January FNSI

 Wendy has decided to continue hosting the monthly Friday Night Sew-In, so I will continue joining in as often as I can.

I've made a good start by joining in last night with other crafter round the world and I had a very enjoyable evening. 

I started off before dinner with a row or two of my Jumping Dots wrap. 

I'm not a particularly fast crocheted so this is my big yarny project for the moment. It uses tapestry crochet to combine the two colors and will be purple and grey on one side, and grey and purple on the other. If you've ever used a Scheepjes whirl the next bit will make sense - I'm waiting impatiently for my first fuzzbuzz - the point in the purple yarn where a new coloured strand in incorporated. I'm also hoping that a better contrast between the colours will mean easier crocheting in evening lamplight. Jumping Dots is designed by Jellina Verhoeff (jellina-creations.nl)

I then bit the bullet and made some good progress on the Alice EPP cushion.

Top and bottom borders added (by machine) and the whole piece basted and ready for hand quilting. Figuring out how the borders should be attached had left this languishing for too long. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared in the end, although I'm very thankful that I've got the hang on consistent seam allowances! (I have a patchwork I made when I was around 12 and the original 4 inch patches end up anywhere as small as 2.5 inches in places! I know that was a long time ago but until very recently I'd still been massively reliant on my 1/4 inch foot for accuracy). I didn't start the quilting but I know what I want to do. The evening ended with a little more crochet.

Whilst crafting I also watched and listened to crafty things. 

I've recently come across the Fruity Knitting podcast (fruityknitting.com) so I dipped into a couple of episodes of that and one of the episodes led me to the Wool Work audio podcast from knitbritish.net. I only listened to the first episode (from 2014) so plenty to go but seems interesting so far. Does anyone have any recommendations for crafty podcasts? I've only recently come across them and would love to watch and listen to more.

So that's all from me, if you want to see what everyone else got up to pop along to Wendy's blog Sugarlane Designs

2021 Plan

Having a plan for crafting in 2020 seemed to help keep me focused so I'm going to try the same again. Although having put my list together I seem to have made a 21 in 21 type of thing unintentionally, I have no aim to complete all the items on it.

My list is as follows:

1 Aran squares x 3 (WIP) 

2 Xmas Stars (WIP) 

3 Wedding quilt (WIP) 

4 Jessa trousers

5 Grace 2/ Marguerite 

6 Lovenote sweater (WIP) 

7 Jonie

8 Xmas mini

9 Socks x 7 (WIP) 

10 Jessa shorts

11 Snowflake quilt

12 Billie dress

13 Billie top

14 Hitofude

15 Bird quilt 

16 Cross stitch bookmark (MIA) 

17 Rainbow quilt (WIP) 

18 Xmas Lucy's Terrace

19 Cat quilt 

20 Jumping dots

21 Bag

Some are already started, some are from last year's list and one is playing hide and seek!

I also hope to get some handmade gifts made throughout the year, but I'm not including these on the list.

I will try to remember to provide progress updates through the year.