A shoebox full of squares and the bottle bag subverted

Mum tells me she already has a shoebox full of squares of all sizes and it's overflowing. Onwards! We'll be putting them together to make a blanket in December.

And the bottle bag has found a home in Vienna and now holds the knives and spatulas of an artist friend, Sharon Ratheiser.

Babette blanket project

Mum has started work on the Babette blanket project. (I have yet to find out who Babette is/was.) She's sorted her yarn into acrylics and wool. Most of the acrylics were in pastels so that's what she's trying first as it's easier for her to crochet. She's also using a sort of granny square stitch because it's easier for her to feel her way around the holes. As she can't see the colours, I'll help her assemble the blanket when she has enough squares. She's really grateful to the people in the Babette blanket group at Flickr for their inspiration and advice.

Indoor roofing or it's all in the genes

Last night Mum was telling me about how her mother used to make cord working trousers for the men in the family. She had the first pair made by a tailor and then copied the pattern to make the rest. When the trousers began to wear out after all the work in the fields she'd cut them up into tile-shaped pieces and sew them together. Mum's brother used to say she was making the indoor roofing again as the pattern looked like the tiles on the roof of the house. She used her "indoor roofing" as a protection for the top and the back of the couch and sofa. Just another "waste not, want not" story, Mum calls it.

Knitting muscles

Things have been going a bit slowly for Mum lately, but she has been trying out new things. One is a knitting machine that makes tubes and flat pieces. We're only at the tube stage at the moment. It's a bit tricky casting on, but once that's done you just have to turn the handle. So Mum's collected all her bits of wool that have the same thickness and off she's gone. She can't do it too long, though, as the constant turning of the handle makes your arm tired and the biceps hurt a bit. It's a sort of knitting "body building" machine even though it is all in plastic. The idea she's got is to make long sausages that can be stuffed with leftovers and used as cushions to put in the small of your back. You can also make scarves. Sometimes the machine drops stitches, but you can usually catch them. Here's a pic of the magic machine and some work in progress. Reviews of the knitting machine are mixed, but it's fun and makes for a bit of a change.