Making a start!

I've been doing quite a bit of sewing and knitting over the last few months, both for charity and for two gorgeous grand-children, so this seems like a quick way of keeping track of everything I've made lately rather than just a bunch of photos randomly stored on the laptop.

So, just finished this little top-down cardi from a free pattern on Ravelry  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/top-down-baby-cardi

Knitted on 4mm needles using Aldi's 'Gorgeous Baby Yarn DK'.



I've also started working through various squares from Jan Eaton's 200 Knitted Blocks:

This is block 8 'Little Blocks' worked on 4mm needles and it worked out correctly at 15cm square. It was also made using some of Aldi's variegated DK yarn this time from last year's stock.  They only seem to have yarn once a year but it's usually quite nice to work with and not expensive. 

The yarn was left-over from a Mitred Baby Blanket.  I printed off this free pattern from a website that I can no longer find but it's the third one of these blankets I've made.  It's good because you never have more than 23 stitches on the needle - except for the border of course!

The first photo below shows one of the blankets as well as another version of the top-down cardi.  The second shows a pink version of the blanket.  These were all made about a year ago - I was given a lot of pink yarn at that time!

And a couple of recent quick sewing projects.  First is a travel jewellery pouch adapted from this tutorial http://www.sew4home.com/comment/11055

I wanted mine smaller than the original so changed the measurements, not entirely successfully as it should really have been a bit bigger to allow it to gather up properly but it works well and was easy to make.  The fabric is from a pure silk cushion cover passed on to me by one of our WI members as it had blotches of spilled ink that wouldn't wash out.  There's enough untouched fabric left to try another, slightly bigger one.

The second was a slip cover for my new tablet - a lovely Christmas present.  I would show the cover on the tablet but I was using it to take the photos  :)  No pattern for this one, just a make-it-up-as-you-go effort.