Vikki Makes Things

Hello there Autumn! For the past few weeks, there have been hints of autumn starting to crop up: the odd leaf on the floor, an occasional cooler morning, the evenings drawing in, the kids finally returning to school after many months off. Unfortunately, this year, those signs of autumn have brought with them an increase in cases of Covid, so our region has just gone into a local lockdown. Since the kids had gone back to school, I had been getting used to being able to see friends again, and spending days at the park enjoying the last of the summer's sunshine. The next few weeks promise more time at home again, but with the kids still in school (for the time being at least), which has me somewhat optimistic about the possibility of additional crafting, sewing and baking time!

I seem to have amassed quite a pile of sewing materials over the past few months and years, and I would love to be able to turn all of it into wearable items: last week I stitched a dress for me! I genuinely can't remember the last time I did that. I remembered to make the length adjustments as I went, and the fit is pretty good, so the dress is definitely wearable, which has filled me with a renewed enthusiasm for dressmaking.

Cooler, darker evenings always inspire me to return to the kitchen - there's something so welcoming about filling the house with the aromas of baking, and the kids are always enthusiastic to sample my baked goodies. Great British Bake Off also returns to our screens next week, which never fails to fill me a desire to try out new recipes.

Last year I loved knitting my way through a yarn advent calendar, adding a square to my mitred square blanket every day in the run up to Christmas, and I'm hoping that I might get the blanket out early this year and start adding squares using the leftovers from all the socks I've knitted over the past year or so. The mitred square blanket has got to a scale now where I can't work on it during the warmer months as I have to sit under it to add extra squares!

The past couple of years have seen me add a few knitted garments to my wardrobe - my Lush by Tin Can Knits that I knitted last summer is pefect over a dress with tights and boots, and the Love Note I knitted this summer is similarly versatile. I also have a Pavement sweater that I knitted three years ago that pairs well with jeans and is good for layering. All these knits have given me confidence to keep on knitting garments, so last weekend I cast on a Chuck sweater that I want to have finished by the end of October - it will be a welcome addition to my wardrobe as it is winter-weight without being festive! I own several Christmas jumpers, which get heavy wear in December, then put away for the following 11 months, leaving a gap in my wardrobe in January and February when jumpers are much needed.

Of course, all of these things are projects that I am enthusiastic about, but that definitely can't be defined as 'work', and this is the blog for my business, Vikki Bird Designs. I still want to share all of these makes with you all, but to keep them separate, so this weekend, I finally set up an Instagram account for all my non-work makes: vikkimakesthings In all likelihood, there will be a good mix of baking, sewing, knitting and crochet, plus some other things I haven't thought of yet. If you fancy following, you'd be very welcome.

 

Yarning Along: A top-down challenge

This week's Yarning Along finds me just the tiniest bit tired. On Sunday I went to Yarndale with my friends Sam and Jo and had the best time (yes, there will be a full post about Yarndale in a few days time), but that combined with the usual mild winter lurgies means knitting time has been a bit limited by my need to get a few early nights!

I'm currently working on a lot of top secret projects that will make their appearance in the new year, but there is one project I can share: some top-down socks in Regia Pairfect.* I've used this yarn before and it really appeals to my perfectionist tendencies. The yarn is designed in such a way that it will always result in two perfectly matching socks, and comes with stitch counts for various foot sizes. The one drawback with the yarn is that it forces you to knit the socks top-down, which is unusual for me. I'm using the basic sock pattern from Custom Socks (an excellent comprehensive book, for the sizing charts alone), but I did somehow manage to knit the heel flap over the wrong number of stitches as I hadn't divided the stitches evenly for the ribbing and didn't think to check before working the heel. So I'm now halfway through my second attempt at the heel.

I am still reading Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and am a little less enthusiastic about it than I was last week. I am finding the writing style very, very readable, and have been making an effort to read when the house is quiet, but the main character is annoying, and I'm finding that certain aspects of the story aren't ringing true for me. I was starting to think that the story might be a little predictable, but the bit I was reading last night had a sudden change of pace, so it's possible this book might be surprising in the end.

One other thing I've been doing a bit more of in the past couple of weeks is baking. I haven't especially enjoyed the current series of Bake Off; I'm finding the editing of this series is making the format more formulaic than it needs to be, and am annoyed that the adverts make the running time of the show excessively long. I wondered whether doing some baking myself might make me more enthusiastic about the show, so last week I baked some blondies with peanut butter** that were amazing (and the kids didn't like them at all, so I didn't have to share), and this week I baked a simple chocolate cake, which was delicious, and I did enjoy last night's episode a little more, so maybe it's working!

Linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along.

*Affiliate link.

**Recipe from Bake by Rachel Allen.

F is for Friday and feet and failures...

Friday! The day before the weekend. I have managed to stick to not knitting, and have been occupying myself with lots of other activities: baking, crochet, and printing out things for Eurovision tomorrow!

First up, baking: one large batch of cupcakes and a batch of brownies. The brownies went perfectly. The cupcakes created havoc in the kitchen - I dribbled mixture everywhere while spooning the batter into the cases (and that was without any assistance from my kids), then exploded icing sugar everywhere when making icing with the Kitchen Aid. The worktop is still rather sticky...

Second: feet! My chameleon is finally back on track. Today I finished one leg and have started the second. I have no idea whether the feet are correct (I didn't realise from the picture that the chameleon has toes, but apparently he does), but I have done one and the other three will match.

Thirdly: printing failures. I order a couple of new printer cartridges earlier in the week as ours had finally totally run out. I excitedly loaded them into the printer ready to print some bunting for Eurovision tomorrow night (I am taking it seriously this year!), and the black one doesn't work. Boo. So I got as far as half an Albanian flag before giving it up as a bad job (it also turns out I was printing out bunting from last year's contest).

Not the best Friday, but onwards and upwards... What do you have planned for the weekend?

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I'm blogging every day in May. I you fancy reading along, follow this link.

Christmas countdown 2016: Days 23 and 24

Obviously I meant to write this earlier in the day, but here is the final Christmas coutndown post of 2016.

Day 23

A day mostly spent driving, initially in good conditions, then in horrible ones as it got dark, and wet and windy. The highlights of the day were knitting and hot chocolate in service stations, with the very highlight of the day being knitting on the sofa at home!

The advent calendars handed out some pretty yarn, which mostly got ignored as long-distance driving does not lend itself to blanket knitting.

Day 24

A day of last-minute Christmas preparations: food shopping, present-wrapping and baking. I made a batch of mince pies, but couldn't find the cutter for the tops so went with the letter 'M' instead, which allowed for comic 'mmm' mince pies! I also made sausage rolls, which are one of my Christmas Eve traditions.

The advent calendars provided some lovely colours for the final day, and some banana cream, which is not my favourite!

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Time to wait for Santa to come, and to catch some sleep before two very excited children make an appearance! Hope Christmas is good to you. Merry Christmas everyone!