ODDS 'N ENDS

Last week had lots of quilting going on.  I finished the QuiltSmart Midi Bag and gave it to my friend Shirley for her birthday.  It was a hit.

I really like it too, and have started another very similar for Karen, who gave me the batik strips for the bag.  Some of my own batiks are in there also, just for variety's sake.  I used 27 different fabrics, four 2 1/2" squares of each to make the bag.

Although I've done very little knitting the last year because of a "wearing out" of a joint at the base of my thumb, I do want to finish up a few things:  One of them is to knit new soles for this pair of Jim's socks, originally knit in 2016.      

                                       

It's much less work to reknit the sole, picking up stitches at the toe and including a stitch from the original sock at each end of each knit row.  The sock on the left has a new sole, the one of the right has a new toe so far.  You can see the hole under the heel, and there was a very worn spot under the toe. 

I started fixing the left sock quite a while ago, and had the "bright" idea of stuffing in bit of roving (carded but not yet spun wool) as I went along.  The idea was to make a nice soft cushion under the sock, but it didn't turn out well.  It was way too puffy.  So I picked the heel loose and took out the stuffing.  I should go back and reknit the heel as I was trying not to run out of war.  There's a tiny tail left, but the heel got a little scrunched up.

And I spent some time the last several days cutting up scraps and sorting material.  This is the pile to be given away: some whole pieces and two big plastic bags of scraps.  The scraps have the potential to become lots of cut squares of various sizes, but I've done so much of that kind of cutting I'm finished!  These bags of scraps will go to a quilting group that can use them.  OUT THE DOOR!

In the meantime the weather has warmed up nicely and we've had some very nice days.  Mother's Day was pretty much a perfect May Sunday, except for about an hour in the afternoon when a band of rain showers blew through.  But once that moved on east, the weather returned to a lovely Spring day again.

With the warming weather comes an increase in Garden Centre customers.  Well, we've been waiting for that.  The greenhouse is quite full of blooms and it's time to move them on to their new "homes."  Hope the good weather continues!