Blue Blue and more blue

I seem to be going through a BLUE period, which is unusual for me as I am very much a RED person!

About a month ago I started knitting a Hill Top Shawl by Helen Stewart using a 4mm 100cm long circular needle. I love her patterns as every row is listed and also the number of stitches that should be on the needles each row. Starting with a cast on of only five stitches it quickly increased to 383!

I used 4ply yarn, (25% wool and 75% Polyacryl,) by Dy choice bought on sale for the princely sum of £2 it knitted up fairly well.

I have been having a problem with my hands and terrible cramp, this is under investigation by the Doctor and I await a series of blood tests. The weight of the knitting project probably did not help.
At one point I knitted two rows of garter stitch too many, 608 stitches, there was no way I was going to undo that many, so I adjusted the next set of garter stitches to match it... life is too short to go backwards!

Blocking the finished shawl, as soon as I completed the pinning I realised it was upside down, hey ho!

My Christmas Tree modelling the shawl in the sunshine

BLUE item number two... to give my hands a rest I started a new quilt, rail fence with diamonds.

Again I choose BLUE, a jelly roll this time with an accent yellow diamond.

It will probably be a charity quilt and I have not really decided on the size yet.

Using my EQ7 computer programme I have worked out quantities for a 39x51  or a 50x60  size quilt.

Joining three strips together and cutting into 6 1/2 squares

Adding a few diamonds and laying out a few blocks to see the effect.