Tall Gal Knits and Spins

Boo!!

 

Its windy and blustery here, sorta setting the tone for Samhain, unfortunately I'll be in class getting a quiz back that I don't entirely want...then I think its margarita time.

Catching up a bit on the easy stuff.  Dear Jane blocks ..Jason's Jacks we did already...and since the Red Sox got to the world series and then won it...On Game 4 night I did the World Series Block

 

the DH insisted (politely with a smirk) that I had to use red sox colors, or at least as close as I could get and stay within the reproduction theme.  Not bad if I do say so.  even though its going to stick out like a sore thumb with the pinks and browns...oh well, there will probably be a few more like this if I let him choose colors.  this one was done with my so far favorite technique, freezer paper and basting.  the not quite perfect curves would be anxious moments of the game, eh the sox aren't perfect either ;-)

Then there is Piercing Rays, the one i hand pieced.  UGH.

this is after being ripped apart because I didn't like how it was coming out

Not lining up with the inner part, one eighth part is significantly smaller than the others, and yuck.

So here's the redo.

In the greater scheme of things, its not that bad, its only about the fifth bit of handpiecing I've done, the center part isn't awful, but my intersections do need practice.  At least I can tell what the block is suppossed to be.  I haven't decided if its heading for the reject pile or not (i.e. pillow tops or small "reject blanket").  I was pretty upset about it because i did spent a significant amount of time on this one trying to get it to line up all the way.  After talking to my quilting friends they all said leave it be for a while, and move on to another block.  So its in the pile with the other three.  I may just redo this one on the machine...depends on if I'm still annoyed with it next spring.  I've three picked for November, but haven't done any trace work for them yet so I can't remember their names.

Next up...pretties from rhinebeck

october....

feh, that's what I have to say to this month.

School is kicking my butt, I did well on the first quiz for the old english class, the second one, probably not so well, we'll find out wednesday.  This class is generally only offered at graduate level, and I understand why 7 weeks in, this class is not your typical intro to language course.  I hate parsing and conjugating and trying to remember classes of weak and strong verbs, gender, number and tense.  At least the background history material is interesting and I'm doing the work, but its definitely slogging.  No more quizzes until the final, so now its all translation and class participation work, hopefully some of the technical bits will sink in more before then.

Thursday I get my first paper back, hopefully that went better, have to draft 1 of the second paper this weekend. 

There has been sporadic hand work this month, but not as much as I would have liked, or needed to happen...but I'll try and do posts on each of those later this week, along with pics of my haul (pretty small for me actually) from rhinebeck.  We've hit the end of the KYFS 2007, and for the most part I did stick with it.  I did use my 'get out of jail free card' for the order with J&S earlier in the summer and aside from an odd skein of sock or lace yarn here there I really didn't add to my stash this year that much, my yarn stash that is ;-)

So the highlight of October is this mess

 

has been replaced with this

 

 

 

 

My old mac mini has been replaced with a 24 inch IMac, significantly faster, bigger hard drive and less messy, less cables and stuff hanging around.  Even has a copy of Leopard on it :-)  Now back to work, its monday which means a different kind of slogging

I'm supposed to be studying and working

right now, multitasking at its finest! But I decided instead I'd take a quick break from trying to remember cases of Old English nouns for a quiz tonight (cross your fingers, toes, hair and anything else that my brain doesn't freeze at about 7 p.m. tonight when it hits) and post about what I did this weekend, besides write a shitty,  in need of  some work and I've got a few holes in it first draft that is need of some editing, but that's what revisions are for right, and the point of this class.  Writing 4-6 pages on a single story, with no outside resources, not my idea of a cup of tea, but since I'm stuck in this class if I want to matriculate, we're trying to put a happy spin on it.

Anyway, not a lot of knitting because of the writing, so instead when I couldn't stand it any longer in the evenings I was quilting... Here's my second DJ block - D-3 Jason's Jacks, which is appropriate since the DH's name is Jason, and he even got a kick out of it (even didn't mind I made it pink).

This one is appliqued as well with the freezer paper basting, I like this technique, it makes good clean folds to sew on.  The next block will be hand pieced, H-11, Piercing Rays  not something I'm great at, but getting better, and this block really doesn't lend itself to applique work.  I'll be taking a small trip to my LQS for a tip or two about the next one.  I have a third in the line up for October, but only if....the Red Sox make it to the world series, because that's the block's name B7 World Series.  If we don't make it then it goes back in the pile until next October.  So we'll see what happens...

Saturday I gave my self a break from note taking and outlining and I took a trip out to visit a friend and she put a new quilt project under my nose and said "lookee here" how's that for hooking someone into a project... it was leading and a loaded gesture and she knew I was going to ask where she got it....and like I needed another project to do, yeah, well at least this one is on a time schedule that I have no control over.  We have yarn clubs, sock of the month clubs, KAL, well now I've walked into a true Q-A-L block of the month club....sighing with a smirk here's my first block for this one.

this was at 11 p.m. on saturday night...and I'm still wired so I decided to go ahead and join the rows together and complete the first block.

And here it is by midnight....I'm rather pleased minus the one triangle in the upper left that is a bit short, but I tried a new triangle technique and that happened to be the first one, so I'm okay with it.  Here's the deal, you pay for the pattern and the first installment of fabric which was 12.29 plus 5 for the fabric, if you get the block down by a predetermined date every month, you bring it in, get it checked off and you get the next block's fabric for free, for the entire 12 months.  If you don't make the deadline, then you pay $5 for the next installment, pretty reasonable I think!  So my catch was that this started in mid september and the first block is due Oct 20th, now I could have let this sit until after the paper, but knowing i was going to be  spending the entire friggin day Sunday writing the paper I needed to do something else....so block one is done!

Sunday night as a reward for writing the paper,  I decided to pull out a project that I've been wanting to learn how to do...sashiko.  I've been collecting books and tools and notions for it and finally decided I was going to sit down and do it. Here's my first attempt.

Sorry for the slight blur, but the weather is crappy and the lighting is not the best when I took this.  But I'm pleased with it.  The traditional sashiko fabric is thicker and sturdier than normal quilting fabric and requires different needles and thread to be done properly.  I have five of these coasters to practice on.  It helps significantly that the lines for spacing are on the fabric (they'll wash out when I'm done) to help me get used to the spacing when sewing, and I think this will help with my hand piecing technique as well, the 'rocker motion' required for this seems to agree with my hand.   I have lots of toys to play with now I just need some more time.

I am knitting, I'm working on the FIL christmas gift, part of it should be done by the end of the week and I'll post pictures, but for now, back to parsing out OE....

Sweater for a little guy

A little bit of striped warmth for the godson!  Its based off of a pattern from Rowan's pattern books - Miss Bea's Playtime (there's six in the series).  Its going to be a bit big on him.  The original pattern called for Rowan Wool Cotton which is a DK weight yarn and I used ...stash yarn!  I had some Knit Picks merino style lying around and liked how the colors worked out, the Merino style is closer to a sport weight.  So sizing for a 1-2 year old turned out to be 2-3 year finishing (maybe even four years if we're lucky!)  Quick knit, and at least for now is big enough for him to layer underneath it.

We've gone past  the half way point on the Spring Shawl center, row 177!  Another 151 rows gets the center done, which puts me through about to the end of the year, as I may try and sneak an extra set of rows in now and then.

Last week I had finished my first Dear Jane block and forgot to put the picture up...oh well.  Here it is now,

Not bad for my first one.  I did this one with the needle-turn applique, with freezer paper basting of the pattern.  This one is Tour de France F-13 on the DJ grid.  The two I've picked for this month are D-3 Jackson's Jack and H-11 Piercing Rays.  D-3 I can do as applique again and H-11 I may have to do as hand piecing, we'll see...I may be able to work it out to do all of them as applique work.

Its class night..