I really must finish those socks...

-.. but hey look, a squirrel (chipmunk, groundhog, rabbit, hummingbird, blue jay, other crafts, car issues, gardening etc.etc.)  Excluding knitting this month has been unexpectedly productive as I have made a dress for me, a shirt for my husband, cut out a pair of shorts and a jacket for me too.  The first sock was finished on June 12th and I got the second one cast on pretty soon after that but then, as I said, I got distracted.  

Near the start of the month I went to Florida for work - that is when I got the first sock completed and thought I was doing well with plenty of time to get the second done by the end of June. But life had other ideas: our elder son came home for Father's Day weekend with us during which he was going to change the rear suspension strut in his car but it turned out he had a shock not a strut so borrowed our main car for the week and ordered the correct part, which UPS promptly lost in transit, so our trip to the Pittsburgh area last weekend did not involve swapping cars back over as expected. Nevertheless we did get together with elder son for his dad/my husband's birthday together with some friends we hadn't been over to see since before Christmas! As my car has an oil leak (part now in hand to fix that) we rented a car from Avis and I also had an upgrade code, so my husband came home last Friday in a Camaro for the weekend which he had lots of fun driving, but we both decided we would not want one for our daily driver.  While at the western end of the state I dropped of my Orca Bay quilt for edge-to-edge quilting with Sheila from Longarm Love, so we managed to get quite a lot packed into the weekend.  Normally I would knit in the car on this sort of journey but the ride in the rental was not conducive for me to do that this time without suffering from motion sickness.

This week the (replacement) right part arrived and the suspension is now fixed ready for elder son to come home for the holiday weekend and after that the correct vehicles will be in the correct places, but fingers crossed that the new seals and gasket sort out my Mini's fluid retention (or lack thereof) problem.

Our plants are doing well in the hydroponics system and we have baby peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers getting bigger each day now. The basil plants still need to go in or there will be no fresh pesto this summer...

Oh that second sock? Well I woke up today realising it was the last day of the month and I needed to get a move on with the foot and the toe, so in between washing and hanging out to dry my two big duvets, and being distracted by the tennis at Wimbledon, I got it done today!  My One Monthly Goal for June has been achieved and I am inordinately pleased that my stripes match so well.

A busy patch

Wow! Two months since I last posted, sorry to be so lax on the blog frint.  Since then I have been back to the UK with my elder son and his girlfriend for his graduation ceremony at the University of Swansea.  The weather was wet and windy so photo opportunities were limited, but here he is in his finery:

Looking back at my photos I can see that I managed to finish making some boxers ...

... a quilt top, which is also now marked and pin basted ready for quilting ...

 ... helped my husband make sausages ...

... got my leg on the wrong side of one of these ...

Ouch! But all is OK now.

I also caught and recovered from covid - thank goodness for vaccinations and boosters, did some more knitting ...

... and have more knitting and sewing underway.

I would like to be able to state quilting the black/blue/purple/turquoise quilt as my One Monthly Goal for June, but have to be honest with myself and face up to it being unlikely given work and travel commitments already in place.  So I am making myself a pair of Cozipeds socks out of Knit Picks Felici Worsted as a test piece to see how much yarn they really take before making some more for gifts.  Mine are in the Zen colourway, a soothing range of blues and I am setting completing these (all ends woven in too) as my OMG for June 2022.  Here is the first sock more than halfway done:

Blue and Yellow

It has been a busy month: 

My version of Bonnie Hunter's Orca Bay is ready to go out for quilting! Started in November 2011, to be completed in 2022, so my OMG was achieved  Most of those little sawtooth triangles for the final pieced border were already cut and I had the perfect neutral fabric for the inner border in my stash, I also added a narrow black border to ensure there was no risk of losing any of my points when I get to sewing on the binding.

I finished my husband's Christmas socks, Christmas 2022, but better late than never.

I caught up on my Stash Busters 2022 blocks - in fact I am very slightly ahead as I know I won't get to sew in the first week or so of April.

I did some snow dyeing too - one of the big pieces will be going off with Orca Bay to become its backing.

So did I start more projects? Yes of course I did. 

My knitting guild hosted their For The Love of Fiber festival so I bought more yarn and started in on a pair of blue and yellow socks (Ukraine colours). This is Youghiogheny Yarns Highland Sock yarn.  Next year's FtLoF will be on Saturday 18th March 2023 at the Ramada in State College PA.

 

And a Ukraine colours sunflower cushion cover is well under way. The pattern is by Vanessa Goertzen of Lella Boutique.

There are other projects on the back burner too, maybe some will get some progress made on them in April.

Just the colours I feel driven to use

Current world events are pretty grim at the moment (that is British English for downright dreadful) with the completely unprovoked, unwarranted and illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine.  There are many reports and videos demonstrating the indomitable Ukrainian spirit and I know that many quilters are choosing to work in blue and yellow to signify the colours of the Ukrainian flag and national flower - the sunflower.  Once again this month I want to work on a project that has been "resting", this time Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt from autumn 2011 - Orca Bay, pattern available in her String Fling book. Bonnie's original quilt was made in blacks, reds, blues and neutrals, mine is in blacks, blues, yellows and neutrals, so what languishing project could be more appropriate to pull out and get done this month.

Bonnie Hunter's original Orca Bay - 2011/12 Mystery Quilt

My version as I had left it

 

In early 2012 I had got as far as assembling the main part of the quilt top and then ran out of steam, so I really don't have a lot to do to get the quilt top finished. This one will get sent out for long-arm quilting so my One Monthly Goal for March 2022 is to get this top finished up and sent out (or ready to send out) for quilting.  Packed away with the main section are most or all the little bits for making the borders.  My first task is to remove the remaining foundation papers from the string blocks, this would have been easier before assembling the quilt top, but then I would have been dealing with a lot of stretchy bias edges so I made my sewing both easier and harder!  Of course no work on one of my quilts is without my "helper"

In other news my amaryllis have been blooming giving a bright burst of colour - this photo was taken a couple of weeks ago but the second flower spikes have opened on each of these bulbs.

This last weekend was warm, in fact I was outside in my t-shirt raking leaves and looking forward to the arrival of spring, so maybe there will soon be splashes of cheerful colour outdoors as well as in.

Twenty years and done!

I knew I had started the current project a long time ago so I did a search of old messages from the rec.crafts.textiles.quilting newsgroup and found a posting I made mentioning it in April 2002, so yeah, 20 years... 

Snakes and Ladders (aka the black and white monster) is now finished! All quilted and bound (but not yet labelled - so is it really finished?) and in the washing machine to remove construction/quilting markings and dust and cat fluff of past and present.  My quilts all go through my washer and dryer - I can't be doing with something that needs super special care.  There were blue washable markings from 20 years ago on it that seemed to vanish OK when I dabbed them with tap water, so fingers crossed that everything washes out fully now.

Here is a proof of completion picture that I took before committing it to the laundry process.

Six ladders with feather and pebble quilting, nine snakes with five different patterns inspired by Native American snake designs, and a whole lot of black stippling on black fabric.  The feathers, pebbles and snakes were quilted with YLI White to Black machine quilting thread, the stippling with Aurifil black and I used The Bottom Line in black in the bobbin.  The batting is Warm and Natural.  Because of the dens quilting in the ladders the fabric was starting to draw up a bit so to prevent grief and puckers I decided to break the "rules" and after I had done the ladders I quilted the borders and added the binding before going on to quilt the final black sections in the quilt centre, it seemed to work - I haven't found any egregious pleats or the like on the back yet.

At the beginning of the month I set this as my One Monthly Goal and am delighted to be able to join the link up party for goals achieved!

Feathers and pebbles

Over the last two weeks I have made steady progress on my current quilt and have completed the feathers and the pebbles in the ladder sections. The pebbles were particularly challenging as it is very hard to see where you have already sewn with black/white/grey thread on black/white/grey fabric! I must have been crazy to decide on that colour scheme or I love my husband very much to indulge his monochrome preference in décor or, most likely a bit of both. On Sunday I took the quilt into his workplace while he was in and laid the whole shebang out on the big tables in one of the meeting rooms with lovely natural light.  

This was so that I could mark my quilting ideas for the spaces in between the ladders and in the borders.  As I was marking on plain black fabric I used a Clover white marking pen which I really like for this purpose. The "ink" is essentially a wax which shows up as the ink dries and disappears with a warm iron or moisture and does not have any chemical effect on the fabric.  The name of the pattern I used was Snakes and Ladders so having quilted my ladders now I am doing the snakes taking my inspiration from Native American art.

Today I added some extra pin basting along those edges to help prevent fabric shift and unwanted pleats, of course I had help for this activity!

With one full weekend yet to go in February I still hope to get this oldest UFO/WIP done by the end of the month.

A Belated Update and a Very Mature UFO

This is definitely a very occasional blog and often I seem to write when I am trying to make sure I don't let a project slip (back) into being a UFO (unfinished object).  I did get Christa's Colors finished last year and gifted it to my elder son's girlfriend for Christmas.  Here it is all finished, with some detail pictures too.

Last week I pulled out what is probably my oldest UFO to turn it back into a WIP.  I am not sure exactly when I started this but it was certainly well before we moved to the States in 2014, and from searching old posts from rec.crafts.textile.quilting it would appear that I was working on it in September 2002!!!  The pattern came from a book called "Quick Quilts to Make in a Weekend", a misnomer for sure, but I was suckered in by the title.  Once I had made the quilt top and sandwiched I was frozen into inaction by not knowing how to quilt it as it deserved.  Many years of piecing and quilting later I have acquired the skill set I needed then (probably could have done this some time ago but...) and also the confidence not to get hung up on imperfections that will not affect the functionality of the finished quilt.  My FMQ (free motion quilting) is definitely more controlled and I have started in on it.  Now my aim is to get it finished this month, so I am declaring it as my One Monthly Goal for February 2022.  Here it is under the needle last week and as it was earlier today after doing one of the six 6 foot long free form feathers and with the infill quilting on one side of the feather.

A google search on "free form feather quilting" led me to this site which has inspired me to do fill-in quilting between the feathers and the white bars.