The journey of quilting, gardening, and seeing the world

I would never call myself a quilter. On the contrary, I surely am anything but a quilter. Nor am I a knitter, or a cook, or any of the other things I occasionally toy with.

I suppose I could say I am an accountant and a (former) musician because those are things at which I felt I had some special expertise.

At the heart of ALL the things I like to do (the occasional quilt, playing with my knitting needles, cooking, and even accounting and music), though, I think it's the journey that attracts me and spurs me on as I get lost in any of these lovely things to do.

Where will this road take me? What traps will I uncover? What are the surprises? What will I learn about the world, or even about myself, during this journey? These questions are my motivations. This might be equated to dream time for me. Dream time - getting lost in the flow of the journey - is probably part of an underlying trait that enables me to work at jobs I haven't always liked when others threw up their hands. These questions probably motivate my joy in the travel Lauren and I are able to do. What's ahead? What's this feel like? What secret (unknown to me) will I uncover? How will I grow?

The journey of this new quilt makes me realize how very much I enjoy our meager little garden. Although I've read about a quilt being inspired by nature, I had never been inspired before now. This new idea comes as I realize it was probably the image of our garden that attracted me to Fassett's Pink Square Clamshell. Our garden is the image I see all the time from our sunroom, the room that holds my work space.


I've been especially pleased these last few weeks to see this yellow rose come back from what has probably been a dormant period encouraged by the neglect of the last few years while I was working so intensely. It is blooming like crazy, and the leaves look so healthy. I've been paying particular attention to it recently, spraying it with Ortho Rose Pride hoping to spur it back to life, feeding it, and making sure it had plenty of water. I believe it was so diseased with black spot that it just didn't have a heart left. To see this bloom again - there must be more than a half a dozen blooms on the bush - provides such a joyous feeling.

I always get a kick out of this pink-yellow rose. It begins with a bud that's almost coral, tinged with yellow, then it blooms as yellow, and then changes to this pink-white lovely thing before it is no more. Throughout its life, it seems as though it becomes everything it would ever want to be - maybe an idea for the rest of us. The coral rose, just a bit further away in the picture, seems to be sitting like a cup today, open to let the sunshine pour in.

In the background, of course, you can see the angelonias that must be the primary inspiration for my color choices for this quilt.

I've been watching this fuchsia for the last couple weeks, wondering if that little pink capsule was ever going to burst open, and here it is. What a delight to see the violet center. The beautiful pink holds a precious jewel.


The quilt is progressing. I needed a proof of concept after I finished the paper layout, so I cut and put together one square to see if I liked anything about it. Seemed good to me, and I'm up to five squares now, enough to start getting a better grasp on what I want to do with the quilting. I think I'm going to like this a lot. I will spend time this weekend watching some movies, cutting squares, and then laying out the 7 x 7 squares so I can put them together. I've found that if I keep all the pieces for one 7 x 7 square, stacked in the sequence I need to put them together for rows, in a folder, it works well. I pick up a folder, do all my strips in that folder, leave the strips in the same folder, and then pick up the next one. Once I get to the sewing machine, the work is pretty automated and my mind isn't too heavily engaged, so I listen to books on CD or podcasts while I work.


During commercials while I was catching up on my TIVO'd season premier TV shows, I sketched out a possible quilting plan for this quilt. I really enjoyed not being so traditional on my bedspread quilt, so I thought I'd like to take this one a step further. I'd like to avoid staying in the lines. I don't know if this idea will work or not, but it might be worth a try.

It's such a lovely day today - sunny and bright. We've had a couple overcast days that seriously spoke of fall, and I had the biggest urge to fix some hot chocolate and start thinking about holidays. I had to laugh because we haven't done much for holidays since Mom died in 2003. One year, we even went on a cruise during the Thanksgiving holiday. Ah, what old people do (or don't do) when they're left on their own. We are definitely new to this stage of our lives, but we're figuring out how to do it and enjoy the time we have together.

I got up early this morning and worked out some possible travel dates for my personal (without Lauren) visits in the spring. I love spending the week with Judy, nestled on her trundle bed in her sewing room, watching videos and talking sewing and other things, with a visit to the Quilt Museum in Paduccah, among other things; and, of course, going to the Philippines is too special to describe. I will make all my reservations in just a couple weeks! Not too long now!

My muse is whispering sweet somethings ...

I'm getting a handle on the diagonal concept for this new quilt. I kept looking at my Excel spreadsheet puzzling about how I could make those squares become diamonds. Duh... I finally used Excel to make a page of blocks so I could manipulate them with my hands, and then I printed and cut them out. It was like handling playing cards or a stack of stamps. I had to touch them before I could figure out how to see it in Excel. Isn't that funny? The workings of the mind are strange. Some people can see the concept right away; and others, like me, have to use trickery.

The square configuration to the left was my first attempt, but then I had to stop and think whether I wanted this quilt to be square or not - and not was the answer. So back to the drawing board.

You would think it would be easy just to rearrange the squares, but taking the square apart and creating a rectangle wasn't as easy as it should have been. I actually had done the math in my spreadsheet and knew that I needed a configuration of 3 squares across and 4 deep, on the diagonal, to get the size I wanted, but only my fingers could see how to arrange the squares.

Mind you, all this design work is only for the top of the quilt. I figured I needed to get that settled before I even thought about the borders (or sashes).

After I fit the paper squares together by hand, I then could keep looking at it out of the corner of my eye as I created the same concept in my spreadsheet.

Here it is in Excel. I made all the rows 16 pix high and 16 pix wide, except for the rows between squares. The row between the squares is a border of sorts. I darkened it in Excel so it would be obvious that there's something there. The half diamonds that fall outside the inner rectangle are there only there in this image. That area between the two rectangles will be some sort of border. To have those half diamonds as part of the border is a possibility, but I think I will have to wait until I make some progress on the real quilt before I made that decision.

By rotating the screenshot 45 degrees to the left, I now have a better idea of how this is going to work.

I believe the quilt I'm using as a template (the Fassett Square Clamshell) uses something like 3" squares to come to the final size of 67" wide and 93" long. I want to end up with something with a little different width to length ratio, so I adjusted the size of the little squares until I found a combination that would work. Each square in the 7 x 7 square will be about 2.5 inches, with a 1-inch border between each of the 7 x 7 squares. This should give me approximately 64 x 85 for the top, and then I can add a 15-inch border (30-inch increase in width and length). That should cover a double or queen without any problems, and not look too strange.

This is a little snapshot I found on the Internet where Fassett's book was for sale. It shows a corner of the quilt and a little more detail about the fabrics that create this wonderful effect.

I don't know what's so wonderful about this pattern, but I just love it. Mine will look very little like it when I'm done. The quilting and the colors will make a huge difference, but I hope I fall as much in love with the one I'm making as I am with this one Fassett designed.


Here are the fabric candidates for my quilt. There's no way to tell how this image (aura) will change when I cut these little strips into squares and start laying them out in pattern. All bets are off at that time. This process is the emotional one. I have to look at each color configuration out of the corner of my eye, sneak up on it and accidentally look that way, stand outside my sunroom and look at the mix through the window - all sorts of tricky things.

In the end, this quilt should look like a pink and violet flower garden, muted by grays so that it has a shadow-like quality. It should make the bed look like it's covered by flowers, and they are about ready to fall off. It should be something you want to crawl under for a wonderful rest.

I think I've been looking at my potted plants too long this summer. The angelonias are growing out of their minds, and I love them. Will this quilt look like a flower garden of angelonias?

Who knows what I'll be thinking as I watch the colors begin to form their own imagery.

Margie asks "Will it be done by the time we're home?" (She and John are still traveling - oh, how fun.) And my answer is "Hahahaha!" That was a good chuckle. Thanks, Margie!

That's enough work thinking about the quilt today. This is not something I can rush. It's about time to turn on my TIVO and catch up with all those old shows like Murder She Wrote and the Hallmark movies. I work on Mandi's afghan when I do that. Here I am, "watching" TV and running in yarns. See the little pile of cut ends on the arm of my couch? I don't have too much more to go - another week or two, maybe - and then I'll be done. Periodically now, I lay down on the floor and see how it feels to be covered up with the afghan. I think I need about 6 more inches or so, just to make sure she will be able to snuggle her feet in the bottom.

After 50+ years, I finally needed to know ...

Who says you don't need all that math you learn in school!!

I finally needed to know how to calculate the distance of the corner-to-corner diagonal in a square! Luckily for me, I knew the question, and I'm lucky enough to live with a fellow who has all the answers when I come across these long-ago-learned & forgotten mathy things. Here's the short answer: Multiply the length of one side by 1.414 and you'll know the length of the diagonal. If you have a 3" square, the diagonal is 4.242" (say 4-1/4 for short). If you have a 5" square, the diagonal is 7.07 (or 7 plus a smidgen, for short).

Why do I need to know? Well, this morning, I started looking for quilt patterns that interested me, and I found two. Both are squares made into a bigger square and then turned so that they lay point to point on the diagonal. Tough to explain.

Here's a little picture that might help.
Look at the magazines in the upper part of the picture. The magazine on the right shows a 9-patch quilt put together on the diagonal, and it caught my eye right away. It looked interesting, but not too complex to become tiresome or too challenging for my meager talents. The magazine is Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, July/August 2006; and the quilt is Sarah's Nine Patch by Lorie Stubbs.

The left-most magazine shows some quilt designs by Kaffe Fassett in his book Museum Quilts: Designs Inspired by the Victoria & Albert Museum. The pink one, Square Clamshell Quilt, was the second quilt that caught my eye. It, too, is sewn on the diagonal, but it's 49 (7 x 7) squares in a block - a bunch more than 9 squares in a block. Click the picture to see more of the quilt details.

Not willing to fork over the change to purchase Fassett's book (part of my austerity program), I went to the library to see if I could find it. I didn't, but I DID find another Fassett book, Glorious Patchwork. I borrowed it so I could pick up some tricks about how he thinks and works his quilts. Color, pattern, and the actual quilting once the layers are together are the three important elements in the overall design of a quilt, I think. I don't know which is more important, but I do believe that the failure of one can undo the excellence of the other two elements. Fassett excels with color. I am wowed every time I open a Fassett book (I have a few of his knitting books).

In the picture, Glorious Patchwork is laying open to a Lattice Quilt which is also put together on the diagonal. I like it, too.

By the way, the bag holding the Quilt Masterpiece book is the last bag I made. I really like these bags. Big, sturdy, strong!

Before I start a project, I like to understand it. When I knit or crochet, I always read through the patterns first and see if I can comprehend where the designer wants to go. I want to find things that I think will trap me so I can begin thinking about them now and avoid costly and frustrating mistakes later.


To get me started this morning before I looked at patterns, I pulled a bunch of my stash out of the closet. My inspiration doesn't come in a vacuum, and my imagination needs all the help it can get. My basic rule, at this stage of my game, is to try to work off my stash, not increase it. So I need to have this stuff in front of me, hoping that my muse will be at work on it and will (sooner rather than later) shout "Eureka! This is it!"

That done, I dug through my collection of books and magazines and found the patterns in the previous picture. I have to be careful not to get myself in too deep. My last quilt was just the right challenge. It seemed to take forever (6 weeks or so), but I paced myself, and it was certainly not too much beyond my capabilities. I was able to finish it. I hope for the same good fortune with this one. I will be slow to go through this initial stage so that when I actually get started, I will be so eager to dive into it that my momentum will last until it's complete.

I think I'm ready for a diagonal quilt. I think I can pull this off. The question is, do I want to do a 9-patch (3 x 3) one (I can make the squares in strips, cut them, and then just alternate colors), or do I want to go for the more challenging 5 x 5 or (gasp) Fassett's 7 x 7 idea. Anything more than 3 x 3 means that I can't initially begin my squares with strips.

With anything beyond a 3 x 3, each strip must be planned and sewn square by square. Here's the way the 7 x 7 shakes out:

(I numbered my squares starting with #1 in the middle. Each number represents a fabric.)
07 08 09 06 09 08 07
08 05 10 04 11 05 08
09 10 03 02 03 11 09
06 04 02 01 02 04 06
09 11 03 02 03 10 09
08 05 11 04 10 05 08
07 08 09 06 09 08 07

Either way you look at it, strips 1 and 7 are alike, 2 and 6 are alike, 3 and 5 would be alike if I used only 10 fabrics and renumbered all 11's to 10, and the center strip is unique.


In order to understand the process, I sketched the pattern out on some graph paper. This particular page is where I came across the need to know the length of the diagonal. Hmmmm, I said. If my squares are 3" wide (finished) and therefore a block is 21" wide, how many blocks do I need to make a quilt of the width I choose. Woops! I was getting a strong feeling that my logic was off, so I took one of my quilting template squares and measured the length of a side and then the diagonal. Not the same. So the answer to that question, once and for all (Thank you, Lauren), is - multiply a side by 1.414 and then you'll know. (This is just your basic right-triangle math, but that was a long, long time ago!) For a less friendly explanation (well, less personable, at the very least), see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotenuse
or if you want it with a cute joke, see:
http://www.mathnstuff.com/math/spoken/here/1words/h/h12.htm

I can play with that answer and combine it with the answer to "How big do I want this quilt to be?" and be ready to hear the Eureka! my muse shouts in my ear about how to use the fabric that I have.

Now, how big do I want this quilt to be? Here's a great site with that answer:
http://www.amishcountrylanes.com/Pages/QuiltSize.shtml

Oh, I love the Internet, and I love these people who are so very willing freely provide all this wonderful information that I would never find otherwise. Thank you, Amish Country Quilts!

I hope to actually begin cutting by this time next week.

A little garden of succulents, travel, and cat parenting

With fall at our doorsteps, I decided to plant a little garden of succulents. It's in a bowl, and I can bring the bowl inside in case the weather becomes very cold this winter.


The pictures show two views of the same little bowl. It's nothing fancy, but if these will root well and grow, they will multiply and fill the bowl - maybe even more than one bowl.

Maybe caring for a little garden will be a substitute for caring for our two cats. I surely miss those two, but we don't want to cat parent again for a while until our travel season is over - and I don't know when that's going to be. We have trips lined up through next May, and I can't keep my eyes off the travel pages as they float by on the Web. There's a black sea cruise that keeps drawing me - places we haven't been and would like to see.

Maybe, for the time being, I have traded hens and chicks parenting for cat parenting.

The results of temptation in the face of pretty fabric

I should know better than to buy fabric just because I think it's pretty. It's just that when I see a piece of fabric that's interesting to me, I have this idea in my mind that I need to buy it to tell the designer and producer that I appreciated their efforts. I suspect I also feel that way about books - consequently, I end up with too many (not always read) books and too much (stored away) fabric.

I'm on a program to tame my need to acquire (just to show some misplaced honor or something), and in the meantime, I have some lovely pieces of fabric that I am determined to do something with.

A spinoff goal from my program is to waste as little as possible. Thus, at least in the matter of the fabric, that may mean sewing and ripping, adjusting, re-sewing, and maybe even re-ripping and re-sewing again. It's kind of an incentive for me to be a more prudent shopper (or steward).

Take this lovely piece of fabric, for example. I love the ribbon of embroideried flowers woven right into the fabric, and the color is so bright. With the perma-crinkle effect, the fabric is soft and interesting. So (some time ago) I grabbed what was on the bolt - a little short of three yards - because it was on sale. That should be sufficient for a sun dress, I thought.

But I should have known better. With the perma-crinkle, the fabric isn't a standard 42" to 44" wide. It's more like 32" to 36" wide. One wouldn't want to iron this flat (even if it were possible) because the delicious crinkle would be gone.

The first problem I ran into was when I tried to lay out the front and the back of a sundress and realized that I would have to lay them end to end because the width wasn't sufficient for side-by-side pattern pieces. But, golly gee, the length wasn't sufficient for a sun dress. Oh well, Plan B is always part of my thinking, so I quickly converted my sundress idea to a blouse. There was certainly sufficient length for the front and back of a blouse.

While I was cutting the blouse, a little gnawing was going on in my mind - what to do about those crinkles with the arm and neck facing - particularly the neck. They would stretch all over the place if I wasn't careful. So I decided I would fully line the blouse with some beautiful matching poly silkessence - a very light-weight lining fabric. Then I would top stitch the neck carefully and that would take care of that problem.

So far, so good, and I proceeded to cut and carefully sew, with 1-3/4 mm length stitches (shorter than normal) and a size 70 needle so that the needle would sew and not cut the threads of the fabric.

I knew when I tried the blouse on, as I was making it, that the neck was a little large, but I figured I could live with it. I generally like loose clothes. Besides that, the neck opening needed to be sufficiently large to get my head through it since the blouse doesn't have a zipper or placket opening anywhere. So I quickly and carefully finished the blouse and wore it to the movie yesterday afternoon.

I liked the feel of the double layers. Together, they are light weight, and you can't see through the fabric. That's a good feeling - nice and modest. But the neck. Oh, that drat neck. Why didn't I spend more time thinking through my reaction to that. Much, much too big. It almost slid off my shoulders.

So today, my task is to take out those tiny little stitches around shoulder seams (both at the neck and the armholes) and take up about an inch of slack on either side. At the same time, I have to be sure the neck opening is large enough for my head. But the blouse is worth saving, and the act of having to carefully undo these spots and then redo them might be a good reminder to me to take a little more care on my next projects.

Here's the blouse in its current condition. The picture on the left shows the undoing at one shoulder seam. I think it's going to work. It would be nice if this were to become one of my favorites. And it will be even nicer if I learn to be a little more careful before I do all those little stitches!

Sewing, knitting, crocheting, TIVO, and Netflix

My attention span is short, so my new plan for my days may not last for more than a few weeks. It's this: Sew in the morning (sew anything!) and then either knit or crochet in the afternoon and evening - maybe both. The idea is several-fold - use up my fabric stash (it's considerable, although I've seen worse), learn something new, accomplish something with my days, and continue to finish old projects. I have a little yarn stash, but it's not really large. The stash to use up is my fabric stash.

As for the yarn, I gave away a couple boxes of yarn a couple years ago - most of the acrylic stuff. Most of what I knit these days is fingering weight yarn that has a high wool content. Socks are most often on my needles, although I'm using my finger-weight sock yarn now to make a little mobious scarf, just as an experiment. This yarn is recycled from the unable-to-identify Fair Isle project which I ripped out a couple weeks ago.

There are several tricks to reducing my stash, at least for me. The biggest trick is to refrain from increasing it!

The best way to avoid increasing my stash is to stay out of the stores! If I don't get in my car, I have that battle mostly won. Getting in the car with Lauren is ok. He doesn't shop, so I don't have a problem when we go out together.

But even a small trip by myself is a temptation for me. For example, I drive myself to church because Lauren usually runs errands afterwards and I generally want to come home. Yesterday, after church, I decided to go to Michael's to browse with my 50%-off coupon, and I ended up with two skeins of yarn suitable for felting. Hmmmm.... But it was only two skeins, and they were on sale, and that's progress. Then I went to Walter Anderson's and came home with some new plants - three succulents, some bulbs, some mums to replace the cosmos which didn't survive the summer heat, and a few other plants. That was a little more than I meant to do. The whole idea was just to get a few succulents so I could play with a container garden over the winter.

I can't count my little trip yesterday as a total failure, though. The good news is that when I was at Michael's, I didn't walk next door to Joann's and browse (and purchase) any fabric. Ah, a little success means a lot.

Two weeks into my plan, and I've made some progress. I bought this black a couple months ago with the idea that it would make a nice light dress for Donna. It's always very warm to hot where they live, and light is a good thing. I ended up with enough fabric to make a dress for Erica, too.

I have no idea when I purchased the patterns. Patterns are priced ridiculously high these days, but I watch for the sales at $.99 to $1.99, which is much more reasonable, and I go through the catalogues and buy patterns that I think I might use some day. I really liked these patterns and was pleased at how they turned out. I like the dresses with no zippers. Zippers are such a pain - not to sew in, but to zip up the back when you're putting something on. The fabric was nice to work with - almost like a handkerchief.


These little bags, part of my sew-each-morning plan, are "green" - not green in color, but green in that they will replace the plastic bags we get from the grocery stores. The one on the left is in its box ready for the Philippines. D&T go to market a couple times a week, and this should be really good to carry their produce in.

The other two, #1 and #2, are for LDR. Why did I number them? Well, it just seemed that I'd like to know which one he loses first. Now isn't that terrible? Actually, I think once he's used these, he will like the idea a lot, and the numbers might be useful for him, too.

I will eventually make a couple for myself, too. They are great bags, made from heavy denim, and they will carry a whole stack of library books.

I modeled the bags after one I purchased for $10 on the McKinley Explorer when we were in Alaska this year. We were without our luggage for several days when we went to Prudhoe (not enough room to carry all of us, along with our luggage), and I really liked the idea of not having heavy things to carry in and out of hotels. But I needed something to stuff my loose things in (the miscellaneous stuff we had), and I found this heavy canvas bag in the shop on the train from Fairbanks to Denali. It was the smartest purchase I've made on a trip, I'm sure.

I was amazed that the bag cost only $10. I figure there's almost $10 worth of fabric in it. Of course, my bag is a little more decorative, but it should be just as sturdy. One of the great things about it is that the straps are just the right length to slip over one shoulder, and they are wide enough that they feel really comfortable even when the bags are loaded with heavy things like books! Another feature that I liked is the sturdy and roomy double-layered bottom.

The concept is simple.

• Take a 36" length of heavy fabric (I've had this denim and some other pieces in my garage storage box for years).
• Cut it to the width you want (somewhere around 20 inches).
• Pin a 12" double bottom on it (center the bottom on the center fold of the 36" length).
• Cut and sew two 42" straps, about 1-1/2" to 2" wide.
• Slip the straps between the double-bottom and pin. The straps make a U-shape.
• Cut and sew a rectangle pocket shape to slip between the straps on the front.
• Sew the bottom, the straps, and the pocket to the bag. Sew the straps to within about 2" from the top edges of the bag. The bag is still laying flat. The side seams are still open, so you are working with the 36" length.
• With wrong sides together, fold the bag in half so you have 6" of the double bottom on each side of the bottom.
• Tuck 1/2 of the bottom bold up inside the fabric, making an envelope type affair. You now have two bottom folds, and one fold (the tucked one) about 3" from the bottom.
• Sew the sides with the bottom tucked in.
• Turn, and sew a strip along the top.
• Done!

I figure I can do all kinds of decorative things with this pattern. On these bags, I machine embroidered the pockets.

I have more denim in the garage. When I saw it on sale, who knows how many years ago, I figured it would make great things that needed sturdy fabric. I had actually made camping pillow cases out of the fabric I used for Lauren's bags, but the fabric was too rough to be practical. Now I've remade them into something that is actually useful. That's a good feeling.

We'll see how long my attention span holds. I hope to get a few more of these made before I tire of them. Ah, resolve!

Somewhere along the line, I found my fingers reaching into my UFO (UnFinished Objects) basket, and I pulled out this afghan that I started some time ago for Mandi (I should learn to use her grown-up name, Amanda!).

The afghan is made of pale yellow rosettes crocheted together with pale cream yarn. The yarn is TLC, and it's a good thing I purchased all I thought I would need when I started it some years ago because I don't see it in stores now.

The pattern isn't difficult, but it's a little tedious because each complete rosette, when crocheted into the afghan itself, requires that I run in yarns at least four times. Multiply that by 16 rosettes for each row, and the numbers add up quickly. However, I find that TIVO is a great assistant. I have watched many, many TIVO'd movies from the Hallmark channel this past week, and the afghan is growing, growing, growing. This is my afternoon and sometimes evening project. I love the afghan. It's really beautiful and I think Mandi will like it when it's done.

TLC yarn is acrylic, but this particular yarn has a lovely weight to it and just drapes over you. It almost hugs you when you're resting. I was so glad to get it started again, and I will feel good about my UFO project basket when I have this one done. It's definitely a worth-while project on several levels.

In the meantime, I have decided not to put any more socks on needles until I've done a little knitting on other things. I got it into my head that I wanted to do a simple mobius scarf.

The pattern is pretty simple, and the discipline is good. It's just row after row of garter stitch (knit, turn, knit) with a little lace edging on each side. In the end, when this thing is about 42" long, I'll twist it and graft the ends together - and it will magically be a mobius! Cat Bordhi has a book out with what she calls a mobius cast on (I think it's her book about Magical Knitting), which I haven't seen and don't understand yet, but maybe trying her method will be next. Using the mobius cast on (MCO), there's no grafting to get the twist. You just knit it right in. We'll see. Trying her MCO method may be a project in the future, if ever at all. First, I just want to get my knitting fingers used to doing something besides socks. I have become way too sloppy and instruction inattentive (unattentive?).

So, what does Netflix have to do with all of this (subject line)?

With my little Netflix subscription, I can watch 9 hours of video online, in addition to my CD shipments. I've watched several videos, including one about John Tyndale (interesting, even if not award caliber, because I knew little about him). Much to my delight, I find that knitting and Jane Austin go wonderfully well together. I am now in the middle of watching Emma, a BBC series, if I remember correctly. Last month (ending September 12), I ran out of video time, so I haven't worked on the mobius since then. However, my billing cycle has renewed itself so that I have 9 new hours to watch. The mobius and Emma will be on again. That's great evening work, very satisfying and relaxing before bedtime.

Things done, things to do over, and things to do

I finished the quilt on Tuesday! I could hand-tack the mitered corners and the join for the binding, but I'll see if that's really necessary once I wash it. It's in the machine now.

I'm almost pleased with the results, but I find myself a little amazed that the whole of it is much fancier than I envisioned as I was working on the parts of it. However, it's home art (or folk art) that was created in this home, and therefore, I must judge it "just right" for our home.


I hung the quilt over one end of the ping pong table (with one end of the table pulled up in a vertical position) in the garage so I could get these pictures. It seemed like the largest surface we had where I could hang something. The top picture shows the pieced back, with the front folded over a little, on the left, showing the contrast between the back and front. The picture to the right shows a little less than one half of the front.


In the spirit of finishing projects this week, I finished a little pair of socks I started in February of this year. I love the feel of hand-knitted socks so much - they are so comfortable for my feet. The foot itself was what I really wanted, so I didn't knit a long leg for them. Instead, I knit a only a few rows after the back of the heel (these are knit toes up - not leg down) and then did a half a dozen rows of k2, p2 ribbing and then a double-knit set of four rows for an invisible bindoff (Cat Bordi, Socks Soar...). As such, they are loose around the ankle - and that's good for me. I tend to show pressure marks with even the slightest bind on my legs. These are comfortable.

I started these using a toe technique from one sock book (Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch), added my own improvisation through the foot, and used Cat Bordi's heel found in her Socks Soar book.

The sole of the foot is primarily alternating rows of k1, sl1, k next row (knit in the round) for a sturdy bottom of foot. This technique is a standard heel stitch, but some years ago I read that this might be good for the entire sole - and it is. The top of the foot is a moss stitch - two rows of k2, p2, then two rows of p2, k2 (again, all in the round).

You can see in the picture that I slipped (memory slipped, that is) the heel stitch for several rows between the ball of the foot and the heel itself - it shows up in the bulky part around the bottom arch. This shouldn't have been, but these socks are for me, and because I didn't want to rip these out, I can live with it.

I probably had enough of the brown tweedy yarn to make these socks without any contrast, but I wasn't sure it was going to last so I used a different yarn for the heel turn. The brown tweedy is Cervinia - 70% wool and 30% polyamide, and it's machine washable. It was one of the specials at http://www.smileysyarns.com/ - I hardly ever buy expensive yarn. The contrast yarn is some I've had for eons (purchased for the Fair Isle project - later in this post).

Washable is a good thing for me. No matter what I make, I want to be able to toss it in the washing machine when it needs cleaning. With two of us doing washing, I learned years ago that I should not have hand-wash things. That's a sure recipe for an argument and some unhappy feelings in our house. With so many other more important things to argue about, if one needs an argument, my clothing and projects should not be among the stimulants!

Using the contrasting yarn, though, has a good side effect. It shows me exactly which part of my sock is the heel turn. The next pair I make, I will make each segment of the sock with a contrasting yarn so I can see just which part is the knitted toe, foot, heel flap, and so forth! That's really good information when you're designing and measuring.

Along with the yarn, by the way, all my socks have an accompanying strand of wooly nylon for reinforcement (strengthening). Wooly nylon is sold as serger thread and is available in almost any fabric store. I find the nylon helps make a really comfortable fabric for my feet, too. I wind the nylon on sewing machine bobbins and knit with a strand of yarn and a strand of nylon as though it were one strand. Because I used a variegated nylon with this pair, strange colors such as blue and bright red pop up in the sock. But that's ok for me.

But do I want to do socks as my next project? I don't know. It's been along time since I really knitted, and actually knew what I was doing. I keep getting the nudge (from inside my head) that I need to quit winging it and actually learn (or relearn) how to knit.

In going through my stash (really not too large, but some of it is old), I found this piece of Fair Isle and decided I had no idea where I was going to go from where I left off years ago, and so I'm now in the process of unraveling it.

This was my first attempt at Fair Isle knitting, probably inspired by reading Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting once too often! (I just looked this up on Amazon so I could get the link, and it's selling for $140 from third-party sellers! Yikes!!!)

This pattern is my own design, and I have no record of it. I know it was intended to be a vest of some sort, but I can't find my notes anywhere. I thought that maybe I could measure it and feel it and think about it and maybe pick up where I left off, but then I decided that would be more trouble than just picking it out and learning to do all this again.


I must have started this project in the early 90s because I'm sure both Mom and Dad were very much in our lives then. I can almost see Mom and Dad living with us at the time, but I don't think that can be true. Memories tend to meld together and become timeless. I think, but am not sure, that I worked for a CPA firm in La Jolla, and that would put it in the late 80s. My edition of Alice's book is 1988, and the price on the back of it was $34.95.

So, anyway, here I am, unraveling. It's interesting to watch how it went together - strands interwoven.

The Fair Isle made a nice fabric, so I think I'll chart out an actual pattern (based on something I can document well and then follow) and start fresh. It's hard for me to follow someone else's pattern to the T - I always think I have to do something original. It's the same with cooking. I'll look at the recipe, but if I make it by the recipe even once, it's a victory for me. My quest for some originality is a handicap, and it costs me because my (1) my experiments aren't always successful and (2) when they are (at least for cooking) I don't always remember what I did!

In going through old knitting magazines last evening, though, I found Faux Fair Isle knitting in the Fall 94 issue of Vogue Knitting. That looks interesting, with the colors created using a slip stitch pattern. No row has more than one color, but because you are slipping stitches on each row, a stitch from the previous row, in a contrasting color, sits in the row you're working on - thus, creating a fake fair isle effect. I might try a few swatches to see what I think of this method. This might be something, too, that I can incorporate into the back of the heel of a sock since I use a slip stitch pattern there already.


There was a day when I actually thought I knew what I was doing when I knit.

When I designed and knit these vests, I had no problem understanding what I was doing. My Vogue Knitting book was beside me (the 1989 version, so that gives me a good date for these vests), and I understood (somehow) about how to make the parts the right size, do the right increases and decreases for the shaping, how to mix color and combinations of patterns. I'd like to get there again.



Neither of these vests were difficult, and they were fun to make and I've enjoyed having them. I'm glad I didn't toss them (or give them away) during one of my clean up campaigns during those years when I had poofed out too much to wear them comfortably. Last year I wore them once or twice and will wear them more this winter.

Thus goes the blog for today. It catches me up with my thoughts and helps me get turned around looking toward tomorrow.

The card table is down!

Finally, I put the card table away yesterday, and my sewing machine is clear for a few minutes! I took a picture of it because it's hard to tell when my sewing table will look this neat again.


After church, I took all my library books, DVD's, and books on CD back to the library and then headed straight home. It's a hot, hot, hot day. In fact the entire week has been hot; but I figured if I stuck to it, I could get the binding ready for another cooler (not cool) morning this week and start that final step. This thermometer is the one in our porch room where I work - not the one outside. Lauren said the thermometer in his car (registering the outside temperature) struck 102 on the way home. He comes home an hour or so later than I do because he stays for Bible study.

I had cut out one approximately 42-inch square of bias yesterday, and today I cut a smaller square and got them all sewn together, pressed in half, and rolled on a paper towel holder. At 13 or more yards, I figured rolling it up would protect the pressed fold and make it easier for me to attach the binding.

The quilt is now covered with a piece of muslin to protect it from whatever elements might mess it up out here in my sun room. I still need to go over the back, clip loose threads, and pick out those tiny little dust balls of batting where I can. I think you can see some of those little tufts of batting if you click the picture to enlarge it. (This picture also shows a little of what the back looks like - I like the black on black!) What I can't pick out should pretty much wash out. Just think, I might have this on the bed in a week! I started work on it sometime during the last two weeks of July, and I have worked several hours on it almost every day since then. At least this one won't linger in my to do pile for several years. How nice. I think I'm really, really retired! I like it!