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I was frazzled beyond belief yesterday. Three days of The Mister worrying himself to death over all the new truck details has worn me out. Today we have to go into town to turn in the tags. Yesterday was a big fight with the finance company. The dealership filled out the paperwork using a company The Mister didn't want to use so it had to be switched. It's all been a big headache. Anyway....the only energy I had left was to open a package that came. It's the materials for this year's Christmas cards.
Here's a closeup of the stamp set. Every fall I look at the offerings of all the stamp companies and this year I picked these from Mama Elephant.
Here's their inspiration card. I also bought that pretty snowflake frame die. What I have to do now is make that ombre background before anything else gets done. Hopefully, as soon as things calm down around here, I can get down to the craft room and get an assembly line going.
The Stephen West MKAL has been a crazy week of knitting gymnastics. I made it through section one and am almost done with section two. It looks like a circus tent doesn't it? This might be the ugliest thing I've ever made but I'm having fun making it. The next clue drops tomorrow but I still have FOUR more pages of knitting to go before I'll be ready for it.
I might have gotten more done this week if I hadn't spent two days in the car turning the heels on the Halloween socks outside a Ford dealership while The Mister traded in his old 2008 Ford Ranger.
On Monday we spent the day haggling over the price and doing some test driving. We went all the way back yesterday to pick up the new Maverick after it had the bed liner installed.
I'll probably be spending today trying to figure out how all these fancy gadgets work. The Mister is no good with such things and it turns out I'm not much better. It took me quite a while just to figure out how to get the radio to play when all the darn thing wanted to do was to read me text messages and sell me YouTube music.
There is now a squirrel on the branch I stitched last week. I also finished the fancy border. I've got one more side to go and this will be a done deal-again. You might remember this is a complete re-stitch of Patchwork Automne after I cut the first one wrong while trimming it up. It was not my finest moment.
Meet Betty Boo. That's the actual name of the pattern that I'm working on for Halloween this year. I didn't get very far and most likely won't this October because although it's a small project it's all fill. It will probably take me the entire month just to fill in the orange background on BOO.
Dear Jane is still on hiatus due to the sewing room being an unholy mess thanks to some terribly naughty flying geese that I've been wrestling with all week. I did find a new stitching rhythm with the Patchwork using my small oval hoop. I've finished one side of the border and will be starting the second this week.
The border is taking care of itself but I still have a lot of those smaller Xs to stitch that are in the middle of the quilt. I could get to some of them when I had the big blocks in the big hoop but not all. I bought myself a smaller hoop last week for when that time comes. I've got quite the collection of hoops now. I guess I should be planning another hand quilting project. I'll have to go look through Dad's paper piecing box and see what I can come up with.
The latest Knit Picks catalog came on Saturday and look what they carry now. A punch needle just like the one I have.
I've been putting mine to good use. I finished another coaster last week.
Up next is the project that started it all. I bought this kit off Etsy but I didn't have the skills to make it work. It's time to try it again. It was meant to be a Christmas gift for The Mister and maybe this year it might happen.
The little vegetables that are punched with the teeny tiny needle and embroidery floss are almost done. One more sit down session and then I'll have to figure out what to do with them.
Look what I did. I was unbelievably proud of myself. I've made a lot of quilts but I usually stick to simpler blocks. I had to keep looking at this one all night to make sure it was really there. Then it was time to move onto the second part of the pattern and well, things didn't go so well.
My flying geese's beaks were missing. After watching a lot of tutorials I realized what I had done wrong so it was rip, rip, rip and try it again.
After I had the geese lined up better, I discovered that the strip doesn't match up with the center piece the way they should. The whole line of them was about 1/2" too long. Normally I would cheat this by taking in a few seams here and there to even it out but you can't do this with the geese or they will lose their beaks again.
What I had to do was take the strip apart, shave a bit off the bottoms of some of the geese and then sew them all back together again.
The second strip went on without a problem except for the part where I forgot to tension the bobbin thread after I re-loaded and it was all sewn on wonky. I had to rip some of it out and sew it all back together again. The third strip is having the same issue as the first strip. It's too long so I'll be taking it apart today and giving those geese a haircut. I don't think I'm a fan of this particular block-especially as a border.
And a big thank you to Sandflies who every fall sends me a care package of coffee and other goodies. This year it was maple cookies which I absolutely love but can never find. It was very generous and very, very much appreciated!
Remember all that pretty yarn I was going to use for the Mystery Shawl KAL? I couldn't use it. You needed 8 different colors that had at least 191 yards each. My baby skeins were only 90 so at 5 am Thursday morning, after the first clue came out, I was digging through my stash like a madwoman. After seeing the color layout and watching the first video installment I realized I also needed pairs of light and dark. This is the best I could do. I'm telling myself it will have an autumn vibe and that it's been a great stash buster. That's seven balls that won't have to be socks.
That first beige yarn is not actually from the stash. I took it out of the Stroll Pi Shawl's bag. It's been slowly growing but it's going into hibernation for a while while I tackle this new challenge.
So how is the knitting coming along? Like this. I had to learn the icord cast on. I had to learn it several times. Now I'm dealing with short rows. It's going to be a series of triangles which I should have figured given that it's called the Color Kaleidoscope Mystery Shawl. I've had to take many deep breaths and trust the process. Thankfully, via video, Stephen West has been holding my hand through the hard parts so far. I have to say I'm very impressed with the level of support $8 gets you.
I finished winding my latest warp so that means.....
...the towel that was on the loom could be cut off. It's been sitting there finished for a while but I didn't want to take it off until I had something to put back on the loom.
And there it is. Another one of the Caribbean Plaid Huck Towels. This time in fall colors that make sense.
Not that I don't love this scrappy towel. It really grew on me.
After it's hemmed it gets unceremoniously dumped in the laundry with the other dirty kitchen towels for its wet blocking. It will look a lot different when it comes out. It's always an anxious moment.
It made it through its first wash. It's all waffley and squishy now. After a few more washes it will tighten it up even more.
Since I've determined it to be a summer towel, right now it's resting with all my other towels. You can see why The Mister rolls his eyes when I tell him I'm making another one. It's like socks. I don't need anymore but I can't stop making them.
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