Road trip equals knitting not sewing

My quilting is on hold for a couple of weeks while we travel cross-country and 9 states, each way!  We live in central Pennsylvania, our younger son is graduating on Saturday in New Mexico, and I flew out to Chicago for work yesterday (Monday).  My husband leaves from home, driving, tonight to pick me up tomorrow afternoon and then we hightail it in a southwesterly direction until sunset and beyond.  The idea is to take some vacation time after the graduation before schlepping all the way back to PA again.

I don't do much hand sewing, but I do knit and have one pair of socks that just need afterthought heels putting in and another pair of socks where the second needs to be knitted to the closing of the toe and then they too (two?) also will need the heels doing.  If I get all that done while we travel I have more sock yarn in my suitcase to be able to start in on something else.

Here is the pair that only need heels:

Apparently they have been in this state since 12th Jan this year (2021) so finishing them is my One Monthly Goal for May.

I shall add a picture of the other socks when I am not stuck in a laboratory :)

Christa's Colors - some progress

Life has been busy this month, particularly with work and associated travel, so not a lot of progress was made on the quilting front, but I have met my OMG of getting the yellow and purple bits of Christa's Colors quilted and moved on to some of the green.  I'm still having thread breakage issues while doing FMQ which has dulled my enjoyment of the process.  However here are some pictures showing what I did manage to achieve:

 And the start of filling the green wedges:

I am also now fully vaccinated against Covid-19 which is a relief with my business travel commitments, some of them due to be international this summer by the looks of things.

One of my sourdough loaves was really pretty this month too:

Some quilts are like fine wine.....

 .....they need to have time to mature.

I am currently working on Christa's Colors, a quilt that I started at a retreat 5 years ago in April 2016 designed by the highly talented Cynthia Spencer of Stitch Your Art Out here in Centre County PA. 

Cynthia's original quilt

Cynthia's original quilt was lovely but I wanted a bigger end product so firstly I decided to add more blocks but this took me almost a year to get around to!  With another retreat on the calendar I made the effort to have this ready to assemble there.

Not quite enough blocks

 

Enough blocks and the rows decided upon

 

After getting the rows sewn together I knew it still wasn't quite as large as I wanted so it needed borders, (almost) black borders - I had sufficient of 2 suitable fabrics in my stash so needed to audition them both and choose a final layout:

Squiggly grey on black or black Spraytime by Makower?

Without sashing?

Or with just a thinnish strip to separate the rows?

 

I settled on the squiggly grey on black for the setting and to have thin sashings between the rows.  Off I went to retreat and came home with this:

A flimsy!

I really liked the top I ended up with but had no idea how I was going to quilt it, and it needed thoughtful quilting to help those bright colours sing even louder, but I had an ideal backing and black batting so I even got it pin basted in May 2017 and then it became one of my PIGS (Projects In Grocery Sacks) and matured for another nearly 3 years.  At that point it started whispering to me, first who it wanted to be owned by and then how it wanted to be quilted, yes quilts talk to their makers, no we are not crazy, this is a real thing! So late in 2019 or early in 2020 off it went to my Tuesday quilt group where there were tables big enough for me to lay it out and mark it up for quilting, then covid hit and my quilting mojo decided to go into isolation without me :(

Pin basted

 

Fast forward yet another year and it is finally under the needle of my sewing machine being quilted, and I would really like to get it done in the next couple of months.  

There will be different textures for each colour

I think getting in all quilted in one month may be too ambitious, so my One Monthly Goal for April 2020 is to get all the yellow and purple quilting done with the red and turquoise (or whatever is left) slated for May.

In other news Smokey thinks the weather is nice enough to catch some rays on our Adirondack chairs in the back garden.

What a fast month!

Wow! March seems to have flown by this year, and how is it already over 3 weeks since I posted my One Monthly Goal?  That goal seemed so achievable back then, but life got very busy very quickly - my elder son moved into his first flat (apartment) on his own and he and I went out hunting down affordable pre-owned furniture, I spent a week away working and then was super busy in the lab when I got back. In the meantime the weather has gone from cold to warm and back again, and tonight we expect snow in time for April Fool's Day. There was a brief flash of spring and I found these crocuses in full bloom, not where I had originally planted them but relocated courtesy of the squirrels and/or chipmunks! Flower bulbs rarely remain where I intend in my garden.

Crocuses the day before a heavy rainstorm...

Oh yes, and before I went away I had almost run out of the thread I was using to quilt my OMG quilts.  While away I visited 2 quilt shops neither of whom stocked the thread I wanted but I did buy other thread (in a similar colour way but a different manufacturer) and fabric including what would become the binding and that was on sale :)  When I got home I could not make the new thread work with my machine at all, ordered a free standing spool holder which got lost and a replacement had to be sent out.  However I did find the thread I wanted on-line and that arrived super quickly so I was able to have another go at the quilting and then found that I had not lowered my feed dogs when I had been having all that trouble with the different thread.  My preferred thread behaved just perfectly and tonight, with just a couple of hours of March left, I got the binding on both barn quilts - OMG for March 2021 achieved!!

Two quilts for "Toys for Tots"

There will be more detailed pictures once the quilts have been washed and dried to remove the temporary markings.

Baking also happened this month. Pi day was marked by an out of season batch of mince pies, normally I only make these between 1st December and Twelfth Night, so these were much appreciated as a special treat.

Pi day pies

 

For Christmas my elder son gave me a copy of New World Sourdough by Bryan Ford, so last weekend I made his Bananas Foster loaf and very good it was too!  I shall share photos of more of my attempts at recipes from this book over the coming months.

Sliced bananas on top

Banana-y, buttery, sugary swirl with rum on the inside

Spring Clearing (not cleaning)

After what seems like an endless winter with snow present in our garden from 10th December 2020 (yes that is 12 weeks ago!) the sun is shining brightly, the wind is still cold but the snow is melting, and Spring may be on its way "real soon now".  It will still be a while before the haze of green starts to appear in the woods around us, but I am already hearing birdsong when I awaken in the mornings and the curtains are staying open a little later each evening before I feel the need to shut the darkness out.

Quilter's Depth Gauge, 17th Dec 2020

 

At some point last year my quilting mojo just up and left - I think it had had enough of covid, social distancing, isolation etc.  Wherever it went I hope it had a good time, but I sure did miss it.  I still did some sewing as masks continued to be needed, I made summer pyjama shorts for my menfolk, some shorts and a couple of dresses for myself, but no quilts.  However I am pleased to say my mojo crept back into my life sometime in November 2020 and still seems to be here, which brings me to the real subject of this blog posting - Spring Clearing!

Autumn Leaves Wallhanging - completed Nov 2020

 

Like many (most?) quilters and crafty people I tend to have more than one project on the go at any one time and sometimes those projects that get left behind nag us in the background, sapping our energy for the current project, pushing our guilt buttons because they still aren't being worked on or even finished.  I had too many of those so have been making efforts towards whittling them down a bit so I can get on with more recent(and new) projects with a clearer conscience.

So far as part of my Spring Clearing I have photographed and listed several quilts in my Etsy shop, relisted my hand dyed sock yarns and finished up some nearly done baby quilts and listed those too.  For my younger son I got on with and finished his denim and polar fleece quilt that had been in the works for too long and thanks to USPS it arrived in New Mexico from PA a couple of days before his birthday.  

Today I am working on pin basting two charity quilts for our local quilt guild, I had started these back in June last year when I last updated this blog, yesterday I made the second top and dug out a couple of pieces of polar fleece to back them, getting these quilted and bound is my One Monthly Goal for this month. 

Backing is fleece with pink stars

Pale fawn fleece backing with pastel elephants

I also have a couple of quilts that are destined to be gifts to work on, but can't show photos just yet.  The sooner I get them done, the sooner I can share them with you all.  Another work in progress is my Grassy Creek mystery quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville, I have made all the parts except the outer borders but assembly will have to wait until my living room floor is no longer occupied by my tender plants. In the meantime I did assemble a whole load (240) tiny bonus HST units trimmed off while making one of the clues into a cushion cover featuring some of the other fabrics used in the quilt.

Cushion cover from Grassy Creek trimmings

Constituent parts of Grassy Creek quilt - some assembly required...

I am hoping that the mojo is here to stay for a while and I will get more projects moved from the WIP list to the done list freeing up time and energy for some long standing UFOs (UnFinished Objects) as well as some new ideas.  Meanwhile Smokey is dreaming of better weather to come:

 

Keeping occupied in difficult times

I don't think it matters what your political persuasion is, at the moment these are difficult times for most of us.  The covid-19 pandemic is still bubbling away around the world with its health and economic consequences, the death of George Floyd has also, quite rightly, hit the headlines bringing the actions and attitudes of US police forces to the fore, and with the US presidential election just 5 months away there is no escape from politics on the news and in social media.  All these things, and more, mean that our attention is drawn in many directions at once making it hard to settle to normal day-to-day activities, I know I am still finding it hard to get projects finished, particularly the larger ones. 

For me, my garden is my daily solace right now and I am happy to go out into it each day, see how each new plant has settled in and the progress it is making.  I have tomatoes and peppers starting to bloom, the aubergines (eggplants), melons and cucumbers all seem to be putting on plenty of new growth and the basil seeds that I planted rather late have germinated and will soon be outside in the warm weather.  There are also flowers making colourful splashes from their pots, attracting the bees and other pollinators to my patch and those of my neighbours.

The clement weather and easing of restrictions in Centre County PA has enabled us to have one or two friends over at a time for outdoor dining and conversation, a very welcome change from the quiet months at the start of our lockdown.  This spurred me to complete a (very simple) project - a new tablecloth for our camping table.  The fabric came from fabric.com and was on sale so I purchased sufficient to make some outdoor cushions too.  I think this is a great improvement, don't you?

I made some progress on another quilt for Toys for Tots - this time a crib sized one (there will be two once I am done with them).  I started with these two fabrics and with some careful cutting and a quick hunt in my stash, where I found an Egyptian style wheat ear fabric, made this:

Something that did make me smile this week was hearing that I had won a giveaway from the One Monthly Goal challenge on Elm Street Quilts and yesterday I was delighted to receive my prize from Paper Pieces - 1200 1" hexagons for English paper piecing!  I have been happily wasting time looking at ideas to use them in due course. 

Before I can even think of starting a long term handwork project I must get some other projects of the WIP/UFO list, so for June's One Monthly Goal I shall aim to get all these blocks (from my Feb 2020 OMG...) set on point to form the centre of their quilt.  I am hoping that this will be the spur I need to get this project moving forwards again after it has been derailed by my lack of inspiration and concentration over the last few months.

I shall leave you with a few more pictures of my early June garden, including the radishes which have lots of leaves but no root swelling yet.

Hello Spring, Goodbye Spring!

Spring in the UK is eagerly awaited and lasts for several weeks, in central PA Spring is just as welcome, but if you blink you have missed it!  On 9th May this year we awoke to snow on the ground, our last frost was the night of 13th/14th May, two days later we hit 82F/28C and this last week we have had warm to hot sunny days which means that digging out the air conditioning units is on the jobs list for the week.

I have to confess that over the last week or so I have not even turned on my sewing machine, that spring weather has had me out in the garden!  Some annuals needed to be replaced as they did not like the frost and snow, and that is my own fault as I know that the local rule of thumb is not to plant such things out until Memorial Day.  I took the chance and lost.  However every cloud has a silver lining and needing to replace those plants meant more trips to Lowe's and finding bargains on the plant clearance racks; over a couple of trips I found gerbera daisies, alyssum, lobelia, lavenders in three different shades and two dwarf buddleias with prices ranging from $1 to $5.  After a good watering all have been planted out.

My succulents and my amaryllis have also gone outside for the summer, with our aloe getting its annual repotting and removal of its offshoot babies. I introduce Audrey III and her daughters to you!

When we moved here in 2014 there was a small, rather weedy looking aloe on top of the refrigerator, a bit of care, repotting and an annual summer break being ignored in the garden has done wonders and, to be quite honest, I don't know where she will fit when it is time to bring her back inside in the autumn!

We also grow fruit and veg each summer, mostly in our outdoor hydroponics system but also some in raised beds and containers.  This year I am trying radishes in containers so I can easily ensure that they get sufficient water.

 My sourdough adventures have also continued with rye bread and crumpets made from the "discarded" starter. 
 

The rye bread was dense and flavourful and the crumpets were a great use of the excess starter that would otherwise be thrown away, thanks to King Arthur Flour for the recipe.