Stonehearth Hutch Update

Remember that absolute mess I showed you last week? Sorting through the floss and putting it in order by number made a huge difference and now I can't put Stonehearth Hutch down. 

This is definitely a "one more stitch" project right now. I'm at a point where there's a ton of confetti stitching, but seeing the stitches spread across the blank fabric is incredibly satisfying. 

A New Rule at My House

If I'm going to pull floss for an upcoming project and put it in a clear bag, I need to label that bag. Because I was sure that this was the floss for Home is Where the Horror Is (even though these quite obviously aren't the colors for that project) until the first one I needed wasn't there and neither was the second... 

This is the floss for the Grady Twins. The floss for Home is Where the Horror Is is the floss that I thought was for the Grady twins...and I hope that other unlabeled baggie full is for Southwest Mesa.

Goals for the week --

-- put together yarn and patterns for the next few shawls
-- find more colors of yarn that will work for the Frankensocks
-- cast on Finding the Yellow Brick Road socks
-- start stitching the Grady Twins
-- finish the blue and white quilt for Alexia's

Beehive Alchemy

Hubby checked on Saturday and the bees are still in their hives, apparently doing what bees do. At the very least they're making and capping honey...but one hive didn't seem to have any newly laid eggs. That'll have me holding my breath for a while, even though there seem to be indicators that they've hatched a new queen and taken care of  the problem themselves. 

Did I mention that we've got Hawaiian bees? Sort of... These latest hives have Kona Italian queens. I'm not sure if that means the actual bugs came from Hawaii or if they're descended from queens that did (because I wasn't paying enough attention to remember) but they're definitely gentle bees. No one has been stung at all this year, even though I was standing close enough to touch this frame and not wearing a suit.

Hubby made beeswax lip balm which I've been happily using up. He did cheat and buy a hunk of beeswax from the bee supply place, but who said it had to be from your own hive?

I'm hoping that our hives will produce enough extra stuff that we'll be able to get more adventurous. Netgalley sent me a review copy of Beehive Alchemy: Projects and recipes using honey, beeswax, propolis, and pollen to make your own soap, candles, creams, salves, and more by Petra Ahnert. We could spend years experimenting with the recipes from this book. There are the soaps and candles you'd expect, but there's also sealing wax and beard balm and solid lotion bars. And there's a whole chapter on dying your own batik fabric! No matter how the hives work out, I'm sure we'll come up with some extra wax that's suitable for playing with fabric. I'm also curious about the beeswax ice cream.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {8/31/18}

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.

Whoo's There?

I can't tell you how much I love these little Prairie Schooler Halloween patterns! They're so fun and symmetrical and sometimes knitting with three colors is just what I want to do. 

I thought I could stitch this one without gridding my fabric if I counted and recounted and was really careful. I couldn't and once I realized that one skeleton was a stitch higher than his buddy, I started stitching faster so that I could find out if it was going to work out okay. There's a slight jog in the border to make it meet up, but we all know that I wasn't going to pick out an entire skeleton and I wasn't going to start over from scratch.

I've got another of these patterns in my stash, the one that I thought I was going to stitch when I picked up this one instead. And there's a third that I was eyeing at Starlight Stitchery last month and now really wish I'd picked up.

The last time we were at Shepherd's Bush I absolutely know I bought two Halloween patterns. This was one, but the other isn't with it and I haven't the slightest memory of which pattern it was. (Cute as these are, they all do look very similar!)

Bamboo and Ewe Socks

This is one of those rare occasions that I didn't lose the ball band before I was done knitting and I actually know exactly what yarn I used. It's Sensations Bamboo & Ewe Pattern, one of those skeins I picked up when the boys were toddlers and I thought I was going to knit socks for them.

Now it's a finished pair for....some adult in my life. Maybe one of the boys if they ever start to be more responsible with their footwear. It all depends on who wears them first.

{I've Been Reading} Tail of the Dragon

Tail of the Dragon by Connie di Marco

Professional astrologer Julia Bonati takes a temporary job at her old law office and finds herself investigating death threats and murder. Between her current investigation and some new information about the death of her fiance, there's a lot going on in this book. I've definitely warmed up to Julia herself, but I doubt I'll ever get into astrology.

Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copy by the publisher. All opinions are my own.

Figuring Out Where I Left Off

Picking up Stonehearth Hutch again wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I had the tree along the left edge stitched, so I'm using that as a landmark and making decent progress.

What wasn't working for me was the situation with my floss. That's three different sizes of bags and loose skeins of floss and general chaos. It must have been working for me back in 2004 or I wouldn't have three quarters of the project done, but this week it's been making me crazy.  

I thought I was going to wind it all onto pretty bobbins, but I couldn't find the empty bobbin box I'd set aside for a new project. Instead I took snack bags and index cards and now all of the flosses are in order by number and marked with their symbol from the chart. Except for the ones that weren't here....those could explain why I've been wasting so much time looking for the colors I need. Maybe I borrowed them for another project or didn't have them in the first place. I'll pull them out of that master set I spent so much time getting together this spring.

There really isn't much of this project  left to stitch, not if I compare it to the entire chart. Hopefully the other full coverage piece I unearthed is better organized...although I doubt it will be.

{Thrift Shop Temptations} I Wish I Could Find More Like This

As long as we've got the time, we duck into at least one of our local thrift stores every week. It's a quick trip to see if there's anything wonderful lurking on the shelves...or at least anything interesting enough to talk about and maybe take a quick picture of. 

Now and then I find a needlework kit that makes me squeal with joy.  This one has everything I love...and the bird is making a nest in the crossbeams of the wishing well! 

I found a set of stools for the kitchen counter at my daughter's new place and sent her some pictures. That meant another detour to dump them on her porch, but it also took me past the thrift shop with the amazing vintage needlepoint.

Someone is going to love that pink mirrored dresser. The color is great already, but the paint is rough so maybe it'll get a makeover. I was tempted by the rustic clock, but not enough to check the price. I've still never seen one of the painted Mrs. Butterworth bottles that Katie posts about over on Non Consumer Advocate, not even after years of thrifting in Portland, but we found some overpriced plain ones.

Campside Shawl

As soon as I stumbled across the pattern for Campside, I could picture which stash yarn would be the absolutely perfect color. I bought this subtly variegated orange yarn years ago and at the time it was a huge splurge so I was afraid to actually cast on with it. 

Pattern: Campside (free download)

Yarn: Bon Prix Ornaghifilati 

The yarn itself was a huge disappointment. Expensive acrylic from the yarn shop should not be harder on my hands than a particularly bad skein of Red Heart Super Saver, especially not when it claims to be blended with wool and alpaca.

The pattern, on the other hand, is fantastic. The eyelets get denser as you knit your way towards the border and there's a really neat ribbed edging along the bottom. Aside from the name, that edging is what drew me to the shawl in the first place. I made mine wider than the inch and a half that the pattern calls for because I like the look of it so much.

Can I start making all of my shawls with ribbed edging now?

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {8/24/18}

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.

These Socks Aren't Scary

I'm knitting up sock yarn from the depths of my stash and the only slightly stressful thing about it is waiting to see whether I can get all of the heels and toes from one partial skein of the brown yarn. If I can, there's another project I'll use the rest for. If I can't, I'll just use the second partial skein and the other project won't have brown heels and toes. It's quite possibly the least nerve-wracking thing in my life right now.

Signups for the Super Sock Scarefest (why can I never get that name right?) are open over on Ravelry and if you enjoy sock knitting and horror movies, this is the knit along for you.  It's a competition, but unlike Sock Madness it's super low key. You get points for being among the first five or ten to finish each pattern, or finishing at all before the year's knitting is over. And you don't have to knit every pair (or any of them) Last year was my third year participating and I finished two pairs. I meant to knit a third, but couldn't get through Suspiria or the socks inspired by them.

Personally, I only knit the socks based on movies I've enjoyed (or want to watch.) Or the ones that have neat patterns. Did I mention that this isn't an aggressive competition?

Wanna see all of my scary socks to date? I think the first of them was Le Manoir du Diable, which I found on Ravelry and what led me to the Scarefest in the first place.

Le Manoir du Diable, The Fly, Jack or Not, Charlie McGee, Faces in the Wallpaper, Convoluted Clues,  The Wicker Socks

{Thrift Shop Temptations} Is she Cinderella?

I'm not a fan of needlepoint framed behind glass. The glare on this piece was so bad that I thought it was a flat reproduction of a needlepoint piece until I took a much closer look. 

The flamenco dancer was huge, and this piece was even bigger. Apologies for the bad picture, but glass outside on a bright summer day is probably the worst circumstances for trying to photograph needlework....

He was sixty-five dollars. After seeing that, I didn't even look for the price on the dancer. I'm not in the market for vintage needlepoint....

Then I saw this one. She's under glass, but it seems to be the anti-glare kind. And she was eight dollars.

I managed to resist until I stepped inside the store and saw that all wall art was fifty percent off. Four dollars for a gorgeous piece of vintage needlepoint? If I'd left her behind she would've haunted me for years.

I thought the colors were too bright, but now that she's inside the piece is steadily growing on me. I love the fireplace, and her shoes, and the hatchet. (Please tell me that she isn't planning on cooking any of  those birds for dinner!) 

This post is linked to Share Your Cup. 

As Deep as the Stash Diving Gets?

I've been looking at last year's finishes and my current projects and thinking that was was missing was a big full coverage piece. There are at least a dozen that I'd like to start, but that means gridding fabric and pulling floss and a lot of time spent on busy work before I put in the first stitch. 

Then I remembered that there were two full coverage pieces sitting in my UFOs. I actually mentioned Stonehearth Hutch in my very first blog post...and don't think I've picked it up since. If I did, I didn't mention it by name. 

Looking at it now, it's probably my least favorite of the Thomas Kinkade cross stitch patterns that I own. I'd forgotten about it completely until I pulled out that box of UFOs a few months ago. But I'm three quarters of the way done. It makes sense to put in a few hours to finish the thing, right?

I think something might have gone wrong with the door and that's why there's unstitched space there. But those memories from thirteen or fourteen years ago aren't terribly clear. I guess I'll figure it out once I start stitching on that part, right?

Gramma's Hug

Some knitting projects are just a dream from beginning to end. My Gramma's Hug shawl almost fell into that category. I spent a happy evening casting on and getting through the first few rows...then I hit that little patch of simple lace and everything went straight to hell. 

On my second try, I used stitch markers every seven stitches and managed to keep myself on track. There's no reason I shouldn't have been able to do that lace without so much extra help, but sometimes things happen. It was like my Cathedral Window Shawl. I cast that one on while my middle son was in  the NICU and I was sleep deprived and heavily medicated and the first half came out just fine. It was after he was a bit older and I didn't have any excuses that I couldn't manage to knit the same lace pattern for the second half.

Pattern: Gramma's Hug (a free Ravelry download)

Yarn: Hobby Lobby I Love This Chunky, Sand Dunes, 3 skeins 

Even with the false start, it only took me five evenings from start to finish. My own shawl is narrower than the pattern specifications because I substituted acrylic which just doesn't stretch and block the same way wool does. I substitute acrylic all the time, unless it's a lace pattern that will need blocking to look right, and I've never realized that it changes the potential size so dramatically.  Now I'm wondering if this particular designer blocks more aggressively than others, or if I've just never paid attention.

I used almost three skeins of I Love This Chunky from the Hobby Lobby clearance incident and it's thick and squishy and doesn't split or snag or do anything else that makes me unhappy. I wish  I'd bought a ton more of it while it was $1.24 a skein but I'd never worked with it before and didn't know how much I really would love it.

In addition to loving the yarn and the color and just about everything else, I love the shaping. Instead of increasing every other row like just about every other triangular shawl I've ever knit, this one has increases every row which makes a much longer, sharper angle.

My Project Tracker and Big Plastic Bags

I've been keeping a monthly project tracker since February and it's made a huge difference. I've stopped losing track of what I was working on just before whatever happened to distract me happened...and that means I'm much less likely to start and abandon a new project. I can also look back and tell when I started and finished things. 

Right now, A Little Girl's Fancy has a blank column because I'm letting it sit while I stitch on things I'm more excited about. The constant reminder that it's there is going to make it harder to forget (although I reserve the option to just not stitch on it until the urge strikes again.) Nothing I started before the tracker is listed, but I'll give those projects a column when/if I pick them up again.

Next goal -- better project bags. I need some for the shawls that are big enough to hold the project and pattern AND all of the skeins of yarn I'll be using. Stopping mid-row to hunt for yarn is a pain.

For now I'm just happy that everything in the planner is also in a bag and they're all in the same place.

Fizz Boom Bath!

Have you been to that store that sells all of  those absolutely gorgeous (and really expensive) bath bombs and fallen in love with all of the possibilities? I'm the mom of a beauty blogger, so I've been more than once -- and then bought my own bath bombs at the Dollar Tree.

The boys and I tried making our own once and came out with bath bomb brittle, which smelled good and made their skin soft but didn't fizz and foam. It's possible that if you want to make something that actually works, following the easiest looking recipe from Pinterest may not be the best way to do it...and that you might need some specialized ingredients.

Which is where Fizz Boom Bath! comes in. 

I haven't had a chance to try any of the book's recipes yet, but I'm reeling from all of the gorgeous photos and possibilities. There are geodes and gender reveals and secret messages and one bath bomb for sore muscles...and then there are the masks and shower steamers and scrubs. Working your way through this book would be a lot of fun.

And did I mention that the book -- and da Bomb Bath Fizzers, the company that inspired it -- was written by two teenage sisters? The bath bombs they sell look even more amazing than the ones in the book. I'm going to have to try to make more soon....or to just break down and order some!

Disclosure -- The publisher provided me with an advance review copy. All opinions are my own. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {8/17/18}

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 Skeletons are Uneven

I'm starting new Halloween projects, mostly because all of my stitchy friends are counting down to October 31st and posting tempting pictures of all of the Halloween designs and fabric and I don't want to be left out. It's the good kind of peer pressure. 

I was so anxious to get started on Whoo's There? that I convinced myself I could stitch this one without gridding my fabric. I counted and recounted every row of stitches and don't have any idea where it went wrong...which means I can't pick out the offending stitches and fix it.

Not that I would pick out an entire skeleton. One side of the piece is a stitch off from the other. You wouldn't be able to tell at all except the borders weren't going to line up properly. Look just to the right of the floss bobbins and you can see what I did to fix it. Not symmetrical, but it'll work. It was either that or start over from scratch or abandon the project altogether.

I'll grid the next one.

Petersen Rock Garden

Back in June, we took the boys to the Petersen Rock Garden in Redmond. I'd been there as a kid and again as an adult, but it'd been a very long time and the youngest two had never seen the place at all. They've closed and reopened a number of times over the years and I'm afraid that what was once a really neat attraction may not be with us much longer.   

You already know that I love dollhouses and tiny houses of all kinds, so this place is right up my alley. One man, Rasmus Petersen, built it himself with petrified wood, agates, obsidian, and other rocks he collected in the area around his ranch. He started in 1935 and was still adding to the displays until his death in 1952.

I love old tourist traps and this one is practically in our own backyard. One of the travel sites I visited to confirm that they were still open said that admission is by donation, but that wasn't the case. There's a drop box for admission fees and the signs make it very clear that they expect you to pay. We saw a handful of employees working on the landscaping and I kind of got the impression that we weren't welcome. Signs warn you to stay on the path...but it's not too  clear what is and isn't path.

Despite the disrepair and unwelcoming atmosphere, I still kind of love the place. My husband told me not to recommend it to you guys, but if you like old roadside attractions and keep your expectations kind of low, it's a one of a kind place that's a lot of fun to wander through.

If you're interested in finding out more about the history and current state of the garden, there's a lot of information on Friends of Petersen Rock Gardens over on facebook.