I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during these incredible times! I'm one of the lucky few who has been impacted to a much smaller degree than most of the world. I live alone in a remote area and already worked at home, so the social distancing hasn't been as big of an impact on me. I also have a job that is continuing while so many are losing theirs. And, so far, nobody in my family has come down with the disease. I am so blessed and my heart just aches for what so many people are going through!
In my spare time I've been continuing to make things. I can tell that I'm a bit stressed out about what's going on in the world because I'm finding myself leaning towards smaller or simpler projects. But that's okay. I've started working on some smaller Christmas presents for the family. I started with this shaving bag for my nephew:
The outside is waxed canvas and the lining is canvas. It also has some leather details. I hope he likes it. I find it so difficult to come up with crafted gift ideas that might appeal to a guy!
I also tried some other patterns that might make good presents for multiple family members. The first is this tortilla warmer for heating tortillas in the microwave:
I used a free pattern from Bernina (available here) to make this warmer. I made this one for myself because I've been wanting to try one of these for a while now. I normally wrap tortillas in a wet paper towel when heating them in the microwave, but that seems so wasteful. The next time I have tortillas, I'll give this a try and if it works well then I'll make more of these for the family. If you make one of these, be careful about what materials you use. Anything that isn't cotton could cause problems in the microwave. This includes the thread and the batting. Most cotton battings have a plastic (or some other non-cotton material) scrim that holds the cotton in place, so you have to get special batting for microwave projects.
The other project I made is a reusable shopping bag:
The bag has a magnetic closure to keep things inside if you don't buy much; and, when not in use, the bag itself can be folded up inside of the pocket:
I found this pattern in one of my books and think I'll probably be making several of these for Christmas!
I've also been doing some knitting. Knitting is really nice for making my TV time a little more productive! I found myself need to work on an easy knitting pattern, so I pulled a pretty skein of yarn out of my stash and made this Easy Goes It shawl by Finicky Creations:
I also got the March installment of my Jimmy Beans Wool shawl club project, Coral Coast Wrap by
Ambah O'Brien:
This is a fun knit and I'm glad that I'm keeping up so far!
I also decided to start a sweater. Although a sweater is a lot of knitting, it's mostly easy knitting that doesn't take a lot of thought. I decided to make the Creek sweater by the Berroco Design Team. I really liked the sample sweater so I even got the exact same yarn to make mine. This sweater is knit from the bottom hem up. Here is what I have so far:
The body of the sweater is done in a "Broken Ribbing" stitch. This is a 1x1 ribbing round (knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one) alternated with a knit round. Not much thinking involved, but the ribbing round takes a lot more time since you have to keep moving your yarn from the back to the front to the back of the work between each stitch. The yarn I'm using is a cotton/wool blend that I think is going to be spectacular to wear on cooler summer evenings (and really throughout the year for me). I really want to get this done so I can wear it!
I'm also getting ready to start on another sweater. This one is the Pacificus DK sweater by Laura Nelkin. It's a short-sleeved summer sweater with a lace yoke knit in a Pima cotton yarn. Laura is having a knit-along for this pattern so I can knit it together with a group, with prize incentives to help me keep on track. I got my yarn selected and wound into balls ready for knitting:
I've also knit my gauge swatch and need to block it to see if I have the right size needles for this project. The size of your needles and the size of your yarn affect the size of your knitting stitches, so you have to knit a square of fabric with your needles and yarn and then measure it to see if your stitches are the right size for your pattern. This isn't so important for things like hats and cowls, but is really important for things like sweaters. It would suck to do all of the knitting and then end up with a sweater that is either too big or too small for you to wear it!
Finally, following the CDC's suggestion and our governor's request, I made myself some masks to wear when I do have to go out in public for things like groceries:
I had already made 25 of these masks for organizations that are in need of these, but was in a hurry when I mailed them off so forgot to get pictures. I used the same pattern for my masks and those are the ones above. These masks are nice because they're fitted and don't need the piece of metal over the nose, and they also have an opening between the outside fabric and the lining that can accommodate a filter, if you have one.
That's all I have for now. Sorry there are no pictures of the pets! They are doing well and I was even able to get them in for their semi-annual visits right before our vet stopped taking appointments for routine visits. They are all seniors at this point so it's really nice to get them checked out regularly! And I really love my vet. They had several weeks ago instituted a policy where the owner stays in the car and the vet tech, in gloves and mask, comes out and collect the pet(s). They do the examination and the vet calls the owner on the phone to discuss everything. They then bring the pet(s) back out to you and collect payment. So, they are working hard to keep everyone safe! Since I have so many animals (2 cats and a big dog), the vet helped the vet tech bring them back out to the car and chatted with me for a little while, from a safe distance and fully masked, which I thought was really nice. It just feels so much better to be able to talk about the animals in person! (But it doesn't feel enough better to outweigh the risk of infecting anyone if done in an unsafe manner!)
As I said before, I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy through these tough times! The pandemic can't last forever. And if we all do our parts, we can minimize this disaster. Don't get me wrong, the best we can hope for is really, really bad. But it can be so, so much worse if we don't do everything we can! Off my soapbox now.....
Nancy
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