Liz

Liz

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Work in Progress & What I'm Reading Wednesday - #10

This is part of a ring that can be found on on Tami's blog here.

First off, I want to start with a finished object. I am so ridiculously pleased with myself about this one. We have a room in our basement that a week ago looked like this:

Last Thursday evening I went out and bought a shelving unit. A couple of hours of putting together the unit, sorting, bagging for the trash, sweeping, and organizing brought this result:
Stuff is organized. Stuff I'm never going to use, ever, is gone. There is not cat food littered all over the floor. Proud, yes I am!

I have been knitting on Abby, and I realized a couple of weeks ago that my yarn (my first spinning) is much chunkier and more uneven than the yarn used in the pattern. A cowl this is not realistically going to be; however, it could be a hat for me (I have always had trouble with hat patterns because my head is HUGE). So, I started strategically decreasing. There are two blocks in the pattern on each row, and so I've been alternating blocks in which to do the decrease. By trying to maintain the lace pattern, I've been letting the pattern tell me when to decrease. No, I haven't taken decent notes. Arrrggghh. Here it is, with about half the stitches decreased out. I had to switch to DPNs last evening:
I'm pleased with the way this is working out.

I have the striped quilt top done except for the final trim off the bottom:
(It's 80" long, but you don't want to see the mess in my sewing room.)
The fabric with the vaguely southwest motifs on it? The selvedge says 1980! Wow! I am hoping to whomp together the backing for this before I leave for my quilting retreat this weekend. That way, I'll have two quilts to quilt and bind on the retreat (and I truly hate the quilting part, so my attitude toward that part of the task is to hope for NO THREAD SNARLS!!)

For my book club, I finished reading over the weekend a lovely book about Korea during the Japanese occupation (that ran 1907-1945). The Calligrapher's Daughter is a haunting, elegiac novel about a young girl born in the early years of the occupation. She grows up in the strictures of an upper class family, becomes friends with a princess, lives in grinding poverty for a time, and keeps on being an independent, thinking person. The novel is based on the life of the author's mother, and you really should check out the gallery of pictures at the link above. I really really really liked this book. Last night, I said to the woman who had suggested we read it, "I feel as though my world is broader and deeper because I spent a week inside this book. Thank you."

7 comments:

Lauren said...

Wow! You have been busy!
The hat looks to be shaping up nicely.

pip said...

... nicely organised... and a wip... well done:)

Tami Klockau said...

I think the hat is turning out great, especially since it didn't start out a hat! Congrats on the organizing, it's always so rewarding, isn't it!?

Esch House Quilts said...

Congrats on the clean/organized basement! I know it feels so good.

Have fun at the retreat - the hat looks great.

Unknown said...

I have corners that look like yours. I'll get them organized just before I move and have those corners again.

A hat is a good way to use those first attempts at spinning.

Spundun said...

Nice basement work and your cowl-to-hat project looks lovely (great spinning)!

Dina said...

It is always so nice to have things organized. Just wish I could figure out how to keep them that way. Great idea converting the cowl to a hat.