Saturday, January 28, 2012

Made this in 1967?

Older than most of the people I know. First try at hand stitched button holes. Waaaay in the back of the closet.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Sheep wool!!!!

Will be knitted into a sweet sheep blankie.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

   I am planning to knit THIS! I have the pattern and the yarn is being contemplated. Do I knit the wonderful shetland un dyed gorgeous colors as shown? Or do I go crazy colored all over the place. Stay tuned...
   I love to plan projects like some people plan vacations. I pore over the patterns and read them line by line. I print them and highlight and make notes in the margins. I count the long lines of stitches and write the numbers on the charts and put the pages in plastic sleeves to keep them safe. Just in case I do not have the pattern printed, I email it to myself and put it on my iPhone and my iPad. Just. to. be. sure.
   Shopping online for yarn is a great pleasure. It boggles the mind to have the resources that we have on the interwebs. I can order real shetland yarn from Jamieson and Smith in the UK or find a substitute in the US of A. Or I can go to one of many superb yarn stores in NYC- or- if I am very patient, I can wait till one of the yarn and wool festivals within traveling distance in the coming year.
   The J&S shetland supreme 2 ply for this Blanket  is also available here in the states at Yarns International  (They do not charge shipping!) They also carry the J&S dyed shetland in the event that one does want to added a colorful ram or three to above referenced sheep blanket.
   Once it arrives,  I wind the yarn into balls and find the needles and stitch markers and life line supplies if I am knitting lace, and put it all in a zippered bag to be picked up at my leisure. Don't laugh. I have some leisure. Socks and small things I can bring on my commute, but bigger more complicated patterns I leave for home knitting. This will begin at home but it looks like it is also a commutable pattern.
   Quilted projects also have their planning stages. But many times when planning a  quilt project, I let it take its own course. Maybe it is a product of having done it for much longer than I have been knitting, so I have a more relaxed approach. But many is the night when I drift off to sleep counting colors and patterns and not sheep.

Saturday, January 07, 2012

Tiny houses from scrap:) I kind of edged into this side ways telling myself that if I finished my other stuff first I would allow myself a few little houses. I have a thing for houses. This is my third house project. My first was a huge denim monster from the days of Georgia Bonesteel and it is truly a monster but I adore it and the second was a wall hanging from the same era, all in blue calicos.
But these! these are just bitable. I have not found my perfect method yet. I have tried paper piecing and strip piecing and just plain old eyeballing..of course this ensures that they will not be uniform: that they will, in fact, be wonky, and I accept this. I have not yet hand pieced any and I am dead certain that this will be the most precise and perfect method-but I am more inclined to allow for imperfection, so as to actually get some done. Jeanekke has all of her pieces lined up in a partitioned box which is very alluring, making me want to go out and find the perfect box and spend hours arranging my sections but then you see I would not have time to sew any together. So I resist, telling myself that if the perfect box exists for me, the universe will present it, in the fullness of time.
I find that I can use very small scraps for these ( the window square is less than an inch) and they will be scrappy and I will not need to buy anything for them and that is the perfect recipe for tiny houses. Be sure to visit Jeanekke's blog for lots of info as this is her project and there are about 800 people worldwide who are doing the "a tiny house a day" project.
It has always been a dream of mine to build an actual tiny house  but this may have to do for now.

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Cleaning the sewing room

As usual, not much cleaning got done, but I found a bag of 2.5 inch squares that I was saving.
*updated to add**This pattern was down loaded ten years ago for a website called Aroundoz and it is called Ann's scrappy quilt. Although the website looks the same I did not see the link to this pattern. But I wanted to make sure to give credit where credit is due. Thanks Chrissy! **