be nice if the whole thing didn't come off looking too haphazard. 

Technically, for a T, haphazard is the point. But my personal fashion goal is 100% 'pyjamas that pass for office wear' and sloppy sleeves don't really fit the bill.

Just this brief Hug today I'm afraid, as we have a busy Saturday schedule not exclusively involving Plants In Ground! Hopefully your weekend is equally exciting and I'll see you next Saturday. Thanks as always, so much, for stopping by to see me.

 

 

Ready for summer

It's only taken me three months, give or take, but I finally finished my lil sewing project for white shoe season!

I don't plan to use this as a kerchief for my head, but this pose looks cuter and evokes a carefree 1960s summer don't you think? 

Even taking the project from initial idea to fabric purchase took ages, owing to my not being able to decide (and also, having a lot of work on.) 

But to recap, I was hoping to solve the problem knot of white being SO not my colour, while also being a fun and heat-reflecting choice for summer; not liking to put on a ton of sunscreen all the time; and wanting to do a better job of balancing prints and solids. 

Enter, scarves! Only I couldn't find any in shops that would be lightweight enough, apart from bandanas and other square options, which have to be doubled to make a triangle. Too hot for a hot day, know what I mean? And on cooler but not quite sweater-friendly days, I didn't want a big flopping scarf over my shoulder or in a big lump draping down from my neck. I wanted something tidy, like a turtleneck. 

I settled on Liberty of London's Tana Lawn cotton pretty quickly, because it's the lightest, softest cotton I know. Half a meter was, I felt sure, enough to do the job. Then I stalled a long time because I couldn't find a pattern that matched my vision, and I didn't know how to get there on my own. 

Eventually I cut off 27" of one piece, planning to fold that piece to half height, and, with 3/4" for a side seam, make a funnel to slide over my head. The idea is to fold it up a bit to protect whatever isn't covered by the shade of a big hat in full sun, or fold it down a lot to leave air flow while still having some colour near my face to brighten up a black top or make a white one less jarring.

Then I cut out a triangle that spanned the full half meter on one side, with a view to finishing the edges for a single layer jaunty bandana for hot days. For my NECK, not my hair. I need forehead protection too so it's sunscreen or hats for this girl. 

Et voila! This was my first attempt with the finished edges.

My sewing machine took ages for the fancy stitch, which kind of buckled the fabric, and I still had to do a second run of stitches. After this one, I just pressed in a fold and tucked the raw edge toward it as I ran a bog standard stitch down the length. Definitely preferred. 

The funnel neck is pretty much as I described - a tube I stick my head through. 

Boring, right? Let's look instead at how cute these fabrics are with my blue suede Birkenstocks. 

How cute will these look with an all-white outfit, or all off-white? And check this for white jeans and a navy T:

Somehow I got into a lot of trouble making the funnel work, so in the end I made a long horizontal tube, pressed the raw edges inward on either side, and topstitched them down to each other for a 25" tube (maybe 25.5", don't quote me.)

 

I think that'll also give the tube some stability in the back, where I want it more or less flat, even as the front part flops down a bit into its fold.

Here's how that looks on my faaaaaaave of the three, the print that matches the one I had in brown tones in a miniskirt I wore for years after finding it at a jumble sale in England.

Swoon

I save this one till last as I was sewing, so I would solve all the little execution issues before I got to it, but then I managed to sew its initial seam with bits of raw thread sticking out right where it'll be next to my face, sigh.

Probably you can't see those bits along the top edge. And I've decided to just clip them close and pretend it never happened. 

Meanwhile, while I was noodling around online looking for patterns to spare me figuring this out myself, I started thinking about how fun it would be to sew a Merchant and Mills top in one of these prints. I mean, assuming I could afford it! Tana Lawn is SO pricey. Another reason for a single-layer neck scarf.

Might try to sew this top in some 'lesser' fabrics first, and see how it goes. 

It's a long weekend here and I have made my usual holiday weekend plans: DECLUTTERING THE HOUSE. I hate cleaning, but if I put on a good audiobook and dig in, I can go for hours just making the place tidy. Currently that audiobook is Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time.

fun quote, paraphrased: your gifts don't count, it's how you use them that matters.

I loved that because it means it's okay if you're not the best at something, as long as you find a way to apply that skill that has a positive impact. Or to put it another way, it doesn't matter if you don't get a project done within a week of thinking of it, as long as you finish eventually, ha!

Hope you have a great weekend however you're spending it, and thanks for spending some of it with me. See you next Saturday!

 

Slow spring

I've been feeling lazy lately, curling up with a book or some stitching, enjoying the view out the window and the warmth inside because it's been sooo chilly and damp out there!

What do you think of my new Emma Bridgewater blueberry mug? I know it's silly, but switching up my mugs for different seasons really makes my day. Also I love these shades of blue and green.

And speaking of green, the leaves are definitely coming out now despite the chill.

That's our lilac on the left, and on the right, the brilliant green of our mystery shrub. It's coming up to its most gorgeous moment in the year, when pink blossoms burst open. After that the petals brown and drop, and the leaves brown and linger till the fall. Good thing I love textured bark, and the squirrels and birds love places to shade themselves, or it'd be a pretty dull view.

 

As you may recall, I was at a jewellery show last Saturday. Trish had called to say a friend of her mom's was selling *her* mom's mom's various projects from the 1940s. Of course I dropped everything and ran to the venue!  

These little handkerchiefs are all so delicately edged or, in the case of the flowers, stitched. I think the white and blue are both crocheted but the purple is definitely tatted! That's something I can't imagine having the capacity to learn, and it's so pretty.

Prettiest of all though is that floral design, in my opinion. I just love it!

I'm also so smitten with this white crochet border, and the delicate embroidery of A. P. As it happens I have a writing friend with those initials so I snapped it up for her.

 

I also snapped up this little earring and brooch set for Lannie, made from shells! Shell jewellery was hot back then I guess and this lady was very adept in making it. I tried to get a little closeup for you of the earrings but you might have to use your imagination.

I guess it's not a surprise that somebody who can tat can also glue together tiny curls of shell, but I'm still very impressed. 

Meanwhile, I've continued to work on my second crochet blanket, with just one more colour stripe to go to make two full repeats of the six needed to make it long enough for a snuggly long stint on the sofa. And my main takeaway is that even though it's the same stitch and mostly the same colours, I like it SO much more than the original narrow-stripe blanket!

The fabric is coming out dense, almost rigid, compared to the floppy stretch of the original, whose stitches were a constant miracle to me as I learned how to work them. This time my tension is consistent and I'm working with as much calm as enthusiasm, which seems to go better than enthusiasm alone. 

Here's another shot to maybe show better how the two compare. 

Still enjoying the process a lot, still hoping to be done in time for the cool weather next winter! We'll see though, how much appetite I have for a big blanket in my lap during the inevitable run of heat waves.

For now I'm just going to keep drinking my tea and working away at things, mindful that even the smallest progress adds up.

Hope you have a great weekend and week, with progress of any kind or at least some happy moments! Thanks for dropping in and I'll see you next Saturday.