Resolutions

I don’t usually do New Year’s Resolutions.  I tend to think the newness of a new school year in September is a better time of year to get into new and better habits, instead of the middle of a New Hampshire winter.  This year, however, I do have a couple of resolutions.  

I think the trick to making the resolutions is the same as the trick to making goals: Specific, achievable and measurable.  Have I chosen specific and measurable resolutions?  Of course not.  The things I want to improve in my life are so nebulous that I don’t think you really can measure them except in how I feel and what I see, etc.

For example, my bureau seems to be a dumping ground for many things that I can’t seem to find a place for, or for items I know must have a home but I don’t have time to find that place. These are not limited to bedroom items, they are all kinds of things that go someplace else in the house!  I would like to get into the habit of taking care of those items right away.  Some might suggest a pretty basket where I could put these items until I have time and then just empty the basket and take care of them at one sitting periodically.  I’m not sure this would really work for me because I think the basket would just become what the top of the bureau is right now!

So what are my resolutions?  I want to keep better track of what needs to be done and the steps for doing it (I’m going to try using a planner again and making it work for me), I want to get our finances in order, and I want to get into habits that will mean the house is at least picked up nearly all the time, if not exactly clean.

I’ve been working full time for the last two years.  Before that I worked full time at an elementary school for two years, but that still meant that I was home by 3:30 or so, which meant I had time to throw in some laundry or do dishes, etc.  The house still wasn’t great, but it was better than it is now.  Now I don’t get home until  5:30 at the earliest, we have dinner, the kids do their homework, and we have a bit of time before they go to bed.  Then I sit on the couch.  Admittedly, I am often knitting or crocheting or surfing while I’m on the couch even if we are watching TV, but it does mean I’m not getting anything else done.  Then when I finally drag myself off to bed (usually much later than I should) I berate myself for not getting more done.  

There is often a pile of papers of various sizes and urgency at my spot at the kitchen table, as well as a mess of mail and papers on the counter.  At work I think of things that need to be done at home or something I want to look into when I get home.  So I write it down. Then I stick it in my purse or my lunch bag and add it to the pile on the table when I get home.  Repeat as needed.  I believe the way out of most of this is getting into the habit of dealing with things sooner (i.e. not just looking at the mail, but immediately putting it in the place where it belongs – bills into a spot, things that need to be dealt with later into a spot, that kind of thing).  The other part is getting out of the habit of thinking I’m too tired when I come home to deal with anything and using that as an excuse for not getting anything done.

Pinterest can be a complete Time Suck, for lack of a better term.  But I have also discovered many things on there not just that I want to make (quilt, sweater, shawl, paint projects) but ideas that will help me get organized.   One was having a bill binder.  A monthly calendar in the front where you write the dates each bill is due when it comes in, a pocket to put those pending bills into until the next bill paying time, and tabs for each bill.  Once a bill is paid it gets three-hole punched and goes behind the tab. At the end of the year, discard the stubs you no longer need and file the ones you need to keep for taxes.  Done.  No sticking the stubs in a pile somewhere and then dragging it and a lot of other sundry things down to the basement office and leaving them in a pile until either the husband or I get around to filing it.    How cool is that?!!

Yesterday I spent about a half hour or so on putting together the binder.  I re-purposed another binder I had (from when I went gung ho with FLY Lady a few years ago).  That was all it took to set it up, a half hour.  So now we just need to train ourselves to use the binder.  The husband and I are on the same page about having to do something about our finances, so hopefully we are at the right point that we can be retrained without too much angst.

I read a few blog posts about organizing one room at a time (also discovered on Pinterest), one per week for X number of weeks, but they seemed so involved.  I don’t have the emotional energy to take everything out of all my kitchen cabinets, sort, then put them away in an organized fashion.  One cabinet at a time, maybe, over a series of days.  But I have seen some good ideas.  The first one was to keep everything in a drawer visible.  

My bureau has three smaller drawers across the top row, then two columns of larger drawers below that.  I took about 15 minutes or so the other night and redid my underwear drawer. Exciting, huh?!  But boy the last couple mornings have been great!  I can see right off what is there and take what I want.  So last night I moved on to my sock drawer, which was a volcano.  I hated opening it.  It took about 20 minutes or so to sort through everything, finally find matches for socks that got separated in the wash, etc.  What a pleasure it was to open that drawer to find socks this morning!

So I’ve done some little things, and I hope to just continue to do these little things and make it work.  I do not want to crash and burn like I have with so many other things.  I want to make the routines stick and make my life and that of my family better.  A great side benefit to this would be to teach my children that you can teach an old dog new tricks, and to pass some better habits on to them than what I have passed on to them so far!  (Yeah, you don’t want to see their bureaus…..)

Love this little wheel

So Much For That

Yep, finished the sweater, pretty much.

Yep, basically fit, though I would have had to redo the sleeves, as they were too tight (my fault).

Yep, looked awful on me. Not sure if it was the style or the yarn or what.

Yep, ripped it all out in a matter of minutes (OK, maybe it was an hour or so).

Yep, have started something totally new with the yarn.

Ugh.

Almost Done!

I am sooo close to being done with this sweater. I can't wait. And I sure hope it fits!!! There was something funky going on with the size of the shoulder - way more stitches on the fronts than on the back, so I had to bind off more of what was supposed to be the back necks. We'll see!!! I'm sewing up the seams today!

My New Contraption

OK, I am ridiculously excited about this thing.

It looks like some sort of medieval torture device, doesn't it?! Here is a less blurry picture.
I love that chair, by the way.

So what is it? It is a Mother Marion.

Oh, you still don't know what that is? It is a kick spindle. No?
Notice the adorable cat on the left in the picture. :-) Does that stuff at the top make it a bit clearer? It is used for spinning fiber, in this case wool.

I have been using a drop spindle to spin wool on, which is fine, but it does take a fair amount of time, and I was having trouble drafting out the fiber (pulling the fibers apart enough to thin them out for spinning) and keeping the spindle spinning. I really wanted to be able to use both hands, but I don't have the money for a spinning wheel.

I've looked into ways of making a spinning wheel, but I don't have any old bicycle tires hanging around, and that seems to be one of the main things I'd need. Yes, you can make a spinning wheel from a bicycle tire. I'd love to try it sometime. They are mounted sometimes on a PVC frame. Cool engineering, huh?

Anyway, somewhere on the web I found a mention of a Mother Marion, a kick spindle, where you can put the thing on the floor and use your foot to turn the spindle, thereby leaving both hands free for drafting out the fiber. So neat! There are people who make them and sell them online (Here is an Etsy shop where they make and sell their Mother Marion's, and HERE is a place where they make gorgeous ones!), but they can be pricey as well. I didn't have the money to buy one. You can also put them on a table and use your hand to spin the wheel, but that kind of defeated the purpose of wanting both hands available for me.

So I searched on the web for people who had made their own, and found a couple different ones. One was on YouTube, one was on a blog. I can't find the links right now. At any rate, the materials needed were very few, so I made a list and headed off to Home Depot. Here is what I bought:

a 3/8 inch dowel
a 'bun' foot
a piece of wood about 12 inches long and 8 inches wide, rescued from the bottom of that 'cutting center' cart in the wood trimmings aisle
a piece of wood doweling about 2 1/2 feet long with a 1 inch diameter, also rescued from the cutting center cart thing
a package of cup hooks
a large wood drawer knob

I spent less than $14. The flat piece of wood for the base and the 1 inch doweling cost me 51 cents each, because they came from the bottom of the cutting center cart! The cashier just kind of made that amount up, I think, based on something she looked up in the pricing chart. Worked for me!

You would also need some screws and nails, etc, but I had that kind of thing at home, thanks to my hubby's workshop and tool collection.[ I'm going to call it a collection, so that when I buy another shawl or more knitting needles or crochet hooks I can just say it will be part of my collection. :-) Just like his coin collection.]

So I cut the 1 inch dowel into 10 inch long pieces, the DH helped me drill holes from the bottom of the flat piece of wood into the bottom of the dowels, and also a hole through each of the dowels. I put another short piece of dowel (3/8 or smaller) through these holes to make an H. You can see that better in the next picture. We unscrewed the screw that comes already screwed into the bun foot and then drilled a 3/8 inch hold through the center of that, as well as through the center (well, it's not quite perfectly centered on either one, but close enough!) of the wooden knob. The big H is screwed onto the flat base. There is a small hole (not all the way through the base) drilled at a 45 degree angle where the dowel sits (that did take a bit of maneouvering), and two little nails hold the dowel on the top of the big H. You push the dowel through the bun foot and through the knob. The knob sits above the H on the spindle, to keep the fiber from going down the dowel. I cut the dowel to about the length I wanted, just by sight, and we put the cup hook in the end. Voila!

Here is the other picture:
The fiber you see at the top is what I did the first night I had it. So exciting! :-) I have to work on my consistency, making sure there aren't thick and thin spots, but it was easier and so much faster to use than the drop spindle.

It has its issues. For one, it does tend to jump out from between the two little nails on the H, but not so often that it is a pain, and we can figure out some way to fix that. It slides away from me a bit on the floor, but that is easy to fix, with some cork or some of that rubbery drawer liner on the bottom of the base.

That dark brown wool is that last of the roving I had on hand. Last night I started using the kick spindle for plying the singles I have spun on the drop spindle (plying is taking two 'strings' or singles you have spun and spinning them together in the opposite direction from the way they were spun to make yarn. You can make 3 ply, too, or even more, but I'm not up to that yet! ). The plying goes very fast, and it very rewarding because you can see what the yarn is going to look like. Fun! Now I'm really looking forward to the fiber tent at the local fair this weekend!

Now I just have to make sure I don't stay up too late at night doing this stuff, because it makes it awfully hard to get up to get the kids off to school in the morning!!

A Few Finished Objects

I have a few finished projects. Nothing big, really.

I have a finished purse. I made it using Future Girl's Starling Handbag pattern. Great pattern, good instructions. Go look at her tutorials, too. She has a fabulous one on paperclip stitch markers, and an awesome one on lining a crocheted (or knitted or felted!) bag. Wish I had had that when I did the lining for my felted bag a couple months ago!

I also made a few dishcloths. Here are two I did with a double ended crochet hook. You can call it crochet, you can call it cro-hook, you can call it tunisian crochet, or you can call it crochenit. It's all really the same thing. No wrong side, two colors, a double ended hook. It was fun and quick!
I also made a hat and a scarf using the same technique. The scarf is done with Caron Simply Soft yarn, so it is, well, soft. The hat is done with some of the yarn I got free. I can't tell whether it was the yarn or the double ended hook (this one had a cable) I was using, but the hat took me forever it felt like.
Then I made a couple hats from a pattern from Laughing Willow, who was wonderful about answering my questions when I had them. I tried to do the brim/ribbing at the end, but it was just getting too, kind of wavy, I guess, and sort of belling out. So I left them as rolled brim, which looks pretty good. My daughter immediately decided she needed this one:
Which I had intended to give to charity. But it was a bit small, and it fit her, so that's ok. This one is not being kept here, though:
I should have taken a picture of the tops of the hats; there is a subtle pinwheel effect on the top, made by the colors as the hat is decreased. These are tunisian crochet in the round. Very easy and quick. The top one is done in Caron Simply Soft, and the bottom in Red Heart Super Saver (the black) and Lion Brand Homespun (the gray). You can wear these on the other side as well, and they have more of a stripey effect.

These pictures are of a scarf I did, also in tunisian crochet, also from Laughing Willow. It is done with some of my free yarn, which is kind of like the Lion Brand Homespun in texture. These pictures are before washing. If the scarf is anything like the afghan I made with this yarn, it is going to fluff up quite a bit after it is washed.
You can't really tell from the pictures, but there is a different look on the back and the front. Tunisian in one color is worked only from the right side, working the stitches onto the needle as you work from right to left, then working the stitches off the needle as you go left to right. I did this one with a big crochenit hook.

I'm having fun with the tunisian crochet. I want to get a pattern book I've seen that has 101 stitches for double ended crochet hooks. It would be fun to work up a scrap afghan with all the different stitches.

I've got another major project I am working on, though, one I'm very excited about. You'll have to wait and see......

Sixth Time's a Charm?

So I bought some Vanna's Choice yarn with the intention of making myself a sweater (it was cheap at the box lot store!).

I have this v-neck cardigan I bought a couple years ago when I was working at Christopher and Banks, and I love it. I love everything about it, except sometimes wishing it had longer sleeves. I would love to recreate this sweater myself. I knit pretty well, I crochet, I've made sweaters before, how hard could it be?

Harder than you think.

First I had to find a pattern. Well, there are lots of patterns I like, but I wanted something very particular for this sweater. Found this pattern, which I really liked, with a pretty lace bit at the bottom. I've not really done lace, but I figured I could, well, figure it out.

It is worked with the bottom and sides done at once up to the elbows, so there are a lot of stitches to cast on. Well, I had to do it about three times, because I could not get that darn lace pattern to work out. It's only increases and decreases one after the other, but I kept getting to the end of the row and not having the right number of stitches. I am still not sure if this is user error or an error in the pattern. I choose to believe the latter.

So then I decided I would crochet the sweater. I found this pattern. The yarn I had was not the right size for the pattern, but I decided to wing it, using the stitch used in the pattern but just eyeballing the size according to the sweater I had that I loved. Crochet is so fast, I had almost half of the back done before I realized that the fabric I was creating was not as drapey as I would like. Back to the drawing board.

I have Doris Chan's book Everyday Crochet, and I love the patterns in it. I hadn't made anything in the book yet, though, so I thought this would be a good time to try it. I started working on the Haru pattern. It's a long cardigan pattern, but it would be easy enough to stop at the length I want because Doris's designs are worked from the top down. Perfect!

This pattern was working up quickly (all those shells!), but I had to rip it back two or three times to fix mistakes I was making (putting shells where there weren't supposed to be any shells). I had been getting gauge when I started, but when I got to the point where the arm holes become actual arm holes, I tried it on, and it was HUGE! Way too big. If I went down a hook size or two, then the crocheted fabric would be too stiff, not drapey like I wanted it to be.

I went back to my Ravelry lists and found this Drops cardigan. I liked the ones on Ravelry that people had made from this pattern, so I tried that.

I cooked right along with this project. Again, crochet is quick, and the stitches were big on this. I got the two fronts done, the back, and one sleeve, then I basted them together to try it on.


It fit beautifully. I had added a bit here and there to adjust the fit some, and everything I had done worked out perfectly (I'm better at this in crochet than knitting). I loved how it fit.

But UGH!! It looked AWFUL on me!! Talk about accentuating the negative! See where those fronts curve upward where they meet? My flabby belly was sticking right out there for all the world to see! Yuck! So I frogged the whole thing. Yep, I only had one sleeve left to go and I ripped it all back. So disappointing!

Big Sigh.

I hunted around again for a pattern I liked and found this one that might work, worked side to side. Meaning you start at the wrist, knit up to the shoulder, across the body, and down the other sleeve. Except I wanted long sleeves. So I worked out how many stitches to start with for the wrist (instead of the elbow like the pattern started with), and tried to figure out how many increases to make between the wrist and the elbow so I'd end up with the right number of stitches. Well, I got up past the elbow and really looked at it. Basically it has dolman sleeves, which I don't really like. So I pulled all that back out, too.

By now, I admit, I was getting a little irritated, wondering if I was going to have a sweater at the end of all this or not. Would I ever find a pattern I liked that would work AND fit?

I hunted through the patterns I had saved from the Knitting Pattern of the Day and Crochet Pattern of the Day calendars and found one that might work here.

So. I've been working on this one, in Purple Mist, and so far so good. I made it through the lace section at the bottom, which I made longer than the one in the pattern. Now I'm at the straight stockinette part, which I'll be working a bit longer, to make it as long as the C&B cardigan I have. It's almost time to start the armholes. We'll see how it goes. I like how it's working up so far, but I have to say, it's hard not to know if it's going to fit until it's done. I mean, I measured the sweater I have, I picked the right size of the pattern, I think, and I was getting gauge (or pretty darn close to it), so it should be ok. But you never really know until you try it on, do you?

I'm crossing my fingers.

First Yarn!!!

So I have been working with a drop spindle and have spun my first yarn. I am ridiculously proud!

I bought a kit two years ago at Wool Day at Canterbury Shaker Village, a kit for knitting a scarf with roving. I loved the color, took it home, knit up the scarf. Then last year at Wool Day I bought a drop spindle, so I decided to use the rest of the roving from the scarf kit to try spinning. I spun two lengths, then spun them together to ply it. There is only about 25 yards of it, and it is quite uneven, but I am very proud.

I wish I knew what kind of wool it was, but I can't find the directions from the kit, which would have the kind of yarn and the farm it came from. I'll have to keep looking.

Now to find some other fibers to spin!

Tunisian Dishcloth

I've done some Tunisian crochet before, but not a lot, and I'm not sure if I have ever actually finished a project with it before. I was excited to see this post at the Hooked On Needles blog. Tunisian Short Row Dishcloth
Mary Grace did a great video tutorial, and I had a finished tunisian dishcloth in no time! I was wishing I had some other colored cotton around, because it's a bit boring in just plain cream, but it was fun to do.



I'm ready to try something else in tunisian, I think. I love this pattern for a Tunisian Jacket at Crochet Insider. Got the link from Mary Grace's blog. I've tried a couple different size hooks to start this, but I end up with a very thick cloth, a bit too heavy for a sweater for what I want right now, but that's ok. I'd have to fool with that pattern to make it fit, but maybe I'll have time to do that in the not too distant future. Short rows are sooo easy in tunisian!

Afghan From Free Yarn

You can't tell the color very well in these pictures. I just couldn't get a picture that got it right. It's a dark moss green, really.

I would compare it to Homespun by Lion Brand in size and texture. After the first layer or two came off the cone, it was pretty flat, but boy did it come out nice after it was washed! Very fluffy and soft.

I used a pattern from this booklet: Snuggle-Up Baby Afghans I've used the "Squares" pattern for some scrap squares I've been crocheting over the years and holding onto to eventually make up into a scrap afghan, and used that same pattern for the squares for this. I'm not sure of the hook size, though, because it's an old wooden one I've had for ages.

It was fun, and was quick. It's going to a charity, but not sure which. It's kind of neat how the holes at the corners of the squares make a secondary pattern.

boooorrrrriiinnnggg

Knit my husband some socks. Took me a long time, and boy was it boring! All that black, over so many stitches! He tried them on and wore them for a bit to see how they felt, hence the cat fur on them.

I don't think I'll be making him any more socks for quite awhile. :-)

Free Yarn!!!

At a meeting at the public library the other night I heard those two words and practically salivated until I could find out what it meant. Turns out a local business (Perfect Fit Industries, I think it is) was giving away free yarn. The date, today, the time, 8-1.

I got there at about 8:05 or 8:10, and had to walk a long way from the parking spot I found, to join a line of about 150 to 200 people. I don't think that is an exaggeration, either. This is what I got:


Twelve cones all together, each cone about 10 inches tall, mostly of a worsted type weight and bulky weight. This is the stuff they machine knit with, so it doesn't have a lot of stretch to it. (I've had stuff like this before.) The biggest rolls will be enough for an afghan each, if not more.

I lugged a Bean bag, a basket thing, and two tote bags back up the hill to my car. People were taking the boxes that had been emptied and dragging them along behind them as they looked for more. It was a bit crazy, but people were pretty polite. A lot of the bigger or more colorful stuff was gone shortly after I made it in, but they were taking more out of the warehouse, too. I left, figuring I have more than enough to last me quite awhile, and to let some others have a chance. I promised myself that I wouldn't go crazy and take home a bunch of stuff I wouldn't use just because it was free. There is only one that I wish I had more of, because I love the bluish-green color, but that's ok.

I left there at 8:50, and unless they had loads and loads more in the warehouse, I bet it was all gone by 9:15. I don't think they realized how quickly it would all go! Although, there was a lot of very thin, almost threadlike stuff that would probably still be left. Unless you had a very fine knitting machine or could ply them together on a spinning wheel or something, it would be tough to use. It's too bad, because they had some pretty colors of it.

It was fun, worth getting up a bit early for, and now I have plenty to keep me busy for a fair amount of time to come!

Scarf and Shawl

I have a bunch of yarn I picked up at a thrift store, plus some yarn that I think had been my grandmother's. I like to try to use those up. Plus, it gives me something to work with when I don't have money to buy more yarn! A lot of the yarn is just one skein or maybe two, which leaves me in the same quandary as in the previous post.

I had two skeins of a wool/nylon mix in blue, and two skeins of the same yarn in a mauve color. Originally I was going to use them both to make a triangular shaped shawl, but I got half way done with it and didn't like how the colors looked together. So I ripped it all out. Since I couldn't find a pattern for that amount of yarn, I just used one of the stitches out of this book:

The Complete Photo Guide to Crochet. It is awesome. Great pictures of different stitches, with the directions in written and graph form. It's terrific. (There is a knit version, too, but I've not looked through that one). So I picked out a stitch I liked and that I thought wouldn't take up too much yarn, and here it is:

And another view. It's not really all that long, but enough to drape over your shoulders. Not sure if I'll keep it like this or not.

Maybe I'll pull it all out and make something else, if I think it's too short. Here's a close up of the stitch:

I have the mauve one almost finished as well. I think it might even end up a bit shorter, because I made that one a bit wider, but maybe one of the skeins I had had been partially used or something. We'll see.

I also had a skein of Lion Brand Wool Ease, and figured I could make a scarf out of that. I found the pattern on Ravelry here. It's a very simple stitch pattern, and it works up super quickly.

I wish I had made it a bit wider. You start with a chain, and because of that would have ended up with one end that was scalloped and one that was straight, so I went back at the end and added a scallop to the other end. You can kind of tell that was what I did on the left hand end, but it looks better than it would have otherwise. Next time I'll try doing the little shell stitch into different holes to make it look a little more like the other end. Still, a pretty little scarf.

Felted Bag

I love buying yarn from the people who spin it themselves (someday I'll learn), but I am also frequently unsure of how much to buy. So I often have a couple of stray hanks of yarn around that I'm not sure what to do with. I have a couple books with patterns for one skein (One Skein Wonders), but inevitably I have the wrong weight of yarn, or not enough yardage.

One pretty skein I bought at the Deerfield Fair, though, I had enough of to make a felted bag. I got the instructions from One-Skein Wonders: 101 Yarn Shop Favorites. It's the Quick Felted Bag on page 27. Except, me being me, I thought I might make it a slightly different size. Not good, when you're dealing with a process like felting. You never really know what you're going to get as a finished project. I decided to make it a bit wider, but that meant that it wasn't as tall. This is what it looked like before felting, if I can find the picture. Nope, can't find it. Must be on the old digital camera, which means I have to find some batteries....anyway....

Then I threw it in the washing machine with hot water and let chemistry do its thing. This is what I ended up with:


This was all done sometime last year, before we sold the house and moved. The bag hung on the knob to my closet door for several months, looking a bit forlorn. I think my husband was wondering what its purpose was, but being the great guy he is, he doesn't ask too many questions about works in progress unless they get in his way or make the house look too messy.

I had been thinking for some time that the bag needed a lining, something to give it some body. Right now it's a bit floppy. I like a bag that stands up on its own. Also, anything you put in this was going to come out linty. The colors are lovely, but the felt is quite fuzzy. I'm not sure if I should shave it a bit, give it a haircut or something.

Several years ago, the women's group I belong to (Circle of Home and Family) made bags for the local public library. In Lisbon Falls, Maine, there was a factory outlet, and sometimes you could get great deals on beautiful blankets, fabric, etc.(It's in Brunswick, now, Maine Woolens, but they don't seem to have a website)

I bought a huge roll of upholstery weight fabric that we used to make the bags. (I also bought fabric there which I used to make a cover for the futon we used to have, and huge pillows for it, and some to reupholster the couch we used to have) It's a deep purple color. When I was looking through my fabric yesterday to find something to line the bag with, I found some of this purple stuff and thought it would be perfect - a good weight to give the bag the body I wanted.


Strangely, both ends of the piece I had left was hemmed. I am pretty sure we did not do this, so it must have been on the original roll of fabric or something. But it was handy, as I made sure the pieces I cut were right on that edge, which mean less work for me!

So I measured carefully, was glad I knew how to add fractions when figuring out what size to cut the lining pieces, etc. and cut. Once I had cut two pieces, I realized that the lining was a bit short, and wouldn't come up high enough on the inside sides of the bag. (or so I thought) So I remeasured and cut a piece a bit wider, sewed the whole lining together and pinned it up to hand sew into the bag. I pinned the lining on the outside of the bag, which made it very easy to whipstitch into the bag. It also gave me a false sense of security though!


Once I had finished sewing it into the bag, I turned the whole thing right side out. And discovered that I would have been better off to use the original piece I had cut. For some reason, the lining was too big for the inside of the bag.

So then I had to spend an hour fiddling with the lining, sewing a couple tucks into it, etc, in order to get it to fit right. *Sigh*. In the end, it's not quite as nice as I would have liked, but it does work.



I even managed to get a pocket inside! I used the original what-I-thought-was-too-small-but-would-have-been-perfect piece I had cut to cut out a pocket.



The bag stands up nicely on it's own. it's only about 7 inches tall, and about 10 or 11 inches long, but it will be big enough for a small knitting or crochet project in progress. Because, you know, I need another one of those. Kind of pretty.

To Quilt or Not To Quilt

So another of those projects that I started a few years ago and never completed reared its not-so-ugly head last week. I had bought, washed, pressed, cut into strips, and sewn the fabric for a quilt I intended to make and keep for my husband and I, to have on our bed. The pattern was like THIS. (As an aside, I don't know who the person is who posted the picture. Is it ok to link to them like that? I should probably ask.....).

There is only one block for this pattern, and you make it from two colors, a light and a dark. Mine are white with blue flowers, and a blue-on-blue flowered print. I had all these strips sewn together, and a whole bunch of triangles cut out, which you then sew together to make bigger triangles, which you then sew together to make squares...and so on and so on. The block is made so that the dark fabric makes a cross in the middle. Then when you put the blocks together, you get a secondary pattern of light crosses. Pretty cool.

Last week I went through all the pieces I had already cut, and tacked the one finished block I had on the bulletin board above my desk/sewing table as inspiration. Then I got to work sewing the triangles and squares together and ended up with a bunch of finished blocks. There were 22 of them. While I was putting them together, however, I noticed that they had some problems. Well, one problem really: wonkiness. If that isn't a word, it should be. The blocks were wonky. Most of the seams lined up the way they were supposed to, but each new triangle or square didn't look quite right. I was trying to be careful not to distort the triangles, as that bias edge can be a bit tricky, but they still weren't right. The squares weren't square, and the triangles weren't quite triangles. Here's one of the blocks:



I don't know if you can tell, but it's not exactly square...

So what did I do? I kept sewing them up, of course! I mean, they were already all cut out, what else was I going to do with them? When I was finished sewing together all the triangles that were already cut out, I pressed all the strips I had, trying to decide what to do. I laid them out on the floor trying to see if I should sew them all together side by side.



Or maybe put sashing in between each block?



Nah. If you do that, you lose the secondary pattern of the light crosses.

At this point, I thought I might try making up another block, being careful to cut the triangles so they were true right triangles. Maybe I could make up a less wonky block, and then decide what to do from there? I seem to have discarded the book I got the original pattern from, but I had tape on my acrylic ruler to show the size of the triangle to cut. I used another acrylic ruler, a triangle one, to cut new triangles that were what I thought was the right size, judging from the way I had cut the previous triangles. Then I sewed that one block up. What did I end up with? A still slightly wonky block that was a half inch smaller than all the other blocks!!! Big sigh.

I spent a day or so cogitating on what I was going to do. Chuck it all back into a cabinet and let it fester for another few years? Take all the blocks apart and try to recut them in the smaller size of the new block I made? Heck, there was NO way I was going to do that. I mean, I'm not adverse to ripping back knitting or crochet if I've made a mistake that needs to be fixed (provided it is obvious or will make something else obvious), nor am I adverse to whipping out the seam ripper to take apart a project that isn't going well. But take apart all those blocks, recut them and then sew them back together? No way.

So, I counted up the number of squares I had (22) and realized I had to make three more if I wanted to put them together and have something that was square. A lap quilt maybe or a tablecloth had become my aim. I cut a bunch more triangles, sewed them all up, and ended up with 25 finished blocks. I laid them all out on the floor side by side, much like in the picture above, and tried to decide what to do. The next day I sewed them all into rows of 5 blocks each, aiming to sew those rows into a large square. I haven't sewn the rows together yet, but that is my plan.

But what do I do with it then? I've done the best I could to line things up so that the corners that are supposed to meet actually meet, and so forth. There are a couple spots where there are obvious misses, but most of them actually look ok. Not that I would want anyone to look too closely, but still, not too bad looking. This is what they look like sewn into rows:



Once I get the rows sewn together I figure I have a couple of choices. I could sew on a border or two, back it, and leave it as a tablecloth. I could sew on some borders, add some batting and backing and make a lap quilt. Or I could make it a much bigger quilt in some other way.

The large square, once the rows are sewn together, will be about 56 inches square. If I want a quilt big enough for our queen size bed, I will have to add quite a bit. And I am not going to make anymore wonky blocks. I know that much. Whatever is added will have to be borders of other things. Plain borders, then some pieced borders? I just don't know. What I do know is that I have this:



All these strips sewn together. Forty something of them, all the width of the fabric. And I have checked them - they were not the problem with the previous blocks. They are as straight as I can make them, no waviness or anything. I want to use them, but how? I could cut and sew some more and make some nine-patch blocks with 4-patch corners and middles. Or make a checkerboard border with them. My husband said I should just make it into a twin size quilt for one of the kids, but it's not really my daughter's style, and it's a bit too flowery for my son. Plus, I still really love the fabric and color. If I make a bunch of borders, some pieced and some not, it's going to take some planning, and I am not sure if I am a a good enough quilter to make it all come out right. I could fudge enough to get these blocks sewn into rows, but adding pieced borders is a whole different thing. Plus, I will need more fabric, which I can't buy right now.

So that is where I am, trying to decide what to do next. And working on some other unfinished projects in the mean time, and sometimes starting something new.

One Day project

I bought this kit at last fall's Wool Day at Canterbury Shaker Village. I enjoyed the little sheep rug hooking project from the kit from Harrisville (from my previous post), but I didn't really want to do a big project, so I picked this up. I love sheep. Can you tell? And it's not because I love yarn, I've just always liked them!



This little sheep is about 8 inches by 6 inches, and is made up as a little mat. It's on the coffee table for now. I'm not quite sure what to do with him. I could open up one of the seams and make it into a pillow, but as I've just finished the other three pillows shown in my last post, I'm not sure what I'd do with another one. Maybe this little guy should be a trivet/hot mat? Hmm...

I love Canterbury Shaker Village, but Wool Day is especially fun. They have people demonstrating tons of things: rug hooking, knitting, crocheting, sewing with wool, lace making (that was neat - hadn't seen that in person before), spinning, weaving, felting/fulling, and more. I'm not sure if they had someone doing braided rugs or not. They also had the woman that makes the Shaker cloaks for dolls and women, and she showed me all the steps of the lovely work she does. The Shakers used to make them for sale, and wealthy ladies in the city would buy them for opera cloaks.

Plus, they have vendors at Wool Day where you can buy finished products or supplies to make your own items! I bought a drop spindle there to try my hand at spinning some yarn, and will post about that sometime soon. There was lots of yarn to choose from, but I don't think I actually came home with any last year. I came home with the kit for this rug hooked sheep instead. This year's Wool Day is Saturday, September 25th.

The museum store is terrific, as well, with some crafty type kits for adults and children (the basket I made and featured on in early post I got as a kit at the museum store at Canterbury Shaker Village). They also have lots of beautiful hand made items like furniture, Shaker boxes and peg boards, as well as books and so forth. You don't have to pay admission to the Village in order to go into the store, so it's worth a stop.

Rug hooking is one of those things that I am glad I know how to do, but I don't presently see myself doing a full sized rug for the floor any time soon. Plus, I'd almost hate to step on something like that! :-) Although, I am working on something that will become a rug, but more on that another time.

Finishitis. I've got it.

This is the first needlepoint I ever did. I finished it a couple years ago, but hadn't gotten around to making it up into a pillow. It is done with embroidery floss, not yarn. I wasn't sure how it would turn out with the extra border around it, but I'm pleased with the results. :-) I like that it was a relatively small project, and made me feel successful in a shortish time. I had gotten the canvas from Michael's, but they don't carry those anymore, more's the pity.




This is the first rug hooking project I ever did. I had seen the kit to make it at the Manchester Millyard Museum gift shop (I love museum gift shops!) several years ago, a kit designed for children, and told my husband it would be a good Christmas gift idea. It didn't take me too long to make, really, but then it sat in a box for a year or two, also waiting to be made up. I made it up as a little pillow, but I wasn't sure what to do with it. I kind of like how it looks against the old books, though.



This is the needlepoint I just finished. I bought the kit (also done with embroidery thread) online, after obsessing over exactly what I wanted, to bring with me to England. Four years ago. I had visions of me spending the hours on the plane working on this. Yeah, not so much. I worked on it off and on after that, and got finishitis a couple of weeks ago. I'm pretty pleased at how it came out, though I wish I had had fabric that better matched it for the back of the pillow. I thought DH didn't pay too much attention to what I made, but the day after I finished it he said, "Did you put your name or initials on that anywhere? Don't you think you should?!" Very gratifying.



Last year sometime I bought another needlepoint kit, this one with yarn, at a second hand/antique store in Dover. It was super cheap, as these kinds of things go, and I did a bit of work on it in the next week or so. Then I put it away, feeling that I should work on the one I already had going before I started that. So now that I finished with the piece above, I can really dig into the next one.

Soon I'll make a real foray into the abyss of my craft stuff downstairs and see what else I have that is unfinished. Plus, my aunt just told me she had found a needlepoint project my grandmother had started at some point and never finished, so she's going to send that my way. That'll be cool.