Daily Dose of Fibre - April 2020

[lyn]

This is a very strange April - alien to us all - and I'm grateful that I am able to sit here in comfort. Many people worldwide are not so fortunate.

I am used to being busy and my enforced light duties after a recent operation are driving me nuts.
Felting is a no-no and I don't have any UFO's to work on (yup, you heard that right - what a time to be without UFO's).
So I thought a bit of knitting would help.

I found Pamela's Blog Pamela very kindly published a knitting pattern for a tea cosy that used a stitch I hadn't yet tried - Broken Rib. The stitch creates a very stiff piece of knitting - it will stand up on its own.

Here are the yarns I used.


And here's the cosy on my mum's small teapot.

[MTRuth]

Wonderful job Lyn! I can't believe you don't have any UFO's to work on. Perhaps I should send you some of mine??

Glad you found something to do while recovering. I just found out that my May class is to be held by Zoom. I have to go and figure out how that works. Our local group has decided our April meeting will be by Zoom so I can practice. I have heard it's easy so I will give it a go. Always learning something new even in a world pandemic situation.

[lyn]

Annie said she had a 'coffee morning' with some friends via Zoom. I'm afraid I don't have a clue about it. Look on the bright side Ruth - you won't have to pack the car and travel to your class!

[MTRuth]

Yes, I was thinking about not having to pack everything together to go. That always takes me 3-4 hours at the least.

[lindsay]

Love the tea cosy, Lyn. The colours are very ‘you’. Looks like It might be a good stitch for a knitted cactus too. Hope you’re recovering well.

I did some needle felting yesterday. Not my favourite thing but good for a limited space and nice to get back to a creative project however small. I needle felted some mussel shell earrings (yet to have a bit of beading and the earring fixtures added). I don’t seem to be able to use Ipernity to upload photos any more and can’t share any photo links from Facebook so I suppose I will wait till I have a finished item to show on Instagram or maybe look at Dropbox.

Hope everyone is doing ok. I agree that I feel extremely fortunate to be relatively comfortable in these strange times. I’m doing a fair bit of one-to-one video chatting and have zoom downloaded ready for a couple of bigger group chats that are coming up but have only used it one-to-one so far. Technology can be a wonderful thing.

[lyn]

Apr 1, 2020 22:36:19 GMT lindsay said:

Love the tea cosy, Lyn. The colours are very ‘you’. Looks like It might be a good stitch for a knitted cactus too. Hope you’re recovering well.

I did some needle felting yesterday. Not my favourite thing but good for a limited space and nice to get back to a creative project however small. I needle felted some mussel shell earrings (yet to have a bit of beading and the earring fixtures added). I don’t seem to be able to use Ipernity to upload photos any more and can’t share any photo links from Facebook so I suppose I will wait till I have a finished item to show on Instagram or maybe look at Dropbox.

Hope everyone is doing ok. I agree that I feel extremely fortunate to be relatively comfortable in these strange times. I’m doing a fair bit of one-to-one video chatting and have zoom downloaded ready for a couple of bigger group chats that are coming up but have only used it one-to-one so far. Technology can be a wonderful thing.

I was trying to think of what the stitch reminded me of - yes, it does resemble a cactus!

I hope you manage to sort out the uploading of your pictures - would love to see the needle felting.

I have 'dropbox plus' with 2 terabyte storage and the price has just been hiked up by a steep amount. However, I appreciate the amount of storage and I can share stuff easily with Annie. I just paid £95.88 (£79.90 + £15.98 tax) for the next year - gulp - but I try to think of it as just under £2 per week as that doesn't sound so bad.

[Antje]

Your tea cosy is great & does look like a cushion cactus. I've seen floor cushions this shape, maybe they also utilise the stitch you describe. Follow all your post-operative instructions & emerge strong.

Zoom - a group I belong to, we are about to trial it tomorrow....a first for all of us....old dog, new tricks & lots of giggles come to mind.

Stay safe everyone

[Shepherdess]

Great tea cozy Lyn. no felting must mean no cleaning too. Think of the upside. I bet you have a stash of embroidery floss somewhere. Maybe get Annie to make you a few blank canvases to hand stitch or just stitch on some scraps. There is a large slow stitch movement that does this.

[lyn]

Apr 3, 2020 13:39:41 GMT Shepherdess said:

Great tea cozy Lyn. no felting must mean no cleaning too. Think of the upside. I bet you have a stash of embroidery floss somewhere. Maybe get Annie to make you a few blank canvases to hand stitch or just stitch on some scraps. There is a large slow stitch movement that does this.

Every cloud has a silver lining Ann! I'm not allowed to hoover or clean or cook meals for at least another two weeks and that suits me just fine.

Non-essential car journeys are forbidden and Annie lives too far away to walk to my house. Anyway she wouldn't be allowed in as we are in lockdown.
I do miss her - it's tough - she wasn't even allowed to visit me in hospital as there was already a no-visitor rule in place.

I'm not complaining though as I appreciate that these rules are for the good of us all.

[Pandagirl]

Lovely cozy Lyn, one of my favorite color ways! Enjoy your leave from housework!

[lyn]

Thank you Marilyn - I will! We share a love of ocean colours.

[Shepherdess]

I wanted to say Zoom is easy. You download the app and then follow a link the host gives you. If the people who are not talking mutes their mic it helps with the extra background noise. We had someone with a bird in the background that came through really loud. I have done the video chat with facebook. one on on it works great. I havn't tried a group.

[MTRuth]

Thanks Ann. For our local group, I have to be the host. But I am sure I will figure it out.

[Antje]

We’ll Zoom was great, although we did have a start up glitch. Once sorted, 6 of us were chatting.

2 note worthy points....if you are doing it from a phone It seems you can't get the gallery view, & second - next time we will have to set up some sort of protocol for speaking as all trying to speak/reply at once doesn't work.

What was lovely was having the gallery view & seeing others at the same time & their reactions etc.
Having practiced, I'm now off to try & 'host' a Zoom meeting with my family.
🤪

[lindsay]

I’ve been struggling to copy links to Facebook but 🤞🏽 I’ve found out how it’s now done. This is what I’ve recently made.