Fischernetze

I was looking for another challenging pair of socks to knit. Fischernetze didn't turn out to be complicated at all, not once I got the stitch pattern established and dug out my magnetic chart holder. Once in a while there's a cable to cross. Every other row, there are a couple of k2togethers and yarn overs. The rest is knit the knit stitches and purl the purl stitches.

But doesn't it look a lot harder than that?

The pattern isn't a full pattern. Charts are provided for two different sizes and you're left to your own devices for the heels and toes. That's fine by me, since I usually wind up doing my own thing anyway. I started toe up with the medium size and then added stitches to the back after turning the heel. In hindsight, they'd fit better if I'd added  purl stitches in the front, too. Now that it's done, I can see how I could have made that happen without interrupting the stitch pattern. I did remember to center the pattern on the top of the foot, which I've forgotten before, proof that I'm getting better at this.

Lipstick Holders & Old Clothes

Ever since I posted about that monogrammed thing of Grandma's that I'm sure isn't a lipstick holder, I've had lipstick holders on the brain. You just don't see them that often any more. Unless you go to the estate sale we were at last weekend. 

Then you see five of them. 

All five lipstick holders and the vanity tray for three bucks. The mirror has a crack, but for fifty cents we happily took it. They went to Teenage Daughter, who actually wear lipstick. If she gets bored with them (which I'm not expecting), I've got dibs.

The other interesting find of the day, which did not come home with us, was this --

I've never seen anything like it. It was hanging in a closet and Teenage Daughter pointed it out because of that lace collar, but upon closer examination, it got even odder. That fabric collar is heavily stuffed with something and reminds me of the fabric wrapped clothesline bowls people make. It's got leg of mutton sleeves and lots of boning. And it was so tiny. And old. And stained.

I think it's all hand-stitched, but when I was trying to get a good look at the seams a bug crawled out of the lining and I beat a quick retreat for the car.

This post is linked to Ivy and Elephants, Share Your Cup, Thrifter Share

Le Manoir du Diable

Originally, I was going to use a solid grey yarn for these socks (the pattern is Le Manoir du Diable ) but then I remembered how well that Patons Stretch showed off the texture on my Fischernetze socks and decided to use up some more of that yarn. I followed my own advice and searched Ravelry for projects using the same yarn.

The yarn is too dark to show off the neat details of the cuff. But with the cuff done, the rest of the sock is just ribbing...and I'm having fun knitting it...and I hate turning back mid-project. So I guess I'll keep going.




It was quite a weekend for Sarah Winston. Her latest project, the largest garage sale in New England, was a big success, but she's more concerned with the mysterious fires, a stolen painting, and the body found in her friend's art studio. The Longest Yard Sale is the second garage sale mystery by Sherry Harris. There was a little more about garage sales and thrift stores in this than in the first book and a little less about life on and around a military base. The mystery was interesting, but what really had me guessing was how Sarah could fit so many pieces of furniture in the back of her Suburban!

From the description, Little Girls by Ronald Malfi sounded like a book I'd enjoy. After her father's death, Laurie returns to her childhood home with her husband and ten-year-old daughter, planning to get his affairs in order and return home as soon as possible. The old house is creepy and the maid and her brother are even creepier. I halfway expected the two of them to lock Laurie and her family in when they left for the night. It took time for the plot to get moving and, once things did start to happen it was a little much for me. I love horror novels and I read lots of them, but this... I can't explain exactly what it was, but the book gave me a bad feeling.  There were a couple of twists I didn't see coming, but the book has a whole lot of familiar elements, including the girl next door who is identical to Laurie's evil childhood playmate, who fell to her death through the roof of the family greenhouse.


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

  Disclosure - The publishers provided me with ARCs.

I Wonder if She Even Likes Apples...

This vintage transfer that I found online was so different she had to go into the quilt. 

While I stitch, I make up stories in my head. It's a long walk to that twisted old tree and there are probably thistles and snakes.  The old woman is tired and that bushel basket is heavy. I wonder if she even likes apples. Maybe she feels obligated to pick them because they're ripe and shouldn't go to waste. Maybe she doesn't have many other options.

If I'd chosen brighter colors for the dress I still think she'd look overwhelmed It's her posture and those shoes.  Maybe she's related to the lady with the mop.

Mid Year Totals

I thought that last year, with seventeen pairs finished, was my year of the sock, but I'm still at it. Eleven pairs so far this year (ten in the picture, because I haven't taken pictures of the most recent pair) and two more pairs half done. I'm sure I'll beat my record. Not that I'm trying!

I've finished two baby quilts.

And I've made progress on some bigger projects that still aren't finished...

My Garden Party Quilt continues to grow, block by block. 

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 4 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 36 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 4400 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 3675 yards
Net Used for 2015:   725 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Mystic Shawls by Anna Dalvi

Have you ever done a mystery knit along for a lace shawl? I have, twice, and it's a lot of fun. I actually managed to finish a couple not far behind the rest of the group.  Then there was Mystic Waters. I bought the pattern, made it through the first couple of clues, and completely lost my place. Things like that happen when you're knitting and raising small children at the same time. Espeecially if you don't keep really good notes for yourself.

I still want to knit that shawl, someday.



Mystic Shawls contains the patterns for fourteen of Anna Dalvi's mystery shawl KALs -- including Mystic Waters. I could see myself knitting most of the patterns in this book. (No, I don't know when I'd have time to do that much focused lace knitting, but that isn't the point. The point is that now that I've bought the book, I can do it when I want to.)

I love the patterns. The book itself is mostly charts -- pages and pages and pages of them -- and the pictures aren't on the glossy paper I'm used to in my knitting books. (I want to make the shawls. The whole eye-candy thing is extra.) All of the shawls are shown being worn and lying flat, which is nice.

There are all sorts of shapes here and some of the shawls come in multiple sizes.

If, like me, you can't collect enough lace shawl patterns, you'll want to get your hands on a copy of Mystic Shawls.

Pesky Discslosure -- I bought this one myself, from the Knitpicks 40% off book sale.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {6/26/15}

Look at what Myra from Busy Hands Quilts linked up last week --

She was making a baby gift for another quilter and wanted something special. This drawstring play mat gathers up into a bag that will hold the toys. Click through to her blog for the full story.

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.

Estate Sales and Self Control

The pictures in this post aren't great, they're what I could quickly get with my phone. I'm still convinced that when it comes to moments like this, less-than-perfect pictures are better than no pictures.  

Because how often do you see lamps like these, still in their original setting?  

Wouldn't they go great with the tiki painting I inherited from my father's mother?

If ever a kitschy painting deserved its own light fixtures, it's this painting and those light fixtures. But neither of them is suited to our ninety-six year old farm house, so I left the lamps for someone else to love. (The painting lives in my sewing room where the rest of the family doesn't have to look at it.)

It was harder to leave behind the antique spinning wheel that had been converted into a lamp, especially after Hubby asked me if I could salvage it. It had caught my eye from the end of the driveway. I love spinning wheels the way I love treadle sewing machines, but I don't have a good spot for one that's been wired for an electric bulb and is falling apart. That poor wheel will probably never spin again, at least not well enough to turn roving into yarn. Then I realized that it wasn't thirty-five dollars, it was seventeen fifty and I started to second guess my decision to pass on it.

Someone please tell me I did the right thing by leaving it behind!

Red Hot Socks

If I'd known what pretty socks this yarn (Sock-Ease Red Hots) would make, I'd have cast on with it a long time ago! I wish this yarn came in more colors. I've used up my skein of Lemon Drop and now I'm happily knitting up my skein of Rock Candy.



The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango sounded right up my alley.  A best-selling author wants to leave his wife for his mistress, but his wife is the one who actually wrote all of  his books....
It's an interesting story, a bit different from anything I've been reading lately. The reader is kept distant from the characters, kind of like in an episode of that old radio show, The Whisperer, and the author interrupts the story with comments addressed to the reader. I wasn't too anxious to find out what happened, maybe because of that distance.

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

Looking Back...

Five Years Ago This Month....

I wasn't having much fun.  I was recovering from knee surgery and the first round of blood clots. They were telling me that I hadn't followed the doctor's instructions (and I was swearing up and down that I had) and that I didn't have to worry about getting clots again in the future.

Quinn and Leif were arguing about whether or not the Creature from the Black Lagoon is a swamp monster.  Five years later, they still haven't decided.

Ten Years Ago This Month....

I was pregnant with a six-month-old and two bigger kids, packing for the move to this house, and distracting myself from the growing pile of boxes with some late night colorwork and felting. The plan was to use these same horses on a sweater for one of the boys, but they outgrew that idea before I managed to follow through on it.

I was working on a round baby blanket....wonder where that ever got to? 

One of the Reasons I'm Not Quilting Right Now

My teenager has been hogging my sewing machine. I wrote about it in this post. She wanted this dress. In the two weeks since then, she's gone from this (using the ugliest fabric in the sewing room to make a muslin and check the fit):

To this: 

That's what she did with three Walmart sheets, a zipper, and a dollar's worth of buttons. And a picture she saw online. There was no pattern.  Edited to add - She's made a tutorial for the dress, if you want to see all of the figuring that went into this creation.

I struggled to make the possum costume. And I had a pattern for half of it.  Any claims I've ever made about being able to sew clothing....I take them back. I'm going to slink back quietly into a corner with my quilts and socks now and be grateful that my biggest complaint about my teenager is that my daughter stays up until 2am working on ruffles and pin tucks.

My Ravelry Queue

I joined Ravelry back in 2007 and have been adding patterns to my queue willy-nilly ever since. At this point, there are just under 1300 projects in it.

Am I deluded enough to think I might knit them all? Nope.

Do I lose any sleep over that? Nope.

I feel a slight obligation to, at some point, knit up all of my yarn and use up all of the my fabric. But, unless I spend money on a certain pattern or buy specific materials for it, I don't worry about following through on all of my plans.

That Ravelry queue includes just about every pattern that's struck my fancy over the past eight years. Lately, I've been going through and deleting some what-was-I-thinking-of projects and some that I've actually made (those are always a nice surprise!) and some sweaters that my boys have outgrown or I've fallen out of love with. Along the way, I'm adding more than I delete, but that's okay.

I'll knit some of them. Or I won't.

Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 4 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 36 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 4000 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 3675 yards
Net Used for 2015:   325 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Training Socks

Lots of you have commented that you'd like to learn to knit socks.  I can't tell you how many false starts I had with my own attempts at sock knitting. I'd spent months reading books and the posts on a very prolific sock knitting group and it was all completely overwhelming. What finally worked for me was to knit a baby sock from a random pattern I found online.

I have no idea what pattern this is. About all that I do know for sure is that I finished the cuff when I was in labor and delivery being monitored for contractions. I didn't have enough yarn for a second sock, but that wasn't the point. This was practice.

In the past, my recommendation has been to try the Super Quick Baby Socks pattern. But I think I've found something better.

Kate Atherly has written a set of free patterns for "training socks" and they walk you through all of the parts of a sock. Apparently, these have been around for a while, but I just stumbled across them last week.

Training Sock - Toe Up, DPNs 
Training Sock - Top Down, DPNs
Training Sock - Toe Up, Magic Loop/2 Circulars
Training Sock - Top Down, Magic Loop/2 Circulars

These aren't full size socks, they're just practice. You make a sock that's big enough to have all of the parts, but no so big that you'll feel bad if you make a mistake and have to start over.  Assuming that you've already got some worsted weight yarn and the needles, what have you got to lose by casting on a pair?

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {6/19/15}

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.

One of My Favorite Estate Sale Finds

There are estate sales and purchases that stand out in my memory. Every time we drive to visit my parents, we pass the house where we bought the old sleeping bags that Hubby and I use when we camp, even though we've got newer fancier ones. And every time I notice that place, I smile at the memory.  

One of my favorite estate sale stories dates to long before I started blogging. It was in an old house near downtown Salem. (I couldn't tell you which house it was, but I'm guessing it was one that's been torn down to make way for office buildings.) It was one of those sales where the person had lived their for decades and the family is just trying to get rid of the accumulation. 

Up in the attic was a pile of dresses, definitely vintage, most probably dating from the fifties and sixties. With my tiny baby girl in my arms and that gorgeous stash of little dresses, all priced at twenty-five cents each, I did the only sensible thing.

I bought them all, brought them home and washed them, then hung them on the clothesline and took a picture. It's not a good picture, but this was in 1997 and I was using the cheap little 110 camera that I loved because I didn't have to learn to actually load film into it. Right now, I'm just happy that there is a picture, because it makes it possible for me to share the story.

Alex wore the dresses and added some stains and tears and they probably got donated somewhere along the line. If I found them today, I'd still buy them and wash them and hang them on the clothesline, but I might be more hesitant to wear them out.

This post is linked to Share Your Cup, Vintage Inspiration ,

{Yarn Along} Third Time's the Charm!

This is the third time I've cast on with this yarn. The first time, I thought it might pool for Judy's challenge but decided that the colors were subtle enough to deserve some texture. The second time was with an eyelet rib. It was pretty enough, but I got distracted, lost my notes to myself and forgot which stitch pattern I was using.  Instead of guessing and getting it wrong, I unraveled half a sock.

Now, I'm very glad I did because this yarn and this stitch pattern are making something absolutely wonderful. And I've almost got the sizing right.



I remember liking the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, so I happily downloaded The Truth According to Us onto my Kindle. In an attempt to teach his spoiled daughter a lesson, Layla Beck's father packs her off off to Macedonia West Virginia to work on the Federal Writer's Project. Watching Layla grow accustomed to life in the Romeyn household and learn the actual details of Macedonia's history (as opposed to the ones that the town leaders want her to include in her book) was interesting, but the book is long and moves at a very leisurely pace.

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

Disclosure - the publisher provided me with an ARC 

A Sewing Bird

This pattern is from one of the Workbasket inserts. The actual transfer is itty-bitty, only about two inches across. I made it twice the size so it would be easier to stitch, and to see in the finished quilt.

When I was little, we visited Grandma Dorothy, an older relative who lived alone in her tiny apartment full of antiques. My parents would sit and talk with her, talking about coins or stamps or genealogy. At least I think that was what it was -- I was sitting on the floor by a bookshelf, totally engrossed in an old book.

We didn't visit very often, but when we did I'd go straight for that spot. I can't tell you how badly I wanted to read the whole book, which was about a little girl being taught by the sewing bird. It was the most wonderful amazing fascinating thing. And I'm guessing now that none of the adults in my life ever had the slightest clue. (My own kids would ask me to write down the title of the book and check for a copy at the library. But I wasn't armed with their problem solving skills. I saw a crumbling old book that I knew I wouldn't be allowed to borrow and that was the end of that.)

As an adult, armed with the magic of Google, I figured out that the book of my dreams was the Mary Frances Sewing Book. I could read it for free online here, but I've never made the time.

Black and White and Waiting for a Border

I'm not sure at this point if I'll use the same border as the pattern that inspired this project, or another variation that I dreamed up while I was doing the piecing. Either option will work. I just felt like sewing some fabric together -- and this isn't a bad way to use up some leftovers.

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Quality Time With My Boys

The boys and I watched Sharknado 2 on Netflix Friday night. They watched. I listened and halfway watched and worked on other things. It was a lot better than the first one -- except there's a song and now it's stuck in my head. As for the boys, they're eagerly waiting for Sharknado 3, which comes out in July.

I think my favorite part of the movie might be the Parents Guide from IMDB, which included important details like -- "A shark slides down flooding hospital stairs, it then slides out the door and is run over by an ambulance." I'm so glad they warned me about that! (I love those parental guides and use them often, but I probably didn't need a detailed description of every last shark bite.)

With some time to kill on Saturday, we visited three quilt shops and a yarn shop -- and a magic shop that sold straight jackets. (No, we didn't buy one!)  I didn't see anything that needed to come home with me, but the two youngest boys had an interesting conversation with the gal at the yarn shop.

She told them that knitting is a series of repeating patterns, just like computer programming, so it would be a good thing to learn. Quinn responded by telling her that he thought it would be better to raise possums and milk them to make cheese (I have NO idea.)  Without missing a beat, the yarn shop gal told him it would be better to shave them and make yarn...  Have I mentioned how rarely I  take the boys into actual yarn and quilt shops with me?

Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 4 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 36 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 3600 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 3675 yards
Net Added for 2015:   75 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Little Bits of Embroidery

I've been thinking that I should do some little pieces to fill in between the bigger embroidered blocks. These two transfers, which were in  the box Janice sent, are just what I didn't know I wanted. 

I'm very happy with the dog, a little less so with the cat. Those whiskers aren't quite right. But a lot of the details in these old transfers can be puzzling.