Cattywampus

The great reveal

Well, here's the biggie.  Rene, by Anne Hanson

This is, of course, what I spent the last month frantically knitting.  It came down to the wire, and I didn't know if I was going to finish it in time, but in the end (with an extra day taken off work to finish a sleeve and seam) it was blocking by the afternoon of the 23rd.

As you can see, it was unwrapped and immediately put on, so I consider that a rousing success.  The sleeves are too long, they stretched like mad.

So I'll probably need to cut the sleeves and put a regular ribbing on the bottoms to keep him from having to roll them up, but I did use superwash, so it was a danger.

I used berroco vintage, he tends to be too hot in 100% wool sweaters, so I thought this was a good compromise.  The top color is the most accurate, it's a dark reddish/burgundy color.  

He opened it, looked at me in amazement and immediately says "but when did you knit this??" and was flabbergasted to realize that I had been knitting it in front him for a month solid.  Sweetheart that he is, he immediately felt bad for not noticing what I had been knitting - lol - that's just fine with me - otherwise I would never be able to knit him anything!

I also finished a scarf for my step-mother (it seems so odd to call her that in the sense that most people hear it - she and my father will have been married for 30 years this year!).

(the fireplace takes good pictures)

This is knit in a cashmere silk blend I picked up at School Products in New York.  The pattern is some version of feather in fan that I UNvented when I screwed up the original pattern by doing it on a stockinette background.

We will be seeing them tomorrow, but I doubt she'll be on my blog between now & then.

Last but not least, a quilt for my mother.

This was made from a layer cake that I picked up a few years ago, and then I found the fabric I used for the backing on clearance a year or so later, a happy coincidence as they say.  I am really, really happy with the way this turned out.

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(note the hand knitted socks under the bottom edge of the quilt, my mother knit those for herself - her first finished pair!)

I moved away from spirals for the quilting (tho I really do love doing the spirals, they are fun to sew) and tried these echo stitches and did an "edge to edge" pattern instead of going block by block and doing something different for the borders.

The yarn blends so well I'm not sure if you can really see the quilting, but it's in there, I promise!

On a completely different note, I tried this really fabulous (and amazingly simple) sticky bun ring recipe on Christmas morning, and it was fabulous.  In fact I ate so many I gave myself a serious sugar high.  I didn't think to take a picture of it, I was too busy enjoying them, but it turned out really pretty as well, I highly recommend it for your next special breakfast treat.

I have some goodies that I got myself that I want to share with you too, but that's for another day.

And again.

My work ate my life.

And now it's 5 days til xmas and I am super behind in updating you on anything.  There are few reasons for this.  

1.  I haven't finished much other than stockinette socks.

2. I have been making xmas gifts and even though I don't think said giftees check my blog, I'm not posting about them just in case.

3. Really it's just that work ate my life.

Here the few things I have finished.

First, the evil hexagonal quilt of dooooooooom, which I have to admit is completely gorgeous, no matter how much I hated the process of putting it together.

And I really am getting better at quilting.

There are a few puckers in this one, but considering how skewed the quilt was in one place, I don't think it's bad at all.  Wait 'til you see the next one I'm working on!

I jumped on the band wagon and made a brambles beret, totally fun pattern.

Bad lighting, but there it is, it's a lovely medium blue color.

Saturday rainy day socks.

Fun stripey socks.

And last but certainly not least, puppies.

The mister is still doing okay, his monthly vet visits for check ups and chemo refills are adding up, but I don't see that there are any other options.  As long as he is still healthy and enjoying life, we will keep handing over the credit card.  The vet is impressed with his health, she didn't think we could hold the cancer at bay this long.  We can tell that the cancer is slowly growing, but we are at status quo until his behavior changes, so we will continue to spoil him rotten and cuddle him to pieces for as long as we can.

Pixie seems to be taking it all in stride...it's hard to tell how much she understands about his situation, but when he has a bad patch (a 20-30 min period where he gets all shakey from a histamine reaction and it is really, really obvious that he feels awful - these happen about once a week) she acts really weird, so she definitely knows that there is something going on.  Poor sweet Pixie.

I will update after Christmas when I can post the gifts that have been given, hopefully on the giftees!

I wish you all a safe and happy holiday season!!

Moving on

I recently finished this quilt top.  It took me 3 years.

Not three years to actually sew it, but 3 years after cutting it out to get to the act of sewing it together.

And can I tell you one thing?  I hated every minute of it.

It's lovely, I can see why people make these quilts, but I really, really didn't enjoy doing it.  And if by "really, really didn't enjoy" you have interpreted to mean "I considered cutting it up into teeny tiny peices and/or setting it on fire because its evil was overtaking my life", then you are right on point.

I HAD to finish it though.  This is where stubborness can be either a boon or a curse.  A more sane person would have just given up and given it away to someone who would enjoy doing it, but not me, oh no, I will not be defeated by mere fabric!

So, there it is.

If you're wondering what was so awful about it, I'll tell you:  I hated the triangles, I hated that the seams had to be ironed open instead of to one side, I hated that when I was sewing it together I had to keep checking that everything was in the right order, I hated the small cutting errors that prevent it all from being exact, I hate that it doesn't have any straight lines, I hate that it isn't symmetrical.  Mostly though, it's the triangles, the ironing, and the matching things up and how timeconsuming all those things were.  I currently hate that there is some odd sewing issue going on in the middle that makes one side pull in and I don't know HOW I'm going to quilt that out.

For those of you who sew, I know you'll know what I mean by all that, and those of you who don't, I'm sure you get the gist.

It's done and I'm moving on.  Once it's quilted I will put it in the bottom of a drawer somewhere and hope that when I take it out in 6 months to a year I will have forgotten how angry it made me and just be able to appreciate the fact that it really is quite pretty.

Oh - does anyone want a One Block Wonder book?  I will HAPPILY donate mine if anyone out there wants to give this a try.  I will definitely not be making another one of these.

Baby Quilt Hooray!/Christmas Quilt Meh.

A dear friend is pregnant and expecting a little boy, so I have whipped up the first baby quilt EVER that I am actually going to gift BEFORE the baby is born.  

I had this darling paisly frog pattern, so I couldn't resist highlighting it in the quilt.

I also couldn't resist buying a little frog to go with it.

I am really, really pleased with my quilting on this one, it came out even and I think it does add quilt a bit to the overall look of the quilt.  

I finished this quilt feeling like I was getting the hang of it and ready to try something bigger.

Up next was this Christmas quilt...I did many things wrong here.  Many things.  

1. I chose the wrong color thread.  I used red because it seemed right, but looking at it now I can see that a softer color would have been better, perhaps a beige that wouldn't clash horribly with any of the colors in the quilt.

2. I chose the wrong pattern to quilt on.  Spirals in the designs like this take too much away from the design of the quilt itself.  

3. I centered the design incorrectly.  I should have left the sashing unquilted instead of trying to include that in the main pattern, including it made all my circles off center because I couldn't judge where the center of each circle needed to be very accurately.

4. I quilted too close together.  I think the color would have been okay if it weren't as dense.  I quilted further apart on the border and I do like that better.  Also it would have taken WAY less than the 8 or 10 hours than it took me if I had quilted less densely.

(this picture looked really weird, no matter which way I rotated it, apparently I held the camera in mid air at about 45 degrees)

There are a few other things too, but I'll spare you from the minutae.  

I am not crazy, I know this quilt is FINE in reality, it is perfectly functional, no one will notice the fabric puckering on the back, no one else will look at it with such a critical eye as I do...but still.  

Lessons learned, hopefully I'll have a shorter list with the next one!

In the Completely Unrelated news category, we saw the Philadelphia Orchestra perform Beethoven's 9th a few weeks ago.  Absolutely AMAZING.  We had great seats too...they were cheaper because of the positioning, you can't see the whole stage, but you could look right down on the orchestra!  If you have a chance I heartily recommend seeing them, also they just had to declare bankruptcy, so they could use the support!

At the orchestra I knitted on the only little bit of knitting I have to show at the moment.   This sock, which I ended up ripping out because my gauge had changed so much from the first one that it was striping differently and I couldn't have that!  

I really am knitting sweaters and lace and other things...there's just nothing much to show, a slightly longer sweater front...a 4 inch piece of lace...

Lots to tell you, a book review, a recipe to share, but this post is long enough already, also, it's my birthday and I'm supposed to be getting ready to go out for dinner right now!  :-)

February Fitted Pullover

I finished the February Fitted Pullover last week.  The yarn I used is 50/50 wool/cotton, so once again, I finished a knit about 2 weeks too late to wear it this season, so it'll go in the closet until late september.  That's fine, really, it'll just be oodles of fun when I have forgotten all about these things I finished and I get to pull them out for fall.

This shape is  much better suited to me than the February Lady Sweater, I'll definitely get some good use out of this in the fall.  The pattern was really well written, especially considering it was free.  

Once again, I have confirmed and validated my hatred of sewing in sleeves.  I really will think thrice before I decide to knit another sweater with sleeves that can't be converted to top down.  Oy.  Evil.

I also recently finished a quilt top for a dear friend who is expecting.  I had this cute little frog paisley fabric, so I decided to go completely in the other direction and use all solids to let the pattern stand out.

Here it is up close, I think it's just adorable. 

Next up, how to quilt it!  One of my fabulous readers (thank you Connie!) recommended a really great website, Leah Day's blog, she has posted oodles of tips and how-to videos with different free motion styles.  I am significantly impressed.  I learn EVER so much better from watching videos than reading books, so I feel like my understanding of free motion quilting has increased by leaps and bounds since I started obsessively watching the videos on her site one by one.

Hopefully after this weekend I will have a finished quilt to show you!

A baby quilt, two years late and more practice

Before I get into the quilting - look - daffodils!

I finished the final delayed baby quilt, pieced, quilted, and binding sewn down.  WHEW.  

Lesson learned here:  Never underestimate the value of solids.  I think solid sashing in place of that crazy stripe would have gone a long way to make this quilt more attractive.  

Eh.  Well, live & learn. 

I quilted this one myself, I am getting better, I think.

If you look at it up close my stitches are still uneven, and the shapes aren't even close to exact copies of each other.  Also, I didn't do a good enough job making the quilt sandwich because it's bunched up in some places.

It's not perfect, but I'm definitely improving, and neither the little boy nor his mother will notice, and even if they do, they won't care.

I am practicing for my next quilt, a bigger one, I have decided on an all over pattern.  It's a Christmas quilt, so I tried to see if I could do a snowman pattern that I saw online.

Not so much with the snowmen...the flowers aren't so bad, not for a Christmas quilt, but for something.  Instead I think I'm going to go with a swirl/wave pattern.  

Much better.  

After the Christmas quilt I will finish the one block wonder quilt that I started 3 years ago this summer.  I have the rows put together, so it shouldn't take long to finish it another time, it was really a pain to get this far, so I have been sort of making bargains with myself to get it finished.  This weekend I needed to get it to this stage.  In a few weeks I will come back to move it to the finished quilt top stage.  

The finished quilt top is going to be good, I think, but I doubt I will make this type of quilt again.  If I do it will certainly not be soon, I will need to forget how incredibly annoying it was before that would happen.

I feel like I should clarify that I took a few extra days off this weekend, I didn't accomplish all this in 2 days...

I will leave you with a very content dog.

Practice, practice

When learning new things there is nothing to do but practice, as much as it pains me to admit it, it is indeed the truth.  None of us, or very few of us at least, are good at anything in the first go.  It takes a certain amount of persistence to keep going until you consider yourself at least competent at whatever it is you are trying to learn, and a good bit more to become proficient.

I consider myself reasonably proficient at knitting, but quilting I'm still working on.  I have been meaning to learn free motion quilting for quite some time, I finally picked up the right foot last weekend and I set out today to see if I could make that happen.

So, I did like the book said, and did a 'sampler'.

Certainly not great work, but enough for me to get the general idea.  I finished piecing a wall hanging this weekend, so I decided to dive right in.  Stippling, a sort of meandering stitch, seemed like the easiest thing to start with, so off I went.  I did okay.

On the right you can see where I tried the small, tighter stippling and did that half in separate squares, that was the first half, then I did the piece on the left, then I did the little loop-d-loops on the outside and sashing.  

I still have to put the binding on, but I ran out of steam to do that this weekend.  I was so obsessed with sewing that I didn't knit at all this weekend, so I think it's time to sit down and do that.

All in all I am relatively pleased with my first attempt at free motion quilting.

Something else that required a bit of practice this weekend:

We went on a segway tour of Philadelphia, one of those things we got for half price on groupon, it was quite cold for the tour (30s), my knitwear came in handy and even still my toes felt like little icecubes by the end of the tour.  They spent a good 30 minutes teaching us how to use them before we started on the tour, thank goodness for that.  Once I had the hang of it and we were on our way it was insanely fun, I would absolutely recommend it if you ever have the opportunity!  

I have this quilt ready to be quilted, but I am leery about moving from a wall hanging to this giant thing, maybe I'll work on on a friend's baby quilt next, that seems like it would be a good inbetween step before I get to this one.

Sorry, it's a little blurry, I just can't tell that they're blurry on my phone until it's too late.

Something completely random, cinnamon bun french toast!  It's just like regular french toast, except you use cinnamon buns sliced in half so they are the thickness of thick bread.  YUM.  

Quilting Retreat

This weekend my mother and I went to a quilting retreat held by the Old City Quilts in Burlington, NJ.  The retreat was right across the street from the quilt shop (dangerous!) in the Quaker Meeting House, a huge, bright room with tables for all.  

Even enough room for iron boards and cutting mats and everything.

This was our table, we were messy. 

Below is the only thing I actually completed, a quilt for one of my friend's children, #5 out of 6 baby quilts, though he will be 6 years old this year - I missed 'baby quilt' by quite some margin.

This is rather washed out, the colors look a lot better in real life.

This is my first set of log cabin blocks, I'd never done these before.  I cut out this fabric at least a year ago, possibly 2, and I finally put it together.  Turns out it was only enough for 8 blocks, so the most I can do is a table runner.  I may just do 4 each and do 2 table toppers.  I'm not sure yet.  I am really pleased with the way it came out though.

This is from the jelly roll of christmas fabric I had, what a fun quilt to do!  I liked the teal accents, so I got some to match for the sashing.  I have another matching fabric for the border.  There's no rush on this one, but it would be nice to get it done in time for Christmas!

This is as far as I got on number 6 of 6 baby quilts, but cut out is one giant step closer than I was before I went!  He'll be a year in April, this summer won't be so bad, right?

 

My mother chose some gorgeous fabric and made a tote bag for work.  Isn't it pretty??  She was quite pleased with it and had bought more fabric to make another one before we left the shop!  :-)

The retreat was really fun, we met a lot of wonderful people, the staff that came from the shop to work were friendly and incredibly helpful, and the food was amazing.  The only other thing I could ask for is just a little more time to finish one more project, but isn't that what we always want? 

And I'm back for a brief update

Last weekend we finished up the organizing that was started a few weeks ago turning this

 

Into this

 

Pretty amazing, right?  It's amazing what you can do with the right piece of furniture!  Our den is finally looking like a room that we planned instead of a room that fell together, it feels SO much better! 

And one more, we also completed our kitchen nook, which is a nook only in the way that it is a small place to sit that isn't the dining room table.

 

Now on to the next stage of our settling in!  The best part is that I don't even know what that will be, we need a new rug for the bedroom, the dog is eating the current one.  Yep, that's right, he's eating it.  mmmmm fiber...  So we were thinking about getting those carpet squares and not putting them all the way under the bed, since that's where he hides himself to eat the carpet.  Silly puppy.

Spring is blooming out all over the place, but I haven't managed to take pictures of any of the beautiful blooming things.  I have been posting things like that on facebook, if any of you are on there we can be friends there too, drop me a line and I'll reveal my "true identity" so you can find me.  :-)

I have been diligently working on my Pi Shawl, I am well on mark to hit my deadline of March 31st to finish the last of the body repeats before the border.  I am obsessed with choosing my own border, I'm not digging the one that's in the pattern.  There are so many choices though, I'm a bit at a loss of how to narrow it down.  Work is stressful at the moment and I'm a bit fried, so when that passes I think it should all make a lot more sense.

I did buy beads to use on the edging, here are two pics, one in an OTT lite and the other in regular inside lighting.

 

The one below is the inside lighting

The one all the way on the right is out for sure, but the two on the left are flipflopped in the pics, I will have to wait for some natural light and put it on the yarn and see what it looks like.  I'm leaning toward the transparent ones b/c I don't want the beads to be too in your face.

An additional super exciting thing is that I am going to a quilting retreat with my mother this weekend, I am totally excited about it, it will be fun to hang out and to get lots of stuff done!  Here's a bit of what I'm taking.

 

On the left are fabrics for a baby quilt for a friend, (number 5 of 6 babies I need to catch up with) and on the left is a jelly roll and some coordinating fabrics with a Christmas theme, and I threw a few other things in the bag just in case.  Who knows what I will want to work on, it's so hard to tell, and it's also hard to tell how much I'm going to get done.

I have packed the camera too, so I am planning on taking pics of the whole outing and of course what I get done, I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll see you on the other side!

One block wonder UFO

Back last fall sometime I started a one block wonder quilt.  It's a very funky kind of quilt and you can see some examples of it here.

I had all the little pieces done and just needed a place big enough to put them up and figure out the order they would go on the actual quilt.

This is what they look like - this is from last year when I had just cut them out.

I went over to Jersey saturday and used my stepmother's design wall - it's an entire wall covered in flannel so the fabric sticks and you can see what the quilt will look like before you sew it together - to put up all the blocks for this quilt to arrange them in an eye pleasing sort of way.

This is what I ended up with, sorry it's blurry, it's from the phone and I couldn't tell exactly what I was doing.

I went with a light to dark sort of thing with the golds in the middle and there's some teal over on the right that you can't see b/c of the stellar quality of the picture.  Of course now I have to sew it all together so you can see it for real.  

This pretty much used up my creative energies for the weekend, it took us about 3 hours to do, so I have nothing else to show...