Monday, August 31, 2015

Black and White Appliances


I've got the second block of my black and white embroidered quilt done. I'm loving the kind of sketchy look that these have.

The fabric I'm using is a white on white with little dots. They made me think of static, which fits with the whole "black and white television" idea I've got going here. My only concern is that it's going to be hard to keep track of right/wrong side while doing the pieced blocks.

Any tips for me?


Sunday, August 30, 2015

The Ugly Fabric Debate

Teenage Daughter has four days until her next cosplay event. That's enough time to design and sew a new dress - or so she assures me!  We spent a chunk of yesterday afternoon digging through my stash of old sheets to find something she could use for a test run of the new sleeve design.

I guess "ugly" isn't an obvious description, since she came downstairs with an armload of vintage 70s floral prints. She thinks they're hideous. I think they're nostalgic and pretty and, even if I never find the perfect project for them, I know they've got value to others. The vintage florals went back into their box and I sent her off with a stack of solids that weren't ugly, but were crunchy polyester blends and some pilled flannel.  I do use some blends in my quilts, but those solids were even below my standards. And now they've served a useful purpose. Win-win, right?

I'm spending the morning freezing the fifteen pounds of roasted Hatch peppers we picked up yesterday and daydreaming about the yummy stuff we'll be able to make with them.

Weekly Stash Report  

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 4 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 5 yards (solid black for those embroidery blocks and Jo's Midnight Hour quilt)
Added Year to Date: 46 yards
Net Added for 2015: 41 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 6400 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9165 yards
Net Added for 2015:   2765 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

One-Skein Wonders for Babies

If you're knitting for little ones, make sure to take a look at One-Skein Wonders for Babies: 101 Knitting Projects for Infants & Toddlers


Filled with hats and sweaters and booties and blankets, this book could keep you happily knitting until the little ones in your life are in preschool. There are lots of cute projects for boys and girls and lots of different techniques to try. And they're cute





Disclosure - Storey Publishing provided me with an ARC. 

Friday, August 28, 2015

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {8/28/15}

 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, August 27, 2015

Back to School Socks

My vacation socks were a bit of a disappointment. I'd been saving the yarn for a big trip. Trips were planned and cancelled and I kept my hands off of the yarn because it was a special treat to be saved for road knitting. (I've got specific criteria for road knitting yarn. The really special stuff gets savored at home. The stuff that's pretty but not suited for anything but self striping stockinette makes good trip knitting.) 


When we hit the road and I cast on, the yarn was much brighter than it looked in the skein, not at all what the color name "fern rose" had conjured up in my head. It took me most of the first sock to come to terms with the fact that my socks were bright crayon colors and not delicate garden colors.


I've renamed them my Back to School Socks. With their bold colors that name fits them better, and there will be lots more pairs of vacation socks in my future.

Update -- Teenage Daughter may have complained about her owl embossed ankles, but she's not willing to give up the socks. And my friends on the knitting lists tell me that cabled socks tend to do that, especially with boots. I'm glad to hear that I'm not cutting off the circulation to her feet!

And I've decided to go ahead with the sock knit along based on my sock pattern that isn't a pattern. They'll be toe up, knit on double pointed needles (this would be a great project for learning DPNs, since you aren't joining a bunch of stitches and worrying about twisting them), and I'll include instructions for both fingering and worsted weight yarn. I won't be ready to start for a while (I want to have all of the steps written out and double check my math before I post the first step) but I'll have the details for you this weekend.

This post is linked to Finish it Up Friday, Show and Share

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

{Yarn Along} Self Patterning Sock Yarn

When I showed my sock in progress last week, there were some comments on the design the yarn was forming and whether or not it did that all by itself. It does. I like those chevrons, but no way would I put in the work involved to make that happen!


In addition to self-striping sock yarn, there's self-patterning sock yarn. It's dyed to create a specific effect, which you can reproduce if your gauge and stitch count is right. If it's too wrong, though, you might wind up with a blinding nightmare like this sweater that I knit for my oldest son.  I'm drooling over Regia's Arne & Carlos yarns right now. If any of the local yarn stores sold it, I'm sure I'd be knitting with a skein.

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

Candy Corn Murder by Leslie Meier is the perfect read if you're ready for Fall to arrive. The Great Pumpkin Fest is in full swing, complete with pumpkin catapults, an underwater pumpkin carving contest, and a pumpkin boat regatta. But the event isn't going as planned. Someone is destroying the candidates for the title of biggest pumpkin and tearing apart the scarecrow displays. And when the first pumpkins start to fly from their catapults, a corpse is discovered in the trunk of the junky old car that they were using as a target. The book opens with a chilling prologue and, as the plot unfolds, more and more details of a decades old crime are revealed. I enjoyed the contrast between how women of different generations deal with things.

Cancans, Croissants, and Caskets by Mary McHugh is the third book in the series and the first one of the Happy Hoofers mysteries I've read. The five member dance group is performing on a dinner cruise in Paris when a body is discovered on the upper deck. While they try to figure out who the killer might be, they spend their days seeing the sights. There's a lot of detail about the city here, and a cooking class in one of the chapters, but not a whole lot about the characters or the mystery itself.

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

    

Disclosure -- the publishers provided me with ARCs.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Something Different


I've got so many embroidery projects on my to-do list that I decided to take a little break from the Garden Party blocks and work on something that I might be able to finish more quickly. I bought these patterns at a local quilt shop for a dollar each, with the idea that I could stitch them up and then plan a little wall quilt around them. 

Almost as soon as I got them home, I started to fuss about color choices. I knew I wouldn't be happy with the blocks if I tried to imitate real life colors. And I knew that I didn't want to do them in redwork. Finally it clicked -- these are things I mostly know from old television shows. So black and white it is!  

Sunday, August 23, 2015

A Friendly Warning About Cabled Socks

Teenage Daughter wore the Owlie Socks with a pair of boots last weekend and she tells me that when she took them off at the end of the day, she had cabled owls embossed into her legs for the next few hours. Oops! I wish there was a picture so I could see if was really as dramatic as it sounded.

I'm going to ask around on the knitting lists and see if blocking might loosen them up a bit, otherwise they're destined for the sewing room wall.

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: 6000 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 332 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9165 yards
Net Added for 2015:   3165 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Knit the Sky




Knit the Sky: Cultivate Your Creativity with a Playful Way of Knitting by Lea Redmond isn't like any knitting book I've come across before. These are ambitious projects that will take weeks or months at the very least (one will take eighteen years and another even longer than that!) The title project asks you to collect balls of blue and grey yarn and knit a scarf a stripe at a time, matching your colors to that day's sky. You can knit on sharpened pencils, or sewing pins, or on a project that you keep under your bed and only work on in the dark when you can't sleep.... These are definitely geared towards process knitters, because there's not going to be any rushing to the end. But just think of the stories that these projects will have to tell!

The book is filled with color and drawings, but there isn't a single photograph of the projects. And there (almost) aren't any patterns. The chapter for each project will suggest what you should knit and, if needed, direct you to a basic pattern in the appendix.

It looks like a lot of fun and I found a couple of things I'm tempted to cast on.

Disclosure - The publisher provided me with an ARC.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {8/21/15}

 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, August 20, 2015

Tourist Trap Temptations

When we were planning our latest trip, Teenage Daughter asked if we could make a side trip to the Grand Canyon Caverns. My mind went straight to this old photo that I found when I was scanning old family albums. The couple in the middle -- that's Grandpa and Grandma. 


I was hoping that the sign would still be there, because wouldn't it be neat to have a new one with the kids that I could combine with the old one in a scrapbooking layout? The sign is gone, but by the time we got underground, I was too taken in by the cave to even remember it.

We'd driven past the signs for years without a second though, thinking that it was just another pricey tourist trap. It's actually one of the largest dry limestone caverns in the world. Not as amazing as Carlsbad Caverns, but it was worth the trip.


In the gift shop, they were selling old phones from the motel. If we weren't on the verge of giving up the landline, I would have totally brought one home.


Wednesday, August 19, 2015

{Yarn Along} Let Me Tell You

I'm up to the  cuff, using the first skein of that yarn that Jo sent me, and I'm up to the heel of the second Catnip sock. This afternoon I'm going to dig out yarn for my next "sort of challenging" pair. I'm thinking that it'll be Eagle's Flight



When I got the chance to request a review copy of Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings by Shirley Jackson, I jumped on it. I loved Haunting of Hill House and, maybe more than that, I loved Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages. Those last two are books about raising children and I can't think of more perfect titles for the subject.

This book is made up of previously unpublished essays and short stories. I didn't love them all, but the ones I did, including one unfinished short story, will stay with me. It amazes me how much her parenting essays hit home. (Apparently, I'm "everyone else's" mom, the one who won't compare notes with the other parents and set the rules for her children accordingly. I would have thought that was a new thing.)

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

    

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

In the Pond



This little frog was so quick to stitch that I didn't have time to dream up a back story for him.  He's just filler that will go in between the larger blocks.

But he's cute, isn't he?

Monday, August 17, 2015

Design Wall Monday

This is what I should be working on -- 


I'm counting it as progress that I matched the quilts up with their intended backings and hung them all together so that I couldn't lose them again. The problem is that the foot I need for free motion quilting (which mysteriously disappeared just after someone else was using my machine -- I think she moved it and then forgot where), there are too many other projects I want to start.

Getting motivated to pin baste is hard enough when I know I'll be able to start quilting as soon as I'm done.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Who can tell me about Hatch peppers?

On our last trip to Sedona (the one before the one we just got back from), we bought cans of Hatch peppers at Costco.  When we got home, I called around and discovered that Costco only sells them in the San Diego region, which sadly doesn't include Oregon. We'd been planning to stock up on our next trip, but it turns out that canned peppers are (maybe) a seasonal item and it's the wrong season. So now we're carefully rationing the last few cans, only using them in recipes that deserve the good peppers. Like white chicken chili and tamales.

Last week, I saw fresh Hatch peppers in the grocery store and did a little happy dance -- until I asked the produce guy and he told me they were local.  I left the store thoroughly confused and without any peppers.

Then Mom gave me a newspaper article that she'd cut out. The store is taking orders for roasted Hatch peppers and the ones they're selling really are from the Hatch Valley in New Mexico. (And they might want to educate their employees that some things are best not local!)

I'm not in the mood to can right now. Could I freeze them? I know I physically can, but is that a good idea?  Do I want to chop them up first or freeze them whole?  Favorite ways to use them?  Because if I've got enough to play with, I want to use them in everything!

Weekly Stash Report


When we picked up the mail Monday afternoon, there was a squishy envelope from my buddy Jo of Jo's Country Junction. Of course I thought it was fabric, because what else would she be sending me?
Sock yarn! Along with the sweetest note about knitting some sanity back into my life. Just look at those yummy colors. I've never heard of this brand -- Online Supersocke 4-fach Samba-Color -- and I can't find it on Ravelry, although there are some other similar looking yarns from the same company.

I'd cast on a new pair of self-striping socks Sunday night, but when I sat down to knit on Monday, I pulled them off the needles and started over with a skein of the yarn Jo sent.  It's not just pretty, it feels good to knit with and is making a gorgeous pair of socks. I'm already up to the heel of the first one.

In case you missed it on Friday, I'm playing with the idea of doing a sock knitalong soon. The socks would be toe up, knit on double pointed needles (this would be a great project for learning DPNs, since you aren't joining a bunch of stitches and worrying about twisting them), and we can do it with fingering or worsted weight yarn. And probably the best part is that you don't have to worry too much about gauge. Decide on a yarn and needles combination that you like and we'll work from there. If you're interested, leave a comment. 

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: 6000 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 1377 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 8833 yards
Net Added for 2015:   2833 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {8/14/15}

I messed up last week. That adorable elephant quilt wasn't by Dar, it was by Angie in SoCal.  I am so sorry! I checked  and double checked and somehow still managed to get it wrong. The links did go to the right blog, but I had the name wrong.

I'm hoping to have a new tutorial for you soon, once Teenage Daughter surrenders my sewing space. She's making a last minute pleated skirt.

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, August 13, 2015

Hayride Socks


I finished these socks right before the trip and was hoping that once we got home I could find a bale of hay to photograph them on. I'm glad the socks were in my knitting bag, because the resort had a couple of bales of hay stacked next to the pool, all staged with a kerosene lantern and coil of rope.

What more could I ask for? Teenage Daughter was even willing to run down and take the pictures for me.


I love the way the yarn (Stroll Handpaints from Knitpicks, in the Hayride colorway) makes these pretty narrow stripes. And my non-existent sock pattern is pretty foolproof at this point.

Is anyone interested in doing a knitalong with me and learning how to do these? They're toe up, knit on double pointed needles (this would be a great project for learning DPNs, since you aren't joining a bunch of stitches and worrying about twisting them), and we can do it with fingering or worsted weight yarn. Anyone want to play with me?

This post is linked to Finish it Up Friday and Patchwork Times.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Antique Store Temptations


When I found the pattern for the Garden Party Quilt, I started watching the thrift stores for old embroidery. Not because I wanted to make my quilt with other people's stitchery the way the designer intended, but because I wanted to take a closer look at it and see how my own work compared. 

For ages, I didn't find anything interesting. Then I found an absolute ton of it, all at the same antique mall. One of my favorites is this little embroidered family that I almost missed. My attention was caught by that awful teddy/monkey/thing on the left hand side of the picture. It wasn't until I pulled out my camera that I noticed the parents and child. 

I love these! And I'm curious about them. Great Grandma Walters left behind a bunch of fabric painted girls in international costumes. Mom and I made them into little stuffed pillows. I wonder if this little family was always intended to be stuffed, or if they were meant for something else and made into little pillows later.

If the ones we made were still around, I'd be taking them apart and appliqueing them onto a quilt. 

{Yarn Along} Vacation Socks


While we get where we're going, I knit. It keeps me from fidgeting too much and makes the time pass more quickly. Some of stretches of desert are absolutely amazing and some just aren't. These are my vacation socks. I cast on the toe of the first one just before we left and had all but three or four rounds of the second one's cuff done by the time we got home. A full pair of socks in just over four days of knitting. Yikes!

I wish you could see how these needles (Knitpicks Caspian) look in the sunlight. I knew they were pretty, but what they look like in my dimly lit corner of the couch is nothing compared to how gorgeous they are in really good light.



I enjoyed The White Magic Five & Dime by Steve Hockensmith and Lisa Falco so much that I jumped at the chance to read the second book in the series, Fool Me Once. Alanis has settled down in the small town of Berdache, Arizona, taking over her mother's shop and trying to make amends with as many former customers as she can, without letting them know that they'd been conned in the first place. It's going well until Martha, one of her mother's victims, realizes that Alanis hasn't been honest with her.  Hurt and betrayed, Martha returns to her abusive husband. Before Alanis can find her and explain, the husband is dead and Martha has been jailed for the crime. Alanis isn't like any cozy mystery heroine I've come across before. She was raised by a pair of con-artists and, while she's distanced herself from their ways, she doesn't hesitate to use the skills they taught her to clear her friend's name. I can't wait for the next book in the series. The authors do an amazing job of capturing the part of Arizona the books are set in.

In Awake by Natasha Preston, sixteen-year-old Scarlett Garner has no memories of her early childhood. Her parents say her memory loss was caused by a traumatic house fire. When Scarlett starts to remember things that don't match up with the stories she's been told, she begins to suspect that her life is a lie. I can't share more details than that without getting into spoilers...which means I can't tell you what caught my interest in the first place. (I think the cover copy changed a bit after I requested my review copy.)  It's a young adult book and reads like one, complete with the perfect new boy in school who's happy to help Scarlett find out what really happened in her past. The scary secret, when it is revealed, is two dimensional and not all that scary.

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

    

Monday, August 10, 2015

Normalcy

We've been down in Arizona, using up timeshare points that we booked long before the latest round of excitement and "new ways to have fun," one of my favorite ways to describe unexpected disasters.
I'm ready for things to calm down. I'd like to get back to our normal routine -- although I'm not even sure what that is anymore.

Normalcy was supposed to start today, but unexpected things happened and I'm going to have to wait just a little bit longer.

I've got lots to tell and show you, most of it yarn and fabric and vintage related, just as soon as I get a chance to transfer pictures to the computer and type it all out.

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: 6000 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 7456 yards
Net Added for 2015:   1456 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Saturday, August 08, 2015

Preserving the Japanese Way

Someone is getting a copy of this book for Christmas. I haven't quite decided if it'll be for Hubby or Teenage Daughter, but this book needs to be in our kitchen. With our family's ongoing series of culinary dares, this book seemed like a good way to find out what some of those intriguing things on the shelves of Uwajimaya and Fubonn actually are.




There's so much more than food in this book. The author lives in a hundred year old Japanese farmhouse with her husband and family, and teaches an English immersion preschool. She describes her wooden buckets and barrels and collection of old cooking implements in loving details, explaining when and why traditional is better than modern plastic. The pictures are gorgeous and the instructions are clear.

And that's before I even start to think about the food that's the purpose for the book in the first place! I won't be pickling eggs, but there are plenty of recipes I want to try.

Disclosure - the publisher provided me with an ARC.

Friday, August 07, 2015

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {8/7/15}


Look what Angie from A Quilting Reader's Garden made! There's an amazing story to go along with this one, including converting the block from an African elephant to an Asian one. Make sure to take a good look at all of that free motion quilting, including the temple! (Yes, I've got a lot of exclamation points here, but that quilt deserves them.)


And check out this spiral quilted baby quilt over at The Quilted Puzzle.

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, August 06, 2015

HI-SPEED SKATES are Lightning Fast


I prefer plastic bins with tight fitting lids for storing my own treasures, but decades from now no one is going to pull down one of my boxes and wonder who had size six ladies' hockey skates. Which sold for $5.65 if that number written in grease pencil is the price and not some other notation.

The box and its contents came from an auction. There aren't any size six ice skates or a family story to go along with them.  There is a pair of white ice skates that Teenage Daughter bought at a thrift store  for a quarter....but those are part of a different story.


 The contents of the box were wrapped in a couple of partial pages from the New York Times, dates 1935. It crumbles to the touch and all of the articles are continued from page one, but I managed to find out that new bridge rules would simplify scoring (of the card game, not the bridges that cars drive over) and that planes had soared to 1500 feet. And a chicken and her chicks were rescued from a bush after a flood, but the paper was  cut so that I got the caption but not the picture.

Do old boxes and bits of newsprint excite you? Or is it just me?

I'm linking up to Woman in Real Life.

Monday, August 03, 2015

{Guest Post} Marty Wingate - Where Writers Write



Pru Park is one of my favorite cozy mystery heroines. She's a competent grown woman and an expert in her field. In Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the third Potting Shed Mystery by Marty Wingate, Pru is planning her wedding while working at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburg, trying to authenticate a historical journal. A hostile co-worker, who winds up dead, has Pru concerned that there's something fishy about why she was hired for the position.  The historical details of the journal are interesting (what is it about Monkey Puzzle trees that intrigues me so much?)  and Pru's disastrous dress fittings are absolutely hilarious. I've never been able to picture fictional dresses quite so well. 

Today I'm happy to have author Marty Wingate here with a guest post. 


Where Writers Write

I love reading about other writers’ writing lives, their peculiar quirks and their special places – Roald Dahl’s hut with the comfortable chair and tray, Vita Sackville-West’s tower (yes, please give me a tower like Vita’s!). I enjoy learning about how they go about the daily task of writing, as long as I’m not told, “This is how to do it.” Don’t tell me what works for me – I’ll find that out for myself. Some writers may swear by the “zero draft” but it’s not something that suits me. I cannot write without looking back at what I wrote, combing through, editing, creating a more tangible setting, adding details to characters.

I can write one or two new scenes at a time, and I’m exhausted. After a break, I go over this new stuff again and then push forward. If I didn’t look back, I wouldn’t see what clues I had already incorporated – tiny details that I pick out to expand later.

Lacking Vita’s tower or Roald’s hut, I go to the library. Libraries aren’t as quiet as they used to be, have you noticed? But it still makes a difference to me to be away from home. At home, I sit down at the computer and am suddenly overcome with the urge to start a load of wash, check Facebook, or play with the cats. At the library, people may be talking, but they aren’t talking to me, so I can tune them out, and I don’t check Facebook. Hardly ever.

Although I write the major part of a book on my computer, paper and pen are still vitally important to the process. I have a Moleskine notebook – the kind with the elastic strap that keeps it closed. In fact, I have two of them, one for each of my mystery series. If I don’t have one of those at hand and a particular word, phrase, or plot point comes to me, I’ll write on anything I can reach. I’ve even been known to jot a few things down on the church bulletin during the sermon. Sorry, Pastor Carol.


Author Links

There's a giveaway hosted by Great Escapes Book Tours here


New Life for an Old Project?

When I learned to sew, it was to make clothing. For a few years, I made a lot of clothing. Including this --


Before you laugh, please keep in mind that I was sixteen and it seemed like a good idea at the time. And look at the construction details. That baby has a dozen buttonholes. It's got boning. It's got top-stitching. I never did wear it, because the cup size was a little off, but I made the thing.

Now that I've unearthed it from the sewing room again, I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to turn it into a bag. It seems like the best way would be to sew a flat bottomed bag and fasten it to the inside with hand-stitching.

Wouldn't that be fun to store yarn in?

Sunday, August 02, 2015

Too Many Choices? No!

Lately, I've seen quite a few discussions about how having fewer choices -- in our yarn and fabric stashes, at the grocery store, or wherever else -- is supposed to make us happier.

Um....no. I'm not happier when the grocery store limits me to three different kinds of frozen vegetables to choose from. I actually shop at four different grocery stores on a regular basis because I want more choices, not less.  (If I've got to do dishes for six people, I'm getting the brand of dish soap that I think works best. Same with a  few other things.)  Having too many choices is the least of my worries.

I'm the same way with my fabric. No way am I going to go through all of my blacks and pare them down to fewer options. It's black....or blue, pink, brown, whatever... I'm going to use it sooner or later. If I had to pare down my stash to move it into a smaller space, I would. But no way am I cutting down on my options just because someone tells me I'd be happier with fewer of them!

Now if I went up to the sewing room and sorted and got all of my blacks and pinks and browns and greens together.... THAT would probably make me a happier quilter!

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: 5600 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 7456 yards
Net Added for 2015:   1856 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Saturday, August 01, 2015

Knitting Fabric Rugs


I can't say that I love the process of knitting fabric rugs, but I do love the finished result and the feel of them under my bare feet. Knitting Fabric Rugs: 28 Colorful Designs for Crafters of Every Level by Karen Tiede has me convinced that I need more little rugs for my house.

The rugs the author knits from recycled clothing are gorgeous and the book is filled with everything you'd need to know to make one -- how to source the fabric, how to cut it to a size that will get you a consistent gauge, how to calculate how much "yarn" you'll need for the rug you want to make.


The patterns are even knit in sections on size 10 straight needles and then assembled so you won't have to worry about hurting your wrists with their weight.

And did I mention that they're gorgeous? I'm absolutely swooning over these spirals...


Disclosure - The publisher provided me with an ARC.

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