In this light, you can finally see a bit more difference between the pumpkin orange and light coral stripe. The camera still has trouble capturing it. It’s much more apparent in person.
It’s been nice mindless knitting. Work has been crazy, and now we’ve added house-hunting into the mix. I’m just not up for complicated knitting right now.
The Felici is great for that. It’s a nice yarn to knit with and they are such fun colours. It’s the kind of yarn that makes you knit “just one more stripe.”
It certainly makes giant man socks go much quicker.
And I’m happy to say the replacement order of Felici arrived safe and sound.
There’s still no sign of the lost order. I think it’s well and truly lost. I hope, at least, it’s been found by a knitter!
As you may recall, if I have a free day on the weekend, I like to use them to sew quilt tops together. I save block building for during the week when I may only have an hour or two. But on the weekend, the chances are better that I have a few hours strung together… the perfect time to assemble a top.
The only project I had at that stage was my Round Robin quilt. It just needed the last border assembled. So Saturday afternoon, I got to it. Despite all the pieces, it went together fairly smoothly. After it was on, I decided it needed one last plain border.
At about 86″ square, it was too big to really show off it’s full beauty on my bed. So I took it outside.
It was almost too big for the only patch of shade in the yard, but I managed it. And now you can really see how good it looks. This quilt-a-long was so much fun. It really stretched the brain, and helped me with my quilt math.
I’ve convinced Mom that is needs some fancy quilting, so you won’t see it finished right away. But when it is, you can bet it will have some quilting worthy of it!
Quilting wasn’t the only thing that happened last weekend. Dave and I officially started house-hunting. In fact, we even put an offer in on a lovely little place in the middle of no where. There were nine other bidders, and it sold for $90,000 over the asking price. And not to us… even if we had the money, we are not that crazy. The house was nice, but not worth what it sold for.
Sadly, that’s the kind of market we are in right now. We are keeping a level head, and I know we will get the house that is right for us, at a price we can afford. In the mean time, we’ve been looking at what we have in this place, and getting rid of anything we don’t want to have to move.
In the middle of the week, we took a load of scrap wood Dave had collected to the community recycling centre (they sort and recycle/reuse what they can). I’ve got a bunch of gardening stuff (pots, etc) that I’ll probably give away. But the main thing I need to take care of is the undyed yarn.
As you know, I’ve been slowly working at dying it all up. Once it’s all dyed, I’ll sell the leftover dyes (there will be a tonne), and accessories and that’s one less thing to worry about moving/storing at the new place.
This week’s task was dyeing up the “Bugga” bin. Back when we were selling our dyed yarn, Mom scooped up a bunch of “irregular” skeins of the Bugga base – a sumptuous 70% Merino, 20% Cashmere 10% Nylon blend. If you’ve ever knit with Bugga, you’ll know how wonderful it feels. Mom bought it for our personal use, and we just never got around to dyeing it up.
There were 26 skiens of it! Neither of us can quite remember why the skeins were considered irregular. I think it’s because they are not the full 125 grams of the regular Bugga skeins, and Mom thinks some had poor plying too (though it didn’t look too bad when I was dyeing). Either way… it’s a whole lot of wonderful yarn.
I stuck mostly to semi-solids. As much as I love wild yarns, they can be hard to work with and don’t play nice with fancy stitchwork. I find myself knitting with plainer yarns more often these days.
I did a few up in what should be cardigan quantities
I did an olive green too, but I seemed to have forgotten to take a picture. And that grey/purple on the end is really more of a blue/mauve/plum. The camera did not seem to want to capture it at all.
I did a couple colours in shawl quantity
Though these could just as easily become hat/mitt/cowl sets one day.
And finally, I did four single skeins for socks.
Because Bugga socks really are a treat for your feet (and my one and only pair got holes ages and ages ago!)
Now I only have two bins of yarn left to dye. With luck I can get it all done by the end of March. Though it may eat into my quilting time a bit.
Last weekend, while I was quilting, Mom and Dad headed north to see my brother and family. They haven’t been down since before Christmas because of COVID.
In addition to quilting, I kept watch over the puppers. Checvy does not like it when his people leave and he mostly kept vigil at the window.
Jem, on the other hand, was much more relaxed about the whole thing…
When Mom and Dad returned, they came back with my birthday present from my brother. I had mailed up his birthday present, but mine was much too heavy to mail. It was worth the wait!
A new feature for Squirrelington’s that is not just cool, but lights up as well. Yes… we know squirrels don’t come out at night, but who cares? It looks AWESOME! It holds about 1 kg of peanuts at a time, so it means I have to go out and fill it less often.
He made it so it can be attached to a fence or a tree (hence the ladder to the bar level), but for now I’m keeping it on top of the garden cart with Squirrelington’s main dining section.
It did not take long for the patrons to discover the new addition.
And soon enough they had the whole thing figured out.
I haven’t seen the blue jays at it yet, so I’m not sure how they will feel about it. But it’s been a hit with the squirrels.
Okay… it’s going to be hard to part with this one. But I’ve done it, I’ve put it in the shop.
Yes, in addition to the Hidden Heart Baby quilt, I also quilted my Cluckers this weekend.
Aren’t they just awesome? I’ve said it before, but next to cats, chickens are probably my favourite animal. I know it sounds kind of odd, but if you’ve ever kept chickens, you’ll understand.
We had them when I was a kid. When we moved to the country when I was 12, we had to give them up (they went to live with my grandparents who had their own coop). I still long to have a place I can keep chickens again. For now, I’ll make do with sewing them.
These ladies were so much fun to put together, made more so by the themed fabric I had to work with.
And I’m so glad I was able to get the chicken-wire print for the background and backing.
I still have a good chunk of it left, as well as some other chicken fabrics in the stash. This won’t be my last chicken quilt!
In the mean time, I hope this one lands in a good home!
First, let me wish you all a Happy St. Patrick’s Day. (And a happy birthday to my SIL, Jenn!).
We normally don’t do anything for St. Pat’s around here. But the other day, I took down the snowflake decoration I had hanging from my Welcome sign. It’s too early to put up the hanging basket that lives there in the warm weather, and it needed something. I thought a shamrock would be just the thing and hit the Dollar store. I left it a bit too late though, and there wasn’t much left. All I managed to find was a foil shamrock garland. I cut a few of the shamrocks off, and tied them to the hook on the sign
It’s not quite what I had in mind, but it did the trick! Of course, there was still almost the whole garland left so I hung it between our living room and dining room.
It’s such a silly little thing, but seeing it hanging there has been so cheering this last week! I think I need garlands for all the holidays!
In other green news, one of potted shamrocks is going gangbusters too.
As you may recall, I keep these guys outside in the summer (I have burgundy ones too), but they do fantastic as houseplants as long as they get enough light.
Now… to the fluffy bits…
No Burton… not your fluffy bits! (as cute as you are). Right now I mean the knitting.
Does it look much longer than the last time I showed you? It is. But not as much as it should be. At first I was really good, putting the requisite four rows on it every night before working on everything else. Then things got hectic and I was barely knitting at all. Then when I did have time to knit, I just wanted to work on happy striped socks.
But I need to get back to those four rows each night. It’s the only way Im ever going to get through this one. And I’m determined to do it. Then I promise never, ever, ever to buy mohair again. I love the fabric, but it’s certainly not a thrill to knit with!
Saturday saw me back up at Mom’s at the quilting machine. The first I tackled the scrappy baby quilt.
And I couldn’t be happier with it! Al those little scrap just pop against all the white. I told you I was going to do something a little special with the quilting…
… and while I did m usual swirls, mixed in amongst them are a bunch of little hearts, randomly placed throughout. Can you see them? I left the coloured scraps un-quilted, which makes them pop just a touch more.
All those little critters were just perfect for the back, and I think the pink binding wraps it all up quite nicely.
This one is now in the shop and ready for a loved little wee one.
The old: This yarn. While not truly old, I bought it last year intending to have it used up by Christmas. Plans changed and it became “stash yarn”. Which qualifies it as old.
The new: It’s a new sock on the needles!!!! Nothing fancy, just a plain, old, south-soothing vanilla.
The somewhat blue: Three cool stripes! (though one is slightly mauve)
It’s a man sock and the colourway is Thunderstruck. I’m not sure how that name correlates to the colours, but hey – it’s fun. It’s hard to see in the picture, but there are three shades of orange too. First a pumpkin orange, then a slightly more coral orange, then a dark red-orange.
They are definitely not colours I normally gravitate to, but they are fun none-the-less.
I’ve had a couple good nights of knitting so I’m almost through the leg. I’m using a little leftover light blue Alley Cat (left over from Rowan’s hoodie) so I don’t have to break up the stripe sequence. I’m definitely enjoying it so far.
That’s the good news.
Now for the bad news. Remember that order of Felici I told you about? When I posted about it, it has been shipped, but not yet arrived. A few days later, it just stopped tracking. I waited, and waited, and then finally contact Knit Picks. It does appear to be lost. They are replacing it, no problem. However, by the time they determined it was indeed lost, they no longer had and of the Goth Kitty! The whole reason I placed the order in the first place. They are also out of the Rainbow, which make me sad, but not as sad as losing out on that darn Goth Kitty. Oh well. Maybe I’ll get lucky and that lost parcel will get found and make its way to my door.
It’s been another week with not much chance to sew, but I was able to carve out a little time to work on one small project.
All the snowballed leader/ender blocks have been sewn together and surrounded with a pretty white on white border. Unfortunately, this picture is not showing how bright and cheerful all those little scraps of colour are.
I’ve got this fun little animal print for the back, and the scrap binding bin yielded up some pink for the binding. I’m thinking I might do something a little special with the quilting on this one… stay tuned!
Wandering Cat Studio 