Cowls, Quilts, Spinning, and Socks

I had a note from a friend this week asking where I was and if I had abandoned this blog. Well, I've been under the weather, buried in two complicated books, and watching Downton Abbey.

First, the books. The parish's book group had a very good discussion about Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God: Mapping New Frontiers in Theology. I was really glad that I had read the book, the bishops' statement about the book, Dr. Johnson's response to the statement, and the bishops' response to her response. It was pretty dense theological argument for a non-theologian, but it was worth the time spent to read, reflect, and then discuss.

Next, just this morning, I have finished reading Charles Dickens' Bleak House. This is for my other book club. It seemed as though the book took forever, but at the end, I am glad I read this. The characters (and there are a LOT of them) are richly drawn with even minor characters having interior lives and interesting things to do. The plot is carefully drawn, with LOTS of different plot lines thrown out and then all drawn together at the end. I will be carrying these characters and their lives with me for a long time.

After finishing the Christmas knitting, I made a cowl for myself from The Garter Girl's Burberry-like cowl pattern. Here it is:

It's warm, comfortable, and bright pink. Life doesn't get much better!

As soon as I finished it, I started in on a pair of basic toe-up socks from Melissa Morgan-Oakes' book. I am using the dyed sock yarn blank I purchased from Happy Fuzzy Yarns last winter when I took her yarn dyeing class. Here's my progress so far (much delayed because I've been reading Bleak House):

I am about an inch or two up from the toes area.

I have also been spinning a bit. Here are a couple of beauty shots of the lovely silk roving I got at the Fiber Expo back in October:

Finally, I have been working on the Fruit Salad quilt. I started off by auditioning various fabrics for the setting squares, and I still couldn't figure out the orientation of the diamonds.

I didn't like any of these fabrics. Then I got the bright idea of moving away from the standard setting square idea and into a different direction. Here is the start of the notion:

Then, I realized that I had some interesting options from here, including finishing this as a circle. Here is the current state of play - yes, those most recent pieces have to be picked out and moved to new places because, let's face it, a circle has 360 degrees, and a foolish quilter forgets that to her peril.

I am starting to like this piece again.

Finally, here is the requisite cute cat shot. This is the Big Guy - I crept up the basement stairs and set the camera on the floor to get this shot. He is SUCH a cuddler.

Inspirations and Updates

First off, I would like to thank The Student Knitter for the pretty niddy-noddy she made and I won in her recent giveaway. I've skeined up the spinning from my first bag of roving!

Thanks to this wonderful tool, I now know that I have about 290 yards of yarn - any suggestions for patterns I could make from this?

I haven't shown the Helix socks in a while. I was so thrilled when I got to the heels in mid-July, thinking I'd be able to work the legs during the quilt show. No, the heels took longer than expected, and then when I started working the second heel, I realized that I had not understood the instructions on the first heel and had screwed them up. All through the second heel, I kept telling myself it wasn't that big a deal. When I got the second heel done, and it was SO much better than the first heel, I knew what I needed to do. So, I slid the second heel over to the inactive side of the needles and spent the quilt show unpicking the entire first heel. Mid-Sunday afternoon, I was finally at the point where I could restart it. People kept asking during the show, "What are you making? That looks really interesting." Well, actually, I'm unmaking.... Then, we had lots of sun on our vacation (I am NOT complaining!!) and my prescription sunglasses are only good for distance viewing, so I really couldn't knit in the car. So, with all of that, here's the current picture:

On the road, we listened to an audio version of Robert Merry's A Country of Vast Design, about the presidency of James K. Polk. It was an utterly fascinating window into American politics in the first half of the 19th century. So many people seemed to spring out of the pages and into real life. John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay all come alive in this book; however, the most vivid character is James Buchanan, the clever conniving political hack who served as Polk's secretary of state and went on to become one of the two worst presidents in our nation's history. If you have a chance to listen to or read this book, do so.

Also, I wanted to show a couple of pictures I thought I would be able to use for future quilts. The first is a detail from buildings I saw at both Fort Michilimackinac and Fort Wilkins.

I loved the way those triangles fit together.

The other picture is from a staircase leading to a lighthouse tower at Whitefish Point. We weren't allowed to go into the tower, but I was able to take this picture.

Wouldn't that be an INTERESTING quilt - I'm thinking complementary colors - orange and blue, magenta and forest green..... mmmmm!!!!

Art Fair!!

I LOVE Art Fair, love it love it love it. It runs Wednesday through Saturday, but really seems to start on Monday, when the streets start getting closed off, and the booth boundaries get marked. The first two days of the fair, I went out with a friend at lunch time, and we poked around, chatted with people we knew and didn't buy anything except some candied almonds. I've gone out by myself in the evenings, and last evening, I bumped into a friend from the book club, and we wandered along together.

Anyway, the first evening out, I made an impulse purchase:

Isn't that gorgeous? It's 8" on a side, and it's all stones carefully placed on a piece of slate. I kept looking at it and looking at it and looking at it, and well, it had to go home with me. If you want to see more of the artists' work, check out their website.

I also made a very conscious purchase. In addition to the "official" art fairs, there are a couple of "private" art fairs. At one of these, I've gotten in the habit over the years of buying a dress or top. This year, it was a spaghetti-strapped dress with this darling painted on it:

The vendor is called "Creations by Tina," and she's based in Sand Springs, Oklahoma. I was unable to track down a working website. She paints jersey dresses all over and then puts a large motif in the sternum area. My only cavil with this dress is that it didn't have pockets. I had to install some side-seam pockets yesterday morning before I could wear it to work. Of course, when you're 50, and you haven't done much "working out," you wear a T-shirt under the dress...

Next, I've been spinning along for the Tour de Fleece. Here is what I've done over the past week or so:

I'm so pleased with how pretty it is!!

Finally, I want you to see what the Yarn Piggy did with the piece of hand-dyed fabric I sent her last month. So, check out her blog.

I opened the front door today, and I think we'll be able to swim to work - yeah. Hot and HUMID!!

Finished Objects Friday

Amazingly enough, I have spun my first batch of roving!! Woo-hoo!! Here is a picture of the spinning that got done this past week:

Here is a picture of the roving that is up next.

I bought it at the FiberExpo in Ann Arbor last fall. If you're going to be near Ann Arbor in late October this year, it might be worth checking out. They had a LOT of stuff to see, touch, learn, and purchase.

The Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild meeting is tomorrow, and I'm taking workshops from the speaker, Vikki Pignatelli, today and Sunday. I don't think I'm going to take my camera. I'm feeling a little loaded down as it is. I need some down time, and if I'm taking pictures, I'm not really relaxing.

Scraptastic #5

I went back through my posts, and this is approximately the fifth post about my Scraptastic obsession. This all began last fall when I had lost my quilting mojo and was feeling overwhelmed by the scraps in the sewing room. I had finished at least three or four big projects and was feeling uninspired. So, I started sorting my scraps into color families and sewing them together at random. For pictures of that early part of the process, please go here.

Then, I made a couple of test pieces (and ended up quilting and binding the green one for a silent auction at my husband's workplace). Then, I made a larger piece for the silent auction that my quilt guild will have at its show this summer. Then in June, I dyed the background for the big quilt I'll put in the show - it's the scrunched blue near the top of the post. As of this morning, after a weekend of working on the quilt, I am pleased to show some real progress.

First off, the idea is a field of flowers under a sun. Last month, I created "dirt" from my brown scraps:

As you can see, I pressed the edges of the triangles under and topstitched all around. I then moved the triangles around on the quilt until I had them in a layout that pleased me. The end triangles are left and right isosceles triangles rather than regular isosceles triangles - to form edges.

In my last post, I was unhappy about the way the sun looked. At about midnight Friday night/Saturday morning, I couldn't sleep and went into the sewing room, hauled the thing down from the design wall and started scribbling on it with Prismacolor pencils.

I am pleased with how it looks. It's a little messy, but much less obviously BRIGHT YELLOW.

I cut down the very large diamonds I had cut out, and made several smaller flowers. I pressed the edges under, starched, and topstitched.

Once I had enough flowers, I could then start laying them out. When I was in college 30 years ago, I edited the student newspaper for a year and a half and learned basic layout skills. To this day, I start in the upper left corner of a "page" and move diagonally downward to the right and then put something interesting in the upper right. You can see this in the Brat Cat quilt. You can see this in this quilt.

That's the sun in the upper right corner. The faint orange lines are pieces of novelty yarn used to show the locations of the flower stems. Next, I went into the scrap box and pulled out stem-shaped pieces of green fabrics and laid those down.

Then, I trimmed, sewed together, pressed under the edges of the stems, and pinned the stems into place:

After I had the layout right, I started sewing down the stems and flowers to the quilt. At this point, the dirt is held in place with a single line of stitching across the bottom and pins the rest of the way. When I get the stems and flowers sewn down, I'll create leaves from squares left over from a previous quilt (the red, green, and yellow one shown here). I'll have more pictures soon, probably tomorrow.

In other news, I have been spinning 20-30 minutes each day of the Tour de France/Fleece. Here is two days' worth of spinning:

Friday Fill Ins - and lots more

1. When it's quiet I can read in peace.
2. I haven't rested in what seems like a month.
3. My heart is racing from all of the deadlines in July.
4. I want to survive July.
5. In the town where I was born there's a really pretty lighthouse.
6. Making dinner most evenings is something I really love about my significant other / friend.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to laundry, tomorrow my plans include baking Communion bread for the church and then going to the Independence Day parade in Ypsilanti, and Sunday, I want to make serious progress on my quilt for the guild's show at the end of July!

On to other news, since I have taken the process pledge to show my works in progress, here is where I am with a quilt that I've promised for the guild's show at the end of July:

Yeah. They're only pinned on (except the sun). This was going to be a queen-sized quilt until I got real. Now, it's twin-sized. Right. The "flowers" are not staying; they'll be replaced with smaller flowers. Here's the sun in close-up:

I am going to run to the art supply store today and get some PrismaColor pencils in yellows and oranges and see if I can't scribble out that weird yellow line in the upper corner.

As for the too-big flowers, I'm going to make pillows out of them. They are SO cute!

My plan at this point is to sew on the "dirt" I've got ready (pix soon, I promise), and then create "stems" and smaller "flowers." For those new to this blog, here is where I showed the beginnings of this process.

Because I don't have enough going on, I have also decided to be part of the "Tour de Fleece," and I am pledging to spin at least 20 minutes per day from July 3 to July 25. I'm hoping to take this:

to this:

It is Louet 50% wool, 50% soysilk. July will be a very interesting month....