Wool on Sunday

Once again joining in with Janine over at the Rainbow Hare blog here to share what yarn related things I’ve been up to in the last month. Janine's post features a magnificent crocheted mat.

So a fair bit of progress on the mohair throw which is using up some hoarded yarn. I think this will be donated to the Karuna Hospice Christmas Market in late November.

More donated squares have been turned into a big blanket and a little baby blanket. My knitting group had just had a request for baby blankets from an organisation that helps young mothers who are doing it tough and on their own. And luckily one of the ladies who crochets squares for us had decided a little while ago to do some smaller squares in soft yarn...perfect!


The golden yellow yarn was donated by a friend who had the yarn for a while. Readers (of a certain age 😉) from SE Queensland  might recognise the brand of yarn. It’s Baroba which was the brand of a local department store called Barry and Roberts. B&R closed its doors when DD1 was little...about 36 years ago! So my friend had that yarn for a loooooong time, but it was in perfect condition.

I’ve also been working on mini Christmas stockings for K4BN. Each year the group makes these and fills them with sweets and these small gifts are distributed to the needy in the community. We’ve been giving away over 6000 per year.
Instead of showing my efforts I’m going to share a photo of some of the stockings made by an amazing member of K4BN. Rita has made 800 of these so far this year; her goal is to make 1000! 
Aren’t they fabulous and Rita is certainly inspiring.

Wool on Sunday

Joining in with Janine from Rainbow Hare, in Wool on Sunday where anything related to yarn can be shared.
This month I have a few items to write about.
On our recent holiday I took some balls of mohair yarn (it's light) and a circular needle set in my suitcase. On our first night in Adelaide, I cast on 195 stitches and started a new throw. The idea was to have the project started and ready for the train trip. I also knitted in the evenings in our motel room in Darwin and on the plane home...and since then this project has remained untouched. I actually like having a few WIPs on the go as they are easy to pick up and work on at any time. Z

I haven't been idle yarn wise though since we came home...I worked on that purples honeycomb throw that will eventually go to DD1's best friend...it is getting closer to being finished...😊

And even that project got put aside last week...you see my knitting group has had a request for 200 blankets by the end of May, so a challenge was put out to all interested members to try and reach 120 in that time. Why such a request? Cyclone Debbie has put a strain on resources and with winter approaching high demand for blankets etc is expected. So...3 members had recently given me over 400 squares between them. In the last week, I've joined squares into strips, then tacked the strips into blanket size squares or rectangles. And now I am crocheting together the rows of strips with double crochet (UK dc) and I have 17 blankets made from the squares that those 3 ladies did for the group.

It's Mothers Day here on Sunday and in recent years, a friend and I have organised a small Mothers Day Raffle to raise funds for Knitting for Brisbane's Needy. We had 2 lovely prizes this year...a beautiful crocheted blanket and a patchwork quilt. Because I hadn't made much for the group this year in January to April I decided to buy lots of tickets...I bought 60 😐. And I won first prize...no one was more surprised than me. I was rapt.

I've kept the prize for now...but who knows...???
Thank you to Janine for organizing Wool on Sundays. Her latest post shows the lovely cardigan she has finished...I love the pattern! Wool on Sunday Link here.
After having all sorts of trouble with my Blogger app which had become very unstable after my last updates, slowed down my iPad and worst of all wouldn't let me type text, I noticed the other day that there was a Google Blogger Manager in the App Store...at last! This is my first post using the App and it seems to have worked okay...fingers crossed!! 🤞So maybe the $4.49 I paid for the app was worth it?

Wool on Sunday...

Regular readers would remember that for a little while I've been linking with Janine's Wool on Sunday on her Rainbow Hare blog. I've 'met' some lovely fellow knitters/crocheters this way and it's such fun thinking up yarn related posts to write. Janine has published 137 Wool on Sunday posts which is phenomenal! But from now on, instead of being weekly, the WoS posts will be monthly.  

So...my latest yarn themed post...

There must be something about January, because this time last year I was writing about my big push to lessen the number of the bags of donated squares in my sewing room, by joining them into blankets. And this year has seen the same frenetic activity. The blankets go to Knitting for Brisbane's Needy ready for distribution when the weather starts to cool down. The weather has been rather hot here lately so in the last 2 weeks, the air con has been turned on, and the TV turned on, and I've just sat and joined the stacks of squares/rectangles that have been donated to K4BN.

You might say, I've been on a roll...
This was the one that I put together last night and crocheted a border on it this afternoon at Sisters of Stitch. ( which is held at a council library with air con!) My DD1 crocheted the majority of the 36 squares in this blanket.

 The 11 blankets I've made this last fortnight, folded and stacked...lots of people have contributed squares to enable me to make so many blankets.

 

 

Yesterday DH helped me collect some bags of yarn/unfinished knitting projects from a young woman who had gone to school with my girls. This woman's mum had recently passed away and Amanda remembered that I belonged to a knitting charity and asked if the group would like her mum's yarns etc. So we picked up all these bags, and the yarns are gorgeous. Lots of lovely items will be made for the needy, that's for sure, as I will give out yarns to my 'outworkers' and also take bags of yarn to Knit and Natters.

( There is a possibility that that big stack of blankets will be used in one of my 'yarn bombing' photo shoots, sometime soon. )
So now the bundle of squares to be joined is quite depleted...

But I've been told there are some bags of squares for me to collect, so some more joining coming up! lol

Oops! Where did they all come from? 😉 (Wool on Sunday)

Today I gathered together in one place all the squares that a number of lovely people have recently knitted or crocheted ready for me to join into blankets for K4BN.

Hmmm...There's a few! 😉

Just a few are my handiwork...either making little donated squares larger by a few more rounds or a few started from scratch. That's what I do at Knit and Natters. 

So I would like to 'order' some rainy days where I can sit under the fan ( or the aircon) and just turn squares into blankets...I always find it so satisfying. It will be lovely having a big bundle of blankets early next year, all ready for when the requests for warm blankets start to come in later in the year.

So many people knit or sew for K4BN and today we were given 52 Trauma Teddies that were knitted by a lovely lady called Val. My friend Helen took a photo...it is amazing! 

A big thank you to Val!
Linking with Wool on Sunday on the Rainbow Hare blog.

Wool on Sunday...

The last week has just flown and it's again time to write a post about ýarny things' and link it to the Rainbow Hare blog. And Janine describes in her post about running out of yarn before a project was finished...don't we all hate that!
This last Sunday was the monthly meet up of Sunday Stitchers.

Some Show and Tell yesterday at Sunday Stitchers

I usually take some sewing/stitchery projects to work on, but yesterday I took a bag of donated crocheted squares with me and the plan was to make up 2 blankets. Well I was a bit ambitious, because despite working steadily throughout the day, I only had time to join 30 squares...which means just one blanket.

The friend who had made the squares used a beige coloured yarn as the final round on each square and she gave me the leftover yarn from this round so I could use it to join the squares.

It was enough to join the squares but sadly it ran out before I could do some rows around the blanket. What could I use that would tie in with the colours already used? 

Then I remembered the bundle of craft items that DH brought home from his older brother's place on Saturday. My sister in law had passed away in late August and her family thought that I would be the right person to find new homes for Bette's craft supplies.
 

So I had a rummage in that striped bag and found some yarn...
 

It is creamy with pink flecks and was perfect for the narrow border...which I'm now working on. 

And then I'll make some time to join those other squares that I mentioned. Those squares are mainly pink too. K4BN give a lot of muted/dark coloured blankets to the homeless but the lighter coloured/pretty colours are just perfect for women's refuges. 

Wool on Sundays...squares for blankets.

Once more joining in with Janine over here at the Rainbow Hare blog for Wool on Sunday.

There's still not much happening by way of crafting here at my place, but while I'm hard at work counting votes and doing scrutinies of postal vote envelopes, I'm still finding time to plan upcoming projects. 

However, I have done a little crocheting. Once again I have been given some lonely 'orphan' afghan squares in a bag of donations for K4BN (Knitting for Brisbane's Needy;the group that I belong to which, not only knits/crochets for needy people, but also sews and provides toiletries etc.)

 The squares were only 6 inches, so I am crocheting more rounds to make them 10 inches...or thereabouts. 

And I had some other orphan squares handed to me late last year; they were a little larger and only need a few extra rows...and these are so colourful.

And my sweet DD1 has given me a bag of 10 inch squares that she has made for K4BN, so it won't be long before I will have enough squares to make a single bed sized blanket. And by then, the cooler weather will have arrived.
(The projects that I'm planning include 2 knitted throws that have been promised to two lovely people in my life who have been waiting a while! :-/ )



Zillmere...

Last week I caught up with knitting friends who attend the Knitting for Brisbane's Needy, Zillmere Knit and Natter at the community centre there on Handford Road...
Bubbles the Sheep is our new cash donations' money box...

The knitted/crocheted items that were handed in that day show the dedication of the members who keep working on items for the needy despite some quite hot weather....

Blankets are always in demand....

 Some of the balls of yarn that have been donated...

 And this box of yarns as well...

Adult sized garments are always in demand as well...

A bag of knitted Teddies from one member...

 Ann arrived with a large bag overflowing with items, including quilts and crocheted blankets, as well as some children's clothing she had made...

One of the dresses that Ann made for a needy child...

 Trish, another member, arrived with a bag of toys that she had made since the December K&N...

Trish also made some more of her very popular elephants.

I think the item count of donations handed in that morning was over 100...so a good start to the new year.

 I just had to take a photo of Elaine, below, as she told me that her personal tally for completed crocheted blankets in 2013, was 101! Now I believe that some of those were joining donated squares into blankets but the majority were Elaine's famous blankets made with '20 round' squares and made mostly using scraps of yarn. A great effort in any terms!

Well done, Elaine!