.
ro·man·tic
adj.
Given to thoughts or feelings of romance;
imaginative but impractical;
tan·gle
v.
To mix together or intertwine;
n.
A confused, intertwined mass.
A jumbled or confused state or condition
My plan to take the kids to a different museum every month has gotten off to a slightly rocky start. Unless I can count Christmas Storybook Land, we missed December. I made a last minute effort to get the kids to an art gallery, but it was closed for the last week of the year and we didn't find that out until we'd slogged across the very muddy, very rainy park to the building.
Now we've had another slight change of plans. My husband told me about a deal that the Portland Attractions Marketing Alliance is offering. Members of any of the twelve participating attractions get free admission to a different one each month. The least expensive family pass is from Deepwood, which happens to be where my husband and I got married almost twenty-eight years ago....
So the two of us went and bought a membership and took a tour of the house together, which was gushy and romantic and wonderful and I'll take the boys back later.
January's admission is to the Oregon Zoo, so on Saturday we packed up the kids and took a road trip. It wasn't as rainy as the weather forecast had been predicting and we had a good time.
Some of the new exhibits let you get really close to the animals...
This is completely different from the zoo of my childhood memories. The exhibits are larger, which is a good thing, but there are fewer animals. I was kind of disappointed that there's no zebra. We pass one in a field on our way to the grocery store every couple of days, but it's only a fleeting glance and I was expecting the zoo to have one.
One thing I wish I'd realized years ago is that zoos aren't all the same. I'd always heard that Portland had a pretty good zoo, so when we traveled I didn't think of zoos as an option. Then one year we found out that the zoo in Denver had a giant anteater (he wasn't on display the last time we visited) and Komodo Dragons and the blind cave fish I was so fascinated by when I read about them in a Trixie Belden book as a little kid. The zoo in Albuquerque has Tasmanian devils and we're hoping to see those on an upcoming trip.
I'm going to do better in February. Our new Deepwood membership gives us admission to a bunch of other places and I still have all of our original plans. I won't be posting on the first of March to say that we missed another month.
I finally finished reading The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks, which took me absolutely forever to get through. I loved the book, but I haven't been getting many chunks of uninterrupted reading time lately. I'm glad I made it through this one without hearing any spoilers, so I'm not going to give you any details of the plot besides the cover copy I shared in my last book post. When the first big reveal came, it was a complete surprise and even after that I didn't see what else was coming. If you like domestic thrillers, I think you'll enjoy this one.
I've got a new shawl on the needles and I can't get over how much I'm loving the stitch pattern and the yarn and how they're working together. It's thick and squishy and quick to knit and I think it'll be really warm to snuggle up in. Basketweave is something I used to avoid because of the counting. I guess that made sense at one point, but now I can't imagine what I was thinking. This is lots of great texture for minimal effort.
Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copies by the publisher. All opinions are my own.
The window frame itself was easy, but oh my gosh those drapes! White and ecru and three different shades of pale grey... this is not the most exciting stitching there is.
But the tedious parts are what make those realistic folds in the fabric and what makes projects like this one work. Did you notice that I'm saving the dollhouse, the whole purpose for this project, until after I finish the white on white on almost white curtains? If I didn't do that, I'd stitch the fun parts and never finish the rest.
I've got yarn in my stash that was always intended for shawls. I've got yarn that was going to be sweaters but is now intended for shawls. I've got a Ravelry queue full of patterns and a shelf full of books and the occasional chills that come with taking blood thinners.
I've also got a few skeins of brand new shawl yarn that I bought at the end of December, but I figure maybe I can alternate between that and the stash dived stuff.
What I'm loving about this yarn is that most of it has stories. The Brown Sheep in the picture came from one of our family vacations when my husband drove us miles and miles out of our way so we could visit the factory store. The Bernat Frosting is yarn I bought at a knitting guild meeting after an elderly woman showed up hoping to sell some of her deceased sister's stash and was told that no one in the group needed yarn. (I caught up with her in the parking lot and gave her a ride home and made a tiny dent in the inherited yarn stash.)
Out in the sewing room, I've got green worsted weight that was left over from my daughter's Slytherin sweater and I think there's a bunch of ecru cotton that was going to be the Aran Weight Victorian Lace Shawl. It was there, unless I wound up using it for something else...
I haven't decided how I'm going to display this one yet, but it's going to be something fun and wild and appropriate for Halloween...and then I'll probably have to fight my oldest son for it.
Under the building, it was supposed to say "Mt Hood." The red letters from the canvas show through just a bit. I've played with the idea of spelling out something over it with embroidery floss...or I could put part of the frame over that part. There are lots of possibilities for making this work.
I don't know how long this little needlepoint kit sat in my stash, mostly because I don't remember buying it in the first place. If I'd gone through and decluttered with that strict "Are you going to actually use this?" mentality that so many people tell us to use, it would've been among the first things to go.
It only took me a few days to stitch up, but it was a lot of fun and I'm glad I have it...and working on it gave me the confidence to tackle a bigger needlepoint project that I've been intimidated by for years.
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.
I'd come up with a different name, but the shawl was for my daughter and when I handed it over she said that it had Hufflepuff colors, so I guess we'll go with that.
About the Yarn
The yarn is Loops and Threads Chameleon in the Creme Brulee colorway. It comes in huge, fluffy 429 yard skeins -- or did until it was discontinued about thirty-eight seconds after we found it at Michaels and my daughter hinted that it would make a nice shawl. It was also dirt cheap. I think I paid a sale price of four or five dollars.
When I cast on, I was following a completely different pattern and made it more than halfway through before I knit the wrong row from the lace chart and things went very wrong. This yarn is sticky and a pain to unravel. For your own sanity, try to pick out a project and stick with it. It's not too splitty to begin with, but after it's been unravelled once or twice, the two loosely spun plies get a little challenging.
If I had another skein to play with I'd definitely wind it into a ball before casting on. That big fluffy skein was pretty, but I spent a lot of time unwinding yarn to knit my next row. And I had a knot. Mine didn't mess up the self-striping sequence, but over on Ravelry there are reports of multiple knots in each skein.
Want to Knit This One for Yourself?
I didn't set out to create a pattern, so the setup rows I'm giving you don't match what I did on my shawl. (I followed someone else's instructions for the first dozen rows or so and then got an idea of my own...and by the time I realized how much I liked my own version the shawl was halfway done and I wasn't re-knitting it a third time just to get pictures that match the instructions.) The body of the shawl is the way I did mine and that's the part you need.
If you've knit a triangular shawl before, this will be easy. If you haven't, but know how to knit, it will still be easy. Just bear with me for my version of the setup rows.
The shawl starts with a garter stitch tab. I couldn't do a provisional cast on to save my own life, so my version isn't how everyone else does it. If you know how to do it, please do it that way. Or, in an absolute pinch, you could cast on stitches and place markers and go from there, but that's what I did on my shawl and I really wouldn't do it that way again. It makes the shaping wonky...as if anyone is going to look at the nape of your neck and critique your shawl.
After you do the set up, which is explained in the video, you'll have twelve stitches, divided by stitch markers into five sections.
Right Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, make stitch, knit to next marker, make stitch, slip marker, knit two center stitches, slip marker, make stitch, knit to next marker, make stitch, slip marker, knit two.
Wrong Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, knit to next marker, slip marker, knit two center stitches, slip marker, knit to next marker, slip marker, knit two.
Repeat these two rows five times, ending after a wrong side row.
If you cast on the way I did in the video, you'll have an odd number of stitches in the body of the shawl. Just increase one extra stitch in each body section on the last row and you'll have the even number of stitches you need for the lace.
Knit a lace band, then a seed stitch band, then a lace band, then a garter stitch band...and keep repeating that sequence, ending with a seed stitch or garter stitch band. Bind off loosely.
Lace Band (repeat these four rows twice)
Right Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, make stitch, **knit two together, yarn over** to next market, make stitch, slip marker, knit two center stitches, slip marker, make stitch, **knit two together, yarn over** to next marker, make stitch, slip marker, knit two.
Wrong Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, purl to next marker, slip marker, knit two center stitches , slip marker, purl to next marker, knit two.
Right Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, make stitch, **yarn over, ssk** to next marker, make stitch, slip marker, knit two center stitches, slip marker, make stitch, **yarn over, ssk** to next marker, make stitch, slip marker, knit two.
Wrong Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, purl to next marker, slip marker, knit two center stitches , slip marker, purl to next marker, knit two.
Seed Stitch Band (repeat these two rows twice)
Right Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, make stitch, **knit one, purl one ** to next marker, make stitch, slip marker, knit two center stitches, slip marker, make stitch, **knit one, purl one ** to next marker, make stitch, slip marker, knit two.
Wrong Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, **knit one, purl one ** to next marker, slip marker, knit two center stitches, slip marker, **knit one, purl one ** to next marker, slip marker, knit two.
Late nights and missed increases gave me problems with this band. Watch your stitching and make sure that you're knitting the purls and purling the knits to get the seed stitch.
Garter Stitch Band (repeat these two rows twice)
Right Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, make stitch, knit to next marker, make stitch, slip marker, knit two center stitches, slip marker, make stitch, knit to next marker, make stitch, slip marker, knit two.
Wrong Side -- Slip the first stitch as if to purl, knit the second stitch, slip marker, knit to next marker, slip marker, knit two center stitches, slip marker, knit to next marker, slip marker, knit two.
My youngest son turned twelve last week. When he was in the NICU, one of my online knitting friends sent us this tiny sweater. It came with instructions to alter it for a teddy bear after it was outgrown, but there was no way I was going to change anything about this perfect little knit.
It fit him for about thirty-seven seconds after he came home from the hospital and has been hanging on my sewing room wall ever since as a reminder of my thoughtful friend. I don't look back fondly on our NICU days, but this little sweater always makes me smile.
Babies grow fast. That's what we're all told. Make something they'll be able to wear as a toddler. Something that will fit them for years to come. Everyone else is going to give the parents to be tiny little things, so you shouldn't.
Every time I hear that advice, it bugs me. My daughter was full term and the not-so-little outfit her paternal grandmother sewed for her was miles to big. By the time it would have fit her, it would have been a completely inappropriate choice. Not all babies grow out of newborn sizes in the blink of an eye. And even if they do, what's wrong with having something like this little sweater that fit for an instant but can be cherished for years to come?
I've been spending lots of stitching time sorting through my floss for whichever shade I need. This project has a manageable number of colors, but there are lots of similar blues and browns and pinks. Hopefully winding them all onto bobbins and putting them in numerical order will help with that.
My progress came in fits and starts last week. I was busy with the quilt and the shawl, then I spent two days stitching as much as I possibly could, then there was some not-huge-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things stress that left me with a nasty tension headache that wouldn't go away.
My hope was to finish this quarter of the chart by the end of January. Whether I get in every last stitch or not, I'm close enough to be happy with my progress.
There was a sign for an estate sale and I had a few minutes more than I needed to get where I was going. The house was really new. My guess is that it was built in the 1980s at the absolute earliest, which didn't bode well. As far as estate sales go, it was absolutely minimalist. But they had all the tattered old quilts...which I somehow didn't get pictures of.
I love this vintage piece of crewel.
And I think I have the same kit up in my sewing room, or one that's very similar, including the bright blue background. Now I want to go dig around to see if I can find it.
Stamped cross-stitch piggies...
And a cross-stitched Last Supper. I was intrigued, but not tempted to bring it home and hang it on my wall.
This one is gonna haunt me. I've been on the lookout for one of these, but on that day I didn't have the time or the room in the back of the van. Or the teenager to load it for me. There will be another one, though, if we're patient.
With so many quilts and pieces of stitchery, there were almost no left over supplies. One partially finished Oregon Beavers needlepoint project, a couple of books, and a tiny box of nondescript fabric scraps. I'm guessing that whoever lived in the house wasn't the person who did the stitchery.
If I hadn't spent time in the NICU with my two youngest sons, I never would have imagined how much those little quilts and handknit hats could lift my spirits. So often, we make and donate quilts and knits and don't know what becomes of them. So I asked some members of an online parenting group if they had memories that I could share with you.
Angel Coleman, who blogs over at Purely Unorthodox, was kind enough to share her experiences with us.
Has your life ever had such a surprising turn of events that you weren't prepared for? Most people have. A few life events for myself, that was both a blessing and terrifying was when two of my children, my son, and daughter were born at 31 weeks of pregnancy. I had vaginal bleeding, placenta previa with both of them and I ended up delivering both via C-sections.
Salina was my first preemie. She was only 3lbs and 3 oz. Even still my little preemie was strong and had a hospital stay of 3 weeks.
With Cayden, he was born at 3lbs 13oz and did well almost directly after birth. My little fighter as his name suggests, had a 2-week stay.
I had them both at University Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, and I was blessed to have them there as the care was amazing and the set up of the hospital was baby friendly as well as family friendly. Well if you don't know preemie clothes are hard to come by. Salina was born in the spring so it wasn't cold anymore, but Cayden was born in November. Having a preemie baby can be hard as you are often unprepared. My babies were two months early and I hadn't even had my baby shower yet. I had friends and family, pitch in with clothes, and honestly, it all meant so much to me. One of the things that really warmed my heart was the little-knitted hats, that was were given to them.
I remember when I was in the hospital with Salina a friend and someone walked into our hospital room with a basket of clothes. They were knitted hats and booties! They told us we could take what we needed and that they were hand knitted items for our babies. They were so cute! I took a bright pink and white hat, with a pom pom and a pair of booties.
With Cayden, I remember walking into his hospital room one day and he had on a little hat. I asked the nurse where they had gotten it from. They told me about a program that made little hats for the babies in the NICU. I remembered the hat Salina had gotten, and I smiled. His hat was so cute! He had a tiny little head and they had a tiny hat for him. I went back to the family room and got a few more. They try to keep preemie babies very warm, and it was so cool to see a cute little warm hat on him, and it helps them stabilize their body temperature, which is an important factor, in preemie babies.
It's so awesome to think, that somewhere in Ohio, someone sat down and took the time to knit a hat for the little ones in that hospital. Several that my own children got to wear. I pray that God blesses that little deed, as it meant a lot to me and my children.
I have one hat that I kept, and it was Cayden's. I was going to donate it but thinking about this story, I will keep it to show, him, how tiny and little he was, and how it helped keep him warm, so he could eventually go home! It really is the little things that can help someone. Thank you for the little things.
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.
I've been trying to finish A Perilous Undertaking, the second of Deanna Raybourn's Veronica Speedwell mystery series, before the third book comes out. The biggest part of my problem is that I can't read paper books in the dark before falling asleep, and there's been too much going on in the house for much daytime reading lately. But I love everything I've read so far.
In the dark, I've been reading The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks. The back cover copy is intriguing --
When you read this book, you will make many assumptions. You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife. You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love. You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle. Assume nothing. Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage - and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love. Read between the lies.
I'm a third of the way through and I don't know where this is going to wind up. My one wild guess can't possibly be right and I'm trying to avoid spoilers and reviews until I'm done reading it myself.
What I did read in only a couple of sittings was A View to a Chill by Larissa Reinhart. I've already told you how much I love the characters Cherry Tucker and Maizie Albright and this mystery brings the two of them together in the same book. Everything I love about both series is here. The chapters alternate between Cherry and Maizie but it's always immediately obvious which of them is telling that part of the story because their personalities are so distinct. If you've read either of the two series, I highly recommend this one.
Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copy of The Wife Between Us by the publisher. A Perilous Undertaking is from the library. I was given a copy of A View to a Chill by the author. All opinions are my own.
Sometimes, probably too often, I take wild leaps of faith when it comes to my quilting. I found this gorgeous piece of yardage in the fabric stash at quilt group and knew I wanted to use it for a backing.
That meant finding fabric for a top. I already knew that I wanted to do an Irish Chain with some simple applique...and there was a lot of blue available. The options for a light background were pretty limited. (Dar suggested finding something in my own stash, but I was spending the day with the quilting group and needed something then and there.
I wound up using almost every last scrap of that light print, but I got all of the blocks I need. At the absolute end, I realized that I could have pieced some of the little 3" squares, but it didn't get that desperate.
Now it's time to cut the applique for the light blocks. I've got more than enough dark blue...I think!
A saner quilter might have actually measured the fabric and done the math before cutting, but I don't work that way.
I couldn't tell you for sure where I got this yarn. My best guess would be Woodland Woolworks because I used to love their clearance room and that's where almost all of the Regia I've owned came from. What I know for sure is it's been in my stash for a loooong time and this definitely qualifies as a Stashdive project.
If I'd known how this stuff would look when it was knit up, I would've cast on MUCH sooner.
Last week's stitching time got spent finishing my daughter's shawl and hand-stitching the binding down on the scrappy quilt with the blue sashing. When I finally sat down with my project on Sunday morning, I had a hard time putting it down again.
Another stripe of wallpaper is done, and the left edge of the trunk lid, and a big chunk of the drapes, which you can't really see because it's all white and ecru and off-white... but I can see myself meeting my self-imposed goal for the month and that's making me really happy.
And that mistake I was afraid I made while I was at my stitching group earlier this month? It looks like I was worried about nothing because the lid of my trunk seems to be lining up just fine.
The backing fabric I want to use is 44" wide and I need an odd number of blocks to make the top symmetrical...So how do I size the squares to make the nine-patch blocks so that will all work?
I got that part all figured out and now the question is whether or not I have enough of the light background fabric to make this quilt I'm picturing in my head actually happen. The other question would be why I'm starting a brand new project when I have so many other quilts in the works, but I can answer that. (It's not going to stay my quilt.)
Since I was a little girl, I've wanted to own a spinning wheel and a butter churn. As much as I make fun of that tacky Bicentennial stuff we keep stumbling across, I guess it left a lasting impression on my early childhood. Or I read the Little House on the Prairie books a few too many times.
I got my spinning wheel years ago and I got my butter churn at the thrift shop earlier this week. Actually, it's our third churn, but who's counting? The first one is just a crock, without the lid or plunger. The second one, which is technically my husband's, is the glass kind with paddles and a metal crank.
This is the kind I've been dreaming of...
And, yes, I do see that brand new screw and the plywood on the plunger. And, no, I didn't notice that until I took the pictures. When I'm buying something that I think is old, I rarely spend enough money that it matters whether I'm right or wrong.
I'm fairly convinced that the crock itself is old. For the twelve bucks I spent -- did I mention that the butter churn of my dreams had a green tag and was 75% off? -- it doesn't matter if its a reproduction. I just want something neat looking to sit next to our big old fireplace. I could have spent a lot more for a brand new piece of decor that would look dated in a few months or years.
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.
In March of last year, a gal from the quilting group handed me a stack of 4" squares that someone had cut and asked if I wanted to try to do something with them. Her suggestion was that I sew them all together the way they were.
Anyone who's ever read my blog knows that isn't how I do things. I cut the 4" squares down to 2" squares....then assembled them into 3 1/2" four-patch blocks, then put those together into 12" blocks and added some sashing...
Then it sat because I didn't have a way to quilt it at the house and didn't want to turn it in to have someone else quilt it and I couldn't work up the motivation to stitch in the ditch.
Remember that shawl I showed you last week? It was half done at that point.
Now it's a completely different shawl.
Before that happened, I was done with the stockinette section and half a repeat into the lace. Then something happened. I don't know if I knit the wrong row from the chart or just miscounted, but something went very very wrong and I couldn't make it right again. I spent a couple of rows trying to adjust my mistakes, then unravelled the whole thing.
A safety line after the stockinette portion would have saved me from that, but I don't use the technique as often as I probably should, especially not on patterns that have been described as "perfect to memorize and knit while you're watching Netflix." The pattern was fine. Nothing about it was challenging. I just had a very off night.
There was no way I was going to knit my way through all of that stockinette again, hoping I didn't make the same mistake twice. I found another pattern I liked and cast on for that one. A few rows in, I changed my mind and decided to do my own thing, alternating bands of very simple lace with bands of garter stitch and seed stitch.
I liked the first attempt, before things went wrong. I seriously love this second attempt! Doesn't the texture on the right look better?
This is the second time in the past month that I've ripped out a project after spending several days on it. A few years back, I never would've done that. The failed project would have sat in my knitting bag until the end of time.
I've been up in my sewing room playing "What is this and why do I own it?" Sometimes I find bundles of vintage pillowcases that I've never seen before. Or yarn or fabric.
This little needlepoint kit has been plaguing me for years. I don't ski. I've never been to Timberline Lodge. So why did I pick this up? (There's a hazy half-memory of a thrift shop in the early days of my cross-stitching passion.) Why have I held on to it for so long? I was never going to stitch it.
A while back, I saw it again in the bottom of an old sewing basket and told myself that it should really go in the donation box.
It wasn't until the middle of the night that I made the connection. The Timberline Lodge is the Overlook Hotel. Not my favorite incarnation of the Overlook, but haunted hotel needlepoint can't be a bad thing. I had to wait until morning to go up and make sure it was the right ski lodge.
And now I'm happily stitching away on The Overlook Hotel.
It's been a long time since I did any freemotion quilting at all. The last thing I did on Mom's machine was the Nancy Drew quilt. I do like the longarm, especially the part where I don't have to crawl around on the floor and pin baste, but I always got better results on my Janome. I've usually stuck with my own machine, except for projects that were too big to comfortably handle on my own machine.
Hopefully this is the first of many quilts I'll get done this year, either by driving up to use Mom's machine, or by getting the Janome fixed, or switching to another of my own machines. Not quilting at all isn't working for me.
These early days of 2018 are off to a good start. I've got lots of goals for the year, which include making better use of my time and maybe jumping from project to project a little less. I've been doing a lot of that over the past couple of years. Life gets hectic, then when I get some free time I start something new. Which isn't a bad thing, I just need to finish more of the big quilting projects.
Just before New Year's Day, I lost my planner. You know -- the one that's got the goals and UFO lists and everything else in it...something that I really kind of need right now. I've searched for it and waited for it to turn up, both with no luck.
I guess this settles my debate whether to start a new planner or to use the other one until it's filled up, but I really could use those lists that I was making during the last days of December.
On the bright side, the new one has a pretty pink cover and I've got a pen in the same color that I'm using for page headers.
Do you keep a planner? Do you have any tips for keeping track of your planner?
These are the most exciting projects, but there were some others that aren't as photogenic. If you want to see all of it, and me looking like a deer in the headlights while I'm sorting through the box, there's a video.
I found this weeks ago, when I was digging around for the kits and then didn't go through it until now because I thought it would be good for a video and blog post. There's stuff here that confuses the heck out of me. Please keep in mind that I packed it all away while we were moving down to this house, when I had an eight year old, a five year old, a six month old and was just pregnant with the new baby....which all culminated in a month of hospital bedrest, both houses being broken into, and, a bit later, kidney surgery for my youngest. I'm proud of myself for remembering my own name after all of that!
I knew I'd left projects unfinished. There are a few that aren't here with the rest. I'd messed up on them, so it's possible that they got tossed back then.
I remember starting Woodland Walk, the sampler in the upper right hand corner. That's actually the last project I was working on and everything was going well with it.
Now that I see it again, I remember working on Stonehearth Hutch. It's a shock to see how much progress I'd made before setting it aside. It seems like something went wrong with stitch placement, but there's got to be a way to salvage that last corner.
Sanctuary is a pleasant surprise. When I was looking for the kits, I knew I had that one (which it turns out wasn't a kit after all.) I didn't know that I'd started it or made so much progress.
The little garden scene in the lower right hand corner is a mystery. It's on my favorite fabric. I've got the pattern and all of the floss. No one else around here would have stitched it, but I don't think it was my style even then... So I'm confused. All of the back-stitching (and there's a lot of that) is done on the finished part.
Considering how much stitching I'd been doing at the time, this isn't bad at all. I'll finish all four of these projects, and they look like they can be finished...depending on what problems I find when I take a closer look at Stonehearth Hutch. There's also a lot of gridded fabric for projects I didn't start, and a lot of stuff I had kitted up, but considering how much the price of supplies has risen, I'm counting that as a win.
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.
If I'd really pushed myself, I could have had these bound off before the clock struck midnight on the thirty-first. But there were other things I wanted to be doing with that time and these aren't part of a group project or challenge. They count for 2017 because that's when I did all but a couple of inches of the knitting.
I'm starting 2018 with what's pretty much a clean slate. There are unfinished quilts and needlework projects, but they've been unfinished for so long that they're deeply within UFO territory. It's the projects that just sort of halfway straddle the years that I can never figure out how to classify.
One of the plans for this year was to take the yarn I'd stashed for sweaters that will never be and knit some of it up into shawls. I'm wearing the Snoqualmie Wrap a lot these days and loving how nice and warm it is.
While I was searching Ravelry for patterns I could use with my Caron Cakes, I stumbled across a group with the goal of knitting at least twelve shawls a year. I can do that, especially if I'm knitting with worsted and bulky weight acrylic from my stash.
Then I went to Michaels with my daughter and she pointed out that this 439 yard skein would make a pretty shawl. So I bought it with the intention of making that shawl for her...because any excuse for buying cheap yarn...and then, because all of the yarn was forty percent off, I bought a couple of other pretty skeins to make shawls for myself. Four shawls from new yarn and eight from older stash...that'll work!
It took me a few pages to get into the latest Passport to Peril mystery because the book opens with an explanation of what bloggers are and why a group of them is participating in Emily's latest tour. Once that bit is out of the way, the book picks up speed and is the usual entertaining, disastrous adventure. Emily and her usual group of clients are always fun to read about. Shortly after the group checks into the Stand and Deliver Inn, one of the owners dies and the other is arrested for his murder, which leaves Emily and her friends struggling to keep the inn going and solve the murder...and keep the bloggers happy so that their online reviews don't destroy Emily's business.
Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copies by the publisher. All opinions are my own.
I've spent the past week convincing myself that it would be cheating to call Christmas Storybook Land our museum trip of the month for December. I could twist the rules enough to allow it, or just give myself permission to take the month off because lots of things don't happen during the holidays.
On Friday, I drove us up to the Bush Barn Art Center. It's one of the options that I was saving for a month when I was short of time and I picked that one because, unlike the museums which don't change, there will be different art in a few months. Turns out they're closed from Christmas until the first of the year, so we didn't get to see any art. We'll go next week when they're open.
What do you do when you can't look at art? Go to thrift shops, of course...
I always look through the vintage books because sometimes there are Nancy Drews hiding there. One of my sons fell in love with this old book, which someone had "repaired" by gluing upholstery fabric over what was left of the original cover.
Want to guess what the book inside is?
I was sure it was going to be a bible, but instead of that it's a hundred year old book about adolescent mental health with red paint (not blood, I'm sure) staining the title page. Now I'm feeling guilty about not giving in and buying it for him, but this thing is not worth three bucks, no matter how cool he thought it was.
We also saw the brightest, most ruffly crochet bunny ever. Someone worked hard on that!
I dug through all of the craft stuff at two different stores and found two kits worth falling in love with. Realistically, I'd probably never stitch the hummingbirds and I think someone else had already started it, so that one was easy to leave behind. That mill pond, though....I really wanted that one. And I would have bought it if there'd been more to the kit than just the outside packaging and some leftover yarn.
Who prices these things? That was the same shop where I found the really nice kits on Halloween for ninety-nine cents each. Today, kits that didn't contain enough to qualify as a kit were three dollars each.
A needlepoint kit that's missing the canvas is worth even less than an old psychology book covered in upholstery fabric, right?
I am going to get my Janome fixed and working properly Either that, or I'm going to set up one of the vintage machines and learn to use it. Because this is getting ridiculous.
It's been a year since I was able to free motion quilt on my machine. I've tried every trick I know and asked for help and nothing fixed the problem. Every time I sit down to sew, I wind up fighting the machine. Do you think that's why I've done so little sewing in 2017? The knitting and cross stitch are fun and tempting, but I like sewing too.
Last week, I made a thing and wrote a post, then I quickly deleted the post because my finished project was sad and miserable. (It did wind up on Bloglovin and apparently when you hit publish too soon it's there and stays there.)
The plan was to make a thrifted piece of needlepoint into a simple zippered notions bag. There's absolutely no reason why that shouldn't have worked.
The Janome disagreed. I swore at it and it beeped at me and came unplugged four separate times and the whole thing culminated in a broken needle.
This would have been such a cute little bag if the layers hadn't kept shifting and the machine hadn't kept expressing its opinion. I love the idea of what this should have been enough that I'll take it apart and redo it.
