quilting, jam, and socks oh my!

When I started this blog I envisioned it to be about knitting. Particularly some of my knitting problems (hence the name disasters with yarn). Then the first few things I had to write about were baby quilts. Then I wrote about jam. And of course I threw in some knitting too. Well today I have all three!
First the baby quilt.
My cousin recently had her second baby, a boy. And since she doesn't read this blog I can tell you about her baby quilt. I decided that I needed something splashy as she is an art teacher and the quilt I made for her first baby was WOW. So I picked finally to do a blue kaleidoscope from M'Liss Rae Hawley's Scrappy Quilts. I have never had so much trouble with a quilt. I could not for the life of me get the triangles to lay flat when they were sewn into the hexagons. Fortunately my MIL is a much better piecer than I am and she put all the blocks together for me. I did everything but that. Now it just needs borders.



And needs them quick because we are turning my "quilt studio" into a craft/play room and the new carpet is scheduled to come in in about a week or so. We still need to pick up my sewing things (which is now down to my sewing table and ironing board) and rip up the existing carpet and mop the tile underneath. Whew. I've decided that I'll be putting a border on this afternoon and moving everything after that, I'll get it ready to quilt while we clean that space and quilt it after we move back in.

Hmmmm there don't seem to be any pictures of the jam I made last week. Since we love strawberry so much I should probably only make that, but I like to play. So this year, I decided to make sour cherry jam. Now, sour cherries are not beautiful like sweet cherries are. They are small and squishy and well... gross. In fact so gross that not only did I not photograph them, I also couldn't bear to taste the jam until several days after I made it. The insides are yellow and so I was pleasantly surprised that after I blended them--and I did blend more than I usually like to with fruit jam, I like my jam chunky--that the resulting jam is reddish. ALso, I was surprised to find it tastes like cherry pie filling. The verdict from the family is that aside from the skins that it is good good good jam.

But perhaps most exciting is the knitting that got done this week. And by got done I mean:


These are Lace and Cable socks (size small!) from Socks from the toe up. The yarn is a knit picks bare that I dyed. I took them on vacation and nearly finished the first sock--the second one I took along everywhere for the last three weeks (swimming lessons, playgroup and tv knitting). And for what--socks that are too warm to wear until September! I got so warm posing in the socks that I didn't wait until I got a great picture--just an "ok you can see the socks and tell what color they are" picture.

I also finally got the lace pattern in the dollar and half cardigan sorted out and knit a swatch. The gauge for the pattern is in the lace pattern but I think I may have to go up a needle size for the lace, but I like the look of the reverse stockinette. I'm washing it first though, in case it grows. Ravelry tells me that many people use two different needle sizes so I'm guessing I'm not the first to look at the swatch and decide that. I do need to invest in a circular needle size US 4. I have a denise set and it only goes to size 5 and if the lace gets gauge at a size 6 I may want to bring the reverse stockinette down to a 4. Doesn't make for a whole lot of exciting knitting though.
So for now I have the tongue twister "sweater swatch" that I keep wandering around saying. Try it--say it five times fast.