Not Much Knitting

I've been reading a lot lately -- okay, a lot -- so not much knitting.  (I'll save the reading for another post.)  But next week is our Girl Scout community day camp, and the theme this year is ... needlework! so I've pulled out this skein of Fyberspates Bamboozle and am pondering sock patterns, as I could hardly not knit at a needlework camp.  I bought this yarn only last October but it seems to have dropped off the face of the planet since then, no longer on either the Jimmy Beans website or even Fyberspates'.  It's very pretty, the Bamboozle, and was a pleasure to wind, although I was more than a little dismayed to find three splices in the one skein.  Well, it's very pretty. Hedgerows, perhaps?

This is actually the only knitting I've been doing for a long time, a neck schmatta that I started before Christmas as a present for Laura, out of some Louisa Harding cotton blend that I found at Tuesday Morning and promptly lost the label of.  I got sidetracked, obviously.

I've also been doing a lot of sewing, most of which was curtains -- lined! -- for two of our bedrooms, which took weeks.  I'm not really happy with the first set, but I learned enough not to repeat the mistakes, and I'm very pleased with the second set.

I did this next in about an hour after that, feeling quite the old hand --

a pair of flannel pajama bottoms for Julia, whose hand-me-downs are by now literally falling apart, besides hitting her mid-shin.  These are in a very cute Scotties print I've had in the drawer since Laura was two.  No, I don't know why Scotties would be leopard-spotted, but there it is.

(Look at that face!)

All of this sewing made me realize yet again how very much I need a big pincushion, and, remembering all of the twee things they have at Jo-Ann's, thought, "I could make one."  After Googling the best thing to stuff pincushions with, and discovering that it's wool -- because the lanolin helps keep them rust-free -- I thought, "Felted ball then -- well, shape" and almost immediately remembered the swatch from my January Aran, thus,

sewed together and stuffed with a next-to-last skein of the Sheepswool chopped to bits, and washed six or eight times so far in the regular laundry, making I think the world's homeliest pincushion --

Oddly, the two ends felted really well, but the middle is still soft and floppy -- I like to think that this is from centrifugal force, but it's probably just because the ends got more of a beating in the wash, being more vulnerable than the middle, as it were.  Still, the ends are perfect as pincushions go, nice and firm and non-shifting, and it's so big that I can just stab blindly as I sew and be sure of hitting it.  Now I'm thinking of collecting all of those wool swatches I've still got somewhere, and making a needle-book or two ...

Comments

[Mary Lou]

Excellent idea. I have an old needle book of my grandmothers, it is wool felt, but it never occurred to me wonder why.

[Berva (Mom)]

I saw that on your computer desk and wondered why you had pins stuck in it! Clever and good use of a swatch.