Sweet Peas for April

For my BFF. And this is only a smidgen of my adoration. :)

Japanese Garden

... And another quilt finally gets finished. It's been sitting in my UFO pile whistling sweetly that all I needed to do was quilt a corner and the border. Then I herniated a disk in my neck mid-summer and not much got done for about 2 months. (Well, except sewing circle skirts; you can't keep a girl down totally!) then mom bought the genius sewing machine and I wrestled my way through the corner hand quilting and machine did the border. I love it, I am in love, and I have 3 more quilts ready to finish with that puppy!

Circle around

My new fave: circle skirts. Add half of one to make an apron and pockets. Super girl already has an order in for hers.

Sweet dreams are made of these

Woke up from a nap and suddenly knew what I wanted to do with the box of fabric under my bed.

And another begins... King-size, of course.

Burlington Industries, 1971

My favorite purse is um, 12 years old and a Gap $5 special. I'm pretty sure I got my money's worth. I haven't used it constantly but it's been a good one to fall back on when I needed a change.

The poor lining has been patched many times and when the patches were the only thing holding it together I wasn't sure what to do. It's the perfect everything (corduroy patchwork) and there is nothing like that in style right now.

Lucky thing I've been in an extreme-save $-thrift shop kick because it dawned on me: just replace the lining; that's all that is wearing out. Get a great funky cotton pattern.

Went fabric diving at mom's and found 2 absolutely fabulous retro prints. Only thing with the retro part, they are actually from the early 70s. The selvage on the main one said 1971.

Awesome.

Seed Stitch Möbius Cowl

A continuation of the chunky purple yarn, this one an unexpected Christmas gift for LMSS. She gave me the yarn and sweater reject because it didn't turn out like she thought and she was tired of looking at it. I frogged the whole thing and figured she needed something out of her purple.

89 stitches CO. Join in round, intentionally twisting stitches if want a möbius cowl. Seed stitch till 8" wise. BO in seed stitch. Wish I could say it was my pattern. It was adapted from a free one on Ravelry.

Purple People Eater

Nutso about knitting again. Look at this beauty. Good thing the knitting bug is revived; both kids have put in orders for immediate production for one (1) fair isle hat and one (1) pair of socks.

Bazaar Or Bizarre, Either Way is Fine

I downloaded the blogger app and am finding new freedom in our desktop-less world!

Here is the "bizarre" quilt for the church bizarre. Made to use and love you back!

Yarn Diving

I think the knitting hiatus might be coming to an end. Since the stockings I've been piddling with dishcloth patterns and a pair of socks but not really getting anything done. There have been no deadlines so I've taken advantage of the no stress crafting. Only problem is when I don't have a deadline I seem to think nothing needs to be worked on. On second thought, that really isn't a problem, just nothing new to post!

However, two days ago I suddenly was inspired to knit a teacher gift for Little Guy's teacher: a lovely purple chunky scarf with cables. Yum. She taught in Guam for 6 years, has only just moved back to the states, and has little to no warm clothing. Definite need and inspiration there. I casted on, started knitting away, and it has been bliss. A lovely break, new zest for knitting and knitting projects, and loving the chunky yarn because it means it won't take forever to knit. I'm giving it to her Friday so it needs to knit up quick anyway.Speaking of the knitting break, I spent the time quilting, i.e. cutting out pieces, planning, piecing, quilting, sandwiching (when you stack the layers), quilting some more, cutting binding, binding, some embroidery thrown in somewhere, and finishing. For some reason I decided in the midst of cleaning out Mom's stash, mine needed cleaning out too and stuff used or moved on, operating with a realistic mind set: I can't keep it all and will I really use this? It was exhausting at times but I have several finished, some almost, and some in progress. Hopefully will have those posted soon. Mom and I also did a raffle quilt for the church's Christmas Bazaar that they went nuts over. It was so cute and I'm glad they liked it so much. I'm taking a deep breath and preparing myself for us being asked again. Mom pieces and I quilt and finish it. It uses up more of her stash and we get to try out new patterns. I'll be ready for it again in oh, maybe two years. :) I have a king-size quilt being pieced for Crochet Queen.

Doing a little dance

So I was up at 4:30 this morning, wide awake. This isn't usual and there was a tiny part of my brain that felt cranky about it but the rest of me was kinda happy. This meant a few hours to myself. So what did I do? Dishes, laundry, made coffee (not necessarily in that order), and watched children's programming. It's where I find the meaning to life. If you can't make it simple and with a sense of humor, what good is it? One of my new favorite quotes I saw on my younger brother's networking page and it went something like "if you're going to tell them the truth you better make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.". I can see myself on both sides of that... But I digress. I had walked outside because there was a little daylight and I remembered Hubby saying I needed to move my birdbath because it was killing the grass. (It didn't need much help. We've been in such a drought many of us have contemplated investing in scrub brush and rock gardens because obviously IT'S NOT GOING TO RAIN EVER AGAIN UNTIL WE GET STARK NAKED ON THE BLUE MOON AND DO A FUNKY DANCE. Apparently someone was crazy enough to do that because it rained a lovely soaking rain all yesterday.) The dog was delighted to see me and the hummingbirds were pissed. I thought it was because I was outside but turns out their feeder had fallen. So I fixed that, picked up the birdbath, and moved it to the flowerbed. I was about to turn to go into the house but noticed lots of humming. I paused, thinking there either was a huge beehive 2 feet away that appeared overnight (industrious little critters) or I was way too fragrant for them to stay away. I turned slowly to where I heard all the motion and was amazed. Next to me, flying around my moon flower bed, were dozens of happy honeybees, busily taking advantage of the cooler weather. They could have cared less about me, they just wanted the moon flowers, at least 2-3 per bloom and there are at least 30 blooms on that thing. I just had to pause and give God a little thank you. Life has been a huge roller coaster lately and where it's been great, it's been too gosh-dang busy and it's been really hard to keep calm and remember priorities. It's funny how the harder you try to keep life simple and stay home everyone wants you out and about. C'est la vie. Glad I was up to fix the hummingbird feeder and I'm loving this extra time this morning.

Christmas in July

The one with the green reindeer was the original, knitted and decorated back in the early 70s.

The one with the wreath I did for the mom of the family to match the original tree (the dad's from the time he was little).

The blue with the snowman was for the son and the pink for the daughter.

A view of what finally got finished!  I was so pleased with it and had a great time visiting with the two friends of mine that had done more "embellishing" than I ever would dream.  I'd never had a thing for sequins or other shiny things but this was the perfect project to try them out.

"Monet's Childhood"

My baby.  Totally birthed itself out of trying to use up all the fun kid fabrics I kept finding and throwing in a pile.  And yes, that delicious back is Amy Butler design and a gift from LMSS just so she could "see what I did with it."  Love it.  Love her.  And this is 90"x 90" and a dream to wrap up in on chilly days (not that we are having many of these anymore!)

The title came from a "Clueless" quote about a girl being "so Monet," i.e. from far away it looks o.k. but up close it's just a big mess.

Just twist the rag on the 10th.

Um, I've been quilting.  A LOT.  Not much knitting.  Finally finished the bee stitch shrug (oops, need to get a picture of that) and have been working on the Christmas stockings for friends but Harriet hasn't been speaking to me through knitting.  She's all up in the sewing and so sewing I've been doing.

Above is a rag quilt variation for one of HHubby's nieces.  Her mom gave me the fabric to use (the niece had picked them out with her mother a few years ago) and I came up with this for her 10th birthday. 

Rag time

My "little" brother is about to graduate college and this is what I had to give him.  It's all his t-shirts from his "early years."  He couldn't believe it and loves it.

This is the way I recommend to do rag quilts.  All you need is the top (10 or more inches square) and the back (fleece; eliminates the need for any batting), sew it together with the seam on the right side (NOT wrong side) with a seam allowance of 0.5 inches, sew 0.5 inches (or more if you want) around the border to hold it all in, and snip the seams to make them fluffy (careful not to snip the sewn line).  No kidding, that's it.  You pop it in the washer to get everything curled around the edges and throw it on the bed.  Crazy, huh?  So's little bro so it all works perfectly!  :)

Aspen is lovely this time of year

My afternoon extra daughter has been busy when we aren't doing homework.  The first picture is her own creation: a sock dog.  She has since made another so this one could have a friend.  The second picture is our Christmas present to her: her own quilt, done rag quilt style.  Highly recommend this technique for the speed of completion but do not recommend doing the squares this small, unless you just really want to.  She was worth it and it turned out so lovely.  However, I don't think I'll be doing squares that small again; just the snipping of the seams gave my fingers nerve damage and they still tingle a little from time to time.  She was worth it all, though!  She's a sweetheart!

Merry Merry Christmas!

Our tree finally has an angel.  Wanted to share this with you and wish you the merriest of holidays ever. 

Now finally...

My socks!

The Schlep backpack!

I finally got the pictures taken.  I finally got two more projects out of the "To Do" stage and they are now "Done."  Rah rah ree, kick them in the knee!

Socks are out of the yummy yarn I got when LMSS's little one was on the way and the backpack was my tutoring child's inspiration and request.  I carry a bag in that pattern but it has regular bag straps.  She asked if it could be made into a backpack and that's all she wrote!  She picked out the fabrics from my slowly shrinking stash (HAPPY DAY!!!) and here it is!

Thank U (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

And now for a moment of immaturity...

A friend stopped by today to drop off my kids and her daughter.  She had been watching them while I did a mad dash of grocery shopping (with kids it takes 2.5x longer) and her daughter is staying the night tonight at my house while she goes out.  Totally normal thing, a swap "this" for "that" arrangement, always is going on with mothers of young to middle age range children, the other half of the swap sometimes happening simutaneously or weeks later, all of it coming out in the wash eventually.  I was feeling totally fine until my daughter ran up to me with a huge cookie cake, all smiles, exclaiming that I needed to look at it.  I was puzzled (it's no one's birthday) so I looked at it and it just had a huge "thank you" to me on it.  I pasted on a smile, intentionally not huge, talked my way through the drop-off, went inside, put the 3 kids outside with bathing suits and the sprinkler, and proceeded to grumble my way through putting away the groceries.  I don't like cookie cakes.  I didn't want a cookie cake.  Why do I now have a cookie cake.  If you want to spend money on me, my purse needs replacing.

Let me explain myself at the risk of being ungrateful.  This is a friend who is extremely vocal about being health conscious, frugal, and knowing what everyone individually wants.  Keep this in mind and add that she brought me a greasy, chocolate chip cookie cake that runs about $28 (I know because I footed the bill for two of them birthday season) and I don't even like sweets (dark chocolate yes but 80%; Hubby is the cookie cake nut).  We as a family ARE very health conscious, on an EXTREMELY tight budget, and have to watch our sweet intake because we have certain other family members who feed us and don't care about that one bit, thus sweets get offered LOTS. 

Gifts like this causes two reactions in me, neither of which I'm proud of:
1)...the odd Monty Python-like skit in my mind where John Cleese is my dad, me saying "But Fahhhtha, I don't WAHHHNT it" and him jumping around me saying, "Yes you do.  Yes you do" and me just smiling on the outside hoping I'm fooling everyone...
...OR...
2)me telling the person "You know I don't like this."

I have done both.  The first one makes me feel like a doormat/liar and the second, I suspect, makes everyone else think I'm a b*tch.  So where do we draw the line?  Where does this get solved?  There are all those self help people who say "Be true to yourself" and all those feel good conventions that have lovely stories about how wonderful people are when they are grateful for what they have.  How do we solve this, people?

This brought to mind an episode where the Bee received something and she became upset because it wasn't what she wanted.  Hubby and I consoled her like most parents would, telling her the person didn't know and be grateful for what she receives because she doesn't have to get anything.  I told myself that, but it didn't make me feel any better.  There is still a stinky cookie cake on my counter that I'm going to have to (ack) eat or (frown) give away, regretfully contributing to someone's weight problem, hurting my witness of healthy eating and care.  There is also the issue of me facing her daughter at supper tonight, knowing that she will report everything to her mother on what was done with the cookie cake (kids are great like that; cookie cakes are their dream so isn't it every adult's?  And adults can buy them anytime they want, too!).  So I wasn't reaching much balance in this problem.  Throwing it away is also an option but that seems wasteful and would definitely get reported back.

I thought about what the friend would want me to do.  She would say that she would want me to tell the truth but I don't think she would receive it well and would feel like a failure in not making me happy.  I don't really want to deal with her constantly reminding me by trying to make it up ("oh, sorry, I brought a cookie cake for your husband so I brought a completely different dessert for you"), or making excuses ("sorry, I know you don't like this but it's all I had"), or trying to accommodate my tastes (my tastes are definitely not everyone else's and really, now that I think of it, it's not that big a deal).

Throughout putting groceries away and all this running through my mind I remembered something I have said several times: I love working with kids because they actually try to do what we teach them, unlike the parents who don't, WON'T, and should know better.  I realized that even though I might not get THE ANSWER for this problem, I should follow my own parenting advice and be grateful (even when I don't want it), don't pin my happiness on someone else's actions, and work with what I get, whether it's to keep or to give away.  Do I understand it completely?  No, but I don't want to be one of those parents who fusses at their kids to be responsible and then won't do it themselves.  I'd rather be a good example and strive for the answer than the b*tch with only my interests in mind, not considering the other person's mind state, gift habits, and/or personal guilt.

Dear God, please grant me the grace to accept people for themselves, not what I think they should be.  Please help me be happy through me, not others actions.  And most importantly, help me BE the person I tell my children they should be.  No lip service, please.

Thank you for your time.  I feel better now.

Beginners luck

Car pool is back to being my personal/sock knitting/phone call catch up time, sometimes one of the above, sometimes all of the above.  This has given me lots of time to work on the socks for me (no pics yet, alas) using the lace pattern the Bee picked out.  Totally loving using a pattern in the foot/leg of the sock; it makes the foot go so much quicker and the lace pattern I'm using is stretching out the yarn just right.  I might get 3 inches on the leg which is ideal.  I was expecting something close to ankle socks but am glad they aren't as extreme ankle as I thought they might be.  I'm a size 10 foot so there is lots of yarn going that length before even thinking about turning the heel!

The other day I had realized I had the foot long enough and was trying to figure out where in the yarn pattern to stop or do a little extra without having complications when the short row heel was finished and it was time to join the heel stitches back to the top of the foot.  I've never done this before and wasn't really thinking about the complications about the lace pattern exactly, more the past experience of not realizing how short a short row heel is and not doing the foot long enough, thus having a sock an inch too short with a heel finished and me chewing nails because I don't want to frog a heel.  (Don't ask me why frogging heels can be so daunting; I think it has something to do with the magical way some unseen force suddenly transforms the questionable tube into a sock , the knitter being only a pawn in this game of love and war, and to undo the miracle would be sacrilege.  Or at least make the knitting gods mad at your insolence and consider striking you down.)  Well, Harriet (my knitting muse) was on my side this time.  I quickly looked over everything, thought "ho hum, I'll finish this 6 row slant, stop before the knit only row so I have that knit only row to collect my sanity after doing the heel and before starting the pattern all the way round and do my heel."  Gave me a little extra length just in case and seemed to make sense. 

That evening I knitted the heel (DID forget to put the extra stitch I had on the pattern side back on the heel side so I was working with 29 sts instead of 30.  Oh well, just one little stitch) and was looking at starting the leg when I realized that not only thank the good Lord I had that "knit only" row to get everything even, I did not even think about the way things were slanting and needed to slant when starting the pattern.  I don't have much experience with lace.  Things go every which way.  I was having to start the pattern on a no pattern side and for the zig-zag to look right it needed to go left, not right, and I was so lucky to have stopped on the beginning of a "go left" slant. After some prayers of thanks (I really didn't need any progress in my life halted) I continued on and I'm almost an inch into the leg and everything is looking great.  I've been tempted to try it on but haven't.  Partially I'm concerned about stretching the lace pattern when the leg is still in it's infancy but the other is worried I've done socks too short, yet again, and I don't want to give these away.  As you can see from above, frogging is not an option, and I don't want any more fictional divine characters mad at me, vowing to wreck havoc on my mudane existance.  Or at least not just yet.

Slow but steady wins the race

AAnt's afghan is actually being worked on.  I'm using up all my old acrylics for it in a queen sized bedspread/blanket.  The yarn skeins are nice and wonderful colors, especially for him, and I'm thrilled to have the excuse to use them all up (that whole "moved on/destashing" kind of thing) and I'm crocheting them one line at a time, either single or double crochet depending on how wide I want the stripe.  It takes a while to do one stripe so I think he'll get it birthday of next year.  It was supposed to be his birthday gift last year with this year as an alternate but I've since gotten realistic and discovered how much fun reading is.  Thus, I'm doing a line whatever night I feel like doing it and enjoying watching the skeins slooowly disappear.

There's also been a sock-in-progress traveling around with me and I'm very excited about it.  It had started as another plain toe-up sock in a lovely skein I had picked up a year ago while visiting LMSS.  The yarn was so expensive I split one skein to make a pair of ankle socks but have since realized that if I throw a lace pattern on the top of the sock foot and leg I can spread the yarn out more.  The Bee (SuperGirl) picked out the lace pattern she liked and I got to work.  It's turning out beautiful and works wonderful with how the yarn's colors are placed.