my weekend in pictures

My first attempt at hand quilting, thanks to a lesson from my buddy Fiona.

Homemade snickerdropper!!  My favourite sweet thing in the world (quote Ysolda: ‘It’s like snickers and millionaire shortbread had a baby!’), a treat from our old knit night cafe and now re-created for me by Fiona…

This would have been done if it wasn’t for a sudden thread shortage.  Anybody recognise the pattern?

I knit.  A lot.  I spent most of yesterday evening wrestling with ribbing and icord, and now my knitting basket is overflowing with an almost completed Carter Cardigan…

A new phase of decorating has begun and I spent hours standing inside a very small space covered in tile paint.  And somehow managed to get it all over my legs, through my painting trousers.  Goodbye grubby-yellow shower room!

The only thing missing was a little time at my spinning wheel, so that is at the top of my list for crafting fun this week…

purple projects

I seem to be working through my list one giftee at a time, and my sister is the current person-in-progress.  And if it looks from these photos that she has a favourite colour, you’d be right.

1001 Peeps!!  I’ve had this stashed away since the Squam Art Fair, when I had the pleasure of being cabin buddies with Lizzie House.  When I was little one of our favourite family movies was Disney’s Aladdin, so this fabric seems appropriate…  This is going to be a lap quilt as large as I can make it and very simple, so I should have a finished quilt top to show by the end of the week.

This was a little bit of merino and silk fibre, commercially dyed I think in three shades and blended together.  I picked this up years ago in a really out-of-the-way craft shop/cafe that my mum took me to for lunch when I was visiting her in the Highlands.  At the time I was working in a knitting shop and while we were having lunch in the almost deserted cafe a lady came up to us, said that she knew me from the shop, wanted to say hello and needed some help with her knitting, and would I mind having a look?  Shyness suddenly seemed to overcome her and she never showed me what it was, but my mum thought it was hilarious…

Anyway, I’ll knit this up into some simple fingerless mitts.  (You might have noticed that this project was never on my original list – adding things is probably a bad idea.  Oh well.)

My sister doesn’t knit or spin, though she does sew a little.  My absolute favourite though of her makings is cake.  Today she brought me these –

Posting pictures of these two cupcakes online is my way of making sure that Mr Saz gets one.  Publishing evidence means I can’t pretend they never existed and eat them both right now.  Ok.  So she might have brought me three…