careful with the merch!

So I'm plugging away at the values quilts.  I jumped into this project with both feet before realizing that just about every damn intersection in this thing is going to require precision piecing. 

Precision piecing is not my enemy, not at all, but after working for many hours on point after point, I'm ready for a relaxing break dismantling bombs or training porcupines to synchronize swim. 

Or it might be time for a quilt on the theme of wonky rectangles. 

Although they're not all perfect, several have come out as well as I could imagine triangle points in fabric coming out, such as this one:

and that keeps me going. 

It hit me in the middle of this huge pile of point matching that I have no idea how I'm going to quilt these suckers. 

Bah, niggling thoughts for another day. 

Post 200, and a WIP

Howdylee hey, neighborinos!  I've been very, very busy with very, very pressing things.  At the top of the list is procrastinating on binding (really even just finishing the binding of) Cartoon Pinball.  Half the binding is on!  What is wrong with me?  

That procrastination has provided a lot of other things, though, namely:

Whoa!  What's this?  It's a values quilt in blues and greens.  Though my conscious mind is surprised that I've done all this work on a new quilt (or two), the evil homunculus who apparently runs my brain knew this was coming. 

And say, what is that lovely-looking design wall behind it?  Why, it's a huge chunk of batting in the bedroom, which I spontaneously rearranged and annexed for quilting.

Today was a surprise, late-in-the-game but seriously-go-home-now snow day.  I got home around 2, after *not* spending any time lodged in snow banks (yay!) and have been working on this sucker all day.  When I looked up and saw that it was 9:24, I was shocked and simultaneously realized why I'm so hungry. 

Which of course means that instead of eating dinner I should write a blog post. 

Happy weekend!  I plan to crush my to-do list, and I hope you have just as much luck with yours. 

DittenCraft on Etsy

Hey!  So, I opened a shop.  In it, currently, are pincushions:

Of which this is one.  There's a patchwork one that's green and a stripey one that is stripey.  Elegant-stripey, not like crazy-stripey. 

Some handknit socks will go up later today.  And then, maybe next weekend, there will be quilts.  Also, hand tie-dyed baby clothes! 

It's dittencraft.etsy.com.  Check it out!   Let me know if I've spelled anything wrong!

Blocking Shawl and Domain Name Change

First off, here is Icarus!

It is whompin,' even missing the last repeat of the first chart. I'm not sure how to wear a shawl this big, but will definitely figure it out this week. The temperatures have plunged again, and there's now an impressive wind to boot. I'll take nice pictures tomorrow.

Second, I'm moving the blog again (again!) but this time the description should be all-encompassing and won't need to change when I take up tatting or glassblowing or whatever other crazy thing I become obsessed with. After I post this, I will move over to dittencraft.blogspot.com. Please follow me over there for continued chicanery.

And a set.

It's amazing what actually working on stuff will do.

The socks are coming along nicely. So far, I'm really happy with how the pattern's breaking up the pooling.

A prototype

So today the pattern is actually: spend an hour actually doing something, then spend 30 minutes on Etsy killing my confidence that I'll ever sell anything. Good times!




Coasters?! We don't need no stinkin' coasters!

Time to be productive again.

SNOW DAY!!!!!!!

I got up to check conditions, and we've only gotten about 5 inches so far, but it's coming down and there's barely anyone on the road, which means it's probably not getting cleared by all the traffic like it normally would. So I e-mailed work and said, and I quote, "Oh hell no!"* and now I have 10 found hours.

Snow day! Woo! I'm going to liveblog it! No, I'm probably not going to liveblog it. Maybe if it's spectacularly productive. Otherwise it will look a lot like this:

7:20: Ate some Cheerios.

8:03: 4 more rounds done on sock.

10:31: Napped.

10:49: Daytime TV sucks.

et cetera.

This is a great chance to finish Cartoon Pinball, but that's going to take some serious willpower. I might be bad and start something new.


Finally, here's a picture of what should be mountains:



But you can't see the mountains because the snow day is in the way.

I hope that you have a snow day too! Be careful out there!

*this is not a quote