{Yarn Along} Wider Stripes Than I'd like

One of these days, I'm going to learn to check Ravelry for project pictures before buying self-striping sock yarn. Does this look like a snake to anyone else? And not a neat snake, either.



Handmade, Holiday, Homicideis the latest Kiki Lowenstein mystery by Joanna Campbell Slan. When a mean old woman drops dead during one of Kiki's Zentangle classes, it seems like everyone had a motive to do away with her. Kiki had less reason than most, but she's still a suspect. With so many suspects, some of them familiar characters from the series, this was a fun one. I absolutely recommend this series, but don't jump in with the latest book. Start at the beginning.

This is the first time I've pre-ordered a book for my Kindle. It was nice to have it there and waiting for me as soon as it was available. That's definitely something I'll do in the future.

A couple of years ago, we were on a road trip and listened to a radio adaptation of The Man Without a Country. I can't remember which show it was, but it would've dated to the 30s or 40s. The introduction said that it was based on a true story (if I heard it right....no one else in the family remembers listening to it at all) but that didn't seem possible. When we got home, I downloaded the Kindle version to see if it explained more. This week, I finally got around to reading it and learning that the story of a man sentenced to spend the rest of his life on sailing ships, never to receive any news of the United States was fiction.

How to Meal Plan: A Step by Step Guide for Busy Moms by Crystal VanTassel is a short book that just brims with enthusiasm. It's not a complete, step-by-step guide to meal planning, but it showed me a couple of things that I'd been completely missing. I've downloaded a ton of meal planning stuff onto my kindle -- this is one of the few that's been helpful.

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



 

Chocolate Covered Cherries

It's the best feeling to find a pattern that you love and then be able to make it almost completely from stash. (In this case, the pattern is Chocolate Covered Cherries from Jo's Country Junction.)

For the past couple years, I've been pulling together brown scraps and red scraps for a few different quilts. I love to use them....and hate to use them, because what if I take a few strips to make something and then don't have enough left for all the other things?  This project was worth the risk, and it's really just a strip of this and a strip of that...not enough to make much of a difference when it comes to the other projects.

I love this quilt. But when it came time to quilt it, I started to realize that I might have bitten off more than I could chew. It's big, bigger than most things I quilt on my Janome. The longarm wasn't an option, because the backing fabric I was determined to use was an inch and a half wider than the quilt top. I've had that problem before and cut just enough off the edge of the quilt top to make it work. But that dubious technique wasn't going to work with those pieced borders. So, in a couple of spots, I've eased the top to make it fit the backing.

Obviously, this one isn't going to be entered into any quilt shows. It's for me and mine and we're so hard on our quilts that it might not survive the decades. Or it will, and people will know how I really quilted.

R, S, U, V, W, X, Y, Z!

That's the whole alphabet, all pieced and assembled into a quilt top! 

And, because this whole project has had me thinking of needlework samplers, I'm playing around with a fancy border...

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Sunday Stash Report

Now that I've found some time to sit down at my sewing machine, I'm making all kinds of progress on my projects. And now that I'm doing that, I'm happily  making plans for what's next. 

There's perfect fabric in my too-good-to-cut pile for this bag, but then I priced the leather handles. Nope, not gonna happen.

I'm squealing over this little undies quilt at Gnome Angel. There's a tutorial at sewtakeahike and they're pieced! My stash doesn't have any of those amazing novelty prints, but I'm sure I can find something to play with.

Shwin & Shwin has a tutorial for an adorable Olaf quilt. I want one. For me.


Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 8 1/4 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 48 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 102 3/4 yards
Net Added for 2014: 54 3/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week:  400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 7475 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 4210 yards
Net Used for 2014: 3265 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

I didn't realize I needed a vintage ceramic tree....

I can have an old whatever-it-is in the attic or barn, unloved and forgotten. Then one of my favorite vintage bloggers will find one just like it, post pictures of their newly cleaned up treasure, and suddenly I'll be all excited about digging mine out again. 

Last year, it was the vintage ceramic Christmas trees. At about the same times as I was seeing the posts, Grandma was putting hers in a box destined for Goodwill. It  came to live with me.

I think this is one of those projects that everyone who was doing ceramics in the early 80s made, like those big white cats.  They all used the same plastic lights and the same green glaze and the same puffy snow glaze...so if Grandma hadn't told me that this one was a gift from someone else, I would've assumed that it was one of Mom's. At least until I looked inside and found someone else's signature engraved there.

At some point, the base was completely shattered and glued back together. It needs a new lightbulb for the inside. But it has a working wind up music box that plays Winter Wonderland, which is probably my favorite Christmas carol.

So I'm happy. Now I've just got to dig out Evil Santa.

This post is linked to Vintage Thingie Thursday, Thriftasaurus, Share Your Cup, Ivy and Elephants, We Call it Olde, Savvy Southern Style, Thrifter Maker Fixer, Coastal Charm, Thrifty Life Thursday

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {12/8/14}

I've been taking some not-quite-ugly fabrics and finding ways to make them work in baby quilts. You can find the details for the latest baby quilt, Katy, in this post.

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.

Meet Katy!

I don't throw away fabric. Actually I do, sometimes, but it's a rare thing unless the fabric is seriously nasty or damaged beyond use. A few dots of ink or glittery fingernail polish? I can and will cut around that! 

This piece has been knocking around the sewing room for a few years now. Must've come in one of the thrift store bags because I wouldn't have bought it, not even at super low clearance prices. It's not THAT ugly, but it wasn't going to make the kind of quilts I want to make. 

So I separated the squares, which of course weren't printed exactly on the grain. They did measure just a hair over two inches, so that part worked out okay. 

And then I pieced them together into the kind of quilt that I did want to make. Ridiculous and tedious and I'm not sure I'd do it again anytime soon, but it was a fun little challenge.

I bound the edges with what was left of the fabric and backed it with the same little dots I used for Ansel.

For more finishes, check out  Sew Much Ado, Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?,  , and Freedom Fridays, Wonderful at Home, and Inspired Friday.

I can see myself finishing these!

Fifteen minutes. You can work on almost anything for a few minutes, one stitch after another until the timer dings, even if you're convinced that you hate the needles and hate the yarn and the stitch pattern and can't remember how you tweaked the pattern so that the first sock would fit....

Fifteen more minutes and things start to look a little better. Stretch it into a half hour and the heel flap is done and the stitches are picked up for the gusset and you've stopped hating the sock enough that you can slog through the foot

A couple more pattern repeats and I can start toe decreases. I can manage that!





Georgia Thackery has a skeleton in her closet....or in her armoire, if he's not hanging out in the attic. Sid is a walking talking skeleton that's lived with her family since he saved her life when she was six years old. They've never given a lot of thought to what or who he was before he became her best friend.  When an anime convention provides the perfect way for him to leave the house, costumed as a skeletal character, Sid spots a woman who sparks recognition and fear.

I've got to admit that I was skeptical when I picked this one up at the library, but A Skeleton in the Family is an absolute blast. Lots of times, I have trouble suspending my disbelief when it comes to cozy mystery plots, but author Leigh Perry presents Sid in such a matter of fact way that I had no trouble accepting him.

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

Drab Postage Stamps

I love postage stamp quilts. The whole idea of cutting scraps into little 2 1/2" squares and sewing them all together to see what you can come up with is tremendously appealing to me. With postage stamp quilts, there's no background fabric or sashing to buy.

There are 1296 squares in this quilt and every last one was cut and sewed together. No strip piecing for me, not in a project like this one. I pieced my squares into four patches, then assesmbled those into sixteen patches. I made sure not to repeat fabrics within each of those blocks, otherwise the colors all wound up wherever they fell.

I think I've confused some readers with my name for this quilt. I'm not calling the quilt itself drab. It's the fabrics I used that fit the dictionary definition: lacking brightness or interest; drearily dull. A lot of the fabrics in this quilt are just plain ugly. They're scraps from the thrift store bags that weren't bright enough for the baby quilts or pretty enough for my other projects.

A couple of years back, I used them to make a couple of little wheelchair quilts and fell in love with the look.  I cut more square from those prints and dug through my stash to see how many fabrics I could find that met the "drab" criteria. Not all of the fabrics here are ugly. I mixed in bits of some of my favorite browns and other dark colors.

For more finishes, check out Sew Much Ado, Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?,  and Freedom Fridays, Wonderful at Home, Make it Monday and Inspired Friday.

Feeling Giddy

Between my newly finished Cheddar Bowties and my newly finished Drab Postage Stamps (the reveal for that one is tomorrow's post), I've had plenty to be giddy about lately. And now I'm giddy again, but this quilt top is definitely squeal worthy: 

All of those browns and reds are from my stash. There's something wonderful about seeing a pattern that you love, realizing that you can make it with fabric you already have, and getting it done. It's even better when you get it done quickly. Can I call four months quickly?

I'm hoping to have this one quilted and bound by the end of the week.

This post is linked to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

Watching the Calendar and Making Plans

I've been looking at the calendar and looking at my projects, trying to figure out what I'd like to have done by the end of the year. I'm not putting any pressure on myself, just seeing what's here and what's close to finished and what I feel like working on and planning from there.

Except for the squid. Teenage Daughter wants that done and she seems to want it now. It only needs two more tentacles (those things with all of the bobbles were arms) and some seaming, but my last skein of purple yarn is hiding.

Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 2 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 39 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 102 3/4 yards
Net Added for 2014: 63 yards

Yarn Used this Week:  0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 7075 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 4210 yards
Net Used for 2014: 2865 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

Got Any Halloween Candy Left?

This year, I saw all kinds of suggestions for dealing with Halloween candy, from selling it to local dentists to eating a piece a day  for a few days and donating what was left to (my favorite) freezing some of it to use in those dessert recipes that  call for chopped up candy bars.

My own plan, which I got too busy to follow up on, was to do a bunch of the experiments from Candy Experiments by Loralee Leavitt. We're going to have to buy a Cadbury egg to see what happens when we fry it.

My two younger boys love doing experiments, especially that one where you fill a jar with muddy water and wait for it to settle into layers. I don't think they've ever left the jar alone long enough for it to work the way its supposed to, but filling the jar and shaking it up makes them happy.

This book is full of simple experiments that don't require much preparation. The author even offers alternatives to a microwave (for the two or three of us families living without one like we are!)

I was thrilled to find out that there's a second book, Candy Experiments 2. That one has a strong focus on science fair projects as opposed to science demonstrations, which are what you'll find in the first book. (The boys and I are after science demonstrations.)  Both books explain what's causing the reaction you get. I don't  expect my boys to get deep scientific understanding from either book, but they'll be perfect for those days when they wants to make something happen.

Disclosure -- I found Candy Experiments on my own. The publisher provided me with an ARC of Candy Experiments 2. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {12/5/14}

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.

Meet Gordon!

This baby quilt started out as an unfinished quilt from a yard sale, the same one where I bought the quilt we haul down to the river and spread on the rocks. The frog print was really cute and it was only a quarter and it looked like it would be a great start to a baby quilt... 

I probably should have looked a little closer. Those weren't solid strips of the novelty print. Instead, it was cut into six inch squares and pieced into strips. With a decorative zig zag stitch.

Why would anyone do that?  I wonder if she didn't know the settings on her sewing machine, or if that odd serpentine zig zag was a deliberate choice.

I cut it back into squares and did what I could with the frog print and the navy blue print and the bit of blue sheet that was left over from Teenage Daughter's latest dressmaking project.  It's not what I was picturing in my head, but it'll do.

{Yarn Along} Abandoned Socks

I started the Croc Socks in August 2013 and I have not been loving them. I do like the yarn and I like the look of the pattern, but I'm not enjoying the process. Especially since I put the second sock down halfway through the heel flap and can't quite remember the changes I made to the pattern  for the first sock. I'm really too far along to rip it out and start over with something else...

The Noviembre socks have been on the needles since 2008. According to an old post, they were going fine until I was doing dishes and had a mishap with a broken Pyrex bowl. There's no reason not to finish them now...except maybe for the part where the pattern is in Spanish and I hope I come up with the same translation again!

Maybe if I force myself to spend fifteen minutes at a time, I can actually get these done.



A garage sale mystery? Of course I was going to read Tagged for Death by Sherry Harris. When Sarah Winston finds a blood soaked shirt in one of her bags of garage sale leftovers, a shirt that obviously belongs to her ex-husband, she isn't sure what to think. The shirt points to something awful, especially since the young woman he left her for is missing, but she can't believe that he's guilty of murder.

The background turned out to be more about civilian life on and around a military base than about garage sales, but the plot and characters were interesting enough that I'll be watching for the second book in the series to come out next summer.




The writing team of Sparkle Abbey is back with a sixth book in the Pampered Pets mystery series, The Girl with the Dachshund Tattoo. This time it's Mel's turn to solve the mystery, and she's plunged right into one when she finds a body at the Laguna Beach Dachshund Dash. Betty, Mel's quirky (and that's putting it mildly) assistant, is back with a larger part in this book. The gun she's been carrying since their last brush with danger has gone missing, making her the main suspect in the murders. I loved the chance to read more about Betty.



Cookie Chanel, owner of a vintage clothing store, comes home from an estate sale with more than new inventory for the shop. The ghost of Charlotte Meadows is tagging along with her former belongings, and she expects Cookie to solve her murder. If You've Got It, Haunt It by Rose Pressey is a cute read with useful tips for finding vintage clothes and less-than-useful tips for getting rid of ghosts scattered through the chapters.

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



Disclosure -- the publishers provided me with ARCs

Cheddar Bow Ties -- My favorite kind of quilt!

I thought last week was the big reveal for Jo's Quiltville Challenge. Turns out that I had another week to get my binding on, so here it is again, all bound and ready to snuggle under! 

This is my absolute favorite kind of scrap quilt, the one where you get to use everything from the scrap bag as long as it's halfway decent quality. (And sometimes if it's less decent, if the color or print is exciting enough.)

I've got lobsters....

and geese and seahorses and the hind end of a Dalmation....

Halloween words and tea pots and teacups....

And spiderwebs and plaids and a zillion different kinds of flowers. It's like an I Spy for grownups!

I, J...L, M, N, O, P, Q....T (and some flying geese and broken dishes and a pinwheel, too!)

This is one of those rare times that my design wall photo is actually of something on a wall. The directions for the last of the Little Letters blocks are up at  Temecula Quilt Company, which was just the little shove I needed to get back to work on my quilt. I'd set it aside after my letter "I" came out all wrong. Not sure what I did to the first one, but the second one is all nice and square. 

I want a pieced border to add to the antique sampler look, but I'm not sure if what I'm picturing in my head will work or not. 

The fabric I'm using is a black on dark grey that looks solid unless you're right on top of it. I'd bought a whole bolt when Joann's was closing one of their local stores to reopen in another location and it's been waiting for the right project. This isn't going to make a huge dent, but I'm glad I had it to use, and I don't mind having yards and yards left over. 

Sunday was a good day for piecing. A dozen or so Little Letters blocks and a bunch more of the red blocks for Chocolate Covered Cherries... Not what I'd planned on piecing, but that project derailed as soon as I took a good look at the pattern.

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.