A scrappy Saturday

Today I had several jobs I needed to get done. I needed to finish some marking and I'd promised Lucy I would help her with an activity she is putting together for work and I really really needed to get my sewing machine out and show her some love. Sewing helps me relax as I lose myself in the project I'm working on. I haven't had a lot of sewing time recently and I could hear my machine alternately sobbing and gnashing her cogs or whatever machines have at my lack of interest in using her. I decided to leave the marking till last and so when Lucy arrived we got down to finalising her project.  The project is an activity around London for the senior section of Guiding who will be staying in London to celebrate 100 years of their section. Lucy got her head round the plan and tomorrow we will go and check the route and the clues.

So next up was my sewing. First I decided to check on the progress of my projects. That turned out to be quite scary as I had started several new projects this year and I have an awful lot of UFO's. It also took a lot of time. Memo to self - concentrate on finishing some of the projects! 

I decided to start with the rainbow challenge blocks. The colour this month is aqua but unfortunately I have very little of this colour so instead I decided to use up my large amount of green scraps. I also decided to work on the mini 9 patch blocks for the baby quilt. This baby is due in August so the project has to move up to top of the list. I had fun chain stitching the pieces for the 9 patch and the 5 granny squares but ironing the seams was a pain. I decided to stop and finish these off in the morning.So here are the groups  for the 9 patch.

We know the baby is a girl so I deliberately made quite a few pink patches. This is what I have already finished for this quilt.

I'm hoping the 9 patches I've started today will be enough for the quilt but I'm not sure. Still I have a lot more 1 1/2 inch squares if I need more blocks.

These are the strips for the 5 granny squares. They will finish up quickly tomorrow.

Last night, having finished knitting the baby blanket I was looking around for something to hand stitch whilst watching TV. I have a lot of pieces of embroidery on the go but I wanted something easy and that wouldn't require a great deal of concentration. I remembered I had a mountain of badges needing to be stitched to my camp blanket so that won. I stitched on 5 badges. This shows just some of the badges as they are stitched all round the blanket.

I want to get these stitched on this week. Some of these are from our trip to Switzerland in 2013 so really need adding to the blanket especially as our next trip to Switzerland is next year..

I also have these lovely badges which Girlguiding UK produced to mark 100 years since the start of world war 1 and show how Guides helped in the war. I can't decide whether to keep them as a set in the pack or add to the blanket.

Earlier this week Scamp went to the groomers. He always looks so cute when he is trimmed and he loves his short fur. The only problem is he suddenly becomes a very small dog. With his fur he is bulkier than the cat but now Picasso is larger and feels the need to boss him about.

I love that you can see his big button like eyes when he's been trimmed. He uses his eyes to good effect to get exactly what he wants.

Whilst I'm stitching on badges I'm going to try and decide which embroidery project to work on this week. It will be fun to do something different from knitting.

Lyndsey