I have done very little crafting since my mother came out of hospital, as she has been taking up a lot of my time and energy, though I did make a few books which I will post about soon. I still haven’t finished the second sock using the hand-dyed yarn which I posted about in May, but she is back in hospital again, so I expect my sock knitting to speed up again as I’ll be knitting while travelling and sitting with her. I already have my next pair planned, in a subtle (cough) sunshine yellow/orange space-dyed yarn. They are for my DH and it was his choice of yarn and colour. I’m not too happy about it, as 100% merino is not my first choice for socks, particularly for someone who is tough on socks.

I also want to get back to paper crafts and a friend pointed out an amazing giveaway on The Stamping Boutique blog, which includes 36 Copics. I love Copics! I don’t have enough of them, though. :-(

The local guild of artists has its annual studio tour this weekend, and we decided we could spare a few hours this afternoon to visit some of the venues. The quilters guild had fewer quilts on display than in earlier years, and they were heavily dominated by one particular artist, but she is very good and I loved looking at her quilts. There were some interesting printmakers and one portrait artist had some very good small pencil portraits but she also had some large pencil drawings of other subjects from her trip to Kathmandu – some of her older work is on the trail web site. I particularly like when the artists have their sketchbooks or notebooks available for us, as I often learn much more by looking at those than by looking at their finished work.

We bought some books, cards and a poster from local publishers Two Rivers Press, and some cards from one of the printmakers, but our last purchases were examples of a different art …

I’ve been knitting socks while visiting my mother in hospital, and I continued while sitting with her after she went home, as I couldn’t do anything complicated.  I did the second sock of the blue pair (Opal yarn), and then I couldn’t resist starting on the yarn which I dyed at the workshop in February.  Both were knitted on 2.25mm Brittany dpns.  Here is a detail – click on the image to see the whole photo.

I tried the Thing-a-Day challenge in February but only managed to complete something on 10 days (17 items total), and that was a struggle. Too many of the things I like to make require more than a day. I was visiting a new-to-me blog today, Myrna Wacknov’s “Creativity Journey”, and the header describes her personal challenge, which is to “work on my art every day and create a minimum of 2 finished pieces each week.” That seems a more manageable challenge than the Thing-a-Day, so I might try to do something similar once I get past the project which is currently bogging me down, and once my mother is out of hospital and we get into some sort of routine.

Stolen from a friend’s blog …

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

My own knitting has been going well, though slowly. I have almost finished a pair of Regia socks, as they have been my mindless knitting while visiting my mother in hospital (mainly on the journeys to and fro). As she isn’t likely to go home for a while yet, I needed to set up my next ‘car knitting’ project, so I’ve started on the yarn from the dyed sock blank. I have finished one toe, but as I’ve not used this yarn before and I didn’t swatch (bad Jenny!), I may have to do a bit of ripping after a couple more inches to adjust the number of stitches. At least I’ll have something to keep my fingers busy, so I won’t mind too much if that happens.

The challenge is to go through April without buying any new craft materials, tools or supplies, in honour of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day on April 22. I did buy a craft book yesterday, but I’m claiming that doesn’t count as a tool or supply. We are also supposed to make at least one new project this month entirely from our stash. Well, I have a suitable one planned for as soon as I finish my most urgent current project, so that shouldn’t be a problem. However, I have no self-control where craft supplies are concerned, so wish me luck!

Between still not feeling well myself and having to deal with the situation with my mother, I haven’t got much done over the past few weeks, but I have finally got around to unravelling the sock blank I dyed back in February at the Procion MX workshop. It had been knitted with 2 strands of yarn held together (one for each sock) so as I unravelled it, I made it into 2 loose piles. The yarn was very curly after being dyed and washed as knitted fabric, so I had to wind it into skeins and steam them before I could wind them into balls.

One re-wound, one to go ...

So who is knitting again? Not me – I never stopped knitting, though I’ve definitely slowed down as I got distracted by other crafts. My mother, though, hadn’t knitted for 20 or 30 years, but she is in hospital and one of the occupational therapy activities is knitting.

On the day after she was moved to this hospital (a rehab facility), I saw the woman in the next bed to her was knitting a garter stitch square in thick yarn on straight needles. That led to a conversation about knitting socks, which used to be her favourite knitting. I happened to be wearing socks knitted with Opal faux-fairisle yarn, which really impressed her, even though I explained the yarn did all the hard work. I’m going to take in my current sock project (Opal again, but striped rather than faux-fairisle) to show her, and perhaps some of my fancy sock yarn stash. Perhaps she will want to try socks again, but I think my mother will stick with garter squares. The row of rib in the middle was unintentional, but it’s now a decorative feature. :-)

I’ve not been making much this week as I was very sick over the weekend and I’m still not really recovered, so I’ve nothing of my own to post, but I just want to draw attention to a friend’s work.  Opal spins and knits but she also makes lovely jewellery, so of course she also makes stitch markers for her Etsy shop. She has a giveaway for a set of similar markers on her blog.

Another small journal, for a friend this time. I think I am on a black & white & bright kick after using that colour scheme for quilt blocks for a swap. This one is 3″ x 4.2″ x 0.5″. It is coptic-stitched, with 7 5-sheet signatures of 5.6″ by 3.9″ 90 gsm printer paper (well, 3 sheets are red paper of similar weight). The cover is stamped Tyvek again, and the thread is Anchor #20 crochet cotton.