Ash Wednesday

That two-days-in-a-row thing didn't last, did it?  Well, I've been pretty busy working on quilting projects these past few days.

It's been a very productive, in fact.  I got Lauri's "blue jeans & t-shirt" quilt finished up very quickly, doing a quick, all-over swirly pattern.  I was able to deliver this back to her on Monday after the guild meeting.  I sat with them for a little more than an hour, visiting.  The two of them started Weight Watchers and have both lost over 30 lbs. each.  They look great!

She had given me one other quilt to finish up--this is a baby quilt for a Sounders Fan family.  She said that the baby is a boy and wanted to stay away from girly-swirly quilting, so do something more...masculine.  OK...  To get some ideas, I needed some outside assistance.  I had heard of people talking about Leah Day's 365 quilt project, so I went to her web site and found the hundreds of examples of quilting patterns.

After looking through several patterns that would be too dense for the quilt top, I came across one that is more adaptable for a larger space, and had a very "Snakes & Snails & Puppy Dog Tails" kind of feel to it.  It's called "Oil Slick" and makes one think of oil drips in a parking lot--the rainbow of colors spreading out across the pavement.  It would have been even more striking had I done it in rainbow thread, but this would have clashed with the Rave Green and blue fabrics.

Having finished up a couple quilts "for pay" I loaded up a quick little quilt for our guild's charity for Children's Hospital.  This was a cute little country/cowboy quilt that had a polar fleece back.  With such a heavy fabric for the back, I decided to not put any batting in it.  I really don't think it needs it.  The one thing I found with the polar fleece is that it's really stretchy on the weft, so I had to load it up on the warp, which I normally don't do.  I took Leah Day's "Oil Slick" pattern and modified it a bit.  I think it looks like snake tails, don't you?  "There's a snake in my boot!"



Having finished that one, I loaded up another charity quilt and tried another new pattern that Leah calls "Super Spirals".  It's fast, it covers a lot of territory, but I don't like it as much.  Maybe if I make it even more wonky and deliberately wobbly.  I'll have to experiment on that later.  I also decided to take some of the weird size pieces of batting and piece them together.  When I do a quilt for a customer, many times the width of the quilt top is significantly smaller than the batting's width, so I'll cut off 20"-30" off one side of the quilt and set it aside.  I don't have any plans for this leftover batting from other projects, and I really don't want to use it for customers who are paying full price for the batting, but for charity quilts, it's perfectly fine.  Once it's quilted up, no one will ever know.

Then I pulled out the quilt that I started for Cammie more than 10 years ago.  I racked that up and pulled out more of those batting leftovers.  As you can see in this picture, there were two pieces of batting used in this quilt.  Oh, you can't see it?  On the left side, mid-way down, there's a yellow square.  The batting sticks out just a smidge farther on the bottom piece.  Once the binding is done, again, no one will ever know.

I consulted Leah's web site again, and found this pattern that was very similar to the "Oil Slick" but with a more feminine touch.  It's called "Bed of Roses" and has very little retracing of stitches, which is what made Oil Slick more challenging.  I finished it up really quickly and I'm very happy with the result.  I need to get the binding on it, then it'll be done and ready to put on Cammie's bed....at long last!

So, then it was time to do another charity quilt.  This one, I actually made the top last July at the quilt show and turned it in.  This was made from a bunch of "DOTS" charm squares that were swapped, and apparently the donor decided she didn't want them after all.  Then, last month, the charity quilt gal, Doreen, brought it out and was looking for quilters to finish it.  I figured I may as well finish it up!  Again, I used batting scraps to quilt this and will turn it in at the next meeting.  The quilting pattern was a modified swirl--looked more like snake heads or large question marks, but without the dots...the quilt was already covered it dots, I suppose...



The only other thing that I've been working on is an Anglo-Saxon weaving project.  The nature of this weaving causes a great deal of twist in strings to build up.  In an effort to alleviate this twisting without having to untie and re-tie all the 24 sets of strings, I figured I would try something that was suggested on a web site to use barrel swivels from the fishing aisle at Fred Meyer.  As the twist builds up, it can untwist via the swivels.  Two things I've discovered...the twist stays between the posts until you get to the end; and the leftover strings tend to get tangled up in the swivels preventing any un-twisting.  Next weave, I'm going to tie the swivels in at the beginning of the project rather than at in the middle.  I will also have to figure out a way to tuck in the ends so they don't get tangled in the swivels.  Not sure how I'm going to do that.  Tape?


I'm feeling a little sickly today.  Time to get some soup and then start the afternoon runaround.

In the Wake

I went to the Thursday night guild meeting and picked up a couple of packets for the raffle quilt they are assembling.  I got kits #11 and 12, which are part of the pointy border areas that go around the edge of this spectacular batik quilt.  It's all paper pieced, which I have gotten into a little recently...see posts on Harry Potter Quilt of Insanity.  Here I am sewing the fabric onto the paper.  OK, the paper is just used as a sewing guide, since the fabrics have to be sewn to each other with at least 1/4" seam.  You first sew pieces 1 and 2 together, lining them up behind the paper (holding it up to the light...).  Stitch and flip, finger-pressing open, then add piece 3.  Repeat to end.  The paper will later get torn away and the pieces will look like this!



OK, not exactly like this.  The extra bits have to be trimmed up around the edge, but the instructions said to leave that to the assembly team to complete.  They don't want to risk anyone accidentally cutting into the main part of the design...they probably don't have extras of this paper pattern.

But before I started these, I made one more HP block from the kit.  It took a LOOOOONG time to make this one with all the little bitty pieces.  I turned on a movie when I started and finished about the same time as the movie.  Seriously.  I think I like using this box as a photo box for the blocks...although I think I should probably press the blocks with an iron before photographing.  The books look a little lumpy.  I haven't decided if this is just an hourglass or if this is the Time Turner.  It's a bit big to hang around the neck, so I'm going to say hourglass.  I can't imagine Hermione tucking this down her robes without looking...suspicious...or in need of the hospital wing for an engorgement charm gone wrong.

Since then, I started another block of books, but only have 1/3 of it done.

After the Friday shooting, it was difficult to focus on much, so I spent a great deal of the weekend just puttering around.  I finished the baby quilt on Saturday, despite having a broken stitch regulator.  I need to take the thing in to get fixed...hubby suggested that I just take the broken part in rather than hauling in the 70 lb. behemoth...a much less physically-taxing endeavor which I am in favor of.  Maybe I'll do that in the morning.

I also mailed out a bunch of Christmas cards, which I haven't done in three years.  In the process, I discovered that I was missing a great many addresses in my book, or had ridiculously outdated information.  A high school friend was still recorded under her ex-husband's name; cousins still listed at university addresses, even though they graduated years ago; spouses and children were missing completely...luckily I have most of them on Facebook, so was able to get new physical addresses for many--others haven't written back yet.  I sent out about 40 cards--one of them still went to the wrong address (I got the corrected version after it was already in the locked outgoing mail slot).  I could have sent more but I ran out of momentum and stamps, even after a store run to get more stamps.  I'll catch 'em next year.  Or in three years.

Santa, I am not.  As per usual, I'm making a mental note to make a list, and hoping I have the forethought to check that list twice, once I find it again after losing it...  I hope that we have a fairly balanced number of gifts for each of the kiddos and a good selection of toys and games, and I will have likely failed miserably at making sure that no one feels that someone was favored over someone else.

I hope at least that they'll think well of me when I'm old enough to go to the retirement home.

Irony

I don't normally allow my Facebook and blog lives overlap (other than sharing pictures) but I found this to be really funny.  A friend (acquaintance) posted one of those text images to her wall:

"If you have a friend who tells you that they are leaving their marriage because they've "fallen out of love" or they're "no longer happy." Being a Real Friend doesn't mean hugging them and helping them pack their bags. Being a Real Friend means telling them that they're about to make a terrible decision and encouraging them to fight to restore their Marriage."

Why is this funny?  Because she is divorced.  She was also sleeping with a married guy who eventually divorced--for the second time--and then married her.  She moved into his house within a couple weeks of the former wife leaving.  That's irony.

...

The weekend was spent sewing a bunch of 4 patches together.  I just got the bug to sew some of the scraps together, so I grabbed the baggie of 3" squares and found that many of them had two or more pieces of each fabric, so I matched lights and darks into 4-patches.

On Monday, I went up to the guild meeting, probably the last one for the next few months. My DH's union is in the midst of negotiating a new contract, although I don't feel that they're really negotiating in good faith--the company offers a crap contract and the union doesn't bother to counter-offer before threatening to strike...they're going to be nice and wait until after the holidays...gee, thanks.... So we won't be able to spend $30-40 a month on gas to and from the guild meetings, and we'll likely have to cut out all entertainments from movies to non-food essentials...maybe even turning off cable.  If it gets really bad, maybe I'll find a job...depends on how long the strike goes, I guess.  In some ways, I think it'll be good to try to focus on local functions & guilds for entertainment, but at the same time, I know I'm going to miss going up there.  I will probably renew the membership and go up from time to time to keep in touch--maybe in the summer when there are fewer issues with getting up early the next day to take the kids to school.  I got home at 1 a.m. after spending a bit of time with my sister.  The visit was nice, but then I realized that it was already 11 pm and I had to stop for gas before hitting the road.

Anyway, the guild meeting was a Christmas party potluck and raffle with the "high end" raffle goodies.  During the other 11 months of the year, the raffle table has small bundles of fabrics, books, sewing tools & trinkets offered at 3 tickets for a dollar.  During December, they have $1 raffle tickets for much larger items.  A few of them were nice, but I got the impression that they were not as amazing as they have been in years past.  The Olfa mat was half the size as previous years; the Ott Light was a table top version, not a floor lamp; the kits were miscellaneous fabrics (some of dubious quality) and had just a couple yards, not a big basket full of new fabrics; the books looked second hand or at least several years old.  They did have $50 gift certificates for several different area stores, but since I don't live up there now, I wasn't that gung-ho about dropping tickets in those containers...I'd have to spend $35 just to drive there.  I entered a ticket to win entry into the spring retreat, but alas, didn't win that.  I dunno...it just wasn't up to par.  

I did buy $10 worth of tickets and was able to bring home one of the prizes:  a bin of weird fabrics.  Upon closer inspection, there were 12 fat quarters of mixed genres, one yard of modern fabric in brown & blue (not my style, but I'm sure someone will get a nice bag out of it), and a fat quarter from a Big Box Fabric Store that shall not be named.  There were also a couple of other things in the box--a membership pin, a fabric glue stick, which should come in handy, and a marking pen.  I really just wanted the bin.  

I also bought one ticket for the Christmas raffle quilt, which was far smaller than previous years.  I'm not sure if they didn't get enough participation, which is possible, but I don't remember hearing more than a mention of it once or twice during the year--then again, I was overwhelmed with the quilt show, so my participation was limited in every other arena.  It's a tree skirt.  I don't recall the exact size, but it's about 55" across; just smaller than a standard round banquet table.  I quilted it (no mention of that at the meeting...thanks for the promo, guys!), but didn't win it.  Didn't even catch who did win it.

So I got home (very late) and slept fast for a super-busy Tuesday.  I sewed a few more 4-patches together and figured out how many I'd need for a twin-size if I alternated the 4-patches with solid squares.  I thought that sewing two 3" squares together into 4-patches, I could pair them with 5" squares, which I have a TON of!  Oh wait...math is wrong.  I need 5 1/2" squares.  Dang.  Gotta cut more scraps into 5 1/2".  Then I almost forgot that it was a Girl Scout day.  Extra caffeine to drag me through the day.  Went to bed early that night.

Then yesterday was the usual church in the morning at school, which Ben and I skipped and went to get a muffin for breakfast--he didn't eat enough that morning--and then it was an early-release day, so scooping up kids, off to karate...fast dinner...skip evening karate for the girls so they can catch up on homework (but Ben went).  Hopefully they're good now.

Finished sewing the 4-patches that I needed for the twin quilt and found a baggie of 5 1/2" squares--not enough of them to actually make the top, but maybe 50 of the 80 that I need, so it's a start.

The dust in the house is starting to get to me.  Mostly it's the old carpets...I can smell it and I want, more than anything, to rip out all the carpet and have a giant bonfire in the street.  I'm waking up with a stuffy nose and we've already put the dust covers on the pillows and mattress, and it's still bothering me.  I'm also really frustrated with my clothing and my dresser.  Maybe I should just pare down to a few outfits and toss out anything I haven't worn in at least two years and make a t-shirt quilt out of the stack.  More projects....

Two weeks later...

I can't believe that it's been 14 days since I posted anything.  I don't usually go this long without sharing my stuff, so I guess I better get busy!

I finished the tunic for Tyrssen.  It looks pink, but it's really salmon colored.  I had originally made it with straight sleeves, then remembered what a pain in the butt it is to have big sleeves, so I tapered them down.  Hopefully, they're still large enough to roll up over his forearms for working/cleaning/cooking.  I made it with a slightly simpler design--no armpit gussets--but used long gores on the sides that essentially incorporated the gussets.  Fewer seams, less fuss.  I sent it to his office so he'd get it sooner and he was so excited, he put it on as soon as he got it...at work...including the cap I made.  He said he got a lot of funny looks, but he's very excited and wants to order more fabric and have me make more tunics for him.

See?  Not pink like the washcloth.  Aunt Melinda suggested it might be "antique red."  She's a funny lady!  This is the coif I also made for him to cover up his "bed head" after camping several days in the hot fields of Pennsylvania.



I made a bunch of beads for gifts for Their Majesties of the Kingdom of Northshield (black, white and yellow) and Their Majesties of the Middle Kingdom (red, green and white).  This is part of the Lampworker's Guild for An Tir (for which I somewhat surprisingly was joined--Sophia just signed me up and I didn't object).  There are somewhere around 18 Kingdoms, and the rest of the members made beads for the others--we divided the work up amongst us.  Note how these beads do not have the problem with the colors getting all burnt and smokey?  Yep...I got a new hot head for the torch and things dramatically improved.  I'm very happy with this and want to try to make some more designs for myself and to make as largesse for the Kingdom and the Barony.  Other than the torch head, the rest of the materials are pretty inexpensive.  I'll need to order some more white for the base colors.  I go through a lot of that.

I put the beads onto dental floss and folded them into a square of muslin with two of my SCA business cards (it has my SCA name, titles, and contact information...Vista Print will give you 250 cards for free...just pay shipping.  Sweet deal!).  Last week Friday, Cammie and I hopped into the car with the yurt and our clothes and some bedding and headed off to July Coronation!

This is the yurt when it's all broken down (canvas not included).  To give you size perspectives, the door frame there is 5' long and 3' wide.  The circle is the "smoke hole", called the tono; the larger bundle directly under it is a giant baby gate (the khana) that stretches into a 12' diameter circle; the smaller bundle of wood are rafters (uni) that connect from the walls to the tono.  It fits very comfortably inside my car.  Some people actually have a door frame that disassembles for even easier transport!  The ropes hold the frame to the walls and the tension cable wraps around the top, keeping it from splatting outwards.  It's an amazing feat of engineering.  It sleeps two people quite comfortably.  We had two cots and a 3' x 6' table (granted, I could have used a table half the size) that we used for the Coleman stove.  Given the smoke hole in the top, it was a well-ventilated area that I felt safe using the stove in.  We really only used it to cook dinner and then heat water for tea and washing.  We had another small table (TV tray size) that held a 5 gallon jug of ice water for drinking.  We could have used some kind of floor covering, like a tarp and some rugs, but otherwise it was very cozy.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of it set up.  I'll have to do that this week...

The kids have been keeping themselves occupied and enjoying the summer weather.  They couldn't decide between playing in the pool or on the swings...so why not both?  They moved it, filled it, and played for hours.  Clever little monkeys!

Today was spent largely at the quilt show for my guild.  There are a number of amazing quilts hanging up there, including MINE!  My job there today was to volunteer for their charity quilts area.  I didn't realize that I was the second-in-command for the charity quilts that go to Children's Hospital (somehow an email went astray) and many things went wrong.  Not disastrously wrong, mind you, but I used fabric from the wrong donation pile (I didn't know they were segregated), and I signed in for my volunteer hours in the wrong spot.  Next year we'll have it down to a science and we'll trade off hours so it'll work more smoothly.



After I got back from volunteering there, I started making pants for SCA wear as part of my Olympic Costuming competition.  One of the things I discovered was that I really only had one pair of Medieval underwear (bloomers, if you will) and I needed to make more.  The image above is of one leg...the skinny part on the left is the ankle, and the wide part on the right is the waist.  The triangle makes part of the crotch gusset.  It's a great pattern because of its simplicity and it uses every scrap of fabric.  I bought this rather inexpensive cotton fabric and sewed up two pairs for myself.  I also made a pair too big, so I'll finish those up for Kelly.  I used some of the leftovers to make a pair for Cammie, but they were too small for her, so they'll be for Ben, and I still have a scrap left over to make another pair for Cammie.  I'll have to figure out something else for Emma....

Olympic Costuming is a spin-off of the Olympic Knitting competition that occurs during the winter Olympics, so I'm starting my own Olympic Costuming for the summer Olympics.  During the next 2 1/2 weeks, I am going to see how many garments I can make from my seemingly endless stash of fabrics.  I need to make new tunics for the kids, for Kelly, and a couple of key garments for myself.



One of the things I've been wanting to make for myself is some kind of warm night garment.  Maybe something like a Medieval bathrobe, night tunic, and warm leggings...with feet.  I'd like to be able to get up out of bed, slip my feet into boots and go to the privvy without freezing all the way there and back.  There are also several occasions when I was so cold I couldn't sleep.  These things must be remedied.  Of course, the only night clothes I can find in images are simple long tunics, and they're usually of sick people, so they're covered up with blankets.

Here's one that looks like it has a quilt on it...although it could be woven.  She's wearing a full dress and head scarves.  That would probably be uncomfortable to sleep in.  Note the dog licking its balls.  And who said that Medieval art wasn't sophisticated?

What's cookin?

Lebkuchen!

Ben had a Christmas in Germany report to do.  The rest of his classmates did other countries and they presented these reports to their class with interesting facts, traditions, foods, and decorations.  We decided to make a traditional gingerbread type cookie called Lebkuchen.  I made it the night before and put it in the fridge, as directed.  This morning, I rolled it out onto the pan, sliced it up into rectangles, and baked it.  I nearly forgot it in the rush to get myself and the kids ready, but 10 minutes before we left, I pulled it out, tossed it into a brownie pan with a lid, and we dashed out of the house with the cookies still hot and smelling yummy!  The teacher swooned when we walked into the room with them and later said they were delicious!

Emma earned her orange belt on Saturday!  Woo-hoo!  We celebrated with sushi and a show--we went to the Bellevue "Snowflake Lane" show, which was 20 minutes of drumming, singing, dancing, and people in Christmas costumes handing out peppermint lollypops.  We finished it up with warm drinks--which didn't work out as well as anticipated...the kids didn't want hot chocolate, and the place we went to was located in the corner of a grocery store.  The chai was awesome!  It was a great time hanging out with Jean.  Thanks again for inviting us!  It was so good to see you again!

I finished up the Double Diamonds weaving the other day.  It turned out so remarkably well...I love it!  I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but this is a lot of fun!  I'm thinking maybe I'll have to sell these with a merchant--maybe I can work out a deal with the candle merchant.  Not that these have anything to do with candles, but she's a friend of mine, and might be willing to draw in a few more customers who go, "Ooooo!  Pretty!"

Working on a new weaving project.  This is more of a challenge because you have to split the stack of cards and turn some of them in different directions for four turns, then put them back together and turn them in the same direction for four turns.  Being able to do this opens the doors to a lot more interesting designs.  I might want to do this again in some other colors--Kelly wants me to make a guitar strap to go with the new electric he picked up a couple weeks ago.  He also picked up a Learn to Play Guitar game/program for the XBox.  Unlike Guitar Hero, this actually teaches you to play guitar.  I think I've heard "Boys Don't Cry" about 140 times in the last few weeks.

Last Monday I went to the quilt guild meeting for our annual Christmas party.  Several people signed up to decorate tables.  Just a couple days before, Tara wrote and said that she had signed up to decorate one, but since she is now in Minnesota, she would not be able to, so I filled in for her at the last minute.  It's not amazing, and it certainly didn't win any prizes, but there was a table, a centerpiece, some candies in the Santa chimney, and some paper plates and napkins.

Sharon also decorated a table...she did a bang-up job, but it was table #1 that won the prize.  By the end of the night, we were calling it Table #Won.  Several people won big raffle prizes that night.  It wasn't funny after about the fourth person in a row.  I didn't win anything, but we had a good time and I got to show Marge's quilt to the group.  I then took it over to her house before heading south again.

Today I got a call from a parent at the school who needed someone to quilt up a present for her sister.  I must have given her a business card some time back...I put it on the frame right away and started working on it tonight.  It would be done right now if I hadn't run out of the brown bobbin thread.  Sigh.  I gotta buy some more tomorrow morning and hopefully I can get it done early and get it back to her in the morning.

Tomorrow's the last day of school before Christmas break!  Yippie!

K