Stitching for August

 I’m a bit late with this, but let’s have a look at what crafting I got up to during the month of August.

The Chookshed Challenge ended up being yet another failure.  All I managed to do was restitch the little wording panel for the pincushion in finer thread.

This year has been rather unsuccessful when it comes to this challenge.  It is what it is.

I didn’t make my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks, as I was not to be dragging out tubs to get fabric.  It won’t take much to catch up.

Enough of the failures, what did I manage to actually do?

Mum’s little dog bookmark was a bit of fun to make.  A quick, colourful project.  It was nice to actually finish something.

I continued to plug away at the slow stitching panel at my stitching mornings and finished the panel up at Baradine on the weekend.  (More on that in a separate post.) It was fun to have a little play with some stitches other than straight running stitch on some sections. 

I now have to have a think about how I will construct the pouch that it is destined to become.

My corner to corner crochet rug has been slowly growing.  I don’t have a photo at the end of the month, but this is where it was up to mid August.  That would have been the start of the third 200g ball of yarn.  I was working on the fourth ball at the end of the month.  I worked on this in the evenings at Baradine.

The final project I have worked on is the Anni Downs pouch that was the project we were given at Scrub Stitchin’ in 2024.  I don’t seem to be able to get too enthused with the process of making this, but I know I will love it once it is finished.  I had a false start with this back in January, and took it to Baradine to work on.  Once again, not a lot of progress, but at least it was a start and I hope to plug away at it over the next little while.

How did I go with working on something for at least 15 minutes a day?

Surprisingly, I worked on something on 24 days.  Often that may have only been a row or two of crochet, as it takes about 15 minutes to work each row.

August = 24/31

Year to Date = 181/243, which is 74.49%, being a slight improvement over last month.

So, there wasn’t a real lot to show for the month, but I’m OK with that.  The projects will all get done in their own good time.  Now to look forward to September.

Finishing Mum’s UFO

This is a bit of a strange one, as my Mum didn’t have UFOs, she was a finisher.  She would work away on a project, finish it and then move onto the next.  Her daughter did not inherit that trait, and it always surprises me that Mum didn’t encourage me more to finish things off.  

Anyway, I digress.  Back to the UFO.

A couple of years after Mum moved into residential aged care she was looking for a little something to make and we found a cute cross stitch bookmark kit in Big W.  This wasn’t long after she had had a mini stroke and I don’t think any of us realised at the time just how much it was affecting her cognitive functioning.

It never did get finished, and when I started going through her craft tubs I found how far she had got with it.  She had marked the centre line on the pattern and tacked those centre lines on the Aida, although not needed on a project this size.  Then she had threaded a needle with the six strands, rather than the two and progressed no further.  Dear Mum…..  So, is this actually an unfinished object, or an unstarted object?  Who knows.

Well, this serial starter, and often not finisher, of a daughter thought she had better finish off Mum’s bookmark. In the process I tried a few new things.  We recently bought a couple of stable tables at a garage sale and I finally had a brainwave to use it when stitching.  It works really well. Who’d have thought??  I then decided to actually use an embroidery hoop.  I know the centre ring is supposed to be wrapped, but this is just one that will be used for a Christmas decoration.  That worked well too.  Fancy that!!  Then finally, I used my new little magnetic needle minder.  I’m a sucker for green sewing machines.

I started it on Friday at my stitching morning, did a bit more on Saturday and finished it off yesterday.  The weather was even warm enough to sit outside in the sun, down to a t-shirt yesterday, which was rather lovely.

Now, being just a cheapy kit, the Aida band wasn’t as nice as most and the threads, although six stranded, the strands were really thin.  Not as nice as DMC or other well known brands, and there was not felt to back it.  However, I just worked with what there was and found a bit of felt that matched in my stash.  Having said that, the design was super cute.

It’s not the greatest of finish on the back, but I’m going with finished is better than perfect.  The crease in the felt will come out in time.

I’m really pleased to have finished this off for Mum.  Are there any other UFOs?  Yes, just a couple. The only reason these are in existence is that she forgot how to crochet and knit.

While in the nursing home, she crocheted the tops of kitchen towels, while she remembered how to crochet.  There are a couple that have had the row of blanket stitch worked, ready to do the crochet, and a few tea towels, that haven’t been started to be worked on.  There are several tubs of coloured crochet cotton to use on them, so I would like to work them up.  

The other is some knitted squares.  Mum used to knit knee rugs using two strands of wool, one a constant colour and the other all sorts of coloured scraps.  Her last knitted rug ended up rather messy on the second half.  She then tried to just knit ten inch squares using the same colour style.  There are a few squares completed.  I’d like to make some more to make a small knee rug, to honour her last ever knitting.