Dave continues to head off to his Grandma’s to help out every other weekend. Although I do miss him (he’s usually gone before I get up Friday morning, and returns mid Sunday), part of me really looks forward to some quiet time.

When the lockdowns began, Dave started teaching from home, through Zoom. And though things do seem to be improving, as he’s helping his grandma so much, he doesn’t feel comfortable going back to in-person yet. And that means we are both home ALL the time.

He is generally very good about leaving me to do my own thing, especially when I’m sewing, but there are always inevitable interruptions if he’s in the house.

So as soon as he left last weekend, I took the opportunity to really be able to focus and finally get the top of the Spring Brook Blossom top together.

I got it all laid out on the bed, and made sure there was a good balance in colour placement. I was a little disappointed to realize I was going to have to assemble this top in rows. I dislike trying to match up long seams, so I try to assemble tops in quadrants. That way, there’s only one really long seam when I bring two halves together.

If I hadn’t sewn the blooms to their leaves and stems, I would have been able to do quadrants, but I wasn’t thinking about final assembly when I was making the flowers… I just wanted to see those blocks come together!

Still – I powered through it. And it actually went together pretty well. It didn’t take terribly long for it all to come together.

My layout is just a little different than the suggestion by the designer. Mine is not quite as balance (I have more white space on top than bottom) but of course I also added that cute little butterfly too.

I’ve been hanging onto a very special chunk of fabric for the backing.

That wonderfully wild floral was a clearance bin find, and as soon as I joined the sew-a-long, I knew it would be the back for my version. My scrap binding bin yielded up a faux scrappy-looking binding which I think will be just perfect to wrap it all up.

I’m hoping to sneak off to Mom’s this weekend and get it quilted! But I have to make sure I’m home in time for Hallowe’en!

With all the fingerless mitts off the needles, it was time to turn my attention back to Dad’s birthday socks. So turn my attention, I did.

Now I know what you’re thinking…

a) YOU HAVE ONE SOCK DONE ALREADY???

b) Wait a minute… weren’t you using different yarn??? And a different pattern?

To address the first, I started these the minute the Cameron Mitts were off the needles, which was the morning of Oct 21. Still – that’s pretty good speed for giant man feet, I must admit. (Work has been relatively slow, leaving more time for stitching)

As for the second, I just wasn’t loving the combo of the Sock Ease with the cables. It was just too busy.

So I went stash diving and came up with this lovely, squishable skein of Bugga. It’s from the batch I dyed up before we moved. I don’t usually use fancy yarns for gifts, but Mom does Dad’s laundry so she knows how to wash/dry them properly.

I also decided to switch up the pattern. I love the look of cables, but I’m not so much a fan of actually executing them.

I found this pattern on Ravelry. It’s called Studmaster. It is mostly ribbing, but has some fun little mock cables (increases and decreases) down either side of the front.

I’ve already got a decent start on the second. I’m just hoping I have enough yarn. The skeins of Bugga were “seconds” some short on yardage, some with small flubs, some with both. Fingers crossed I can win this game of yarn chicken!

My goal is to get both my real brother, and my new brother’s quilt tops done by the end of November. Then I can zip to Mom’s for a weekend, and get them both quilted in time for Christmas.

With that in mind, I’ve kept my attention on my brother’s outhouse quilt. It’s the smaller of the two, and I’d already made good progress on the friendship stars.

I just needed to add a plain solid border around the centre, then a border of all those stars. The plain solid border went on easy peasy… and why wouldn’t it?

But then I got to that star border…

And once again, I’ve learned that apparently I suck at math…

Oh, my stars were the right size… but I just didn’t calculate properly and make enough of them. There should be a row of stars up either side of the centre too! But to do that, I need 28 stars, not the 20 I made! Gah!

I have enough of the toilet paper, and newsprint fabrics (which is good, because both are out of stock almost everywhere), but I don’t have enough of the brown.

Burton wants to tell you that there’s no need to worry though. We did an emergency order from Missouri Star Quilts and there’s more on the way. Happily, they have very quick shipping to Canada, so I should have it in a week or so. And in the mean time, I can focus on new brother’s quilt.

The last of the Christmas mitts is done!

I know, it’s not very exciting compared to the other ones. But this pair is for Paisley’s boyfriend, Cameron.

He’s been around for a couple of years now. I’ve only met him once, but by all accounts, he’s a very nice young man. But I don’t know him very well so I decided to play it safe, and simple.

The yarn is some leftover brown Barn Cat I had kicking around (colour is Milk Chocolate). Last year I made him a brown, ribbed hat, so this pair will go nicely with that.

And, as the title suggests… it’s my pattern. I couldn’t find anything that was tickling my fancy, so I decided to just write my own.

It’s a VERY simple mitt pattern with a major plus – these mitts will fit pretty much any size hand. That’s my tiny little hand in the picture, but Dave has giant man hands and they fit him just as well. It’s all in the magic of ribbing.

So the pattern is available now (it’s free!).

Enjoy and have a wonderful Monday!

I’m sewing every spare minute I can. It’s not enough in my opinion, but I hope to get more time once winter really sets in and there’s not as much to do around the house.

Still, with what little sewing I have been accomplishing, I’ve managed to sew up all the pieces I had for Leader/Ender blocks. It was time to lay them out and see how far they would get me.

I had a fair bit of help with that laying out.

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He was so helpful, I wasn’t able to get one picture of them without his noble fluff-butt.

Still, I have 39 blocks in total so far (a couple are missing from this photo. But since I’d like this to be a decent sized lap-quilt, I need quite a few more.. at least 60 or more added to this lot.

So I’m back to snowballing scraps. This one is going to take a while.

We’re closing in on the end of October, but there’s still lots of colour around here. And I’m not talking about fall colour….

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The mums I brought from the townhouse hit their peak last week (when I took these pics). They are just starting to fade, so I expect that they will stay pretty colourful until the end of the month.

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The neighbour’s Morning Glories are still peeking over the fence and still providing a few blooms here and there.

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There are still a few strawberries, though they are small and probably won’t ripen before the frost. The Tickseed still throws up a bloom here and there.

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Each of the new Butterfly Bushes has put up a small, but beautiful bloom stem. All three have really grown since I put them in so I expect good things next year.

And last… the lawn is just full of wild violets.. they don’t really get a chance to bloom because of the lawn mower….

But this little guy managed to stay low enough to evade the mower blades. It makes me wish I didn’t have to keep th grass short.. I’d love to see more of these little guys! (even though if left unchecked, they totally take over!)

Anything still blooming in your yard?

With that other baby top done, I can get back to working on my Christmas quilts. First up is my brothers outhouse quilt. The centre is done, but I needed to get working on the next border.

That called for MORE friendship stars! 20 of the to be exact. But because they are all the same, they were perfect for chain piecing.

I started by turning my stack of squares into HSTs using the eight-at-a-time method. The sewing goes pretty quick, it’s the trimming of said HSTs that really slows things down.

Especially when you have 160 HSTs to trim! My special handy dandy ruler helps, but it’s still a slog.

After what seemed like an eternity, they were trimmed, ironed open, and laid out into the block. Chain assembly could finally begin!

Those are some fun little friendship stars, if I do say so myself! And now I am 20 steps closer to having this top complete!

Another day… another gift knocked off the Christmas list.

These are for my Sister-in-Law, the girl’s mother, Jenn. The pattern is Cloudburst (not mine), another freebie that was a very fun knit.

I used some leftover Alley Cat (colourway is Peony) It’s a nice semi-solid that really lets the lace shine on these.

And before you get too excited… no, I didn’t finish these in just two days. I schedule my blog posts ahead of time. Paisley’s Elphaba mitts from Monday were actually finished on October 12. This pair was cast on the same day, and finished on the 18th.

Now I’ve got just one more pair of fingerless mitts to make for the holidays, and I can move on to other knits!

I really should be working on my Christmas quilts… but Mom needs me…

You see, she has a friend who has commissioned a few baby quilts from her. And this friend is in need of another one come November. But she doesn’t know the sex of the baby. And she doesn’t really know the theme/design she wants. So she asked if Mom could make up a couple for a boy, and a couple for a girl, and then when the baby is born… she can decide which one she wants.

Making multiple baby quilts isn’t really an issue, especially when you can make whatever you want design-wise. Which ever ones she doesn’t want will just end up in our shop. It’s just the timing… Mom not only has her own list of Christmas projects to get through, she also works for the post office. Things are already starting to get busy, and her working days are getting longer. That means less time to sew.

So time for me to lend a helping hand. We’ve already got a few “boy” quilts on hand. But not a lot in the girl department.

So I went through my stash and came up with a layer cake called Tiny Tots

It’s a mix of pink, grey and blue, and I’d always intended on splitting it up into a couple quilts. So, I pulled the pink fabrics from it, as well as some pale yellow from my stash and set to work. Friendship stars are quick and easy, and if you make them big enough, you don’t need that many.

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Four… eight… twelve…. they stacked up quickly.

Add some sashing and cornerstones and you’ve got yourself a baby quilt top!

I even have just enough of the grey flannel giraffes leftover from the back of another quilt to do this one.

With any luck, I can get down to Mom’s and quilt it before the end of the month.