Hello! September was a pretty good month, if you ignore the fact that there was another major fire south of us. Thankfully, with the cooler weather, it was far less devastating and didn’t burn down any homes.

It’s hard to capture the deep orange-ness of the sun when viewed through smoke.

I did get to enjoy a few more beach days before the chill set in.

The water was…..refreshing?!

Last time I showed you a pile of quilt squares. These were assembled and backed and quilted and the result is…

…a 6 ft square bed-sized quilt with a scrappy binding and machine quilting radiating out from two points on the quilt. It was quite the challenge to get all that bulk under the arm of my machine.

I have already given this to the intended recipient, a lady I’ve known for 25 years and who lost her home in the wildfire in August.

A super fun project I sewed this month was this sweater.

The fleece is printed to look like crocheted granny squares and I knew I had to have some as soon as I saw it.

I made sure to buy enough to make a matching beanie.

My friends and I had a sewing day, which was a belated birthday celebration for my 61st, and we made Japanese knot bags.

These were mine. As usual, the sewing wasn’t perfect but the cute fabric makes up for it!!

Earlier this year, I made a batch of drawstring bags as a commission. This month I made another batch of 25, lined this time, as a donation to Vegfest. Of course I decided that the fabric had to have a fruit or vegetable theme.

These went into the goody bags on the day. My friend said that next year we should jointly make 100 so that every bag gets one! We’ll see!

Vegfest was fun. It’s so nice to be surrounded by so many vendors selling stuff that I can eat or use without worrying that it has animal products inside. I had helped to round up donations ahead of the big day, and the day before we were filling gift baskets. On the day we had more donations to add, and I was busy with that in the morning, on the door in the afternoon, and helping to clean up at the end.

A finished project that I’m really excited about, that’s hot off the needles today, is my second Sporto sweater. It’s a free pattern on knitty.com and last year I made a grey version. Last February I cast on this green one.

I didn’t plan it ahead of time, which meant that while I was knitting it I was trying to decide how to incorporate the contrast colours. The yarn is Scheepjes Truly Scrumptious Aran, and the main colour is Spirulina Bites. The pink which I finally used on the sleeves is Acai Bowl. I also have some Honeycomb (a mustard yellow) but it didn’t end up in the sweater.

The reason it took eight months? It sat in its project bag for months while I figured out what to do. I started to add a pocket then ripped it out. I finished the body but it was too short so I ripped back, added more length, and did a split hem. And then someone in the Vegan Ravelry group suggested a Finish Your WIPs-along and that was the impetus I needed.

So happy it’s done!

So the vlogging is ongoing over at Stitches and Slapdashery.

This is the latest episode. I’m still learning. I had to get an SD card for my phone because videos take up a lot of memory. I want to record a crochet tutorial but I’ve been having the darndest time setting up the camera in such a way that you can’t see the tripod legs! And I’ve had my new mic run out of juice and had to re-record footage, and the beanie tutorial will be redone because of camera shake! I’ll get there!

I’m looking forward to an October full of creating, and enjoying wearing the warm layers which I have spent so much time making! Happy times.