Pretty Yarn in Need of a Prettier Pattern

I desperately want to cast on with this yarn. 

I have 487 sock patterns in my Ravelry Queue, so how can it be so hard to decide what to do with this gorgeous yellow yarn? I want to do something toe up. Hawthorne is only 357 yards to a skein and I'm not in the mood to play yarn chicken. So I filtered my queue to show only the two up patterns, and the only ones that appealed to me were written for sport weight or dk yarn (and too complicated to easily change by adding more stitches.)

Suze asked if I have a favorite sock pattern, something that's interesting but not too complicated. Socks on a Plane and Express Lane both meet that criteria, at least for me. Both of those are free downloads from Ravelry. Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch has lots of great stitch patterns that you can add to the socks you already know how to make.

As for my pretty golden yarn, I think I'm finally leaning towards My Favorite Sock Pattern, from the blog purliekay. I'd do it toe up, of course, and with my own favorite short row heel. But I do really like that stitch pattern, which is a little fancier than those lace rib socks I've done twice already...

{Antique Shop Temptations} At the Quilt Show

There are a couple of antique shops in Sisters and on Saturday, we managed to duck into both of them. Shade, air conditioning, and neat old stuff to be tempted by -- how could we not take advantage of that?

I was drawn to this picture even before I realized that it was embroidery. I'm awed at that skill. From any distance at all, it looked like a print. 

Garter stitch squares with embroidered flowers... I don't think I've ever seen a baby quilt quite like this one, which was definitely intriguing.

And the vintage Tupperware coasters. I'd forgotten those were a thing, but we had a set of them through most of my childhood.

Someone please remind me that I don't need (or particularly want) a set of vintage pastel coasters, no matter how nostalgic they make me feel.

{The Row by Row Experience} Quilt Show Weekend

I was trying to get pictures of every shop's exterior but it was hot on Friday and my minivan doesn't have air conditioning and I kept forgetting. So no exterior pictures this week except for the Stitchin Post which I got because it's impossible not to get a picture of that place on quilt show weekend.

Shops: 
BJs Quilt Basket
Homestead Quilts and Gallery
Paisley Fabric and Quilts
Quiltworks
The Stitching Post
Material Girl Fabrics

The quilt show itself is always a lot of fun and, more than anything, it motivated me to pull out my copy of Farm Girl Vintage and start piecing some of those blocks. I was making myself crazy, trying to remember which blocks were in the book and which were the companion blocks. I kind of want to purchase every last one of Lori Holt's patterns.

What are you excited about lately? For me, it's suddenly cross-stitch and Hawaiian applique and cute little blocks with vintage things on them.

Look -- I See a Cat!

It turns out that the little black cat wasn't scary at all. I've still got paws and back stitching to finish, but she only took a couple of evenings to get through. Now it's back to the safer but less exciting stretches of orange pumpkin.

If it seems like I'm randomly jumping around this project, I am. Depending on the time of day and how alert I'm feeling, and who else is in the room, I opt for an easier or more difficult part of the project. And I deliberately leave big stretches of one color for those late night or early mornings.

{I've Been Reading} So Far, So Good!

Halfway through the year without a single library fine! And with no mad searching of the house to find lost books. I've got to admit that I'm a bit shocked.

Final Girls by Riley Sager

The three of them are the Final Girls, sole survivors of terrible events that seem like they came straight out of a horror movie. Lisa wrote a book about the massacre at her sorority house. Sam disappeared from public view years ago. Quinn runs a baking blog and tries to get on with her life. She can't remember the details of that night at Pine Cottage and doesn't want to. Then suddenly Lisa is dead by her own hand and Sam bursts into her life, determined to make Quinn revisit her past. I can't tell you much more without venturing into spoiler territory and I never want to do that.

I read this one on the flight home from our trip and it kept me engrossed for five hours, even through clear air turbulence and worries about blood clots. At times, I thought I knew what was going on, but I was wrong. The plot shifts from Quinn's present life to that fatal night at Pine Cottage, but it never felt like the author was deliberate stringing me along. And, even though Quinn is kind of a mess, she never seemed whiny or childish. There's some blood and gore (because that comes with the territory when you're reading about horror-movie style massacres) but it's not the bulk of the plot and not horribly detailed.



Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

I've been disappointed by the last couple of Stephen King Books. The Bizaar of Bad Dreams had too much  material I'd already paid to read. Revival started out good but got too weird for me to enjoy. Over the past decade or so, I've decided that I'm either going to love his new book or hate it, so I'm more and more inclined to just get the new one from the library and read it before deciding if I want to own a copy.

Gwendy's Button box is a good one. It's not the kind of button box that quilters are going to think of, it's got buttons like a remote. Anyone who's read Stephen King knows that if a strange man offers a  gift it's time to run. Twelve-year-old Gwendy doesn't know that, so when the man she meets on the suicide stairs offers her the box, she takes it. She doesn't know what it can do beyond dispensing the tiniest most perfect chocolates she's ever tasted, but she knows that she wants it. This one is more suspenseful than scary, and it's very short, but I enjoyed it.

Disclosure -- I was provided with advance review copies by the publishers. Gwendy's Button Box came from the library. All opinions are my own.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {7/7/17}

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.

Going to the Quilt Show?

Are you headed to the Sisters Outdoor Quilt show this weekend? If you are, are you ready?

I'm most definitely not. For the first time ever, I'm going without any kids. I've been scrambling all day to get my ducks in a row before I leave the house tomorrow morning.

The plan, if all goes well, is to spent Friday visiting area quilt shops and picking up Row by Row Experience patterns and then go out early Saturday morning to watch the quilts go up. I'll be posting pictures from the show to my instagram feed.

Laundromat Knitting

New socks in Blue Sea Drops Fabel... 

Our water supply has been iffy for the past couple of weeks and, while I can wash my hair with a two liter bottle of water and do my dishes in a pan, laundry is harder to deal with. So I've been making laundromat runs. Not my favorite place to be, but at least the knitting makes the twenty-eight minute wash cycle go more quickly. And I don't have to sit and wait (or pay!) for the dryers.

Since I planned  this post, the situation has improved. The water supply isn't back to normal, but it's much much better than it was. In case you've never experienced it, playing chicken with the water supply is much less fun than playing chicken with those last few yards of yarn!

More Unseasonal Stitching

Just look at all the progress I've made! The kitten popping his head out of the top of the jack o'lantern is intimidating me a bit, but I've done much more complicated stuff in the past.

Back when I was eating sleeping and breathing cross-stitch I never would have picked up this project because that huge orange expanse of pumpkin seems so boring, but at this stage in my stitching life it's the perfect way to confirm that my eyes can still do this.

I might be wasting a little too much time these days drooling over cross-stitch projects on Instagram (you can find my own stuff here), but it's all so pretty! I will not start anything else until I finish this one....I will not pull out any more kits until I finish this one....I will definitely not buy any new kits until I finish some of the ones I already own...

{The Row by Row Experience} The Shops in Salem

Luckily for me, most of the Oregon quilt shops are located in convenient clusters that aren't impossibly far from home. Notice that I'm not describing them as close, because some of them definitely aren't. But I'm taking it one shop at a time and hoping to make it up to Washington for a day trip before time runs out. 

Earlier this week we took a road trip that included most of the shops on the way to Grandpa's house.  I'm hoping to visit the Central Oregon shops on quilt show weekend and the Eugene shops soon after that. 

One of these shops was new to me and a couple weren't participating last year. It's a fun excuse to check out all of the shops. Some I may not return to, at least not until next  year's road trips. Others I'll get back to at the first opportunity.   Have you ever come across a shop that changes a dollar a yard more for clearance fabric if you pay by credit card? That was a first for me.


Shops:
Paramount Sewing and Vacuum
Quilt N Stitch
Bernina Stretch and Sew Fabrics
Craft Warehouse
Whitlocks
The Cotton Patch
Discover Quilting

Mid Year Totals 2017

I have made so many pairs of socks in the past six months...

That's fifteen pairs, two less than I knit in all of 2016. I didn't think I was that stressed, but maybe I am. Or maybe my fingers are just getting faster. 

I've made a few more zippered bags. 

I want more project bags, especially the ones with clear vinyl to stash my knitting projects in. The fabric and zippers are laid out and ready to go, but I got distracted by my new cross-stitch project. Which is fine. The zippers and vinyl won't run away.

As far as quilting goes, I haven't got much to show. I quilted one baby quilt that was already basted before the first of the year and I've done some piecing on new projects. Those free motion quilting issues with my sewing machine have really messed with my enthusiasm. Why finish the top when I can't quilt it? I need to deal with that, either by taking in my machine to see what can be done or by learning how to fmq on one of my vintage machines.

(Sort Of) Sunday Swing Socks

This was another uneventful pair. I saw someone else's Sunday Swing Socks and thought the stitch pattern would be fun to try with some sock yarn that's been in the deepest depths of my stash.

Pattern: Sunday Swing Socks (with modifications)

Yarn: Knit Picks Memories, Fly Fishing 

It was fun and the socks knit up quickly, maybe because this yarn is a little thicker than the other stuff I've been knitting with recently and maybe because there are so many knit stitches and the stitch pattern is so easy to follow, just regularly spaced k2togs and yarn overs.

Until the very last minute, I planned to knit the pattern as written. Then I decided that I didn't want to mess with a cuff  down pair or a heel flap. I wanted to use the stitch pattern -- and knitting it toe up made my stitches slant the opposite direction, but they're slanting and that was the whole point of the thing.

 I think I've only got two skeins of Knit Picks Sock Memories left in my stash and I'm going to miss it once it's used up. This was some of the first sock yarn I ever ordered and I still love the colors of it.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {6/30/17}

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.

Unseasonal Stitching

It's been a long time since I did any cross-stitching. I used  to do a ton of it, back before I learned to knit and quilt. After I broke my knee for the first time, there was some negative crap that took the joy out of it for me and every time I've thought about starting up again those memories have popped back up. 

Last week, when the boys and I were going through the thrift shop looking at things we don't need, I found this ninety-nine center cross stitch kit. It was factory sealed and has only a few colors and it's kind of cute. 

Even with the grid lines, I'm making mistakes left and right. I think I've  caught them all. If I haven't, it's just a cheap little kit and the world won't end.

But I'm hoping I can get back  into the swing of cross stitching and tackle some of the more ambitious projects that I've still got up in my stash.

Souvenir Socks

I only spent about twenty minutes knitting (if that) while we were on Kauai, but these are the ones I'm going to remember as my Hawaii socks. When I was putting together the yarn for my Summer yarn sampler, I had this skein of Mary Maxim Tropical Breeze set aside for the trip. It seemed appropriately beachy. 

Yarn: Mary Maxim Tropical Breeze, Walk on By

Pattern:  Lace Rib from Sensational Knitted Socks 

I wound up using that same lace rib pattern that I used for the pink Esprit socks a couple of months ago. It's easy to do from memory and just by looking at the needles I can tell where I left off, as long as I don't put them down in the middle of a round.

I'm surprised at how nice this yarn was to work with.  I bought it on clearance at Craft Warehouse for three dollars a skein and didn't have high expectations. It was really nice to knit with and had an almost cottony feel, except there's no cotton actually in it. 75% wool, 25% nylon, according to the label. Not a single knot or splice or weird spot and the gradient played nicely all the way through both socks.

Hand knit socks make a great souvenir, even if I don't spend much of the trip actually knitting on them. Last summer, I worked on the haunted hotel socks with their mysteriously appearing rabbits.  The summer before that, I had my hayride socks which had nothing to do with the trip as far as colors or name, but the resort had convenient hay bales placed around the pool with decorative lanterns so I'm not going to argue with that.

I'm kind of giddy that we got to see the waterfall from the opening credits of Fantasy Island. (And the one from Jurassic Park, but that's not quite as exciting.)

I wondered about using this stitch pattern again so soon, but then I decided if it's okay to use k2p2 ribbing on a dozen pairs in a row it should be just as acceptable to use an easy variation. Do you reuse the same yarn and/or pattern more than once?

{Antique Mall Tempations} Is Antique Bug Spray an Appropriate Father's Day Gift?

After much debate, the boys and I decided that it is and luckily my husband agreed. He's always looking at the bug sprayers at estate sales and this one was more affordable than what we've seen before and has neater graphics. 

I'm fascinated by this very expensive little desk with the broken chair. The carving in the middle center is an angel, which didn't show up in the other pictures I took. There are drawers down one side and false drawers down the other to make it symmetrical. And the whole thing is sized for a child... so it this something that someone pieced together? Or was that little chair added later? They don't seem to match well.

I love love love old radios like these. Can't you just imagine sitting next to one and listening to Suspense or Lights Out? 

Trying Something New

Have I ever mentioned that I'm intimidated by applique? But I'm also completely enchanted by the gorgeous quilts I saw in Hawaii....and it looks like enchantment is stronger than intimidation...

The smart thing might've been to pick the simplest design in the book. But if I'm going to spend as many hours as I imagine this will take, I'm going to spend it on something I love. If I'm going to abandon the project it makes just as much sense to abandon something hard as it does to abandon something easy. The investment in materials will be the same either way.

And I'm being just cautious enough not to start with one of the big patterns I bought on the trip!

Summer Yarn

My Summer Yarn Sale order from Knit Picks arrived on Friday. I knew that I was excited about this new addition to my stash, but I didn't realize how excited  until I opened the box...

Can I just cast on with all of it right now?

It's so pretty! The pictures on the website were of swatches, so I didn't realize how it would look in the skein. Based on Socks on a Plane and Rose and Thorn Socks, I know I love Hawthorne, so I ordered every color that was on sale and looked appealing and wasn't already in my stash. I did the same with the Stroll tonal and handpaints, looking for the colorways on sale at the lowest price and deciding from there which ones I wanted.

It's a great way to replenish my stash without breaking the bank.

Stash Report

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 2 yards
Fabric added this week: 0 yards
Fabric added year to date: 13 yards
Net added for 2017: 11 yards

Yarn used this Week: yards
Yarn used year to Date: 5200 yards
Yarn added this Week: 7359 yards
Yarn added Year to Date: 16709 yards
Net added for 2017: 11509 yards

Glass Beach, Kauai

I'd read that there's a glass beach on Kauai and, inspired by the posts Dainty Squid and The Only Living Girl in New York have written about a different glass beach that I know I'll never see, I was determined to find it. My husband was less enthused, but we were already close (and Kauai isn't that big to begin with) so we followed the directions in my travel guide. 

We got to what was supposed to be the right spot and I was immediately distracted by the cemetery on the other side of the narrow gravel road. The stones were shaped differently than I've seen before and I almost forgot what I'd talked my husband into looking for in the first place. 

It was hard to make out much from the right side of the barbed wire fence, but the writing was Japanese and it all looked old. Later we looked it up and found out that it's the McBryde Sugar Plantation Cemetery and a local woman has been working to uncover the gravestones, which were almost completely buried in weeds until she stumbled across them. This is why I love our smartphones! We learn so much more about the places we visit than we could have in the days when our only resource was a AAA guide.

We took a few pictures through the fence and  then walked down the hill to find the beach, which is a very narrow strip that had at least a dozen people beach combing while we were there.  I didn't see any recognizable pieces of bottles, just amazing little grains of tumbled glass.

Amazing that a garbage dump can turn into something this beautiful. (And I'm sure a lot of what was swept out to sea wasn't as pretty or as inert.)

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {6/23/17}

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.