Projects near the finish line

 In between weekly clues for Bonnie Hunter's Grassy Creek Mystery quilt and holiday cooking, I've been pecking away at various projects.  Maybe I'll finish them by the end of the year; they are both quite close.  

I spent a couple of days hand quilting the sashiko center of my blue and white round robin quilt after it came home from the long armer.  I discovered that my hands aren't as dexterous as they used to be.  Quilting was hard and slow.  It might also be that the sashiko fabric was a little thicker than the usual quilting cotton.   At any rate, I am now working slowly on binding and am lucky to do a half side a day.  I didn't work on it yesterday but hope to get back to it today.  It is nice to sit partially under a quilt on a chilly day.

Most days I do several rows of knitting on a shawl made from a "cupcake" of various blues and greens.  As it grows, each row takes a little longer.  I don't have a pattern for this - I just adapted a dish cloth pattern and will leave it as a big triangle when I've used up all the yarn.  I do want to finish this fairly soon, though, as I have some very pretty yarn waiting in the wings for a hat and mittens.  Unlike quilting, I don't want to have more than one knitting project going at a time for fear I'll never finish anything.  

I finished the kelly green section and now there's a little bit of teal yarn before the final bright blue start.  It won't be long til it's finished.  I knit while watching TV - Quilting Arts in the afternoons and Jeopardy in the evenings,  sometimes a little more in between.

I draped the shawl over the coffee table which has a very old Christmas table topper on it.  Since COVID-19 began, the coffee table is usually in front of the fireplace and piled with bolsters and other equipment for yoga via Zoom in the middle of the living room.  We are taking two weeks off from yoga so we can have a "normal" living room for a little while.   

On tap today:  vaccuum, bake a loaf of bread and drop off cards and little gifts (mug rugs, coasters, goodies) at the neighbors.  We had considered a little driveway get-together, but cold weather and a recent increase in virus cases makes that a little too risky since we are all "of a certain age."