New Year, new resolutions??

Yes, I am back, though not with a vengeance yet!!  Anyway Happy New Year to everyone and I hope the Christmas and New Year celebrations went well for you all and don't they seem a long time ago.

Christmas for me was spent in Cambridge with a well organised Christmas meal cooked by my son and a small input by me, which was enough for me not to do the washing up afterwards - excellent.  I went to the Crib Service and Christmas morning service at the University Church of Great St Mary's where my daughter in law goes.  I still cannot get used to seeing all the tourists who are around and coming in during the service on Christmas morning!

I went down to Kent for the New Year but travelling by train this time.  I was slightly apprehensive about the journey down as it was Sunday and I thought the dreaded 'PLANNED RAIL MAINTENANCE' might be in effect; but everything went so smoothly it was brilliant and the family picked me up from some small railway station in deepest Kent and bang on time!! Well done National Rail.

As New Year's Day was good weather we went to Camber Sands for our usual walk and it was very busy 

People, dogs and horses exercising on the beach

I went for a walk along the beach and waded through this stream coming across the sand but on the way back the girls and Dad had built a dam so my new walking boots (a Christmas present) didn't get too wet.  

Last year I seemed to spend most of my time being double booked so this was one of my New Year resolutions, which I promptly broke!!  Every year my family give me a family calendar with family photos each month and I really look forward to seeing it.  So I am going to 'sync' my calendar with my diary to make sure that everything is up to date.

I think I have mentioned in previous posts I belong to a monthly sock club (first Saturday of the month) and at our December meeting we did a secret Santa and have to make a pair of socks for a fellow member, ready by the March meeting.  Well mine are finished - no photos yet though - because I have now started a new knitting project from my Swing, Swagger, Drape book.  So exciting and I am loving it.

But here are some socks I made earlier -

BUT only one of each at present, so a long way to go!!

I also crocheted this bobble hat in two evenings

and wore it on the beach at New Year.  I do not like these hats as they usually make my head itch but this seems OK at the moment.

Do you remember back in the summer my younger son (who runs marathons) gave me a bag of his t-shirts and asked me to do something with them!!

Well, I washed them all (as they had been in the attic for years so you can imagine the smell!!), stabilised those I wanted to use with iron-on Vilene, cut the logos out and that was as far as it got in August!

A huge pile!

Well what do you give a son for Christmas?  A finished throw of course, but not without a great deal of blood, sweat, tears AND bad language!!  I decided to do 'quilt as you go' and cut all the logos into 12" squares (30.5 cms) (or made the smaller ones sewn together into 12" squares) and sandwiched them together with wadding, quilted them and laid them out to get the best design.  Doesn't that sound simple - well it wasn't!!  I used my walking foot for the whole project including the binding and got through THREE sewing machine needles because they became blunt.  Most of the logos were plastic which caused skipped stitches whilst quilting and it took a long time for me to find the best method to do this.  Eventually it was finished 

and he likes it!!  All the binding was made from the t-shirts so nothing was wasted.

He has informed me that there are more bags of t-shirts in his attic as he approaches his 100th marathon this year!!!  No NO.