I needed a quickie

I am struggling with the sweater.  I can do it technically, but it just seems to be taking forever.  One of my Saturday morning knitting friends was working on the Susies Reading Mitts from Dancing Ewes Yarns.  I loved them.  So much so that I had to come home and make them.  Right then.  I grabbed the first yarn form my stash that might work.  This is an an aran weight alpaca that I picked up at the Empire Alpaca Association's Extravaganza.  I loved the yarn, but it came form one of the farms and was not labeled and I had no idea of the yardage.  It also turned out to be an odd color and I never found any yarn in purple or gray that would work with it.  So, it sat.

Susie's Reading Mitts call for DK weight yarn.  I went up a needle size and made them in small.  It worked, they fit.

These took just over a day to make and they were fun!  I'm already planning on making a second pair.

Raving Rabbids: Rabbids Go Home

I have not had much to say lately.  We are eating out of the freezer., so not much cooking.  The sweater is poking along.  It snows every day. 

We have been obsessively playing Raving Rabbids: Rabbids Go Home on the Wii for the past week.   Basically, you take two insane rabbits with a shopping cart through different places and collect stuff so that the rabbits can build a big enough pile to climb to the moon.  Each place acts like an obstacle course.  it is silly, fun, and suspenseful.  Kiddo and I occasionally scream like little girls.

Our pile is getting pretty big.

pic frum everyjoe.com

Kiddo's Quilt: Week 2

A block before trimming

Sewing is in full swing! 

Blocks after trimming

She finished two blocks and four more are in progress.  She is listening to the machine and slowly gaining confidence.  Her seams are at least half an inch wide, and sometimes veer to the left.   At this point, I'm just encouraging her to try to sew in a straight line.  

Love those curved seems.

I am still cutting strips and will be trimming the blocks for her as she goes 
along.

The basket of strips

 I really hope she is having fun at this.  I know I am.

Blocks in progress

We lost the dog food.

Darwin's dry food lives under the kitchen table.  When I went to feed him breakfast this morning, it was gone.   It was not on the counters either.  Sometimes, it gets left up there.  We both go on a search for the bin.  The bin is not small.  It measures 14" tall, by 9" wide, by 5" deep.  It should be easy to spot.

It is not in any of the cabinets.

It is not outside.

It is not in the refrigerator or either freezer.

It is not in the dining room, living room, bathroom, sewing room, or either bedroom.

It is not in the basement.

It is not in the oven.

Darwin is not bright enough to hide it.

There is no evidence of spontaneous combustion.

There is no evidence that he ate the whole thing.  In fact, he sleeps through the entire search, blissfully unaware that his food is missing.

Where the heck is it?  We were robbed and all they took was the dog food?

Finally, we decided that the kid must have moved it.  She does wacky stuff.  Well, she did not like being blamed one bit.  She marches into the kitchen, goes straight to the table, lifts the Farmer's coat that is hanging over the back of a chair, and there it is.  Between the coat and the cat sleeping under the table, it was invisible.  I swear I looked under there at least 3 times.  Oops.

Someone smart once said: "It is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

If you have read this far, you  know.  I am a fool.

Monogomous Knitting

Knitters practice polyamory.  All the knitters I know have multiple projects on their needles.   For the last 3 weeks I have only had one project in progress.  It's Cinxia from Knitty.  I don't know how to pronounce it, but I love the sweater.   I started this project last April but put it aside quickly for other things.  Now, I am back to it and I am 3.5" into sleeve #2.  It starts with a slip stitch pattern and it seems like all I do is count: "One, two, three, slip.  One, two, three, slip..."  I thought that if I focused on just one project, it would go faster.  Instead it is taking forever.

A little more love in the world would not hurt would it?

Canvas Tool Wrap #2

Oops.  The pockets on the first wrap faced the wrong way. 

So, here is is again.

It measures 29.5" long by 26.5" wide.  The flaps measure 6".  Each pocket is 5 and 3/8ths inches deep.  The center section between the pockets is 2.75".   For each row of pockets the far right pocket is 3".  The remaining eleven pockets are 2".  It means that as the tools are facing each other, the openings of the pockets are offset.  Tools will go in handle first so the blades of the tools will lie exposed between the handles of tools in their opposite pockets.  Does that make sense?  The blades are then protected by the flaps.  The ties are 42" long.  I didn't sew the ties on first so I had to secure them by over sewing the pocket seams.  

 

I got the ties 20 years ago.  They came holding a futon into a roll.  They have traveled a long way waiting for the right project.  I really try not to save stuff like that because I think I could become a hoarder of stuff that has crafty potential if I am not careful..  These have escaped multiple purges.

Placement of the pockets on this one was tricky.  What I did was cut the  canvas 1.5" larger than the finished dimensions.  Then I folded it in half and pressed a center crease.  Everything was measured off the crease.  It worked.  The machine actually went through 6 layers of canvas in a few places.  It went slowly, but it went. 

I like it.  I hope my Dad does too.  I wonder if he would give me the original back?  It would work really well to store my DPNs.

Now she wants to make a quilt.

A block in progress

Okay. I have made a ton of quilts. I still have more fabric than brains.  This is doable.

Here we go! Week one.

Actually, back up a bit.  She has been asking to make a quilt since we finished the pillow case.  We had to make sure that this was not a whim.  It's not.

First, we designed a pattern.  I decided on a string quilt with blocks.  It will be 5x5: 10" blocks with a 12" border.  Final size will be 74" square.  We drafted a few options on graph paper until she settled on a favorite. 

Next step was to clean out the sewing room.  Most of that was taking boxes of Christmas decorations up to the attic and just putting random stuff away.  The sewing room tends to become a "catch all" for just about everything in the house that does not have an immediate home.

Holy mess Batman!

More mess!

Finally, it was time to pick out fabric.  The first attempt was a bit overwhelming.  She decided that she loved just about every color in the bin, regardless if they would work together or not.  We did a bit of resorting by theme and then after a few days, she decided that she preferred the really bright colors that "pop."

The calico bins

Then, we went though 7 more bins.  I do not even know how many fabrics she chose.  More than a hundred.

The basket of fabrics she chose

I cut this old ditzy pink fabric into 11 inch squares.  Then I started cutting strips.  Kiddo does not get to cut yet .  She cannot cut a straight line and rotary cutters are for grown-ups. 

Fabrics that have been cut so far...

She is sewing the strips onto the foundation square.  She is still a bit afraid of the machine and she really does not like the iron.  I press for her.   Her seems are huge.  It doesn't matter.  Once she sews them, we press them open and all evidence of big seem allowances and wonky, curved sewing disappears.   Her confidence is growing and she is getting excited.

This is going to be fun.