Grey sweater finished!

I finished my grey sweater with lace edgings this weekend!  I'm quite happy with it.  I started this sweater as a reward for myself after I passed my advanced exam in June, using a pattern from a little booklet my aunt in Denmark gave me.  The pattern basically used the construction method that Elizabeth Zimmerman gives in Knitting Without Tears, so I referred to that as I was knitting and made a few modifications to the pattern based on her recommendations as I was going along.

I was a bit worried about fit, since the yarn specified in the pattern wasn't available in the States, and I chose a yarn that I ended up not being able to get gauge with.  But the sizes given in the pattern seemed unreasonably large to me, so I chose a larger size than I would normally use and knitted it with a tighter gauge than specified, and hoped that it would work out - and it did!

The yarn has a bit of sheen, and it didn't photograph that well - it's actually a solid color (and doesn't look shiny in person).  If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can get a better view of the lace edging.

A productive day - and a Christmas tree!

After a lovely Thanksgiving on Thursday, yesterday I spent the day relaxing and working on some projects that I've been meaning to finish for a while now.  First I mended two sweaters that have been sitting in my drawer with holes since last winter, including this one that had a hole in the right elbow.  It's a delightfully warm and lightweight cashmere hoodie, so to fix the hole I needle felted a little heart over it.  Robert says he's never going to stop teasing me about "wearing my heart on my sleeve."

 I also finished the second of these two project bags.  They have a large buttoned pocket for yarn and a small sleeve for a pencil sewn into the lining.  I think they're the perfect size for sock projects.  One of them is headed for New York, where a new friend my mom and I met at yarn school last month lives.  She gave me some really lovely sock yarn, and I wanted to make her something to say thank you.  I hope she likes it!

Then this morning, Robert and I went out and bought a Christmas tree.  Then we went and got a simple felt tree skirt, six strings of white lights, a bunch of little red ball ornaments, and a lit-up star tree topper.  We also put on several gold and silver Rosendahl "Karen Blixen's Jul" ornaments that I already had.  Robert carved a little wooden tree ornament, and has plans to carve some more!

CMS/Colloquium - a mini sock!

This project was an impulse buy from my most recent Webs order.  It's a miniature sock blocker keychain, and it came with a pattern for a sock to fit it. 

I knitted the sock using some leftover yarn from a full-sized pair of socks that I knitted for my mom a few years ago.  It only took about an hour, and it's super cute!  Next time, I'll make the leg a bit longer.  I'm going to make a bunch of mini socks for it, so it can wear different socks on different days!

Shawl finished!

The summer after I graduated from college, my mom borrowed a large floor loom from her local fiber arts guild or adult education service, I'm not quite sure.  It sat in her living room, and my godmother, who is a wonderful weaver, helped us warp it and design woven shawls to make.  We were motivated to finish the weaving, since we had to give the loom back, but after they were finished and off the loom, they sat in my mom's house for over two years, waiting for us to finish the fringes. 

When my mom came to visit a few weeks ago, she brought the shawls (and a fringe-twisting tool she borrowed from my godmother), and I finished mine!  It's pretty large, and very soft and warm.  If I remember right, the yarn is some sort of tencel blend, so it has a lovely shiny sheen.

Last Week's CMS/Colloquium knitting

Last Thursday morning, this was 21.5" long, and at the end of colloquium it was 28"!  Another two inches (which I'm going to try to do before this Thursday, so I don't have to measure in the middle of a seminar) and the first 30" strip will be done!  I think there's one more to go after this - I need to check with my mom.

Houston Quilt Festival

 

My mom and I went to the Houston Quilt Festival yesterday.  We had so much fun!  There were so many wonderful, beautiful, inspiring quilts.  This one was my favorite.  It won a blue ribbon.  You can't really see in this picture, but not only are the animals beautifully detailed, the thing each animal says in the song "Old McDonald Had a Farm" are quilted into each animal's background square.  The quilt is called "Ms. McDonald had a farm."

This was another really beautiful quilt - one I can actually see myself being able to make at some point.  The pattern is called Tennessee Waltz.  It's made with snowball blocks alternating with Fifty-Four Forty or Fight blocks.  All of the seams are curved, but the way the blocks combine, they look curved!  I especially love the color scheme on this quilt.  I've looked up other Tennessee Waltz quilts online, and a lot of people use a different arrangement of the background that I don't think looks as nice.  I like how the yellow pops against the black and white prints (and the yellow center squares are each a fussy-cut sunflower with a lady bug sitting on it).

FNSI Results

I finished the arrow quilt (well, I still need to sew on the label, but it's bound and washed!) and the mittens. 

Here's the back of the quilt.  This is the first time I've done a patchwork back, and I really like it!

I'm happy with the way the quilt turned out, but I found the tutorial at Moda Bake Shop that I used to be incredibly frustrating - and sometimes just plain wrong.  I usually don't follow quilt patterns - I usually draft the blocks out myself from pictures and do my own quilty math.  But in this case, I decided to be lazy and just follow the pattern.  This was a mistake.  When I follow a pattern, I expect the math to be done right and the instructions to work out.  This was just a tutorial, but since it was on the website of such a reputable quilt fabric manufacturer, I trusted it.  The tutorial calls for, among other things, a half yard of the border fabric and a half yard of the binding, and these two fabrics also make up the stripe in the pieced back (the backing fabric alone is not enough to make the entire back). 

I bought the fabric in the amounts called for, and started cutting according to the instructions.  When I got to be border and binding, I realized that the tutorial calls for cutting 18.5 linear inches from the binding fabric! Out of a half yard!  Also, it says to cut four 3" by WOF strips for the borders.  The quilt is supposed to be 47" by 47", so you clearly need five strips!  Add this to the 6" strip for the back, and you need to cut 21 linear inches out of a half yard of fabric!

I had already cut the 6" strip of the border fabric for the back, and I needed it, so I ended up cutting five 2.5" strips for the borders, skipping the binding fabric that was supposed to be in the back, and piecing the back out of scraps of the arrow fabrics.

Another, less crucial quibble I had with the tutorial was the construction method for the arrows.  The tutorial uses two half-square triangles for the points of the arrows.  I'm sure this is designed to save fabric, but I think it would have looked better to use a single flying goose instead.  Several of my arrow fabrics have stripes, and they ended up meeting at right angles - you can see it in the top photo.

Other than that, I'm thrilled with how it came out!  I was going to free-motion quilt it, but I chickened out and did diagonal straight lines with my walking foot instead.  The only hiccup was that the yellow chalk I used to mark the two major diagonals didn't quite wash out ... but I don't think it's very noticeable, and I hope they'll continue to fade.

And here are the little mittens all done!  I decided not to do a string.  My cousin can add it if her daughter needs it.  I'm happy with how they turned out, and I hope they will keep my cousin's daughters hands all toasty warm this winter!