The Psychology of the Sockyarn Blankie

I've got a pile of projects on the needles - a stocking for baby, a lace pattern blanket for baby in a linen-cotton blend, a Citron Shawl for my supervisor (who, when unbeknownst to her I am staring down about 8 more rows of 500+ sts ruffled edge, remarks to someone how jealous she is of my handknit armwarmers - arg), a separate pile of Christmas knitting, etc. - and all I can think about at this moment is my Sockyarn Blankie. The blankie I started years ago and have been chipping away at here and there for what seems like eons. The blankie I resolved to make out of approximately 847 separate squares and then magic together somehow when the time came, in the oh-so-far distant future. 

 

The future is now! Well, I want the future to be now. It's not, really. Of course it's not, did you see the list I just made of stuff with actual deadlines? Also, I will need to obtain about half a pound of black sockyarn, possibly more, although half a pound seems like a good start. I've got my eye on some, but haven't made my move yet. I've got a good quorum of sockyarn squares - last count was about 90, which doesn't seem like a lot compared to others' 800-square blankies, but a) my squares are a bit bigger than these, I think, and b) I'm not going for a twin size, I'm going for a throw that I can fit under if I tuck myself into the most compact fetal position I can muster. Right now the squares are laid out and are about fetal position size, and that will grow a bit when the black edging/connecting/crochetmagic happens.

So, I got out the squares and used my now-pretty-much-unused office to lay them out beautifully on the floor and assess where we are, and then I got out a bunch more sockyarn ends that I can use to create more squares. And it turns out that recently I have violated my long-held rule of making absolutely sure that I would have enough yarn left over for at least one blankie square before finishing a pair of socks. Twice. No, three times. This means that, horrors, I'm going to have two different sockyarns in a single blankie square. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Also, I can't find the rest of a ball I used to make my mom a pair of socks about two years ago, which is driving me crazy.

I blame all this on the addition to my life - no, the swallowing of my life - by the babychild. It was miraculous enough to be finishing a pair of socks that something had to give, and sockyarn blankie considerations are what fell by the wayside. We've gotten through the period during which the babychild had to be held - by me and only me - every waking second. This is a huge victory and allows for more knitting than the furtive middle-of-the-night, in-the-dark Citron sessions that were happening a few months ago. There was a very small window between the Holding All the Time period and the Eager Drooling Living-Room-Destroying Chaos Vortex Baby Godzilla phase, which I hear doesn't end until they're about 18. Or 4, maybe someone told me 4. Let's go with 4.

So now I can knit three stitches after removing the remote from the babychild's mouth, then another four as she goes for the bookshelf, then a few more after removing a paperback from her surprisingly-coordinated hands. There's actually a lag between when she obtains something that shouldn't go in her mouth and when she decides to put it into her mouth, so that buys me a few stitches. If I play my dinner card right, I can let her throw stuff out of the high chair for several minutes and knit in between bites. Some ground prep, like filling the coffee table with objects that are both throwable and put-in-mouth-able, buys me at least 60 seconds, although I still have to be vigilant for flying debris and accidental faceplanting.

 

 

So there is more knitting happening, but it is much more harrowing and exciting. Amidst all of this, I'm standing there thinking, Yes. Now is the time to finish SockYarn Blankie and revel in its sentimental glory. Which, if you've been following at home, you can clearly see is completely unrealistic.

Also completely unrealistic: the idea that the blankie can be finished now - today! - and also include ALL of my sockyarn, even the stuff I haven't made into socks yet. Because that yarn is part of my yarn story, perhaps even more dwelled-upon than the sockyarn I've already used to make socks out of. How many ideas have I had for what to make my STR Falcon's Eye into? A skrillion. I can't have a sockyarn blankie without the Falcon's Eye! And yes, I believe I did just type the words "my yarn story." I haven't slept for 8 hours straight for over a year, people*. It's a miracle I'm still using punctuation.

 

ANYWAY, here's another weird thing that's happening. You know how people (nutritionists, doctor people, commercials for speed, whathaveyou) use that barrel and hose metaphor to illustrate the set point for your level of body fat to explain why diets don't work? I've never quite understood exactly how that barrel and hose worked, but I do now realize that there's totally a similar set point for sockyarn stash. Because I've done serious feats of stash strength by using up three skeins of sockyarn that have been available to be knit up for literally like 5 years, and now all I can think about is needing to replace it. There are over 20 other skeins to make into socks, and my finished socks to stash ratio has still been dropping given the lovely willingness of my mother to give me piles of sockyarn as gifts, and not having the Brick and Turquoise in my stash anymore has me feeling like I missed a meal. Noooo, self! Drill that hole lower in the barrel, or whatever metaphorical thing that would make sense in this analogy!

 

Clearly the answer is that I need to knit up 20 pairs of socks and then finish the sockyarn blankie. And the stocking, the primo heirloom lace blanket, the smashing Christmas gifts, and the Supervisor Citron. Perhaps a padded room for Baby Godzilla is in order, although after ten minutes she'd probably just eat her way through the door.

 

 

*Literally. This is real, I'm being real about this. No period of sleep lasting at least 8 hours for OVER A YEAR. Fear my giddy, non-sensical logic! Fear it!

Thaw My Stash

I've mentioned before how half the fun of knitting is thinking about and planning which yarns to pair with which patterns, and this is especially true of sock yarn because you don't really have to worry about yardage.  But  I've been acquiring yarn at a faster rate than I can knit it, and it's gotten to the point where I think "but if I knit that, I won't have it in my stash anymore!"  And that's crazy.  So, we're not stopping with the Fleece Artist Melon from 2007, and if I'm to come anywhere close to success with the 26 Pair Plunge, more stash is going to need to move on into the next phase of existence, i.e. sockdom.

Sock Knitters Anonymous has "Knit All in Red" as its challenge for this month's Sockdown, and I just happen to have a beautiful skein of Brick in BMFA lightweight that's been chilling in the stash for at least 5 years.  So now is the time.

Now is also the time for Christmas knitting, especially given the fact that I really have lamentably little time to knit these days.  Oof, I miss it.  There are extravagant plans in the works for Christmas, and there's more time to think about knitting than to actually knit.  In desperation, I've considered pulling out the sock on the commute to work, but don't worry, I didn't.  (The drive is so short it wouldn't be worth it.)

Here are two strikingly similar tales:

One: I worked my fingers off last night finishing the Menehune Cobblestone Slogs I'd started in black yarn for Other back in May.  It was August, the month of finishing SIPs for SKA.  I finished weaving the last ends in at 11:53pm on the last day of August and pulled out the laptop to post a finished pic in triumph.  And of course the internet wasn't working.  I restarted the computer, troubleshot, cursed August, and generally anguished, the clock struck midnight, and I went to bed having failed.  Got up this morning, noticed that the wireless button on the keyboard was orange when it's usually white, pushed it, and viola: internet.  Steempy, you idiot! I said to myself.

Two: I chose to compete in the Ravellenic Games with this WIP from a zillion years ago (well, 2008.)  I finished the knitting, wove the strands, finished more knitting, wove in a billion ends, wet-blocked it, then a) didn't post it for a prize, and b) realized that this is so scratchy that I won't ever be able to wear it around my neck, which is unfortunate given that it's a scarf.  And that for the amount of work in it, I could've made an afghan instead. 

The yarn is part alpaca, which I don't really get along with, even supposed baby alpaca.  Perhaps that's the part that makes it seem scratchy to me?  Perhaps this would feel like the pelts of baby bunnies to a normal person?  I don't know.  I may bathe it with some conditioner (which has tamed even Jamieson's Sheltand Spindrift, which I thought was impossible) and put it up for sale. 

Finally, in a story not thematically tied to the first two through incompetent boobery, I have finished another reeeeeaaally old Work In Progress:

and the dog says thank you very much.  The squares are from our old clothes, the back is part of an old sheet that one of the dogs put a big hole in many years ago, and the batting is the nice puffy, lofty stuff I use for dog blankets these days.  (Our dogs are old.)  Much of my free crafting time the last couple of weekends has gone towards repairing the other dog blankets I've made because they've taken a beating recently.  Luckily, I love how patches look.  And I hope that many years from now, the quilts I've made that actually follow the conventions of good quilting are the ones that survive, because I was seriously just making up techniques and going with "I Have 10 Minutes to Fix This" Chic for some of this stuff. 

Now to finish the laundry before Baby wakes back up.  Yay for naps! 

Baby + Blanket

She likes it!  Of course, it helps that she's at an age that she likes just about anything that she can cram in her mouth and has not yet discovered that she can express color preferences, so I figure I'll enjoy this while I can.  This quilt is cheery and a nice size, and it doesn't match the beautiful nursery my family help me put together the least bit, not even with the biggest stretch of imagination. 

Okay, let's see, what else.  I finished socks!   Here they are! 

They are lovely, they fit, and I'm sure they'll be nice and snuggly warm when the time comes for them.  (I WIN, SOCKS, HAHAHAHAHAHA.) 

And then, oh, ha, this is funny.  You know how I have pretty much no time, what with the job and the baby and meeting the basic necessities of living what's considered a civilized life these days?  Well, I thought that this would be the opportune time to commit myself to the 26 Pair Plunge.  This is as opposed to the 52 Pair Plunge (a pair of socks a week for a year).  See?  Sane!  In comparison. 

It started 7/1/12, so I'm actually kind of on-track-ish, having just finished my third pair of socks.  Observe:

These are Hedgerow Socks, which have been in my queue since 2007.  They are made with yarn that's been in my stash on Ravelry since August, 2007 and thus likely even longer than that, considering that that's the month I joined Rav. (It's Fleece Artist in Sea Wool, colorway Melon, although it's the lightest Melon I've ever seen - others look much darker.) 

Game plan for the remaining 23 pairs involves more pretty simple rib patterns, ancient stash yarn, and then, if necessary, finishing pairs-in-progress that have been abandoned for various reasons, and then, if true desperation sets in, baby socks. 

And one more thing.  I spent my glorious Birthday Me-Time making a little tag blankie for the babe: 

I threw everything I had at this thing, and it turned out pretty well.  (That's faux-Minky, terrycloth, some batik, yarn, and several different kinds of ribbon and blanket edging.)   It's backed with a blue plaid from a pair of pajama pants I had and loved in high school (packrat stash for the win!).  If I ever get to see my sewing machine again, I might make a couple more to put in my Etsy shop. 

Okay, baby's hungry, I'm out! 

I'm back, baby!

Where have I been?  Thanks for asking!  I've been off having my ass handed to me by a sock.  Well, a pair of socks.  That makes it better somehow. They are ganging up on me. 

And I had a baby!  Yay!  She is lovely and wonderful and my whole life has changed and whereas before I could put up a decent fight with a pattern and come out generally whole and with a successful pair of socks on the other side, now...  my defenses are down.  I've only recently been getting enough sleep to function relatively normally, and it's been months (7, I'd say) since I got 8 hours of decent, uninterrupted sleep, and hey!  Sleep good!  Sleep make orooni function like person!  So.  Now knitting a pair of socks is a bloody, protracted battle with many long, dark nights of the soul and froggy froggy frogs and despair and wabu sabi and all the rest. 

Looks pretty, doesn't it?  Oh, it would, the filthy sneak.  That picture was taken in a moment where I'd won many battles and, in a horrifying moment, turned around and realized I'd accidentally invaded Canada.  Or something.  And the Canadians are all like why, why are you doing this to us, and I'm all like, there!  Take that!  Roar!  And then I realized that the sock would be way too long if I kept up in this direction, given that the triangle-y stockinette part was nowhere near close to being done but the cuff was bordering on too long.  And then I had to, like, give back a bunch of Canadian towns and build hospitals and release statements about regrettable actions and convince everyone not to bicker and argue about 'oo killed 'oo, etc.  Or, non-metaphorically, rip out a bunch of the sock. 

And doing that was very painful and difficult for me, because I had used a lot of car ride time (just about the only knitting time in the first 4 months or so of baby's life) and 96% of my available brainpower on getting to this point.  So I took a picture before frogging, to make myself feel better.  And from this vantage point, the point at which I have finished all but the grafting on both socks, the above picture doesn't really look all that impressive, but that knitting was hard-won.  I had knit that sock and was wearing clean-ish clothes and the baby was fed.  WINNING. 

Only not, because I wasn't shooting for thigh-highs. 

Also, there was a sickening moment about halfway through one foot where I decided to try on one sock and thought that perhaps if it didn't fit somehow I'd probably give up knitting.  It did, though, thank the muses. 

So, I frogged this sock after knitting 1 1/2 repeats of the first chart because I read a bunch of comments on project pages and decided to knit a S instead of a M (60 sts instead of 66) and agreed that the M seemed very big and stretchy.  And then I ripped out another whole repeat of the first chart, on both socks, because the cuff was coming out too long. 

And pretty much the only reason I kept going on these was because I love this yarn, think it's the prettiest yarn on the planet, and already had partially knit it into socks that didn't make it onto their own project page and I didn't want to be beaten by a second pattern with the same yarn.  

Am I still talking about these socks?  I am?  Sorry.  Also, I haven't taken a more recent picture and there's a baby asleep across my lap so this is not a very exciting entry.  And I haven't even linked the socks.  So here.  These are Solid Socks Mystery Feb/Mar 2011.  Barring a terrible, unthinkable disaster, I will graft their toes sometime in the next week. 

Okay, here are some socks:



These are Hermione's Everyday Socks, kind of - I didn't even read the pattern for things like ribbing, heel, or toe instructions because right now I'm functioning in a world where anything outside of my heel stitch heel flap and normal normal normal sockmaking means that the designer probably wants me to die.  If there's arch shaping, it's because they want me to suffer deeply before I die. 

Uh-oh.  Babychild's awake, which means that it's time to get ready for bed.  More to come, now that I remember that I have a blog. 

Happy New Year!

I feel like I've been knitting away, yet have barely finished anything. However, the fact that I've also been neglecting the knitting blog for a long time means that I've finished enough to justify a post.

So first! Here is the Sunny Baby Blanket (ravelry link) that I made for a friend who was due near the beginning of December but had her baby much closer to the middle of December:

The pattern was easy and quick, which was just what I needed.  The yarn is KnitPicks Swish Worsted in Caribbean, a color that I believe is discontinued.  I got it from another raveler in a very sweet deal.  I'd heard negative things about Swish, so I'd never used it before, but this is a baby born in December in the Northeast, and I wanted wool rather than the Crayon (cotton) or Shine (cotton/modal) that is my normal go-to for baby blankets.  I did not love the number of bad joins and knots in every single ball of the stuff, but it spit-felted well enough and it was a good enough deal that I can't complain too much. 

I machine washed and tumbled dry in the way I expect the recipient to care for it, and was very surprised at how nicely it came out of the dryer.  It was stringy-feeling and limp and thin-looking after it went through the wash, but the dryer fixed it up nicely and the pattern pops a lot more now than it did before washing. 

The problem with giving away all these baby blankets is that it's hard to know how well the yarns I use actually hold up.  I hope they look good for a long time, but I'm not sure I'd hear about it if they didn't. 

A project I'm determined to finish this weekend is my Night Owl Mittens:

which are actually a lot further along than this picture would have you know.  Both mitten bodies are done and I conquered one thumb today.  If my luck holds, I may have a FO shot tomorrow, although they probably won't be blocked yet. 

These are going to be a gift for a coworker who has handed-us-down a TON of baby stuff so far, with promises of more to come.  We're very grateful for this, and because I'm a rather socially awkward knitter, I'm choosing the "say it with mittens!" response.  This is very similar to the "say it with socks!" response, but with fewer sizing problems.  (I hope.) 

The pattern calls for one ball each of MC and CC palette.  I made a pair a couple years ago with Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift Something Something, and needed two balls of each color, so I got two balls of each palette color, and unless something truly crazy happens with the second thumb, I definitely could've gotten away with only one ball of each, despite lengthening the ribbed cuff.  Whoops.  Anyone want to trade a couple balls of palette for a couple of different balls of palette?  The colors are black and whirlpool. 

Also, the first pair I made were too small for me but fit my mom perfectly, so once I'm done with these, I'm casting on ANOTHER pair in a nice dark red and oatmealy sort of heather.  Because despite having knit for years and years, I don't have a decent pair of actual mittens. 

These mittens have helped me confirm that I love colorwork and hate thumbs. 

There's lots of other stuff on the needles or ready to be finished, but I don't have good pictures, so maybe there will be more tomorrow.  Hope your new year is safe and warm!

GAH

I was all excited to come on here and say hey, I finished the Neverending Baby Blanket!  Because I thought I'd finished the Neverending Baby Blanket.  Turns out, during its photoshoot, I found six more (six!) (more!) mistakes in it.  In a baby blanket consisting of a 3x3 rib row and a resting row.  Six more.  The "more" there implies that there were some there before, and correctly, because yes, there were, and they took me HOURS to fix.  Hours because of course they were on about the 20th row of a zillion-row blanket.  Are these Six More mistakes also on about the 20th tow of a zillion-row blanket?  Of course they are.

So now I get to unpick the bindoff (for the second time, actually - I BO way too early before because I didn't realize how wide the blanket was turning out, and couldn't handle a squat-rectangle-shaped blanket) and spend more hours (probably six) dropping a stitch down a meelion rows of knitting and picking it back up.

Self, what happened on Row 20?  Why have you not looked closely at Row 20, a row you knew to be problematic, until after you bound off for the second time?

See the mistakes? The really freaking obvious ones?  Sigh.  There goes my afternoon.

Hey Orooni, you haven't posted for a while, surely there is some other stuff you've screwed up royally in the last month or so, isn't there?

Of course, dear reader.  Let us turn to the Thank-You Hat.

As awesome as this picture is, I fear it doesn't hide the ladder, the strange misshapenness of the pom-poms, and - well, it may hide the weird hugeness.  (A new camera entered my life, and although I have figured out how to take terrible pictures with it, sometimes it does well in spite of me.  This color, for example, is dead-on.)

Also, this hat is for a boy.  And I'm telling myself that it's red, not pink, but it might be pink, and really I should probably stop thinking about it.

So, a friend of Other's e-mailed us up one evening and asked if we'd like tickets to a David Sedaris reading that night.  HECK YES, we would like them, so we picked up the tickets and went and it was awesome and the tickets had obviously been expensive and so we wanted to do something nice for the friend.  They couldn't use the tickets themselves because they couldn't get a babysitter for their (adorable) 14-month-old, so the obvious answer here was to knit something cute for the kiddo.

After a quick trip to the local-ish yarn store, I was armed with a lovely skein of (superwash) Malabrigo Rios in Ravelry Red.  And the Pompom Bear hat knit up quickly on size 9 needles, and also it unfortunately knit up huge on size 9 needles.  Quick test, yes it does fit my head, my head is probably much bigger than a 14-month-olds, ergo: froggy frog frog. 

CO the next smallest size.  Knit knit knit, halfway done, wait this is still huge, froggity frog frog frog.

Go down 2 needle sizes.  CO same size as last time.  Knit knit knit, yes, this looks like the right size, onto the pompoms.

Lesson: pompoms kind of suck, and pompoms made out of slippery superwash yarn are ridiculously easy to pull apart.  Ergo: this gift is terrible, an embarrassment really, and why is this stupid yarn so slippery and drapey and GROW A SPINE, YARN, and really, I've been knitting for seven years and am being thoroughly pwned by a baby hat.

I would say, self, stick to baby blankets, but we've seen how those go.  

That was the low point.  I quit knitting for about a week in protest, then pulled it together, used a surgeon's knot in sewing thread and a surgeon's knot in non-superwash malabrigo in a similar color to cinch the pompoms as much as possible, sewed in the ends, blocked it, and shipped it off to the recipient, who is lovely and gracious and who refrained from saying any mean and obvious things about the hat to Other's face.  Yayyyy, victory.


Here is a dramatic shot of the Rufus Textured Cardigan I'm making out of KP Swish DK in Sugarplum.

This is all the progress I made during my 3-hour gestational diabetes torture test, which of course I had to frog once I realized that my gauge was off.  I'm now knitting it on much smaller needles, so good news!  It will be windproof! If, of course, I ever finish it.  There are lots of steps involved - seaming, decreasing at regular, predictable intervals, producing parts knit to specific lengths and widths - all of which are more taxing than making a stupid pompom or several feet of 3x3 rib.  Maybe if I live long enough it will be finished in time for a great-grandchild. 

Anyway, I passed the GD test with flying colors, so at least my pancreas is doing something right. 

Uhhhh... hi.

Hey!  I'm not dead!  I am in fact, the opposite, filled with life both in that my body remains animate for now and I'm also pregnant. 

Yeah!  So, there's that, which ate all of my knitting energy, most of my working energy, and a good portion of my being-awake energy for a good 3 1/2 months there.  Blogging energy was apparently the first to go, which might be good because my posts would mainly have consisted of the word "BLUHHHH" over and over again. 

And!  I took up spinning!  Spinning happened some, for a while, but then got put down for yet another move, the fourth in four years (this has got to stop), and right now I can hardly stand up because my left thigh has essentially given out after walking up and down flights of stairs elebenty thousand times over the last three days.  (Right thigh is fine - I don't really understand that.) 

My camera died yesterday, as I was trying to take pictures of the sparkly gloriousness that is the apartment we moved out of and cleaned within an inch of its life.  So, you can't see the sock that is sapping my will to ever use Noro yarn again (it's Silk Garden Sock, and I truly hate it, pretty colors be damned).  But here's a picture of my second spinning attempt, which I took a while ago:

My output's gotten a lot thinner than this, and a bit more regular, although it's nowhere close to actually being uniform. 

So.  Here I am to say that I'm back, but without pictures and with one measly sock that's taking a million forevers because the yarn is evil.  Yay! 

Fallow

When my quilting mojo left, I turned to crochet to keep on being productive.  And voila, after four tries at the circular base, we now have water bottle cozy:

I haven't road-tested it yet, because of the holiday, but we will see tomorrow how it works.  I'm not sure about it, in terms of functionality.  It definitely is pretty, though.

I've got a million mindless socks on the needles, which is good in that I don't waste much sitting-around-waiting time, but not much for blog fodder.  The more complicated socks on the needles are temporarily abandoned.

This stole, Lump de Lump (actually One Skein - A Stole!), occupies that hazardous land between being interesting and being mindless.  Which is to say, it's kind of boring.  

In my effort to feel productive this weekend, it's gotten a lot of play and is probably over halfway done.  I think it will be lovely once it's finished and I can wear it (which of course won't be for about five months), but for now it's the project that I work on because I need something to work on.  One small problem with it is that I suspect that it will block to a much different size than it is now, but in which direction and how much, precisely, is difficult to guess.  So I'm not sure when, exactly, to stop. 

I went through my favorited patterns on Ravelry in order to move some stuff over to my queue, and ended up with a rash of pretty shawls on page six.  Perhaps one of those will move me to pick up the needles and cast on something new. 

Until then, wishing you better mojo than lives at my house right now. 

And now for something completely different.

Well, first is the better picture of the last thing:

And now for something completely different.

I'm considering taking up spinning, but haven't committed yet.  So the next best thing, within easier reach at the moment, is crochet.  I've finished one successful baby blanket and have a gigantic crochet blanket going that's not going to be finished anytime soon.  I've wanted to try out amigurumi for a long time, but have never crocheted in the round, so I'm starting with a water bottle cozy. 

Yes.  I am making a water bottle cozy. 

It's called Terrarium, and it's a free download on Ravelry.

Here's a terrible, flashy picture of the bottom.  The yarn is Pagewood Farms Denali in the Leaf colorway, which is the most perfect green on the planet.  I got this in a total impulse buy when I had a rare chance to go back to my old yarn store.  I seriously debated whether a humble little water bottle cozy would be worth using this beautiful yarn on, and decided that it would be a better choice than socks, because I'll get to see it every day.  (I'm very attached to my water bottle.)  I hope it wears well. 

I also hope my quilting mojo returns someday. 

L is for the way you look at me

This picture is dire, but the Bliss quilt is done and I am in L-O-V-E with it:

This was taken pre-wash; post-wash, we have a slight crinkle and even slightly softer flannel.  I'll take a better picture for the finished quilts page and maybe do some fancy stuff like measure it.  Maybe.  This was the first quilt that I didn't pre-wash some of the fabric (others I did, because it wasn't bought specifically for this quilt) and it did not bite me on the hindquarters.  Whew. 

I figured out a better system for quilting straight lines over open territory than squinting and sticking my tongue out a bit, but eventually, for stuff I want to sell, I'll need to cave and buy some tape for line marking. 

Sometimes it strikes me as funny that we quilters work so damn hard to press and fret over everything being completely flat and perfect, then quilt the thing, toss it in the washing machine, and then it's wrinkly for all eternity. 


Audrey asked in the comments about Sock Candy.  I can tell you that I like working with it and don't notice the elastic-y stretch nearly as much as working with a yarn like Cascade Fixation.  Mom, do you want to weigh in in the comments about how it wears?  (Not that you've gotten these socks yet, because, ah, they're still kind of in my possession.  Sorry!  Tomorrow is Errand Day and they will be on their way soon.)  (The brown acorn socks are the same yarn.  That's my point.  Yeah.) 

Tern Socks!

Pattern: Tern at Twist Collective
Yarn: Sock Candy by Blue Moon in Denim (not currently on site)
Needles: size 2.25mm dpns and 9" circ

I haven't finished a pair of socks in a while (although I have eight socks otn at the moment), so I'm really glad to get these done. 

They should jump in the mail on Monday. 

I've been designing a new quilt in my head, although it's not quite worked out yet.  The Bliss quilt from the last post is quilted and ready to be bound, and I was hoping to wait to buy fabric for it but caved today and got some solid Kona red from JoAnn's.  Maybe once that's bound and finished, I'll be able to throw myself into the new project. 

No more thread basting!

Best decision ever.  Well, best quilting-related decision ever.  Basting is sucky, and thread basting is so sucky that it overwhelms the desire to finish the quilt and leaves me procrastinating and grumpy.  I switched to safety pin basting, and it's working just fine. 

I realized how happy this decision has made me when I sat down to baste the next quilt, which is made from a Moda Bliss charm square stack, some white fabric, and a wee bit o'yardage from a print in that line.  This quilt has been just as fast as the squares one before it.  I think after the battle of attrition that OMG Pink Quilt was, I've needed to feel like I was making fast progress, and simple charm square quilts are fitting that bill nicely. 

This entire thing was pieced yesterday, and half of the quilting is done - I loved the grid quilting so much on the first charm square quilt that I'm doing it again.  The back is a flannel, also from this line, which I think will prove quite snuggly. 

Due to my astonishing ability to fail to plan ahead, I have nothing to bind this with.  Nothing suitable, anyway.  I've got some purple, some jade, and some dark gray.  Meh. 

And another...

It's done! And I must say that I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I decided to go a little out of my comfort zone and quilt this one with a variety of colors. I'm generally bad at visualizing things, so I wasn't sure how this would turn out, but it's a relatively small quilt (32"x32"-ish) and I figured if it didn't turn out well, I could always give it to the dogs. The spoiled, spoiled dogs.

Funny story about the thread... I didn't have all the colors in the "Dual Duty" basic cotton/poly Coats stuff, but I didn't make the decision to quilt in colors instead of white until the end of the weekend.  Other goes past a JoAnn Fabrics on his way to work on Mondays (and only Mondays), so I asked him to pick up the same kind of thread in yellow and orange.  I wrote a note and sent him with the spool of red thread to identify which kind I wanted. 

He brought home absolutely gorgeous thread, shiny and just the right shades, and it was Sulky rayon embroidery stuff, a zillion yards of it and quite a lot more expensive than the basic stuff I wanted.  I opened the bag and said "Oooh! Oh."  When I told him it wasn't the right kind, he said that the lady at the fabric store had helped him pick it out.

Grr, lady at the fabric store.  I suspect that what happened was that he went and stood in front of the Sulky display and she came along and he mentioned needing yellow and orange thread (he swears he showed her the spool I'd sent) and then they spent forever picking out the right shades.  But this means that the fabric store lady believed that my husband needed help identifying the colors yellow and orange.  Now, occasionally my husband tells people he's colorblind just for fun (he's not colorblind), but he insists that he didn't this time, so I was kind of miffed that the lady sold him this expensive not-appropriate-for-quilting thread.  Also, ironically, the only yellow and orange thread I did already have is tiny little spools of Sulky rayon. 

Then, later that evening I went back in, and one JoAnn worker said to another that "the husband" got the wrong kind of thread, and I very politely didn't inform them that actually, they "helped" him figure out what yellow and orange are, while completely disregarding which brand and kind of thread I'd asked for.

Wow, thread story was long.  ANYWAY, it turns out that Coats now makes a slightly different composition cotton/poly thread and it was kind of hard for me to find even knowing what I was looking for, so I probably would've had to go myself anyway. ETA: And I should make clear that I'm more amused than angry over this.  Really, going to the fabric store myself isn't exactly a hardship. 

Great story, Hansel.  Moving on:

I really love it.  I freehanded the straight-line quilting, which means that it's a bit wobbly and imperfect, although the puckering camouflages that a bit.  Using colored thread on a white background really makes the quilting visible, as I probably should have realized. 

For the back I went with Ash, a solid from Connecting Threads (that I ordered accidentally instead of the Gray that I need to finish Cartoon Pinball II and am therefore free to use in other ways) and scrapped the idea of a pieced backing because the other solids I had just weren't working together.  I adore how the back looks with the gridded quilting and the puckering. 

This was taken before the finished quilt was washed, and you really can see the difference. The binding is a darker gray from Kona. 

This one's going to be hard to part with, but it's going up in the shop.  If it sells, I'll use some of what it sells for to get another charm pack of bold fabrics and make another one.

Process and shiny new things

First, a note about the OMG Pink Quilt of Much Pinkness.

I had just been reading in one of my big quilting encyclopedias about different types of face plates (the metal part that the needle goes down through), and you can buy a special one with a very small hole for working on finer fabrics to keep them from getting shoved down the hole and caught in all manner of moving parts down there.  

I do not have any such special face plate, but it would have been ideal for trying to stitch through that stupid white mystery fabric.  But, taking the idea that not letting the fabric get pushed through the hole in the faceplate was key to working with this stuff, I ended up just pinning at the very very edge of the pieces and starting the tiniest titch after the pin.  I don't like putting pins under the presser foot, but I used one of the ones that was already slightly bent and was just really careful to not let the machine needle hit it on those first couple of stitches. 

I also planned to say something about getting the lace edge on that quilt, and in a word or two, it sucked.  Probably mostly because that was the first time I had ever tried that technique and didn't have the edges cut down exactly to the point where I needed them.  For envelope construction, it is very very very important to cut the edges down to size with all the pieces in place the way you're going to sew them.  I cut and then rearranged and things got bad. 

Also, I think that if I do the lace thing again, I'll go ahead and pin the lace to either the front or the back, then pin all four layers (two fabric, one batting, one lace) together.  That will be a lot of pins, but it should also save the pain of discovering that there are points at which the top layer of fabric didn't catch in the seam.  Many points.  Aaaargh. 

MOVING ON! 

After two near-painless sessions, this top is done. 

This is a charm pack of bolds from Connecting Threads, plus three prints.  Two dots and one dandelions. 

And here is a picture of the final layout audition, in black and white for insight into how the values were lining up. 

I did my usual OCD washing of the charm squares before using them.  I cut them down to 4.5x4.5 because some of them shrank a bit and also: OCD.  I plan to straight-line quilt, probably in a billion different colors because that sounds like fun. 

A pieced back might happen - I left two squares out of the front, for numbers and also because they were very similar to shades already included.  But in order for my plan to work, I need to find several more solids, and aside from gray, dark gray, and yardage in shades quite similar to the two I already have, there's not much to go with in my stash.  I'm itching to get this basted and on to quilting, so maybe a pieced back won't happen. 

FINALLY

Pink quilt is finally done.  With just a wee touch of stitch-in-the-ditch quilting around each of the five squares and between the two borders. 

I did go with plain white instead of orange peels, and I like how it turned out that way.  I sometimes shoot past "interesting" into "busy," and this is an excellent example of laziness (do I want to applique 32 orange peels onto impossible to needle fabric? no.) saving the design from business. 

My favorite thing about this quilt is the folded flowers.  They're cute and they made it through the quilt's first wash just fine. 

It was finished using envelope construction, rather than traditional binding, with a lace edge. The back is a nice pink and red stripe.  Note to self: if there's any chance of straight-line quilting, don't use a print with straight lines. 

Soon I'll post about the many problems I had getting this thing done, including getting the lace edge right, cutting squares with the intent of cutting them down and then forgetting to cut them down and then ripping everything apart, cutting them down and sewing everything together again, and dealing with the white, which really, really did not want to be sewn through.  I now have suspicions that it's part polyester and might do a burn test if I can get up the curiosity. 

This one's going up in the shop, probably Monday. 

Pink Quilt of Pinkness

After a day and a half of working on design ideas, it's started:

This will be my first shot at folded flowers, which I'm using Fantastic Fabric Folding for.  You don't open up the flowers until later in the process, so I'm looking forward to that.  I'm probably going to applique the whole petal down, because I'm worried about the fabric raveling. 

This project has had its challenges so far, including math, design questions without obvious answers, and difficulty needling the mystery white (which I actually think might be muslin) that I found in my stash. 

Here's a peek into my design process, which involves graph paper, poor drawing/coloring, and occasional swearing.  I've been searching for something to do with the mostly-white squares that in this drawing contain orange peels.  I don't think I want to do the orange peels, but was feeling like plain white might be too stark.  I want those squares to be mostly white so that the overall design mimics the puss-in-the-corner squares in the center.  For a while I was thinking that I could do white-on-white folded flowers for those squares, but I don't think I've got enough mystery white to do that, so maybe I'll just go with plain white.  That would certainly speed up the process. 

Number 9

It's done! 

 And it looks much better after being quilted, for some reason.  Maybe the extra texture softens the weirdness of the colors or something. 

 That's my favorite block -- I like how that shade of green looks with the dark, almost-blue purple. 

And the back, a blue plaid that doesn't match the front.  I think my stippling is getting better and better - less herky-jerk starts and stops, more even stitch lengths. 

I used Quilter's Dream batting for this one, rather than the Warm & Natural I'd been using.  It's very nice, and a bit less opaque than W&N is.  Judging from having it on my lap to blind stitch the binding, it seems like it's going to be nice and warm, too. 

Next up will be a patchwork explosion of pink for the shop.  My stash has an abundance of pink fabrics and I'm not really sure why, and I'm not usually one to give baby girls extremely girly gifts.  I'm familiar with girliness, though, and can do it when I need to.  This quilt is going to be maximum girly. 

spare a square

So this mess:

Has become this much neater mess:

over the course of today.  And because it's only 8-ish, I think I can get it basted and ready to quilt before being forced to turn in. 

Exhausted from having to piece a millionty squares, and back at the drawing board because my original plan yielded a quilt that was a few inches too big for the intended backing, I almost scrapped the center motif.  I'm really glad I didn't, because it's pretty much the only thing giving any sort of visual order to this quilt. 

On my last couple designs, I've struggled with the issues of light vs. medium vs. dark fabrics, and the problem is in clear evidence here.  I think that for what I'm going for to be successful, I need a variety of fabrics in narrower values ranges.  This quilt is based on the idea of a 10-patch square, two four patches and two larger squares, with two or three of those smaller squares being a different color and popping out from a monochrome-ish background. 

My monochrome-ish background didn't happen, because the values are all over the place.  

There are three yellow patches, which you can probably pick out, but which are pretty close to that pondscummy green and which therefore blend a little more than I'd like.  And I don't even like that pondscummy green, aargh.  I just didn't have enough different prints in the blue-green. 

"Modern" quilting seems to involve working with many different prints from a single line, which all or nearly all involve multiple colors in one fabric.  Rather stark patterns with clear geometric figures and plenty of white set off this nicely-coordinated group of fabrics.  I don't want to go totally for solids, because I like little prints, but what I've been doing so far with my stash hasn't really been working. 

I'm definitely going to finish and keep this one, because it has many fabrics that I love and is just the right size, but moving forward is going to require some re-thinking. 

Victory of the Week

This week tried really, really hard to prevent me from finishing the purple whirlygig quilt, but I finally prevailed:

and it's now up in the shop.  On to other things, none of which, speaking of them, have moved forward at all.  This week was evil.  I think it was the supermoon. 

I've been dreaming of summer, when the house might actually be warm, and a time that will call for a light little quilt (well, okay, a light freaking gigantic quilt) on the bed, rather than the down comforter.  This is entirely an abstraction; two mornings this week we've awoken to thin but fresh layers of snow, and yesterday morning it was twelve degrees on my porch. 

So yes, I've been thinking about that quilt, and maybe basting it will finally happen this weekend.  The back is still in 26 pieces, and the two really big pieces of backing haven't exactly been ironed yet. 

That was a whole thing.  I've never been on well water before now, but after several months of my iron acting very weird and inconveniently spitting out this dirt-ish, gunky stuff, it dawned on me that hey, that is actually dirt.  Dirt that had been separated from the water that carried it when that water turned to steam inside my iron, then seeped out and got intensely heated over and over again, forming an angry cake of burned dirt on my iron. 

This did not dawn on me until a couple of months after trying several internet iron-cleaning suggestions involving salt and baking soda and elbow grease that barely touched the problem but did leave a helpful coating of steamed baking soda that caked out of the iron's little steam holes every now and then. 

Also, there's been a piece of plastic (or something) rattling around the inside of my iron ever since it fell off my table about 5 years ago.  Just so you have the full iron picture here. 

So anyway, I get wise and figure out that pouring dirt water into my iron is a Bad Idea and that perhaps buying some kind of Official Iron Cleaner is a Good Idea.  I got this Dritz stuff that you use while the iron is hot and it totally worked and also smells good in a way that makes you suspect that it's just mowing down your brain cells left and right, like gasoline or curing vinyl.  I also committed to just getting gallons of store brand spring water to use in the iron, and the iron has been happy and non-dirt-spitty ever since. 

Hope I just solved all of your well water + misbehaving iron problems.  Or maybe you're smart and are just wondering how I've managed to finish a presentable quilt at all. 

New on the Design Wall

I have been cutting and cutting and cutting.

I finally finished the cutting this afternoon, and now it's time to start the piecing. On the values quilts, the piecing took seven forevers and the quilting took seven minutes, so I'm hoping that in this case, the piecing and quilting won't take as long as the cutting has.

The top part of that picture, with the colorful mess, is for the back of the gorilla. The bottom part is going to become a purple and green top.  It turns out I have a lot of green fabric.  Not so much with the purple, but enough to eke out enough bits to make this top sufficiently patchy.  I hope.  There's always this part of the design process where I realize with a crash how different things look when in fabric than in colored pencil on graph paper. 

For this quilt, a duplicate will not go into the shop, so I've abandoned any attempt for commercial appeal.  The back of the quilt will be that medium blue plaid that matches positively nothing on the front.  Because I like it. 

I've been reading all about curved edges from a blogger that I can't quite remember off the top of my head, so I'm thinking that this one will have curved edges.  Why not, right? 

I do like sashing.

After a trip to JoAnn's,there is now Kona cotton in Imperial Purple outlining all the blocks, and the top is done. 

Now to smush with the batting and backing, for which I chose a nice purple with butterflies and flowers.  It came out to be about 40"-ish by 50"-ish, but I don't plan to pre-shrink the batting this time, so it will probably lose some length in its first wash.  I haven't been able to go to Art Day for a long time, but am making the trip back next weekend, and my goal was to have this to take with me and quilt.  Looks like I might be into another top by the time I get to quilt this.  That's good, because it will give me time to figure out what the best quilting pattern might be.  Right now I'm at a loss. 

You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't

Greetings!  It's Saturday, which means quilting is happening again. 

Sometimes I marvel at how quickly something can go from a sketch on the page to pieces on the design wall:

In this case that may not have been such a great thing, because about five whirlygigs into this quilt, I thought of a modification that might add some interest to this rather basic top.  Oh well, another quilt for another day. 

When I was quilting several years ago, I built up quite a nice, pretty diverse stash.  It's rather short on light brown fabric (although I think in general the world is pretty short on light brown fabric) as well as pieces big enough to serve as backings.  So deep into the planning of this quilt, I realize I don't have anything for the back that would match or coordinate or look decent.  And most of the pieces of fabric that are represented here are getting pretty small.  Maybe there isn't even something suitable for the binding, although there's a weird not-purple-not-blue polka dot that there might be enough of for that.  A quick stop at the fabric store yesterday yielded a fat quarter of one of the purples you see here, as well as a good chunk of plain white fabric, but if I used that for the back I'd be right back in the same place of not having any for the quilt tops that I need white for. Also, plain white backs are boring.  

The values quilts (one of which is now in the shop) were all from stash, every fabric and thread of them.  Using a fugly dark green jungle (?) batik for the back of the one I'm keeping allowed me to use only stash, and because I intend it to be a wallhanging, that worked out well. 

So I'm thinking maybe this quilt needs some dark purple sashing and an interesting print for the back.  I also seem to have exhausted my stash's supply of unique purple prints for whirlygigs, so either I need more of those or the plan for this (square) top needs to be scuttled or significantly modified.  Not sure yet what I'm going to do, but a trip to the store seems to be in order. 

Snow Day II

Oh wow.  Most of our snow had melted and the driveway was ice and puddles yesterday morning.  Then rain turned to snow, about 26 hours ago, and it's still snowing.  Really really hard. 

Which means no work for me, no leaving the house, even, which means lots and lots of quilting.  I finished the values quilts, both of them, and mine is ready to hang.  Or, because I neglected to sew on hanging sleeves, tack to the wall.  I love sewing the binding down by hand, but hate sewing on hanging sleeves.  Not super logical, but that's how it is. 

They're in the wash now, probably being ripped to shreds and bleached beyond recognition.  (Why do I think the washer is out to destroy my stuff?  Hard to say, but the belief hasn't faded after one successful washing.  Maybe two will do it.) 

Knitting is also happening!  This is my Multnomah shawl:

in BMFA silkie, ST-1 colorway.  Love that garter stitch. 

Not sure what to do now.  My gorilla quilt could use some work - I've got a bunch of pieces cut for the backing, so maybe putting that all together is up next.  I've got a couple more quilt designs in my head and ready to go, except I need more white fabric.  Will probably make Connecting Threads my go-to for solid white.  I used that for Cartoon Pinball, and it's surprisingly soft and not as sheer as the Kona muslin I used for the gorilla.  But unless they can beam it here, there's not much to get done on new tops today. 

I'll do my best to get the values quilt up in the shop today, assuming it survives its bath.  

Proof

I've finished binding Cartoon Pinball I, and it's in the dryer now.

I took these pictures before throwing it in the washer to prove that it really did exist, and really was finished, just in case it got destroyed or shrank to the size of a coaster or slipped into a wormhole in the universe through a portal in our washing machine. 

It will go up in the shop just as soon as it's dry and I have some shopworthy pictures of it.