Mid-Year Totals

2013 is sure flying by, isn't it?  Our schedule has been different from usual and I'm still trying to find out a new rhythm.

 

I've finished sixteen baby quilts and created tutorials for seven of them. That's fewer than the 25 I'd hoped to have done by now, but more than the 13 I had done by this time last year.

I've knit a pair of fingerless gloves (with actual fingers and thumbs and lateral braids!), three pairs of socks, a gargoyle, and a large shawl which doesn't count here because it still needs to be bound off and blocked.

I finished Quinn's big green quilt, made a spooky little quilt for my wall, played with one of my die-cutters to embellish a biscornu pincushion, typed on fabric with an electric typewriter to get words on my daughter's Kindle sleeve, used more of my Nancy Drew fabric for a book bag and a camera strap cover...and a couple of other little things I can't show you yet.

Weekly Stash Report

Looks like I forgot to add the two skeins of sock yarn I bought last week -- two skeins of Lion Brand Sock-Ease that I found on the clearance rack for $2.99. I'd been wanting a skein of Lemon Drop since the stuff first came out and planned on buying it with a 40% off coupon now that I'm knitting socks again.

I added more new-to-me fabric to my stash -- two large paper shopping bags of nice cotton for twenty bucks. If the measurements on it are correct, it totals about 30ish yards.  A woman was selling her stash off for sixty cents a yard and gallon bags of scraps for a dime.  Most of it looks like older craft store cottons, but that's exactly what I love best.

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 44 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 30 yards
Added Year to Date: 228 1/4 yards
Net Added for 2013: 183 1/2 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 500 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 2050 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 800 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 8700 yards
Net Added for 2013: 6650 yards

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 26}

 

I've got two new tops pieced and ready to quilt, but I was worn out last night after our latest episode with the bees and decided to wait and do the quilting when I'm feeling more up to it.

 

The blue one is another version of Laura. Those pale blue squares don't stand out nearly as much in real life as they do in the pictures. I'm already cutting pieces for a green one and a pink one, and I'm sure there will be more. Those snowball blocks and nine-patches go together so quickly and produce such cute results.

 

The second top is put together from blocks that were passed along to me. I wrote about those in Monday's design wall post.

 

 

Neither has a name yet -- I'm open to suggestions!

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, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, 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.

a little experiment

 

I've got two baby tops ready to quilt, but I got scratched by a bee.

 

Yes, "scratched" is the word for it. I was taking off the suit and got nicked by a stinger, just enough to draw a bit of blood and not enough to inject any poison. But I didn't know that for sure  at the time, so I took a dose of Benadryl just in case and that stuff makes me sleepy.

 

I didn't have the nerve to tackle my baby quilts, but I did experiment with this orphan block that's been telling me it wanted to get some fancy free motion quilting and become a mug rug. Your stash talks to you too, doesn't it?

 

It's not my usual style of quilting and I definitely need more practice, but it was a fun experiment and I've been needing a second one.

 

I'll be linking up to Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, and Freedom Fridays.

the rows are getting longer

With top-down triangular shawls, you start with a few stitches and increase on every row. The first few rows absolutely speed by, then they start to take a little longer...and longer...and longer...

That's the point I'm at with the Rose Ribbons Shawl. According to the pattern, I'm done except for the edging. But I've got another skein and a half of yarn, and room on my needles, so I plan on knitting another set of repeats to make it larger.

No new book to share with you today, since I just finished the Yesterday's Mysteries for the blog hop post on Tuesday.  For more fun knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.

 

Yesterday's News / Threads of Yesterday

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Antique dealer Anna Yesterday pries open the stuck drawer of an old  dresser and finds a yellowed scrap of newspaper with singed edges.  She's never heard anything about the rape and suicide covered in the article, so she starts asking questions, questions which the men who worked so desperately to hide the event when it happened don't want answered now.

Did I mention that the antique shop is haunted by a saloon girl and a cowboy? I absolutely loved Yesterday's News. It's one of those books that plunges you into the characters' world and leaves you a bit sad when there's no more to read.

Happily, I had Threads of Yesterday loaded on my Kindle and ready to read as soon as I'd clicked the last page of Yesterday's News.  In this one, the story is more about the ghosts. Anna has purchased some antique dresses from a local museum and both the living and the dead want them.  There were a couple of minor little details  (an error with dates and a character's name) in this one that jolted me out of the story. Things I would never have noticed if the rest of the book wasn't so good.

Disclosure -- I was provided with review copies of both books by Cozy Mystery Book Tours so that  I could participate in the tour.

it's kind of a puzzle

I'm playing with someone else's abandoned project. There are too many blocks here to call them orphans, so I guess that makes it a UFO? 

Like the strips I used to make Billie, these are a mystery.  I don't know who made them, or what the pattern or plan was.  At first glance, I thought they were Jacob's Ladder blocks, but they're something else.

 

I like that secondary star where the corners come together.

 

And then I've got these little pieced blocks. They aren't part of the larger block....maybe they were intended as a pieced border? Or, for all I know, they could be part of a different quilt. They were in the same plastic bag, so I'm guessing they went together.

There's probably enough here for a throw, but I'm making baby quilts. So I'm thinking of using 36 of the larger blocks for one quilt, then the leftovers and border pieces for a second one. At this point, I'm still open to suggestions.

To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

Everything but quilting...

It was a busy week!

I sliced up twenty pounds of fresh berries for the freezer and made a batch of strawberry jam.  

I made gravy  from scratch for the first time in my life, six months after confessing that  I didn't know how and asking my readers for suggestions. There's no blog post about the gravy, because I was in a hurry to get dinner on the table and didn't take pictures. It wouldn't have won any prizes, but it was real, honest-to-gosh gravy and not terrible. I'll be making my own gravy again as soon as the opportunity arises.

I pulled out the Rose Ribbons Shawl and figured out which row I was on when I abandoned it to play with pooling sock yarn. I'd forgotten how excited I was about this project, and now I'm working on it every time I get the chance.

I helped hubby capture another swarm of bees -- our own, so it's not as good a thing as it would otherwise be...

That's in addition to all of the regular, boring stuff like settling an argument about whether or not anteaters have teeth. (They don't.)  Now can I do some quilting? Please?

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 44 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 1 yards
Added Year to Date: 198 1/4 yards
Net Added for 2013: 153 1/2 yards


Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 1550 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 7900 yards
Net Added for 2013: 6350 yards

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

{whatcha reading?} Still Life in Brunswick Stew

 

A couple of months back, I blogged about Portrait of a Dead Guy, the first book in the Cherry Tucker mystery series by Larissa Reinhart.  I was been waiting eagerly for the second book, which came out last month. Have I mentioned that there aren't enough hours in the day to quilt and read and knit everything I'd like to?

From the book's Amazon page --

Cherry Tucker’s in a stew. Art commissions dried up after her nemesis became president of the County Arts Council. Desperate and broke, Cherry and her friend, Eloise, spend a sultry summer weekend hawking their art at the Sidewinder Annual Brunswick Stew Cook-Off. When a bad case of food poisoning breaks out and Eloise dies, the police brush off her death as accidental. However, Cherry suspects someone spiked the stew and killed her friend. As Cherry calls on cook-off competitors, bitter rivals, and crooked judges, the police get steamed while the killer prepares to cook Cherry’s goose.

Cherry is back at it, selling her art at the annual Brunswick Stew cook-off, trying to find a nude model for a series of Greek paintings, and investigating the bingo games Max Avtaikin is suddenly hosting at his palatial McMansion.  But all of that takes a backseat when a outbreak of food poisoning at the cook-off leaves lots of people ill and Cherry's good friend Eloise dead.

There are lots of quirky heroines in the cozy mystery genre, but Cherry has a style all her own. I'd almost read the book just to see what she wears to the funerals. This is the gal who mourned her Grandma Jo wearing "a t-shirt with the deceased's face outlined in Swarovski crystals." The outfit she designs for Eloise's funeral is considerably less successful.

Through midnight June 30, Portrait of a Dead Guy and Still Life in Brunswick Stew (along with other ebooks from Henery Press) are both on sale for ninety-nine cents. So if you're thinking about reading one or both, now is a good time to snatch them up! There's a third book coming in the series and I'll definitely be watching for it.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 25}

I had something else planned for today's post, but we had a bit of an emergency last night. Everything and everyone is okay, but my post on fabric selection is going to have to wait until next Friday.

My baby quilt for this week is Sid, a blue and green version of Priscilla.

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, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, 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.

{yarn along} I thought I was in trouble

I set aside the Rose Ribbons shawl to work on socks for Judy's challenge and had an absolute blast knitting three pairs, one after the other. Until I hit the point where I couldn't even force myself to pick up the fourth pair and knit another row of that k2p2 ribbing.

I hadn't planned to put the shawl away  for so long. I hadn't written down the last row number and had a nagging fear that the magnet marking my spot had slipped. So between that and the sock, I haven't been doing any knitting. Until yesterday, when I decided it was time to pull it out and  compare the knitting to the chart and either knit a few rows or give up for good.

Sometimes the magnet has managed to remain on the right row and things are just as easy as they should be. It's a  good feeling.

 

I decided to read Yip/Tuck because the plastic surgery element intrigued me. Turns out that, although the customer Melinda Langston finds dead on the bench in front of her upscale pet boutique is a plastic surgeon, plastic surgery is  a very small element of the book.  That doesn't matter,  though, because the book was so entertaining that I barely noticed. Aside from trying to find out who strangled Dr. O'Doggle with a leash purchased from her shop, Melinda also has her hands full trying to reclaim an heirloom brooch stolen from her by her cousin Caro (after she stole it from Caro herself.)

 

Even though I started with the fourth book in the series, it was easy enough to catch up on the  characters and their relationships. I wanted to find out more of Melinda's back story, so I picked up  

Desperate Housedogs, the first book in the series. That one is from Caro's point of view -- and I think I might like her better than her cousin.

For more fun knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.

 

My copy of Yip/Tuck was provided by the publisher.

Meet Sid!

 

When we're on road trips through long stretches of desert, I dream up quilts in my head.  The whole process makes me a little bit crazy, because it's hard to keep track of the math and decide where I might have tucked that piece of fabric that might or might not work with that other piece of fabric that I could vaguely remember finding in one of the scrap bags a couple of years ago. But it is entertaining.

 

On our last trip, I decided to try a two-color (or do I count the background, which makes it three-color?) version of Priscilla.  I made my head hurt a bit trying to figure out whether or not the fabric placement would actually work in real life, and how many strips of green and blue I'd need to cut.  

 

 

It turned out, once I had actual quilt blocks to look at, that the color placement is easy. There are an even number of squares, so you sew them in pairs of blue and green, then sew one to the edge of the pinwheel section with the green on the left and one on the opposite edge with the green to the right.

Then you do the same thing with the remaining edges. And the blocks all fit together just the way they did in my imagination.

 

 

Now the big mystery is why I had a yard of fabric with monkeys on flaming skateboards. I'm sure I didn't buy this stuff as yardage (although I do admit to buying the robot dinosaurs and the ugly King Kong fabric, which were both really cheap.) It did go well with the front of the quilt, though. And now it's used up except for a few leftover inches that I'll hack up into baby quilt squares.

You can find the full instructions for Priscilla here. For this version, I used six blue width of fabric strips and six green width of fabric strips and had a few squares of each left over.

I'll be linking up to Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, and Freedom Fridays, and House of Hepworths, and The Dedicated House.

They do look kinda like stars!

Every year, I intend to go out and pick strawberries. Something always comes up to stop me, even if it's the realization that picking berries with all of the kids in tow might be more of a challenge than I'm willing to deal with. A friend called with an offer of cheap strawberries, delivered straight to my door.

 

Doesn't that sound like a great plan?

 

While I was rinsing and hulling them for the freezer, I was hit by the idea that they really do look like green and red stars.  I made up the pattern for Strawberry Stars in December, when real berries were a vague memory. I thought they looked like stars, but wasn't sure anyone else would agree with me.

 

 

Floating in the bowl of rinse water, they absolutely looked like stars! If I'd had real berries to look at when I was designing the quilt, I might've made those center squares green...but I like the way the original quilt came out. It shows off the red prints better.

Over the past couple of days, I've cut up something like fifteen pounds of berries for the freezer, and made seven pints of strawberry jam. I'm just in love with the color red right now, wondering if I've got enough scraps left over from other projects to experiment with a larger version of this block and make a baby quilt.  

 

 

Of course now that I'm up to my ears in strawberries, I ran out to buy blueberries to make Jo's pie recipe.

You can find the free pattern for Strawberry Stars here on my blog.   I'm linking up to Rednesday at Cottage Sweet Cottage, More the Merrier Monday, Sumo's Sweet Stuff,  and Monday Funday.

I should've made this quilt already

As much as I refuse to believe that fabric should have expiration dates or that quilters should aim to turn over their stashes every so often, I think I might've blown it with this one.

 

We were on a blog hop -- let's guess it was five years ago, but it was probably a bit longer -- and my oldest son fell in love with this fabric. The budget for full price quilt shop fabric only stretched to 2/3 of a yard, and later I bought some less expensive solids that I thought I could use for the rest of the quilt. There was a vague plan, but it was always too complicated for me to plunge into.

 

I'm not sure my thirteen year old would still be as excited about an otter quilt that he requested when he was seven or eight....but I still feel like I should make it for him.   Would it be sneaky to drape the fabric over the rocking chair and see if he still remembers it?

As for the new and revised plan for this fabric, I was thinking of doing something like Sidelights...then I thought about doing a narrow inner border with the brown solid and a piano key border with the blue and green solids...and then I took a look at the Mountainpeek Creations website so I could link to Sidelights and saw all of their other Just Can't Cut It patterns....

 

I'm open to suggestions! What would you do with it?

 

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 4 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 44 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 197 1/4 yards
Net Added for 2013: 152 1/2 yards


Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 1550 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 7100 yards
Net Added for 2013: 5550 yards

I'm linking up to the Weekly Stash report at Patchwork Times and Sunday Stash at Finding Fifth.

Topsy-Turvy Inside-Out Knit Toys

I don't knit a lot of toys. Between my finishing skills and my sons, my luck with them hasn't been the best. I've done better with projects like the shark hat and gator scarf.

When I got the chance to review Topsy-Turvy Inside-Out Knit Toys: Magical Two-in-One Reversible Projects by Susan B. Anderson, I jumped at it. Reversible toys are FUN. Fun enough to make for myself and hide from my kids.



I was expecting dolls. This book does have a doll, but there's also an egg that changed into an alligator, and a chrysalis that reverses to expose a butterfly. The snowman/tree would make a great holiday decoration. 

There are lots of pictures, so you won't be guessing how things are supposed to look or fit together.

 

 

I'm writing this review based on an electronic ARC, but I think I'm going to have to buy the book. These are just too cute not to knit! 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 24}

I've got a new tutorial for you this week, Carrie. 

 

Checkerboard baby quilts go together quickly, especially if you've got width of fabric strips to start with, and using eight different prints that are all the same color means you don't have to fuss much about color placement.

Looking for more free baby quilt patterns? You can find all of the Let's Make Baby Quilts tutorials over in the side bar, and more ideas for baby quilts on my baby quilt tutorials board over at Pinterest.

Have you seen Cheryl Lynch's collaborative baby quilt? She prepared fusible fish parts (bodies, fins, lips, eyes) and had each at the baby shower create a block that will go into the finished quilt. I absolutely love the idea.

 

 

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, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, 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.

{yarn along} Relatively Dead

The first sock of this pair is almost done. I haven't picked it up in over a week. Partly because I haven't had much knitting time and partly because I am completely burnt out on ribbing. It's time to pull out the lace shawl again and pray that I took good enough notes to figure out where I left off.

I just finished reading Relatively Dead by Sheila Connelly and I didn't care for this one at all. It seems to be caught halfway between cozy mystery and paranormal romance....except there's no real mystery and not much of a romance. 

Here's the book's description from Amazon:

Abby Kimball has just moved to New England with her boyfriend and is trying to settle in, but the experience is proving to be quite unsettling, to say the least. While on a tour of local historic homes, Abby witnesses a family scene that leaves her gasping for breath—because the family has been dead for nearly a century. Another haunting episode follows, and another, until it seems to Abby that everything she touches is drawing her in, calling to her from the past.

Abby would doubt her sanity if it weren’t for Ned Newhall, the kind and knowledgeable guide on that disturbing house tour. Rather than telling her she’s hallucinating, Ned takes an interest in Abby’s strange encounters and encourages her to figure out what’s going on, starting with investigating the story of the family she saw . . . and exploring her own past.

But as Abby begins to piece together a history that’s as moving as it is shocking and unravels a long-ago mystery that nearly tore her family apart, she also begins to suspect that Ned’s got secrets of his own, and that his interest may be driven as much by a taste for romance as a love for history.

I love ghost stories, but the ghosts in this one didn't do anything but appear. Abby quit her job to relocate with her boyfriend, and he's always off watching sports or playing golf with his buddies. It seems like she jumps into researching the ghosts because she's got nothing else to do with her time. The ending was so abrupt that I almost wondered if something was missing from my review copy.

For more fun knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.

 

My copy of Relatively Dead was provided by the publisher.

Carrie {a baby quilt tutorial}

Meet Carrie, the newest of this year's baby quilts!

Sometimes you need a baby quilt in a hurry, or have a backing size piece of an absolutely perfect novelty print and want a top to go with it, or want something to stretch your free motion quilting skills on.... this cute little checkerboard quilt goes together quickly.  If you've got your scraps sorted by color, you're halfway done already!

Want to make your own? For a 32" square baby quilt you'll need eight width of fabric print strips and eight width of  fabric white strips.

Not cutting from yardage, or cutting from a combination of yardage and scraps?  You'll need 128 2 1/2" print squares and 128 2 1/2" white squares. But read through the instructions first to see where you can save time by strip piecing.

Sew each print strip to a while strip, press and cut each strip set into sixteen 2 1/2" wide sections. 

Join those sections into 64 four patch units.

Join those units into sets of four...

Assemble into four rows of four and you've got your completed quilt top. Didn't I say that this one was quick and easy?

Quilt and bind. As always, if you make this quilt I'd love for you to send me a picture or link up to my weekly Let's Make Baby Quilts! linky party. There's a list of my free baby quilt tutorials over in the sidebar and you  can find out when new ones are added by either following my blog or liking the Let's Make Baby Quilts Facebook page.


I'm linking up to Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, and Freedom Fridays,

It's warm enough!

Yesterday was our first chance of the year to make it down to our favorite spot by the river.  Last year, between the new roof and whatever else was going on,  I think we only made it two or three times. 

The weather forecast and the thermometer in the van both said that it was too cold to play in the water, but you couldn't have convinced my kiddos that it wasn't warm enough to swim. (Of course I think the boys would try to swim in January, given the chance, but it really was a gorgeous day!)


Besides the obvious sunscreen and snacks and drinks, here are my favorite tips for a day at the river, with links to some previous posts --

I bring a fluffy utility quilt with thick polyester batting to spread over the rocks for a more comfortable place it sit. We bought this one at a yard sale for a buck.

I bring pool noodles and toys with our names on them, because sometimes things drift downstream a bit and need to be identified.

And I bring my  floppy hat so I can keep from burning my ears and nose.

What are your tips for a great day at the park with the kids?

This post is linked to WFMW at We Are THAT Family.

another batch of bowties

I spent a chunk of yesterday afternoon sorting through the new-to-me fabric and some scraps I already had, cutting pieces for my ambitious scrap quilts. A  1 1/2" strip for Little Trips, the hearts, and the Lego quilt...a 2 1/2" strip for whatever, and a 2" strip for the bowties and whatever...

 

If my last count was correct, I only need about a hundred and fifty more bowties. Then it's time to assemble them and start fussing with the idea of a border. I wish I'd known I was going to have a border from day one, but I was bound and determined that this was going to be a borderless quilt until I saw Bonnie's and fell in love with her scrappy pieced border. It would be nice to have the same fabrics I used for the bowties in that border. But if I don't, who will ever notice?

To see more design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times. And come check tomorrow for the new baby quilt tutorial.