Category Archives: Crafting

Progress Report

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I have been meeting my self-imposed deadline of finishing one bunny block per week. The June one was a little out of sync, parts of the design had not transferred well, due to my poor ironing skills, and I needed to do some tracing in a window on a sunny day. I finally got that done and got this block done by the end of last Sunday. (Good thing there was some golf to watch/listen to.) The problem with this block is the rabbit-bride had to be wearing a white dress, which is not going to show up really well on the completed quilt. I don’t suppose I had to make the church white but it seemed like the thing to do. I did make the veil a light silver color, so maybe it will show up a bit differently.

I finished the October blockthe week before, not quite on deadline, but by the end of Tuesday. I am behind on the one for this week, but hopefully will have some time on Sunday. I have a business trip tomorrow, and am taking my Camp Loopy project, the color affection shawl (picture below.) The June one also had much less detail than this October one had.

This one was kind of a pain, but it looks nice, I guess. Now I just have November and December left.

Here is the color affection shawl. Thanks to my friend Judy, I am doing it on the size of needles recommended. Usually I go down two sizes, but she is also a loose knitter, and she is knitting it on a size up from the recommended size 6 needles. I am hoping to get to the end of the 2nd section (lavender and cream stripes) by the time I get home from my trip, and carpooling to a meeting on Friday. If I get enough knitting time on the airplane, maybe I can take embroidery on the trip to the meeting. I can’t just sit in a car and ride, it is very difficult for me. I have to be reading, or knitting, or embroidering. Usually I don’t get carsick. Usually.

I watered the flowers tonight and one of the peonies lopped over and bent its stem, so I felt the need to bring it in for a bouquet. Peonies are in my top five favorite flowers, and they are blooming happily this year. I am very tempted to convert most of the upper garden to peonies. It is half peonies and bleeding hearts anyway. Maybe I will put in an additional row this year. Can’t have too many peonies, in my opinion.

After a stressful day at work and coming home to swamp cooler problems, I declared it to be a night to sit in the driveway and have a drink and watch the sun go down. It was great. I will be making that declaration more often this summer.

A Busy Weekend

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I took an impromptu day off from blogging on Monday, primarily because I was running around like crazy all weekend and had not time to write a post in advance. I literally had a list of goals to get done this weekend, since we are going on vacation on Weds., and I was going to be out of town for work Monday evening, and get back very late Tuesday.

Saturday was cool and rainy outside, so I tried to get things done inside. I finished up the September block of the 12-block bunny quilt for my 2nd youngest niece. I want to enter this in the county fair this summer, so I have to get the blocks done, some sort of borders put on, and sewn together and quilted, by the end of July. I decided this would not happen unless I put myself on deadline of finishing one block a week. So I wrapped up September (bunny going to school) and have started on October (bunny with jack ‘o lanterns) for this week. I am not allowed to work on knitting projects until I am done with my embroidery block for the week.

I made this much progress as my boss drove us across the state on Monday:

My goal is to have it finished tomorrow, so I can take knitting projects on vacation I finished making my mom’s socks smaller at the toe, but I think I will wait and see if I need to re-do the cast-on (too tight on my calves) until after she tries them on. So then I started casting on the Silpalu Bag from Knitpicks, which I bought as a kit, oh, years ago, and then realized I needed to focus on my mom’s sock featured in “Can this Sock Be Saved?” So I worked on unravelling the top of that sock, unfortunately I was interrupted by remembering that I hadn’t boxed up and prepared for mailing the birthday presents for my nieces E. and A., and after I did that, I discovered several other things I didn’t have on my official list but still needed to be done.

Also on Saturday, I put away all the sweaters in the cedar chest (who else still has a cedar chest? Dad got mine at an auction. I think I have had it since my 1st apartment after college. It is good for storage as well as providing seating when needed.) I surprised Ken, who was doing laundry, with all the summer clothes from the chest. So now we are ready for summer, except we still have flannel sheets on the bed. We may be ready for regular sheets by June 1.

We went to our usual Pho 78 for some soup for lunch (good day for it) and had Cheeseburger Macaroni for dinner with leftover smoked sausage instead of hamburger, that was good. The cats napped all day, that was what they thought of the rain.

This One Time, at Knitting Camp…

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I came home from work and announced to Ken I was going to knitting camp this summer. He was only slightly confused. And, I suspect, not at all surprised. Well, knitting camp (yarn camp?) is a virtual camp where you work on a project for a month with other knitters around the world. The interaction (if you want it) comes from message boards, etc., online. I have had many friends who have done knit-a-longs or quilt-a-longs but I am usually up against a deadline for something, and have never done one.This camp is sponsored by the Loopy Ewe, which is both an online and regular knitting store, and they just moved to Fort Collins this spring, so I am lucky enough to shop there in person! Here are the details of the camp.

The theme for this 3-segment camp is the Olympics, and so for the 1st project, you are to knit or crochet something that is designed by someone from a country other than the one you live in. When I checked on Ravelry and saw that the “Color Affection” shawl was made by Veera Välimäki, who is from Finland, I knew I was going to participate.

You are eligible for special bonuses if you buy your yarn at Loopy for the project (and I didn’t have any yarn that I liked for this project), so I went in and bought some lovely yarn. I looked at about a million pictures of the project on Ravelry (fiber arts website where knitters and crocheters plot to take over the world) and decided the ones I liked best had two pretty light colors for the first colors, and then a very highly contrasting color for the last colors. So that is what I went with.

AND my camp badge. The bad thing is that you have to wait until May 27 to cast on, so of course I want to cast on Now Now Now but this will give me time to work on some other projects and hopefully finish them up.

Speaking of other projects. I finally finished my youngest niece’s Christmas present. She doesn’t care, because she is only one. I don’t have to start being on time with her for another couple of years. It is a good thing, because she doesn’t have all of her baby quilts yet I make for each niece/nephew either.

Yo-yo button pillow. All I can say is that it is very cute, but never again! Those yo-yos and sewing them down, and the buttons, oy vey. My sister-in-law has a great talent for finding really cool projects that I will make one of and they say EEEEEEEEE! :  ) The colors are a little wonky in the picture, those oranges and pinks and greens are not quite that bright.

Then, my niece also had her 1st birthday last Sunday, so I just wrapped up that project. I would actually make this one again, it wasn’t too difficult.

Another one that my sis in law found and sent to me. Tutorial here. I don’t even have to supply the hoop for hanging, as she already has one!

Now I just need to get them in the mail…..

The other project I am currently telling myself I need to finish before starting anything new is a pair of socks for my mom. I thought I had them finished, and then when I blocked them, they seemed to grow. And if they were huge on me, I was pretty sure they would be huge on her. So I pulled the toe back out of one, and took about about 10 rows of pattern, and re-knit the toe. I think it is much better now.

Both socks. They are actually a little browner than this.

So, those are my recent crafting adventures. Sorry this post is later than usual this morning, I was out late at an event that I will write about tomorrow! (Pictures of food!)