Elves. Ghosts. I am not Responsible for this

Baltic Sea on New Earth Stole

I finished knitting, I wove in the ends. Now, I've been told that plant fiber--in this case, sugar--doesn't require blocking. However, as I one day expect to wash the thing, I figured I'd better get it wet before chopping off the endsie bits. So, I soaked it about fifteen minutes and put it outside on towels. I only stretched it a bit. I'll find out when it's dry if I should have been more rigorous. But as it was so pliant as I was working on it--and again that thing about plant fiber!--I'm guessing pinning won't do much good.

In the Garden

You know how sometimes on TV a lawyer in a drama will say, "She felt compelled to..." whatever? Well, I felt compelled to stitch on this thing. As though I was being pushed to cross-stitch. By the Ghost of Cross-Stitch Future. Anyway, I got a lot more done.

Therese's Leftovers

And on the quilting front, I'm ripping out a really bad job of quilting I did. Wrong thread color, irregular work... it was just... uh... it wasn't me. It was elves. Unskilled elf labor that infiltrated my studio while I was out partyin... uh, feeding homeless dogs. Yeah.

Bask in My Imperfection

That's a phrase my Thursday night improv group has embraced. It usually involves kneeling before the person and basking like a flower in the sun. This is where my imperfection shows up well today. Therese gave me this lovely top out of the kindness of her heart: all I had to do was make it into a quilt. So I got to it. Then I looked at the job I did. (Insert appropriate expletive here.) Not only is the color of the thread just wrong, the quilting itself has all kinds of little jogs and blobs. The above is just one example of my wondrous capacity for imperfection. Basking yet?
So I have to frog. (Rip-it! Rip-it!)

The Camera Doesn't Lie

Oh, sure it does! When you look at these pictures, you can't tell if the room is a mess or straight out of Better Homes and Gardens. In fact, you can't tell if my home is really in a hollow tree or an alien ship orbiting Earth and looking for signs of intelligent craftwork. But wait. That also applies to you. I don't know if you're even human or possibly some exotic mix of gorilla and butterfly. A gorillerfly. Butterilla? I gotta get my mind back.

I pinned these two quilts in preparation for actually quilting them.

Definition

Quilting, if you don't know, is the action of attaching a quilt top, fluffy stuff in the middle, and back together. Usually a sewing machine is used for this, but hand-quilting is highly respected. Also, there's something called a tied quilt. In this case the quilting is done with small bits of yarn, cording, thread, or very flexible pasta* that simply goes through the quilt and back up and is then tied. Many quilters will actually pay to have their quilt machine-quilted. This is referred to as credit card quilting. I have credit card quilted my three largest quilts as Molly, talented as she is, simply isn't big enough for some things.
Miss Running Water, my Dream Dancer, has made some progress. I believe that everything except her skirt and feet and some little background do-hickeys (that's a technical term) has been cross-stitched. Backstitching is still needed for almost the whole picture.
*Quilting with pasta is not recommended for quilts that you expect to ever wash as it is biodegradable and will disintegrate. Cooking with pasta, on the other hand, can go over quite well.