Knitting Nights

Yesterday it flurried off and on for most of the day here in Maine. By late afternoon it was snowing more heavily, and this was the landscape this morning when I woke up--about three inches of snow on the ground. The leaves haven't even finished falling off the trees yet. In the seven years we've lived up here, I can't remember that it ever snowed this early in the season, and I sure hope this isn't a precursor of what winter is going to be like this year.

I haven't worked on my September Sun any more this week, but I have been doing some knitting. November marks the beginning of a new challenge in my Knitting Nights class--mittens. We are making two styles, mittens with thrums and felted mittens. For those who may not know, thrums are tufts of unspun wool that are knit into the mitten. On the outside they look like little colored V's in the pattern. On the inside, all the fluffy bits of wool are exposed, and eventually they'll all mat together and make a nice thick cozy mitten. This is the beginning of what will be a thrummed mitten. ......Actually I suppose this looks like the beginning of a sock too.

October was more a month of knitting rather than quilting finishes. I finished up this little yellow sweater from the September class, size 1T. We've done baby sweaters before, but this was knit from the top down, all in one piece, all on a circular needle. The idea behind the top down sweater is that when you're done knitting, you're done. No seams to sew up. I LOVED this method.

I also finished the fishtail lace scarf I started in class several months ago, made a nice thick scarf for one of my sons, and made a beanie for the other one. Now I'm working on a beanie for my husband along with the mittens.

The burgundy scarf was a trip to make. My son wanted it really long so he could wrap it around his neck, so I used a super bulky yarn and size 13 (big) needles in a K1, P1 pattern. The fishtail lace scarf took weeks for me to finish. I knitted 6 feet of the burgundy scarf in 4 days. I had so much fun with it I may have to make one for myself.

Who'd have thought I'd be needing hats, scarves, and mittens in the beginning of November?

Did you know you can wind a whole ball of yarn on your thumb? As a beginning knitter, I recognized that I couldn't knit from a hank because it would get tangled, but I had no idea how to wind a ball of yarn. The automatic winders are silly expensive to me, so I googled it and discovered several methods for accomplishing the task. My favorite was this one. The idea here is to wind it in such a way that you can pull from the center of the ball when you're knitting, which I think is just so cool.

The September Sun Project

Life has been awfully busy the last several weeks; and when life gets busy, something has to give. For me, blogging is the least critical activity, so that's what usually goes first. I've had no time to either read blogs or write my own, so I have lots of catching up to do, and I look forward to it.

What am I so busy with?
*Social obligations, most of which involve either quilting or knitting, so that, at least, is a good thing.
*Things around the house and fall clean up. I am home alone most of the time, so everything pretty much falls to me. I'm still behind with the fall clean up. I don't think I've ever seen so many leaves in the yard, and they're mounting by the day, but we've had enough rain to keep me in the house.
*Work! I went back to work at the beginning of October as a seasonal hire. Even though I only worked a grand total of seven days this month, it's enough to disrupt the schedule I've developed over the last six months. I've had to develop a new schedule to make work the priority.

I continue to fit in as many sewing days as possible, and today our small group who is working on the September Sun project is meeting at Sherry's house for a day of sewing. I came down with an awful cold on Monday and decided it would be best to stay home today so as to not expose the others. But I'm still working on the project and communicating with the girls by phone, and I thought I'd share my progress today as I go along.

11:00a
Here is what I've got done so far--all but the center four blocks. The last time we met, two of the girls worked on the center blocks and expressed their difficulties in a pretty colorful way, so I suppose I haven't been looking forward to it.

I made some templates for myself to assist in the process, and my strips are cut, so I'm ready to go.

3:00p

I've sewn all the strip sets together for the center star block. After a couple of well-chosen expletives and some hair pulling, I also got two of the required eight diamonds sewn together into a quarter of the block. There's a darn good reason why I never made a Lone Star quilt. My motto today is, CLOSE is GOOD ENOUGH.

I called Sherry's to see how everyone was doing. In the background, I could hear things were heating up over there too. Barbara is working on the same set of star blocks I am, and she was using a different set of equally effective expletives.

Sherry is teaching her sister Sandy how to make mittens from old sweaters today, and she's going to teach me too. Up here in Maine, you can't have enough pairs of warm mittens.

9:00p

Anyone still with me? My head hurts. I have spent far more time ripping than I have sewing on this block, and my patience is at its end for tonight. This half of the block looks pretty good until you look at the square in the upper right corner. I've lost nearly all the seam allowance for the blue square, and it took me ages to figure out that the seam allowance on the strip set wasn't quite large enough, which threw off that whole corner. I'll be ripping some more again tomorrow, but at least I know what NOT to do for the second half. It'll come together--just not tonight.

Right now I'm going to do something mindless. I'm knitting a scarf.

Hourglass Log Cabin

Last night I finished sewing all the blocks together for the little log cabin quilt. I think I will be happy enough with a 3/8" binding to frame the quilt, so no border on this.

Several people wanted to know how big these blocks were, and I'm sorry I didn't think to include that information. Each of these little blocks finishes to 4" square, so each little log finishes to 1/2" wide. Because the pieces were small, I cut strips or rectangles from my scraps that measured at least 1-1/8" wide. Then I paper pieced the blocks, trimming any excess fabric off as I went.

Playing With Scraps

I haven't spent much time sewing in the last couple weeks, but that is not to say I haven't been busy in my sewing room. I finally finished the last of the mini log cabin blocks, 36 in all. I enjoyed making these so much that I'm going to start on an offset log cabin block next or maybe a pineapple blossom.

I played around with all the traditional arrangements for these blocks and finally settled on this hourglass arrangement. I haven't decided yet whether or not I'll add borders to it. As it is, it will finish to 24" x 24", which is just right for its appointed space in my hallway.

Next I started rooting through several bags and a couple of boxes of scraps I've acquired over the last year and a half. Quite a few of them were channeled into ziploc bags for several scrap projects I have lined up. The rest were consolidated into two medium-sized shopping bags and stored under the longarm. Only a very few of the scraps were actually cut up, but I sure feel good about getting this all cleared out.

Since I was on a roll and felt like cleaning out more stash, I spent several more days going through my cabinets pulling fabrics I thought might be suitable for pillowcases. Some of these fabrics I bought when the kids were younger, intending to make some project for them that never got made. Others constituted a what-was-I-thinking-when-I-bought-this moment and went into the pile too. Everything got washed, and I kitted up enough for 29 pillowcases. I really like some of these fabric combinations, so I'll save several of them for the grandchildren I may never have, and the rest will be donated to the Conkerr Cancer project.

I also cut up about a yard and a half for a small tablerunner. All total, I busted 32 yards of fabric that week and didn't buy a thing. Too bad I'm not still doing stash reports!

More September Sun Blocks

Over the past two days I finished 16 more blocks for my September Sun quilt. I unwittingly switched the two inner strip colors thereby losing the gradated effect; but since I don't have any more of one of those fabrics, it's staying like it is.

Now there are just four blocks left for the center star. Yesterday our little challenge group got together for an all-day work session, and two of the girls worked on the center block. It's basically a lone star type block, and both girls had trouble with it, so I'll have to take extra care to cut and piece precisely.

I will say that this has not been an easy quilt to piece, but I think it's a good thing to challenge ourselves as quilters from time to time. The results will be worth it.

Felted Bowls

These are before and after photos of one of the projects in my knitting class this summer, felted bowls. We were given instructions for a set of five, and I recently finished knitting the last one and got them all felted. I used fisherman's wool, and they felted up beautifully, very thick and sturdy. I can imagine how nice and warm a pair of felted mittens might be, and I'd like to make a pair for this winter. The coolest thing is that all five bowls nest together.


















People keep asking me what I'm going to do with them, and I keep telling them I don't know yet. I do know one thing. I'd like to make two or three more of these, only larger than the largest bowl in this set and half the height--large, shallow bowls. Then I'll use them to toss leaders and enders into as I get them made, one for four patches and maybe one or two for half square triangle units. I think I'd enjoy seeing them sitting on my sewing table.

A Few Hexagon Blocks

When Robyn started The Great Hexagon Quilt-Along blog, I thought it sounded like fun and I joined. The inspiration for the blog is a quilt constructed entirely of diamond-shaped hexagon blocks. I tried English paper-piecing years ago and enjoyed it, even though I thought it a very slow method. By the time Robyn started her blog, Linda Franz had already published several of the Inklingo collections, so I decided the time was right to give it another try. I made one block, then the project fell by the wayside.

This week I decided it was time to get it back on track, so I collected a few more fabrics for it and started washing, pressing and cutting. I'm using primarily civil war fabrics for the quilt, plus scraps of whatever else appeals to me; and I plan to stick to the colors used in the original quilt--red, pink, blue, brown, tan, and cream--but probably in different proportions.

I'm using the Inklingo software to print hexagons right to the fabric, so there's not much preparation. I'm sure the ability to pretty much get right to the sewing will hold my interest longer. I'm trying not to think about the fact that I'll need 82 diamond blocks to complete the quilt as it was originally shown, and I'll just keep plugging away at it.

Since I've just gotten started with this project again, I've made one additional hexagon and nearly finished a second. Handpiecing 25 hexagons together into a block takes me a long time, but I'm really enjoying it. I love looking at the backs of these blocks--all those little hexagons formed by pressing the seams just look so cool.