Mystery Revealed

This is Lyn Mann's mystery quilt from Quilt Camp in the Pines 2006. The class voted to name it "Twisted Violets." Lyn used purple in her sample and so did alot of the students! There are actually only 2 blocks in the whole quilt. I added two borders, and came home from camp with a FINISHED OBJECT. B. commented that I probably violated a whole bunch of quilty rules by doing that! I replied that it just moved into the Longarm UFO pile...

My Summer Vacation

I am leaving the heat of Phoenix tomorrow for the cool Pines of Flagstaff and Quilt Camp! The picture shows John Flynn's Storm at Sea, which is my Saturday class. I am also taking longarm quilting and paper piecing classes and a mystery quilt! I picked traditional blues for my Storm at Sea quilt.

There won't be any new posts until after I get back on the 24th, and then I am sure I will have plenty to share with you! Of course, I have stuff to show off now, but no time to run the phone line down the hall to the computer with the photo sharing software. So, just be patient and there will be lots of knitting and quilting photos in about 10 days. BTW...I am working on the leg of Sock #2, so I might have my first pair done by August, woo-hoo!

Microsoft Quilt Designs

This is the fern leaf I am currently putting in sashing pieces of my latest strip quilt. It's going much better on the longarm than with the mouse!! Although I wish I had used a different color thread, and I wish I had done a different design in the center squares. It looked ok on paper, but now the central design is too similar in scale to the fern leaf. Oh well, live and learn. Add to this the pressure that this is a sample for a class on Saturday...yikes!

When I get to the end, I will take a picture of the major disaster from yesterday...I basted the top too far away from the top leader, so when I got to the bottom, I ran out of backing! (I said a few bad words.) My brilliant fix was to baste as far as possible, unzip the top leader, un-pin everything else, and sew an additional strip to the back. That's where the sleve will go...yeah, yeah, that's the ticket!

Working on a holiday

These are the freehand designs I used in the border of my latest longarm project. It's a sample for the store featuring a center panel with large-print Amy Butler fabric. It was so much fun to work on! I outlined the leaves and flowers in the center, then in the border I used the blue wiggles and green leaves.

I don't have a real photo of the quilt because we reconfigured the computers as we cleaned out the house and worked on the nursery. The digital camera software is on my laptop, which has been moved to my craft room. Unfortunately, there is no internet access now! So, I am using B.'s computer to get on the internet, and playing with the Paint program in Windows. Actually, this could be a good deal...it's hard to get a nice picture of quilting to show up!

Happy Independence Day to all!

Silly Survey

I tagged myself with this meme from Red Shoe Ramblings: (I think the one-word answers are a rule. It's harder than it looks!)

1. Yourself: emerging
2. Your partner: asleep
3. Your hair: red
4. Your Mother: cheerful
5. Your Father: golfer
6. Your Favorite Item: books
7. Your dream last night: meetings
8. Your Favorite Drink: margarita
9. Your Dream Home: comfortable
10. The Room You Are In: loft
11. Your pleasure: reading
12. Your fear: spiders
13. Where you Want to be in Ten Years? teaching
14. Who you hung out with last night: Kesslers
15. What You're Not: sophisticated
16. Your Best Friends: understanding
17. One of Your Wish List Items: photo printer
18. Your Gender: woman
19. The Last Thing You Did: read blogs
20. What You Are Wearing: housedress
21. Your favorite weather: rain
22. Your Favorite Book? No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
23. Last thing you ate? cheesecake
24. Your Life: full
25. Your mood: satisfied
26. The last person you talked to on the phone: Julie
27. Who are you thinking about right now? DebR

Big Spender

This is the crib we decided on, but ours is a darker wood finish. The store calls it "Cognac," and it matches our other furniture which is walnut. Fairly plain, but it suits us. I like the simple curves on the ends. We have a headboard to move up to in a few years (family heirloom) so we chose not to get the convertible style cribs, which to me, look too havy and massive for a baby's room.

We still need to find a dresser and a rocker we like, then the room will be decorated! Well, except for some pictures on the walls. The theme is "African Safari" since I found some fabric with giraffes, elephants, zebras, etc. The plan is to make a table cover for the desk we are using
asa changing table.

Happy Hearts

Time to spread some love...the universe needs some balance after that last post!

I made this in 2004...it was my third quilt ever, and the first one I quilted myself.

Darn Postal Workers!

I am anxiously waiting for 2 packages:

1) My One Skein Secret Pal yarn for June. This was not a partner swap, instead, person A sends to person B, who sends to person C, etc. I sent off a skein of Noro on about June 7th, plus some cards in the mail since then. My partner is a happy camper. However, the Golden Rule has not worked in my favor on this yet. Luckily (??) my partner is not-so-secret, and about 10 days ago I emailed her a nicely worded, "How's it going" note. She did write back saying life was crazy and my package would be on the way soon. Please, yarn swap fairy, speed up the mail routes so my yarn gets here this week!!! [ I know, swaps are a gamble, especially on the internet, so it's not a big deal if I don't get anything. But it does kinda feel like Valentine's Day in First Grade when everyone else has more Valentines in their pink paper covered shoe box!]

2) Wedding pictures from my best friend's son's wedding back in December. I ordered three prints online, oh, back in March I think. April rolled aorund, and I thought, hey, where are those prints? May rolled aorund, I came across the photographer's address and my invoice number, and I thought, I'll give them a call when school lets out and I have more time. June rolls around, and whaddaya know, I got a call from the photographer! She has my prints, but oh dear, I didn't include tax for the order, so could I please send them another check? [ helloooo, how about you get someone to help with your website to either A - accept credit card payments, or B - TELL ME TO INCLUDE TAX] So, I subdued my irritation and wrote a check for the tax ($1.22) plus, a few dollars for postage since she first asked me to pay for shipping then decided to eat that cost. (My mom's a small business owner...those little things add up!) Anyway, it's now been several weeks and NO PHOTOS. We're in the same suburban area, I get mail from across town in 4 days, tops. Time for another phone call.

3) And while I'm venting...I am supposed to have a light bar for my longarm! The dealer said a month ago that she'd set up delivery next week. I called her shop last week and they just got a new phone system and couldn't figure out how to transfer me to her extension so I was cut off - TWICE. grrrrrrr.

Sock Progress

You can kind of see the eyelet pattern in the photo. The leg is done and I have started the heel flap. You would think that k1, s1 would be easy, but I have noticed in jsut two rows that I like to k2 occasionally. OOPS. I have put other projects on hold while I get through this sock. I figure if I make one sock, then I know how to handle all the parts and then I can relax on the second one and bounce around among all my projects! (We're all unfaithful yarn harlots at heart!)


I *really* need to be sewing right now. I have the strips ready for the July Strip Club project at the shop, and only three weeks to get the top completed and quilted! In those same three weeks, I have to finish painting the nursery and get the house cleaned up for the nerve-wracking Home Study which will certify us to adopt. AAACK, where are the instructions for altering the time-space continuum? I just saw them in the pile on my desk...

Really, really, really good news from the General Convention of the Episcopal Church: we elected a FEMALE Presiding Bishop! Head Honcho for the whole American Church is a WOMAN! You go, girlfriend! I have to giggle...three years ago, the Episcopal Church ordained an openly gay man as the Bishop of New Hampshire and the conservative branches of the church around the world had a fit. I bet they are really P.O'd now! Get over it, dude, it's the 21st century!

Progress

I talked to my mom at about 11am today and mentioned we were enjoying the World Cup. She was outraged! She thought we had too much to do getting ready for baby that we shouldn't be wasting time in front of the TV. Relax Mom, we'll be ready...by the time the child goes to college it will all be sorted out :-)

So, feeling rather industrious, we turned off the TV and trudged up to the extra bedroom/storage room/soon-to-be-nursery. It made me a little crazy to see all the mess we had to deal with, but B. convinced me his methods would work. These methods include piling every box in the center of the room (there were about 6 in the closet when we started) unpacking them all, and sorting, just like you see on Clean Sweep: keep, charity, and trash. In just three hours, voila! 2 boxes back in the closet, 2 in the garage and lots of stuff for charity and the trash.

This is a big deal, people of the internets...I have boxes that I have not unpacked in TEN YEARS because I cannot handle the mess and the inner turmoil of sorting out what bits to keep from my past! But, B. is ruthless and it must be done. The pregnancy is in week 32, which gives us about 6 weeks (we're hoping for an early delivery.) The race for organization is on! Say a prayer for the reformed packrats...

All American

Ugh. It is so hard to show quilting details in pictures! Especially when I use lots of prints and same-color thread. Oh well...at least I tried???

This is the first quilt I actually got paid for! It's a sample my mom made for her shop, pretty simple blocks, but she used the fun baseball and hot dog prints. I quilted diamonds in the squares, meandered around the hot dogs, and sewed baseball words in the yellow parts, words like strike, run, out, pitch, catch, etc. Since the blocks were small, I had to keep the words short, LOL. My original list had things like umpire, outfield, fly ball, etc. Ain't gonna happen in 3 inches!

Quiet Sunday

I have been enjoying my summer vacation IMMENSELY. Sleeping late is wonderful :-) No progress to report on the socks. I went to the Friday Knitting Club at the store and we decided my gauge was off, so I frogged the whole thing and started over on US size 1 needles. This time, I was a good doobie and knit a swatch so I could check my gauge BEFORE I had three rounds of eyelets done!

Yesterday was Worldwide Knit in Public Day. I wore my t-shirt, but that was the extent of my participation :-( I had to teach a class in the morning, then we went to a wedding in the afternoon. I was tempted to make B. take me to the mall afterwards, since the socks were in my purse, but no, we just went home.

Our new addiction is "24." Yes, the TV show. Yes, I know I am behind the times if I am just now getting into it. About two years ago, I was able to watch about 4 episodes. But, my life is really busy during the school year on weeknights, and meetings came up and I just couldn't plan my life around a TV show. Yes, we do own a VCR, but that is like, soooo 1990s. Plus, it's a nice back-pocket guilt inducer because at the time (note: TWO YEARS AGO) I told my husband the ONLY thing I wanted for my birthday in October was Tivo. Somehow, he couldn't figure that one out. So I said, the ONLY thing I want for Christmas is Tivo. Not even Santa came through on that one! Here it is, what, season five??? And I finally went to Blockbuster for season one and we are up to 8am. Hubby is addicted too. (Hey this might be the year for Tivo!) But, he said we have other projects to get done around the house (say, painting the nursery before baby arrives in August? Good Plan!) so, we can only watch one season a month. I am crossing my fingers that the video store has Disk 4 in stock tomorrow!

Juggling Toothpicks

Trying to get my first sock started on DPNs jsut made me laugh. I felt like an octopus! But, as you can see, I managed to get the feel for it and my first-ever sock is taking shape. Yay me!

Yarn: Regia Cotton Color #4075
Needles: Crystal Palace Bamboo DPN, US #2
Pattern: Summer Solstice (June) from The Sock Calendar (c) 2002 by Catherine Wingate and Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer.

I finished the 1-1/4" ribbing, and I have completed the first full pattern round, which entailed yarn overs and SSK for the first time. Another YAY ME!

Bringing me to the thoughts I have had recently about learning new skills, knitting and otherwise. Apparently, I am blessed with healthy self-confidence. Knitting looked interesting, so I picked up some needles and started doing it. I ask for help when I am confused by a pattern. I grab a book, or look on the internet for instructions. Basically, I just try it! Same thing with quilting. I sat down with some fabric and a pattern, and started stitching. A few months later, I went to Quilt Camp and signed up for any class that looked interesting. (Curves were a little frustrating, so the Double Wedding Ring is still at the bottom of the UFO pile.)

We have had a woman in our local knitting group who is at the opposite end of the confidence scale, and it makes me sad. She was trying to decide on yarn for a next project, and she had a book of baby patterns in front of her. Reading through, she came to a description of an increase stitch. It was a little confusing, so she put everything back, saying it was too hard. She cast on another scarf. I am baffled. It's just some string wound around two sticks! Try it! It will make more sense when you have the stitches in your hands! If it looks horrible, rip it out and try again! But, to each her own. I hope she finds a patient tutor who can gently lead her along the knitted way...I will be far ahead with my basket of projects: sweaters and knitted animals and socks, and whatever else catches my fancy.

Workin' on the Weekend

My latest longarm effort is a quilt from the book "9-patch Pizzazz." (It's a great book for interesting settings of large prints.) I used a varigated thread called "Woodland" which has tan, reds and a dark brown. It looks really good on the floral prints, but I wish I had used a coordinating thread on the light green squares, or else stitched across all the floral prints. Oh well, I'm not going to rip it out!

Home Improvement

Meet my dear hubby (B)...Home Depot's most loyal customer this week! He is very handy...one of the things that attracted me to him ;-)

I need a place to display my quilts, and also (eventually) to hang customer quilts while waiting for inspiration and time on the machine, LOL. We fashioned this display bar from copper tubing. It sort-of matches the mission style furniture throughout our house. It was a good day for B - he got to use power tools! The giraffe picture may have to relocate someday, after I find the clip/hangers that I will use to hang quilts.

I got the idea for hanging quilts this way from my mom's store. She installed rebar around the store near the ceiling, and hangs her displays that way. She even has a nifty pole with a hook on the top to aid the putting up and taking down of quilts!

The Princess

A longarm quilting machine is an expensive piece of equipment, used to sew intricate designs on the top layer of a quilt. In my case, it has become a kitty hammock.

Since the longarm is about 4 feet by 112 feet, the only space in our house to put it is the loft. Lofts, by nature, are large open spaces...meaning no doors. It is impossible to keep cats off furniture without doors. (The bathroom doors are always closed in our house because a certain calico likes to play with toilet paper.)

The lovely blue sheet at least keeps the cat hair off of the quilt!

Christmas in May

Here is a little something to get you through the long hot days of summer...start thinking about Christmas! This bargello went together VERY quickly. The fabrics are some of the strips from my Cotton Rainbow project. I was trying to think of another project for our Strip Club, and Marilyn Doheny just gave a lecture on bargello. Perfect for strips and strata!

Charity Blocks

Number 1 of 3. This bear paw variation will be part of a charity quilt. My local guild does 4 charity quilts per year...3 go to outside organizations and one is donated to the church whose facilities we use for meetings. We saw a really neat quilt in the book "Hidden Blocks" and we used that for inspiration. A quilt appraiser told us that two-color quilts, such as blue and white, or red and white, are the most popular/valuable, so that influenced our color scheme.

If you ever get the chance to hear a quilt appraiser talk about her work, take advantage! It was fascinating to learn about color techniques and fabric dating, all the way to pattern development and how that influences future market value of a quilt.

Feelin' the Blues

You are Ocean Blue

You're both warm and practical. You're very driven, but you're also very well rounded. You tend to see both sides to every issue, and people consider you a natural diplomat.

What Color Blue Are You?

Deb at Red Shoe Ramblings shares fun quizzes about once a week. This one fits me pretty well, being a Libra and all ;-)

The secret sweater

In previous posts, I have mentioned this sweater, my current knitting project. It's not really a secret, I just never got around to taking a picture! Here, you can see that I am almost done with section 2 - right back. I have already finished section 1 - left front and I am looking forward to repeating the process with left back and right front.
I am using a DK weight alpaca yarn from Royal Fiber, in blue, heather and multi-colors, on US #3s. It should be just right for winter in Phoenix, layered over a t-shirt! Hopefully, I will have it complete by November, but considering it took me almost a year to get to this point, don't hold your breath.
This is my second sweater project. The first was a t-shirt sweater pattern, knit in Butterfly Super 10 cotton. It is sitting in the closet, waiting for blocking. I have procrastinated on that so long, that now it is probably too hot to wear for another six months. I'll have to set a reminder for September, block the sweater, then I can wear it the week before the vest! (Here in the desert, we only have a small window of sweater-wearing temperatures, so it's good to plan ahead.)