Back to lockdown

– and back to our own resources. I’m sure all our members are as thankful as I am to have our crafts to enjoy while so much human contact is lost. I trust you all have plenty of fibre to work with. Perhaps your stash is something like this?Some of those items look cringe-makingly familiar!

So what have our members been doing in lockdown so far?

Lib was lucky to lock down with the latest Spin Off, which has an article on making cabled yarn. Once she got her S and Z sorted, she spun some muddy (presumably she means muddy-coloured!) naturally dyed wool that is destined for a dog blanket.

In case any readers are unsure about what S and Z mean in spinning, here is a useful diagram from Anne Field’s book Spinning wool beyond the basics:

In general we spin anticlockwise (Z) and ply clockwise (S). The arrows are the way the drive wheel turns. What happens if we spin and ply both in the same direction? You really, really don’t want to know!

Here’s the lockdown dishcloth – Diane has been making cotton dishcloths for family but is now reduced to using up scraps.

Lynley has mostly been sewing. She has designed and made a useful wrist pincushion.

She’s happy to share the instructions, but they are too long to print here – here’s a PDF file you can download:
wrist pincushion

And what has your blog editor been up to? Mostly writing, and struggling a bit with online supermarket orders. Do you remember in the first lockdown I mistakenly bought one banana instead of one bunch? This time we decided we’d like a few croissants for a treat so I ordered 4 (I thought) and got 4 big bags full! It turns out that stale croissants make a very acceptable bread-and-butter pudding.

I made it the way my mother used to – slices of bread (in this case croissant) buttered and layered in a baking dish with a sprinkling of sultanas between the layers, then a milk/egg/sugar/vanilla mixture poured over and left to absorb for half an hour or more before baking. Don’t be stingy with the liquid. For a moderate-sized baking dish and 3 small straight croissants I used 1 and 1/2 cups of milk, 2 eggs, a bit less than 2 tablespoons of sugar and almost a teaspoon of vanilla. Yum.

So what have you been doing? It would be great if members could drop me a message and a photo that can go in the blog. My email is in the gray box at the end of your last newsletter.

And stay safe, everyone.