Hmmmm....
The last few days have been so hot, too hot for me. I try to do as little as possible because, well, really I like being lazy... sort of.
I have been doing a bit of everything lately at least everything that doesn't seem to be too much like work...
I even made pumpkin tarts for an uncle who lives in a care home that is about 100 kms from us, so we only get there about once every 6 weeks. Anyway, because of the heat, I did not want to use the oven, so had the bright idea to pull out my toaster oven, and put it on a table outside on the deck, where I was able to 'bake' a 1/2 dozen of his favourite tarts without warming up my kitchen to miserable heat levels!
As to the producing something without working, I was experimenting with some crochet lace and lace edgings. I had #10 crochet cotton, which is not nearly fine enough for these edgings (and I did not even have white to use). It was an experiment for the most part tho.
I had picked up at a garage sale awhile ago a couple of vintage booklets (the green one is copywrite 1942, and the pink one is 1943). One of the challenging things about these booklets is that the instructions are written somewhat different than what we use now. In fact a couple of these I could not make heads or tails of... there were a couple of sets of instructions that seemed to have repeats within repeats -- or maybe it was a series of stitches that I was not quite advance enough to understand.
The other problem with the experiment was the type of cotton thread, #10 just doesn't make a fine pretty lace, BUT it was excellent for figuring out the instructions for the most part.
I am not sure how far I will take this experiment as there are about 100 or more different laces in these two booklets that I could try out. It is satisfying to achieve the proper look to the lace, and with each one that I do succeed at, I am re-writing the instruction to our modern understanding. I am even thinking I might graph a few of the instructions so that I can easiy go back to a few and work on a length of lace with the proper cotton thread weight.
I am still working on and slowly progressing with my postage stamp quilt idea. The heat does prevent me from spending much time in my second floor sewing room because when it is hot outside it becomes quite oppressive in that room. Instead of sewing the tiny squares together, I have been working at adding to the tiny squares pile...
Even so, the 25 patch blocks are growing. 16 of then now.
And my final, work in progress for now, is a small crochet bag. The bag is quite simply done with a crochet icord handle. I sewed up a watered silk scrap I had as the lining with a inside pocket and put a magnetic snap closure on it, now all that is left is to hand stitch the lining to the crochet bag at the top edge. I think I may list this bag in the ETSY shop -- I have been ignoring my shop too, so if I want it to be a bit more active I should be updating it with interesting things....
This week I am too late for the Needle and Thread Network link- up, but these still are my WIP's for now....
