I’ve been slow to get back into things since coming back from Kuala Lumpur, but I think I’ve finally got there now. I’m back at the Horniman Gardens comfortably – that is, as long as Bank holidays and dental appointments don’t interrupt – and I’ve started a couple of other things, but for now I have finished objects to show.

Pattern: Fiori di Zucca, by Alice Yu (Socktopus Sock Club June 2008)
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy in Gelato al Pistacchio
Needles: 2.5mm

At long last, nearly four years later, I have finished these socks. If anything, these socks tell me how much I’ve grown since I first tried to knit them. When I first tried, I had to read the chart every single row, almost every single square, and I could find no rhythm or sense in the pattern. This time, I whipped through it because I found a pattern to the pattern, a rhythm to the lace, and all went very well indeed.

The only problem I had was that because of my chunky calves, the lace looks painfully stretched on the leg, and while it fits very well on the foot, the shift from the leg to the foot made the heel cup slightly baggy on me. I rarely choose to knit the large size of a sock pattern, but I needed to here to fit my leg, and I wish I had the foresight to decrease around the heel to make it fit better.

Oh well. If you’re not still learning, you’re already dead, I suppose.

I also finished something else last month, but I started it probably about two summers ago. I’m very glad I’ve finished it now, but I think I did bite off a little more than I could chew when I chose this project.

I finished a quilt. A pretty big quilt, that involved some small piecing, appliqué, and my first attempts at quilting and binding. The small piecing was fine, and actually quite fun to do, largely because it was done entirely on the machine – well, not my machine per se, but Mummy Irish’s machine, because that was where I did most of this quilt. In fact, let it be known that if I didn’t take this thing up to Wolverley it would never have got done.

Mummy Irish showed me how to sew together the pie pieces neatly. Then now to appliqué the pies onto the red squares. Then she helped me put the quilt top together. Then she helped me make the sandwich. And when I utterly failed to hand-quilt the thing in different coloured threads, she decided I should just machine-quilt waves across the quilt while hand-quilting the pies in the ditch.

Then she showed me how to bind. In fact, she did the machine work and then showed me how to hand-stitch the final stage. And then because she was quicker, she finished the hand-stitching for me.

This quilt is not even for me.

It’s for the son of a special young man, to whom I owe a lot. In fact, I owe him my entire career move and therefore my new life.

So I’m very glad that this quilt is done, and despite how daunting it was because of its size, I’m glad I made it this big, because his son will be two in November, and I want this quilt to last.

Next time I’m going to aim smaller. Like a cushion. Or a hot water bottle cover. Let’s start with that.

Oy.