by Tess.

Last week I shared a favourite recipe and wrote about finding a place to work at home. This week is all about crafting. Right now I’m flitting from project to project like a butterfly in a flower bed, I start one thing, then another.  Old projects which had been long abandoned are rejuvenated and abandoned once more, and new projects dreamed up/planned/begun.  I make excuses to myself but really there’s just a lack of focus, and for now I’ve decided that’s OK.   Random and chaotic crafting is what is making me happy right now and therefore I’m going to celebrate it.

Crochet one minute, and knitting the next. Hurray.  Baking and gardening. Yes indeedy.  Sewing machine is in the spare room/home office for eldest child, no worries, it can have a new home on the kitchen table amongst the chaos. 

And so I present to you the results of 6 weeks of lockdown crafting so far.

1. Crochet. Crochet flowers. Oh so many of them. Some have become a garland for the newly expanded studio. Others will become a cushion for the studio sofa. Yes there’s going to be a sofa. And cake.  Cake is very important.
2. Sewing. A baby dress. My niece had her second baby at home just as we went into lockdown. I sewed her this little dress with some fabric I had left over from my Esme shirt, and lined it with some Liberty tana lawn which is possibly my favourite fabric in the whole world. 
3. Knitting. Land girl –Cheviot Marsh Aran, in Hedgeberry and Glacial Breeze. Here and there a few rows are added each day, I’m not having as much fun now I’m passed the striped section and I’m wishing I’d planned it to be stripy all the way to the top as each stripe was a feeling of accomplishment but I do think it will be lovely. And I get to do stripes again once I get to the sleeves.
4. Gardening. My little greenhouse is full of seedlings which are happily growing away, and soon will be able to go outside and hopefully there’ll be salad and flowers by the summer.
5. Baking. Flapjacks still a winner, and crumble bars, and next week I’m going to make rhubarb cake and … did I mention that cake was very important.
6. More Sewing. A baby quilt for friends from run club. Random scrap quilt with strip piecing rainbow sections. I love sewing this way, taking a selection of strips and tiny scrap pieces, sewing them together, cutting them up, rearranging them, no planning, just a vague plan that no piece will be too big or too tiny.  
7. Even More Sewing. Whilst hunting out the scraps for the quilts I found a lot of really bright rainbow coloured fabric that wasn’t right for the quilt and so I made super quick bunting to decorate the house, to celebrate both the work of key workers and for Friday’s VE day celebrations.
8. More Knitting. This was a “I wonder what would happen if” project. In this case I wonder what would happen if I knitted the Vine Lace scarf in 4ply and not DK. And then what if I made it wider. I’m loving the result. You can expect to see a lot more of this.

Unless of course I start another project.

Which is quite possible……