Work in Progress Wednesday - #14

I skipped last week's WIPW because I am a political geek, and my head was filled with numbers. (Also, except for the governor's race in my state, I was pretty upset about the results. 'nuf said - except that I am THRILLED with our new governor!! He is making all sorts of really great early decisions.) Anyway, this is part of Tami's WIPW ring, and I hope that you go check out the rest of the lovely projects in progress this week.

Here is the progress I made on the Cone Nebula quilt this past week:

Will you trust me that these two piles took several hours to iron and cut? I truly don't know how much I cut, but I figured I could make a good start. After making that first block and analyzing the picture, I decided it would make a lot more sense to do the layout in chunks of several blocks. I have a picture in my head of how I want the colors to interact with each other - and I keep going back to the Spitzer Telescope picture as reference. This coming weekend, I'm hoping to get some actual layout and sewing done.

The Haiku jacket for my great nephew is looking like this:

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I was commenting that the fabric of the jacket wasn't quite right. I was on size 6 (4mm) needles. I swatched on size 5 (3.75 mm) needles, but that wasn't much better. I didn't have a pair of size 4 needles in the right length, so I tried size 3 (3.25 mm) needles, and the fabric has a nice, tight weave (no tiny fingers will be able to poke through!), and the fabric has a better drape. The jacket's lapel is at the bottom of the picture, and that part that is sticking out is the shoulder area of the front (just to give you a reference).

Several months ago, Hubby dearest finally went through his clothes bureau and cleared out ill-fitting and worn-out clothes. This past Saturday, I went through those and sorted into four piles: trash, cleaning rags, rug rags, and St. Vincent's Thrift Shop. The rug rags I tore into strips, and this week, I have started warping a rug on the loom that I bought at the guild's summer show (because working full-time, doing volunteer work, reading good books, and having two three intense hobbies aren't enough). Anyway, I have wanted to weave ever since I was a little kid watching the neighbor lady on her big garage-sized rug loom. I go to places like Colonial Williamsburg and hang out in the weaving shed. Something about turning 50.....

It's a start, and I'm thrilled. I figure if I add a few strips every time I go into the basement, then I'll eventually have a rug.

I've also been reading. I finished the book on Chinese history and picked up Jacquelyn Mitchard's Still Summer. She has a podcast and a blog! Must seek out! I will say that I dearly love this woman's books. Her characters are like the people I encounter in my daily life, the problems they face are real, and the way the issues get resolved make sense. This book is really intense and quite frightening. She builds the suspense nicely and handles the resolution well. It is about a Caribbean cruise taken by four women who have known each other all their lives. Bad stuff happens, and they have to deal with it. I really don't want to spoil the plot beyond that.

This past week I read Barbara Vining's (Ruth Rendell's) Anna's Book. I've mentioned Lady Rendell before. I LOVE LOVE LOVE her writing. I'm not sure if I've mentioned here how I found her. I was in Aunt Agatha's bookshop in Ann Arbor a year or so ago, looking for a novel by P. D. James that I hadn't read. Unfortunately, I had read all of the novels they had, but there was a sign saying, "If you like P. D. James, you might also like Ruth Rendell."

Anna's Book takes place in both London in 1905 and London in the late 1980s. A baby is born in 1905 and dies as an old woman in the late 1980s, but who is this child and how did she come to be in the life she lived? Rendell knows how to set a scene, how to spoon out information, and how to keep you reading until the very end. It was a very engrossing book.

Right now I am reading Monica Ali's Brick Lane about a young Bangladeshi woman in an arranged marriage to a much older man. I'm only about 30 or so pages in, but it's good so far.

What are YOU reading? working on? worrying about? Let me know.

Oh!! Oh!! Oh!! So exciting! This evening, I'm going to a live taping of the Slate Political Gabfest! It's going to be in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan law school. I have been listening to this podcast for about four years, and it is my favorite podcast. I am SO thrilled.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Part 1

This weekend, I finally cut the first pieces for a quilt I've been mentally planning and dreaming over for at least six or seven years. This is the Cone Nebula quilt, based on a picture I saw on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website several years ago. If you're not already checking this site regularly, you really should add this site to your habit; it has really interesting pictures every day, and you learn some science, too!

I was not able to find the link to this picture this morning, but this is the inspiration. A couple of years ago, I decided that I would do it in kaleidoscope blocks. Here is a test block I did just to remind myself how to make them:

You start by making the corner "ice cream cones," then sew those to the plain triangles until you have it all sewn together. Ideally, you have eight points meeting in the center.

A couple of years ago, I started coloring this version of the quilt, and I finished the coloring yesterday. After I took this picture, I put numbers down the side of the map and letters along the bottom so that I could keep track of the blocks.

Here are the dark fabrics I've been collecting for this quilt. I have them sorted with the darkest darks in the left column, the next darkest darks in the middle, and the medium darks on the right.

I plan to mix these up through the quilt, creating "lanes" of color. This will require some careful placement of fabrics. Here are the light/bright fabrics I selected for the non-dark pieces:

I really want high contrast between the darks and the lights. Here is the first block:

I have a sticker in the upper middle. It has the location code of the block, and the sticker is oriented so that it's readable when it's in the correct orientation. You can see that the points don't match in the center. I sewed the block twice. Looking at this picture, I may take it apart and resew it with different fabrics. I clearly need to do a lot of thinking as I go. I also cut the next few blocks:

Finally, I wanted to show you the true queen of the autumn, sprawled on the sideboard in our dining room.

Giveaway Results

It's Saturday morning, and I don't want to spend the weekend at the computer, so I'm doing this first thing. Let's purge Liz' stash!

Sarah, the Student Knitter: I'll pop my 6-1/2" squares, the 3" squares, and a couple of fat quarters in the mail to you. I have not kept your address, so please send it to me privately. Thank you.

Lauren at Knitter's Space: I'll send you the 4" and 5" squares and some other larger pieces. Again, I'll need your address, so please send it privately. Thank you.

Faith, the Vampire Slayer: I'll send you the 2-1/2" squares, the 1-1/2" squares (wonderful for learning chain piecing and making 9-patch blocks), and some other larger pieces. I will need your address, sent privately.

If anyone else wants to chime in here, please do so. I'm hoping to go to the post office during my lunch hour on Wednesday with these packages.

Thank you, all, for helping me clear my sewing room!

Liz

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Pink Lemonade

This post is part of the Blogger's Quilt Festival. The quilt I'm sharing began in a watercolor painting class one evening where I was just playing around, getting to know the paints.

The colors were all swirling around, greens and yellows, and then I slashed some red lines across in a cross-hatch. "Hmm!!" I thought, "That looks like a quilt."

I then knew it would have to be all 2-1/2" squares sewn together. I pulled all of my greens, yellows, reds, and some yellowish oranges out. For someone who likes to have a plan made up ahead, it was a real trick to make this look spontaneous and unplanned. Having to run to a quilt shop in midweek (I did this on a week's sew-cation) to get more red and yellow was an interesting experience. I took the quilt with me to show the folks in the shop. You know how you get SO close to something, you're not sure you see it any more? That's how I felt with this. When I unfolded it, and the gals in the shop gasped in amazement, I knew I had something special.

I made it to donate to our local hospital for a fundraising raffle. The gal in charge of the fundraiser immediately named it "Pink Lemonade." It was queen-sized - about 90" x 110" - and I had it quilted professionally.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #12

This is part of a ring of posts that you can find on Tami's site. Thank you, Tami!

This will be a pretty quick post. I've been in head cold/migraine land for the last week or so and am only now feeling as though I'm going to be well again. I do want to say that I woke up this morning and realized that a week from now, we in the US will be awaking to airwaves free of political advertising. I am SO sick of Clown One accusing Clown Two of various half-whispered nefarious deeds and vice versa. Ick, ick, ick!

I went to the Fiber Expo at the county fairgrounds on Saturday (because I'd been looking forward to it, head cold be darned!) and here is what I got:

Yep, some Malabrigo yarn in Teal Feather for me to make up into the Every Way Wrap that was in Interweave Knits a year ago. I took a hard look at my sweater collection and realized that I didn't really have a decent blue sweater. While I was purchasing this from the Busy Hands booth, I bumped into a pal of mine, and we wandered around the rest of the expo. She spotted the roving in this picture and said it would make a great addition to the sweater. I agreed.

I have started on the jacket for my great nephew. I'm using size 6/4mm needles right now. I swatched on 5s last night because I think the fabric is a little loose, and that didn't help much. I may yet swatch on 4s and see about that. I know, real knitters swatch first and then start. snarf, snarf, snarf

In response to last week's post, Vivianne suggested that I do a giveaway on this blog of some of the fabrics I'm purging. That's a great idea! I have boxes of squares - 1-1/2", 2", 2-1/2", 3", etc (up to 6") - just really mixes of fabrics I had on hand when I tried taming the scraps into usable pieces. There are different numbers of squares, different color schemes, etc. If you want these, please leave a comment. If more than one person wants a particular size, I'll divide them up. I also have a batch of circles that I think are about 4" and a bag of half-square triangles (originally 2-1/2" squares, I think). Let me know if you want these.

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."