Work in Progress Wednesday - #15

This is Wednesday, so be sure to check out all of the fun projects being shown in WIPW on Tami's blog. I check out most of the projects each week and find them interesting, inspirational, and colorful. Thank you, Tami, for hosting this!

I spent a lot of would-be knitting time this past week reading Brick Lane by Monica Ali. I will say that for a middle-aged Michigan woman who has spent most of her life in a mainstream middle American lifestyle, this book was a real stretch. I simply could not understand the passivity, the acceptance of fate, and the obedience the Bangladeshi women in this book exhibited. At some point, around page 100, I had a talk with myself along the lines of "this book isn't about you; it's about someone else; either slip into her life and see the world from her eyes or put the book aside." I really had to let go of huge parts of myself in order to read this book. Once I began to "see the world from her eyes," though, I realized that I was on a wondrous journey into a very different place than I ever could have imagined. I'm glad I read this book, and I know that I need to seek out other books like it. Parts of the book take place in the immigrant community in London, parts in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The characters are well rounded and believable (once you let go of your own cultural assumptions).

Anyway, I did get some knitting done! (And, that's why you came here today, I know.) Here is the jacket so far. You can see that I have started on the back.

There is a small group of women who gather several times a year and have a sewing-talking-eating day together. We are getting together the day after Thanksgiving, and I think I'll work on the jacket that day rather than take a sewing project.

I finished warping the loom this weekend and, yesterday morning while waiting for the dryer to get the towels just a little dryer, I started on the weft. Here is a beauty shot of the warped loom. (Yes, while hanging out near the washer and dryer, I'm adding fabric to the loom - maximizing that waiting time.)

If you peeked in at my Monday post, you saw the progress on the Cone Nebula quilt. If you didn't, here's a big picture of the work so far.

Well, that's all I have this week. I do want to say that it was a little disconcerting to watch the news coverage of the Big Engagement last evening because I remember getting up at some gosh-awful hour like 3a to watch Prince WAPL's* parents get married. It was the summer I graduated from college, and I took the day off from job hunting to sit with my sisters (one had just graduated from high school, and the other was half-way through high school), all of us in our pajamas deep into the morning, utterly fascinated by the whole thing. Diana was our contemporary and someone to whom we could relate. It was fun seeing her son last night. Life is funny, isn't it?

*William Arthur Philip Louis - one of the local newscasters in Detroit gave him this nickname at birth.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Part 2

I had some extended time this weekend to work on the Cone Nebula Quilt. I have decided to work in chunks of 15 blocks - 5 across and 3 down - mainly because that fits nicely on my worktable and gives me room at one end to cut more pieces. I found that as I worked, I needed to cut additional pieces of some fabrics and go hunting for additional fabrics. As you will see in the pictures below, I have taken to heart the fact that I paid for both sides of the fabric. I have found this trick to be a quick way to get additional shading - pay attention to the green fabric that has leaves on it.

I am making use of commercially printed fabrics, fabrics that I have dyed, and fabrics that I have painted. The dark yellow fabric with squiggly light yellow lines is from a soy-wax batik class I took a year ago in the summer. Once I had laid out the bright fabrics for the 15 blocks, it was time to lay down the dark fabrics. I decided to lay down single-piece-wide "lanes" so that there would be some movement and variation within the darker sections.

I think that adds some subtle changes. Here's the big picture view from the end of the table.

Looking at this picture, the bright orange pieces really stick out, but when I go back to the source picture, there are very bright areas, and I really don't want this to be single-value quilt.

You may wonder why I am laying this out on the table and not on the design wall. The brutal fact is that my design wall doesn't hold individual pieces of fabric very well. It's great when I have blocks that I am arranging and holding up with pins, but when I'm working with small pieces of fabric, the table simply makes more sense to me.

Here are the first three blocks done and sewn together:

I am planning to quilt-as-I-go with these sections - I'll sew together the 15 blocks, then add batting and backing, quilt, then move on to the next section. It's a little nervy - it's assuming that I won't want to change any fabric placement, and I may hold off on the sandwiching and quilting until I have all of the large pieces done. I'm still thinking about that.

I have a practical issue to deal with in that the sewing room is not used as a sewing room every day. Most of the week, it's a cat snooze spot. So, to protect my work, I laid some pieces of cardboard over the layout....

 Then, I put a large piece of cloth over that....

Then, I piled the uncut fabrics for the quilt on that....

And, finally, put a blanket over all of that - creating a snuggly cat bed....

In the end, I recognize who is in charge of the "sewing" room....

Have a good day, everyone.

No More Soul-Sucking Projects!

There is something that happens to people of a certain age: You start noticing that there are fewer sands in the upper half of life's hourglass than in the lower half. There are many ways to respond to this, and my way has been to go read the books I really want to read, to learn skills I've always wanted to acquire, and to hang out with interesting people who have learned a few things.

A few years ago, when a certain person in my life said some truly horrible things to me, I realized that I didn't have to take it any more. It didn't matter how many years she'd been trying to tear me down while I tried to be kind and understanding; she would continue until she succeeded or one of us died. I broke off the relationship. It was hard, as the person means a lot to me; and I have since told her that I would be happy to have a pleasant conversation with her any time she wants to initiate it, but I'm not going to be screamed at and called by ugly names.

This past weekend, I went to the quilting retreat, and when I showed up, I announced that I had an ugly quilt that I was going to quilt and bind before I did anything fun. "Well, that's the way to feed your soul, Liz!" (The "NOT" was implied in the tone of voice.) When I pulled out Mr. Stripey, one of the gals in the group said, "I recognize those blocks." It seems that a now-deceased member of the guild would make batches of blocks in her pattern-of-the-moment and then donate the blocks to the guild for some other poor soul to make into a quilt - never enough blocks for a whole quilt, mind you. My friend said that I had put the blocks to good use (the hexagonal blocks that I divided in half).

As I quilted and bound (finishing up before bed time on Friday evening), I contemplated the comment about "feeding my soul," and I realized that I have a lot of fabrics in my stash that I picked up early on in my quilting career that I no longer like. I also have ugly-to-me fabrics given to me by various good folks. I have been gamely working these into projects over the years, but this weekend, I plan to purge. I plan to move fabrics out of my stash and into a box that will be donated to the quilt guild's charity quilt projects. Maybe someone else will look at these fabrics and say, "Oh, yummy!" Moreover, I am going to go through the boxes of donated fabrics in my basement right now and do some purging there. It's time to stop working with soul-sucking fabrics and on soul-sucking projects.

I also got Peppermint Candy quilted and bound. I would show you pictures, but the pix I have are blurry and not worth the hassle. Trust me. On Saturday morning, we had a field trip to the nearest quilt shop, a delightful shop called Mabelena's in Ortonville. I have lived in Michigan most of my life and in the greater Detroit metropolitan area for most of my adult life, and I would not have been able to make a reasonable guess about the location of this little town. Having spent an hour there, I wouldn't mind going back. The shop was a lot of fun with friendly people. One of the gals who didn't go on the trip needed batteries for her camera, and I was directed to the hardware store an easy two blocks away. The feed store across the street from Mabelena's had locally produced honey and maple syrup. It was a soul-satisfying trip.

I do have to make a confession; I am a sucker for good marketing. How, one might ask, does one get away with selling a fat quarter for $3? When one packages it cleverly. Isn't this cute? I giggled all the way to the register, where I happily handed over nine hard-earned dollars. Utterly darling. (Of course, I am also a sucker for fruit fabrics and have found fun ways of incorporating them into a variety of projects - that's pomegranate on the left, pineapple in the middle, and limes on the right.)









I spent the rest of the retreat playing with some fun scraps I had taken with me, and I actually produced a couple of small projects but only took a picture of one them (about 14 inches on a side).

We had a real variety of projects going, but I'm only showing faces of people who gave me permission to show their faces:

Here's Gayle's labor of love for her daughter (who had picked the fabrics).

Sharon was playing with pretty flowers all weekend.

Deb was working in the theme of red, white, and black.

Sherri was working with some fun colors.

Marge finished her bargello top.



 Erika was tickled pink to finish the 10th-anniversary quilt for her son, just in time for his 13th anniversary!

 I had a chance to work on my Abby hat, and I finished it this week. Here are a couple of beauty shots (it's awfully hard being your own model, and I ended up letting a CD case stand in for the top-down picture).

Now, see those colors in the hat? See how uplifting and life-affirming those colors are? Why, pray tell, would I EVER again choose to work in another palette? Every time I wear this hat, I will feel happy. (Isn't it great how the colors worked into rounds like that? Totally serendipitous, totally fabulous.)

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."

Decision Making Help, Please

Before I get to the help request, I want to show off a finished object (or set of objects) - yep, the socks are done!!

Yay!! I've started in on Abby, using the soysilk and bamboo yarn that I finished spinning during the Tour de Fleece this summer. Okay, I'm gauge swatching, but I've got the yarn wound into center-pull cakes, and I have needles going. Basically, I went on Ravelry and searched for patterns that used under 300 yards of mixed-weight yarn. We'll see how this works out.

Now for the help request. I've told you about my friend, Enabler, who is one of the gals in the quilt guild responsible for pulling together kits of donated fabrics and blocks for people to turn into quilts for SAFE House, a wonderful and worthwhile local agency. Well, she gave me a kit a few months back that I rediscovered in my sewing room last month while looking for something else. I pulled the materials out yesterday and here are the blocks:

and the accompanying fabrics:

and the original maker's diagram and notes:

Well, I started auditioning fabrics for that "C" position in the middle. Here is the fabric she had in mind:

Here are some other fabrics I auditioned from my stash:

I showed these pix to hubby, and we both agreed that the etoile (original), the light blue with suns, and the white with tulips should be eliminated. He really likes the orange, but prefers the blue. I really like the burgundy. Anyone out there have an opinion? That's the first request for advice.

He asked me where I was going with this, and I realized that I was getting ready to commit probably two or three weekends, at least, to a project that leaves me feeling "bleah!" After talking things over with him, I put the fabrics back in the bag and worked on the Peppermint Candy quilt that really pleases my eye. So, here's the second question: Should I just make a contribution of the dark blue fabric to the bag and hand it back to my friend at the next guild meeting, suggesting that someone else should have the fun?

I am seriously leaning in this direction. Something about being 50 and finally knowing that the world won't fall apart if I don't do the particular project . . . . In the meantime, Hubby did say something about the orange fabric and the burgundy fabric being in a project together; that thought had not occurred to me, but I'm having some seriously happy thoughts about maybe fussy cutting some blocks with those leaves and framing them with the burgundy and setting them in an off-centered sort of pattern. THAT would be a fun project!

Have to show you why I put up with bad behavior from a certain someone - because little Miss Brat Cat is capable of being SO darned cute! Next week will be the sixth anniversary of our finding kittens under our porch and deciding that the little tortoise-shelled one should stay with us. Gaaadd!! I LOVE this creature!

Ten Things Tuesday

I was going to make this a to-do list, but that sounded depressing. Here, in no particular order, is a list of ten things I'm thinking about.

1. This past weekend was the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival, and one of the booths every year is a pottery booth where bowls have been donated by local potters with all proceeds going to a local charity. This year, the charity was SOS Community Services, an agency dear to my heart, and this was the bowl I got:

Isn't it pretty? It's just the right size to put your hands around and hold.

2. Sunday, I went on the historic home tour offered by the Ypsilanti Heritage Foundation. There were recently renovated downtown loft apartments, a community health center, and some houses along what had been a post road in the first half of the 1800s. It was all really interesting. It was worth not getting in the sewing room for (well, sort of).

3. I finished Wolf Hall. It was so interesting and so well written that I took advantage of my employment at a large research university and went to the graduate library yesterday and checked out a proper biography of Thomas Cromwell. I haven't been this interested in the 16th century since my college days! How fun!

4. Next up (before I get to the biography) is Guy Consolmagno's God's Mechanics. Hubby Dearest is reading it right now, and we've promised it to someone in our post-Mass brunch bunch this coming Sunday. I'll have to read fast.

5. I made this small quilted wallhanging a few years ago, basically by taking a class and not following the teacher's instructions (because I thought her idea sounded boring). I have always been glad I did it this way and not two rows of identically-sized leaves.

It's about 18" by 36" and hangs right inside our front door. It makes me happy every time I walk by it.

6. I am deep into the cuffs of the Helix socks. I'm starting to think I might actually finish them soon.

7. I have decided I want to finish spinning the pink roving soon as well because if I have all of the roving in the house spun and plied by the time of the Fiber Expo, I can buy more, right?

8. I deactivated my Facebook account this morning, and I've been feeling free all day. I figure that the people who really want to be in touch with me will find other ways. I was feeling really uncomfortable about handing that much privacy to a company run by a smart-aleck kid. I'd been considering doing this for a while, and my friend's blog post a couple of days ago pushed me over the edge.

9. While taking pictures of the bowl for this posting, I realized that I could probably get a decent picture of that cup I bought at Art Fair last month. Here it is.

Can you see why I couldn't just pass it by? Yes, I like pottery. No, I do not want to make it.

10. The noises upstairs are saying that dinner is ready. See ya later!