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 If you look back in my blog, you may see some of the WIP and UFO reports I've made in the past were based on notes I originally made in this book.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.

Good Fortune Mystery Monday Link-up 1

Well, I am in the process of coming back to my blog after months of neglect, and it is in large part thanks to the Good Fortune Mystery Quilt. Every year, scrappy quilters all over the world start stitching the day after Thanksgiving on the clues released by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville. The first gathering of photos from the first clue can be found here at Bonnie's site. You can also download the first clue, but be sure to keep checking back for all the clues because they will go away after the Holiday mystery season is over!

I'm happy to report that I finished all the pieces for the first clue this morning. Or did I? I know I'm going to be changing up the colors somewhat, and I think I'm going to substitute blue for orange. But the little four-patches were so cute, I couldn't resist making a few in blue instead of red.

 And even a few in green.

I really like the checkerboard effect, so I think having a bunch of extras of these in various colors isn't such a bad thing. Especially since I haven't made a definite plan for the color scheme.

 It's a messy process: I was able to get right into it, though, because I had my boxes of strips in different colors and widths already cut. This is thanks to Bonnie's scrap user system, which is something I've been converting my stash to over the last several years of mysteries. When the clue came out, all I needed to do was open the box that contained strips in the width called for, and get out the neutrals and reds (and blues, and greens). Instant gratification sewing, very little extra cutting needed. But the tradeoff is the family room is a bit messy and the cat wants to sleep on the pile of neutral strips I haven't used yet.

Um, yeah, I should probably put those back in the cupboard. Lots of old fabrics being used up, and no new fabrics bought so far. I do think my reds are a little low, and yellows as well. I'm probably going to use yellow in the place where the green goes, and green where the blue goes, and blue where the orange goes, and keep the red where it is.

Oh yes, I am also trying to make myself finish up On Ringo Lake from last year. I cut the setting squares and triangles called for in the final clue. Next comes the assembly. also a somewhat messy process. The mess just seems be a part of quilting. Maybe if I actually finished more projects and stuck with them. Well, it does feel good to be back in the quilting area. I will try to dig myself out of the piles of WIPs.

More Dusting of the Blog; Thanksgiving

 As my few readers know, I took a very long hiatus from blogging, from January until October of this year. The catalyst was a broken laptop, but I also got distracted and worked on things I haven't usually blogged about in the past. So we are catching up, but today will be more traditional, post-Thanksgiving. I know how to blog about all the homemaking business of Thanksgiving. The pies are always made the day before. I made the ones on the top: Chocolate Bourbon Pecan pie (plus some extra filling), two Apple-Pear-Cranberry, and the Birthday Blueberry on bottom left (Steve's birthday is the same as Thanksgiving this year; he was born on a memorable day for those above a certain age.) Quarta made the Pumpkin Pie (extra filling in the tin) from a Binging with Babish video. The butter crust was particularly tricky. Mine were just made with Crisco. I don't even really measure anymore.

 After pie-baking most of the afternoon, Steve took me out for Chinese. These adorable cuties were parked next to us. Quarta is fond of using words like "doggos" and "puppers" and I have to say, they made me want to use them too.

 I love the fact that I have a well-stocked herb garden that can be harvested even in the late months of the year. Actually, the parsley is growing as a weed and I need to plant some in my herb garden. But our gardening philosophy is to encourage weeds that we like. I have no process photos of the bird, or, sadly the group of us at dinner: it was only 5 of us at home, plus Steve's mom. Daniel is in Scotland visiting my sister and eating haggis instead of turkey.

After dinner Quarta went to visit her friend whose family was having a feast at their church for all comers; then when she was dropped off in the evening, my friend, her friend's mom, left us two slices of Pie-Caken, which is a thing she has learned to make. I will stick to basic pies, but I did have a third of a slice (pecan) for breakfast this morning.

And now, one of the main reasons I needed to dust off my blog. This is my most recent photo of last year's Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilt, On Ringo Lake. It is not much farther along than this. I have made all the necessary blocks, but I have not connected them into a quilt top yet. One of the reasons I need to keep posting on my blog is to keep myself accountable with various quilting and knitting projects. When I am not blogging, I may not be quilting at all, and I may only be knitting in small increments. And even worse, I am certainly not keeping my sewing room neat and tidy. But, Bonnie has just issued the first clue of this year's mystery quilt, Good Fortune. Once again I am feeling the siren call of starting another scrappy quilt project. Some people shop on the day after Thanksgiving. I prefer to eat dessert for breakfast and start a mystery quilt that I have no guarantee I will finish. The obstacles are great this year:

1. I must clean my sewing room first, at least enough to be able to use the cutting table, ironing board, and sewing surface.
2. I must also make adequate progress on finishing On Ringo Lake, ideally within the first few weeks.
3. I know I want to change the color scheme, but I'm not sure yet how. I am leaning to changing Green, Blue, Red, and Orange to a more country/vintage palette of Yellow, Green, Red, and Blue. I don't really want to work with orange this year since I used a fair amount last year. But I am still dithering about the changes I'll want to make. Fortunately, dithering about the colors is something I can do quite easily while blogging!
4. The odds are very high that I will get distracted again and stop blogging, and therefore, stop sewing. Christmas is coming. Daniel is posting pictures of the Highlands. I might decide to start another language. 

You will notice that I did NOT list "I don't have enough fabric" as an obstacle. I have enough fabric to make about ten years of mystery quilts, only I might have to change the colors on them. Well, here goes, signing off and maybe I'll start in on some light cleaning now.

After Christmas, Mystery Quilt Progress

Christmas was great, and went by fast. We were able to get someone at church to snag a picture of the whole family:

 And Steve took one of the kids. That's pretty much it for family photos this year, everyone is in such fast transition. We only have the boys for a few more days, and it may be quite some time before Daniel gets back.

It has been harder to get multiple blog posts in a week this year, so excuse me for sneaking in family photos. But for some reason, Christmas season also kickstarts my lagging quilting and knitting, and I like to document them on the blog. First up is the En Provence Mystery quilt, and I'm linking up to Bonnie Hunter's blog with lots of other people sharing their progress: Part 5 Link-up

 I was able to get clue 5 done pretty easily. My purple stash is pretty well depleted at this point.

 I have the pieces for the mystery quilt in a small storage box, and since I finished this week early, I decided to work on some other sewing projects that had been lying around.

 Everything except the borders of Allietare had been done since last January, so I finally trimmed the edges and put the borders on. I think it's just a stunning quilt pattern, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

You can't see it, but Orca Bay is underneath it on our bed. That was the first mystery quilt I did and I've been hooked ever since. This is the sixth straight year I've joined in. If you are happening to hear about this for the first time, you have a chance to get the clues for the current mystery still, at the website linked above. And you want to grab them while they are freely available, because Bonnie takes them down at some point so they can be included in a future book. I never thought I'd enjoy doing mystery quilts so much, but these are really quite addictive. My only concern is that I've fallen way behind in getting them quilted.

The other thing Bonnie got me hooked on is organizing my scraps. I still haven't perfected it, but I have been cutting strips of various commonly used sizes as I have different fabrics out, and today it was time to organize my 1.5" strips. Here's how they looked midway through. The box was completely overflowing when I started.

 Here's me laying them out in color groups,

And here they all are, fitting into the same bin neatly with room to spare! It made me really happy to get this done today! I'm partway through with the 2.5" strips as well. The 2" and 3.5" strips had to be organized to do the previous steps of the mystery quilt.

One other bit of sewing got done today. It was sad, considering the untimely death of Carrie Fisher, but I threaded up my machine with black and went ahead on these Star Wars boxers for Steve. I had wrapped the fabric for him, with the promise to sew it up after Christmas. Got it all done today, start to finish.

 And both boys were very happy with their handknit socks... they put them on right after unwrapping them.

So they fit, the boys like them, and it looks like I could knit socks and sew boxer shorts and my menfolk would be happy for Christmas presents and birthday presents. Seems like a pretty good deal to me! I still wish I could figure out that trick like they do in Harry Potter to make the needles knit by themselves, though. It takes me about a month to knit a pair of socks. 

Works in Progress and a Reality Check

It was one of those "if you give a mouse a cookie" moments.  Although I still haven't been blogging much, I have been chipping away at various quilting projects in an attempt to get back to having something to blog about.  There is Allietare, with all the blocks finished and needing the setting triangles and borders:

There is Grand Illusion, which looks like this at the moment:

You'll notice I ran out of the gold constant fabric that shows up in the squares, and I had to substitute the gold stripe for the inner borders.  That's because, when I was playing catch-up last month, I mis-read one of the clues and I made 25 of each kind of 4-patch, instead of 25 of the one and just 4 of the other:

That means I have a lot of "orphan blocks" to use in a future project, and also I used too much of the original gold and had to use the other gold. But I actually like the stripe better, so it's all good. There was getting to be a large pile of fabric on my worktable as all these different scrappy quilts piled up, and I hadn't put any of the old fabrics away yet because I wasn't sure I was finished with them (and this was taken a few weeks before Christmas!):

But! I never met a scrappy quilt-along that I didn't want to jump into, and some of the chatter on the Quiltville Facebook page led me to the 365 Challenge from Australia.  The idea is to make a block every day, and the ones they were starting with were easy and cute.  All 3" squares so far.  I decided to go scrappy blue and green, and added that to the mix (Allietare red, gold, black and neutral; Grand Illusion green, pink and aqua; and the flannel baby quilts and string quilts I had been working on as well).  Here's the first 19 blocks:

 (Yes, that's Dr. McCoy in block 6, scraps from some boxers I made with Star Trek fabric).

There's no denying they are awfully cute little blocks.  But little! Did I mention they are only 3"? I have no guarantee that all the different fabrics will work together, but I did make the Farmer's Wife Quilt a few years ago (even though it's STILL on the quilting frame) and that all worked out.  I certainly am not worried about running out of blues or greens.  But I'm not sure whether I'll stick with it all the way.  I think it's a sampler quilt that wants to be more matchy-matchy than I am necessarily willing to be. It's kind of cool, though, to be able to do tomorrow's block today because it's already tomorrow in Australia.  But I discovered, in one of those necessary reality check kind of moments, that the huge mess of scraps, bits of fabric, and multiple projects in my sewing area, had made me lose my triangle ruler.  So I went looking for it.  The more I looked, the more it wasn't there, so I resolved to take the necessary action and remove all the mess from my sewing counter and put it on the floor of the family room:

 Um, yes. I need to deal with all that.  I have bins for strips that are 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 3.5", and bins for some special fabric collections, and bins for strings and squares and bricks.

 First I had to declutter around the sewing machine, and vaccum the lint and dust it nicely.  I raised enough dust that I have been suffering from bad allergies for the last few hours, and that's why I'm blogging now instead.

I'm happy to report that my cutting counter has now also been cleaned and dusted.  I'm using it as a staging area for cutting up the rest of my flannel into squares (I'm getting out of the flannel storage business by making a bunch of utility baby quilts that I'll eventually give away). Oh, but I did also find my triangle ruler -- it was under some of the other mess on the cutting counter, and I did go ahead and make tomorrow's 3" block. The clean-up of the family room floor is going forward; most of my fat quarters are now put away, as well as yardage. There are about 4 bags or bins of scraps that need to be cut into usable smaller strips, strings, or squares.  That's a lot, but I can manage it if I work steadily.  And throw out some of the scraps I don't like anymore.  I've been discovering quilt projects that have been neglected for a long time. Some of them I don't like anymore.  I will eventually have to make some decisions about priorities.  Maybe I'll get together a UFO list for the year sometime.  But I have learned one thing for sure:

Apparently 4 active quilt projects going at once is the point I start to lose things.  And the warning sign is when your cat starts sleeping on your fabric pile.  She has had to move:

From on top of the lovely sweater I bought at Goodwill to unravel for yarn, Muffball rebukes me for taking on too much at once.  I know, I know.  I think I'll go to bed.  Tomorrow's block is already done.

Gray Friday

 In the Great Thanksgiving Stuffing debate, the plebeians won this year. "From a box" is Steve's and Quarta's vote; in the best of all worlds I would enjoy making it from scratch, but no one else in our rather small gathering this year cared, and truthfully, I like Stove-Top myself.  But, I still referred to my well-worn 1994 Bon Appetit Thanksgiving issue for the herb-rubbed turkey... and then proceeded to completely ignore the actual recipe and go with my instinct.  There was a killing frost yesterday morning, and I snapped off lots of twigs of parsley and fennel.

 The reason the bird is so... lumpy... is because I discovered a year or two ago that you rub the softened butter and herb mixture UNDER the skin, and it makes the meat really nice. Of course I had slept in and not defrosted butter and was aiming for getting the bird in the oven quickly so it could be done by T-time, so it was rather slap-dash getting it in there.  And I was glad again about the Stove-Top.

I cooked the green beans in the crock pot so the (real) stove-top was free for making mashed potatoes and gravy, and carving the bird.  I need to remember to do that every time.  Acorn squash with butter, fennel, and garlic was another side dish, and a few baked yams/sweet potatoes... I can never tell the difference.  Quarta and I were talking and I will have to try the sweet potato casserole recipe with marshmallows at Christmastime.  It has been almost 4 decades since I had it last.  I won't force anyone to eat it! I don't do that. Just stating for the record, since my husband acts panicked whenever I mention trying a recipe he dislikes.

The beauty of using the nice china, I explained to Quarta, is that Mom doesn't trust anyone else to wash it, so the kids don't have to worry about doing the dishes.  The beauty of me knocking myself out cooking an insane amount of food on Thanksgiving, is that the rest of the family will find leftovers and not expect me to cook for the next several days. I really wonder if I can make it last until next Thursday? That would be a lovely vacation indeed.  We had a fairly quiet Thanksgiving, highlighted by a nice call from Daniel in North Carolina.

I used to think I would enjoy Black Friday shopping, when the kids were little, until I discovered how shoddy and manipulative the Black Friday deals are, and how much I dislike crowded and noisy shopping centers.  So for today and tomorrow, I am living the introvert's dream.  I am eating leftovers, listening to audiobooks or music of my own choosing or nothing at all, and attempting to quilt.

 This has been the state of my design wall for nearly a year.  The rainbow string star is very pretty, but I screeched to a halt with quilting momentum shortly after the new year, and the Grand Illusion mystery screeched to a halt, too.  That one sample block on the lower left? I have been working on getting back into the quilting groove over the last 2 weeks, very gently.  I finally finished all the components and sewed that block together yesterday. I knew I wanted to do Bonnie Hunter's latest mystery quilt, Allietare, or at least attempt it. But I need to stage an intervention in my sewing area (and yes, on my blog), and it started today.

So today, when the first clue was released, I decided to take some positive steps toward organization. Because as we all know, you have to be organized before attempting any serious endeavor, like the conquest of Gaul or a holiday-season quilt project. This is the state of my sewing area, more or less.  My goal is to finish Grand Illusion, and take modest steps toward organizing the scrap mountain into pre-cut squares, bricks and strips, and take baby-steps toward Allietare.

 Here's a close-up of the Grand Illusion block.  I like it, but I'm ready for the top to be done. A new mystery quilt may be just the powerful motivator I need.

I realized when you pick a project up after months of idleness, you can make mistakes.  I thought I was supposed to make 25 of each 4-patch.  But looking back at the directions, I realize now that I was only supposed to make 4 of the pink/black/gold ones. Oops. We will move along and maybe plan a truly scrappy quilt with the extras and other extras from other projects.  I do know that I will not be using that gold for the border, because now I'm pretty sure I don't have enough of it, whereas I was only mildly worried before.

 These are the fabrics that I bought last week, anticipating Allietare, when I remembered a gift card for Joann's that a student gave me last year. My stash is weak in blacks and grays, and it is the grays that occupy my attention today.

 I really like this one, a Tim Coffey print that feels like it would be appropriate for the Italian Renaissance theme.  It has a background texture that looks like old stuccoed walls and that lovely vine, and a very faint purply richness. My only concern is that it is rather light, and we were told not to go too light.

 I bought this one as well, because I like it too and it is medium, and therefore dark enough.  But I don't LOVE it as much.  Here are both grays with the stash pieces I pulled this morning.

Okay, well, the darker gray is poking out on the left, but the favored gray is mixed in. The neutrals that I think of as outliers are on top.

 Here's the lighter gray. I think I can use it, and just edit out the outlier neutrals. And maybe Olivia the Pig, but I will decide on the reds when I have to.

Here is the darker gray.  It's really not all that much darker though, and I still think the outliers would be better not used with it.  So I decided on the viney print. You'll have to wait until the linkup post, but I did go ahead and piece about 1/6 of the triangles needed today, and did a fair amount of catch-up on Grand Illusion.  I'm feeling cautiously optimistic.

Just returned from the Christmas Tree lighting, where Tertia and other school choir kids sang.  It was clear and cold this year. Now for some turkey soup and a little stash organization.