I made a poncho!

I have made a crochet poncho for our little grand daughter, I have never made one before so thought I would give it a try.  I had started on a little knitted top after finishing the little cardigan but I could see it was going to come out too big so I unravelled it and started on the poncho.

The aim was to use yarn from my stash which I started off doing but I couldn't find any similar sport weight yarn to go with it.  I have plenty of double knit but the pink I started with was thinner so didn't want to go to thicker yarn.  Well, darn! I had to buy some more. Just one skein, but a mighty big one! pretty pastel colours.

It is difficult to know how big to make things when you don't see the children all the time so I edged it with loops rather than a fringe and that way I can add to it easily if necessary when we see them next month.

Last Sunday was Mother's day here in the US so we went out for lunch on Saturday for a treat and to avoid the Sunday crowds. We passed by a swap meet going so on the way back we stopped and I got out for a browse.

I only spent $3 and got quite a bargain.  A sewing box with some bits and pieces in all of which are useful.

Thread, bobbins, long tweezers (for picking out fluff and cotton around the bobbin area), some sewing feet and an attachment so that you can change the sewing feet easily.  These are great, I have them on my other machines so this one can go on the treadle.  There was also some embroidery transfers.  I have been hankering to do some embroidery, don't know why as there is nothing really I want to embroider but I just want to do some.  Putting it down to old age eccentricity!  I have lots of embroidery hoops and embroidery skeins so may as well put them to use. There is also a roll and a half of iron on hem bonding tape and one of those spiky wheel things.  I have one of those already and for the life of me I have no idea what it is for. Anyone know?????

The box and contents

Bobbins will fit my Singer Sewmate and the sewing feet will fit all my machines.  The blue thing has a spiky wheel and I have no idea what it is used for.

Plenty of embroidery transfers

The sewing feet and some sewing machine oil and a screw to attach sewing machine to table, (will keep as a spare)

A full roll and a half roll of hem tape

I was well pleased with my bargain.

I also had to work a little more on my treadle cabinet as the machine started getting stuck down in the cabinet again.  It was catching again on the metal slide.  Also I needed to adjust the mechanism that raises the machine as it wasn't going up completely so wasn't sitting flush.  When I eventually found the right spanner I was able to adjust the height it came up so it is now more or less flush.  For now I am leaving it up and covering the whole machine and cabinet with a sheet when not in use. I will have to find a way I can fix the metal slide in place better but that is a job for another day.

Last week we went to the VA hospital for my husband to have cardioversion which is where they shock the heart to try and get it back into normal rhythm.  It worked after the second shock but now they are monitoring him for congestive heart failure. They sent him a machine and a set of scales and a blood pressure cup that plug into it that he has to use once a day at the same time each day to take his blood pressure/heart rate and his weight.  Then it transmits that info to the hospital, it is called Telehealth.  Pretty nifty.  It can also have other attachments too to monitor more things but that is all he has for now thankfully.  It does it through the cell phone signal as we do not have a land line anymore as we went to satellite VOIP phones. I am impressed, just hope someone at the other end is reading it!