Progress and Beginnings

I'm very excited to be at home today, the first Christmas Eve I have had off for 13 years! That's the perils of working in retail for you. This is the first day of 7 consecutive days at home and I have so much new crafting planned! But first let's look at how I've been getting on with a few on-going projects.

Do you remember Katy and Laura's Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop? Myself and lots of fellow bloggers produced EPP projects based on their travel or location photos.

For my stop on the bloghop I chose a photo of my local landmark, The Forth Bridge, and designed an EPP pattern inspired by the geometric architecture of the bridge. Well I have been working on it in front of the telly during these cold and damp winter nights and it now measure 34 x 23 inches. So what to do with it?

I'm thinking a wheelchair lap quilt for my dad, but according to one website it still needs to be at least 36 x 36 for this. So not too far to go but I do feel I have neglected my ongoing EPP star quilt recently and am longing to get back to that.

This is the "All Liberty Tana Lawn" project I started about 18 months ago. One of the problems I've had is that, though the fabrics in my collection are beautiful, they are also very mid value and I feel I need some more light and dark for contrast.
So I contacted the lovely Ali from Very Berry Handmade. Ali has a shop on Folksy specialising in Liberty Tana Lawn and she very kindly helped put together a big bundle of fabric pieces in light and dark (with some more mediums too as I just couldn't resist them!).
Here they are above looking delightful. I can't wait to start cutting them up! Thanks very much for your help and wonderful speedy service Ali!

I also returned to knitting a few months back with this chunky Folksong jumper for my travelling son (currently in Mexico for Christmas!). Look how much I have done!!
I am really enjoying knitting again. My mother was an amazing knitter and I think this made me a very lazy knitter as I could always ask mum if I had a problem and she would step in and finish stuff off for me if it got too hard. So I never really progressed beyond simple stocking stitch. Well now my mum's not here any more to help, and I really feel like pushing myself.

So look what I started last night! Sock knitting!!!
We have some gorgeous Regia wool in the shop this winter (most of it designed by Kaffe Fassett!). So I kitted myself out with 2 balls of this gorgeous stripe, a pack of 5 bamboo double pointed needles and a book!

And after a few false starts I managed to get this much done! I am very excited and proud :)
It is a bit like knitting with a porcupine but I am getting faster all the time, and the great thing about doing circular stocking stitch is you never have to purl! You just keep knitting all the way round.

This is all very well but in a while I will have to tackle the heel - yikes!  Anyway this should keep me busy for a few days. (please excuse the state of my cutting mat - this is an old, spare mat that my husband uses for paper and glue - I wouldn't dream of using it for my lovely fabric!)

I do hope you have a similarly crafty and also very happy and peaceful Christmas!!