Post retreat report

Our spring In-Town Retreat is over and for me it was productive.

As I wrote in my previous entry I finished a quilt top and made my RSC red crumb blocks for March.  I also went through a combined package of swap blocks from two swaps in 2003 & 2007, photographed each set of blocks with the labels showing who made them so I now have a pictorial catalogue of the participants and their blocks. They are now back in their envelope together with the sashing and cornerstone pieces.  Perhaps I'll get them all put together at our fall retreat?

These are the blocks that I made way back in the mists of time.

After that I worked on a foundation paper pieced New York Beauty pattern that I started in April 2016 at the annual Stitch Your Art Out Retreat. The pattern is from Stone Valley Quilting and goes together very easily with excellent, easy to follow, instructions.  Of course I am not doing mine at 48" square as per the pattern but have decided to make it at least big enough for a double (full sized) bed, so I need to make 48 or 64 quadrants.  At the SYAO retreat I made two  complete quadrants.

This week I have made another 19 paper pieced arcs.  I am using a mixture of batik and hand dyed fabrics in a wide variety of colours.  The backgrounds are the hand dyed fabrics and the points are mostly small scale batiks.  I shall use larger scale batik fabrics for the inner and outer parts of each block.  My aim is for lots of colour and contrast. So far I have worked from my stash including the last scraps of some of those fabrics. I am sad to have used up those pieces but pleased with the results.

After all that sewing I went back to knitting and on Saturday was instructed in how to turn the heel on my new socks and I am now happily working up the leg on the first one.
 

There is one knitting finish to report this week too - I finally completed sewing up a sweater for my elder son, now I need to send it back across the pond to him.

This week I need to work on sewing the binding down on my second table runner and make and sew on labels on both in order to achieve my March OMG.

Today I am linking up with:

Quilting is more fun than Housework: Oh Scrap!

Busy Hands Quilts: Finished or not Friday

Confessions of a Fabric Addict: Can I get a Whoop Whoop?

My Quilt Infatuation: Needle and Thread Thursday

Underground Crafter: Knitting Love Link party #19

FLOF and In-Town Retreat

FLOF? what is FLOF? I hear you mutter. FLOF stands for For the Love Of Fiber (Fibre?) which is an annual event that the Centre Knitters Guild run each year at the American Philatelic Society in Bellefonte, PA.  After I added it to our electronic calendar this year my husband asked the same question and I replied "It is an event that turns your money into yarn!"  I'm not sure he appreciated the sentiment.  Once again this year there were many luscious yarns and somehow 3 skeins of sock yarn, a full pound of roving (for felting), a project bag and a neat little gizmo for keeping my stitches on my dpns as I carry my projects around came home with me.  The vendors I supported were:

Unplanned Peacock Studio
Shirsty Cat Designs
Gurdy Run Woolen Mill
Sunshine Lily Crafts

Don't expect to see any completed projects from my new yarns any time soon as I am still fondling the two beautiful skeins that I purchased last year!

From Tuesday to Friday this week we have our in-town retreat and the first day has already been productive.

I finished the top for Christa's Colors, having decided to go with the black sashing.  This will be about 54" x 74" once it is quilted and bound.  It isn't off the UFO list yet, but at least has moved onto the flimsy list from the piecing list.

I also made my red crumb blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I am all caught up on that too.

A busy week

Usually I try to post something covering my weekend quilting/knitting/gardening activity, but this week has been somewhat hectic for me.  Over the weekend I worked on a baby quilt for one of my husband's colleagues and finished the quilt top. This stage is also known as a "flimsy".  I kept careful note of all my cutting, piecing and pressing time on this so I can come up with a suitable selling price for similar items in my "real-soon-now" etsy shop.  All the coloured pieces came from scraps and charms so this is a great way to use small pieces in a larger contrast background.

A couple of weeks ago my little plastic card authorizing me to work arrived from the US government and since then my SSN has also arrived.  It is so good to feel like a "real" person! With these in hand I was invited to give some training this week on the equipment that I helped build, test and worked with for 20 years.  Those days coincided with the winter storm that brought 8" (20cm) of snow overnight Monday/Tuesday and school closures Tuesday & Wednesday as the temperatures and wind chill remained somewhat low.  To top it off yesterday the battery in the family car gave every impression of quitting, but after messing me about and having been given a good charging played nicely this morning for my husband!  All of this took priority over my quilting time so there isn't much to show from during the week until today.

The snow is melting, but somebody still isn't impressed...

 
On the yarn front there has been more progress as last Saturday I took a class on knitting socks from the toe upwards, using this pattern entitled Toe-Up Socks.  I'm sure I could have figured out the pattern on my own, but the class gave me confidence and it was fun knitting along with other people. Over the next two classes we will learn to turn the heel and finally cast off (bind off) the top edge.  I had done a little knitting in the round both with a circular needle and double pointed needles (DPNS) on previous projects, but this was certainly more challenging and has added to my knitting skill set.

Today I cleared and cleaned the lounge floor (Design Floor Friday again!) and tried out a couple of layouts for Christa's Colors. What do you think? Rows together or with some black between? Squiggly black or mottled black?

I am going to let these options rattle in my mind for a few days and then take it all to my in-town retreat next week. The quilting group I belong to hires a meeting room at a local motel for 4 days twice a year. We all take our machines and project with us an can sew from 8 in the morning till 10 at night each day but still go home and sleep in our own beds. Any regular commitments can still be made but we can sew for all of the rest of the time. I think it is a wonderful idea and I love it.  Room hire cost per quilter is about $10 for the week!

Today I am linking up with:

Quilting is more fun than Housework: Oh Scrap!

Busy Hands Quilts: Finished or not Friday

Confessions of a Fabric Addict: Can I get a Whoop Whoop?

My Quilt Infatuation: Needle and Thread Thursday

Weekend progress

By the end of Saturday I had all my En Provence units sewn, though not all pressed and trimmed to exact size.  On Sunday I pressed all the four patch units and finished spinning the seams to make assembly of the quilt top easier.  I did a quick calculation and the quilt top as designed will have 2868 pieces of fabric in it! Wow! Next I need to trim all these to 3.5" square then I can start putting it together.

All the units for En Provence

For a bit of light relief I organised my small scraps into bags of the same colour, this will help with the rainbow scrap challenge during the coming months, and also made 3 turquoise Dresden plates to meet the February colour choice of teal/aqua/turquoise.  All the "petals" came out of the scrap bag, no yardage was harmed in making these so I can also link to Oh Scrap! :)

The weather turned almost warm on Saturday with temperatures of over 50F (over 10C) and as the daylight faded there was much less snow on the ground than we awoke to. My tender herbs got moved out of the garage to get some light and, possibly, some rain, but I expect to need to move them back inside during the week as more cold air, and possibly snow, comes our way.

At the moment I am holding off starting any new knitting projects, though I can hear the siren song of various balls of yarn, as I have at least 4 projects that need to be finished. Of the four things one of them only needs seams and a neckband, the others need a little more, but they are all at least 80% done so I must finish at least one of them before casting on again.  I also have a barely started scarf, but as that is for me there is no great rush to carry on with that at the moment, it will probably become my in-car project when we are driving to places in the better weather.

Cold weather, warm hands

With the snow and below freezing temperatures reappearing mid-week and giving me great light to work in I have managed a couple of knitting finishes this week - a baby blanket for a friend of a friend and some cosy fingerless mittens.

The blanket was a rescue mission as the friend who was making it fell up some steps and broke her hand a week before Christmas and still can't knit, meanwhile the baby it is for keep on growing (as they do), so I just carried on with it until the yarn was used up. Easy knitting for watching TV and taking to my craft group.

The mittens are from this Really Clear pattern and I took a class at Stitch Your Art Out to help me with the techniques for knitting on lots of double-pointed needles. It is actually only a set of 5 (or 4 if you prefer) but feels like 20 when you first start! Now I shall have warm hands as I sit at my PC in our basement.

First mitt completed

Second mitt in progress

My sewing machine has not been totally ignored. I made 3 Dresden plates in varied purples for the January's Rainbow Scrap Challenge and have made progress on my remaining sub-units for my En Provence quilt.
 

I hope to get those final sub-units finished over the weekend, then I can get onto assembling the blocks.  The purple petals came from leftover fabric from En Provence.

What I finished in the rest of 2016

So what did I finish while I wasn't blogging in 2016? In no particular order.

In October the pink elephants quilt was completed and sent over to the UK.

Free motion quilted on my home sewing machine

Quilting detail - easier to see on the flannel backing

The whole quilt - in the end it measured 54" x 74"

In August I finished a sweater for my younger son that he took with him on his trip to the UK and Switzerland. I sewed up the last seams on our way to the airport in July and then made him model it in temperatures of over 30°C/90°F! Also some flannel PJ pants for my elder son.

Another knitting project completed was my fair-isle hat (for me!) started in April at the Stitch Your Art Out retreat, finished later in the year. The pattern is a Really Clear design and it was much more straightforward than it looks as it was all made "in the round", so all knitting with no purling after the initial ribbed edge. I have worn this a lot during the chilly weather as it fits so easily in my handbag.

October saw another quilt finished, the Frugal Block quilt I had been working on back in January was quilted bound and labelled for its recipient, who will get it soon.

More "help" from Smokey

All done! 64" x 84"

Quilting detail

The last October finish was a set of Halloween place mats and table runner for some friends that got married that weekend.  I found them as I unpacked and quilted them in glow in the dark thread, the table runner design uses three disappearing 9 patch blocks made from a Moda charm pack, with some of the rest of the charms used as the borders for the place mats.

December saw three cushion covers finished based on a Moda bakeshop project, one was a gift and the other two stayed home with us.

I think that was all the finishes for the year! In the end it was quite productive.

Where is "home" ?

My second trip of February was to the UK and before I set off I wasn't sure whether it was back home or not.  I suppose that England will always be home in some ways even though living there full time again is unlikely. Whatever the future brings I will always be an Englishwoman, shaped by my time growing up and for the first 40-something years of my life spent there.

As I wrote part of this entry I was at my husband's cousin's dining table looking out at the greenness of their back garden with its English lawn, trees and vegetable plot together with the more unusual suburban addition of chickens.  I had forgotten how many shades of green were to be found in the English landscape, even or especially in the wintertime, and it has been soothing for my village raised soul.  As I left Pennsylvania the landscape was still a stark white with dark, bare trees contrast against it, even the evergreens only give subdued colour to the landscape and true bright colours are probably another month off.  It would be lovely to arrive back home (there is that ambiguous word again) and at least be able to see the leaves of the spring bulbs poking above the soil, promising a riot of colours to come. I shall be most dischuffed if the squirrels have eaten them over the winter.

Seeing familiar birds such as the European robin hunting for breakfast amongst the plants and tiny cheeky blue tits doing acrobatics on the bird feeders has also been a pleasure, though, thanks to Eugene Schieffelin, the starling has become a familiar sight across the continental USA and I have seen a cock pheasant with his glorious plumage running through our PA subdivision.  Looking out of the window of our new home and seeing the scarlet plumage of cardinals and the bright blue of the jays has been a delight and I look forward to the arrival of groups of American robins working their way across the yard eating the garden pests that they are most welcome to!

My trip ended up being 2 weeks rather than the planned single week so very little sewing was completed in February, though all the sections of my grandson's sweater are now complete and awaiting assembly with a final few rows to complete the collar.  Earlier this week a last minute effort on my part while my younger son was at school resulted in him having a hat to go with his scarf before the end of his birthday!  The pattern is Sideways Bobble Hat by Woolly Wormhead, though this hat has no bobble.

In between my travels I did add the borders and letters to a project from a design workshop in October 2013 with Jenni Dobson. The project reappeared in the unpacking of my quilting fabrics and equipment and I decided to get on and get it done, even though there was no expectation to end the workshop with a completed or ongoing piece of work.

The words around the border are Contrast, Line, Balance and Shape - all elements of design which we were encouraged to explore over the 2 days.  Completing the quilting on this is my One Monthly Goal for March.

To answer the question in the heading? Home is with my husband and sons, wherever we might all be.