Brushing off the Trail Dust

Yee-haw! Cowboy Christmas has finally finished the trail ride and is in the stable. Quilting wisdom says that a quilt isn't finished until it's labelled, so here's the evidence.You all are my witnesses. It's done!

Prideful & Prejudiced socks are making about as much progress as my slog through the book--I think it's just that I know the story so well, I'm not turning the pages with any anticipation. But I have finally made it to the color work part and I seem to be doing okay.

This is a hat for Tiny. You can barely see it, but there are some subtle sparkles in the yarn that should make for a gently shiny hat.

And then there's the Damn Classy Hand Towel. Since I switched over to wooden needles, I'm actually making some progress. The linen yarn is slippery and behaves better with less slick needles. (yay) And I (ack!) just found the receipt for the yarn. I won't tell you how much it cost, because I would seem like a very silly woman to spend that much on a hand towel. But a damn classy one.

Bad Mood, Good Quilt

So I was in a bad mood on Friday. I went to PQM group and pulled out the project I planned to work on: most of it was there... well, some of it was there... I just sat there, moving bits of cute red, black, white, and doggie fabric around. Frowning. Finally, I told myself that there was no use trying with that today and put it back in the box. During that time, somebody swooped over to tell me how KAYOOOOOT it was. Hearing "cute" pronounced like that when I'm grumpy was like eating vanilla ice cream with cheese sauce. Both are useful, but. Should. Be. Kept. Separate.

So I decided to use my grump. I went to the Batik boxes (we have like 6!) and yanked out the color of my mood: kind of a blurry brown-purple. Then I found the moods I could go to: that's the blue with sticks and the weird red-brown armadillo fabric. Then the moods I was shooting for: the yellow geometric and the watery blue and brown. Then the color of hope: pale blue and yellow. I added a few more that went with the melange and chopped 'em into 8.5" squares, then laid 'em out. The leaves worked as a border so there ya go. It was completely done by the time I left. See? Bad moods can be useful.

How to Juice a Purse

I hit a couple of finishes at once so I'm sharing! Here's the Fish Cozy, done at last. There was even a chance to make an initialed hem, so... Coolness, huh? You can see the lace finish, too, although it's a little blurry.Cowboy Christmas is hurrying toward doneness, too. As you can see, I'm sewing down the binding. It's about half-done. Hope I'll be telling you it's finished, too.
And I thought I'd show you how I finished the Juice. I knitted and knitted until I was down to about three yards of yarn. Then I turned the whole thing inside out.

I'd read about something called the 3-Needle Bind-off. It sounded like it was just the ticket.So I searched online and found a video tutorial, followed it, and voila! There are others, but this is the one I used and had success. This is what success looks like.Turned it right-side-out again and I added the handles. I didn't really care for them in the standard installation, so I flipped 'em and created a kind of echo to the shape. (That's how I do my hair, too.)I carried the purse yesterday and it didn't fall apart, so that's success to me!

Penguins and Prejudice

So I've had a couple of completions: the Penguin Quilt is all done. And Penguin Mama will be picking it up today. (yay!)Griffindor Arms finally got done. I wove in the ends using the Swiss Darning method and I think I like it. I'll give it some time and see how it behaves itself. If lots of the ends pull out, I'll know to try something else next time, but it was highly recommended... Tiny wore 'em to school yesterday and that's a good sign that she likes 'em. If she ever wears 'em again: that would be a very good sign. Hmm... she'd better.

And I've started the Pride and Prejudice socks. I really like this blue-purple colorway. Do you think this is Pride or Prejudice?

Penguins on Parade

Here's something fun: I'm putting together a quilt out of squares drawn by children in a first grade classroom! It'll be auctioned off and the winner gets a charming antarctic quilt. The kids had just been studying about penguins, so they decided to focus the quilt in that direction. Cool, huh? I covered part of the center block for privacy. So here's the fabric for the back--cute, huh? I was given all the materials and the plan and that was that.
And here's the story of Beauty's Redemption: Bethie found the abandoned and probably tear-stained quilt blocks at a garage sale. She handed 'em over to me for the quilt ministry. Here's what the blocks probably should have looked like. If you look closely, you can still see the log cabin proto-blocks. I knew better than to try and make the original blocks work by ripping out seams and trying to fit them together. Instead, I chopped! Not much, though. I just made the blocks the same width: some 9", some 11". And then I put 'em together in rows. And the quilt wasn't long enough so I chopped up some more and sewed 'em in. Then I dipped into the batik box for border fabric and voila!

The Spit-Splice Photo Tutorial

Okay, first thing you should know, no scissors for this. Second, it works really well with wool, but not so good with other stuff, especially plant fibers. Let's get going!

1. Break the yarn by pulling it apart. Now fuzz up the ends real well. Undo the plies and fray what's left.
2. Now, get those ends wet with some readily available liquid. (Um, that's probably gonna be spit, but I suppose you could use tequila or chocolate milk... but I wouldn't recommend it.)
3. Lay the ends together, overlapping about 2". Now rub them together against something that provides good friction, such as the leg of your jeans or upholstery fabric. Keep on rubbing until the ends have disappeared.

In this case I wanted to take one color out of my Kureyon yarn--the yellow, so I just broke it out and spliced the purple straight to the orange. Yay!