Let's Make Baby Quilts! {9/18/15}

 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.

Thrift Store Temptations

I didn't buy anything at the thrift store this week. I admired this stereo, which has been moving around the store for the past month. 

It's pretty, and fascinates me, but it wouldn't fit with my house or my family. And it's expensive! Hopefully it's worth what they're asking and the right person will find it.

I'm fascinated by these folding rocking chairs. One of these days, I'll find one at the right price. Or not. I don't know why rocking chairs need to fold, so I did a quick Google search. According to what I read, it was so they could hang it on the side of the covered wagon, or women used them at their treadle sewing machines, or undertakers brought them when wakes were being held in homes....

And then there was this, the real temptation. I didn't bring it home. I didn't even give in to the temptation to plug it in... but it's blue and pretty and the price was right...

The Quest for More Photogenic Socks

It's hard to take pictures of socks while wearing them. I've done it quite a few times, but I'm never thrilled with the results. Teenage Daughter is usually a willing model, but she's currently working two jobs and running her own blog and her ankles aren't always available when I need them. Which has led to using my ten-year-old son's feet once or twice.  I'm not sure if that's better or worse than using my own foot.

Just after I placed my last order for sock yarn, I realized that Knit Picks sells sock blockers. I've been trying to be patient and wait for the next great yarn sale. Then a couple of days ago I saw sock shapers at Hobby Lobby, on sale for about the same price.

They're smaller than the socks I make (that vintage set of sock blockers I bought a couple of years back was too big -- it's a Goldilocks thing) and they're bright yellow, bright enough that it shows through the lace a bit. Anyone know if I can spray paint shiny plastic? I'd like them a lot more if they were a neutral color.

But they do what I needed and make the sock more sock shaped so that you can see the details. That makes me very happy.

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

Looking Back

Five years ago this month...

I finished piecing the top for Grandma's Donuts, which is still one of my absolutely favorite quilts.

I learned that unicorns go "bing" when they're fighting with their spiky things.

I bought fifty-one zippers for two dollars. Teenage Daughter and I have used enough of them to make it more than worth the price.

And that was apparently the last time I had the Janome cleaned and serviced. Maybe I should do something about that...

Ten years ago this month...

We were living down here in the new-to-us-almost-a-hundred-year-old-farmhouse and didn't have internet yet, so I was blogging a the public library, trying to herd kids and type at the same time. There weren't a lot of posts in September of 2005.

The Best Ever Use for Lion Brand Homespun

Lion Brand Homespun is far from my favorite yarn. I used it for one of my first sweaters and it was an absolute nightmare. To be fair, I used it for a lace shawl during my month of hospital bedrest and I absolutely love that shawl. But I'd have happily knit with anything that was even vaguely yarn at that point. 

Then I saw this in Teenage Daughter's post about her weekend. From the picture, I'm sure the yarn is Homespun. I can't imagine a more perfect use for that stuff! 

Weekly Stash Report

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

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 6800 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9165 yards
Net Added for 2015: 2365 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {9/11/15}

 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.

My Latest Estate Sale Treasure

What's the biggest, clunkiest, most ridiculous thing you've hauled home from an estate sale? Prior to this, I think our record holder was an old trunk that Teenage Daughter had to have even though I had an absolutely identical one tucked away. It made perfect sense. Mine belonged to Great Grandma and she gets it over my dead body. She needed her own. 

And I, apparently, needed an old shopping cart. 

I've been wanting an old shopping cart for a while now, sometimes halfway wishing I'd kept one from the collection we'd amassed at out old house. The last driveway on a dead-end road, it was a dumping ground for stolen grocery carts. I'd call the stores and they'd tell me I could bring them back on my own. If we'd had a way to do it, I probably would have, but I wasn't going to figure out how to walk them back to their rightful owners and then get a couple of toddlers back to the house without a stroller. They were new and plastic and not half as neat as this one, which seems to have belonged to Safeway once upon a time.

When I found it, it was hiding in the dusty shadows of an old barn at one of those wonderful/awful estate sales where nothing is priced and the family wants everything gone. While we were paying for the rest of our stuff, I asked how much they wanted for it and they told me to make an offer.

It's just about impossible to make an offer when you don't know if your husband will even let you drag the thing home, so I asked Hubby how much he'd let me spend on it and he offered five bucks.

He's better at making offers than I am. Either that, or he really didn't think they'd accept. A full size shopping cart will fit in the back of a Ford Expedition if the kids aren't with you. (If the kids had been with us, I'd have paid the five bucks and made a return trip without them.)

Because I'm completely smitten with this thing. It has a cute little basket. Anyone know what that would have been for?

The story we were told is that the old guy dragged it into his garden and filled it with veggies, then rinsed them off right in the cart. I want to take it up to my sewing room and fill it with fabric, after I shift some furniture around.

I'm not sure how we're going to get it up those stairs, but I've got two able bodied teens and I'm sure I can come up with a suitable bribe.

I'm linking up to Woman in Real Life, Let's Talk Vintage, Share Your Cup Thursday,

{Yarn Along} Jo's Pink Socks

Actually they're my socks, but I knitted them with the yarn that Jo sent me and they need a name so I can keep my finishes straight. This yarn is wonderful to work with, but I don't think knitters who want their stripes to match up would enjoy it. That's a LONG repeat! 

As soon as I was done with the pink pair, I cast on with the next skein. 

Along with the knitting, I've been reading...

The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson intrigued me with its cover description of an "alternative school for happy children" that closed in disgrace, but the most interesting bits (a rocking stone that supposedly holds the devil trapped inside and cursed bridges) are hidden in the pages of the book. The former school is now a care home and Gloria Harkness lives in a small cottage on the grounds, close enough to look in on her fifteen-year-old son, who is a patient there, every evening. When a childhood friend appears on her doorstep and asks for her help, Gloria is quick to offer it because she fears for her son's future if  the murder on the grounds causes problems for the care home. The students who attended the alternative school thirty years ago have been dying one by one over the years, the most recent in a small building on the grounds. I didn't love this book, mostly because I couldn't get myself to like Gloria all that much.

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

    
Disclosure -- the publishers provided me with ARCs.

Avoiding the Tricky Parts

I've been avoiding the fiddly bits again, this time the cord and he dial of the phone. There's no deadline for this project, so it really doesn't matter which parts I get done first, or what day I finish it on. 

One more block to embroider for the Black and White Television quilt and then I've got something else planned that's more suited to the season.

Playing

I've been playing with an old sheet and some solid yardage. This will be a little quilt, with fewer blocks than the pattern I'm following calls for, but I can see making a bigger one with scrappy centers instead of those big solid squares...

This is linked to Patchwork Times.

Stash Report

I am so discombobulated.

The one thing in my schedule  that was set in stone, the thing that I've planned all of my other errands around for the past fourteen years, is completely over and done with. Hubby is working a Monday through Friday schedule for the first time in twelve or thirteen years. (Same job, just a new schedule that I'm told is temporary, but no one will tell him how long "temporary" actually is. I think there's a guess, but I'm not making any plans around it.) I've become a commuter, although I'm not the one actually working the job.

I don't know if I'm coming or going at this point, but I did finish a new pair of socks and get a good start on a new baby quilt.

And there's a new dress. Quilters and knitters working past midnight on Christmas Eve are intense, but we're nothing compared to a motivated cosplayer!

Weekly Stash Report

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

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 6800 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9165 yards
Net Added for 2015: 2365 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Shepherd's Bush in Ogden

For more than a decade, I've been wanting to get back to Shepherd's Bush. We never seem to make it through Odgen on the right time of day or the right day of the week or when we've got an extra moment to spare, but last month the timing was right! 

Words do not capture how amazing this place is. There are shop models on every available space, labeled with the designer and pattern name. It's so helpful when you know what that thing that you just fell in love with actually is. If you can make out the magazine holders in the upper right corner of the picture, that's where the patterns are, all sorted by designer and easy to find. 

I managed to leave the store with only two new patterns and each had slips of paper inside telling me which threads they'd changed for the shop model. Even better than the new patterns, I left the store with a reminder of why I'd collected so many other patterns and threads and fabrics. 

When they're stitched up, they're gorgeous! 

The first time we stopped at Shepherd's Bush, we'd been tent camping in Dinosaur National Park for three days and were more than a little scruffy. Almost too scruffy to set foot in a needlework shop that I'd heard described as "the shrine", but I didn't know when or if I'd get another chance.

I still can't get over how kind and welcoming they were to my and my two grubby little children. This trip, everyone was freshly bathed, but Hubby and the boys waited patiently in the car.

Now that I've seen again how amazing this place is, I may not wait so patiently for my next opportunity to shop there! 

Do You Use Pincushions?

(If you're looking for the baby quilt linky, it's in the previous post)

Ida at My Sister Made Me Do It is having a pincushion parade. Do you use pincushions? They're adorable and fun to make and tempting....but all of my pins live in the plastic boxes they came in.

When I remember, which isn't all that often, I use my little bird needlebook. 

Even if I don't use them much, they're fun to make. I used the narrowest strips of red that I could manage for my spool. 

This one was the perfect excuse to break out my favorite Sizzix die.

And leftover triangles from my Weed Whacker quilt went into this one.

It's starting to look like I could justify making a lot more of those cute patterns I've been seeing on Pinterest....

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {9/4/15}

 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.

Catnip Socks

Someday soon, I'll appreciate all of these wool socks I've been knitting. I usually wear my sandals into October or November, but the blood thinners make me so cold I may have to dig out some real shoes sooner than I'd like. Honestly, my feet are the least of my worries. It's not even close to cold yet and our down comforter and heated waterbed aren't keeping me warm enough to sleep through the night.

This latest pair is Catnip Socks, a free Ravelry download by Wendy D. Johnson. They were the perfect way to use up a pair of mismatched skeins of  yarn. I'd been hung up on the idea that I'd have to alternate skeins until I saw this pattern and wanted green yarn for it and realized that I could do contrasting heels and toes.

That was so much easier than juggling two skeins every other row would have been. And now I've got a half a skein of the darker green to play with. I'm thinking that Barbie may need some handknits, and there are plenty of possibilities on Ravelry.

This post is linked to Crazy Mom Quilts and Patchwork Times.

{Yarn Along} Eagle's Flight Socks

This project has been in my Ravelry queue since 2007. It's the name and the color of the yarn that sucked me in . I don't have any Opal Owl, but I do have two skeins of Patons Stretch Socks in Taffy. That's more than close enough to make me happy, especially since I like Stretch Socks even more than I like Opal.

I almost gave up when I printed out the pattern and realized that it wasn't in English, but then I found the link to the right translation. I had a second moment of doubt when there was no chart and that 16 stitch repeat looked daunting, but I plunged in (toe up instead of cuff down because I'm not a big enough fan of cuff down socks to cast on 64 stitches and plunge right into an unfamiliar written stitch pattern) and after a couple of repeats it was all making sense.

Along with the knitting, I've been reading.

Liz Kroft has been looking forward to her solo hike along the John Muir Trail. She wants to be alone with her troubled thoughts and hopes that the strenuous exercise and voluntary isolate will help her sort things out and make some tough decisions about her future. Her boyfriend, who is a much less experienced backpacker, refuses to be left behind. I've never wanted to go backpacking and The Middle of Somewhere by Sonja Yoerg has me convinced that, even without a pair of psychotic brothers involved, that's the right decision for me. I did enjoy the vicarious trip along the trail and found myself rooting  for Liz and Dante to work things out. 

A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn is the story of daring lepidopterist Veronica Speedwell who has just buried her spinster aunt and has plans to travel the world collecting exotic butterfly specimens. She's traveled alone before and is quite confident that she can handle anything. Those plans are shattered when she returns from the funeral to the small cottage she shared with her aunt and finds the aftermath of a burglary. A German Baron begs her to flee to London with him, insisting that she's in mortal danger. Assuming that at the very least she'll save herself the price of a train ticket, Veronica packs her belongings.  Shortly after he her in the care of Stoker, a cranky naturalist who lives in a warehouse surrounded by moldering specimens, the baron is murdered. If that sounds fast paced, it is, delightfully so. Veronica is a fabulous heroine and the chemistry between her and Stoker is wonderful. I can't wait to see what happens in the next book!

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

    
Disclosure -- the publishers provided me with ARCs.

Black and White Appliances

I've got the second block of my black and white embroidered quilt done. I'm loving the kind of sketchy look that these have.

The fabric I'm using is a white on white with little dots. They made me think of static, which fits with the whole "black and white television" idea I've got going here. My only concern is that it's going to be hard to keep track of right/wrong side while doing the pieced blocks.

Any tips for me?

The Ugly Fabric Debate

Teenage Daughter has four days until her next cosplay event. That's enough time to design and sew a new dress - or so she assures me!  We spent a chunk of yesterday afternoon digging through my stash of old sheets to find something she could use for a test run of the new sleeve design.

I guess "ugly" isn't an obvious description, since she came downstairs with an armload of vintage 70s floral prints. She thinks they're hideous. I think they're nostalgic and pretty and, even if I never find the perfect project for them, I know they've got value to others. The vintage florals went back into their box and I sent her off with a stack of solids that weren't ugly, but were crunchy polyester blends and some pilled flannel.  I do use some blends in my quilts, but those solids were even below my standards. And now they've served a useful purpose. Win-win, right?

I'm spending the morning freezing the fifteen pounds of roasted Hatch peppers we picked up yesterday and daydreaming about the yummy stuff we'll be able to make with them.

Weekly Stash Report  

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 4 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 5 yards (solid black for those embroidery blocks and Jo's Midnight Hour quilt)
Added Year to Date: 46 yards
Net Added for 2015: 41 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 6400 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9165 yards
Net Added for 2015:   2765 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

One-Skein Wonders for Babies

If you're knitting for little ones, make sure to take a look at One-Skein Wonders for Babies: 101 Knitting Projects for Infants & Toddlers

Filled with hats and sweaters and booties and blankets, this book could keep you happily knitting until the little ones in your life are in preschool. There are lots of cute projects for boys and girls and lots of different techniques to try. And they're cute! 

Disclosure - Storey Publishing provided me with an ARC. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {8/28/15}

 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.