Quilting has taught me valuable skills!

Last night, Bill said it would save him a whole bunch of time if I cut the shingles for the top edge of the roof. After he's spent the past I don't know how many days up on the roof from the time he got out of bed until it got to dark to work, I wasn't going to complain that I didn't want to do it.

But I sure wasn't looking forward to the job. At the very least, I was afraid it'd be hard on my hands, which are already twinging a bit lately. I was very good last night and put down the Cobblestone Pullover at the first little ache.

Turns out, cutting shingles into thirds is an awful lot like cutting quilt squares. Except the shingles are already slit halfway, so there's no measuring. And the cuts don't have to be anywhere near as straight to be good enough. And I think it's faster, maybe because you don't have to iron anything first...

I was adding new yarn to my Ravelry stash earlier and having trouble with some of the links, so I went looking through the forums to see if it was my computer or a Ravelry thing and stumbled across a discussion about the massive yarn stash.

What is with some of these people? What makes them think they have the right to decide how big a complete stranger's stash should be? Why would they even care how much yarn a stranger has, let alone make public statements about what she should or shouldn't do with it?

That's why I was hesitant to put my stash information on Ravelry. I wasn't sure I dared to admit how much yarn I've got.

I've added a lot more this month. There was the Elann order and the cheap acrylic sale at Michaels. And then while my house was at its most chaotic yesterday, Dad called from his cell phone to tell me that Mom wanted to know if I knew about a yarn called "Paintbox" and if it was worth a dollar a skein. She was at a yard sale buying quilt fabric and the lady had some yarn. We had half a conversation, I hung up and got things settled, then called back to see if she'd bought me the yarn and what exactly it was.

Six skeins of Knit One Crochet Too Paintbox in different colors. And the lady had some other stuff, along with a bunch of Homespun. Dad turned the car around and drove back to get me two matching skeins of Homespun I've been after for a project. Have I mentioned what a wonderful enabler he is? The lady wound up selling them all of her yarn for fifty cents a skein, so along with the Paintbox, I wound up with four skeins of Berroco Suede in different colors, two skeins of Softwist, and five skeins of Homespun.

I have no clue what I'm going to make with it. And that doesn't bug me one bit.

Why haven't I had a knitting bag lately?

Once upon a time, my knitting projects were ready to go. I could pick up a bag on the way out the door. During that eternity in the hospital a couple of years ago, I could call home and tell my oldest exactly where to find the yarn and patterns I wanted her to bring me.

Then, somehow, the knitting got loose. It literally escaped. Projects -- big, half finished projects -- are missing. I have no stitch markers, even though I know I've bought at least three packs of jump rings so far this year. I even managed to lose track of the big three ring binder with my patterns in it. The past four month or so have been hectic, but not enough to explain that. How could I forget the whole concept of knitting bags?

Last night, it finally hit me that instead of carrying the Hemlock Ring into the dining room and hiding it on top of my sewing machine, I could put it in a bag, the one that even says "Knitting" on the front. Along with the Cobblestone Pullover. And their patterns. I'll still have to hide the bag, but at least things will be together.



As for other projects, we're still working on the roof. That means Bill works on the roof while I stay in the house with the kids and listen for him to bang for my attention, then find whatever it is that he needs and hand it through from the attic.

What kind of person uses flattened beer cans instead of flashing? (Probably the same jerk who "forgots" to load up the cat when they moved and then told us to just take her to the pound if she got in our way.) If he'd done the roof right, we wouldn't be losing the wonderful old tongue and groove boards that give the attic so much character.

We knew the house was a fixer-upper with hidden problems, but someone went way out of his way to hide a few of them.

And, just to put everyone's minds at ease, BooBoo still has the run of the place and although she seems older than dirt and I expect her to keel over any day, she's doing just fine. We're saving as much of the tongue and groove as we can in hopes of keeping the other half of the attic intact, and it's my new mission in life to make sure that nothing that could be of use to anyone goes on the burn pile.

Cheap acrylic!

I think I might've mentioned that cheap acrylic makes my heart go pitty-pat. I've developed some standards (at least when it comes to overpriced estate sale stuff), but Simply Soft for two bucks a skein? I've been dancing around the house with anticipation since I saw the Michaels flyer Sunday. And wishing there was one just a bit closer to home.

The new Michaels, which is even farther from home and less convenient than the one they closed down, but does have a lot more yarn, is next to the new Lowes...Bill's using a week of vacation to reroof the house...

So he sat in the van with the kids while I did some quick stash enhancement and then the whole family shopped for shingles and nails and roofing felt and I don't know what all else.

I got a bunch of the Simply Soft and some Bernat Satin Sport, which I hadn't seen before, and some wool to make myself cabled mittens. I'm sooo in the mood to knit sweaters right now, as soon as I finish the Hemlock Ring.

I'm in love with the Hemlock Ring Blanket

Friday night, more out of a sense of "you bought the yarn so now you're committed" than real desire, I cast on for the Hemlock Ring Blanket. Except for a rocky moment when I read the instructions for the fourteenth round and almost gave up then and there, this thing has been so much fun I can barely stand it!



I never, ever, thought I'd want to knit a wool blanket, but reading the post about it at Brooklyn Tweed convinced me that not only did I have to knit a Hemlock Ring for myself, I had to knit it in yarn I could actually block.

The wonders never cease...

I've been destroying perfectly good batik.

After that cute little paper pieced tree, I went on a hunt for more patterns. Didn't find the birdhouses I was looking for, which are in a magazine that's gone missing along with most of the other quilting magazines I'd collected before we moved here, but I did find some really nifty ones in a back issue of Miniature Quilts.

And yesterday, I picked up a couple of magazines at the library and found three more quilts I can't live without, two of them paper pieced.

So it seemed like a good time to actually do some more paper piecing. I'm glad the first attempt went so well, because if it was anything like yesterday, there wouldn't have been a second try.



I'm having problems here. But I'm going to keep muddling through, because maybe by the time I'm done I'll have figured out how to make this work.



Mom called a week or so ago to ask if I wanted the wooden scissors holder she'd painted years ago for my Grandma Marr. It was, she warned me, really ugly. I remembered how she used to have a wooden holder for her good fabric scissors hanging behind her sewing machine, thought how useful it would be to have one of my own, and asked if she'd mind if I decoupaged it or something.

We need to revise our definition of "ugly." The hot pink scissors are ugly. The green wooden scissors holder that blends so nicely into my dining room wallpaper is not.

Picovolis!

At six am this morning, I was binding off my Picovoli. I got up and out of bed at six to finish it. As opposed to staying up until six, which I'm much much more likely to do.

After weeks of knitting and knitting and getting nowhere and hoping that my modified shaping was going to work, it was suddenly three inches from done. Then two inches, then ready to cast off, and now I'm wearing it.

It fits much better than the first one -- yay for negative ease! And covers my bra better, probably because it's snugger and because I paid attention to the directions for casting on the underarm this time.

I never did post a picture of the first one...



I really did like it until I finished the second one. Now I'm not so sure. And I'm trying not to be irked because my fingers slipped and I lost the whole explanation of why I don't like it quite so much.

My whole train of thought has derailed, so I'll write about Mindy's dishcloths and my Mystery Stole tomorrow. And hopefully have some new yarn to gush about if that box from Elann gets here!

Cobblestones and Crocodiles

After saving the new issue of Interweave Knits for vacation reading, then not having time to look at more than two or three pages while we were actually gone, I finally got a chance to settle in and go through the whole thing while I was sitting on the back porch Saturday night waiting for an advice nurse to come on the line. We think I got bitten by a brown recluse, at least that's what the bite looks like. What is it with me and these creepy crawlies?! Snakes in my knitting, wasps in my t-shirt, and now things that aren't my children are biting me...

At least it got me time to read my magazine. I still don't like the new layout, mostly because it makes it hard to flip through it in the magazine aisle and decide if there are any patterns I can't live without. If I wasn't subscribing these days, I might not have bought this one. Which would be a shame, cause I would've missed the Cobblestone Pullover, which I'm trying to resize for Heath. And wouldn't have seen the ad for the Alligator Scarf.

We're home from the trip

We've spent the past week driving from Oregon to Salt Lake City, to Colorado, to Albuquerque, then up along the Extraterrestrial Highway in Nevada to get back home. I'm too exhausted to remember most of what we did, but I know there was a mine tour, hiking past petroglyphs, and a thrilling ten minute trip to Hobby Lobby.

The van's unloaded, the laundry is running, and I've got about a million things I want to start working on as soon as I get a few minutes to myself.

First, here's my Show and Tell Friday post while it's actually still Friday...




Trixie Belden's Mystery in Arizona introduced me to the idea of sugar skulls when I was younger than Alex is now. I don't think the book described them in great detail or really explained the Dia de los Muertos, but I remember wanting one of those skulls.




I grew up and forgot about them, and then I found Pandora's Button Box and saw her embroidered skull dollys and fell in love with the idea all over again. I found some great candy skull fabric on one of our trips up to Fabric Depot, which made my mom wonder whether I'd lost my mind.

And while we were wandering through the shops in Albuquerque earlier this week, I saw a trio of little skulls sparkling in a display case. I expected Bill to roll his eyes when I asked the lady if they were real sugar and how much they were. Just out of curiousity, because I don't have any real need for a sugar skull, and our howling pack of children make displaying fragile things a risky idea.

I wasn't really meaning to buy one, not until Bill told me to get one if I wanted it. So now I have a sparkly sugar skull on the high shelf in my sewing room, where no one but me will see it. That makes me happy.

And I'm freshly inspired to figure out where I put that fabric so I can make myself a tote bag.

The socks and bonnet are done, just in time to get them to someone who can get them to someone who will be seeing the parents soon. I don't love the bonnet as much as I'd hoped, but the socks are awfully cute.

As much as I love toe-up socks, I couldn't get these to work that way. I tried following the pattern as written, I tried doing it the way I usually do my toe-up socks, then I decided to make things easy on myself and just start at the cuffs. After that they worked up quickly, even though it's been a frighteningly long time since I did a short row heel and I couldn't quite remember how it's done. Right or wrong, they've got heels. I'm hoping to finish the second toe tonight.

I've got this skein of pink yarn that surfaced first while I was digging through my stash to list it all in Ravelry inventory, then again yesterday after I found this neat lace scarf pattern.

I owe my buddy a pink scarf. Because the pink scarf I didn't knit her for Christmas of 2005 may have saved my littlest baby's life. I'd planned to knit her a brown lace scarf. I had the pattern and yarn all picked out, then she showed up at karate all happy about a girly scarf she'd just bought.

It took me until the next day to decide that her Christmas scarf had to be pink, that I didn't have the right yarn, and that I couldn't justify driving 100 miles round trip to get the stuff I wanted. But I'd been feeling a little icky, it was Friday, and I could justify going to the OB just to make sure I was fine. And stop at Craft Warehouse on the way home.

I wasn't fine. I was in labor at 29 weeks and had dilated to three centimeters without feeling a single contraction. Go straight to the hospital, do not pass go, do not stop and buy the pink yarn that was the purpose of the whole trip...

It all turned out much much better than it would have if I hadn't gone to the doctor to justify a trip to buy yarn.

Then today at church I found out that a couple just had their first baby a month early. She's in the NICU, won't nurse, and although I'm not sure I've ever heard of anyone knitting a prayer bonnet and socks, I'm feeling an awfully strong urge to make something pink and lacy.

I've got a little feather and fan blanket that never made it to the baby it was knit for, and I want to make this set. And of course the only pink dk weight stuff in my stash is that same skein I was going to use for my buddy's scarf.

That's okay. I'll order some pink wool for Janet's scarf later. There's plenty of time before Christmas.

I paper pieced! Thursday, while the littlest guy was napping, I found the magazine with the article in it, moved all of the yarn I'd piled on the sewing machine, and experimented a bit. And it worked!

I've checked out a dozen or so books on paper piecing from the library. I actually sat down one night a couple of years ago and tried to do it, with disastrous results. Since then, I've stumbled across instructions that made sense, but I've never had the right book checked out from the library on the same day as I've had time to play around with it.

The pattern for the tree, and the instructions that made sense, are in the Spring 1993 issue of Quick and Easy Quilting. The whole block is supposed to be a dozen little trees surrounding a house, but I'm not anywhere near crazy about the tree to make eleven more of them.

I've got another magazine with a pattern for a paper pieced schoolhouse block...and one with patterns for a paper pieced village...and somewhere, there's one with bird houses...

I'm going up to the sewing room to see what else I can find.

The sun is shining, the kids are playing, Bill is out shopping for porch windows, and my Luna Moth Shawl is all spread out and pinned to the bed in the sewing room.

Life is pretty good!



Pattern - Luna Moth Shawl
Yarn - Elann Callista (copper, 4 1/2 skeins)
Needles - old nylon circular, size 8

I can't wait to see how the shawl looks once I unpin it. The yarn was gorgeous and the shawl had such a great texture and drape when I was knitting with it that I want to be wearing it right now.

And I want to order some more Callista to make a top with. But first I'm going to use my leftovers to knit up a swatch and wash it and all of that stuff that some people say knitters are supposed to do.

No Picovoli pictures today because it seems to be misisng. I'm sure that wherever it is, it's safe and sound and I'm not going to panic. Yet.

Oh, and --

Rachel at Yarn Over is having an anniversary contest and giving away some gorgeous stitch markers.

The Majestic Mountains Stole is making my heart go pitty pat. Now I'm on a yarn hunt...

I've always envied those knitters who have their entire stash entered into a spreadsheet and can tell exactly how many grams or yards they've got. I don't know WHY I want to know exactly how much yarn there is in the sewing room, but I do. Sometimes. And now I've got a list of almost every single skein of yarn I own.

I had doubts about entering all of it into Ravelry. This dial up connection is so painfully slow I didn't even think it would be possible. I wasn't sure I wanted to admit to the world just how much cheap acrylic I've accumulated.

But I started entering the "good" yarn and that went so painlessly, I decided to add all of the yarn I'd bought on purpose. And now I've entered absolutely everything that has a ball band, or that I can identify without one.

This is fun!

I didn't make it online to post my show and tell on Friday, but I can't wait another week to share these!



I love old children's books, especially the series. The Bobbsey Twins was never one of my favorites, but when you find two copies this old for a quarter each, you don't get picky because they're not Nancy Drew.

The inside cover of one says

Stevenson Hall
1930

Reading Room
Small Girls



I'd love to know how old those small girls were and what else they had in their reading room. Did the boys have their own room? Or were there no boys at Stevenson Hall?

We had playgroup in the woods on Monday and I took Picovoli since I always seem to wind up sitting somewhere away from the other moms so I can watch my littlest guys. They sat on the sandbar in the middle of the little stream, throwing rocks into the puddles of water and I was stretched out on a quilt in a patch of shade.

Then one of the older boys startled a snake, which raced across the quite and right under my knitting bag. I suppose I should be glad it didn't go into the bag, which was lying on its side.

What's a knitter supposed to do if a snake crawls in with her knitting? Has it ever happened?

My wonderful daughter caught the itty bitty snake and let it go on the other side of the stream. And I got Picovoli finished this morning, but can't wear it until it has a bath to get rid of the smoky smell that it picked up while I was knitting by the campfire.

And I've got almost all of my yarn stash entered into Ravelry -- yippee!

I'm getting more and more antsy! I was really really really hoping my Ravelry invite would be here when I got a chance to check email tonight. I even rented the kids a movie with a ton of bonus features and games. But it looks like I'll get to watch Ice Age The Meltdown with them -- there are still 29 people ahead of me.

Maybe tomorrow?

For now, I've printed a new-to-me pattern for a lace scarf and dug out some yarn to use. And I've got to put the new Picovoli on some longer needles to make sure that I really did get the math right before I get much more of it knit. I should finish the old Picovoli. And work on some dishcloths for Mindy's housewarming present.

Those Bernat Handicrafter Cotton colors that don't seem to exist would be great with her color scheme. but since I can't find those, I've found some stuff in my stash which will work well enough.




And I'm suddenly overcome with the urge to knit Neapolitan ice cream pink cloths for my own kitchen. There's a bit of logic here - I couldn't afford the pretty pink and brown quilt kit at Craft Warehouse and Michael's had Sugar N Cream on sale in similar colors.

But when we bought this house, I couldn't rest until we painted over the pink kitchen cabinets. And now I'm knitting pink stuff for it. And getting excited over cheap vintage dishtowels. I don't care how many calories are in each hard to identify shape, but it does go with my pink and brown yarn.

-- scroll down for my Show and Tell Friday post --

I've been having problems.

Tuesday night, I sat down to work on my mystery stole, planning to do just a few rows before I cast on for something else. I made a mistake. I recounted stitches five or six times, looking straight AT the huge glaring mistake the entire time, before deciding to cheat just a bit so things would line up. A row and a half later, I figured out what I'd done and had to tink back. But something went wrong with the tinking and I wound up taking the whole thing off of the needles and ripping back rows until I hit a point where I knew everything was okay. Then I had to figure out which row I'd landed on and do the next few rows to be sure that I really had fixed things and could safely go on from there.

I packed away the stole before anything else could happen to it and spent the next hour trying to start the Sonata Crest of the Wave top before finally figuring out that the pattern, although it doesn't exactly say so, must want me to do my increases in the lace pattern and that's one of the things I absolutely can not do. So that project is gone now.

Pulled out the Honeymoon Cami, which I've been avoiding because I'd taken off the needle tips for anther project and stopped in the middle of the increases. You won't believe it -- I actually wrote down which needles I'd been using and which row I stopped on! But I tried it on and decided that, at my current weight, I've got better plans for this yarn. Never mind that the thing was almost finished except for the neck and arm shaping....

It must've been about midnight by the time I pulled out the Denim Style and the Picovoli pattern and started my gauge swatch. It was definitely 1:30am by the time I threw up my hands and admitted defeat. And it was two days later by the time I finally got the adjusted numbers right and made it through the first few rows.

This is ridiculous! I should be able to convert a pattern from one gauge to another without quite this much drama, even if I can't find the calculator.

It's Show and Tell Friday!



Believe it or not, this fella isn't a thrift store find. As far back as I can remember, he hung over the massive wooden stereo in my grandparents' living room. I never thought much about him until the family was clearing out the house after they died. Now, though, I'd love to ask Grandma what the story behind this thing is. Did she like him? Was it just that he went so well with the blood red shag carpet?

I wonder if she'd have an answer. I don't know why I snagged him from the garage sale pile and have dragged him from house to house over the past decade. He's never hung on a wall, because my husband hates him.

But he's neat.

As much time as I saw this thing over the years, I never even noticed the shadowy figures in the background until I got him home.



It hit me while I was taking the pictures for this post that I really want to make a blue and gold applique tiki quilt. With embroidered figures in the background.

I'm linking up to Woman in Real Life