The Lover's Knot

The good news is that I've finished my mystery quilt. (I still don't have a name for her. I'm leaning towards "Fresh Air" but I haven't made the final decision yet.) Unfortunately the rain hasn't finished. We're lucky in that we just have rain and heavy winds here so I'm really not complaining. Since I have the perfect location selected for the final photo shoot of this quilt I'm going to wait for the perfect weather. There are only so many ways you can take sneak peaks of a quilt so I've decided to branch out a little bit with today's blog posting.

Because I don't get enough quilts in my life I love reading books about quilting. Last month I stumbled upon A Drunkard's Path and loved it. I love it so much that I've decided to read the first book in the series, "The Lover's Knot." Nell is getting ready for her wedding when her fiance announces he's not ready to get married. Nell runs away for the weekend to the small town of Archer's Rest, NY where her grandmother runs the local quilt shop. Her grandmother falls down the stairs and breaks her leg prompting Nell to extend her stay. Things take an unexpected twist (while I guess not too unexpected since it's on the back cover) when the handyman expanding the quilt shop is murdered and Nell's fiance returns to win her back. I'm only half way through the book, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm can't wait to read more of the Someday Quilts Mysteries.

Yarn Along

This past week has been super crazy. I've been busy working, but can't share any real pictures other than this one. That bowl contains the trimmings from the blocks I had to square up, and the thread of 120 blocks that I sewed backwards. I'm going to paraphrase a quote from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka Yarn Harlot) that's been running through my head this weekend. "The only difference between experience and novice is that the experienced person makes bigger mistakes faster." If I wasn't so confident I would have checked my first block against the pattern and would have discovered that I was sewing it together backward. Instead I glanced at what came out of the machine, saw that it resembled what I remembered the finished quilt to look like and plunged ahead. (I'll explain later why calling it "creative license" wasn't an option with this quilt.)

My plan for this week had been to share my finished Mystery Quilt today, my usual yarn along post on Wednesday, and 2 Farmer's Wife blocks on Friday. Because of the massive amount of unpicking I had to do wind storm we got I wasn't able to finish take pictures of the Mystery Quilt. Things are settling down so I should be able to finish attaching the last two sides of the Mystery Quilt tonight and will be able to photograph it tomorrow after work. I might even be able to sew a Farmer's Wife block one of these evenings and will have something to share on Friday. If everything goes according to plan (it's early in the plan phase, please don't point out how many ways things can go wrong with this plan) Wednesday's post will feature Mystery Quilt and I'll make my April deadline for a lovely year of finishes. Since quilts are taking over Wednesday's post I'm sharing my yarn along post today.

I finished the increase section of blueberry and just have another inch of regular knitting before I start the shoulder shaping. I can't believe I seriously thought I could knit this entire sweater for the ravelympics. I'm not sure how those knitters finish a sweater in two weeks (or even those who do the sweater in a month thing in November.) Maybe one of these years I'll set a goal of learning to knit faster. For now though I'm going to stick with the idea that knitting is a hobby and hobbies should be enjoyable. The sweater will be finished before fall and that will be good enough for me.

For Mom

There are a lot of things that my mom is great at. I think I get a lot of my creativity from her (someday I'll have to share pictures of the amazing dresses she made my sister and me for Christmas and Easter.) Unfortunately technology is an area that continues to challenge her. She's been following my blog via facebook, but something has happened that's preventing her from logging in. I'd offer to help, but she lives several hours from me and I've also inherited her technological skills so I won't be any help.  Since she's still wanting to follow my blog I've added the option of following my blog by e-mail.

If you want to follow my blog through e-mail look to the right --->. Scroll down past the "About Me" and "Craftsy Patterns" to the followers section. You'll see options for Google Followers, Followers, Follow this blog with Bloglovin', and Follow by Email. Put your e-mail address into the box and click submit! I've never done this before so I can't tell you if new posts will be sent to your inbox or if you'll get a link telling you that there's a new post.

I love having followers so please let me know if there's any other networks you'd like me to add to my side bar. Since a post feels very incomplete without pictures here's some flowers for mom.

Hermoine's Socks

Blueberry has been sucked into a black hole. I'm really not sure whether there's been knitting with no progress, or most of my time has been spent on other projects. Since there's no progress to show on her I've decided to show you guys how Hermione's socks are coming. I've reached the heel! I was a little confused by Erica's pattern which tells you to move on to the next section based on the number of rounds you've done rather than the length of the sock. I didn't feel like counting 20 repeats of the pattern so I just stopped when my leg reached 7". I'm really loving the spiral effect that the yarn is creating. I can't wait to wear these next winter. (Thankfully we're finally getting temperatures warm enough that hand knit socks are too hot!)

Fabric Shopping

Last weekend my sister invited me to go shopping in Sioux City with her. It's only an hour away, but I don't like going to big cities (okay places with any real traffic) by myself. I forced suggested we go to the fabric store there. I suppose at this point in time I should go back to my LQS. I ran into Roelofs a few weeks ago to grab a fabric marker for labeling all of my quilts before the quilt show next month. I'd heard rumor that they'd added some new fabric to their clearance section so naturally I had to wander through that area. I found this great Amy Butler print for half price.

Okay, back to the Sioux City trip with my sister and our visit to Heart and Hand. I was a bit nervous when we pulled up to the front of the store. I'd been picturing a lovely old warehouse and instead arrived at a strip mall. Once I stepped inside though I was in total awe. (So much so that I forgot that my camera was in my bag.) Their store fills two store fronts. I found some great solids that coordinate really well with my Amy Butler fabric. 

My husband loves monkeys. I've even helped him to start a sock monkey collection. Of course when I saw fabric with monkeys I had to get it.

Last month when I was on my quilting retreat I found a charm pack of Bluebird Park. I was debating buying yardage with hedgehogs, but decided I was buying a lot of fabric for my mystery quilt so I resisted the impulse. I've regretted it ever since. I was so excited that they had charm packs of Bluebird Park at Heart and Hand. They didn't have the hedgehog fabric I wanted, but I found this really nice blue flower fabric from the line. I think this is going to be my summer project for when the quilt show is finished. I've almost decided on the pattern I want to use. Hopefully next month when I start cutting these charming fabrics I'll have the same thoughts.

Farmer's Wife Friday 15

This week I decided to use the templates for both of the blocks. I'm still a bit confused how quilting survived before the invention of the rotary cutter. I'm not sure what's going on with the first block, but it does come out at 6.5" so I'm keeping it. I'm in love with this setting and really like the fact that with the sashing around each block I can make it a little bigger and square up on the blocks I need to. I'm leaning towards using a colored background fabric, but still haven't made a final choice on that yet.

The first block for this week is WCTU. I think this block must have been used for autograph quilts (maybe raffled off to raise money for the local chapter of the WCTU.) I think it would be really fun to make a quilt full of these blocks for a special occasion like graduation, wedding, anniversary, etc. in place of a guest book. I also decided to lighten things up with this block and use shades of grey instead of black.

#99 W.C.T.U.

This is another block that I really like. I don't understand why the templates had me use triangles for all of the black pieces in the corner. I think it would work better to do a square with two triangles, but since I didn't want to figure out the math I guess I have to live with imperfect points. They're glaring at me in the picture, but for some strange reason they physical block looks better to me.

#100 Weathervane

31/111

34:55

Finding Balance

I've done a lot better this week at finding balance. I've chosen one time of the day that I play the video game and the rest of the time I focus on things like knitting, reading, and quilting. I'm not done with the 6 round increase section, but I have finished 7 of the 12 rounds. I knew when I set the goal of 72 rounds in a week it was a bit lofty so I'm still very happy with the progress made this week.