... but that seems to be too much trouble for me. I think I have a hidden need to get myself in trouble and then see if I'm creative enough to get me out of it. (I think I did this at work, too, both when I was an accountant - get out of balance so I would have a challenge, and a programmer - leave out a semi-colon and let the compiler find the problem! Would life be boring if I didn't do that? Who knows what my psyche needs!)
Sometimes, a little challenge is a good thing and I can overcome it; but at other times, I have to use my seam ripper (sewing) or start frogging like mad (knitting) to undo the mistake caused by my inattention and then just start again.
January has started out with challenges. At first blush, the quilt pieces above look just fine and dandy. Having finished my (self-set) quota of four quilt tops for the Martha Circle project for January, I decided to get a head start on February, March, and April by cutting out pieces to put together as time permitted (because I'll be traveling a good bit of the time).
For my February batch, I decided to make four-patch squares. As I was rotary cutting the strips and squares, the thought crossed my mind a few times (but very lightly) that 4-1/2" squares didn't seem big enough. My target is to get a 9-inch square from these four. But the light bulb didn't come on until I sewed four patches together and noticed how cute and petite these things looked. To my dismay, I instantly realized I had ended up with an 8-inch square instead of a 9-inch square. (Let's see: 2 x 4.5 = 9. Use up .5 for seam allowances, and you have 8. Yep! The math works.)
Well, there's no seam ripper in the world that will undo this mistake, and I figured I had two choices - either add a 1-inch sash between each block or just put the blocks together and add a border around them - 2-inch border on the sides and a 2-1/2" border at the top and bottom. I opted for the latter. That will give me the 36 inches wide and 45 inches long target I need to have. Ugh.
The idea for me is to make these tops interesting and appealing, while not making them complicated. Well, this set of three quilts will be interesting and appealing and only half more complicated than I meant.
The original idea was to alternate the (supposed-to-be) 9-inch pieced blocks with 9-inch blocks cut from a single piece of fabric. I would have ended up with six quilts.
I still have a stack of 4-1/2-inch squares remaining, and I'll use them for a three-piece block where these smaller blocks are in one corner. And I have all those lovely 9-inch single-fabric squares. They will come in handy for filler when I (correctly) cut my next set of pieced blocks.
Last month, as our travel schedule began to pick up, I came to the conclusion that I could still have some fun with creating blocks while cutting the time it took to piece the tops together if I would intermix some single-piece blocks with the pieced ones. So that's the path I plan to take for the first half of this year. We'll see how that works out.
Socks in progress
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.
My second (recorded) mistake in January was when I copied the pattern for these socks.
I usually work with cables and seed or moss stitch - so simple for me - some knits, some purls, some cables, and I can just make it up as I go along.
Thinking I needed to push myself out of a potential rut for 2008, I decided I would use a different pattern for my first socks of the year. I picked the Lozenge pattern from my 1989 Vogue Knitting book and quickly copied it to my sock knitting notebook. (You don't want to carry around a 10 x 10 hard bound knitting book just so you can work on a portable project!)
The pattern creates a diamond, which I briefly noted, and it seems to be really simple. A couple yarn-overs, a slip, knit, and pass slipped stitch (skp), a knit two together (k2tog), and the balance is just knit, knit, knit. No purls in this pattern. I use a heel stitch (knit, slip, knit) a row and then knit the next row across the entire bottom just to give extra cushioning to the sock (my feet like that cushion), so the sock ends up being something pretty simple.
As I worked, I kept looking for the upper part of the diamond, and it didn't happen. When I had done a couple repeats, I went back to Vogue and realized that I had copied only the first eight rows of the pattern. The second eight rows are in the second column, and I had totally overlooked them.
Thank goodness the pattern was split in half in the two columns or I would have really ended up with something strange. I lucked out. My socks are now made with a chevron pattern, not a diamond pattern. That's perfectly permissible - just disappointing that I didn't pay enough attention!
So, the question is, have I changed anything for 2008? I always think I want to make each year better than the last. Or am I still on the same old pattern of winging it? I think it's probably the latter; but if I can wing it with new and different challenges, maybe that's ok, too. Who knows what fun I might have being just a little serendipitous (by trait, not by design).
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