During my absence from blogging I did have a couple of finishes.
My circles wall hanging is done and hanging up. The circle are really subtle unless you’re close to it. They also show more by lamp light than day light. But I’m happy with how it turned out (as long as no one EVER looks at the backing which was rather a fail) and I like it as a backdrop for the ceramic plate and against the blue wall.
Another finish was my cross stitchtemperature chart for 2021. A year that went from 23 to 115 degrees! The 23 isn’t unheard of, but the 115 is not a good sign for how things are going to be changing around here, weather-wise.
We made a road trip up to Seattle recently so I started a pair of socks for car and visiting knitting. Nothing that requires too much attention or pattern paperwork for the car and it needs to be easily interruptible when knitting on someone else’s couch.
I’m knitting with a Regia self-striping yarn, so about as easy as a sock can get. 3-1 ribbing and a partridge eye heel.
I’ve gotten one finished and am heading towards the heel on the second, but then we came home and I haven’t picked them up again. They’ve joined the WIP pile that I really need to give more attention to.
I seem to have some sort of mental block about blogging lately. I think about it, even plan posts. But then I don’t actually log in and post. Then I feel guilty, then I realize that’s silly because it isn’t a job, and then I remember that it is how I keep track of my projects and I feel guilty again.
My brain is so odd.
But the Winter Olympics are on! I always pick a craft project, usually knitting to work on while I settle in for two weeks of sports that I know nothing about. (Being honest, that is pretty much all sports no matter what season. I’m a crafter, not an athlete.) But I love the pageantry and the speed and how much they all care about going faster, higher, farther and I get very sucked in.
So I needed something to watch during the very exciting snowboard cross races and the less speedy but somehow really gripping curling matches. And the s**t show that was women’s figure skating. (Pardon my language, but !?!?)
I tried a lace project with a variety of reds in a marling attempt at a scarf, but it crashed like an upside down bobsledder. (Sorry, attempted a joke because I’m watching bobsledding as I type and some of them were upside down at the end. I won’t do it again.)
I just ran a couple spinning workshops at school during our intersession, and the spinning wheel was dusted off for that, so I decided to clear some bobbins that have been sitting in a drawer for forever.
First some black fiber labeled “half-bred with silk noils” (did they mean a mixed breed sheep?). I had about a third of it already spun, so I did the last five ounces and made some tweedy 2 ply. That helped me remember how to spin consistently, although the noils threw me off somewhat.
Then I had two bobbins already spun up that needed a third to tie them together, so I spun a single of a humbug BFL that I’d dyed in autumnal colors.
I loved the three singles. I’m less sure about the 3 ply that I ended up with. The colors muddied up somewhat when plied together. But I think I’ll like it again when it is knitted up as it will become a fabric with flecks and stripes of all the possible color combinations.
It ended up making two full bobbins and one that has the end of the three ply, a length of two ply, and – when the second bobbin also ran out – some chained plied purple/blue.
Today I’ll skein up the yarns, give them a soak to reactivate and redistribute the twist and then I can look around for knitting patterns that will suit them.
I decided not to set any big goals this winter vacation. (Pause for vacation happy dance.) Usually I make an extensive list of things to accomplish when we aren’t going to be traveling, and then get only one or two done and feel like a failure. This time, the plan is to pick one set of drawers, or cupboard, or shelf area every day and get them tidied up and organized.
Day One was the top drawer in the IKEA shoe organizer, which is where we keep the car keys, and apparently every other key that we’ve ever owned. Plus a lot of random papers and odds and ends that end up making it serve as a junk drawer.
Everything that was in the drawer
None of these fit any doors we currently own
Pretty sure these are from a condo my mom moved out of six years ago
With the help of my youngest kid, we tried every likely key in all of the house doors and were able to identify and label keys for the back kitchen door as well as the door in from the garage. About 30 other keys went into a baggie to give my crafting sister, including ones that went with shed locks and various doors from at least four houses, cabins and condos no longer in the family. All of the trailer, bike lock, and door keys are all now organized and in their own little bowl. Random papers have been trashed or filed, the various tools and screws are back in the garage, and now all that’s in the drawer is the car keys, other labelled keys, and some masks for easy grabbing on our way out the door.
It was really satisfying!
The drawer in all its organized glory
Day Two was the vanity in the master bedroom. I cleared out all the old make up, expired and empty pill bottles, random hair products that I never use: a multitude of drugstore crap that somehow built up in there. I went online and ordered shelf paper to line the drawers and cleaned out the organizers. Overall it made a whole bunch of space for the things we actually do use and want to locate rapidly on a daily basis.
Lots of space but still needs liner paper
Again, very satisfying and not overwhelming. Generally when I start to clean and organize, I end up with a big pile of random stuff that never gets put away because I get worn out. So the pile just moves around and eventually goes back into all the same spots or into new random places. Doing this project one little area at a time means I actually will put in the effort to find the places that things actually should be in.
Today was Day Three and the sewing area shelving. The shelves themselves were fairly organized from a previous sorting, but I’ve never gotten around to sewing the curtains that I meant to put in front of them. So today the curtains were sewn. Then the staple gun, and done.
I hemmed the curtains on three sides and then stapled the top edge to the top’s bottom edge. None of the staples show that way, and I can just lift up the curtain anytime I need to get to the shelves. I put a few small pleats in to make them hang better.
Then I put away all the fabric and pieces of craft that have been accumulating on top. All the yarn is back in the fiber area, in progress sewing and knitting projects each have their own space, and all the sewing tools are back where they belong.
Still need to find a good spot for the iron, but much improved!
I haven’t picked tomorrow’s Day Four area yet, but I am eyeing the drawers beside the oven in the kitchen. My family throws every kitchen related item they can’t find a place for in those drawers.
The day after Thanksgiving around here is very low key. We aren’t big Black Friday shoppers and the kids are old enough to make their own plans, so today for me is catching up on grading and working on my wall quilt.
I’m making a whole cloth hanging with lots of circles sewn on to serve as a back drop for a pottery plate I have up on the wall. Very tone-on-tone kind of thing.
China plates and wine glasses for the circle sizing, then I stitched around the washable marker lines.
To make sure that the lines are all really straight I’m using masking tape as guides. The circles have lines perpendicular to the background quilting, and the line directions are reversing every third of the top.
From the back
My current progress
There is no backing yet, because I want to do this without binding so I’ll add the backing later, right sides together and then flip it right-side out.
It will be long and skinny and fit on a blue end wall, and then I will put the plate on top of it. Or on the narrow wall perpendicular to it. I’ll decide which looks better when it is up.
The corner where it will hang.
The pottery plate that inspired this.
I want to start getting more quilts up on the walls, both because they are a little bare and because it will help reduce the sound that bounces around since we got rid of the carpet and put in hardwood floors.
WordPress tells me that this is my 350th blog post, which probably calls for deep and insightful thoughts on fiber and making and blogging, but I have none.
What I do have is hats.
My go-to hat pattern for present production is this one. I’ve made a lot of them – they are great for single skeins of handspun.
Merino and silk
Yak and shetland
It is a very simple pattern with a little band of twisted stitch cables near the start to keep it interesting. It takes only one or two evenings for each. I’m using heavier yarns for these, or holding the yarn doubled (the red one) so they are sturdy and warm.
This particular batch is destined for my co-workers as holiday gifts.
I’ve caught up with the calendar on my temperature record for the year. I made it through the warm colors – including the deep purple for June 28th’s 115 degrees – and now I’m back to the greens and blues to finish out the year. I just need the actual days to happen so I will know which greens and blues.
In the meantime I can finish up the rest of the charcoal gray diamonds and fill in the empty start-of-the-month markers.
The mission to eliminate the front lawn continues. The path to the front door replaced some of it a couple summers ago. We put in a burgundy bunny grass edge on one side of the front path a few weeks ago which eliminated another strip, and we bought more grasses for the opposite side so it will match.
And this weekend we dug up some more lawn (if you can call the dry desiccated remains at the end of this hot, dry summer a lawn) and put in a small paver area where I want to put a bench under the shade of the dogwood tree.
The pavers we chose were kind of an impulse buy. I had another more ordinary square paver in mind at first, but when I saw these I really liked them. They don’t match the pavers we used on the path, but I wanted the uneven edge and hope to coax creeping thyme and moss into the cracks. I also thought it would be better for us, as amateurs, to use larger pieces. Easier to get level and less likely to shift around later. Fingers crossed.
It took some effort to figure out how to lay them out correctly. When we bought them they were just kind of stacked, and it was a bit of a jigsaw to get them all in the right order. It took my youngest child who is good at puzzles to get it right when we laid it out on the lawn before we put it in place.
The older son was also roped in to be muscle. He has a lot more endurance than I do! With our heavy clay soil, it took a pickax to work a lot of that ground out.
And of course, because it’s us, it also took an extra trip back to the place where we bought them to get a few more when I realized it was going to be too short for the size bench I want. It was hard to calculate how much space they would really cover when they were such uneven shapes just stacked on a pallet. For future reference, 16 of them used in total. There are two left over. Stepping stones, maybe?
It’s even level, despite the fact that the lawn is not. This was our stopping point on Saturday.
Sunday we filled in dirt back around the pavers and I planted upright and trailing heathers as well as some lavender and a few other transplants around the edge.
While I put plants in the ground, my husband dug out another strip of lawn on the opposite side of the walkway and we planted another row of the burgundy bunny grasses to match the other side. Some landscaping fabric and some bark and the edges are finished.
I still need to rake up some of the rocks and clay clods left on the dying lawn, and there are more plants to get into the ground, but we called it good for the weekend.
I’ve made it through June with the calendar cross stitch, which had the hottest day of the year – 115 degrees on June 28th, with a “low” of 77 degrees. (Why can’t I find a degree symbol on the iPad keyboard?) It was ridiculous how happy it made me each time I got to use a new color, and there were a lot of them in June as the heat just kept rising.
Two other purples and a hot red.
I try to make a month’s worth of diamonds before starting each month. It is also my away from home stitching as I can keep going without needing the chart for colors.
This is right side up, but I actually hold it upside down to stitch.
I actually like the diamond pattern on the back as much as the front. It gets less pretty as the colors fill it up and threads start and stop and travel across, but when the diamonds are empty the stitches form interesting angles.
At this point, I’m half way through the year. Two and a half months to go to catch up with the actual calendar.
I’ve made more progress than I expected to once school restarted as my husband and I have been watching a lot of back episodes of The Great British Baking Show in the evenings. Lots of stitching time as they fret through the technicals and showstoppers.
A corn stalk has grown up in one of the front porch flower pots. I know I didn’t plant it there. At first I thought it was a grass, so I let it keep growing to see what it would turn out to look like. It just kept getting taller and taller, and then suddenly an ear of corn appeared.
Yellow Bird Stitches 