Knit and Natter

Thank you everyone for your lovely comments on my last two posts, I am no longer in bits but still prone to crying apropos of very little.

But normal life continues. I was asked on Sunday to cover for coffee duty at the U3A talk on Tuesday, I said yes without thinking really and I am glad I did otherwise I expect I wouldn’t have gone. The talk was called Smiles to Tanzania. This is a local charity( led by Filey rotary club) set up to help a charity based in Tanzania called Lake Victoria Children (LVC), and is designed to help children attend school by providing school uniform. solar lights, pens, pencils, food, bedding etc. Anything to improve the lot of the people living on this island in the middle of Lake Victoria. When the first party went out they sent over a container of goods, which included bicycles, homemade quilts and blankets, sanitary provision for the girls, pillow case dresses and something called fish and chip vests. The later are basic knitted vests for the babies. Babies were previously often dressed in newspaper, hence the term fish and chip vests. Well this container got held up for three months whilst some ridiculous questions were answered, For example where was the soap that Tesco’s had donated been made. The answer was unimportant, it was a bribe they were after, which wasn’t forthcoming.

So the charity took the next step, first they taught women how to make the sanitary protection. Which means that the girls no longer skip school for a week a month, or are teased by the boys for missing school, or not tempted to become pregnant to avoid the issue altogether. Next they decided not to send goods but money, but they didn’t want it disappearing as a bribe, so they directly employ someone through LVC to handle the money and purchase necessary items.

The talk really put my life in perspective. Many of the children were being brought up by grandparents as both parents had died of Aids.

Here’s a link for some uplifting pictures-here Needless to say the donation plate at the end of the meeting was pretty full.

It was lovely to see the children so proud in their school uniform and the children so pretty in their pillow case dresses. The fish and chip vests looked a bit hot.

I’ve walked a lot this week, being outside really helps lift the spirits. And I have taken a leaf from  Margaret at Crafty Creek    last year and this year as she has set herself the challenge of spending three ten minute sessions in the garden. I have been out twice so far for half an hour a time. Greatly aided by the very mild Winter we have been enjoying. I can’t believe it really but we have snowdrops already.

And would you credit it , rhubarb, not enough to eat but unmistakably rhubarb,

I bought myself some flowers

Lovely cheerful colours.

Sadly I haven’t really done any knitting. I tried but found I just couldn’t concentrate on the pattern. But I thought you might be interested in this. Kate keeps all her bobbins from her quilting to see how much thread she has got through, so in 2018 I kept all the bands from the yarn I used.

In weight that was 5,200 grams. Which is a 100 grams a week. A lot was used in the Eastern Jewels blanket, but a lot was knitting. Gosh is all I can say.

I have done some sewing. I was asked back in the Autumn for this project. My DIL told me of a baby quilt Little Miss F had. Every night she goes to sleep holding the ribbon label. You know the one which says what it’s made of, how to wash it etc. Could I make something to replace as the quilt was getting worn and the ribbon coming off. I was very tempted to suggest replacing the ribbon, but no I’d been asked to do this, and I have always been tempted by the patchwork panels in fabric shops. So I selected my top, consulted the lady in the shop, all via email because I was getting it from The Remant House fabric shop in Harrogate, and some wadding. I was quite confident about the quilting part having done cushion panels a lot of times. Humph, doing a quilt top is not as easy as doing a cushion. I kept finding reasons not to do it, and so it sat through November and December giving me the evil eye. I missed Christmas and there it stayed. It transpires that sewing by hand does not require concentration when you are following pre drawn lines, in fact can be quite therapeutic. So that part was finished. But how to complete. I have spent hours figuring this out, in fact the how to complete part was probably some of the reason it just sat there for so long.

One afternoon I decided to just go for it. After all what was the worst that could happen, I’d need another meter of backing fabric. I could live with that. So go for it I did. I decided that dealing with scary ( 6 years old now) sewing machine was not for me, so I hand stitched it all. Now it’s not even and it’s not well executed but I do now have something resembling a quilt with ribbons on the side. Let’s just hope it serves it’s purpose for my lovely Little Miss F.

And here are the Princesses in close up.

Well the sun is shining so I may go for another tramp or a little weeding session in the garden. Leaving you with a sheep as I used to when I first started my Knit and Natter posts. This one taken on my last walk. I’ll share the rest of that walk next month.

Be Happy my friends and once again thank you.

Cathyx