Tall Gal Knits and Spins

Midnight blues seemed to be my colors this week

Might of had something to do with the dreary weather we're having.  Its been basically cloudy and grey for a week.  Not my favorite weather.

Since things are slightly calmer this semester I've been trying to take one day a week to do some spinning...this week I was on the lovely Drudik wheel...with some hand dyed merino top.

definitely enjoying spinning on the Drudik.  Right now I'm guess this yarn is going to come out somewhere between a fingering and a DK  once plied.    Definitely dark blues, but there are some lighter shades in there as well.  I've got 8 ounces total of this roving, I've split it into 4 ounce balls, we'll see how much there is when I'm all done.

My other dark blue of the week is Ice Queen from Knitty!  I absolutely loved the way this looked on the model, but light blue is not a good color choice for dark brown hair and pale skin, I went with....midnight blue Kid Silk Haze from Rowan and A#11 seed beeds.

You can see the highlights of the beads, they're a bit more subtle than the larger beads the pattern calls for. I chose them mainly because they are what I had in my bead stash.  If I decide to make another one, I think a trip into Beadworks in Harvard Square may be in order.   The pattern was quick to do once the set up was taken care of and using the cotton for the provisional cast on made it extremely easy to pull out afterwards. The DH is debating on whether he'd like me to make one for his grandmother without the beads for Christmas...are we already thinking of Xmas gifts?

With this little project done I'm thinking of what I want to do next...I need to make socks for the DH, I'd like to make myself a sweater, but I also have a few non lace UFO's to think about.  I also have a couple of quilting projects on the burners...I feel a case of startitis coming.

A fascination with bags

This past weekend I felt like doing some sewing, I did my block of the month quilt square but I felt like doing something else too, but not a quilt per say.  A few weeks ago I had made this bag, from a pattern I picked up at Quilter's Way in Concord ma.

Is a patchwork bag..I love the sandcrab in the middle.  It adds just a little bit of funk to it.  This is a very soft bag, its been lined and quilted around the fabric squares.  These are Kofu squares, slightly heaver printed japanese shirting fabrics.  The bag I lined with with some cool grey/red/black dragon fabric I had stashed.  And its just big enough to hold a large sweater project or several small ones

See?  So i had fun with this, and I learned something new.  So i decided I wanted to do something else, smallish just to see how it would go.  I ended up making two things..a little zip pouch and a small clutch.

   

very cute...and i learned how to sew in a zipper!  Not bad for the first one.  I was so pleased by this little experiment that I decided to go a bit bigger and made this clutch for myself.

Stash fabric and a stash button!  One I had picked up this fall at Rhinebeck.  Its just a little different and  think adds to the bag.  You can see the deep crimson red I used for the lining.

Both of these projects came from this book...and I would recommend it to anyone newish to sewing and looking for small projects but instant gratification.  There are some larger ones in here to do, like some more bags...We'll have to see how much trouble I can get into to.

On a side note, I'm going to start trying to post on Fridays/weekends once a week. With school and work its just too hectic for me to do so more regularly until June..we're aiming for starting this weekend...maybe with some beaded knitting pictures if the weather ever clears enough for me to get good shots!