I’ve been a good girl and worked steady and faithfully on Dave’s Valentine socks and as a result…
The first one is finished. Though Relic isn’t too sure about his new career as a footwear model.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to, but I ended up carrying the pattern right down the foot
The cable is only worked on every other column, and only on every seventh row, so it didn’t slow me up too much and kept the knitting interesting. Part of me wished I’d chosen a more cheerful yarn though… we got a dumping of snow, and the temps have dropped so my world is rather cold and grey right now.
Oh well – 12 more days to finish this – then I can cast on for something more cheerful!
It’s about this time of year that I really start pining for my garden. Oddly, it doesn’t seem to have it me very hard yet. Maybe it’s because it’s beena fairly mild winter so far… they kept saying there was a polar vortex on the way, but it hasn’t really materialized. And we haven’t had much snow. Every week or so, we get a good dumping, but then it’s melted a day or two later.
Also, I’ve no grand plans for expansion or new things this year… as we hope to be in a new home by summer. It doesn’t make sense to do any more here. Still, on grocery day, I couldn’t resist bring these happy little mini daffodils home with me from the grocery store.
(You can see how green it is outside through the window).
None of my indoor plants are blooming, but they are all doing pretty well. I got a few new planters for some of my succulents.
It;s an odd little trio of friends (elephant, owl and bear) but they came as a set.
The owl hold a pup from one of my plants – it’s my first time propagating them, so hopefully he does well. The parent got a cool new planter too.
I found him on Amazon and he was so cool, I just couldn’t resist. He’s hanging off a curtain rod in the bathroom right now, but he’ll get a proper hook soon.
I wanted to repot all the babies on this big beast (which was started as a cutting from one of my Mom’s plants, about seven years ago), but those babies are rooted around the momma so tight and so deep, I’m going to have to depot the whole thing to get them apart. It will have to wait until spring, when I can do it outside!
Is there anything green and growing in your world right now?
This week’s prompt for my Round Robin quilt was “plus signs” and I admit, I struggled with it a bit. I couldn’t quite figure out how to make it work with my quilt. Piano keys work quite nicely with Jane Austen… but plus signs….? They don’t seem very Austen-ish.
So I pondered it for a day or two. Finally, as Burton and I were cat-napping on the couch,
…it came to me. The next day, I got cutting and sewing.
Four plus signs were made, and then I got to sewing strips.
Not long after that, my plus signs became the cornerstone of a pretty blue border.
I love how it looks, and I’m definitely enjoying this challenge!
With the Winters Frost socks off the needles (thank you for all the lovely comments – the day I posted we got hammered with snow, so I finished them just in time!), I had nothing else on the needles. At all!
That just won’t do. And with Valentine’s Day just a few short weeks away, I really should be motoring on a pair of socks for Dave. It’s pretty standard that I give Dave a pair of socks for V-day (and some jelly beans and jujubes). So now….
… that’s just what I’m doing. The pattern is Walking with Emma. It’s a nice, unisex, cabled sock pattern with four different variations in the pattern. I’m doing variation C. The yarn is some Alley Cat BFL I dyed up in man colours for Dave a while ago (last year I think, but it might have been the year before). AS you can see it’s a lovely mix of blues. I worried it might be a touch too busy for the cables. I tried it on his Petty Harbour socks last year, and it was definitely too much for them.
But it’s not too bad here. And those cables will pop even more when stretched out on his leg and foot. Now I’ve got about 18 days to finish them. It will be tight, but I’m pretty sure I can do it!
It’s a big one, at about 90″ square. As you know, we don’t do a lot of huge quilts, but it was so easy to make these blocks, and I had so many scraps, it would have been a shame to make this one small.
Although you can see it’s more or less the same pattern as Mom’s, how we put the blocks together made a bit of a difference. Mine also doesn’t have any fancy quilting like hers… just my usual loops. Still, I think it’s pretty wonderful
You all know how I feel about diagonal plaid, and I think it was the perfect thing for border and binding. There was one small hiccup though. You may recall that I planned to use a striped fabric for the backing. Well, it turns out I did my math wrong, and didn’t have quite enough for the back. Mom came to the rescue with this beautiful royal purple fabric.
The aqua stripe would have been nice, but I think this one is pretty grand too.
If you’re interested, this royal beauty is available in the shop now!
Just in time for a serious dip in the temperature, I finished my Winters Frost socks.
They are an “Almost Vanilla” sock with just a touch of pattern down one side. It’s a style I’m coming to love more and more. They fly almost as fast as vanillas, but have just enough pattern to keep them interesting. In this case, it’s a little bit of vine lace, which is just so elegant.
The yarn is Paton Kroy FX, colour is Seashell colours. It’s much nicer in person, with shades just like Mother of Pearl – pink, purple, grey, blue and cream. Kroy isn’t the softest sock yarn, but it washes up nicely, and wears well. My only complaint is that the yardage on them seems to have gotten lighter. I had enough to finish this pair, but I have small feet (size 7), and the leg is only five inches long. Were I making a longer pair for one of my friends with bigger feet, I probably would have run out. Mom said she’s found the same thing with the last few Kroy pairs she’s made. If she’s making men’s socks, she always buys three balls now.
Still, they are warm, and pretty, and I’m thrilled to have them done – so I can start something new!
As you may recall… I made my brother a nice flannel quilt for his birthday in December. Or at least I thought I made it for my brother. Someone else had other ideas…
That’s my brother’s cat, Zappa. Zappa thinks the quilt was made just for him. Since I was getting ready to mail all the Christmas gifts to the family, I decided I could sneak an extra present in just for Mr. Z.
Burton helped me pick out enough flannel squares from our scrap basket and decide on a layout.
And then I got to work. It didn’t take long to put the top together. And since it was such a simple, small quilt, I decided to quilt it on my machine – just some nice, plain straight lines. Soon enough I had a finished quilt, fit for a kitty…
And… since Mr. Z. isn’t an only cat, and it was so easy to make….
I made one for his sister Pou’Bella, too!
As you can see, they aren’t fancy.
Each one measures 27′ x 36″. Just the right-size for a cat nap. I used the same flannel on the back for both of them – simply because it was just enough for the pair. The bindings came from my scrap bin, and I don’t think they could have worked out better.
And…. as you can see, they’ve been thorough inspected and approved,
So I’m sure Mr. Z. and Bella are going to be very pleased.
With the old Leader/Enders done and sewn into a top. I needed a new L&E project. While the last one wasn’t terribly complicated, I decided to go even simpler this time.
Like many of my fellow quilters, I have a pile of random blocks. They are leftover from other projects where I made too many, or changed my mind about things. I call it my orphan block bucket. In there were several 4.5″ HSTs lefover from a couple different quilts.
They are all light/neutral fabrics on one side, and dark, busy fabrics on the other, so I figured they be a good start to an Around the World quilt.
I went through my scrap bins and pull a bunch of lights and a bunch of darks. Each pair will give me two HSTs.
Because they are only 4.5″, I’m going to need a lot to make a good-sized quilt, so it should be a nice, long satisfying L&E project.
Here’s where my other projects are at:
Into the Mystic (baby owl quilt) – Four more pinwheel flowers to go, and then I have to decide on a border
Cluckin’ Eh! – Sewing those adorable chicks
Shave and a Haircut – Sewing strips, making blocks
Homecoming quilt – First round done -waiting for round 2!
This week’s prompt for the Round Robin quilt was piano keys – basically, a simple pieced border. I’ll be honest, while I love how they look, I normally avoid pieced borders like the plague, because they involve doing your own quilt math.
Quilt math is harder than regular math, because it involves cut sizes and finished sizes, and it always gets me confused. But my last year with the Blockheads has helped me improve my quilt math, so I was fairly sure I could tackle this if I kept it simple
I planned for 2.5 x 4.5 strips in four different fabrics, laid out in a repeating sequence, and an alternate 4.5 square for each corner. But once I started getting things together, I decided on something else…
While the centre square on each side looks like a solid square, thanks to the busy print…
… but it’s actually two strips. It wasn’t until I had the four fabrics cut and put together that I decided I liked them mirrored better. Had I thought of this at the start, I would have cut a square. But as I didn’t, I wasn’t about to rip out stitches, and waste fabric.
And I’m pretty pleased with the result. My quilt math worked out and it went together with minimal issues.
Burton inspected every seam after it was finished…
Wandering Cat Studio 