A Return!

Did anyone else have a crazy November? I don't know what happened to that whole month. It seems like I had an event of some sort planned every weekend and the time just flew right on by...

I was also participating in National Novel Writing Month. I've participated a few times now and won 3 of those. If you're not familiar with NaNoWriMo, "winning" means I wrote 50,000 words or more in 30 days. It's a lot. At the end of it I have a big, messy pile of words that will need to be heavily edited and rewritten before they really become anything, but it's a start.  I did pretty good about writing in college, but when your grades depend upon whether or not you finish a poem or short story for workshop the next day, it's much easier to stay motivated. So I have been working this year on taking my writing more seriously and trying to develop daily habits instead of doing a mad dash once a year and then forgetting about it.

But somehow, I also had time for some crafts. Here's a short rundown.

I FINALLY finished this beast of a quilt last night. This picture shows how much I had left when I ran out of bobbin thread. OF COURSE. You may remember me starting this... in March of 2014! I know. It's shameful how long this has been in progress. Especially considering this was supposed to be a gift for my now-husband in 2014. But this is the year! It will finally be finished!

I know this picture sucks, but this hat was a gift and I sent it off before I took any decent pictures. Sorry! But this is a Vermonter made up in Manos Franca yarn. It is lovely and soft and the colors are just gorgeous. I had to make some changes to the pattern to get it to fit, which you can find on my Ravelry page if you're interested. I made this for a friend who lives in a much colder area than me. She's been going through some hard stuff, so I sent her a bit of warmth. Like you do.

And this little beauty is my first Hermione Everyday Sock! The other one is almost done. I've turned the heel, made the gusset, and now I just need to knit the foot. It got put on hold in favor of the Vermonter, but I will be returning to it soon!

There has been more stuff, but this is a little sampling. I plan to return to this space more often to share, so keep an eye out :)

Hope everyone had a lovely holiday!

WiP Wednesday!

It's that time again! So! What do I have in progress?

Well, there is my scrappy chevron quilt. I spent a lot of time cutting out little 4.5" x 2.5" rectangles and sorting them by color. I can't tell you how happy I was to finish that part!

In progress shot- hadn't decided to add reds at this point

This also yielded a HUGE stack of 2.5" squares, which will be fun to play with at some point. My smaller dog needs a new, smaller dog bed. I might just make a simple patchwork bed for her with my leftovers ;)

And now I am in the process of sewing them into pairs... and then I will sew them into rows!

Here is a nice, dark shot of my super scientific method for keeping track of all this chaos! It took quite a lot of time to color it all in. I'm crossing off sets of colors as I go. This could take a while! And yes, that is owl fabric you see behind my notebook. The pajamas are also in progress! I also kind of want to take a stab at this boat neck pattern from Melly Sews. The pattern is free for a limited time but only in size small. But if you're not a small maybe if you know how to scale patterns you could still use it? I don't know. Small will probably fit me. I might need minor adjustments, but I love boat neck shirts so I'm going to give it a shot! If nothing else, I know of at least one friend who would fit a size small for sure :)

I have also been working on socks! Look at the socks!

I tried toe up socks this time. I don't know how I felt about the short row toe. I don't like the lumpiness it leaves on the edges... but maybe that's actually a result of my inexpert knitting? We shall see.

But aren't they pretty? I'm using some Serenity sock yarn I picked out of the clearance bin at Joann. Still not confident enough to use my expensive yarn for socks. Maybe next time!

Linking up to WiP Wednesday with Lee at Freshly Pieced! What are you working on lately?

Tuesday/Monday News!

I know it's Tuesday, but it sure doesn't feel like it to me. I work Tues-Sat now, so Tuesday really feels like Monday. Which is rather blah...

So to cheer me up, I am going to show you some things I'm really happy about!


The first thing making me happy: BIG NEWS. I am going to be part of the Let's Get Acquainted New Blogger Blog Hop this year! :D

 

This is an excellent hop hosted by Beth over at Plum and June. Last year's hop was fabulous! I found a lot of the blogs I follow now through that hop and it is part of what made me decide to start my own blog. I saw how supportive and inviting all these modern quilters were and it made me much more comfortable with the idea of jumping in and joining that community. I am so excited to be included this year! I'll post some more details soon, so stay tuned!

Secnd, SOCKS.

Yes, there is already white dog hair stuck to my just-finished socks. Joys of owning a husky!

Look! I finished them both! I guess it was a really good thing I was impatient and decided to go with ankle socks- I was able to finish them both with just the one ball of yarn! It was getting pretty close down there at the end, but I still had a tiny bit leftover when all was said and done. So YAY!

I just love them.

For these I used some unknown color (thanks to my puppy) of Deborah Norville's sock yarn. I know it was some sort of wool blend and I'm almost certain they're machine washable (my other sock yarn of the same brand are!). What else can I tell you? I didn't use a "pattern" per se. I just followed the excellent directions in Kelley's Socks Class at Knit Picks. I highly recommend this resource if you have never knitted a sock before and are a visual learner like me. She goes over all the basics of knitting socks from the cuff down and it is all very easy to follow. These socks aren't fancy (although I did use the slightly fancier "Eye of the Partridge" stitch for the heel flap, which she goes over in the video), but they are functional and they fit perfectly!

I really liked making socks, which surprised me. I found they're a really good small project to bring with me to work to work on during my lunch break. I can easily fit a little pouch with a sock and a ball of yarn in my purse! It's a little more difficult to fit a sewing machine and several yards of fabric, say, or a half-completed afghan. Maybe I should take up EPP so I can bring a little sewing project to work sometimes, though. There are days when all I want to do is SEW and knitting and crocheting do not satisfy that urge!

I'm linking up today with Sew Cute Tuesday at Better Off Thread! Go see what other cute projects are linked up today!

The One with All the Sickness

I have been sick since Saturday. What was supposed to be a fun weekend for Mario's birthday turned into The Weekend of Sickness, culminating in Mario getting food poisoning on his actual birthday (Memorial Day) and being absolutely miserable for a day and a half. Sometimes things don't go as planned... I am not feeling any better so today I decided that rather than struggling through another day at work and subjecting my coworkers to my drippy nose and frequent sneezing fits, I'd just stay home and sleep the day away. That is my plan. I just had to get up and feed the dogs so I thought I'd pop in here to let you know what's been going on.

Then guess what happened? My SD card reader decided to stop working. I haven't been able to find my transfer cable for the fancy camera, so today you'll have to settle for crappy cell phone pictures of things I've been working on.

My biggest news? I FINISHED A SOCK.

Not a super fancy sock, but it is functional and it fits and it has PURPLE on it :D I used these videos from Knitpicks to help me figure it out. Super clear step by step instructions to make a basic sock. Now I understand what things like "gusset" and "heel turn" mean and they aren't nearly as scary as they sound! I think now I might be ready to tackle something slightly more complicated from my Sock Knitting Master Class book. Maybe.

Seriously terrible picture, I know. But I wanted to prove it fits!

I have started work on the second of the pair... but I don't know if I'll have enough yarn to finish. Because this happened.

My little demon puppy got a hold of the other ball and now it is hopelessly tangled... Probably my fault, really, as I left it on the couch. What else is a puppy to do with an unattended ball of yarn? It would be nice if she had picked it up and knitted the other sock of me... but I guess that's a little too much to ask. I have less than half of the first ball left and I was able to get some yarn from this tangled mess, so I might pull it off. I got the yarn on clearance at Joann, though, and I can't find this color anywhere. Not that I even know what it's called because she ate the label, too... But I know it is no longer available at Joann either locally or online. So I'll see what I can do with what I have. If worse comes to worst, I will just pick up some gray or purple yarn and finish the toe with that. It's my first pair, so I'm not stressing over it too much.

Other than that I have just been steadily increasing my pile of pinwheels. Oh, and I started a new project with stitch and flip triangles...

That is one dark picture. But you get the idea! I'm going to make them into butterflies, I think... Or something. I'll probably make a whole bunch of blocks and decide on a layout later. I was looking through Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pederson (you can see it at the top of the picture) and I just loved all the quilts with stitch and flip triangles. I would one day love to make a Supernova quilt from that book, but  I would definitely need to buy a lot of fabric for that. So right now I am happy using scraps and some Kona Ash :)

Okay. I've rambled enough. I need to go take some cough syrup and lay down for a while... Hopefully I will have some decent pictures next week.

Oh yeah. There's still a day or so to vote for your favorites in each category in the Blogger's Quilt Festival! You should totally go do that! There are soooo many pretty entries!