A couple of knitting finishes

These have both been done for a number of days - I just found time to post!

The cowl is from the pattern Very Gifted Cowl by Churchmouse Yarns and Teas. It is quite plain so every 10th row, I did a K1 P1 pattern for the entire row. The yarn is HiKoo by skacel Simplinatural, color 46 Crimson, that I bought last spring at Knit-n-Crochet in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.  I can use the cowl as a hood so I guess it is called a snood.

The sweater is from the pattern Vineyard Pullover by Rosemary Drysdale. I used James C. Brett Marble Chunky that I bought last spring at Back Porch Quilts and Yarn in Livingston, Montana. I love the yarn. The sweater design is a little blah - I'll wear it some but I was hoping it would be a goto sweater with jeans. 

I'm currently knitting a vest in a lace pattern. It will be awhile before it is done...

Cashmere Socks!

I've had very little free time lately but I finished knitting my latest pair of socks today.

They are not pure cashmere - the Smooshy yarn is 20% cashmere, 70% super wash merino wool, and 10% nylon. The yarn was wonderful to knit and it is so soft. 

It feels good to put my feet up. I love my socks!

One last finish before we leave...

I finished this donation leader/ender quilt last night.

The color blocks are 3" by 1.5" (cut at 3.5" X 2") and the tiny white blocks are 1" by 1.5" (cut at 1.5" X 2"). The long white strips are cut at 1.5" finishing at 1" wide. It escapes me where, but I saw this on someone's blog. Not sure if I used the same size pieces, but that is where I got the idea.

Note: My idea came from Stitchin' Therapy and Deb just added appliqué to her borders which really adds a lot to the quilt.

When I put this together, I sewed the small pieces into long strips and then put the strips together. It's not like I don't know better, but I then sewed all of the strips together in the same direction. Senior moment??? Anyway, I ended up losing about 5" when I trimmed to make the quilt square. Hopefully this old mind remembers not to do that again!

The back is pieced with scraps. The border is also scrap fabric. The quilt is machine quilted in straight lines.

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I never showed you my second pair of slippers - made from some leftover yarn. I like them better than the first pair. The patterns is Simple House Slippers.

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That's it. The house is clean. I have a couple of errands to do and those pies to make. Also a festival to enjoy. And Happy Birthday to Ray tomorrow. Come Monday, we will be on the road...

I'm done going barefoot!

I like to go barefoot. Ok, I love to go barefoot! It has something to do with shoes always hurting my nerve damaged right foot and something to do with me - I just like being barefoot!  

I recently decided it probably isn't the best idea to walk around a quilter's house (mine!) barefoot but I've been doing it anyway. When I happened to see this knitted slipper, I decided to use some leftover yarn and knit some. 

They are fast to knit and comfy.

You can find the pattern information and everything here on my revelry.com page.

Socks Done! And I've been moving piles...

My spiral socks are done. You may recall that I began with this:

And now I have these - Dorothy's Slip Stitch Spiral Knit Socks!

If you want to see the kind of yarn, link for pattern, and more, check out my ravelry.com page here. This may not be my favorite sock pattern but the technique is fantastic and will work on any circular knit. I will definitely use it again! There is a little orange left so it will show up in another pair of socks. 

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I have another quilting retreat coming up. Yes, I just went on retreat, I know! But when you get the chance... I was looking through my studio for UFOs and found a few things to take and a few to just finish. Truthfully, I didn't have to look too hard!

This twin sized quilt needed quilting and binding. It was already pinned. Now it needs the hand work on the binding.

This totem pole wall hanging now has borders and is ready to pin and quilt.

This QOV quilt is finally sewn together. Seems like it took a few years - not sure why. It's now ready to pin and quilt.

I found a bag with 2 1/2" strips of different lengths. I think I was going to make a jelly roll race quilt - so I did! Now it is  ready to pin and quilt.

So ... I moved one quilt from the quilt pile to the binding pile a very short pile.  And I moved 3 quilts from the finish piecing pile to the pin and quilt pile a very tall pile. One of these days I'll move some quilts to the finished pile! Isn't the pile moving game fun?!

More finishes!

It's been rather busy around here lately. We are getting a new roof and then they will fix the water damage that we had from leaks while we were traveling AND they will also fix the water damage we had from last night's storms. So glad I heard the water dripping on our new hardwood floors!

In the meantime, I've been busy! Yes, more finishes! I am determined to move through at least part of this pile of WIPs!  This is a donation quilt that I began because I wasn't sure if I needed a baby boy or baby girl quilt earlier this year. The darling little girl was born and this quilt never got finished but now it is! It's about 48" square. 

I used the walking foot to straight stitch the quilting on the blue areas and I free-motioned the little design on the white squares - you can really tell that I need more practice with my free-motion quilting. It's one of those skills that requires constant practice and I haven't done any for weeks. I'm hoping to change that in the next few weeks.

I love the fabric on the back.

I put together this wall hanging at the July retreat. It is now quilted and ready for October. It is a kit that I picked up at The Sugar Pine Company in Canmore, Alberta, Canada.

I free motion quilted a few spider webs and a spider.

The back is full of spider webs and spiders.

My knitting needles also have been busy. This cowl is on the blocking mat.  If you want to know about the yarn and pattern, it is all here.

There are more finishes coming! Another very special quilt will be shown soon and just wait until you see the next pair of socks!

When life hands you lemons, knit!

It's been a weird few days - I'm very seldom sick. Last Tuesday night we left the windows open and Wednesday we both got up with allergy problems. We both take allergy meds for about 7 months of the year but evidently the allergens were very high and still are. Ray began feeling better by Wednesday night but not me. I do think I am some better today. 

I am trying to get ready for my retreat but any exertion causes coughing so mostly I've been taking it easy, drinking LOTS of water, and knitting.

That means I have knitting finishes! 

My socks are done! They are wonderful and fit nicely. The yarn is Cascade Yarns Heritage Prints that I bought while we were in Canada recently. The pattern is Fleetfoot by Cat Bordhi.

The socks were very close to matching although not planned. While I was knitting the one on the right, the yarn was knotted/spliced together just after I began the heel. Notice the wide blue stripe at the top of the heel. The yarn pattern was not maintained when they spliced the two pieces. It doesn't really matter though.

I am going to love wearing them!

I also finished my Farmer's Market Bag. I began this before we left on our trip and worked on it as we traveled. I was sure that we would be at many Farmers Markets but we only found a couple. Wonder if we would have found more if my bag had been ready??! The small grocery stores had local produce so it was almost like a market at every stop!

The yarn,  Hemp for Knitting Allhemp6 was hard to work with but is wonderful for this bag. The pattern is Grrlfriend Market Bag by Laura Spradlin yes, the pattern is Grrlfriend! I added a second handle otherwise I followed the pattern pretty closely.

The bag is super stretch and the double handles will go over my shoulder.

I'm thinking a nap is next on my list then I have to get ready for my quilting retreat!

Back to Normal?

Normal is in the eye of the beholder.

-Whoopi Goldberg

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Some normal knitting:
I finished Ray's cotton sweater before our trip but just blocked it. He's been busy so I didn't ask for a model - maybe one of these days.

You can get all the specifics here.

While we were traveling, I did very little knitting. One thing I worked on was a cowl using a brioche stitch. I had a lot of trouble - a lot! I finally decided to frog it and will do some research and begin again later.

I also worked on a market bag. It is close to being done.

After we got home, I knit this cowl - actually I knit it 1 1/2 times! When I was 1/2 way done, I realized that I read the pattern wrong so I frogged it and began again. It is a fast easy knit. The photos make it look gray; it is actually a very pretty soft blue.

 You can see the specifics here. This is hand dyed wool.

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Some normal sewing:

I finally found a little time to be in the sewing room yesterday. I began making HSTs for a quilt I hope to put together at an upcoming retreat.

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Some other things:

We've found time for some walks and Ray's been riding his bike.

We've spent time with some friends and the calendar is beginning to fill up.

I've been spending a LOT of time working on Ray's computer. His photos have used up most of his internal hard drive. He uses Lightroom to organize his photos and I am learning way too much about Lightroom since I needed to move well over 18000 photos. I needed to do it correctly - no second chances here! While I've been working - it's rather time consuming - I've been knitting a pair of socks.

Tomorrow we are headed to a Farmer's Market, the Apple Computer store, and hopefully the Dairy where we like to buy cheese. We have a long list of errands.

Yes, this all feels normal!

Ray's Yarn but My Sweater!

We saw the yarn; 

Ray loved the yarn;

 We bought the yarn.

 We bought all they had. 

Then we couldn't find a pattern 

that only used that amount of yarn.  

We just didn't have enough. 

After months of looking, 

the yarn became mine. 

I had no trouble finding a pattern 

that used that amount of yarn. 

The pattern is Laurie by Josée Paquin.

The yarn is Rowan Felted Tweed DK.

The sweater is super soft.

It looks great with a navy scarf I own.

I'm really glad that

we saw the yarn,

Ray loved the yarn,

and we bought the yarn.

Because

I love the yarn too!

A soft, warm cowl and a beautiful spring day!

It is gorgeous outside today. We just took a walk - it is 55 degrees! You can see the snow is slowly leaving our backyard.

Spring is really coming!

I made Ray a cowl but it may be next year before he wears it - and that is fine with me! The Voss Cowl pattern is by Jeffrey Wall of The Yarn Guys.  The yarn is Tumi by Rauma, a Norwegian yarn that The Yarn Guys carry at their store, Wall of Yarn.

I knit the cowl on a 12" circular needle so I made a tube. Then I had to join the ends using the kitchener stitch, a first for me. It was a learning curve but I think I have it now!

The cowl is soft and warm - perfect for NEXT winter!

A couple of finishes

Another baby girl quilt finished. 

This one is about 44" X 50". I didn't have quite enough fabric for the binding so I used pieces of the colors in the quilt at even intervals - I like it! 

I used Dream Poly batting and Minkee backing. I really don't like free motion quilting on Minkee so I used my walking foot and did a wavy stitch across the quilt. A little love is free motioned on the front - you might be able to see it on the back here.

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I also finished my fingerless gloves. I used SilverSpun and will love wearing them - they feel good!

It's a selfie of my hand!

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In other news, I plan to order the new dehydrator  tonight. I'll be doing a little rehydrating for dinner - if it works - and I think it will - all systems are go! The research is almost done and I know what I want. 

Let the fun begin! 

And my sweater is done!

Another knitting finish! This sweater looks very shapeless - it's not really that bad! However the neckline is more of an oval than a circle - I need to learn how to change that. I wish I had made the bottom ribbing a little tighter. I'm learning....

I used Plymouth Yarn Encore Tweed and the pattern Beginner Cable Pullover by Diane Soucy. I made some changes - I removed the cables in the front and the back and I changed the sleeve cables so they both lean the same way.

I'm happy with the way it fits and love its warmth.