Tiny Needle Tuesday

The only one of my projects that saw any love this week was this old one. It was downstairs and needed a good dusting and organizing so I sat down with it for a very few minutes to put a few rows into those never ending white clouds behind the sails. What I did do this week is go on a mini buying spree for stitching stuff. 

I was looking for monk's cloth for the sheep rug hooking project when Amazon suggested I might like to have these and I did. I couldn't resist. I am a tiny scissor junkie. I love them. 

I am only a few stitches away from finishing the lump on the pile of Llamas I am working on but I'm not feeling all those snowflakes and pine tress with spring busting out all over so as soon as I get that lump finished I'm packing it away until next winter and starting the Cow Pile that just showed up. How cute is that? This pattern has been out of stock every time I've tried to buy it so as soon as I saw it was available it jumped in my cart.

The last stitchy thing that showed up this week is this pretty luna moth needle minder. I saw it on Etsy but they were asking a fortune to ship it here from Australia. I found it on Amazon for it's original price and free shipping so of course it had to be mine even though it wasn't cheap. 

And.......The Mister finally found the cake mix he's been looking for ever since I made him watch Arne and Carlos try to make the banana version on YouTube a few weeks ago. It was a hilarious episode that resulted in a rather dubious looking cake but all the same cake is cake and they declared it delicious. We'll see. 

A Whole Heap of Sheep

 

The kit that I bought with the punch needle thingy is the cutest thing ever but it's small. Really, really small so.....

...while I was downstairs hiding from the wind yet again on Friday I made a bigger sheep templete using the original design so I could........

.....re-draw the whole pattern on a big piece of monk's cloth so......

....when I finish Rainbow Kitty I'll have something else to work on. I am closing in on the third corner....

....and having a good ole time making strips out of wool which is my favorite part of the whole process. Wool just cuts so nicely. 

Of course, Spiral Chicken might have something to say about all those sheep. I do believe she feels she is the next in line to be finished-and she just might be right. I'd forgotten how darn cute she is.

Bits and Bobs

 

Thanks to some windy days I've been spending more time in the lower level hiding out with Pup in the downstairs craft room. What I've been doing is digging out old projects and giving them a bit of attention. I took that panel of attached yo yos I found and started appliqueing it down to make a pillow cover. 

I've also started another panel for maybe another pillow or maybe something bigger. This is just the kind of tedious, mindless work I like to do when listening to a podcast or audio book.

I also dug out all my boxes of beads and made a few stitch markers to see if I remembered how. I did. 

I've been working on my latest mandala and doing a bit of watercoloring which means I was just slopping some paint around on those little paper blocks I like so much but can't find anywhere anymore.

I even got out that pricey punch needle thingy I bought ages ago and gave it a try. It's going to take some time to get this figured out. It's not as easy as it looks. 

I might have been busy inside this week but things have been even busier outside. The trees are hard at work. It may still officially be February for a few more days but spring has sprung.

Rescue Me

 

All this warm weather has put me in spring cleaning mode. I've been emptying out cupboards and giving everything a wash including the old quilt cupboard. 

Most of those old quilts are my great grandmother's masterpieces but among them are some of my old horrors like this one which has mostly turned to rags. I've tried patching it with paper pieced hexies but I think it's hopeless at this point.

This big one I'm rather proud of. I pieced it on a machine but it was quilted by hand.

See? The entire thing-by hand. I don't know how I did it especially since I had two babies under two at the time. I remember having it on an old fashioned wooden quilting frame in the living room next to the play pen. That was over forty years ago. Wow.

This was my go to source for quilting patterns back in the day. I can't believe I still have it. I was surprised to find it on the bookshelf after all these years. 

Look at the price.

I found the remnants of projects past among the pages. That tissue pattern is how we used to cut out our pieces in the days before rotary cutters-with a pattern and a pair of scissors....ONE AT A TIME. That newspaper clipping on hand quilting tips is from a column called Needleplay from the July 1980 Washington Post. 

In 1980 I was making baby quilts. These three. One for each of my kids. All these patterns came from the book. The more kids I had the smaller the quilts got...lol.

I found this one in dire need of rescuing. I supervised this one but I didn't make it. It was made by my third grade class the one year I taught third grade. We had a quilt show at our school that year and every class had to make one. We were the only class that actually made a cloth quilt. Most were painted on big sheets of paper. I used that old book to copy patterns for the kids to use. 

I didn't have time to quilt it so we tufted it with yarn and it's all falling apart. I am going to meander all over it with the Juki in hopes of keeping it together so I can wash it. I should also mention it was the BOYS in my class that made it. I held a quilting bee at recess for any of the kids who wanted to work on it and it was the boys and only the boys that showed up every day. How proud they were on that PTA night when we got to reveal it to a great deal of admiration and surprise. It was eventually auctioned off and our ESOL teacher who bought it gave it back to me when I retired. She had it displayed in her room all those years and thought I might like to have it back. I sure did. 

Friday Fluff and a Trip to the Frog Pond

 

Since The Mister had somewhere to go yesterday and the weather was still oddly warm, I took advantage and drug the carding stuff onto the deck to get some batts made. 

I've been spinning this California Red for a while now from this fiber in hopes of turning them into some thick Croc socks for next winter. I sure didn't need them this winter. 

I had this carded fluff all ready to go so.....

....in no time I had four batts made. 

The fiber I have left to card is pretty pitiful but I may squeeze another batt or two out of it if I need it but that was for another day. Hopefully we'll have a few more nice days before the mosquitoes show up in force. I've already had my first bite of the year a few days ago and I am happy to say I killed that sucker dead, dead, dead. The nerve. 

Right now I am concentrating on getting the spinning done for the Garter Squish so I packed up those batts to spin during the Tour. I hope I remember where I put them. I do tend to lose stuff like this.

And.......as for that trip to the frog pond-this monstrosity is now history. Holding handspun double is a BAD idea. I HATED working on it. I couldn't imagine slogging through a second sock so I killed it dead too. My other projects better watch out. I sense a theme here. 

Winter Lichen

 

Remember this? It's that aggravating towel I've been weaving-or not weaving. I've spent a lot of time ignoring it because it was a mess. The selvages were awful to deal with and the warp thread kept breaking. I also goofed up the pattern and left out some of the colors that were supposed to be in the weft. 

But it's done now. I finally got around to getting it off the loom. I've had quite enough. 

As awful as it was to deal with I have to admit it's a pretty little thing. It's the Winter Lichen draft from Handwoven.

It's all hemmed and ready for it's wet blocking. Then I can trim the ends off and put it to use just in time for all the March green things that I'll be pulling out. 

I want to try it again with modifications so I dug some more green out of the stash.

I can already see that I'm not going to get enough contrast between the light green and the white so I spent a ridiculous amount of time online shopping for 8/2 cotton in better colors with no luck. It was no fun at all. Nothing like buying sock yarn. 

Wednesday WIPs and Walkabouts

 

The WIPs are not very interesting this week. I had to get that naughty sock back to where it was and I did. Then I got all the socks I have on the needles up to the heel flap.

I even got my travel sock up to the heel. I'm on a roll with my socks but my other projects suffered. 

As for the walkabouts, the weather here has been insane. So warm. Maybe 80 on Thursday(!). We've taken advantage by getting out as much as possible-another reason my projects have seen no love this week. 

Look at the trees across the street from the boardwalk. All in bud. It looks like April. It's crazy.

Back at home I've been digging my poor spring flowers out from under winter debris. They are poking up all over the place and are having a terrible time doing it. They needed help.

I've got crocus everywhere. 

Even my little Narcissus are in bloom. It's crazy. Just crazy.

Tiny Needle Tuesday

 

Well look at that. I've got my stitching table back. It got a good scrubbing yesterday and I had a nice afternoon sorting out all the project I had packed up during Soap Week to see what was going on.

The new Patchwork Printemps got a few little blocks finished. 

I tried really hard to get all the green fill finished on the Llama Lump but ran out of steam. I'll get it next time. 

Ta da. The very last of the soap is cut and now up on the drying shelf with all its buddies. This one is Apple Butter but it doesn't smell at all like apple butter which I hate. It's a sweet apple smell without any hint of spice. Out of all the soap I made, this one is an outlier. It doesn't share the same recipe as the other loaves so I'm really looking forward to giving this one some time in the tub.

And......Judy wanted to know what pattern I am using for my placemats and it is this tutorial I found on YouTube from The Fat Quarter Shop. It's fast and easy and taught me a quick way to make 4 square blocks. The only thing I do differently is add a row of blocks down each side before the final border for some extra width.