xmas gift in action

C and I received our Christmas gifts early this year.  He got a new 7 string acoustic electric guitar that is pretty amazing.  And hard to find b/c they don’t make them any more.  I got a sewing machine.  It took me forever to pick a brand and style.  There are just too many options out there.  I ended up with a Brother 3700 Pacesetter.  The Brother dealer is close by so if I have any issues or need a class they are just minutes away.  I’m slowly getting used to it and learning its quirks.  I have a hard time loading very full bobbins despite the fact that it’s a drop in bobbin and should be super simple. 

I was able to get a little bit of sewing in while R napped yesterday.  You can see bits of Anna Maria’s flannel here.  It’s so incredibly soft.  It’s also a bit slippery and can be difficult to sew.  I have to go very slow and actually pin in order to get semi straight lines.
It was a short nap day though so once he got up we made his first rice krispie treats.  I added in holiday sprinkles to set the mood.  It’s been years since I’ve had a home made rice krispie treat.  They didn’t disappoint.  And R sure enjoyed licking the spatula.

afghan update

Here’s some pretty Noro pics of my afghan in progress. 
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I had a brief afghan scare a couple weeks ago.  I did some yarn shop searching looking for some holiday sales to buy a few more skein’s of Noro for the afghan.  I discovered that Noro has discontinued both of their sock yarn lines.  PANIC!  I’ve been kind of taking advantage of this project.  Buying the yarn as I went.  Not deciding on the final size of what the afghan should be.  In general just enjoying the project with no deadlines or stress.  Until now.

I did some math to figure out how much was needed for two different sizes.  A smaller 3x4 block afghan and the larger 4x4.  I did some searching and found an online shop with some Noro sock yarn still in their inventory and I ordered 4 more skeins.  That with what I had left over and what Mom has donated to the afghan stash I can make the 3x4 afghan with the border or I can do the 4x4 and get something else for the border.  Maybe some thicker Noro.  I still have room to play and no final choices to make yet.

I do love Noro yarn. 

knucklehead finale

Knucklehead quilt is finished!!!!

And I’m in love with it.  I actually finished it about two weeks ago and every day I love it a little more.  It’s so done and complete and practical.  I think it’s more complete and finished than any of my beaded flowers ever were.  I was never completely happy with the finishing of those.  There was always something missing.  Not with this.  While sewing on the binding everything just came together wonderfully and completely.  I’m thrilled with it.

The fabrics came from my local quilt shop the Quilt Corner in Morton.  They have bundles of fat quarter batiks that I get in trouble with every time I go to this shop.  I fell in love with the bright crazy colors.  While sewing this together it dawned on me that the colors are very autumnish.  Sorta like looking up at a tree with bright yellow and red leaves and seeing the blue sky between the branches.  The back of the quilt is a wonderful orange flannel.  Super soft and cuddly.

The lettering was decided after a few weeks of piecing.  My FIL called R a knucklehead and it just fit.  We don’t really call R that regularly but the majority of the time he is one.  I was very inspired by the Patchery Menagerie for help in the piecing of the letters.  I actually think this was the most fun of the quilt.  I loved the puzzle of putting together the letters and then watching it all come together.  The biggest challenge was picking fabrics that wouldn’t make it difficult to read.

I hand pieced the entire quilt.  And loved it all.  It was relaxing and fun work to do.  I even developed some nice callouses.  I wasn’t too nitty gritty b/c that’s not my style.  So not all the pinwheels meet up perfectly.  But to me that’s part of the charm.  I quilted this with my mom on her machine.  I wanted it machine quilted to help strengthen any fragility that hand piecing might have caused.  I didn’t want it over quilted b/c I wanted the fabrics to be the focus and I wanted the blanket to drape and wrap around R.  We went with a simple diagonal quilt and the quilted around each letter. 

Despite this being my first ok I guess the Rock quilt was my first…Second finished quilt.  I’m going to enter this into the Celebrate Color Contest from Stitched in Color.  Rachel from SIC has been a huge inspiration the last few months while I’ve worked on this and started new projects.  She has amazing patterns and a keen eye for color and design in fabrics.  Not to mention the huge help her tutorials have been.  I was excited that Knucklehead could meet the qualifications for this contest. 

flannel love

My next sewing adventure incorporates some fun flannels.  I’ve been craving Anna Maria Horner’s LouLou collection and when she came out with flannels I had to have some.  I would really love to make some sleeping pants but that’s beyond my sewing level and I’m still hand piecing pretty much everything.  Anyway right now I’m still in the playing mode of figuring how I’m going to do what.  But the flannel is amazingly soft and cuddly.  I bought some solids to compliment them and I’m having a blast putting colors together.

I’m thinking about investing in a sewing machine.  Since this sewing things seems to be taking a bit of a hold on me.  I’ve started shopping around and researching different brands and models.  Any thoughts? tips? stories of machines to get or avoid?

A cold snap has finally come and the trees are now mostly bare and grey.  I’ve been mainly drinking and enjoying wine but I rediscovered Killian’s beer the other day and its a new fave again. 

Tonight we have a babysitter and C and I are going to dinner and a show.  A real show with a stage in a theater.  We got tickets to go see Young Frankenstein.  It’s a fave movie in our house, we know most of the movie by heart.  I’m excited to see if its just a play or if they turn it into a musical too. 
I’ve also gotten C addicted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It’s now our go to show to put on while he’s playing guitar and I’m sewing.  It’s one of my current favorite things to do.

hiatus

I’ve been gone for a while now but definitely haven’t been lazy… 

>The Knucklehead quilt is completely finished now and I am in love!  Pics to come soon. 
>I’ve cooked and canned lots of things pears.  We had an amazing year on our pear trees.  I made pear jam, pear sauce, cinnamon pears, and pear crumble.  I over did the cinnamon on the pear sauce.
>I’ve nearly finished the 8th block on my afghan.  Pics to come soon on this too.  It’s a big slow going project but I’m still loving it.
>Finished R’s halloween costume…he was a little mummy.  I didn’t take into account my stitches would make his clothes a bit smaller.  So he lost a little mobility and if he raised his arms much his belly hung out.  He didn’t seem to mind though.  And we got lots of compliments.  oh well…lesson learned.
>I cooked a bunch of things pumpkin last week.  Pumpkin seeds, pumpkin bread.  I’m not a huge pumpkin person but we all really loved that pumpkin bread.
>I’ve started several xmas related projects, a couple of runners.  Mostly small projects that I hope to finish in time for the holidays. 
>Just wanted to share that I am a live and R made it through his first homemade halloween costume.  hopefully many more to come.

knucklehead

I’ve been busy.  Over the last month I’ve finished piecing R’s Knucklehead quilt.  Today I look for an envelope to send it off to my mom for her to work on the quilting process.  I’m so in love with how it turned out.  I really enjoyed creating the letters.  I was worried that it would be hard to read but I think it’s ok and turned out just right.  The blanket was intended to go to daycare w/ R for a napping blanket.  I think it’ll still go there with him but I’ll miss looking at it.

I’ll also miss working on it.  I only have one block left on my collaboration with Mom quilt and that leaves me high and dry in quilting.  I started R’s halloween costume and my deadline was moved up a bit so I need to finish that up.  I also thought I’d spend some time working on refurbishing my cedar trunk and crocheting my afghan.  But I’m already missing working on a quilt.  Not sure how long I’ll be able to put off working on something new.

rolling in the deep

I’m not much of a music person, I listen to whats on the radio or what C puts on and most of the time that works fine with me.  C sent me a link to this video a few months ago and I watched it over and over while I worked.  Completely just rocking out.  This is the first album I’ve bought in over 5 years.  This is now my fave song to blast in the car with the windows down and belt out the lyrics without caring who hears and what they think.  It makes me happy.

the bugs are itching

I have all kinds of bugs itching me and they aren’t the little black ones you think I’m talking about.  In fact it’s been cool here, really cool, so most of the bugs are gone or going away.  But my red wine bug is waking up, I’m craving a nice zinfandel, and perhaps a syrah.  The cool weather has also got me thinking about camping or at least having a campfire.  R is too young for camping but I like to remember the cool morning waking up in a tent and I look forward to this in the future.  I have a combo bug of really wanting to finish my two quilting projects or at least get them to the point of basting.  That is my goal before I start two other projects that are itching to get going.  One is Ryker’s halloween costume.  There’s a deadline for that one so I’m really being to think about it.  The other is a Christmas project w/ some fun Christmas fabric I found.  A recent email from N in Germany reminded me that I wanted to learn to knit cables and I would like to knit R a winter hat.  Not sure that’ll get done but the itch is there.

Finally I have the bug to cook.  Two weekends ago in Chicago at Mom’s we canned up her huge harvest of tomatoes.  We just canned them whole so that they can be used for sauce or soup or chili or whatever.  We also pickled her harvest of green beans.  That’s what’s in the two photographs.  With the very cool weather this week I’ve given up hope that my many tomatoes will turn red.  So I’ve picked them green and plan to make more green tomato chutney.  It’s quite good so not all is lost.  With the few tomatoes that did turn red I made a tomato sauce that I used with spaghetti the other day.  It was fabulous.  Also we discovered that our pear trees did marvelous this summer.  Nice big pears with very few blemishes.  I’m not sure if its b/c we pruned this summer or what.  Wednesday I picked a ton of pears, gave some to the neighbors and still have pounds of pears left.  I’m hoping to make some pear sauce similar to apple sauce.  I want to make some pear jam.  Maybe candy up some pears.  Pear bread to freeze for later.  Or I could do a pie.  I have a lot of pears but in reality not a ton of time.  We’ll see how much gets done and how good it is.  These pears aren’t really flavorful, but they are very crisp, so they need help with the sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla to make them taste good.
That’s my plan for the next few days and over a week or so.  We’re keeping busy and have lots of fall plans.  I’m happy fall is here, I feel my bones relaxing in the cool weather with the smell of leaves in the air. 

another inprogress

This is the other project I’ve been working on lately.  It’s 90% hand pieced but when I went home last weekend I used mom’s sewing machine to put the big pieces together.  I’m not quite done with the piecing yet.  I plan to add another line with wording.  But the last couple nights I’ve spent working on blocks for Mom and mine’s quilt.  I have two new blocks in progress for that.  Anyway when this quilt is finished it will go w/ R to day care for his napping blanket. 

Later today we head back up to Chicago.  C and I and friends are spending a night in the city and then headed to the Bears game on Sunday.  I’m bringing my holga in hopes for some inspiration.  Either way though it should be a really good time. 

quilt update

We spent a lot of time discussing quilts, fabric, plans, ideas, and layouts for hexes this weekend.  It was great!  Mom snapped some pics with her fancy iphone b/c I’m lazy about my camera.  Thought I’d show some progress reports. 

Mom’s kinda kicking my butt on block progress but if you put all the blocks together we’re over half way done.  We decide to add two more rows before calling it done.  So we each will make 5 more blocks.  I have lots of ideas but am not really sure where to start.  We’re both really happy with how balanced it looks when all put together.  And you can definitely tell our different styles and yet they seem to work.  Can you tell which blocks I made?  For one of Mom’s last blocks she decided to write the date.  Turned out really cool.