My Projects During Lockdown (Linda Turnbull

During Lockdown, I have been shielding. This has meant that I have had more time to do some of the things I have not had time to do for quite some time, such as decorating, gardening and baking. Probably like many of you, one of the rst things I did was empty all my cupboards before putting everything back neatly. This gave me the opportunity to discover all sorts of things that I had completely forgotten all about.

Coffee Time Project. I found a bag of odd balls of wool that had been left over from projects years ago. I decided to use the wool to knit “squares”, which could then be sewn together to make a blanket. This gave me something to do while I had a cup of tea or coffee. Rather than knit conventional squares, I made “diagonal diamond” shaped squares. This is how I did it:

1. Cast on 3 stitches. 2. Knit 1, increase 1 stitch in the next stitch, knit to end of row. 3. Repeat row 2 until you reach the desired number of stitches. I chose 40 stitches. 4. Knit 1, knit 2 together, knit to end of row. 5. Repeat row 4 until you have 2 stitches. 6. Knit 2 together.

With the smaller remnants of wool, I used these to make “half” squares to ll in the edges of the blanket. To do this, I knitted rows 1 to 3 and when I reached the desired number of stitches (in my case 40), I cast off on the next row.

Even if you have no use for a blanket, lots of cat & dog homes will really appreciate a donation of a small blanket.

Linda