Playing Catch-Up

It seems I'm always playing catch up lately. Something will happen for which I will think, "This would make a great blog entry." But do I follow through on it, NO. So here I am again giving you a really long entry to read in order to catch up what has been happening lately.

Quilt Retreat - I went to quilt retreat about a month ago. I had a really good time. I got done everything that I had planned, plus a few extra things.

1) I finished the borders on my Temple Guardians quilt. It turned out wonderfully. I can't wait to get it quilted. I'm hoping to get that done soon. I have to call Deloa and set up a appointment to bring it in. I would like to get it done in time for our Quilt Guild quilt show in August, but that depends on her schedule; so we will see. I have another quilt show in September that I can shoot for just in case. If not, there's always next year.

2) For my Oceans quilt, where I mentioned here, I got my rows put together. I'm not sure if I mentioned in previous entries, but I would like to quilt this using the "quilt as you go" technique. I will quilt each row individually, then sew the rows together, add an outside white border and quilt that. I'm hoping it goes alright. If not, I might end up with 5 table runners instead of a full sized quilt. Who knows, but my friend Helen has done several quilts using this method and they seem to work for her, so I thought why not give it a try. I'll keep you posted on how it's going.

3) Last year, during my spring quilt retreat, several of us made a trip to Lolly's Fabric Store in Shipshewanna. I fell in love with an oriental jelly roll in teals, brown, greens, and creams. I loved it so much that I had to buy the jelly roll, coordinating fabric for borders and the book that the quilt store's sample was made from. I started that project. Sorry, no pictures as all I was doing was sewing all my strips together. However, yesterday, I got all my blocks cut out of the strips. I just have to press them and then they are ready to lay out.

Vacation - The day after I got back from retreat, I re-packed and headed to Kentucky with my Mom, my Cousin Tracy and her daughter Erica. We went down to visit Aunt Corinne and Aunt Hattie (Marie). We were supposed to leave on Tuesday morning, but after getting 3 calls from Aunt Corinne asking when we were leaving, Tracy decided there was no reason we shouldn't leave on Monday night. That was fine by me, I was packed and ready to go. It was a LONG drive. It took us 8.5 hours to drive it. We would have made more stops to relax, but it was dark and rest areas are down right spooky in the dark. Tracy was very proud of the fact that she drove 'through' Chicago. She did very well other than the death grip she had on the steering wheel. We arrived around 2 am and boy was I tired. Tracy did most of the driving, but I was still recovering from lack of sleep from retreat. I never sleep well on their small twin beds.

Our plans were pretty loose for our visit. Other than visiting the AQS Quilt Show in Paducah, we just planned to hang out. The first day, we made a trip into Murray to do some shopping. We went to an antique/re-sell shop called Trends and Treasures, I think. It was very nice. I got a new book (Vanished by Karen Robards), a set of measuring spoons and 2 silicon spatulas. Then we went to a consignment store. I hit the mother lode here. I found a pair of dark lime green Capri's, and 3 shirts. It turned out that I had a shirt in my suitcase, that went with the Capri's so well you would have thought I bought them together.

On Wednesday, we went to the quilt show. Well, Mom, the aunts and I went. Tracy and Erica stayed back to visit with Uncle Johnny. Tracy's not really into quilting. My Aunts and Mom all sew, but they don't "Quilt" like I do. I love to quilt, they not so much. I appear to be the only one who inherited a love/passion for quilting from Grandma Bonnie (their Mother).

The AQS quilt show was held in the Expo center, but they also had this huge inflatable dome next door with a lot of vendors in it. Because of where we parked, we entered the dome area first. It was funny, because Mom, and the Aunts thought that WAS the quilt show. Once they were done visiting all of the booths, they were ready to leave. I had to laugh at their expressions when I explained that while yes, there were quilts hanging up to be admired, this area was vendor booths only, not the quilt show. They ended up leaving me there to go get something to eat while I visited the rest of the show and vendors. I wasn't that hungry and besides, I hadn't come ALL the way to Paducah just to visit the vendors. I wanted to see the quilts too. I did take pictures, but it seems they frown on people displaying them on their blogs/on-line. I guess copy right infringement and all that. Anyway, you can go the AQS Website to see the winners.

I didn't buy a lot, but I really like what I bought. I got some teal/brown fabric to go with my project from retreat, a Bali-pop with 2 yards of coordinating green batik, a 3 yard piece of blue/tan batik, and 3 coordinating fat quarters (mauve, orange and green). I also got 2 lumbar supports; 1 for me and 1 for Mom. If she doesn't like it I plan on using it in my sewing room.

I realized after I came home, that I didn't get any pictures of all of us together. Actually the only pictures I took were of the flowers, Aunt Hattie's Pond and the quilt show.

So here are some beautiful Azalea's blooming at Aunt Corinne's.

And this is the Tulip tree that is blooming in Aunt Hattie's back yard. Someday when my Tulip tree grows up, it will bloom just like this one.

The Dogwood Festival was happening in Paducah also, but this picture is the only part of it that I saw.

We came home on Friday and the car was SO packed, that we decided to take our time and to make extra stops so we stretch our legs. It took us 11.5 hours back, because of this and detours for construction. Just so you know the reason that the car was so packed was not because I bought up a lot of stuff at the quilt show, it was because the Aunts decided to clean out their closets and give it to us. Most of it went to Erica, but the rest of us did not come home with some stuff too. Tracy had to do 15 loads of laundry when she got home to get all of Erica's stuff washed. OMG 15 loads of laundry!!!

Fiber Frolic - This last weekend a bunch of my knitting friends got together at Vicki's house for a fun-filled day of fiber, food and friendship. We got to ooh and aah over Vicki's new 3 Season room. I loved it and would so like to have one off the back of my house. The breeze coming in the windows was just awesome. I'd spend most of my time out there if I had one. To eat, we had Sloppy Toms (made with turkey, hence the name), Spinach salad, taco dip, veggies, hummus, deviled eggs, orange cupcakes, blueberry muffins, cookies. Everything was so good. Oh and Elizabeth brought some awesome strawberries. They were so good I had to drag Deb to Sam's Club on the way home because I don't have a membership card and pick up some of my own.

Of course it was until almost everyone had left that I realized that although I brought my camera, I forgot to take photos. No one else did either though so there! But I did take a picture of the progress I made on the sleeves for my Hoodie. I'm trying to do the 2 sleeves at one time thing. I wasn't sure if I would like it or not, since I didn't like doing the 2 socks at one time on circular needles. But so far it's going pretty well. I can't wait to get them done. I still have 12 rows to do on the body of the sweater, but I had put that aside since it was so boring. I measured it as is, and it measures 22". My row guage must be off a little, because it's only supposed to be 22 1/4" after the 12 rows that I have left to do. I just finished a pattern repeat though, so I'm thinking I will stop there and add the sleeves on when I get them done.

I know I'm forgetting things, but what the hey, someday I made need to play catch-up again.

See ya!

Project Updates

I finally got around to updating my Ravelry Page with some pictures today. It suddenly dawned on me that I have 5 projects started and no pictures of any of them. Well 3 down, 2 to go.

Here is what I have on the needles right now.

1. Calypso Shrug - It will have long sleeves and button in the front.

The colors are much brighter than in the picture, though. This is my 4th try at knitting this yarn into a shrug. I've frogged the project (ripped it out for those of you who don't know the term) 3 times, because I didn't like the way it was looking. I'm pretty happy with the way it is going right now.

2. Felted Colorwork Bag - I wanted to learn how to do 'stranded' knitting, but since I was worried about my tension, I decided I would make a felted bag. Then no matter what my tension troubles may be, once it is felted (shrunk) you would never know the difference.
I'm half way done knitting the 4th repeat, which is supposed to be the last one. However since felted items shrink more from top to bottom than they do side to side, I'm thinking of adding another repreat. I don't want the bag to be too short once it is done. Also, the top is supposed to be bound off with ribbing, but I'm going to do an I-cord bind off to give it a little more stability. I'm also planning to put non-knitted handles on it. I haven't decided whether I want leather or wooden ones yet though. Leaning towards the leather, but it just depends on what I find.

3. Sandy Hoodie - A.k.a. Susie Hoodie. This is a Hoodie Jacket.

It doesn't have buttons or a closure, but I'm toying with the idea of adding some. Maybe 2-3 in the chest area, to hold it closed when it is cooler out. I thought it would go faster, but with 251 stitches per row, it's taking about 30 minute to do one row. And if I get distracted by the TV, that time goes down. Right now I'm averaging 4 rows per night, which doesn't seem like nearly enough.

OMG!

Oh my god, it's been over a month since I last posted. Things have been happening, just forgot to blog about it.

Here's a small recap sans pictures as I haven't any.

I went to Stitches Midwest in Schaumberg, IL at the beginning of September. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a HUGE Knitting/crochet/fiber convention. Lots and Lots of vendors and demos. They have classes too, but I didn't take any. This was my first trip to Stitches. I had only gone to the Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan, MI before. Which seems like small potatoes compared to Stitches MW. Wow, there were 8 rows of vendors! I forgot my camera, but was told that's OK, since they don't allow photos to be taken at the show anyway. One less thing to cart around. I went with a plan. I thought that would be smart, since I didn't want to overspend by buying everything that I saw that I LOVED. Well.... my plan wasn't defined enough apparently. I thought I would get 1 or 2 skeins of sock yarn and then the yarn to knit a sweater. I had 2 different sweater patterns with me that I wanted to make. I wasn't sure what to expect from Stitches, so I thought whichever one I found the yarn for first would be the one I would start knitting the next week. As I said earlier Well...... I did find my 2 skeins of sock yarn. One in a yummy fall orange color, which is not normally my color but was just fabulous. And the other is variegated fall colors. Then I found the yarn for my Mirage Sweater (here's a link to someone's version), but Miss Babs didn't have enough of the yarn in the color I wanted (Kiwi), so I order it. Well, that I think might have been when I made my mistake. Oh, not buying the yarn, I'm anxious to receive it. But the thought that I wouldn't have anything really good to show for my trip. You know!?! Well, except for the 2 skeins of sock yarn. Whoopie! More sock yarn. Not to mention that I wouldn't be able to start my sweater any time soon, like I planned. I didn't realize it at the time that these thoughts were bouncing around in my head when I stumbled across the "WEBS" booth. I found this awesome blue yarn by Sheep Shop Yarn that would be perfect for my Susie Hoodie Sweater Jacket. So I splurged and got it. I started the sweater that week too.

I've got about 6-8 inches of the bottom done. I had to rip it out and start over once. I was supposed to start the bottom edging with a size smaller needles then what I used to knit the rest of the jacket. My cables were not showing very well either, and I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I commented to a couple of people about it and they said give it time, cables kind of have to develop a little in order for you to see them well. I was getting very frustrated and agonizing over what I was doing wrong. I tried drawing out what the row would look like and still couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, because it matched what I had on the needle. That's when I realized that I was having a major "blond moment". Because the even numbers for the cables was printed on the left side of the chart, I was reading them from left to right instead of right to left. DUH!! (FYI, You are always suppose to read the charts from right to left) I've decided not to rip them out though, as that would mean I'd have to start over again. The messed up part lines up with the garter stitch edging, so it just looks like part of the bottom edging. Once I started doing the cables correctly they really popped out. I'm about 4 rows from the 1st waist decrease. I'm not planning on actually decreasing though, just knitting that row normally. The waist needs to be a little bigger for me as I don't have much of a waist.

Then, last week I went on a quilting Shop Hop with my friend Patsy and 2 of her friends Judy and Joyce. For the shop hop, you bought a 'passport' at the first shop and then got it stamped at all of the quilting shops that were participating in the S-H. You turned the passport in to the last shop and your name is entered into a drawing for a really great prize. I found a nice pattern from Benartex for $1 and then at the next store I found the fabric to go with the pattern. I'm planning to work on it this weekend.

Speaking of this weekend. Tomorrow is the start of the River Bend Quilt Guild's Fall Retreat. I can't wait to get there. Although packing up all my sewing to stuff to get there will be a pain. But it's always worth it. I'm planning to work on Dawson's quilt (MUST GET DONE!), My Mom's quilt (which is another must get done) and then the new quilt for myself. I'm taking a few other small things in case I get bored with the new quilt. Like my Temple Guardians Quilt. I finished the last applique cat a couple weeks ago and can now start putting it together. I didn't realize it, but it took me 2 years to applique 9 cat blocks. Well, I wasn't working on them the whole time. I worked a little, then set them aside, then picked them back up; repeat. I'm not really into applique, but I really like these blocks. But I can't start on it until I get Dawson's quilt done! Which just needs to be quilted and the binding put on. I should be able to get that done on Thursday night.

Oh, and lest I forget, I got the news this week that I am back to full time. I have been working only 30 hours per week since January, because business has been slow. Either things are picking up a bit or it's the 'end of year must spend budgeted money before we lose it' rush. Either way, I'm good with it.