Still baking

More blocks made this week for the Let's Bake quilt that I'm working on. I sewed together the top panel now (there are still some mini-apron blocks to make for the right hand side).  I embellished the gingham blocks with some machine embroidery stitches because I don't want to do the hand-stitched chicken scratch embroidery the designer did on the the original quilt, but I'm not loving my end result.  I will leave them as placeholders for now but might switch them out later.  I also made the egg carton, cocoa jar and milk bottle this week.  The cocoa and milk labels are hand embroidered, not my strong point so a bit wobbly but they look ok.

Today I made a flour sifter, the kind we had when I was a child where you squeezed the handle and it activated an arm swiping across the base.  I don't think I've ever seen one as an adult.  They are probably 'antiques' now, sigh.

And this is the 'Let's Bake' logo drying after I soaked it in warm water to get rid of the basting glue.  There will be a red button on the apostrophe and a blue button beneath the exclamation point eventually.  This was hand-appliqued because the bias tape really doesn't want to fold smoothly around such tight curves.  I'm still not very happy with how mine has turned out but I'm hoping once it dries that it will lie a bit flatter.

I subscribe to Today's Quilter magazine and they are starting a new block of the month by Janet Clare which is coastal themed, I am very tempted and even pulled some fabrics for it, but I don't know where I would find the time to do it.

I've had to retire the Victoria leaf lace shawl from commuter knitting because my eyes just can't cope with the laceweight yarn in the indifferent lighting on the train, I was spending more time fixing errors than I was on knitting.  So that's been moved to the living room queue and my Cumbria mini-skein mitt is now my commuter knitting.  This is the first mitt, almost ready to cast off.  The line of contrast yarn is where you pick up for the afterthought thumb.

I was knitting on the mitten during an interesting talk by Louise West today about her recent experiences as a professional lace maker.  This was at a Lace Day held in Northampton.  I was working on the Bucks point butterfly mat during the day which was going very well until suddenly later in the afternoon it wasn't.  I seem to be out by one pinhole somehow.  I was too tired to work it out, I'll have another go at it tomorrow.\

It's turned properly cold now, down to minus one degree celsius last night.  I've got two handmade quilts on the bed as well as my GAAA Afghan, and I'm wearing handknit socks to bed.  And yet bizarrely the lavender and fuschias are still blooming away in the garden, it's crazy. Is it getting cold where you are?