WOYWW 488–Two Completed Boxes

My desk today.

All tidy again! And a finished project!

I finished the two boxes on Monday evening, so in plenty of time for Thursday! We are seeing our friend tomorrow and I am giving her one of the boxes so that she can transfer her copy of the Floral Mini-Album from the biscuit tin it has been living in since February!

I had a lot of trouble with sticking on the metal embellishments. The hot glue didn’t seem to stick onto the metal properly and the embellishments started falling off. I had to scrape off as much of the glue as I could from the boxes, and then I tried again with Pinflair gel glue and this seemed to do the trick, but I hope they don’t start falling off again or our friend’s box will have to come back for running repairs.

You can scroll down for previous posts about the boxes to see how I made them.

Crochet

I think I’ve made enough embellishments for the striped scarf now. I made a few more of the larger crochet leaves this week, and on Sunday I steam pressed all the crochet leaves and flowers.

I have a little more work to do on the felt balls that I made, as they aren’t quite felted enough. They are needle-felted, but need a bit of wet felting technique applied to them to firm them up a bit. Once that is done, I can think about sewing all the embellishments onto the scarf.

I have started making the peacock feathers for the next scarf I’m going to knit.

I bought the cotton yarn for the peacock feathers from an online site – 25g balls in five lovely colours, and they came in this sweet little bag. For this pattern, you need to use cotton in order t0 comb it out to make realistic-looking feather barbs. I haven’t got to that stage yet. More photos will follow in due course. I’ve decided to do some feathers with shafts and some not. The peacock feathers will be on the ends of the scarf.

I’ve left tails on all these crochet pieces so I can sew them on.

I bought the yarn for the scarf for £1 in a charity shop, and had to re-wind it straight away as the skein was collapsing a bit and getting tangled. I am not sure what it is made of because it came without a yarn band, but it is some sort of acrylic, I think, and it is lovely and soft, and the colours are fabulous!

Unlike the striped scarf which is knitted from 4-ply pure wool, stocking stitch on a circular needle, this scarf will be done in moss stitch, and single thickness, rather than in the round. It will also not be as wide or as long as the striped one. I made an experimental start last night but unravelled it after a couple of rows because it was too wide. I’ve got a friend coming tomorrow to watch a DVD with me and I shall begin it again then.

I shall enjoy doing some more knitting, and getting the second scarf done, which shouldn’t take me so long. I have also got any number of UFOs (UnFinished Objects) to get on with, including an unravelling and reknitting job that’s been hanging around since last winter. It’s high time I made inroads into these UFOs because that was supposed to be the main emphasis for this year!

Kitties

A couple of sweet pictures of them sleeping together, taken on Sunday evening.

I came down a bit later to find them like this:

Lily seems to have got Ruby in a face lock – you can see her other paw underneath – not sure how Ruby’s managing to breathe!!

Another fun position, this time on Monday evening:

Ruby has always liked sleeping on top of her lovely warm and soft sister. Now the weather’s got so cold, they are happy to stay in more. When I’m sitting with my feet up I nearly always have Ruby and quite often Lily as well.

Sourdough

My sourdough last weekend wasn’t a huge success. When I tipped it out of the bowl into the Dutch oven I didn’t aim very straight and it ended up half up the side of the casserole where of course it stuck because only the bottom was floured. I got it out OK when it was baked, but it came out looking more like a pasty than a loaf of bread!

Cutting into it, it looked OK, and it tasted fine. Several slices laid out look rather artistic, with that Paisley-like shape!

Again, it’s not rising as much as it should. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.

This week I also made a normal loaf in the bread maker, half-and-half wholemeal and white, with added sunflower and pumpkin seeds – my normal basic bread. The sourdough loaf isn’t big enough to last the week. It keeps ages, and would keep a week easily, if we didn’t keep eating it all!

Health Update

I had my eyes tested on Monday. My eyesight hasn’t changed that much since two years ago so I don’t need new glasses which is a relief – even keeping my existing frames (which I have now had since about the year 2000!!) they are fiendishly expensive. They told me I have developed slight cataracts in both eyes but nothing to worry about yet. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference in my vision except when I’m tired, and I feel as if I need to rub my eyes because they seem a bit blurred. It’s a bit depressing to be told that, though, because cataracts are what old people suffer from lol!!

Also on Monday I had bloods taken at the GP’s surgery – when I went back on the rivaroxaban (anticoagulant) the GP told me she wanted to check my kidney function after a fortnight. It took another fortnight to get an appointment with the nurse! Waiting times seem to be increasing across the board these days, at the surgery and at the hospital. She told me I was due for a general GP checkup and I can arrange this when I go in for the next lot of bloods in November before my oncology appointment.

My CT scan is a week tomorrow, and I have absolutely no doubt that this will confirm that my hernia has returned. It’s taken me two months to get this appointment.

Have a happy WOYWW everyone and a nice creative week ahead!