Shameless Stash Enhancement

Today I fell off the wagon big time.  I hadn't been buying new quilt fabric, remember?  I was using my scrap-rich stash exclusively and working on cleaning and organizing my sewing area.  But that was before the Connecting Threads warehouse sale.  You have NO IDEA what quilter's heaven it was, with boxes stuffed to overflowing with discontinued fabrics or mill ends and just waiting to be rummaged through by hordes of fabric-crazed quilters.  I was consciously looking for red, but my default setting seems to be to grab blue and green.  Lots of large pieces that can be used for quilt backs if nothing else, and lots of fun prints and colors I like.  That there is 11.1 pounds of fabric, $2.96 per pound.  I'll be using it up for a while.

Knit Picks was having their sale at the same time, except the yarn is $12.00 per pound.  I distinctly remember reading somewhere on the internet that sock yarn doesn't count against your efforts to not increase your yarn stash, and all but the red laceweight is sock yarn.  Most of it in manly colors, too. I know I can use this... sometime in the next decade.  Sigh.  I'm going to need to be careful.  Since starting this blog I have become a little more aware of the things I put in my stash, and they aren't all getting used up at the rate they are getting added.  There is a potential for trouble here.

I haven't even been forthright about all the stash enhancement.  There was an estate sale in our neighborhood a few weeks ago, and these vintage buttons were not the only thing I brought home.  Some vintage alpaca sportweight and some worsted wool found their way back with me, because they were "such a good price."  Maybe if I'd seen the moth damage first I'd have thought twice before being so aquisitive.  Truth is, I don't really think about the specific plans for everything I bring home.  Like the one skein of Tosh Merino Light I picked up at Happy Knits after picking up school uniforms at Dennis -- as a "treat" for coping with Portland traffic. I do make sure it's not an unreasonable amount of money I'm spending.  I am, after all, still Scottish.  But that practical streak doesn't seem to extend to keeping the stash to a reasonable limit.  Not SABLE (Stash Aquisition Beyond Life Expectancy) quite yet, but it could happen.
Of course, buying pretty things that make you happy is a well-known antidote to the severe depression brought on by the imminent start of school on Monday.  And then the vicious cycle of not having time to knit or sew because of teaching and grading will take its toll, and then I'll be tempted to buy more stuff to cheer myself up, and so on.

The Dog-Poo Days of Summer

Now that September is here and kids are going back to school, it has been hot.  For the first time we've had several days in a row of high 80's and low 90's, which for here, qualifies as really hot.  Just in time for not feeling like going back to school.  But we have to anyway.

Tertia on her first day of 6th grade, with our "Chapman Yellow" house with "Courtyard" trim in the background.  All ready by 8:35 when the bus was supposed to come... but it didn't.  Not at 8:45 either, when I called and they said they were running late the first day of school.  Not at 8:55 when I called again and they said they were running at least half an hour late (Vancouver School District special services, someone else can call and pester them about it because they aren't answering my calls anymore).  That's when I loaded Tertia and "Little Joe" who's catching the bus at our house too into my van and drove them to school.  They were late the first day but it will be okay.  There are lots of people there to help them and encourage their peers to be kind to them.  I'm not anxious at all about how Tertia will do in her new middle school.  Not at all.

The second day of school, Little Joe came to our house about 8:15, kissed his mom goodbye, and we took him into the family room to watch channel 10, which he likes to do while waiting for the bus. Then I noticed what I assumed was cat puke on the carpet and went to clean it up (a fairly frequent occurrence in our house).  But no, sadly it was the titular dog-poo, left near our front walk by an inconsiderate neighbor and unwittingly stepped in by Little Joe.  So there were little malodorous dots of the canine substance from the front door to the back room, and of course a big glob on poor Little Joe's foot, too, all of which needed to be hastily cleaned up before the bus arrived, at 8:45 this time.

Quarta is bored because school has not started for her yet.  Patience dear!  Monday is D-Day for us Cedar Tree folk.  The teachers have been furiously lesson-planning and room-preparing in the heat, and yesterday evening was the school picnic.  Primigenitus is off on the Upper School beach trip today, and Secundus is even now running in his first cross-country meet.  I wrote my students' names in my grade book today, my copies have been made, and my room is as ready as I can make it.  Come Monday, we'll all test out the new Fall schedule.

WIP Wednesday #10: Getting serious with the Farmer

I avoided a LOT of lesson-planning this week by cranking out 6 Farmer's Wife quilt blocks.  This is block #31 - Evening Star.

#32 - Farmer's Daughter.  This is another one of those based on a 5x5 grid. Take 6" finished block size and divide by 5 and you get a base unit of 1 1/4" (scant), so depending on whether you want a square or a HST you add either 1/2" or 7/8". 

#33 - Farmer's Puzzle.  This is another one where I think I came up with a simpler way to piece it, but I had to draw it out on graph paper first.  Fabric choice on this one reminds me of an aerial view of a farmer's fields with woodlots in between.  So for cutting, I cut 8 green rectangles, 1 3/4"x3".  The brown triangles actually start as 16 squares cut 1 3/4".  Then I used the fast-45 technique to join the squares to each end of the rectangle - you just have to make sure half the rectangles are oriented in one direction and half in another.  Then the center cross pieces are 2 rectangles 3"x1 1/2", and one long one cut 6 1/2" x 1 1/2".

#34 - Flock.  As bird-themed blocks go, this was relatively easy.

#35 - Flower Basket.  I just think the polka dots with the gingham background makes this one of the cutest blocks ever.  I did a machine applique for the handle, so it really did not take long at all.

#36 - Flower Garden Path.  The piecing was tricky for this one but it worked out okay.  I'm not sure about the fabrics, even though I needed more red.  It will probably even out when all the blocks are together. Most of the pieces were based on either a 1" or 2" finished measurement: the chevrons were from strips cut 1 1/4" (scant) wide.

Progress was made on machine quilting my mother-in-law's Japanese Lanterns, but I have no photo for that.

In knitting, I started another pair of Stashbuster Spirals, this time for Secundus.  This is what's seeing me through inservice.  I really like this pattern, and I really like using up those odd little balls of leftover yarn that have been sitting around for years.

I'll be linking this post up to Freshly Pieced for the weekly party, so check out what others have been up to.

Anniversaries

Steve and I celebrated our 19th anniversary yesterday.  Going to a gazebo wedding for a knitting friend was a great way to celebrate.  So is sharing these quilts from my mother-in-law, whose 50th anniversary is coming up soon.  The whole back-to-school thing? Not so much.

Fun colors on this one.  She said it took her a really long time... I wonder why?!  Those are some tiny little pieces.

I'm really hoping that I can be as productive someday.  But for now, I'm descending into the world of teacher training and getting used to the Fall schedule.

Poem in my Pocket

I've been keeping this post in my pocket for a busy day.  The folks over at Redeemed Reader did a National Poem in my Pocket Day post back in August.  So I wrote a poem and posted it in the comments.  But I figured, I should really post my own poem on my very own blog, shouldn't I?  So here it is.

The Pockets I Do Not Check

Too busy and already
turned inside-out myself,
I don’t check the pockets.
I might find loose change afterwards
and it will sit on the counter awhile;
then someone will put a penny
in the penny racer
to trip over another day.
Once a ceramic bunny figurine,
once my son’s I-Pod headphones,
once a pocketful of crayons
(WD-40 is very useful
to clean the dryer,
and red-orange is no longer
my favorite color).

Finished socks

Here are the Stashbuster Spirals, finished with Elizabeth's sewn bind-off, photographed here, and then straight onto Primigenitus' feet.  He likes them, and I kind of think they are the coolest socks I've made.  I've already started a second pair of stashbuster socks for Secundus.  They will probably be mainly greens, blues, and yellows, but probably not as coordinated as this pair.

Tertia had her check-up this morning and got her required shot, then we took the vaccination record over to the middle school so we are legal now.  We even found her classrooms and talked to the Life-Skills classroom teacher, who is new to the school this year.  She seems very nice, but Tertia is unusual in that she will be going out of the Life Skills class for most of her subjects.  I get the impression this Isn't Done very often, so of course I'm a bit anxious about how her first few days will go next week.  Special Education isn't the ghetto it used to be, I have been assured many times by many special education professionals.  But when the special bus delivers you to the special ed class door and you're there for everything except lunch... well, that will not be Tertia's lot and I'm willing to be the troublesome parent to make sure she's as fully included as possible.  It's really a beautiful school building and she's very excited to be there.  Which is more than most 6th graders probably feel.

Farmer's Wife blocks

As promised, here are closeups of the latest Farmer's Wife quilt blocks I've done.
Block # 28, Duck and Ducklings.  Although I'm having a hard time seeing birds in this one, I do like the fabric combo.  It's a 25-patch grid, so each square finishes to 1 1/4" (scant).  Except for the big triangles which finish to 2.4", so I cut 2 squares 3 3/8" and cut them once diagonally.  I think.  I tend to forget the odd math for these base 5 blocks as soon as I do it.

Block #29, Economy. I wish they were all this easy.  Center square is 3 1/2", middle triangles are 4 1/4" QST's (cut diagonally twice; note this will mean the outer edges are on the bias which shouldn't matter if you immediately and carefully add the outer triangles).  The outer triangles are 2 squares, 3 7/8", cut diagonally once (HST's).  Again, I like the unusual fabric combo here; it's not something I would have normally put together if I weren't challenging myself.

Block # 30, End of Day.  I am seriously proud of myself for figuring out how to piece this without templates or weird cutting.  I cut four strips (2" wide each by about 15") and pieced two together at a time.  Then I subcut each of them into four 3 1/2" squares.  THEN I realized that I should have made the squares equal out to 3 7/8" but hadn't done the math.  So I figured the diagonal line from corner to corner would be the stitching line: I laid my ruler with the 1/4" line along the diagonal and cut 1/4" away from that.  I just had to make sure that I oriented the first 4 squares the same way before cutting, and then I oriented the remaining 4 squares the opposite way.  This does mean that you throw out the leftover triangles: if I had thought to do the math for a 3 7/8" strip set, I could probably have made two mirror image blocks, but oh well.  Fabrics are leftover from a quilt I made for Quarta, some old curtains from my mom's scrap bag, and the big print was from the Goodwill bin.