Friday, July 31, 2015

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {7/31/15}



Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.






Thursday, July 30, 2015

Antique Store Temptations

I absolutely squealed when I saw this antique crib quilt. I love the green and the yellow and the way that it looks like animal crackers.


I love that those awkward animal shapes are needle-turn applique and how those little bits of embroidery add so much detail and personality to the animals.


If I was making this for myself, which I absolutely plan to do, I'd make that center something other than a plain expanse of white.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Well-Behaved Sock Yarn


The hayride socks are coming along. I love these colors and how nicely they're behaving, making perfectly narrow little stripes without the slightest hint of pooling or flashing.



David Harwood is just dropping off some chili for his cousin. Marla has always been a little different and the tragic end of her pregnancy left her even more fragile. So when he finds her taking care of a baby that she claims an angel brought to her doorstep, David knows that something is very very wrong.  He finds a flyer in the baby's stroller with an address on it and takes Marla and the baby to that house, hoping that this isn't a repeat of the incident where Marla tried to walk out of the hospital with a newborn. It's worse than anything he could have feared. The baby's real mother is lying dead in her kitchen...and traces of her blood are found on Marla's porch. There's an awful lot going on in Broken Promise by Linwood Barclay and not all of it is resolved by the end of the book.  I want to know why those twenty-three dead squirrels were hanging from a tree, but I'm not sure my interest will hold until the next book in the series comes out.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.
    


Tuesday, July 28, 2015

With That Clock Always Looming


What intrigues me most about this day-of-the-week embroidery set (which I found over at Q is for Quilter) is that huge clock that's looming in the background of every chore. I go through too many of my own days watching the clock, counting down how much time there is left before I've got to get dinner on the table, or go to bed, or get up in the morning.... More than once, I've caught myself still working on a project when I'm going to have to get to bed, sleep, and be up and at an appointment in six or seven hours.  Quilting is a lot more fun than sleeping, but sooner or later sleep has to win out.

Now and then we get a stretch of days when no one has to know what time it is. I wish there were more of those.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Rabbit Trails Through My Stash

For the past year or so, I've been happily following rabbit trails through my stash. It started when I worked my way through almost all of the Opal. Then I knit the Lemon Drop Socks and started in on my Sock-Ease stash. Then Fischerenetze had me pulling out the rest of the Patons Stretch...but after only two pairs of that, I got distracted by my Catnip Socks and pulled out all six colorways of Essential Kettle Dyed.

It goes along the lines of "I'll start some socks with this stuff....oooh! I really like this stuff, is there more of it?!"

Maybe I shouldn't call these rabbit trails, since they've actually led to a bunch of finished socks. But I like the phrase.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 4 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 36 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 5200 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 7056 yards
Net Added for 2015:   1856 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {7/24/15}



Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.





Thursday, July 23, 2015

Le Manoir du Diable Socks



My thirteenth pair of socks for the year, and they're appropriately spooky. The pattern, Le Manoir du Diable (free Ravelry download) is named after a silent movie from 1896, believed to be the first horror movie. You can find it on YouTube. It's only three minutes long, but I don't have the patience  to sit through the whole thing.

I made a couple of mistakes with this pair. The yarn is too busy to show off the stitch pattern...but they weren't hard to knit and I would've wanted more than just plain stockinette and ribbing for this yarn anyway. The eyelets are supposed to go all the way down the foot, but I got distracted and stopped paying attention to the chart.


This post is linked to Finish it Up Friday.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Problem Yarn


 Have you ever given up on a project because materials that were supposed to be a splurge turned out to be a disaster? See those two skeins -- they're the same dyelot and they're even more mismatched in person than in the photograph. I should have called and complained when they arrived in the mail, but I didn't. I shoved it into the darkest corners of my stash and thought unhappy thoughts about alternating skeins to disguise the color differences. 


Then a couple of weeks ago I was wasting time on Ravelry and saw the pattern for Catnip Socks, Contrasting heels and toes don't hide the  color differences, but they're a lot easier than knitting round from alternating skeins while trying to keep track of the lace pattern.

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler tells the story of a water damaged old book that arrives on a librarian's doorstep. Simon is a swimmer, able to submerge and hold his breath for longer than humanly possible. His mother was a sideshow mermaid, descended from a long line of women with the same talent, and all of them drown on the same day of the year. As July 24 grows closer, Simon becomes more and more concerned about his sister and what might happen to her. The plot unfolds slowly, alternating chapters between Simon in the present day and a mute wild boy who has been taken in by the travelling carnival that the logbook belonged to. It's full of magic and suspense and atmospheric details.  I read it in fits and starts over a couple of weeks, picking it up whenever I had time to immerse myself in Simon's world.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.

  Disclosure - The publisher provided me with an ARC.



Tuesday, July 21, 2015

4:00 or 8:00?


I  found this pattern online and wasn't sure if it needed to be reversed or not. She's either dozing at four o'clock or eight o'clock. My self-imposed deadline for putting up the sewing and knitting and heading to bed is two, but I've been known to push it an hour (or two) later.

So 4:00 it is!

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Decisions, Decisions

Do I start assembling the lozenge units I've already made into blocks so I can get a better idea what the finished quilt will look like? Or use the pieces I've got cut to make more lozenges? Or cut more fabric? 


I think there's enough already cut to make the 60x60ish quilt I'm aiming for, but I've found more lights and darks in my stash since then. And I can't find the shoebox with the rest of my pieced units in it, so I'm not even sure how many lozenges I've got done at this point.

But I've got fifty-some more than I had last week. That's progress, no matter what I decide about the rest of it.

This post is linked to Patchwork Times and Jo's Country Junction.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

101 Socks

I'm always looking for more sock patterns to fall in love with.




101 Socks: Circular Needles, Felted, Addi-Express, Toe Up, Crocheted, and Spiral Knit gives a knitter plenty of choices. Most of the emphasis here is on bright colors and embellishments. I think I even saw some fun fur in a couple of the designs. There are some cables and lace, but it's the colors that make these socks pop.

The writing is stiff in places and I'm not sure of the author's claim that "Mostly, socks are worked from the cuff to the tip of the toe."  There are three heels and a couple of different toe options, but if you're after advanced techniques when it comes to your sock anatomy, this might not be the book for you. It does cover some material I haven't come across before -- including crochet and using an Addi-Express knitting machine to make socks.

I'd suggest leafing through this one to see how many of the patterns strike your fancy.

Disclosure - The publisher provided me with an ARC.


Friday, July 17, 2015

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {7/17/15}



Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.





Thursday, July 16, 2015

Antique Store Temptations

I fell in love with a quilt last weekend. It wasn't hanging at the quilt show, it was folded up in a corner of a huge antique mall. 


As soon as I caught a glimpse of those state birds and that chocolate brown fabric, I wanted a quilt like this.  Not this quilt, because in addition to not having an antique shop quilt budget, I'm kind of partial to quilts I make myself. And I'm just about crazy enough to embroidery that many different birds.

Except, on closer inspection, those birds aren't embroidered. That's fabric paint like Great-Grandma used to do. Sure looks like embroidery at the slightest distance, doesn't it?


The bird squares looked like they had some age to them. The quilt felt like it had softened over years and years of use. But that quilting, rows of free motion hook-y wave things, looked recent. I could easily convince myself that maybe this used to be tied and someone decided to quilt it.


This post is linked to Vintage Bliss.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

{Yarn Along} Hayride Socks

I think this is my first skein of KnitPicks Stroll Hand-Painted. Or maybe not. I've used the Multi and the Memories and a few other yarns that came before Stroll.  This stuff is pretty and soft and making me smile. The colorway is Hayride. (I just ordered it a couple of weeks ago, but I don't see this one on their site anymore.)



I just finished reading Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty and I've absolutely got to share this one with my kids. It's wonderfully dark and spooky, interesting enough for adults but not too much for our younger family members. This would have been a perfect audio book for a family road trip. Serafina lives in the basement of the Biltmore with her father, who is in charge of the estate's electrical system. Born with missing bones and only four toes on each foot, she's always been different from everyone else. She roams the vast house freely, unseen by the wealthy family or their guests. When a man in a sinister black cloak appears and children begin disappearing,  Serafina must risk her own safety and secrets to stop him.

Center of Gravity by Laura McNeill is a domestic thriller told in first person point of view by five different characters. I had a hard time with that. Even though it said at the beginning of each chapter who was talking, I kept losing track and having to skim back to figure out whose head I was in. There's the abused wife at the center of the story, her stepson, her controlling husband....and then her lawyer and the court appointed psychologist get their own chapters. Near the end of the book, it all pulls together and had me holding my breath to see what would happen, but for the first few chapters I didn't care much at all about the characters.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.

  Disclosure - The publishers provided me with ARCs.




Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Jo's Show and Tell Challenge

Did you see that Jo's cooked up another challenge for us as she prepares for her Bonnie Hunter retreat? I can get more lozenges sewn up...or maybe just figure out where I put the ones that I've already finished. At this point, I'd count that as progress.


Yup, that's the same picture I posted the last time I worked on my Lozenges quilt for one of Jo's Quiltville challenges. I've got maybe twice that many lozenges pieced now, and enough squares and rectangles cut for me to finish the top.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Black & White (this time with a border)

In the past four weeks, the only thing I've done at the sewing machine was to put the border on this quilt. I don't even have a good excuse. Teenage Daughter hasn't started another fabulous creation. Not yet, at least. 


I do like this one and I can't wait to see what it looks like once it's quilted, but it's hot and I'm cranky and it's easier just to sit under the ceiling fans and knit.

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

When life gives you spiders...

So when you're setting things up to take a picture for the blog and realize that there's a spider in the middle of everything, what do you do?


My response was to take the picture really quickly so the spider could be in it.  Maybe I'm making up for not thinking quickly enough to get a picture of the leech. Or taking advantage of the fact that now I've got more to say in this post than "I really should get the rest of this transfer traced soon so I can get some embroidery done."


As for the spider, he wasn't a hobo spider or black widow (we've seen both in the house) so I let him  go on his way. Hopefully he'll eat an ant or fly or something.

This week, I started wondering why I had a Facebook page for Let's Make Baby Quilts but not for my blog itself. At some point, looks like it was 2012, I made a Facebook page for the blog. And then at some other point, I unpublished it....or maybe I never published it in the first place? I have no idea what I did, or when. Facebook confuses me a bit on a good day. But the page is back, and published, and if you're so inclined you can find it here.  And you can find the baby quilts here.

Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 4 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 36 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week:0  yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 4800 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 7056 yards
Net Added for 2015:   2256 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {7/10/15}


Maartje from Maartje Quilt in Amsterdam made three little ZebraZ quilts -- one toddler size, one baby size, and one doll size. Click over to her blog for pictures of all three of them. They're adorable!




Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.





Thursday, July 09, 2015

Rock Candy Socks



I'm still working my way through the Sock-Ease that's been in my stash for a while and still really having fun with it. I've made the Lemon Drop Socks and the Red Hot Socks and these, the Rock Candy Socks. I think there's one skein of Sock-Ease left in my stash. (And another skein of solid pink, but that's something else entirely. I think it wants to be a scarf or shawl.)

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

Knitting Relieves Stress

So does quilting and cross-stitch and a whole bunch of other things I don't do, but knitting is my stress relief of choice right now. That's two more pairs of socks, each of them half done. 



In addition to the knitting, I've been reading....

I'm a sucker for domestic thrillers lately and The Hand That Feeds You by A. J. Rich is just neat. The author isn't playing games here, hiding things from the reader to keep you turning pages. It's a complex, twisted story that keeps unfolding and we know everything as soon as the protagonist knows it herself.  Morgan Prager returns to her apartment one afternoon to find her three dogs, all eager to greet her but soaked in blood. She checks each of them for injuries, fearing that her two recently adopted pit bulls have injured the Great Pyrenees she raised from a pup. As she realizes that her dogs are fine and that the blood came from her fiance, whose body she discovers on the bedroom floor, Morgan shifts from fearing for the safety or her beloved pets to fearing them.  When Morgan tries to notify Bennett's parents, she discovers that everything she knew about the man was a fabrication, Morgan begins to realize that Bennett, who she met online while researching her projects on victim psychology was someone else entirely. He was using more than one name, engaged to more than one woman. Morgan, who is supposed to be an expert on sociopaths and their victims, can't figure out how she fell for him. The real monster may not have been one of her dogs, it may have been the man she planned to spend her life with.

I've read all of the Dexter books and the last one, Dexter's Final Cut left me hoping that it wasn't the end of the story. Dexter Is Dead is the end and is one of my least favorite books in the series. The story opens immediately after Dexter's Final Cut with Dexter in jail for a gruesome series of murders that he didn't commit.  He's on his own except for his brother and I think that's why the book didn't work for me. I wanted to know what was  going on with the other characters, but all I got was Dexter, deeply mired in a pity party as he tries to clear his name.

Swerve by Vicki Pettersson sounded so good, and it started out that way. Kristine's fiance is abducted from an isolated rest stop on the heat baked stretch of highway leading out of Las Vegas. After narrowly escaping the maniac herself, Kristine pursues him, drawn on by threatening text messages sent from her own phone to her fiance's. The book sucked me right in and then, about halfway through, that plot took a twist that spoiled it for me.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.

  Disclosure - The publishers provided me with ARCs.


Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Chalk!

For years, I've wanted to make  one of the kitchen walls into a big chalkboard. I actually bought a half gallon of chalkboard paint just before Hubby's accident. It was in the back of the Suburban and I don't know if it got left behind when we went to the impound lot and tried to separate our belongings from the broken bits of car.  

After that, I didn't have the time or energy to go paint shopping again. Last week, I saw an etsy listing for a roll of chalkboard vinyl. I may not have the energy or enthusiasm for paint, but that I could do! 


They sell the stuff at Hobby Lobby and, with a coupon, it was less than five bucks. As an extra bonus, the roll was just the right size to fit the door of our little built in spice cabinet. I'm glad I didn't read the product reviews first because they're awful.

My vinyl sticks just fine. There were a few little air bubbles, but I decided not to fuss with them until I'd actually decided whether or not I was going to keep using it. They've all gradually smoothed out with the eraser, except for a couple of bumps that are in the door itself. I re-rolled it so that the adhesive was on the outside and then peeled off the backing paper as I rolled it onto the door - kind of like applying wallpaper. It's a bit crooked, but I'm not going to fuss with that until I decide if this is a permanent addition to my kitchen.


My dream is to learn to do the fancy chalkboard lettering....how to do it, not print fonts and trace a projected image. For now, I'm writing notes to my husband and kids. The biggest surprise -- the boys really don't mess with it much. While I was putting this project off, they must've grown up a bit.

Monday, July 06, 2015

Tumblers -- Little Ones!

I'm still working on spools and lozenges, but that isn't stopping me from thinking about Bonnie's newest challenge. I like tumblers.  Then she showed the ruler she's using and I realized that I could make itty-bitty tumblers. Because smaller is always more fun, right?

I'm picturing something like this (which I made in 2012 with the smaller AccuQuilt tumbler die), but with littler tumblers and a lot more colors.


Only two things are keeping me  from starting. It's way too hot to turn on the iron, and my ruler isn't in its package. I think I pulled it out last year when I was obsessing over Dresden Doilies....and nothing that I pulled out last year is where it should be.

Guess this is more proof that I should start finding it all.

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Sunday, July 05, 2015

Because I'm Not Gonna Quit Knitting Socks...


Knitpicks is having their Summer Yarn Sale. I was good.  I browsed through my Ravelry queue and thought about what I wanted to make. I dug through the sock yarn I have on hand. I went to the site and chose pretty yarns that I think I'll use in the near future to make what I want to make, then I went through my shopping cart and pared my list down to the cheapest options.

Because if I can make a pair of gorgeous socks with yummy yarn for $6.49, that seems like a pretty good plan to me. That's cheaper than the box store sock yarns I can buy locally and the yarn is nicer.

Of course as soon as I placed my order, they sent me an email advertising this sock kit.  Because they always show you the most tempting stuff right after you place an order. I could've resisted the yarn, but that book would've been in my order if I'd seen it fifteen minutes earlier.

And there's fabric from one of my readers who kindly offered Alex a sewing machine after seeing the post with her dress.  I haven't had time to do more than pet it and drool and plan in my head what might be winding up in which projects. Details about the fabric and machine will have to wait for a later post. (Thank you so much, Joyce! I'm still giddy over all of this and it couldn't have happened at a better time.)



Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 4 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 36 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week:400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 4800 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 3381 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 7056 yards
Net Added for 2015:   2256 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Saturday, July 04, 2015

An Empty Bigfoot Trap

Did you know that there's a Bigfoot Trap in the forests of Oregon? It was built in 1974 by the North American Wildlife Research Team and these days, it belongs to the United States Forest Service. Ever since I read the Wikipedia article and realized that it existed, I've been wanting to take the boys there...but that required having some free time and both parents able to make it from the car to the trap. 


It's a much easier hike than the one through Ape Caves, although there are a couple of big fallen trees to clamber over. The trail is shaded and except for the first steep slope down, it's all uphill to the trap -- which means it's almost all downhill on the way back. That worked for me!


The boys did an awful lot of whooping, but no one answered. I hear that they only caught a couple of bears when the trap was in use. So that either means that there aren't any Sasquatches in this part of the forest, or that they're too smart to crawl into that big wooden box.

Too late, I realized that I should have brought the backpack. That would have made some great pictures, especially if I ever get around to doing a tutorial. We'll probably be back there sooner or later. It was a fun little road trip.


Friday, July 03, 2015

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {7/3/15}



Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.






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