What I've been up to

Well this has quite the week.

I'm sure you've probably heard someone say this this week--or perhaps you said it yourself.

Monday the 7th--which feels like a REALLY long time ago, I went to a meeting/baby shower. It was to be a book shower, but you know--I can't resist knitting for a baby. So I threw in a sweater and a hat with my board book contribution.

Baby sweater and hat #gifts

A photo posted by Jodie (@ja_gardner) on Nov 6, 2016 at 5:22pm PST

I had such fun knitting these. The hat is just a basic hat--figured up from the Handy book of patterns by Ann Budd and the sweater is a Kimono baby sweater from Mason Dixon knitting.

Then, I admit that the US election did not go exactly how I thought it would, and I'm realizing that I probably live in my own bubble which would seem weird given I live in an area where the democrats don't usually even run anyone. But there it is.

At any rate, I barely had time to process that when I got word that a former co-worker and knitting friend had passed away from complications of brain cancer. She was an extremely special person. Even saying that feels like an understatement. You know that one friend or relative you have who everyone turns to for advice and help and hugs? That friend or relative who you'll go months without seeing (except on facebook) and they'll ask after some concern you posted or talked about? Sally was that person and more. I feel like our community has a Sally shaped hole in it, and it will take a while to stitch up.

I confess, I started this sock simply so I'd have something to knit at the visitation. I do need some new socks though.

Tiny start to a #sock

A photo posted by Jodie (@ja_gardner) on Nov 14, 2016 at 4:36pm PST

I wrote the above a few days ago, but didn't have time to finish, because the week suddenly got even longer. However, work progresses on the sock, but I'm starting to worry that it is turning out to be too big for my stupidly narrow feet. It's like al of a sudden I can't make socks that actually fit my feet. Because yes, I did finally finish the second baseball sock, but am too tired of that yarn to rip back the first too small sock and re-knit it. So basically I have one sock that fits. Well lesson learned, I'm going to knit another inch or two on the current sock and try it on (toe up for the win) and if my suspicions are correct I am ripping IMMEDIATELY.

Meanwhile, in an effort to DO something, anything really to mitigate the feeling of helplessness I feel, I decided that I could actually do something small for someone who is collecting all the smalls and turning them into a big. Carry the Future, which is a great non-profit organization attempting to provide baby carriers to refugees in Greece is having a blanket drive. They are asking for blanket donations, both twin sized and baby sized to help a group of refugees in Jordan stay warm this winter. Blankets I can do. Baby sized ones in particular. So I started this:

Just a little something I started today.

A photo posted by Jodie (@ja_gardner) on Nov 15, 2016 at 4:37pm PST

It is entirely scraps from the PJ pants of the last few years. And it turns out I'm probably going to miss their November 30 deadline. BUT, I saw an article the other day that said an organization here in Michigan was looking for blanket donations too in order to assist refugees settled in Michigan. Evidently, if you come from a warmer climate Michigan winters (even the mild one we are currently experiencing) make you wish for many many blankets to snuggle under. In some ways that's even better. I'll get to give a happy baby sized blanket to someone who is just getting to America and let them know that not everyone hates them. Better yet, I think I probably have enough scraps to make a few more. And I get that same satisfaction I always get with the thrum and hum of the sewing machine.

Adam's quilt

A while back ago I finished, rather spectacularly, a baby quilt. Because the recipient is my cousin, and I knew she watched my flickr and my facebook pages I couldn't really post progress pictures there, or say much of anything for my facebook status, but one day I wrote: Just had a whoo hoo moment. Because when I finished this puppy I actually hollered WHOO HOO!


The pattern is from M'lss Rae Hawley's book Scrappy Quilts. The cover pattern. One of the things I like about Hawley's books is that she always includes a "gallery" of quilts in the book done in other color combos. I've passed by patterns in the book only to discover something cool in the gallery and realize that the colors were what made the quilt seem special. In this case, one of the gallery quilts was in all pinks, which had a cool effect.
I did blues because she knew the baby was going to be a boy and thought blues would look like the pinks, but no dice. I threw in the yellows because blue by itself was really kind of dull.
I had a horrible time with the blocks and ended up turning hem all over to my MIL to get them to lie flat.


The trick it seems is that two triangles need to make a 90 degree angle. So MIL cheated on those--cutting them if they weren't. All in all I was very happy even if this pattern was a bit beyond my skills. I only purchased border fabric and the yellow on the corners. And seriously it should not be so hard to find a decent non-gold bright but not dark yellow.

My cousin called the other day to let me know she loves it, and also to let me know that now her oldest son was glad that they each had their own quilts. (this one is mine mine mine, were his exact words.)

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.

DONE!

Usually when I've been not writing I can't think of what I must have been up to because I don't have a lot to show for it. This time, I have so much I'm saving some for the next entry.

First of all, I've been doing a little sewing, as my cousin's baby is due any time.

I've been struggling with getting the triangles to make nice hexagons, so my Mother in law has been doing that part. Makes me feel like I won't be able to claim this quilt as my own work, but she's making it look so much better than my attempts. My attempts are all bunchy in the center and don't lay flat. I have three more hexagons to do, and I'm going to lighten up on the yellow a bit I think. I love how it is turning out though. And it will end up being about 90% stash fabrics too. I need to buy some yellow for the corners (I have some dark blue also for the corners) and some border fabric. I need to go through my stash and see if I have anything appropriate for backing.



After all the fussing I did on the swallowtail shawl. Even going so far as breaking up with it. I picked it up again after finishing the hey teach and amazingly enough worked through the issue I was having. And suddenly I started liking it again. And it was a little easier. Then one night I realized I was really close to finishing, and equally close to running out of yarn. I did what any of us would do: I knit faster as it has been proven that if you knit fast enough you'll beat the end of the yarn. Of course this doesn't really work. Fortunately for me, I had used this yarn to start another lace project that hadn't worked out and I had clipped off 10 yards or so and set them aside--so a little russian join and I had a safety net. good thing too--because I hit that join in the bind off row.
Yep bind off row!


Whew, because this yarn is truly one of a kind. It is Knit picks bare, which I hand dyed oh maybe 18 months ago. In a class--so I could never recreate it. It looks even better blocking

Seriously, I love it. It should be dry soon.
Towards the end, I was so in love with this project that I knew I needed to get busy dyeing the other yarn I had. I also knew I had another lace project I wanted to cast on for.
So, Friday I finally took the plunge and dyed my knit picks sock blank and a skein of sock yarn. Details later (sneak peeks at flickr).

struggling

Whenever there is a big gap in my blogging I feel like I should show lots of finished projects. Instead I guess I have lots of crafting problems.
Oh wait--I do have finished objects:

I made shrugs for my girls for their Easter outfits. Very cute and quite functional. I improvised the pattern--based loosely on the base for the Lacey-hug me tight.

I'm still struggling with the shawl, if only in my head. I need some quiet time to just look at it and try to figure out where I went wrong. then the guts to rip back as far as I need to. The former may be the hard part. Most of my quiet time happens after people are in bed, and I'm pretty tired then. But maybe Wednesday when the ladies are at school... if not it will be until the 23rd, which is sadly the next time I foresee being alone in the house AND being awake. I guess I could have worked it out this morning when I had about 90 minutes alone, but I'm still angry at it, so I sewed instead.

That was probably a mistake.
See I'm working on a quilt for my cousin (look away Britt, if you are reading) and something just isn't working. I cut some of my triangles so far so good:

But when I sewed them together--it was a mess. I think I need to check that I'm doing a 1/4 inch seam. My machine's .25 foot doesn't work (it breaks needles) and so I eyeball it probably more than I should. My machine quilting foot has a .25 gauge and so I'll hook that up and see if it goes better. Also--I'll probably trim the points on the triangles. I already checked that my ruler was cutting the same size as the template in the book, and it seems to be off by about 1/16th of an inch. It might be making a difference, but perhaps I can compensate. But I was very very very frustrated with the sewing this am.

I did go on a bit of a vacation...if you can call driving 1000 miles with two children a vacation. And since I was doing all the driving I did not get my usual large amount of car knitting done. I did however start the second bamboo lace sock. I'm working on the foot now--and unlike Some people I know I don't have small feet--so it could be a while. And we stopped by Needleworks when we were in Champaign. I thought it was a nice shop, a tad bigger than my LYS. I didn't feel as welcome as I do at my LYS--I felt like I was interrupting either a class or a SnB. I hope no one ever feels that way at the LYS I frequent, because it isn't a great feeling. They did however, have some neat things. My three favorites were:
1) They were having a knit along for Hey Teach and the sample was in the almost exact color of yarn I have purchased. I hope mine looks as good as the sample, which was knit superbly. It was nice to have validation on the color.
2) They had buttons you could buy by the scoop. My girls were in heaven--I bought them each a scoop ($1 scoop--they had three sizes) and they had fun poking through their buttons in the car. I should have bought a scoop for MIL as a souvenir.
3) They had opal sock yarn in the Harry Potter colors! Like I needed any more sock yarn. But I had to have the Ron and Harry colorway--oh who am I kidding I had to have Tonks too, but I only bought Ron and Harry.
All in all here is my review: nice shop, stop by if you find yourself in the area, but only if you don't mind that "I just walked into a party I wasn't invited to" feeling.

the state of the projects

You would think that when I take these big gaps in blogging that I'd have finished object after finished object to show you. I'm working on three concurrent projects right now, so none of them are really progressing that fast.

My children seem to think that all my knitting efforts should be for them. So, after much nagging I gave in. I'm making baby sweaters for Bone and Stillwater. Here's bone modeling hers:

Stillwater's isn't done yet. I'm almost done with Stillwater's but then I got it in my head that I'd like to have my sock finished for my birthday (in 8 days) and so I've been sock knitting at night.

I have a lace project I'm working on too, but I feel like that needs its own post.

On another note, I think I have an idea for my cousin's quilt. I broke down and bought the scrappy quilt book. (then got all excited about a project for me--later). My MIL likes the kaleidoscope quilt pattern, which is the one I'm planning, and so she bought the fancy triangle ruler to use for cutting. THEN, I went through my stash and came up with a huge pile of blues, and some yellow to set it off:

I need to see if I have some more yellow, that I just didn't pull. I think the only material I'll have to buy is a bit more yellow for some of the boarder triangles, and if I don't have any extra, maybe some for the main quilt too. I asked MIL, which ones should I use. All of them was her answer. Ok then. I'm hoping to start cutting in a week or so, after life settles down (I'm planning a party for my girls--who share a birthday with me--and birthday treats for school and about 50 other things this week).

baby quit #2

Finally, I've finished quilt number two. This was a baby quilt for my co-worker's third baby. I had all these pre-cut 4 inch squares that I had been gifted by one of my husband's aunts. So, initially the plan was to just sew all these four inch blocks together. But it didn't look very visually appealing. Plus, I had 198 of them and I figured I'd need another 100 to make it work. So instead, I decided to alternate them with a four-patch block.

I used scraps for those. I also had to use math! Well, I'm not a math phobic, in fact I loved math in high school, but this was more geometry which I was never good at. I had to figure out what size strips to cut to end up with a 4 inch four patch. If you were drawing you'd say--well 2 two inch blocks makes a four inch block, but I was sewing ans so had to have a .25 inch seam allowance--on two sides. So actually--I cut 2.5 inch strips and sewed them together, cut 2.5 inch strips of that and sewed those together. I think. see this is why I need to journal more--I've forgotten, but I think this is right. If not well then i cut 2.25. See I am a disaster and not just with yarn!
I used scraps from a previous quilt's backing for the borders. I had picked out a different border originally, but it just didn't go right. I even used leftover thread to quilt with--in part because I didn't have enough of one color
It seems to me that this is really the quilting heritage--use up what you have, make do with what you have. And both of these were so true with this quilt. I think it turned out pretty good.

My next sewing step is to clean out the sewing room so I can actually find stuff.


I promise i'll start talking knitting again soon.