“Why didn’t you enter me to be America’s Favourite Pet?????”

Burton has made the top 15, so now we are onto the top 10. Please continue to vote daily – we really appreciate it!

I had hoped to have the first Jupiter sock off the needles by now, but as you can see, that hasn’t happened. I don’t know what it is, but I find this pattern (Vanilla Latte), knits up very slow. Maybe it’s just me… I’m just moving slow.

Regardless, it’s knitting up well and as long as I have the pair done by the end of the month, I’ll be happy. And sticking to my goal to complete one knit project each month.

Happy Valentines Day!

Found this cute guy at Dollar Tree and had to get him for my front door.

And you know where I found this cute guy! He wants to send you all love today.

Last week he made it to the top 20 of his group in the “America’s Favourite Pet” contest. Now he’s vying for a spot in the top 15… so please keep voting every day! It’s a long contest, but at the end of it, he could be named America’s Favourite pet! How cool would that be?

Stitch by tiny stitch, I’m building a butterfly

And it’s starting to look like an actual butterfly now. I should be a little bit further, but I had to do some ripping at the top of that wing – I had missed a few stitches and things were not lining up. I could have fudged it, but since the other wing is a mirror image, I would have to remember how I fudged it – and I know I’d never be able to remember.

So, I got out the seam ripper and slowly started picking it apart. I lost about an hours worth of work, but it actually when much easier than I thought it would… because those stitches are TINY! Still, I’m enjoying making every one of them!

Last week’s prompt for the SAHRR was “Triangles”. Now in quilting, there are lots of types of triangles…

• Half-Square Triangle (HST): Formed by cutting a square diagonally from one corner to another, resulting in two right triangles. When these triangles are sewn together along the diagonal, they create a square block with a diagonal seam.

• Quarter-Square Triangle (QST): Made by cutting a square into four smaller triangles, usually by cutting it diagonally twice. These triangles are then arranged and sewn together to form a larger square block.

• Flying Geese: Comprised of a larger triangle (the “goose”) and two smaller triangles (the “sky”). The smaller triangles are sewn onto opposite sides of the larger triangle, resembling the shape of a flying bird.

• Equilateral Triangle: All three sides of this triangle are of equal length, resulting in three 60-degree angles.

• Isosceles Triangle: This triangle has two sides of equal length and two equal angles opposite those sides.

• Scalene Triangle: All three sides of this triangle have different lengths, and all three angles are different.

So Burton and I had to decide what triangles we wanted to use, and how…

After much back and forth, and sketching on our graph paper, we finally settled on a design.

So we made some triangles

Half Square Triangles for the win! And to tie this round in with the rest of our quilt, we made some hearts too.

And then we got to sewing them together.

Burton was super excited about how it turned out, and I have to say, I agree with him. I’m just loving it so far.

The top is 50″ square now. There are three rounds left, so it still has some growing to do!

Like many of you, we’ve experienced “above seasonal” temperatures this week. It was only supposed to last to Wednesday and then turn grey and cold again. But it persisted, and so did the sun. And by Friday it was 15, and sunny, but very windy. Naturally, I was poking about in the gardens.

The pink pussywillow is in her full glory now. She’s always earlier than the others, and will eventually turn dark grey – but right now she’s just perfectly pink. I think I’m going to cut a few of these to put in my Blue Mountain Fish vase.

And there are lots little bits of green – snowdrops, columbine and daylilies.

And as much as I love yard squirrels, they are troublemakers. In addition to bulb pilfering…

They’ve made an absolute mess of my raised beds. For most of the beds, that doesn’t matter – there’s nothing in them. But the one on the left has garlic (I’ve already tossed a couple they completely dug up) and the one on the right has all the perennials I got on clearance last fall. They’ve totally toss about all the markers and I’m pretty sure dug up a few plants completely. We’ll just have to wait and see what’s left – and what I can identify!

But elsewhere, there’s promise of good things….

My Bluebeard shrub, and Tinkerbelle Lilac are budding.

And so is my Azalea. It wasn’t doing great in the spot I had it last year, so I moved it under one of the windows on the front of the house. I think the fact that it’s budding is a good sign, because this time last year, I thought it was completely dead!

Of course, Mother Nature has now flipped a switch – that wind blew in cold and grey… so it’s been an inside weekend. Maybe I’ll go start some seeds…

Back in December, I was scrolling through Facebook when I came across a post by Winsor & Newton (art supply company) offering free tutorials in the New Year. I’ve been wanted to get back into my art for a while so I signed up.

I consider myself a self-taught artist because, though I took Art all through school, very few teachers ever actually taught technique – they just gave us an assignment and we were left to do our best on our own.

The exceptions were:

My Grade 7 Art teacher (who’s name I can’t remember, though I can picture him clearly). He was the person who taught me how to draw faces proportionately, and also how to use a grid to help making sketching easier.

and

My Grade 12 Art teacher - Mr. Izatt – who taught me how to properly use acrylic paint.

Though I’d never been taught it, I’d always had a love for Watercolour. I was first given a set when I was probably 8 or 9, and would play with it every now and again.

In my teens, I discovered watercolour pencil crayons… and I had a blast with them. The media I’m most comfortable in is pencil crayons. And as much as I loved them, they didn’t give a “true” watercolour look.

In my early twenties, I interviewed an artist who did watercolour on canvas. During the interview, she gave me a quick, 10 minute lesson, and I went home and tried it on my own.

With this technique, you use them thick, like acrylics, and pull colour off with a wet, clean brush for your highlights. It also requires a special type of canvas, and I haven’t seen them in stores for years.

Still – I’ve always wanted to do “traditional” watercolour properly. Though the tutorials came out in January (there are four), I haven’t had a chance to sit down and actually try one until last Sunday.

I decided to start with one that was a butterfly.

I’d forgotten that painting something would require me to sketch something first. Luckily I had Lemmy to help me, as my sketching skills are a touch rusty too.

Eventually I got him to settle elsewhere…

And set to work on following the tutorial with paint.

Step by step I followed it and eventually ended up with something that definitely looked like a butterfly…

But, if you compare it to the guide on my screen, I definitely need more practice.

So… I’m on the hunt for more tutorials because… I’ve had a book of these since forever…

And I think it would be fun to use them all up this year!

“OMG! Are those Froot Loops?!?!?”

The second round of the Stay at Home Round Robin was “Two colours”. Any block you want, but use just two colours.

Now the thing I love about the SAHRR is that the rules are very loose – you can stay as close to the prompts as you want… or deviate a little as needed.

I decided to interpret the “two colour” prompt as “two prints” and started cutting for some piano keys.

I think they work quite nicely with my round of hearts and leaves. I put plain black in the corners so the round wouldn’t feel too confining. And I don’t think background fabric should count in the two count.

The piano keys gave me an opportunity to use the script fabric, something I always have trouble working with. I paired with with the green on green foliage print and I think it works well

A new round was released on Monday, and I hope to work on it this weekend. Stay tuned!

The Jupiter sock doesn’t look a whole lot different since you last saw it. I had set it aside to work on the cross stitch for my friend (and yes, she totally loved it).

I did take the sock with me to Ottawa, but both flights were so short, I didn’t get much done. I pulled it out on the London to Toronto leg, but by the time we got up in the air, we were almost ready to land again (it’s like a 40 minute flight, and I think only a little more than half of that is actually flying). I got about three rounds done before I had to put it away for landing again, so I didn’t even bother to take it out on the Toronto to Ottawa leg. Even the time in between flights wasn’t very long – mostly just long enough to grab a quick bite to eat and get to the next boarding.

Knowing this, I didn’t even bother putting it in my purse for the flight home. I put it in my back pack… which got sent for secondary inspection after it went through the xray at security.

I was wondering what might have alerted them until the security agent stopped pulling things out as soon as he got to sock. The “aha” look on his face gave it away too. I guess those needles in that arrangement would look very suspicious to someone who doesn’t knit. After he pulled it out, he looked at me and said “I don’t want to mess this up on you, so are you ok putting it back in?”

I had a good laugh to myself and told him it was not a problem.

Now that I’m home, and have no more urgent projects, this sock will definitely see more love.