Moderation is HARD!

Have I mentioned that I hate being on blood thinners? I ate some broccoli last week (really, it was half as much as I'd have eaten if I wasn't being careful)  and wound up having to do another shot to get my blood levels back on track. Now I'm waiting until tomorrow to see if my levels stayed put or if I need more shots.

Vegetables hide. Teenage Daughter asked if the egg foo young I was eating was okay, because it's got cabbage. And that made me realize that the egg roll I was eating along with it was full of green stuff...and that there was spinach hiding in the pasta we ate with the broccoli.

If anyone knows where I can find good information about which foods mess with Warfarin, please let me know. I'd love to find a good forum or something, but what I am finding is just not helpful.

But look at my stash numbers. Those are moderate. I've only added seven yards of fabric since January. I've added yarn, but I've used almost as much as I added.

How did I manage to be moderate with fabric and yarn and not with vegetables? There's something wrong with that.

Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 2 1/2 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 38 1/2 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 3200 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 3675 yards
Net Added for 2015:  475 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

All Points Patchwork

I've never tried English Paper Piecing, but I've seen it demonstrated at quilt shows and it's been on my quilty bucket list ever since, especially when Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville posts about her hexies. (If I'd had some handwork over the past eighteen months, I might not have made quite so many pairs of plain socks.)




All Points Patchwork: English Paper Piecing beyond the Hexagon for Quilts & Small Projects by Diane Gilleland is going to be the thing that pushes me from wanting to learn EPP to actually cutting some  fabric and trying it out. It's a how to book instead of pattern book and the author provides lots of options for tools and papers, with explanations for why you might prefer each one, and which which she think is best for what purpose. Everything I can imagine is included from how to knot the thread and begin and end seams to how to design your own projects with software, or by hand with a protractor, compass and pencil.

Step-by-step illustrations tell you how to draft the different shapes in whatever size you want. I'm especially enthusiastic  to play with jewels and coffins. Don't those sound fun?

There are no step by step patterns, but there are plenty of techniques explained, including how to applique paper pieced sections to larger pieces and how to cut paper pieced sections to use them in other quilting projects.  The book is full of pictures of finished projects and it wouldn't be hard for an experienced quilter to figure out how it's done.

The publisher sent me an electronic ARC, but I've already ordered a copy of the book for my quilting library. I think it's one I'll be able to use for many years to come.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {5/29/15}

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.

Why Not a Tole Painted Chamber Pot?

Back in the seventies, Mom and Grandma tole painted on all sorts of things. Milk cans, old saw blades, crocks, pieces of weathered wood, those pieces of shelf-shaped fungus that grow on trees...

And this chamber pot. 

This had a plant in it and sat in a high bathroom window through my entire childhood. It's been banished to a bathroom cupboard at Mom's new house now, and sooner or later it's going to make it to my place. Where it will live in the sewing room so that I don't have to explain it to my husband.

Mom, who painted it in the  first place, has decided that it's too icky to keep. I'm thinking it's not any worse than the old cloth diapers we all reused as dust rags.

Would you keep it at your house?

This post is linked to Vintage Bliss and Thrifter Share.

Look -- Another Pair of Socks!

These are Serenity Sock Weight, in the Aquamarine colorway. I love the narrow stripes this yarn makes and how they vary just a bit. 

If you'd told me when I started knitting that I one day be making pairs so quickly there weren't even any progress posts, I'd have thought you were nuts. Back then, they took forever.  Now, it seems like I'm always digging out yarn for the next pair.

I know the answer -- more texture and detail. But I'm so tired lately that I seriously couldn't tell the other night if I had sixteen stitches on my needle. (And yes, at that point I did put the sock away and just give up for the night, even though it was still light outside. It's the blood thinners, I'm sure.)



Tammy Norman really needs a job, but her new gig working for Shirley Homes is just a little too weird to be true. She's making good money for sitting in an empty office with nothing to do but water the plant. Then they get their first client, a man who's being tormented by an invisible barking dog, and things get a whole lot more puzzling. Shirley is convinced that she's the great-great-granddaughter of Sherlock Holmes...and that he was a real man, not just a fictional character. The Case of the Invisible Dog by Diane Stingley is full of mysterious twists and turns, but I think the most intriguing one is the mystery behind Shirley and her family.

I also got a chance to read Babbicam by Rod Madocks. The book's desscription, about a poet who finds an old wire recorder at an estate sale which contains the story of "the man they could not hang." I didn't realize until I was checking the Amazon link for this review that the story of John Lee's crime is a true one. Both stories -- the story of John Lee and the story of the poet -- dragged.


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


  Disclosure - The publishers provided me with ARCs. 

Our Year Without a Microwave

I didn't write down the date that our microwave died, but it was more than a year ago. For a girl who grew up in the era of "you can cook absolutely ANYTHING in a microwave," I'm surprised that I lasted this long without one. I knew I could do it, but I didn't realize how painless it would be. 

At this point, Teenage Daughter is the only one complaining. She wants to use recipes from Pinterest and make chocolate cakes in coffee mugs.  I don't blame her. I was almost tempted to spent ten bucks on a replacement when we saw this one at the ReStore a couple of weeks ago, just to see if she'd use it. According to the tag, it heats the food really fast and the timer doesn't work. But I'm afraid that it might make the boys sprout extra heads or tails or something.  

I could go out and buy a new microwave, but I'm not excited enough about the idea to actually do it.

Not as Fragile as the Real Thing

One of these days I'd love to have a real stereoscope, but for now I'll be happy to have an embroidered one in my quilt. 

I see them in antique stores now and then, but if I bought one, I'd have to keep it under lock and key. My kids are fairly good at not messing with the vintage and antique stuff, but I'm not sure it would be fair to put out something that neat and expect them to keep their hands off. And they all look so fragile.

For now, I'm contenting myself with picking up the cards when I find extra cheap ones at estate sales.

Weekly Stash Report

My sewing machine has been whirring non-stop for days. Lots of seams are getting sewn and lots of fabric is being used up, but it's not by me. It is my fabric, though...do I get some kind of partial credit for that? Teenage Daughter is making costumes and is thinking that she needs a ruffle foot for the sewing machine.

Have any of you used one? Would it be worth the investment? (There might be one for Great-Grandma's treadle, which might fit my Featherweight.... What kind of learning curve am I looking at?

As I type this, my blood levels are good enough that I've given myself my last shot. Please cross your fingers for me that that they stay in the right range so I don't have to go through that again! (And that I don't drop a carving knife on my foot like I did the last time I was on blood thinners! There wasn't much blood, but that incident still haunts me.)

Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 2 1/2 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 38 1/2 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 3200 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 3675 yards
Net Added for 2015:  475 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Vintage Shoes

I stuck with two colors for this one, hoping to capture the look of an old catalog advertisement. 

For almost all of my embroidery, I use a basic back stitch, but for this one, I needed to remember how the Lazy Daisy stitch works. I'm not claiming to be very good at it yet, but this is just a tiny block that'll go in between some of the larger images.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {5/22/15}

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.

Looking Back...

10 years ago this month...

We were starting the process of buying this house and I was beyond giddy at the thought of having a huge sewing room all for myself. I was also trying to figure out how I was going to pack and move with an eight year old, a five year old, a six month old, and another one on the way.

I was  finishing up my Clapotis at the park, hoping it didn't start to rain again.

5 years ago this month...

I was working on Strawberry Fields, realizing how much fun tiny pieced blocks could be.


I finally got all of the cat blocks assembled into a top and was intimidated by how huge it is.

And my husband was warning me not to burn down the house with Grandma's old iron. I never did work up the nerve to plug that one in. 

.

{Yarn Along} The Mountain Story

The end is in sight! Turn the heel, pick up the gusset stitches, three more owl repeats and the toes... and I've already done it once. There's no reason I can't do it again.

Now I get to start looking through my book collection and Ravelry queue for the next challenging pair.



The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens caught my attention with its description of four people trapped on a mountain, able to see the city below, but with no way of reaching it. Really, it's the story of one of them, Wolf Truly, who went up the mountain on his eighteenth birthday with no intention of coming back down. But before he can carry out his planned suicide, he finds himself helping three women who are trying to find an unmarked lake.  Flashbacks tell Wolf's story, but we never do learn a lot about his companions.

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

  Disclosure - The publishers provided me with ARCs.

Along Came a Spider...

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet

Eating her curds and whey

Along came a spider

Who sat down beside her 

And frightened Miss Muffet away

I just can't decide how I feel about her hair. If it was redwork, I wouldn't have to wonder why she had single curls sprouting out of her nearly bald head, but this is a multi-color project and I don't want to make all of the little girls blonde.

As soon as I started stitching this one, I found quite a few vintage Miss Muffet patterns that I like better.  My absolute favorite is this one from Urban Threads, which just has the abandoned bowl and the spider. I'm tempted to either buy the pattern for this quilt, or buy several of them (probably Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and The Cat and the Fiddle) and make a little Mother Goose quilt. I want these dark fairy tale patterns, too. Because I obviously don't have enough embroidery patterns on the burner.

 So this one may or may not  wind up in the finished quilt. It depends on whether or not I actually stitch one of the other ones and whether or not I decide I'm okay with two Miss Muffets.

Lots of New Lozenges

They're not the most fun units to sew up, but they're a great excuse for watching Netflix with my Kindle propped up next to the sewing machine. I'd planned on laying out all of the pieces for a progress shot, since I've got about twice as many as I did have,  but the box with the rest of them is winning the current game of Hide and Seek. I'll take pictures when I find it.

This post is linked to Design Wall Monday.

Not the Week I Expected to Have

It was a wild week. Monday, I went to the walk in clinic to see about a muscle I pulled a month ago which wasn't getting any better and wound up in the emergency room at 1am getting diagnosed with a blood clot. How does it go from "You should've waited to schedule an appointment with your regular doctor" (that was the receptionist) to a 10pm call telling me that the test results were back and I needed to get to the emergency room immediately?

If you've been reading my blog for a few years, you might remember the drama of my knee surgery and the subsequent blood clots. I've got a new one, this time with no apparent cause. Needless to say, I'm not a happy camper.

While I was waiting for the call with the blood test results, still sure that they were doing to be negative, Hubby came in with the mail and there was a box from Janice, a blog reader who had emailed me a while back that she was downsizing and had a stack of transfers she wanted to send me. That box was packed tight with Aunt Martha's patterns and older ones and some embroidered blocks and some fabric that had already been prepped with transfers... and the amazing part is that, with as many patterns as I've got in my stash and as many as I've been drooling over online for the past year, I hadn't seen most of them. A few I had seen and desperately wanted.

Tuesday afternoon, I sorted through it all while I was waiting for an appointment with the coagulation clinic. Those daily shots to the stomach that I hated so much last time around? This time I don't have to go in to the hospital every day. I get to do them at home myself -- and its twice a day. Actually, I'm pretty proud of myself for being able to do it. I really thought I'd have to get Hubby to do it. And the rat poison pills? I'm on that stuff for life.

I'm so glad to have embroidery and knitting and quilting to distract myself with. There's going to be more than one embroidered quilt. All of the pretty images I want to stitch won't fit into one quilt, even if I make it huge.


Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 0 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 38 1/2 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 2800 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 3675 yards
Net Added for 2015: 875 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Duckies!

It's not a show-stopping block, but it's cute and small and I think it'll make a great bit of filler when I finally try to assemble all of these into a something shaped like a quilt top.

And, after Kitty and her bicycle, it was nice to have a quick little finish.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {5/15/15}

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.

Blogger's Quilt Festival -- Little Letters

It's time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I'd hoped to have the nail polish quilt done but life has been keeping me too busy to get it pin basted and quilted.  So I went looking through my projects for something else I wanted to show off. 

Little Letters (free pattern from Temecula Quilt Company) was just the challenge I needed last year. The blocks are fun and fiddly, without being too overwhelming. And I'd been wanting an alphabet sampler quilt.

I decided that mine needed a pieced border, something that would make the finished quilt feel more like a stitched sampler... (And isn't it cool that this one is dated and I can tell when I made that project instead of trying to figure it out from old blog posts like I usually wind up doing?) 

Honestly, I think my favorite part of this tutorial series was the pictures of stencils and apples and rulers. The letters look nothing at all like those stencils, but I still think of them every time I look at this quilt.

{Yarn Along} Second Sock Syndrome

I've been suffering from second sock syndrome, casting on everything but the second Owlie sock. I don't care for top down socks to begin with, and I really don't care for these cuffs with all of that knitting to the back of the loop. Seriously, is there any reason I couldn't have just done knit stitches? It wouldn't have looked like the designer intended it to, but it would have made me less crazy. 

Now that the cuff is done, though, I'm on to the owls. I can do these. There's a rhythm to them that's easy enough to follow - as long as I keep my eyes on the chart. 



As soon as I finished Big Little Lies, I went onto the library's online card catalog and reserved as many other books by the same author as I could find. What Alice Forgot was the first one to show up on the reserve shelf. This book just about broke my heart. Alice is deeply in love with her husband and happily pregnant with their first child...or that's what she believes when she regains consciousness after an accident at a health club. Alice quickly learns that she's ten years older, her first baby and two others have already been born, and she's in the midst of a divorce. Everyone she loves has changed and, she unhappily begins to discover, so has she. This book was hard to read, and I mean that in the best possible way. At first Alice is so sure that if she can just get to her husband things will be better, but it's not. Everyone she thinks she can turn to knows things that she doesn't, and no one is really helping much to fill in the blanks.

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


  Disclosure - The publishers provided me with ARCs.

A Little Finish

I'd been wanting something to keep my yarn from tumbling off of my lap while I'm knitting at the kids's activities, so I whipped up this little pyramid shaped wristlet. One side is almost completely open, with no zipper or hardware to catch on the yarn. 

It took twice as long as it should have, because the first one I made was too small to hold a 50 gram skein of sock yarn. Guess that's what I get for cutting into the good fabric instead of making a mock-up first to test the size. But it looks an awful lot like the little bag I had pictured in my head, so I'm happy!

This post is linked to Finish it up Friday.

What I'm Working On

Pieces cut out for a brand new project, hot iron transfers transferred to the fabric and ready to stitch... I've got plans for this week!

This post is linked to Design Wall Monday.

A Trip to the Quilt Shop - Grandma's Attic

I haven't been spending much time in quilt shops lately, but we were already in Dallas and I knew that Grandma's Attic carries a lot of redwork....

Before we even got into the store, my mind had gone from embroidery to applique. Look at that washtub! And the stove! 

Three spinning racks full of Aunt Martha's hot iron transfers. No mermaids, not that I'm looking anymore, but it's a hard habit to break. But I did find a couple that I hadn't seen before.

Parakeets! And a  coockoo clock! But there's also that phone....and the mirror.... I need these in the Garden Party quilt.

I wound up getting two sets of Aunt Martha's transfers, the pattern for the Sunbonnet Sue quilt, and some other embroidery patterns with fantastic vintage appliances. I'm loving that television set and vacuum cleaner. Those will get their own quilt.

Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 0 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 38 1/2 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 2800 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 3675 yards
Net Added for 2015:  875 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Look -- I Found Yarn!

I finally got a chance to slip up to the sewing room and dig around for some yarn that might stretch the Outback Wool I'm using for my Constant Companion. It's not the exact color I would have chosen if I'd been standing at the yarn shop with an unlimited selection, but it will felt and it blends with the colors of the bag. The more I knit, the less obvious these stripes are.

If it's hard to tell where the substitute yarn begins and ends, it works.... right? I might be fussier if I had a better history of actually using my felted bags.

Now I've got to teach myself to do an Icord bind-off and figure out how my scaled down stitch count will work with the buttonholes for the strap. I can do this!

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {5/8/15}

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.

Askew!

When I was digging around in the sewing room for something else entirely, I found a couple of WIPs that I couldn't even remember casting on. One was apparently a summer top for Teenage Daughter. I can only figure that much out because the yarn I was using made it for either her or me and the size eliminated me. And because it was in the same knitting bag as this project, which is now a happily finished tote bag.

This started life as a thrift store sweater. Back in 2007, I took it apart and wound the yarn and cast on for Askew. My yarn wasn't getting the same gauge as the pattern, so I did the math and made some adjustments and got the right circumference (a little bit harder than it sounds, since the front is knit on the bias.)  I don't remember much of this, but a blog post that filled in the details for me.

The whole thing was there, all finished except for the straps. Teenage Daughter tried it on and the straps don't sit right. That's why I abandoned the project seven years ago.

I was just getting  ready to throw it out when I remembered the no-sew tote bag tutorial that Teenage Daughter had showed me that morning, because she couldn't imagine why someone would buy a brand new shirt, not wear it, then hack it up into a tote bag. That's what you do with Goodwill Bins shirts that are the wrong size but have great logos. And, apparently, failed tank tops that have interesting design elements.

Swarming Bees Don't Sting

That's what I kept reminding myself a couple of hours ago when I was reaching over my head and trying to shake a mass like this one (a swarm from 2013) into a cardboard box. Even in a full bee suit, that's not my idea of fun....and it didn't help that I could only find one of the gloves. 

I don't know whether I got the queen or not. If I did, there's a chance. If I didn't...then we've lost our last hive.  While Hubby was laid up last year we lost all but one of them.....and then a tree fell on that hive. Have I mentioned that 2014 was a really bad year?

Cross your fingers that my attempt at saving the bees was a success!  While I wait to find out, I'm linking up to Farmgirl Friday and Simple Saturdays.