{Let's Knit a Pair of Socks!} The Heel

If you've been knitting along with me, it's time to work a short row heel. If not, and you want to jump in, you can find all of the details in this post. In the last step, I showed you how to knit your foot and make sure that it's long enough.

(This might be a good spot for another lifeline, just in case.) 

1/4 of your stitches are on needle #1, 1/2 are on needle #2, and 1/4 are on needle #3. We'll be working the short row heel back and forth on needles #1 and #3.

Knit to the last stitch on needle #1.

Slip the last stitch onto your right hand needle (without knitting it).

Bring your working yarn to the front of your work, forward around the base of the stitch, then slide that stitch back onto the left hand needle.

Turn your work so that the purl side is facing you. (At this point, you've got one unworked stitch on the left hand needle.)

Purl across needle #1.

Purl across all but the last stitch of needle #2.

Slip the last stitch onto your right hand needle, wrap your yarn around the base of the stitch, this time from front to back, and slip the stitch back onto the left hand needle.

Turn your work and knit to the second to last stitch on needle #1. Wrap the stitch the same way you did the stitch in the previous row, then turn your work and purl to the second to the last stitch on needle #3.

Each row, you'll leave one more unworked stitch. If you look closely, you can see the wraps at the base of each stitch, but I've found that it works better for me if I count.

For fingering weight socks, I keep going until I've slipped and wrapped all but five stitches on each needle. This pair is worsted weight and for little feet, so I'm using four stitches.

Now, we're going to pick up and knit those wrapped stitches, one at each end for each row.

Knit across needle #1 to the first wrapped stitch, then slide it onto your right hand needle. With the tip of your left needle, pull up the yarn that's wrapped around the base of the stitch, then slide it onto the right needle and knit both the stitch and wrap together into one stitch.

Turn your work and purl to the first wrapped stitch. Slide that stitch onto your right hand needle, lift the wrap onto the needle and purl the stitch and wrap together into one stitch.

Keep going, knitting or purling a wrapped stitch at the end of each row until you've worked every stitch.

Now you've got your heel. There are lots of different heel options for sock knitters. This just happens to be the one that made sense to me when I first started knitting socks. 

If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer, just be sure you're not set to no-reply (or leave an email address in the comment.)

Come back November 14 and we'll knit the leg and do a stretchy bind off. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {10/30/15}

 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.

Stick a Needle in My Eye

Isn't it amazing what some people can design with just a little bit of felt and some embroidery floss? 

I found the tutorial for this freaky little pincushion last Halloween...or maybe it was the year before that. The embroidered eyelashes and the detail around the iris are just too neat for works. Click over and look at the ones she made, which are amazing.

It's just the perfect size for jabbing on needle into while I look for the next color of embroidery floss. This may be the one pincushion I wind up actually using on a regular basis!

This post is linked to Idea Box Thursday, Share Your Cup,

Knitting in Rainy, Windy Public

I'd hoped that this picture would show you how wet and rainy and cold it was at the pumpkin patch on Sunday. It doesn't even come close. I knew it was going to rain, but it was the last weekend of the season and I'd promised the boys, and the dark maze, which wasn't dark last year, is back to the way it should be. And, in all of the years we've been going, the rain always stops and we wind up putting our coats in the car.

Not this year! It absolutely poured. Quite a few of the activities are in covered areas, so we dashed from one greenhouse to the next and while the boys did their thing I sat on a damp hay bale and knit (as opposed to to last year, when I sat on a damp hay bale and wished I'd brought a project.)

In addition to not showing the rain, the picture really distorts the color of the sock. In real life, the stripes aren't nearly that dramatic and the colors are totally different.

Along with the knitting, there's been reading...

Nine Lives by Weny Corsi Staub really pulled me in. After the death of her husband, young widow Bella Jordan has packed up her young son and what few belongings she can fit into their car and set off for her mother-in-law's house. Engine trouble and a pregnant cat intervene and she winds up in Lily Dale, an odd little town where everyone seems to be psychic. Even Bella's son is making predictions -- he just knows that the cat will have seven (or maybe eight) kittens, and that his loose tooth won't come out until the fourth of July. Without a way to leave until the parts for her car come in, Bella finds herself taking care of the cat and kittens and helping to run the guest house owned by a woman who recently died. She doesn't feel that she can stay in Lily Dale, but she's in no hurry to move in with her husband's overbearing mother. I enjoyed this book, but the fact that it's written in present tense was sometimes jarring.

In Haunt Couture and Ghosts Galore, the third Vintage Mystery by Rose Pressey, Cookie finds herself haunted by a second ghost, this one a failed PI who was separated from his favorite hat when it became evidence in a murder investigation. (Cookie has been haunted by socialite Charlotte Meadows ever since she bought the deceased woman's favorite clothing at her estate sale.) With the help of the two ghosts and her psychic cat, Cookie works to figure out the killer's identity. I like Cookie, but the two ghosts flirt like a couple of giddy teenagers and I kept wondering why, instead of waiting for the owner of the occult shop next door to come by, she didn't buy the cat its own ouija board.

The publishers provided me with ARCs. This post is linked to Patchwork Times and Yarn Along.

Five Days to Go and No Costumes in Sight...

So the reasonable thing to do is make a little mummy out of wire and scraps of muslin. (I used this tutorial from Honest to Nod.)

No one is allowed to go as a possum this year. Quinn asked for a costume and I almost caved because he wants to be a wildlife rehabilitiator when he grows up and it would make total sense for him to go as a possum, but he's going to be a serial killer zombie. That's a zombie who was a killer while he was alive. Or something like that. Leif wants to go as the guy with giant scissors. My oldest son is "too old" for Halloween and my daughter is more than capable of making her own costume.

So if we can find some of the neat zombie tattoos we found last year, I'm good.

Isn't that just the view you want in your rear view mirror?

Lozenges

Back in July, I was wondering whether to just sew together the rest of my cut pieces and made the quilt top using however many I wound up with. I put off the decision until I dug through the sewing room a bit and responded to that ad I saw on Craigslist. 

And now I'm cutting more 2 1/2" and 1 1/2" strips because more variety in a scrap quilt is always better, right? 

We Found the Neatest Place!

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across the Facebook page for MECCA in Eugene. I don't even know how to begin to explain this place... maybe kind of like The Knittn' Kitten, except it doesn't focus on fabric and is a non profit... but that doesn't capture the place.

They sell donated art supplies and when we were there last week, they were having a warehouse sale where each customer could fill one bag of supplies from the warehouse for free. Other supplies are available in the attached shop for dirt cheap. The woman explaining it was so welcoming and enthusiastic and made a point of telling us that each kid could have their own bag of free materials. We hadn't known to come with bags, so she gave us some that were absolutely huge.

Between the five of us, we got one bag of stuff. Most is for Teenage Daughter's costuming, but I found some floppy disks to make something like these, and some calligraphy nibs for embellishing an embroidered quilt. The boys got microfiche, which they're fascinated by. We're gonna have to make an extra trip to the library and show them how the stuff  is meant to be used.

I've been finding lots and lots of miniature tutorials that call for odds and ends I don't have. This is the perfect place to find them. I got some little scraps of burlap and bits of twine and resisted the empty old clock case that would have made a perfect room box. I'm sure I'll regret that later, but I was trying to be good.

There were big cardboard barrels of fabric scraps, most not-cotton but I think I could have dug through and found enough bits for a quilt if I wasn't determined to be good after that ad on Craigslist a couple of weeks ago.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 6 1/4 yards
Added this week: 0
Added year  to date: 400
Net added for 2015: 393 3/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 800  yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 8000 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9539 yards
Net Added for 2015: 1539 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Preserving Family Recipes

I know a woman who insists that every recipe ever created is available online. She may be right, but that doesn't mean that the banana bread recipes I've found and tried taste anything like my mother's. (Hey Mom, can you email yours to me? I've lost it again.)

While I could be convinced that somewhere in the vast reaches of the internet I could find Mom's exact recipe....or maybe the ones that Grandma used for her sweet pickles and banana cream pie... I'd never find my husband's tamales or his clam chowder. Those are in his head and no place else.

Someone else needs to learn to make them, if only because now and then the boys are in the mood for his tostadas and he doesn't have time to cook them.

That's why I was thrilled  to get my hands on a review copy of Preserving Family Recipes: How to Save and Celebrate Your Food Traditions by Valerie J. Frey. I read it cover to cover and I'm seriously loving this book!

In great detail, she tells you how to collect recipes from family members and maybe track down similar alternatives to ones that have been lost. She gives tips on where to look for those lost recipes, including lots of ideas that I never would have come up with on my own.

And (this is the part that I need)  she tells you how to get a recipe from someone who measures by feel and has never written anything down. There are lots of options and I'm hopeful that at least one of them will allow me to record the secrets to Hubby's  clam chowder. He's not trying to keep anything hidden, but he thinks that I should have been able to absorb the whole thing by osmosis.  I could probably make the tamales, but that chowder is a mystery to me.

This book also introduced me to the concept of "foodways" and left me with a whole list of other books I want to track down and read, just because they sound so interesting.

If I do make some sort of little family cookbook instead of just putting the recipes I'm looking for onto cards, I should include the durian and some of our little family's other culinary adventures.

Disclosure -- the publisher provided me with an ARC.

Patons Kroy Spring Leaf Stripes

I'm running a bit late with this week's finish. (If you're looking for the Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky, it was posted an hour ago, here.)

When I finished the first sock, I was thrilled with how perfectly the colors were positioned on the heel. And then I started wondering if I could mirror the socks, with the yellow and grey stripes on the other heel...

I made my best guess at the right spot to start the color repeat and cast on. And, somehow, when I hit the heel I was at the right spot in the yarn. That was while I was knitting my way through the Retro Gaming Expo last weekend, which somehow made it more fun and will definitely ensure that these socks are memorable for more than just their stripes.  I did cut the yarn at the end of the short row heel so I wouldn't have a single row of yellow stitches cutting across the front of the sock. That might have been cheating.

To start the toe at the right point, I sacrificed a few yards of yarn. I lost another two or three when I rejoined if after the heel. Towards the end of the cuff, I was wondering if I'd have to use the little bit of yarn left from the first sock or the yarn from the toe of this one and if either of those scraps of yarn would be the colors I needed at that point. As long as the heels did what I wanted, I was willing to compromise on my leg stripes.

Here's what I had left after binding off --

The yarn is Patons Kroy Spring Leaf Stripe. I'm wondering if it was named by the same person who came up with Fern Rose and where they live that their ferns and roses and spring leaves are these colors.

This post is linked to Crazy Mom Quilts.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {10/23/15}

 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.

Have a Halloween Ghost Hunt!

This is a  repeat of a previously published post from 2012.

A pre-Halloween ghost hunt is just the thing for a couple of little boys who love all things scary and creepy.

I started by making a bunch of ghosts. I was thinking that I'd have to come up with a ghost shape myself, then I remembered that I have the Ghosts #2 die for my Sizzix. I'd never suggest buying a die just for a project like this, but you might as well use what you've got. Or trace around a cookie cutter, or find some clip art online, or make little ghosts by wrapping Tootsie Pops with tissue paper...whatever works for you!

I sent the boys outside to play with the big kids, then set up our ghost hunt by taping ghosts around the house. Some were easy to spot. Others were in high corners or on sides of furniture that aren't in our usual lines of sight. Once the house was full of ghosts, I took a picture of the ghost on the fireplace, took down that ghost, and went out to call my boys.

"Come here....quick! I saw something in the house..." Even the twelve-year-old came to see what I'd found.  I showed them the picture on my camera and told them that the ghost from the picture had flown away, but there were lots more. The whole house was full of them. And someone had to catch all of those scary ghosts...

I really didn't expect to get such a reaction from die-cut paper ghosts. It was probably all of Mommy's screaming and shaking and terrified reactions that they loved. As soon as they found all of the ghosts, we had to hide them again. And then someone stuck one on the cat. Now they tell me the cat is possessed.

I wouldn't try this game with little ones who might be scared by the idea of ghosts in the house, but my boys aren't too concerned about things that go bump in the night. Once Halloween is over I think we'll try it with paper bugs -- they're both huge fans of Billy the Exterminator and the Turtle Man!

I Hate Knitting Bobbles, But...

Just look at these flies with their big buggy eyes! This is definitely a project that makes fussing with bobbles worth it. But I do dislike the bobbles, so it's slow going to get myself through that first row of the pattern repeat.

The pattern is The Fly, inspired by the old Vincent Price movie, and it's part of  Super Scary Sockfest over at Ravelry. I'm using Knitpicks Stroll Tonal in Thunderhead. It was tempting to use a solid and save the tonal yarn for some future project, but I'm glad I decided to use it for this pair. They're fun and challenging enough to deserve the "good yarn." 

I'm linking up to Patchwork Times and Yarn Along. 

Looking for Jobs in Hocuspocusville

I'm curious what kind of jobs, other than the Wicked Witch on the sign, that the Toil & Trouble Employment is trying to fill. There must be a landscaper in town to take care of all of those twisted trees and carved pumpkins. (I've got to admit, those elements are my least favorite parts of the blocks. The designs wouldn't be nearly as cute without them, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy stitching them.)

I'm Scared of Sewing Machines

For nine months, I've been afraid to plug in Grandma's sewing machine. What if it didn't work? I'd have been devastated and somehow it seemed better to keep not knowing than to find out for sure.  I had a suspicion that the last time the machine was used was when I sewed Alex's Teletubby costume. (There's the milk glass in the corner of the picture. I love how you can figure out whose house an old picture was in by the corners of the furniture.) 

Once I opened up the  case and got a good look at the machine, I realized that I must've used the Huskystar that Grandma replaced this one with. (The Huskystar is here too, now in the custody of Teenage Daughter.) I thought this machine was the twin of the one I learned to sew on, but it's not exactly the same. 

It sews! The tension isn't right, but all of the original manuals are in the case, so I'm sure I can figure that out. Along with how to get that awful repair sticker off of the front. Why do places feel like they can do that?

While I had my sewing machine table cleared off, I decided to take a deep breath and plug in the Singer 338 that I found last month.  At the risk of sounding disloyal to my grandma, I love this machine!

I've already gushed about the fact that it's such a pretty shade of blue, but even better than that, it sews! The tension is perfect. It was in reverse when I started, but I've got that figured out. This one gets to keep its sticker for as long as the adhesive lasts. I don't know who G. T. Cummins was, but this belonged to her.

What I'd like to do is sew at least one little project on every functioning machine in the house. Starting with the blue one, because it's blue and seems to be cooperative.

Do You Knit in Public?

I spent most of yesterday at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, knitting my way through panels about the programming of the first Atari games and popular YouTubers. I've got a happy son and I made it through the heel and part of the cuff of my yellow and grey striped socks.

On Teenage Daughter's bedroom floor is a pile of lace scarves. Her new job at the call center has a strict list of activities allowed during downtime and knitting is one of the options. She's been shopping her own stash  and making some gorgeous stuff.

Do you knit in public?  

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 6 1/4 yards
Added this week: 0
Added year  to date: 400
Net added for 2015: 393 3/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 7200 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9539 yards
Net Added for 2015: 2339 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

{Let's Knit a Pair of Socks!} The Foot

Have you got a toe finished yet? The foot is the easiest part of the sock, so if you haven't started yours yet you've got plenty of time to catch up. You can find the instructions for the toe in this post. 

If you want some insurance in case you decide to go back and adjust your stitch count, run a lifeline through the last round of your toe. Thread a darning needle with a length of yarn in a  contrasting color and carefully run it between the needle and stitches. Use a smooth, strong yarn so that it will be easy to pull out the lifeline once you no longer need it. (Personally, I don't fuss with lifelines when it comes to my sock knitting. Now and then something goes wrong and I just  start over with a new toe.)

Your stitches are divided onto three needles, 25% of them on needle #1, 50% of them on needle #2, and 25% on needle #3. For the pair of socks I'm knitting here (worsted weight yarn for my tiny nine-year-old) that's 10/20/10. For my usual fingering weight socks, it's 16/32/16. Needles #1 and #3 are the stitches for your heel. Needle #2 holds the stitches for the top of your foot. With future pairs of socks, you can have all kinds of fun working patterns across those stitches. Don't add cables or lace to this pair because they can alter your gauge and change the way the sock will fit, but you can do k2p2 ribbing if you'd like.

Knit around and around and around in stockinette until the distance between the toe and that line you made on your paper foot outline match. (I was eyeballing this pair and went a few rows farther than I should have, but they're socks for a growing boy so I didn't rip back.)

After you get a few rows of the foot done, you can try on your sock again to make sure that you're happy with the fit. Be gentle if you're using fingering weight and wooden dpns! I prefer to wait until I've knit half of the stitches from Needle #2 so I have the stitches spread over four needles instead of three. You want the foot to reach a little higher than it does in this picture, but it's not easy to position a sock on your foot when it's on needles. I can tell that there's enough extra to get up to the bend of his foot. Between that and your traced outline, you should be fine. (And once you've got knit socks that fit to compare your length to, you don't have to mess with this part anymore! You're going to knit more than one pair, right?)

Come back on October 31 and we'll start working our short-row heel.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {10/16/15}

 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.

A Tiny Bit of Halloween Sewing & Some Paper Plate Bones

I found this wonky felt bat tutorial on Pinterest a while back. More than anything, it's those eyes that I love.

Choosing the best possible buttons to stack for his eyes took me longer than cutting out the felt or sewing it together. I've got two jars full that came from Grandma's house (not to mention the jar from the antique mall.) I wanted ones that were the right size and color, but weren't too old or too neat. Now I'm wondering where the worn bone buttons with the chipped edges came from. I'm guessing they're from the antique mall and not a family member's clothing.

Whatever their provenance is, I like those buttons a lot. They'll need a special project to be part of.

The paper plate skeleton is another project I found and wanted to do last year, but didn't get around to. I'm not going to admit how many times I bought paper plates and then used them for food before I finally made this!

My original plan was to make this one with the boys, but I'm glad I didn't. Cutting paper plates into bones is a lot harder than it sounds. I don't love how my skeleton looks, but the way the bones are loosely strung and bounce and sway whenever someone moves quickly past (that's the only way the kids in my house move) makes me smile.

I'm linking up to Crazy  Mom Quilts. You can find the rest of my Halloween to do list here.

{Guest Post} Camille Minichino

Thanks for hosting me today, in all my personas: Camille Minichino, Margaret Grace, Ada Madison, and Jean Flowers.

With four pen names and as many mystery series, I'm always looking for ways to bring things together, such as having all four protagonists meet for lunch! Gloria Lamerino, retired physicist (the Periodic Table Mysteries) enjoys meeting miniaturist Gerry Porter (the Miniature Mysteries), math teacher Ada Madison (the Professor Sophie Knowles Mysteries) and Cassie Miller (the Postmistress Mysteries) in several short pieces and blog postings.

Other meetings of the protagonists come about when I build the series settings in miniature. I've included a photos of one example.

Here, I've turned a bookcase into a funeral home with an apartment on the top floor. It's Gloria's residence in 8 novels and 2 short stories in the Periodic Table Mysteries.

On the lower floor is the embalming room—it's not easy to find embalming tables, trocars, or mortician's pins in miniatures catalogs, so I had to do some improvising. The laundry room is on that level, too (on the right in the photo). No wonder Gloria's laundry is backed up—she's afraid to go down there alone, or after dark. I felt this scene needed some comic relief, so I added the ruby slippers under the embalming table. See what you think.

The next floor up holds the parlor, where the mortuary's clients are laid out for viewing. The casket started life as a box of paperclips. How embarrassing—while taking this photo, I noticed that my dollhouse floor needs vacuuming as much as my real life living-room floor!

Gloria's apartment is on the third floor. It also needs dusting and vacuuming! (The scale is standard dollhouse scale: 1 inch = 1 foot.)

The latest in this series is "The Neon Ornaments," included in the exciting new anthology Happy Homicides: Thirteen Cozy Holiday Mysteries, available online on October 15.

For more on my series and a gallery of miniatures, visit http://www.minichino.com

Self-Striping Perfection

I couldn't have positioned those stripes any better if I'd tried! What I'd like to do on the other sock is to have the yellow and grey stripes on the heel and the grey and black before and after it. I don't know if that's feasible or not. I made my best guess at where to start with the repeat and we'll see how the stripes fall when it's time to turn the heel.

This post is linked to Yarn Along and Patchwork Times.

Quality Pre-Owned Brooms

This was the only Hocuspocusville block left from the ones I had traced a few months back, but it's probably the most appropriate choice for this week since we've been spending a lot of time looking at used station wagons, hoping to find the perfect one for Teenage Daughter.

One block done, another traced and ready to go for next week... I'm hoping to get a few of them done before the season is over. There are so many intricate little details in these buildings that it makes them intimidating, but if it wasn't for those details I wouldn't be so in love with this project.

Lots of Cutting for a Little Bit of Sewing...

My goal of the moment is to finish five scrappy little trip blocks a week. That doesn't sound like much at all, until you consider how many different fabrics it takes to make those blocks. 

Twenty-four different fabrics for a 12x12" section of quilt. And somehow I still think this is a good idea....

I'm linking up with Patchwork Times and Jo's Country Junction.

UFO List Update

The last time I posted my UFO list, I went through it and weeded out projects I had no intention of finishing, the false starts, and the ones I couldn't find. This time around, I've been adding all of the things I've started and then lost track of because life keeps throwing distracting bumps in the road. The list has gone from seventeen to twenty-seven (not counting the six that I decided to leave off because after two years they still haven't surfaced).

Hocuspocusville
Black and White Appliances
Garden Party Quilt
Nail Polish Quilt
Heath's Ocean Quilt
Low Volume Nine Patch
Pink Birds Baby Quilt
Sixteen Patch Baby Quilt
Petals Baby Quilt
Spools
Lozenges
Alice
Buttonhole Cat
Dingbats!
Rose Dream
North Pacific
Basket Quilt
Hobo Quilt
Lego Quilt
Scrappy Irish Chain
Little Trips Around the World
Santa Fe String Star
Summers by the Lake
Sandstone Stack the Deck
chicken wool kit
Blue Dresden Plates
Turtles

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 6 1/4 yards
Added this week: 0
Added year  to date: 400
Net added for 2015: 393 3/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 7200 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9539 yards
Net Added for 2015: 2339 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Hey There, Dumpling!

Years and years ago, Hubby and I used to make egg rolls. I'd found a yummy filling recipe that I made and he did the actual cooking because deep oil frying intimidated me. I'd forgotten all about those until I received this book for review.




Hey There, Dumpling!: 100 Recipes for Dumplings, Buns, Noodles, and Other Asian Treats by Kenny Lao has me wanting to head straight to the grocery store for wrappers and pork and cilantro. (We've got most of the other ingredients I'd want in the cupboards already.) But today is the first day in weeks that I don't have to leave the house for something or other, so I'm just staying put and making plans.

Everyone in our big family loves dumplings and buns and potstickers and these recipes are written to make fifty of  them. The idea is that you'll be having a dumpling party or freezing some for quick weeknight dinners, but I figure that for us a batch will make a meal and, if we're lucky, some for breakfast the next morning.

I like that the author doesn't assume that you know what you're doing. He provides tips for fixing problems like cracked wrappers and oozing filling and diagrams for the different folding techniques. In addition to all of the dumplings and buns, there are dipping sauces and side dishes and desserts.

Disclosure - The publisher provided me with an electronic ARC. I'll be buying a copy of the book.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {10/9/15}

 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.

More Bright Stripes

How is it that those multi-colored stripes come so close to matching up when the toes and heels absolutely don't? This yarn would drive matchy-matchy sock knitters nuts! But I'm of the deliberately mismatched school of stripes, so I'm perfectly happy with them. And I'll have warm toes, which is becoming more and more of a priority.

Jo Kramer gifted me the yarn. This post is linked to Crazy Mom Quilts, Frontier Dreams, and Patchwork Times.

That Could Almost Make Me a Morning Person

I'm not a morning person, I'm an "enjoy the quiet and get stuff done while the kids are sleeping person." If I have a choice, I'd rather do it late at night. 

But views like this could almost make it worth getting up early. The sunlight was coming through the trees and cutting dramatically through the mist. The camera on my phone doesn't do it justice. If I hadn't been on my way to an appointment, I would've pulled back into the driveway and gone back into the house for a real camera.  

My  theory that it's best to do the fiddly bits before you've been awake long enough to procrastinate held and I got "Spooky Lou's Quality Pre-Owned Brooms" done. There's still another sign on the building...and bicycle spokes (ick!)  so I'll need at least one more early morning sewing session. Or a good movie that doesn't require me to look up at the screen much.