I really love this adorable fluff-butt!

 

It took me four tries (and a lot of ripping) but I’ve made it through the first front on the barnyard sweater.

I don’t know why it was so difficult for me. But it did. But I persevered and the right front has been conquered.

Admittedly, it looks really weird. That large wedge of garter is a shawl collar that will roll back when the cardigan is worn. At least in theory.

But, this does look similar to the schematic in the pattern, so it should all work out.

In the mean time, I’ve got the back stitches picked up and I’m working away on that. It’s just plain rows with a little decreasing, so there shouldn’t be any ripping.

At least… in theory…

Of course, I have to get the darn thing back from Burton, first….

Time is ticking away, and while there is no deadline for Rainbow in the Dark, I don’t want the project to linger on too long either. I’d like to have the quilt to my friend by mid-summer if possible.

So, it was time to tackle orange.

I dipped in to my yardage, and raided Mom’s stash and came up with just enough fabric for the seven orange blocks needed for the layout. And as you can see, I was pretty liberal with what I deemed “orange”

They look nice and cheerful next to the yellow blocks though.

Now there’s just red and purple left.  Eleven blocks of each!

An old high school friend put the call out on Facebook the other day…

His lovely daughter, Arabella, is celebrating her eighth birthday in the age of COVID. As our province is still being cautious (and rightly so, we’re still averaging between 300 and 400 new cases each day), large gatherings of five or more people are still not permitted. That means no birthday party for poor Arabella.

So my friend asked his facebook friends and family, if we were available this Sunday between 2 and 4, would we mind driving by and giving his lovely girl a birthday honk to make her day feel special?

How can you say no to that? Especially as they are only about a 10 minute drive from our house.

Dave has the Great White Whale out for the summer, so we’re going to put the top down and cruise on by in style. He probably won’t let me decorate it, but still, I think it will be a bit of a thrill for the family.

We are going to stop just long enough to give the birthday girl a present too. So my needles have been clicking furiously.

Arabella loves purple and skulls, so I pulled the chart from this pattern. I’m working it up into a fingering weight beanie – because no one wants a heavy wool hat in summer! I’m using some Alley Cat that Rowan dyed (Lavender for luck), and some leftover Twinkle in Coal. Fun fact – this friend is actually my brother’s best friend from high school, so it’s kind of neat that my brother’s daughter made the yarn that is being used in the hat for his best friend’s daughter!

Anyway, as you can see, I’ve got a floofy little taskmasker watching my every move, so I better get back to it… there’s only a few days left to finish!

The Spin Me Right Round top is together and ready for quilting.

It’s not huge – 47″ x 57″. I had planned to make it bigger when I first started, but as I got going, I realized I didn’t have as many solid scraps as I thought. In fact, I had to dip into some of my yardage to even get this many.  Still, it’s a nice sized lap quilt

You may recall that I said I planned to use black for the sashing on this one. But as I’ve also mentioned, I’m trying not to spend one extra penny on any of my projects. The solid black I have on hand will likely be needed for Rainbow in the Dark. I was wracking my brain for what I could use for this instead, when I remembered I had a big chunk of solid navy that I’d bought when Mom and I stocked up on “essentials” before COVID shut everything down.

As you can see, it worked perfectly. And I had this beautiful bold floral print with a navy background hanging out just waiting to become a border. I love how the colours in it tie in with the colours in the pinwheels.

And keeping to things from the stash, I have  this cute little heart print for the back. I almost don’t want to use it – I have about 5.5 yards which is ideal for a much larger quilt. I kinda hate to cut it up for this one, but it works so well. And as I said, I loathe to have to go out and buy something.

The binding bin yielded up the pink, which was leftover from the back of Rowan’s flower quilt. I think it ties it all together quite nicely!

I know I recently said that I wasn’t keen on sampler quilts… but…

I just started another one!

This one is for Mom. She’s got a free-motion quilting class coming up. The designer has created a pre-printed panel of something like 20 blocks. But instead of buying the panel, Mom figured out each block and how to put them together. Most of them are pretty basic.

She’s doing hers in solid pastel colours with a white background, and she asked if I would like to make a version too. The class is offering a couple different options for quilting, so if she has two tops, she can try both!

I went through my stash and settled on these small, mostly ditsy prints

I’ve only got four blocks so  far, but like the Blockhead blocks, they are nice for when I don’t have a tonne of time to sit down and sew.

And of course, they are giving me ideas for other blocks for other quilts!

You may or may not recall that I had a small garden table and chairs set up on the patio.

You can see them on the edge of the garden in this panorama I took a few weeks ago. I bought the set at Walmart a few years back. My intention was to get a small bistro set because the patio is small, but this one was such a good price… I thought it might be nice to have the extra space to entertain out there if we chose.

But we never do. In fact, even Dave only sits out back with me on occasion. It’s a sanctuary for me and the cats, but that doesn’t need a big table. With the bbq, table and chairs, potting bench and all the house plants, the patio feels a little crowded. I had just been remarking to neighbour Krista that I was thinking of getting a smaller table and getting rid of this one.

Well, apparently the garden gods heard me, and decided to give me a kick in the pants, because the other morning, Dave and I woke up to this…

Yep… that’s the glass table top shattered all over my patio stones and garden. What happened? We’re not exactly sure. Apparently these tables can explode on their own if it gets hot enough, but I suspect another culprit. The night before I’d forgotten to put down the umbrella. It doesn’t have a base (it’s just a cheapo beach umbrella), and I think it flew up with the wind, and came down just right, on the table top.

Regardless of how it happened, I was obviously getting a new table whether I wanted one or not.

I would have loved to get a little bistro set, but that’s not in the budget right now (most of them are more expensive than the table set that just broke – despite being smaller). With a little sourcing, I found an inexpensive outdoor end table that would work, as well as a new umbrella (slightly posher than my  cheap one).

I shuffled some things around on the patio, and it’s definitely feeling a little less cluttered.

And I’ve got a nice little spot to enjoy a cup of tea (or Coke, as you can see there), do a little knitting, and take in the beauty of my backyard. The umbrella in that location also provides a little extra shade for some of my house plants that don’t enjoy too much sun. So while I had to spend some money I wasn’t really planning on, I’m a pretty happy girl.

It helps that’s this is what I get to look at when I’m sitting out there

The Lupin look fantastic this year, and the Lilac is in full bloom (and scent) now.

The Chives are going gang busters (I really need to thin them out this year!) and the bees just love them. The Globe Alium are in all their glory.  I had five of these big beauties, but some sneaky squirrel came and snapped the top off one of them, so I’m left with four.

The Iceland Poppies (left) are about 1/3 the size of my magnificent Oriental poppies (which have just started to bloom). It’s such a crazy difference. The centre picture is the Iceland Poppy when all the petals fall off – it still looks pretty neat!

My Columbine are all at least a few years old now and looking great. I love Columbine because not only are they native flowers (which means they do well and are perfect for supporting pollinators), they don’t take up at lot of space, despite providing a fantastic show of flowers. I need to get more colours!

Another thing I’d like to get more of are these Coral Bells. Their leaves come in a HUGE variety of colours (from yellow to deep purple). And you get these pretty little blooms! They look fabulous in the fall as all the green starts to fade, AND they love the shade.

And last… the birds or wind must have brought me these bonus wild daisies. Their leaves are different, and the blooms are smaller than my Shasta daisies. These popped up in between my garden cart and the Blue Girl rose. I’ll have to remove them because it’s not an ideal place. But I’ll wait until they are done blooming!

Now excuse me, I have some knitting en plein air  to do!

It’s that time of year again!

Wabbit Season!

Actually we see the buns all year round here, but it’s only about this time of year that we see the babies. They  are all just old enough to leave the nest and start venturing out on their own.

I actually don’t see them all that often, except when a certain someone alerts me to their presence.

If you look closely, you can see a little bunny bum between those pots.

Now Relic is pretty good about the local wildlife. He more or less ignores the birds, squirrels and larger buns. But there’s something about the baby buns he just can’t resist.

It’s fine when they don’t move – but as soon as they run, he wants to give chase. He has caught a few, but fortunately, he doesn’t seem to want to kill them. He always proudly brings them to me, still alive,  for inspection (maybe he wants to keep one as a pet?)

This one figured out that running wasn’t helping his cause, so he found a cool place under the Chives and Lupin to chill for a bit until Relic got bored and wandered away.

Then little bun hopped off to do whatever little buns do.

I’ve done it! I’ve made it through the main body of the East Hale cardigan and have split off the right front (which you can see I’ve started working through already.) Things should move a little faster from here on out. The major slog is over. I still hate this yarn. It still smells. It’s still itchy. But I can see the smallest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Just keep knitting… just keep knitting…

For this quilt, I had a different helper…

Which is odd, because Peno doesn’t pay much attention to me at all. She is 100% Dave’s cat.  How he earned that honour, I have no idea, but that’s how it is.

But when I was working on binding the other night, she hopped right up there and made herself comfortable. She didn’t move until I had to shift the quilt so I could round a corner. Then she gave me stankface and went back to Dave.

Here’s a look at the whole thing without a Peno butt on it. It was commissioned by a friend for a baby due in July. She asked me to make it gender-neutral, but that was surprisingly tricky with the dog theme. So many dog fabrics have blue in them. Plus COVID was just revving up so sourcing fabric from multiple places became tricky. I had some already in my stash, but needed more to make the quilt big enough.

I got some from Walmart (mostly blue-ish), and was able to add a few red and green ones from Lens before it closed! (I’m happy to say it is open again, though I have no extra monies to go play there at the moment).

All those doggy prints make it nice and fun

The fussy-cut centre (or door) squares don’t pop as much as I thought they would in my head, but I’m not going to be too picky. She wanted log cabins (it was the original Dog Logs that inspired the commission), and I had to work with the fabric I had/could get easily.

Flannel backing was tough too. I didn’t have enough of the dog fabric left from the original Dog Logs, but I had this blue piece in the stash. I would have liked to use something other than blue, but … this works. And as you can see, I bound it all with some white-on-black paw prints for a nice bold frame.

And, I’m happy to say that with the exception of Royal Stars, which still doesn’t have  a back, I’m all caught up with my quilting! Now I have to finish some more tops.