Peeping out again.......

Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to email me to check I'm OK. You're so kind. I just haven't felt like blogging as we've had so much sad news recently that I felt the need to withdraw for a while. The other thing is that although I've completed a further 4 marathons since my last post, I've been struggling with my asthma and have had to withdraw from 3 others. Hopefully I'm back on track now and ready for my 2020 challenges for Alzheimer's Research UK!

I do have a lot of new craft/wildlife/Shelley/knitting/embroidery projects to share but I'll have to add them bit by bit or each post will be far too long. Plus in the time I've been absent I've completed another round of the Six Pack Revolution and am about to start another session in the next few weeks.

I've been tidying my craft room and finishing a few projects that have been lying around for ages so I'll start with an embroidery project, Hester the hare. Started in 2013 but not finished and put aside for whatever reason.

She came on a printed tea towel and you could leave her like that or make her into a doorstop or soft toy. I remember thinking that she needed some embellishment so had started work on the side I wanted to prettify.

I'd already done a few bits of embroidery

She definitely needed much more than that!

Once I was happy with the level of embellishment I joined both sides together and stuffed her nice and firmly so she'd stand up OK

 

I left the reverse side plain

There's been knitting too - a jumper and a cardigan. Plus I cut and re-knitted part of my Carbeth jumper because I wanted it to sit on my waist rather than higher up. When I made it I had planned to use it mostly with dresses but I found I preferred to wear it with jeans/trousers which left a cold draughty bit just above my waistline so I'd stopped wearing it.

Thankfully I had plenty of the yarn left (Artesano alpaca) so all I had to do was pick up the row of stitches above the ribbing and then cut off the ribbing (eek!). I lengthened the body by 3" then re-did the rib and now it's perfect. You can see the original rib-line in the photo below and the colour looked slightly different until I soaked and blocked it again and now you can't see it at all.

Now for the jumper, Kapua from Amirisu Summer 2019 magazine. I used some beautiful 4ply yarn from Ella Rae and when I did my swatch I really wasn't sure about it as I thought it looked like camouflage fabric!

I went ahead with it anyway and I'm so glad I did as I was delighted with the result:

I loved doing the pattern on the sleeves and although the tiny pompoms seemed fiddly to begin with I quickly got into a rhythm with them.

The only changes I made were to the finishing of the neck and sleeves: for the neckline I used a 2 stitch icord bind-off as I felt they looked better than just casting off loosely and for the sleeves I bound off using Elizabeth Zimmermanns 3 stitch icord bind-off.

Then there was the cardigan, Ystava from Laine magazine. I must be having a green colour phase as I chose to use green Rowan Mohair Haze and Rowan Fine Lace held together (both from Stash). It was such a lovely knit and the words I used to describe it on Ravelry were "absorbing', "meditative" and "comfy" and it's already a firm favourite.

I marked the position of the buttonholes on the buttonband using tailors tacks - you can tell I have a background in dressmaking!

The buttons were a chance find in a small local shop!

There's much more to add but tempus fugit and I have other things to attend to but I'll be back; methinks I'll need a few sessions to catch-up completely!

A bit of light stitching

I realise that I haven't updated my eyesight issues so in brief; I had a follow-up visit which resulted in much angst because the man I saw didn't speak very good English, couldn't see one of the laser spots (in my good eye!!!), disappeared without explaining what he was doing (which resulted in Mike getting very worried as he was sitting outside the room watching as the man hunted around to find a Consultant to get a second opinion), couldn't find anyone, told me the laser treatment hadn't been done properly and referred me for another 'emergency' appointment. Great!

Went back a week later and saw the lovely lady who did the laser treatment who confirmed that everything was tickety-boo and the man I'd seen hadn't been looking in the right place. That really inspired confidence! I've now got a follow-up appointment with her in a few weeks time and then if all's still OK then I'll go back onto my usual 6 monthly check-ups for my pressures, cataracts and glaucoma.

All this mullarky made me think long and hard about my eyesight issues and how its decline will affect my numerous crafts, especially embroidery which used to be one of my favourite pastimes. I virtually stopped doing it when my career took off in my early 20s as I always need good light to be able to do it and work got in the way somewhat. I promised myself that when I left to have babies then I'd have more opportunities to do it. But then we found out we couldn't have children so that threw a spanner in the works and embroidery became associated with a sad time.

Enough of that thank you very much, time to get on with it again!

As I'm a tad rusty in my stitching skills I thought I'd start on something where I could just play around and refresh my memory. I remembered this lovely tea towel designed by Sarah Young I'd bought in Rye ages ago which fitted the bill perfectly. They are designed to be cut out, stuffed and used as doorstops but to me they screamed "embroider me before you stuff me!"

May I present Hester the hare.

I may embroider both sides. I'll see how it goes.

I just started doodling and played around with different stitches, long-ago forgotten. It's great fun looking back through my embroidery books for ideas.

I added beads on top of some French Knots

Oh my goodness, I need to practice my French Knots a bit more!!!

I do, of course, have a little helper at times:

See, I'm no trouble at all...........

.....until you want to choose some more thread!!!