Beach blanket -- take two

I happened upon a gorgeous green chenille bedspread the other week and I knew it was time to try the beach blanket project again.  I'm showing you the back first because I love how D and I managed to cut the center medallion out so nicely.  It's not like anyone will see it, but I love knowing it's there.

The front side is made up of ten squares cut from vintage bedsheets.  I have already made comfy pajama pants from seven of these bedsheets, and I plan to make pajama pants from the remnants of the other three and revel in their flowery goodness!

And it all wraps up into a neat little package at the end. Bring on the beach weather!

Violet Beauregarde, complete

I fixed the hole! Now my sweater is wearable! First I re-knit and grafted the stitches together according to the methods given in this article. Then (though I know some of you will shudder at this) I darned over the graft because I was so worried that I hadn't done a good enough job. It doesn't look bad, especially when I wear the darned part on my back, and when I consider that this is my very first sweater EVER I feel quite successful about the whole thing. I learned many lessons and still came out with something I could wear. In public. Which I'm doing for the first time today, Violet Beauregarde and Barney be darned.

New knitting project

I am in love with this chunky alpaca from Cascade Yarns. It's just the right weight for a sweater -- not too heavy (the purple sweater I made is nice, but a little weighty for general wear, better for chilly winter evenings when I don't have to move around too much) or too stretchy and fluffy (the white yarn from Misti Alpaca that I tried the first time around was, once again, nice, but a little too pouffy.) This yarn is looking like a good substitution for the obscenely expensive yarn called for in the "Unisex Cashmere Knock-Around Pullover" in Weekend Knitting that I've had my eye on since last summer. It's by far the most challenging knitting pattern that I've tried, but I think I may be able to pull it off. I'll keep you posted.

On my wall

My favorite quilt, which D finally hung up in my studio last night.

I made it well over a year ago and it's far from perfect, but I love it! The picture does not do it justice -- come visit me and see it in person! You'll have to wade through piles of vintage bedsheet scraps, but it's totally worth it. Trust me.

Vintage, yellow and roses

What could be nicer to wear to bed? This fabulous pattern from Ducky House uses the hem on a vintage bedsheet to finish a tailor-made pair of pajama pants, and it couldn't be easier.

The pajama pants experimentation continues. I was disappointed, when I tried these on, to find that the too-high-slightly-snug-waist problem had shown up again, but this time I took action. I cut off the waist casing that I had just sewn and sewed one on the now-shorter pants, tried them on and was reasonably satisfied with the results. I'm going to make the waist on the next pair even lower, and I think that will solve the problem altogether.

And yes, for those of you who are wondering, I did iron them before I photographed them, but I doubt if I'll need to do it again as they're made with No-Iron Percale. Definitely a plus.

Cozy

I never would have thought of this myself, but it seems that laptops need cozies. Do a Google search on "laptop cozy" and you find quite a number of choices, whether you want to make your own or buy one ready-made (though of course you want to make your own.) The other day I stumbled upon a magnificent cozy on One Pearl Button, made from a beautiful cabled sweater-vest, and I knew that soon I would be making my own.

My cozy is made from a felted pink sweater, which I loved because of its flowery embroidery on the shoulder. Of course the embroidery was in a completely inconvenient place, so I had to applique it onto the front of the cozy. I was a little nervous but it came out nicely. The sweater was a little on the short side so I added a gusset at the bottom made from one of the sleeves. I lined the whole thing with a cream-colored cashmere (nothing but the best for my laptop) and made an elastic casing at the top.

Now when I'm not using it my laptop is snug as a bug in a rug!

Stacked Coins Doll Quilt

Yesterday's post featured an improvised rail fence quilt taken from mainly reds in my stash. Since I decided to make the blocks first, then determine the layout, there were a number of leftover blocks. Here's what I did with them, influenced by the Stacked Coins Doll Quilt in Remembering Adelia: Quilts that Inspired Her Diary by Kathleen Tracy.

It used up all the leftover blocks and only took a little scrap fabric from my stash to finish. I'm so pleased with both red quilts that I'll be re-creating them in blue and posting instructions for making them here, hopefully in the near future.

I'm thinking of making a doll bed, complete with mattress, sheets and pillows, out of a cardboard box (because those make the best toys, as everyone knows), to give to K at Christmas.

Red Crosses Prayer Quilt

Maybe they're a little more like pinwheels, but I like the idea of thinking of them as red crosses given to someone in need -- of prayer, comfort, warmth, what have you. This quilt came out of a desire to have something to bring to our church's prayer quilting session today, and a strong urge to make something with the pretty red prints in my stash. I took nine prints and made rail fence blocks, intending to arrange them however they would go once they were all complete, and this is the pattern they took.

Like any other blanket, the red quilt attracts cats. Here it is in its full lap-quilt stature. I'll be taking it later today for folks to put the ties in.

A detailed explanation of what a prayer quilt is and information about the Prayers and Squares organization can be found here. The specifics of our church's chapter is on the Outreach and Inreach section of St. Mary's website.

The (doubly) green artsy blanket

As promised, my weekend project:

"It's a cat bed for two cats!" exclaimed K.

It's really a free-form sort-of patchwork felted sweater-blanket -- or, as one seller on Etsy described their version of it, an Artisan Crafted Repurposed Felted Wool Blanket.

It's made from the trunks and sleeves of maybe 12 or 15 felted wool sweaters, zig-zagged together with lapped seams (that just seemed the sturdiest way to do it) and edged on the sides with ribbing cut from another sweater. I considered making it reversible by doubling the sweater pieces, but a) I wasn't sure how to do that, b) I think the backs of the sweaters are softer to the touch and would be nicer to have against your skin anyway, and c) I kind of thought that two layers of sweater would make the blanket too heavy. At about 76" x 87", it covers our queen-sized bed. (I didn't mean for it to get so big, but you know how things go...)

I washed it in cold on my machine's "hand-wash" cycle, and dried it on high (I dry everything on high; it's just a bad habit I have) and it came out soft and fluffy, if a little fuzzy. I plan to go over it with a sweater stone but I need to buy a new one when I go to the fabric store, so for now I'll live with the fuzz.

I love that this blanket is made from repurposed materials (hence the name), and I love that it feels like wearing an extra sweater in bed without the uncomfortable bulk of actually doing so. It will compliment my pillowcase quilt nicely (that's for another post) and making it is a step toward developing more of my own designs. I also love that it is green.

At the moment

Behold, my studio. I have just finished a major creative project, one for which I should have logged hours and expenses as I may decide to sell it. (If I can convince myself to part with the item, similar ones are selling for big bucks on Etsy.) I would show you what I made, but it's currently tumbling through the dryer. (I hope it's okay...) So watch this space; I have so much to tell you about but in time, in time.

Ready for winter

K was home from school again yesterday, so instead of starting on the Playing Again quilt I made my version of the Doily Scarf from Handmade Home. It's done in soft felted wool suiting backed with thrifted vintage cotton (anyone recognize it from another project?) and uses doilies that I purchased at the Reuzit Shop in Lancaster for this specific purpose. It was both great fun and really easy to make and I love its fresh, unusual design. Although this one is red and green I will probably not just wear it at Christmas, and I will likely make at least one more to give as a gift.

For my sick chick

Poor K has been home sick from school for four days now; it's getting kind of old for her though she's been a real trooper about not complaining. Mainly she's sad because she's missing the fun activities her friends are getting to do -- not the least of which is the Halloween parade tomorrow, in which she was to have worn her K-Cat costume and marched with her friends (and her proud Mama.) I hope she'll still get to do that, but hope is getting slender.

So last night I made her this comfort object from Amanda Soule's Handmade Home. With an average temperature of around 100.2, she hardly needs a hot water bottle. But there's something so soothing about having something warm to cuddle, and this sloshy little thing wearing Daddy's old comfy flannel shirt from college, that I wore for years after Daddy "outgrew" it, brought a smile to her face this morning.

Quilt for dawni

Remember the four-patch quilt from last March? When I promised that if you helped me give the quilt a name I would make one of you a miniature quilt as a gift? It's only taken me seven months and a weekend, but I've finished dawni's quilt and here it is, compliments of Miss K:

It is a Friendship Star Quilt, pretty much done as outlined in Kathleen Tracy's Prairie Children and Their Quilts: 14 Little Projects That Honor the Pioneer Spirit, which I think is as much fun to read as it is to quilt from. The fabrics were taken entirely from my stash, which is kind of embarrassing, given the number of them that appear and the ease with which I was able to choose them. I hope dawni enjoys it, whether she uses it as a wall hanging or maybe a doll quilt?

I may be making more quilts from this book soon, but my next project (taking time out here and there for holiday gift-making; I can't believe it's that time of year already) will DEFINITELY be the Playing Along Quilt from Anna Maria Horner's Seams to Me: 24 New Reasons to Love Fabric made with yards and yards of Amy Butler prints snatched up at the Berry Basket Quilt Show last weekend!

Ribbing

In working on the knitted prayer shawl I mentioned in a previous post, I have learned that knitting ribbing is really easy (which is kind of what I'd thought) and that it's also really hard (if you don't understand the directions or pay attention to what you're doing.)

Directions: Cast on 80 sts. Sl. 1st st., k1p1 to end.

How difficult is that? Assuming you've really cast on 80 stitches (which you'll need for the cables later, and which I never even got to), you then need to know which way to slip the first stitch, knitwise or purlwise, and what those things mean anyway. (I sort of understand what they mean, so I slipped what I'm pretty sure was knitwise.) Then you need to know that you skip the first knit stitch and go right to the purl. I had to read on in the directions to work this out. It took me about ten tries. Finally, you need to remember to keep alternating between knit and purl stitches, which in theory is easy but is hard when you're just learning. Don't try to do it and chew gum at the same time.

Now, in Stitch and Bitch they basically say that to do ribbing, you knit the knits and purl the purls. When I tried approaching it this way (in a k2p2 pattern) I had no trouble at all getting it right. Looks like I've been knitting ribbing all my life. Huh.

I only cast on 32 stitches this time so we're looking at more of a scarf than a shawl, but I think I'm ready to move on to cables. Watch this space.

Notes to self

If you're going to be drinking tea while knitting, do not store stashed yarn on the floor in between tea-table and knitting chair, unless you want to spend the wee hours of the morning rinsing out expensive wool and alpaca yarns and hanging them to dry when disaster ensues, and spending who knows how many days wondering if they will dry in usable condition. Not to mention running soggy bath towels through the wash, scrubbing your good white woolen carpet and kicking your sorry behind.

Also, no matter what the picture in the knitting book looks like, cheap acrylic yarn is still that. Go with the good stuff and spend more time knitting and less time frogging.

Saying goodbye

I have had to set my mitten, sweater and other fun projects aside for a few days to work on a prayer shawl for a grieving friend. A week ago her husband came down with the sniffles as she was recovering from a bout with the flu, and early yesterday morning he passed away from complications due to H1N1. He was my age, and they were close to each other in a way that most couples wish they could be. Rodney is at rest and at peace, but my sadness deepens for his wife as the stitches and rows add up and I struggle with the new design.

I have been casual about flu shots in the past but will be scheduling vaccinations for myself and K (D's is already taken care of) this afternoon. Please make sure you get yours too, if you're able.

Berkshire Sweater, revisited

One of the reasons I was so quiet in September was because I could not stop knitting.  I found some irresistible alpaca/acrylic yarn (details on Ravelry) and started right in on a new version of the Weekend Knitting "Berkshire Sweater" I'd begun back in June/July when I first picked up knitting again in earnest.  I finished the sweater and it doesn't look bad for a first effort -- I'll share pictures and stories here at a later date.  Right now I'm concerned because after blocking it I discovered some mistakes, including a gargantuan hole in the middle of the thing, I suspect from two ends of yarn knotted together that I didn't notice in my eagerness to get the thing done.  Here's what the worst two look like:

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Anyone with thoughts on what I might do to alleviate these problems  (And I did think of adding a big kangaroo pocket, but it didn't seem suitable so close to the underarm.  Sheesh.)  I do like the way the sweater fits, at least for a knock-around Saturday affair, and I loooove the softness of it.

Calling all knitters

So I've been discovering the fun and niftiness of Ravelry.  Come join me there!  My username is jamartin24 -- make friends with me if you're already on or request a signup link if you're not.  I'm slowly but surely getting my stash, needles, projects and ideas organized in my notebook and looking forward to meeting some new folks and expanding my horizons.

Busy day

Found lovely St.-Mary's-Blue patterned flannel in several designs, now have a handful of ideas to try and may actually be able to bring something to the Episcopal Church Women's annual meeting on Sunday where I'll be asking for folks to volunteer to help with the Baptism Blanket project -- I will be getting to work on that shortly.

Purchased lovely deep pink variegated pearl cotton to hand-quilt the yellow-green silk dupioni with a cerise cotton backing. It's all so soft and beautiful, I can't wait to start! I need to buy a hand-quilting frame before I can work on that, though.

Finished knitting the first mitten in a pair of beautiful blackberry wool tweed and was unimpressed with the result, but am so confident halfway through the second one that I'm fairly certain I'll be able to complete mitten #2 and rework mitten #1 into wearable (if not even giftable) pair by the end of the weekend, assuming other projects don't distract me.

Loving being immersed in art and craft -- this is living my dream!

Knittin' Mittens

Project of the day: Super Mittens, Weekend Knitting

Yarn: Cascade Yarns Cascade 128 Tweed, Blackberry, 90% Peruvian highland wool, 10% Donegal (tweed)

Challenge: Learning to knit with double-pointed needles

Thoughts: Pointy sticks everywhere! Like eating a flaming shish kebab!

Dreading: Thumb gusset

On deck: Washed silk quilt; Look-back leggings; Cozy armchair socks