welsh hills again

I do love a good project and living somewhere like this means there are always things on the go. Inside there is usually something on the needles or on the sewing machine, especially in winter. Outside is ignored when it is cold and wet but it begins to call about now and I have spent a couple of days working in the garden.  So just for the record before inside gets abandoned for the spring and summer, here are this winter's projects plus a new one cast on yesterday. Here are some curtains made from dinosaur material for grandson number two, aged five.  The material comes from textile express , a great business based in Oswestry with a really good website and web presence.  I make lined curtains about once a year and every time I have to go back to square one in terms of reminding myself about the order of events.  Last time I did it I made three pairs in one marathon effort for the holiday cottage so I took the time to write down all the th...

This year I absolutely promise that I am not going to turn my back on the garden and just sneak off inside.  I am going to clean the greenhouse and cut back and mulch and all those good things.  Honestly.  But there is nothing like a rainy day to set me thinking about winter projects.  I am not one of those people who carefully finishes one thing before starting another but even I was surprised at how many things I seem to have on the go or waiting.  Confession time. It is a bit of a giveaway that the basket which holds all the wool waiting to be worked is my  parents' old log basket, i.e quite a big one.  The bag on the top contains the project which at the moment is at the top of the queue.  Younger son and his wife are expecting their first baby in November and I am making a blanket. Not a delicate white blanket for a newborn but a cheery, cosy blanket for the car and the pushchair. The wool is a soft merino aran and the pattern is fr...

Confession time.  How many projects do you have on the go at the same time?  If you knit or sew, if you write or quilt or draw, make furniture or compose music, do you do just one thing at a time or are you like me, juggling with numerous projects, the one you do always dependant  on your mood? I didn’t knit or crochet for years and years.  I didn’t have enough time and the results were too slow.  I did make clothes for my children when they were very young on my trusty sewing machine and later curtains and cushion covers and blinds but knitting went by the board in my early twenties.  But I have always been grateful for my ability to make things, which is mainly down to having spent my adolescence in New Zealand.  I am not sure whether I would have learned had I spent that time living in the UK.  My mother is a fabulous cook and she taught me to cook and bake but sewing and knitting were not her things.  I suspect that had I spen...