Grow - April Round Up

April has now been and gone, and the garden has been a little quiet compared to the last couple of months. There have been a couple of unseen additions though, and things have been taking shape. 

Potatoes

One of the biggest changes is that I have planted a few potatoes. One of my neighbours who has an allotment had a spare few potatoes that he wasn't going to get a chance to plant out or use, gave away some of them, and I planted three rows. They were three different early varieties, and one was a second early I think, so I was a little on the late side in getting them in the ground, but already in the past couple of weeks I have had a few pop their heads up to say hello. Despite next door's cat using the veggie bed as a litter tray... It's a good job I like Mr Pickle (the cat). 

Peppers on the windowsill

The addition of potatoes was not the only thing to get done during April. My experimental propagator has worked its magic and has produced nine quite substantial seedlings from my pepper seeds I rescued from a supermarket bell pepper. I planted them out into three pots and they are now residing on the windowsill in the knitting den. It is the warmest room in the house and gets the most light. They are watered almost every day and are being turned just as often to allow them to grow upright instead of leaning towards the window. I was warned by my stepfather that peppers are notoriously hard to keep alive and reminded me that the battle isn't over just yet! ;) 

First Spring Onions

Most of the other veggies I have planted have been growing well, the first set of spring onions are looking tall and strong as ever. I got a variety pack of seeds with a few red as well as white, and I'm excited to see that the red bottoms of a couple of them are starting to peek through! I'm starting to consider planting a couple of these onions outside to see if that will help them grow a little more. I can't help thinking that them being in a small punnet is slightly limiting, but I don't really have much else at the moment. I am considering trying one or two when they are at this stage too, seeing as the small seedlings which I thinned out earlier last month had some flavour to them. The second lot of spring onions are still relatively small, at about three inches high, so there isn't much to report on that front. 

First Leeks

The leeks however are looking good. I have about five seedlings in the first pot, and the biggest of those are reaching around six inches, which is quite exciting. I think they will be what is next to plant out next month. They do look the spitting image of the spring onions, although less fat when they are at a similar height. I have planted out a second pot of leeks now, and am hoping that they will carry on into the winter. But we will see. The spinach doesn't have as much of a happy tale though. 

Spinach and Basil

The spinach, seen here with the second basil plant, is the second lot of spinach I planted. The second lot overtook the first lot quite substantially, and I decided that having two spinach plants was a little too much for just me to eat all of, even with copious amounts of humous. The time the first plant had spend in the kitchen I think had stunted it, and it wasn't showing many signs of recovery sadly. So I picked the baby leaves off of it to sprinkle on tonight's tea and I then used the pot to plant the second lot of leeks. The remaining pot of spinach is starting to look good and I am looking forward to eating it. 

First Basil

The basil, the last thing left to talk about is going strong. Both the first and the second sowing in fact. They are both now quite substantial and smell amazing. I am now going to start using them in my cooking if I can stop just burying my face in it to give it a smell. I am really pleased that the marmite jar seeds have taken so well to being in there too. I am a little reluctant to move one of the pots into the kitchen where there will be a lot less light and heat than by the back door, but maybe it might be necessary when there becomes no more room! 

The last happy surprise from my garden has to be the mystery bush in the middle of the veggie bed. It was green and spiky when I moved in, and is indeed still green and spiky now. It had a tendency to lean over the small path in the garden and for a while now I've just been walking onto the grass to get around it. Today I tied the top part back to the fence so it stood up a lot more and was covering less of the path. Once I can get hold of a pair of secateurs then I will give it a little bit of a prune to encourage it off the path. But to my surprise a lovely pale pink flower was hiding in the bush. There were a few other buds too so I am looking forward to seeing them all come out in time. 

Finished Object - Tailors Ham

I thought it would be a week or so of Works in Progress for you all, but I managed this sweet little stash buster to help with my future makes. A tailors ham isn't something that I had really thought about before, I've always muddled through when pressing, but when planning out a few sewing projects for my days off it was suggested in one of the patterns that one was needed. So I set about trying to make my own using a helpful tutorial from Tilly and The Buttons Blog, which includes a free printable download. 

I rummaged through my box of odds, ends and scraps and found some thick, upholstery type fabric which would be up to the job. The pattern piece is designed to be cut on the fold, and whilst I had one piece of fabric big enough to do that, my other piece of fabric was such an awkward shape that whilst I could get what I needed out of it, they couldn't be one piece. So I traced the pattern piece out twice and added a half inch seam allowance along the fold edge. 

The pattern itself written on the blog was easy to follow and in no time the ham was sewn quickly up. The next step was to stuff it. The blog talks about using sawdust to stuff the ham, but also mentions that soft fabric scraps could be used as well. As we're in the middle of a nation wide lockdown, and I have no idea where I would get saw dust from in the first place I had to make do with what I had to hand. I thought that the softness of the inside of my ham wasn't too important (more than happy to be corrected on that). I am going to be pressing things around it, not pinning into it. But I did have to bear in mind that heat would be applied during the pressing, so I made sure that what I was going to stuff inside wasn't going to melt or something when heat was applied. 

I stuffed it pretty well, and firmly using a lot of what I had in my scraps. I was pretty pleased with the end result. I have also put it to the test with my latest sewing project (more on that soon!) and it was rather helpful pressing the crotch seams into where they need to be without trying to flatten everything. So overall I'm pretty pleased with it, I also couldn't resist throwing it around like a ball... Can you tell not seeing real life people is getting to me! :P 

Anyway, I will be back later this week with some other exciting things for you. So I hope you are all looking after yourselves in the way that you need. Stay safe! L x

WIP Sunday (?) - Helios Wing Shawl

It has been a busy week at work and there hasn't been much in the way of finished objects, so I thought I would share a new project with you all that has my brain working hard to keep up. A little while ago I won a wonderful pattern called the Helios Wing shawl by Beardychiel Designs. It is a lovely shaped shawl with a mixture of lace panels and plain stocking stitch panels. 

The going is pretty simple and the pattern well written, but the lace sections really do give me something to think about and are perfect for these times of social distancing and allow me to get lost and not pay the world around me much attention. I turned to this pattern, mainly because I was a little bored of what I already had on the needles and needed something new to perk my interest and get involved with. It did just the trick. 

I haven't got too far along with the shawl, as it does require my full attention, but I am about 100 rows in and loving how it is coming out so far. 

I am using the recommended needle size, but the yarn is John Arbon, Devonia DK in the Pollen Gold colourway. The pattern calls for a 4-ply weight yarn, but this DK is so light that the drape of the fabric is lovely anyway. My gauge is also a little on the loose side as well so the two have played into each other and I was able to cast this on using something from stash. 

So the shawl is coming along nicely, and providing a welcome distraction. So hopefully it won't be too long until it's finished! 

WIP Wednesday: Letters From Hogwarts SYOA

Just Before a Frame Move

I fell down a very stitchy Harry Potter rabbit hole a few weeks ago and I haven't been able to look back since. I found a new stitch-a-long via a friend on instagram, and found a whole new type of stitch-a-long.

What I found was a year long stitch-your-own-adventure type stitch-a-long, which frankly is amazing. The lovely person behind Cunning Cross Stitch has created a story in which we follow along at the end of each chapter there is another section of the cross stitch to complete. The amazing thing about this one? You get to make your own decisions in the story, which ultimately determines what elements you end up including in your design - pretty amazing right?!

What is better is that they are offering this amazing cross stitch for free. There is a delightful facebook group for support and I really cannot say quite how excited I am about it. It is taking me a little while to stitch everything up, and I am still working on the introduction charts, and haven't carried on with the story as of yet, but we are now into chapter 3 of the story.

There are also some behind the scenes pages as well on the blog detailing the thoughts and processes behind each chapter. It is all well worth a read if you have time. But for now, here are my progress pictures.

Current Progress

Finished Object: My First Quilt

So a very long time ago or what felt like it, (looking back at the original blog post is was about 2018), I started my very first quilting project. I started off simple with a couple of fat quarter packs from the local Hobbycraft and set about piecing them together to make a top and bottom quilt. And then they stayed in drawer for a few years.

It was only a year or so later when I decided to make a quilt for my Nephew when he was born that I actually decided to get a walking foot for my sewing machine and quilt my first quilt as a practice for doing my Nephew's. It worked pretty well, and then the quilt went back into the draw to be forgotten about.

We are now into 2020 and I have finally got around to finishing the binding on the quilt. It took me to get a bias binding maker and get into the swing of making my own binding to actually do it. So the quilt is bound at the edges using binding I have made from scraps I had lying around. I've managed to match the opposite sides, but I do love the way it has turned out.

The first row of stitching on the binding is sewn by machine, but the second set, after it was turned over the edge I've done by hand. This was mostly because the edges were not that even and it was a little bit of a nightmare trying to get the binding to sit nicely. It was far easier to do it by hand and was completed over a couple of nights sitting watching some podcasts with a brew.

I'm pretty pleased that the quilt is finally finished and can now be put to good use. Maybe next time we'll try a scrappy one.

Finished Object - Hummingbird Handspun

Big wheels have been turning and Tina my spinning wheel has been busy, and I have finally spun my last braid of Pixel Atlantis fibre. This braid was a 100% BFL squishy loveliness in the Hummingbird colourway. I absolutely love the green colour it has come out with and it will hopefully be going with the other braid of Pixel Atlantis fibre I have already spun to make something exciting.

I decided to create this yarn in the simple way that I had created the previous braid, so that there was a more likely chance of them being mostly the same. So the braid was weighed, split in half and two singles spun.

The singles were then plied together in a simple two ply, I did have a little bit left over on one bobbin afterwards, which was a little sad, but I wound that off onto a bog roll tube and am saving it with another few from previous and hopefully when I have enough of them they will be plied up into something amazing - but more on that another time.

When I took this plied yarn off the bobbin I was pretty pleased with how balanced it was, and indeed there were a couple of people who were spammed on snapchat with it! But unfortunately I didn't save the photos.

The final yarn was about 16 WPI, so coming to a lighter sport weight (which is what the other braid is - winning!) and about 180 m. It is now all skeined up and with it's friend waiting for their new adventures.

Finished Object - Dino Apron

As my baking has ramped up recently, and after one particular vegan chocolate cake escapade, I decided it was probably time to get myself an apron for when I'm in the kitchen. Thankfully I only got my work shirt covered in chocolate and not a me made! So time for a me-made that wants to get covered in chocolate.

I've been meaning to get on with making myself an apron, and wanted a full length one to cover my top half as well as my bottom half, so the pattern I used for the spinning skirt was out. I found a free tutorial on The Sewing Directory which you can find here. The tutorial walks you through drafting the pattern and then sewing the actual apron. I used the tutorial for drafting the pattern and loosely followed the instructions for sewing it together as I really wanted to go my own way. 

The pattern uses a small facing along the top of the apron to help insert the neck strap, and the rest is pretty simple too. I made my first apron following the instructions and I think it turned out okay.

I had two old tablecloths that used to be my mothers, which she gave me when I moved out, but which didn't fit my dining room table, so I thought they would be perfect for the job, as they were a fabric that I wasn't going to be too sad if it got covered in food and I had a couple of dinosaur fat quarters which I thought would make a brilliant contrast fabric.

Now I don't actually know what type of fabric the tablecloths were made out of, but I do know now that it is a little thick and almost impossible to get a nice crease out of when pressing. When cutting out I managed to lay out my main apron piece so that the bottom of the apron was along the already hemmed edge of the tablecloth saving me a little work.

The top strap and the pocket I cut out of the dinosaur fabric. Here I deviated a little bit from the pattern. I hadn't actually got enough fabric to create the whole upper strap in one piece, and I had been a little lazy and hadn't cut a pattern piece for it. I knew that I had a little buckle left over from when I made waistcoats for my Mam's wedding, so I thought that I would try and combine this in to the upper strap to make an adjustable one. So I created one short strap and one long strap, but which would both make up the length of the pattern strap, which were then inserted in the top of the apron as the pattern suggested.

The buckle was then sewn on the end of the short strap and the other end fed through to make the adjustable strap. The idea was all well and good, and the strap worked as an adjuster. But my fabric I think was a little too thin and the buckle didn't actually hold in place and would just slide off from around my neck when any pressure was put on it. I solved the problem by pinning the loose and of the strap to the other strap with a Simon's cat pin.

I can't say that straps were my strong point on this apron at all either. My main straps, whilst long enough to tie at the front - which is a must for me on my apron - were made of the same tablecloth and just feel a little to big a bulky for my liking. I think that is nothing to do with pattern but all to do with the fabric I was using.

I realise there is a lot of complaining about how this project wasn't perfect, but not all are. I will say that despite all of these things that aren't perfect with it, I do really enjoy wearing it in the kitchen and I do love the dinosaurs. The apron is perfectly functional, if not perfect in the way that I would have liked it to be.

With that in mind the cogs in my brain were turning and over the next couple of days I had thought up of ways that I would have done the apron differently to make it work, and I decided to have another go. I also had a good friend who wanted a dino apron too!

The next apron I made used the other tablecloth I had, so was made out of the same heavy fabric that was a little bit of a nightmare to work with. I decided that this time, only the main apron front was to be made with the tablecloth. I used a white dinosaur fabric for the neck strap and the front pocket, and used a thinner plain white cotton for the main straps (I had a good long length of this in my stash which was perfect for the job) I had also been toying with the idea of making the facing on the back a lot bigger to incorporate the side straps so they could also be sewn in easier.

Second apron with larger facing

This facing I decided to do with a scrap of light/medium weight cotton I had, to reduce the bulk in the top seam, and I think it worked really well in the end. The second apron I am a lot happier with then the first. The bigger facing allows the straps to be easily installed, and the added understitching along the facing added another strengthening seam as well as encouraged the facing to turn under. That apron will be sent off soon and I really hope it is enjoyed where it is going.