July ending, August beginning

 I haven't blogged all the July pics yet, and here we are in August. Some dancing shots of Daniel and Tertia at Ian and Ashley's wedding...

Tertia dances with such complete joy, even when her feet hurt from dancing all night.

 My July birthday girl made her own birthday cake. It was a Mocha Toffee Crunch cake, and it was delicious! She is seventeen now.

Also, Tertia and I entered the Harry Potter trivia competition on July 31 at Latte-Da Coffeehouse and Wine Bar. We won second place! Tertia is the trivia whiz... I provide transcription and spelling assistance, and I know Latin so if she remembers  something that sounds vaguely like "priori incantatem" I write it down.

 A shirt, a Dobby poster and a special vial of Felix Felicis (for decorative purposes only) were the spoils of victory. She is already making plans for the next event on Halloween.

 The Clark County Fair is  now open. Pygmy goats are always photogenic.

 I didn't enter any quilts, but enjoyed looking at those on display.

And the girls doing a silly shot in the 4H cats and dogs pavilion. Not pictured: our annual stop at the Dairy Women's booth to buy milkshakes before leaving the fair.

The plum tree is doing its thing, we are making plans for camp, the Megaquilter is semifunctional again and I am binding Grand Illusions quilt, which really deserves its own post. I'm also doing  genealogy semi-obsessively - which needs its own post; and I'm working on my Latin course for Wikiversity, which needs its own post. The random number for August is 9 - that means that my randomly selected UFO's for this month are (1) to resurrect the ancient Mariner's Compass rug hooking project from... maybe 18 years ago... and (2) work on knitted gifts for my stash. Neither of those is happening so far but I have finally turned the heel on my purple Sara Elin socks. 

Ravelry is still being a booger though, so I'm spending very little time there. They have lifted the restriction on me posting but they have blacked out my profile and are showing no signs of restoring it even though I purged it of everything political and asked to have it restored. And it wasn't even political in the first place! For the record, I oppose censorship. And the people who run Ravelry ... well, I can't say anything nice. But hey, at least they aren't spitting in my food or trying to get me de-platformed everywhere else. Their lunch counter, their rules. It's just one more symptom of a broken culture, where disagreeing with the Left on anything makes you a racist, and Twitter mobs can force the New York Times to take down the bland headline "Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism" because it wasn't anti-Trump enough. Yes, definitely time to tune out of Twitter and Ravelry and any other triggering sites for awhile.

Well, back to your previously scheduled summer. I want to prep a dehydrator full of plums today. Quarta has already made a load of plum-roll-ups for the winter. I also need to tackle Tertia's clothes and bag up the surplus ones so she can actually get them put away in her dresser. And there are a few quickie baby quilts I would like to make, but probably not until after camp.

Celtic Solstice - A Finish

Celtic Solstice was the 2013 Quiltville mystery; I finished piecing the top in 2014, almost exactly 5 years ago. I started machine quilting it in November of 2017 and just finished it last week.

I hung it out on the clothesline on the 4th of July. It really sparkles with those vibrant oranges, blues, greens and yellows. I totally need to spur myself onward with getting quilts quilted. More of that in another post.

Closeups of the wave quilting on the borders. The outer border fabric and the binding come from that epic estate sale I went to over 5 years ago.

I have a set of rubber stamps with designs from the Book of Kells... I decorated some plain fabric with them once and decided to use the fabric here. Celtic kitties...

and Celtic knot patterns.  The quilt measures about 78"x81" - better for a Full than a Queen size. I used navy thread for quilting and, aside from the wave pattern and some outline quilting in the borders, an overall squiggle/loop/star pattern that is my go-to, standard pattern for most quilts.

Also, since it's a new month, the UFO challenge random number is #1, and for me that breaks down to my long-neglected "classics" tote bag, and spinning the light green with silver glimmer fiber that I bought at Sock Summit. Both of those are theoretically possible, but I haven't worked on either so far.

Scrappy Trip Around the World

Well, it has once again rolled around to a new month, and I have been lackluster in my blogging again. But I have been sewing a fair bit. Last time I blogged, I had resurrected some 6-year-old trial blocks for the "Scrappy Trip Around the World." And I kept making them, using my 2.5" strips, until I had a total of the 48 I need for a 72"x96" top.

 Ten

 Twenty

 Thirty

 Forty

48! It went very fast, all things considered. That's what I love about quilting. It's a high-energy, quick gratification thing. Unlike knitting, which I probably need to do to recover my zen after all the blocks I made. Also, I need to clean up my scraps again, but that's a never-ending thing.

 I experimented with a few different layouts; above is more or less an attempt at true randomness, and below is trying to keep adjacent blocks with diagonal paths in the same color/value groups.

 I ended up liking the more random approach of the first time but of course the final layout is different, and I didn't bother to take a picture of it. I did stack the blocks and pin the row numbers on the top in each stack so I can sew them together. That is going to go more slowly, because the long seams of putting a big quilt together are not what I like best, so I tend to put it off or only work in concentrated spurts.

Speaking of putting things off, I put the Celtic Solstice on the frame at the end of 2017, and I am finally getting back to it just today. I'm a little unhappy with how the tension is not quite right... maybe it's subpar thread that is the problem, maybe the machine needs a tuneup. But even with occasional broken threads or tension issues on the bottom, I finished about half of the overall center of the quilt just this morning. I will need to repin the quilt to do the side border quilting. I'm definitely trying to remind myself that "finished is better than perfect."

I don't think I shared this on the blog yet, just on Instagram. This is a test block of "Sand Castles" from Bonnie K. Hunter's newest book String Frenzy. It has a lot of 4-patches I pieced as leaders and enders between the scrappy trip blocks, and some string blocks, and is just going to be really fun.

Also, reporting on the UFO challenge... I haven't really finished any of my quilting or fiber UFO's except for January, when I spun up my autumnal colors batt. I was supposed to do Celtic Solstice, the 1996 Piecemaker's Quilt, and at least 2 other machine quilting finishes so far this year, and for fiber arts, Rosalind, Manu, and more spinning which haven't been touched. The number for June is 10, which translates to the Rainbow Star quilt top, and the On Your Toes sweater which has languished for many years. I may have a good shot at finishing the Celtic Solstice quilting, though. These challenges are more like REALLY broad guidelines, anyway. I have a pair of lacy Sara Elin socks I really want to finish knitting, and I am also continuing cleaning and organizing my sewing area while I work on scrappy quilts and maybe more baby quilts. Happy with the progress on the quilt front this past month, whether I finish any UFO's or not.

Knitting Lots of Socks, and Taking Stock

Since the beginning of February, I have been knitting socks. Lots of Socks for the #LotsofSocksKAL hosted on Ravelry by Paper Daisy Creations. Together, we have raised a good bit of money for Down Syndrome International to use in providing support and advocacy for people with Down syndrome in developing countries. We have until May 21, World Down Syndrome Day, to knit our socks and enter them in the prize drawings. Personally, I have bought 11 patterns (I think) from 7 different designers, finished three matching pairs and two individual socks, and am working on socks 9, 10, and 11, for a total of 8 different patterns attempted. I want to knit more, but there are only so many hours a day to knit and binge-watch Marie Kondo, West Wing, Designated Survivor, and NCIS.

 Lots of Socks by Lisa K. Ross is the title featured pattern designed by the hostess of the knitalong. It was immediately a pattern I just had to buy... mind you, until this knitalong I had never bought a sock pattern, just a few books in the past and free patterns from the early days of Ravelry. Truthfully, I was kind of in a rut when it came to socks, just doing toe-up socks for Steve and the boys mostly. I had to learn a special cast-on by "Tillybuddy" which is stretchy like the Twisted German (or is it Old Norwegian?) but is done two stitches at a time, so goes kind of quickly. I also loved knitting the mosaic pattern on these... it is fun and fast with color-changing yarns in the same way that I find knitting my diamond lattice dishcloths entertaining.

The resulting sock fabric is warm and very squooshy. I used Knit Picks Chroma for the color gradient, which is a single yarn, but it hasn't disintegrated yet after two wearings. I knit these socks one at a time, so though it was the first sock cast on in February, it was not the first finished pair.

 Here is my first completed pair: Non-Euclidian by Sarah Jordan.

These socks feature a clever diamond/triangle heel shaping designed to not break up self-striping yarns. This is some Knit-Picks Hawthorne and doesn't have stripes, but it's a great vanilla sock recipe I will definitely return to again. I used Tillybuddy's cast-on again for its stretchiness, and once again had the chance to practice Kitchener stitch to close the toes. I don't have it memorized yet, it's on a 3x5 card, but with these two techniques there's no reason to fear top-down socks anymore. I definitely would like to knit these first two patterns again.

 Short Attention Span by Shannon Squire. These toe-up socks knitted up rather quickly because they were in Socks that Rock mediumweight, but the first sock was a little harder because I had a hard time memorizing the flying geese pattern and doing the heel at the same time. This heel used the W&T (wrap and turn) short row technique, which I had to research with you-tube videos before I attempted it. Every time I do wraps, I get very confused. I think I did them differently on the second heel, but I can't tell.

 And on to the single socks. This is Rough Waters by Lisa K. Ross again, from her collection of 4 sock patterns inspired by Narnia. It is toe-up and features a dropped stitch pattern and the thing I had to learn with this sock pattern was how to do German short row heels with something called a double stitch. This was completely new to me, but I'm glad I struggled through it. It was a struggle -- Emma had a nasty stomach bug while I was working on this and I was sleep-deprived, so very little made sense when I was trying to figure it out.

In the end, it is a very neat way of doing short rows and I will probably try to use it instead of the wrap and turn method in future socks. I look forward to completing the other sock in this pair.

 This is Epitome of Me by Megan Williams. They are toe-up also and feature a twist on either side going up the foot. I had to relearn twisted stitches, and the heel is something called an OMG (one-needle mock-gusset) heel that also uses German short rows with double stitch. So it was a great opportunity to practice that kind of short row in a very different configuration.

One done - these may be for Emma when they are finished. Also in progress but not pictured yet because it took me long enough to blog the socks so far -- Sara Elin by Vikki Bird, Grellow Love by Clare Devine, Flower Shock by Anna Friberg. I might just be able to get one of each of those socks done by March 21. I bought some beautiful Madeline Tosh Twist Light sock yarn and am thinking of buying yet another pattern by one of the featured designers, Coffee Talk by Traci Millar, and I really also want to cast on Voyage from the Narnia E-book by Lisa K. Ross. That's a lot of socks!

So, on to the "taking stock" part of the blog. I didn't finish any of my UFO goals for February (they were finishing quilting Celtic Solstice, and finishing my Rosalind sweater, as well as cleaning my craft area thoroughly and making a few baby quilts). But time marches on, and the UFO challenge # for March is 8. That means, for fiber arts, "spinner's choice" (I could theoretically justify ordering fiber), or I could just work on last month's neglected project. And for quilting it's the 1996 Piecemaker's calendar quilt, which needs quite a bit of applique before assembly. Or I could just knock out the machine quilting and baby quilts that need to be finished up from last month. Truth be told, I will be content with a lot of socks finished and new techniques learned, but I will definitely try to do some cleanup and organization in the process.

Here's to averaging more than two blog posts this month! Cheers!

January Finishes and February Plans

As I gradually make my way back into the world of blogging, I am comforted that, even with all the cultural craziness and political rancor, I still have the ability to make beautiful things with my hands, and this is relatively uncontroversial.

January was a productive month for me. I finished up the Good Fortune Quilt top from Bonnie Hunter's seasonal mystery.

 I changed up the color scheme from Bonnie's, leaving out the orange and bringing in yellow, and switching the colors around. I was a little unsure at first but I really like the way my version played out.

 I had to wait for a dry and clear day to hang the quilt out on the tree for this picture session!

 I especially love the green/blue outer border. Those colors together always make me think of Grandma Maffett.

The red chain blocks really stand out. But after you get through looking at them, you notice the cheerful yellow/green pinwheel blocks, and they make me happy too.

Overall, a very successful mystery quilt. I hope I can get in gear and crank out the quilting on the many quilts I need to work on. I enjoyed every single clue of the mystery, and had less than usual trouble in matching the corners when I was sewing the whole top together. Or maybe I've just loosened up on my perfectionism a bit. Either way, it's a win!

 I randomly chose "3" as my number for UFO work in January. I was supposed to spin this roving from Dicentra Designs, and I did.  No idea what I will make with it yet. I was also supposed to sew a knitting bag pattern that has been on my queue for several years and my countertop for several months. No, that went untouched. Instead, I have nearly completed my sewing-room cleanup and organization campaign, and I'm happy with that. That could be another blog post in itself.

 I finished the first of the Bovary socks while Quarta was at orientation for St. Jude Leadership society, and forged ahead with Kitchener stitch to close the toes. However, my memory was not so great. I vastly prefer toe-up socks for this reason. By the way, if you are looking for a worthy cause, there's hardly any one worthier than St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Quarta's donation page is here. I was able to remember the Old Norwegian cast on for the next sock just from muscle memory, so the second sock is about 2/3 done. I'm okay with that pace of knitting but I would prefer to get it off the needles because...

There is a "Lots of Socks" knitalong on Ravelry that is in support of International Down Syndrome. The idea is to knit socks from the 15 participating designers, and post them by Down Syndrome day (March 21). A different designer's pattern will be promoted each day for 15 days. Today is the first day and I bought the "Lots of Socks" pattern by Paper Daisy Creations, because it is really stunning. Here is my plan for main and contrasting colors. I am not sure about the Chroma yarn, a single that is prone to felting and pilling, but it is what I have to work with and I have already cast on the first sock, using a rather clever You-tube video by Tillybuddy for an extra-stretchy cast-on. I somehow doubt I will finish LOTS of socks in the next month and a half, but maybe one pair? But if all the designers have such pretty patterns, I may have a hard time picking. Plus Bovary, of course, just to get it off the needles.

So plans for February already include knitting socks and finishing the cleanup of my sewing area. Also I have some quickie baby quilts already half pieced. I am going to have to finish quilting Celtic Solstice, already on the frame, very soon or I will not be able to get anything else done. Also, the APQ UFO challenge picked "6" as the random number for February, so that means (she runs and checks her list)...

A machine quilting finish (good, I was already planning on that) and
Rosalind (a really pretty summer sweater that has been languishing for far too long). It's all good.

New Year, New Goals

So it's 2019, and 2018 wasn't my best year for either blogging or crafting. I did finish several pairs of socks and a few other knitting projects, but no quilts during that time. The coming of Thanksgiving and the mystery quilt with Bonnie K. Hunter served as a welcome kick-start to get back into both sewing and blogging. But it also was a kick in the pants to me to organize my scraps and long-neglected projects, both of which were in a shocking state.

When I had to make blue string blocks, it forced me to organize my strings. And not just the blue ones.

 I have a 3-drawer plastic unit; it goes beside my sewing chair so I can just reach down. Top shelf is cool colors, middle shelf is warm colors, bottom shelf is neutrals and browns. The above photo was taken when I was almost through sorting the cool colors drawer and dumped out a bunch more.

I thinned it down considerably. I stirred up a LOT of dust and had to take frequent breaks. I threw away strings I disliked or were too small for my purposes, and now my three drawers are reasonably tamed. I also started the process of organizing my other small scraps. All of this was in the week immediately preceding Christmas. I ended up getting my entire sewing area thoroughly vacuumed and the storage area under the Megaquilter much neater. I will probably do other purges and take more pictures to document this in the future, but I took a break from that when Christmas came.

This was Daniel's gift to me, and I got them on the wall for the Last Noel.

I was detoured right around Jan. 1 with a friend's post on Facebook about "Bullet Journals," and I fell into a rabbit hole thinking about ways to apply them to my life. I took a notebook I've had since 2011, a gift from a student, and had been using very sporadically as a quilting and knitting journal. If you look back in my blog, you may see some of the WIP and UFO reports I've made in the past were based on notes I originally made in this book. So far, I have not really caught the desire to write in a bullet journal daily, nor to make it look pretty. I did pick 12 knitting and 12 quilting goals (loosely defined) for this year and entered them down in the notebook. But for now, my "bullet journal" is just experimental and I don't think it would make a good picture at all. However, I will post my year's UFO goals from it here on the blog.

The way it works is I select a random number from 1-12 each month, and that number is the project I work on during that month. Then I will have to report on goals achieved or missed each month, and maybe connect with one of those awesome link-up parties that some bloggers are still doing.

UFO or stash reduction projects (knitting/fiber) randomly chosen each month.

1. spin the light green/silver roving from Sock Summit
2. spin the autumnal Dicentra Designs "Black Bottom Stomp" roving in merino/Tussah
3. start a new pair of socks
4. Manu cardigan
5. Manu cardigan (it's in fingering weight, I figure two months are necessary)
6. Rosalind cardigan
7. Mint Chocolate cardigan
8. spinner's choice (may order fiber if that is what I want to do that month)
9. small gifts for gift stash
10. On Your Toes cardigan (or bail and frog it)
11. start new cardigan from reclaimed yarn stash: boyfriend or favorite color(?)
12. any knitting finish
13. (bonus) design my dream colorwork cardigan 

UFO quilting/sewing projects randomly chosen each month

1. classical tote bag
2. bowling style bag
3. linen blouse
4. machine quilting finish
5. machine quilting finish
6. machine quilting finish
7. machine quilting finish
8. 1996 Piecemaker's top
9. mariner's compass hooked rug
10. rainbow star quilt (applique)
11. frugal patch quilt
12. felted wool blanket
13. (Scrappy trip)
14. (LOTR paper piecing)
15. (Baltimore album quilt)
16. (Extra baby quilts)
17. (Spare block quilt "scrap soup")

Numbers beyond 12 are "bonus" choices that can be substituted for another one if it comes down to getting nothing done, or can be done in addition to a completed month's project.

These UFO's are an extension of my yearly urge to clean up my sewing and crafting area. I am assuming I will be working on one quilt and at least one knitting project of my own volition each month; these are in addition. 

So this month I chose the random number 2: the Dicentra Designs spinning fiber was very easy to find and my spinning wheel was easy to dust off and get going again, while Steve and I watched a few episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. 

 It was incredibly fun to get back into spinning. I love these autumnal colors.

 And, believe it or not, the two bobbins of singles plied perfectly; they worked out to exactly the same length! Now to figure out a fun future project to knit with this yarn.

The bowling-style knitting bag is still in pattern pieces on my work counter from more than a year ago, and I will attempt to get to that. I know where all the supplies are.

My current sock project is the Bovary socks, top-down socks so a little out of my comfort zone, in some "Vixen" Hipster Knit sock yarn I bought at Sock Summit in ...2011? I am approaching the toe of the first sock; it has been fun to knit, although kind of slow. I would like to finish both socks by the end of January, so I can join the World Down Syndrome day knitalong. 

My current sewing project is obviously, finishing the Good Fortune quilt top. Hopefully by the end of January as well. Then it will join my 5-7 quilt tops awaiting quilting. I seriously need to get some machine quilting mojo going. But for now I am happy to have my goals lined out.

The Three Quarter Bag

This is what I finished a few weeks ago, right before Mom Chapman went into the hospital. It is a kit called the Three Quarter Bag, by Susan Terpin for Connecting Threads. It's in the Whirlwind Romance collection, and I think has been waiting for me to stitch it up for about 6 years. I checked the Connecting Threads site and they no longer seem to offer it, either in kit or pattern form. I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, although the fusible fleece, heavyweight stabilizer and medium weight craft interfacing were additional things I had to buy before attempting the kit. The heavyweight stabilizer didn't stay fused very well when I was doing the fiddly bits with the bottom and lining of the bag, but I glued it with some spray-on adhesive and it seemed to work well enough. I blunted a needle and my walking foot came apart at one point, but I was able to replace the needle and put the walking foot back together.

 It also features a zipper, and I hadn't done a zipper in about a decade, so it was time. I really like this fabric collection; so much so that I bought the gray/yellow colorway fat quarter set, and some yardage, in the hopes of making a quilt someday. It's a little matchy-matchy for the way I've been quilting lately, but I could make a quick quilt, there's a thought!

 The trim is pretty. It may be my new knitting bag.

While I was conquering my avoidance of zippers, I made a zippered pouch and a zippered pyramid bag. Neither one took more than an hour or so. I still want to make a box-shaped pouch as well, in leftover coordinating fabric.

If I were still tracking UFO's (I never really started it for either 2016 or 2017) I could count this as one. When I hunt up my project notebook from under one of the piles in my sewing area, I'll be sure to note that the Three Quarter bag is now finished! I like it a lot, actually. I have another two bags in my long-term UFO list, and one that I really need to just cut and sew. Like this bag, it is a larger project that involves some advanced sewing skills and a lot of stiff interfacings and hardware that quilters don't normally use. But this project was a confidence builder, and I just need to get up the gumption to do it. Then I can tick off another UFO.

By the way, my mother-in-law was over here tonight for dinner, with Steve's sister who flew in from Phoenix, and she just bought a new motorized scooter for getting around at her retirement home. Combined with her new medication, it seems like a good solution to get her mobility back. I look forward to seeing her zip around on it! In the meantime, school is out for both girls now; Tertia's last day was today, and Quarta's was last Tuesday. The weather has finally improved and has been downright pleasant the last few days. I keep chucking snails that I find on my potted plants into the street for the crows, and I am enjoying my flowers in my hanging basket.

 I can't decide whether I like the magenta or the purple petunias best, so every few days I turn the basket around to get a change of pace. Variety is great!