Knitwear Chanel to Westwood

 

a wall of Fair Isle, how gorgeous was that! Me and two chums visited the exhibition at the Dovecot studios 'knitwear, Chanel to Westwood at the weekend. I am still a bit rabbit in the headlights when going out and about but hey this was worth it! Fantastic exhibition.

There was a section on Cocktail sweaters, OMG I know want to knit a cocktail sweater, these were beautiful.

I dont know if you can see the knitting book on the floor in the picture below, Its the Lady Isobel Barnett book of knitted patterns. I adored Lady Isoble Barnett when I was younger, she was the epitome of chic. Such a sad story. I want to hunt this book down and knit one.

Aww Lovely to fnish with the amazing Bill Gibb and Kaffe Fassett. Bill Gibb comes from my home town, Kaffe Fassett mentions visiting there in his book dreaming in Colour.

I stayed overnight in Edinburgh as I was going out in the evening to celebrate a chums birthday, I know you go no where for 3 years then you are all over the place! Scoobs was away camping so I went into Marks and Spencer and got some Bao buns for our dinner! All in all a lovely weekend!

Mysterious blue pool

 

The weather here has been atrocious just awful, torrential rain. I'm  not a fair weather walker because if I was I would never get out! But this rain has been too much when I've been out its taken over a day for my coat to dry out.

So a break in the weather means we get out to blow away the cobwebs! Me n the scoobs headed up to Plean to visit what is known as the mysterious blue pool. It was probably a mine shaft, seeing it reminded me of the film "the time machine" must re watch that!

There was an iron age broch there too.

Very interesting! We had a lovely walk through the woods, snow is forecast so we may not get out much next week so lets make the most of it today.

We started the day off with breakfast at Tim Hortons. We have one quite near us, really confused Canadian chums on Instagram! 

Fabric inventory

 Wow 😳 OK my chum Carol has been keeping track of fabric in and out for a few years now.

I thought this would be a great idea especially now in retirement....

So I set about establishing a rough estimate of what fabric I already have 🤣🤣🤣

So here we go, this is the baseline in metres:

General = 113.25

Xmas = 9

Hungarian = 10

Melody Miller = 3.75

Liberty quilting cotton = 28.5

Speckled fabric for bubbles = 17

Lucy Engels = 16

Anna Maria Horner = 11.75

Japanese = 16

Shweshwe = 3.5

Quilting life SAL = 4.5

RB SAL = 2

Sewcialites = 4

Floral big cats = 5.25

Batiks = 27.5

Kaffe = 24.5

Liberty tana lawn = 174

Grand total = 470.5

A chum pointed out that at my xurrent rate of productivity this will only last until 2027 🤣🤣🤣 lets see!

January seasons 2023

January is a funny month isn't it? We are out of Christmas but it's not really spring. All a but discombobulated.

I saw this beautiful moon on the way home from Killearn.

The fence posts are looking really lush just now.

It's all a bit dreich and cold and damp but there is hope in the air.

These were taken at 4.30 pm 4th jan, lets see what that same shot is like in Feb shall we.

Fettling - last half of 2022 update

I will admit to a bit of a struggle with how to structure my fettling, part of me wants it to be link the finish along where you  keep accountability year by year and yes we are doing that but I think my list should be less structured by year and be more dynamic, we all know stuff comes along which either spurs us on or sideswipes us. Anyhoo thats my take on it! I will keep a list of how much I tick off each year and will continue to add to the list (strict chronological order, I may be retired but will ALWAYS be a librarian 😂

This is what I ticked off in 2022 with a link to relevant blog post if you care to delve more deeply (I wont be offended if you dont!):

Ticked off in 1st half 2022

Garden Trellis

Hexagon sewing case

Chirp chirp layer cake quilt

Ticked off in 2nd half 2022

In the garden sew along

Siblings together quilt

Temperature embroidery from 2021

Wheel of the year embroidery

Oh deer layer cake quilt

so big fat Brucie bonus for me for all those ticks! This is what is left:

Blossom Jane

I have made progress now with retirement, I go to a regular group every second tuesday and this is the project I take there, so I do hope to get a crack on with it this year, I am now part way through row E there are 13 rows plus borders, you do the math 😂

The only other item which was left on the list proper were the Floral Big Cats, now in my defence she did add 3 more throughout the year, I have added them to the list. I did manage to tick off the lion ad the cheetah this year so yea for me!

Floral big cats -Panther lion, tiger, lynx, cheetah, Jaguar, mountain lion

Marbling fabric - no progress on this, it does require a bit of forethought and setting up, I am going to schedule it in for 2023, I promise!

So this is the waiting list!  I plan to carry working on the above two projects from the previous list, the Blossom Jane is a long term project which will be progressed. Floral Big Cats will be worked on too but they do take it out of you, they are quite intense to make so will also be a longer term project.

Right! time to think about moving things up from waiting list to list proper  - I will highlight in a nice calming orange the ones I intend to move up on the main list page, lets not be too ambitious here, lets be sensible .... these are the ones which are more of a priority and I have more chance of finishing!

The waiting list

FQ melody Miller quilt  put back on the waiting list

Quilt for Henry the dog in Blue and Teal

Bubbles in speckled fabric

Selvedge quilt

Macaron pouch

Mintiya purse  replace with cross body bag

Bargello Angels wings with Tula

Tula butterfly in capel and castaway 

medallion quilt in liberty big prints

Orphan block quilts?

Scrap quilt x2 - Sarah Fielke string sane and Stash bandit one

Jen Kingwell Bakers dozen, Blockheads or pluses quilt in Lucy Engles bundles?

Sew alongs

I also need a way to fit in the Sew alongs, in retirement I have FULLY embraced them! I used to sit and look in the window of Sew alongs but never have the time to commit! Now I do! so I will work them in here somehow, bit tricky when you dont know what is coming up? So I will put in the ones I know are happening, I could do a Gant chart 😂

That was soooooooooo a joke, What I think I will do on my Fettle page is put in a list with start and end dates of the ones I am working on and know are coming up, I will add as they come in through the year, this might stop me over committing ...... who am I kidding, yup no one!

EDITED 04/01/23

OK I may have gone a bit bonkers over this but bless me I do like organising 😂 I have just updated the main Fettling page I have added a section for Non Quilting crafts to keep track of embroidery and knitting etc. Also and Lord this really does say a lot about me! I have colour coded the sew alongs into weekly monthly and "other" who doesnt love a miscellaneous category ! hoping this will stop me overr committing! lets see famous last words!

Hogmanay 2022

 Last year Scoobs and I had to isolate from each otherr, he got the chance to go to his folks for christmas but we were both still very wary of transmitting CV so decided to isolate fromeach other on his return, it was the first time we had really ventured into a family setting so after 2 years of shielding we took it cautious! The only way we could spend hogamanay (scots word for new years eve) together was to sit outside which we duly did!

this year we planned to do this intentionally so we had a firepit outside, I think we now have a new hogamany tradition!

Botanics 2022

 Well, you know how the spontaneous often turns out to be the best? This was one of those things! I have wanted to do something like this for years. to be honest I have really struggled with Christmas since 2017 and a beloved family member died in very tragic circumstances in December, that whole month was horrific and for a variety of factors I have not had a chance to get over that or make new christmas traditions, he was such a large part of our family christmas and with family illness and covid I have not had a normal christmas since. I tried this year to sidestep it all but you cant do that unless you go away completely. and to be honest this year was lonely and sad, I dont want that again so I will work to make it bettter for me next year.

A chum messaged me on wednesday and told me how great the lights were at the Botanics. They looked lovely so I asked Mark if he would come, I wasnt actually expecting him to say yes but he did! 

We had an utterly glorious time! We had hot chocolate, the lights were fantastic and it was an all round top evening! Here are my highlights!