Mostly about Turkey-related things

Hagos and I decided to watch Pulp Fiction last night - a film we haven't seen for years. I really enjoyed it. We haven't watched a film properly for ages, having been plugged into series (Game of Thrones, Lilyhammer, most recently). We've been through phases of Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Woody Allen and the Coen Brothers.

I cast on the above sock in preparation for the evening's viewing, and this was how far I had knitted by the end of the film - up to the beginning of the toe. 

The sock is for my neighbour's new baby, Bear. We met him for the first time yesterday. I haven't felt like knitting for ages, but this sock pattern is so satisfying because it's so quick and apart from breaking the yarn after turning the heel, it's knitted continuously in the round. I LOVE the colour and am thinking of knitting myself a whole jumper in it. 

Turkey is laying eggs again, and is much happier for it. She loves being cuddled and stroked and will sit down gracefully as soon as she sees a human and purrs and pants when she gets touched. I do love Turkey.

THE first Turkey egg of the year. Gorgeous.

And I couldn't resist ordering the turkey egg fabric online. Looking forward to making it into an A-line skirt.

I've also been thinking, and even dreaming, about making a patchwork quilt. I like the idea of sewing together rectangles of fabric from the many different projects I've made, and finally sewing it all together into a quilt. I've never made a quilt before, and am not sure how the actual quilting works. I have so much leftover fabric and it would be great to have a quilt made up of material from different projects.

Excited about Andover Fabrics

It's been years since I've been excited about a fabric range but during a recent scouting mission to John Lewis haberdashery several fabrics caught my eye and I discovered they all belonged to Andover Fabrics. I bought the cat fabric to make myself a new toiletries bag, but I've already decided I want to buy more to make myself a skirt.

I also want to make myself a skirt out of this egg fabric. The eggs remind me of Turkey's eggs.

I like this too, but there are other prints I want to buy to make more skirts. More cat prints.

This was my washing line last week with all the current fabrics I have to make skirts out of. It was good to get them all washed. Now I just have to sort out all my patterns then I'll be ready to cut and then SEW!.

HALT!

My knitting progress was halted about a month ago when, as I was sewing together my orange and blue sock, I noticed a DROPPED STITCH!

Now, I knew I had dropped a stitch somewhere as I was knitting the foot because suddenly there were only three knit stitches before the rib, whereas there should have been four. I looked and I looked but I couldn't find the dropped stitch until I came to sew the sock up and there it was, in the heel. Short of unravelling the whole foot the only thing I could do to save it was to sew the dropped stitch and weave it in. So that's what I did.

A hole.

The finished result is - okay. I think if the blue had been deeper I might have liked the colour combination better. Not sure I still have the enthusiasm to knit the second sock though.

And on the subject of knitting socks - my colleague Fiona recently brought out from her bag one of the knitted socks I'd made for her Christmas. She had already rung slight alarm bells with me when she said she had used one of the knitted socks for her cat's Christmas stocking, to put his treats into - (raised eyebrows). But this was nothing to the maltreatment the sock had since undergone. It had been washed (agitated I later found out) and it had felted. The entire foot had shrunk, as had the cast on row at the top where the foot is inserted (no adult foot would ever get in there again). And that it was being used as a temporary phone cover. Needless to say, there will be no more sock knitting for Fiona. I resignedly came to the conclusion it was like knitting items for children - once handed over I have to relinquish any interest.

Some gratuitous shots of my feathered friends. Turkey is entering her egg-laying, broody phase. We've yet to find a Turkey egg. She hasn't really established a nest yet this year. She's acting like a moody teenager though.

And my lovely wee pals. I do love the chicks. Well, I love them all, but I still think of the chicks as the babies of the bunch, even though they're not. They fly onto my shoulder fairly regularly, which I love. 

And this is Delphus, our adopted hen. The photo doesn't capture her spherical-ness. She's a big ball of feathers. I've become quite fond of her too.

We have two new hens, Marmite and Twiglet. They are Isa Browns and they're gorgeous and sweet and have cat-like natures. Will upload photos of them soon.