Author: missouristar

We woke up this morning to typical Pacific Northwest fall weather – grey, gloomy and rainy. But as true Pacific Northwesterners, we don't necessarily find this depressing. Rather, it's a chance to snuggle up inside, break out the handknit sweaters and brew a cup of mocha nut fudge coffee. Life is good!

In knitting news, I completed the surgery on the belly button cast on for White Snows of Winter. I'm happy to say that the surgery was successful, but sad to say that the patient expired. It was pretty obvious that this was not the right pattern for this yarn. I quickly cast on for Elizabeth by Dee O'Keefe. I have really fallen in love with her designs. They are clean and crisp and very logical to knit. Patterns are error free and there's a delightful group on Ravelry. I like her designs so much that I have knit the Wilshire Shawl not once, but twice. Progress has been fast on this and I am on #7 of 8 charts. This photo was taken about 3 charts ago.

 

I've also spent quite a lot of time quilting. I am having a newfound love affair with hand quilting and wonder why I stayed away so long. I tried Sharon Schamber's method of basting a quilt and although I didn't do a perfect job, it worked well and I will use it in the future with some modifications. I discovered after finishing that I was so wrapped up in the process that I neglected to center my backing so the seam down the back is off center. Oh well – this will not be a show quilt, but one for my own use.

I have finished the center panel and now have a few boring evenings to spend just quilting in the ditch to get to the more fun setting triangles.

I have also decided on my next project. It will be using two blocks combined to make a wedding-ring like design with no curved seams. I'll be using 30's fabrics.

Sorry for the pixelated picture. It's the best I could nab off the internet. I decided to go with Keepsake Quilting's fabric of the month club and will get 6 different 30's fabric each month for 6 months. I struggle sometimes with buying fabric for scrappy quilts, so this will be helpful. Here's my first shipment:

In other knitting news, I completed Abby's birthday socks. They were well received and already have gotten some wear. The pattern is Nutkin and the yarn is Knit Picks Stroll Tonal in Soot.

I just went to the eye doctor this morning and had only one eye dilated, so I'm feeling a bit off kilter. Will be glad when it wears off! I've been struggling with the sight in my right eye. He's tweaked the prescription several times, but things are still blurry – especially distance. On Monday night I was driving to a friend's house and turned on O'Leary rather Quaker because of my blurry vision and ended up a little lost. He decided today that it is perhaps the cataract in that eye causing the problem. He said it's on the borderline of needing surgery, but sometimes even early cataracts can impact vision enough to require attention. I'm more than willing to undergo the procedure if it corrects this frustrating problem.

I think it's been a while since I updated on the granddaughters. Of course they continue to be the delight of our lives! We had our annual photo shoot with friends of Abby's and this time decided on studio portraits. Since the girls just had their dance recitals (ballet for Mei-Mei and Jazz for Isobel), they dressed up in their dance costumes. Two very different styles!

At last the Double Wedding Ring is finished and on our bed! This has probably been at least 10 years in the making, but there were periods of a year or more when I didn’t work on it. Here’s hoping the next project won’t take so long.

Next up on the quilting hoop is the long marinating quilt with no name.

This was made in the very first round of my Round Robin group – probably about 15 years ago. The group still meets, although the membership has changed slightly over the years. There are three of us who have been in from the beginning and one lady who just joined a couple of years ago. A small, but select group! We no longer do Round Robins, but get together every month or so for tea, dessert (the more decadent, the better) and to share our quilting projects.

I ordered some wool batting from Connecting Threads during their sale and am anxious to try it out. It gets rave reviews from everyone who uses it. Lots of other obligations on my calendar, so it will probably be a couple of weeks before this makes it into the hoop.

In another kind of ending, Rose Window has been frogged. I just wasn’t feeling the love and this yarn is way too gorgeous to be wasted on something I don’t love. I think part of it was the beads. Fire Dance kind of did me in on beads for a while. I knew I wanted to start right in on a circular shawl with this yarn and chose White Snows of Winter. I had been wanting to do this pattern in a white, sparkling yarn, but I’m on a yarn diet and the more I thought about it, this yarn would be perfect. I’m calling my version Aurora Borealis.

This is my first time using the “belly button” cast on. This is a really neat way of starting a circular shawl and you must give it a try! First, you cast on the required number of stitches with a waste yarn – I used fingering for this lace weight project. Knit flat for about an inch, then join into a circle and knit for about another inch. Then you just start knitting with your working yarn. By now you have some stability and that circular start with the lace is a piece of cake! Here is my belly button before surgery.

To remove the belly button, thread the tail of your working yarn through the first row of loops attached to the waste yarn. Then unravel the waste yarn and snug up your circle. Voila! It was my intention to post a photo of the completed surgery, but I am way too tired to attempt this delicate procedure right now. I’ll keep you posted. I’ve read that some knitters tempt fate and wait until they’re almost finished with the project before attempting surgery. That’s just crazy pants in my opinion. What if you goof up and everything unravels? I’d rather do it sooner than later so that if I do blow it, not much work is lost.

Another more successful ending is my Watership Down shawl. The knitting is done; it just needs to be blocked. I’m having second thoughts on doing more Mystery Knit-a-longs. They can be fun, but the end results can be, well, a mystery! You never know if you’re going to like the end result. If I’m going to spend that much money (and the Unique Sheep MKAL’s do tend to be a little pricey), I guess I want a little more of a guarantee that I’m going to love it. The jury is out on this one – I’ll let you know when I block it. In case you followed the link for White Snows, it does say that it’s a mystery knit, but enough people have posted progress pics on Ravelry that I know I love it.

Tomorrow hubby and I celebrate our 41st wedding anniversary. Man, the time has gone by so quickly! Who could have imagined back then where these cute little kids would end up? Thanks hubby for a great 41 years – here’s to 41 more!

 

Dorothy Waite, Washington State, U.S.A.

First of all, welcome to quilters coming here for the Hand Quilting Blog Hop. Since returning to hand quilting, I’ve found a wonderful community out there. I think most of us hand quilters operate in a bit of a vacuum. We don’t know anyone else who hand quilts and we feel all alone. It’s nice to know there are other like minded quilters out there!

Returning to hand quilting has really brought me a new sense of contentment. For years I’ve coveted a newer, bigger, better machine, thinking that would make me a better machine quilter. But it would still take lots and lots of practice and I just don’t enjoy it. The past few weeks of sitting and quietly hand quilting have really filled me with a sense of joy and accomplishment. To celebrate I am rewarding myself with some quality tools that are still only a fraction of what a new machine would cost.

The first is a Barnett quilting hoop. These are made by an artisan on the East Coast – a family business handed down from father to son. I had to wait patiently as he has a waiting list, but the wait is over – my hoop was delivered today!

The picture’s not great, but I’d rather spend my time quilting today than fiddling with photos! I also treated myself to a cute little thread/thimble/scissors caddy to match:

I am so pleased by the quality of these. The workmanship is excellent and the hoop works like a dream. In case you can’t tell from the photo, I got the 16″ hoop with a sit on base and I had Harry finish them with a golden oak stain.

I also ordered a Roxanne thimble.

This one will be returned and exchanged because it is too small, but the people at Colonial Needle have been just wonderful to work with.

In other quilting news, I finished a quilt top begun in a class with Judy Irish. Judy is the exact opposite of me quilting-wise! She is a fantastic machine quilter, very contemporary and works in bright, bold colors. I am a very traditional hand quilter who loves working in pastels. When Judy came to speak to our quilting group, I had the pleasure of having her stay in my home. She did me the great favor of choosing my fabrics for the Lone Star quilt class she taught the next day. I certainly had my doubts when she started pulling fabrics out of my stash (which she said was “sedate”). However, I am more than thrilled with the finished product!

I will also say that Judy was so very gracious in her admiration of my hand quilting. It was so encouraging and really made me feel I was on the right path.

Never fear that knitting has been abandoned. I finally finished Fire Dance. This was a true marathon – at least 5,000 beads. I love, love, love it and it feels like heaven draped around my shoulders. I love the weight of it – with all those beads it’s not going to slide off!

We’ve had a beautiful summer, but fall has begun dramatically. It’s almost as if Mother Nature flipped a switch! I can’t say that I mind. Sitting quietly and quilting or knitting while the wind blows and the rain patters against the window has got to be one of life’s greatest pleasures.

 

Here I am. No, I haven’t entirely disappeared from the face of the earth. Life has been pretty busy, but none of it seems all that blog worthy. This year’s summer has seemed busier than usual, with lots of time spent with the grand kids and doing basic running around. As I sit here this morning with the fire going for the first time this season and the rain pattering on the sunroom roof, I find that I’m actually looking forward to the colder days of fall and the chance to curl up inside with my needles.

I’ve done a lot of cleaning out and rearranging in my sewing room lately. Yeah, I know you’ve heard that song before! This time it was in response to some soul searching about where I want to go with my sewing/quilting. I’ve debated whether I wanted a new embroidery machine or a midarm quilting machine. I had decided that I really needed to get good at machine quilting if I was ever going to finish all the quilt tops I have. I know I need to practice, practice, practice to ever get any good at it and I have. And hated every minute of it! This caused me to reflect back on my hand quilting days and the joy that I always felt when I sat down to the quilting hoop. After much much reflection, I have decided to return to hand quilting. All my tops may never get finished, but I will love the ones I do and most importantly, I will love the process. So I rearranged my sewing room to provide a nice cozy spot for quilting.

First up is to finish the Double Wedding Ring that’s been languishing forever. We’ve had the same hand quilted quilt on our bed for 20 years, so I think It’s time for a change!

Depending on how much time I have to work on this, It should be done in about a month. Next up will be to work on one of my Round Robin quilts. I pieced the center and my friends added the rest, leaving me lots of room for hand quilting.

I’m also getting up the courage to start a rather ambitious appliqué project. I enrolled in a Block of the Month a year ago. I now have all the blocks, but hadn’t yet got the courage to even open them up. When I attended the APWQ show in Tacoma, I met the lady who put together the block kits and she gave me some hints and encouraged me to “Just Do It!” This is the first block up.

Never fear that I’ve given up knitting. I’ve been slogging along on Fire Dance. The rows are SOOOO long now – it takes me almost 1-2 hours to get around, depending on the number of beads. But I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and can look forward to casting off that bad boy sometime next week. Here it is in all its amorphous beauty!

I have other projects going, but none that I can show – the Watership Down Mystery Knitalong and a stealth gift project. And, of course, Christmas is approaching fast and I need to consider if I’ll be doing any knitting for that. Did I say summer was busy? Fall and winter are shaping up to be busy too, but in a different way. Bring it on!

 

We’re home again from our travels and once more I’m reminded of how much I dislike flying! Give me a road trip in a car any day. Of course, because the trip to the airport was 2 hours on our end and 4 hours on the other end, I guess we had the added “fun” of a road trip, but without the ability to do some leisurely sightseeing.

This trip was back to the old homestead in Missouri to visit my parents.

As you can see, they both are doing well (pictured there with my sister Claudia). We do worry sometimes about them living out in the middle of nowhere, but they have a great social support group with many friends from their church who love them and look out for them.

The weather semi-cooperated for the first part of the trip and it wasn’t too miserably hot and humid. We took a day to visit Alley Springs, which is a part of the Ozark National Waterways, under the National Park System.

Other than that, we mostly just spent time with the parents and during our hanging out time, I got a lot of knitting done. I finished my Hedera socks. These are mine, all mine! I really need to supplement my sock wardrobe as I seem to be wearing through them at an alarming rate. I immediately cast on for a new pair – Journey Cable socks, which will not be for me, but for a friend. I have had this pattern for quite a while, but always put it off because there are so many options for size and weight in the pattern and wading through them all was quite daunting. Knit Companion to the rescue. It was so easy to go through and just set up the size I wanted.

Speaking of Knit Companion, I will be teaching another class at Wild Fibers in Mt. Vernon on July 20th. The class is already almost full, which is really exciting! The recent update to Knit Companion has added some great features. I am constantly amazed at the responsiveness of the developers. There is a group on Ravelry and if you ask a question, you will usually get an answer within minutes!

Since we got home I’ve finished my Wilshire Shawl and finally got around to blocking my Evenstar.

When blocking Evenstar, I encountered every lace knitter’s worst nightmare – a dropped stitch! Actually, it could have been worse. It could have been a broken stitch with the resultant loose ends. This stitch had only dropped down a few rows and was waiting patiently to be picked up.

I can’t say that this Evenstar is my best effort, but as my mother always used to say, “It won’t be noticed from a galloping horse!”

 

 

Every year there is a Yarn Crawl sponsored by 24 shops in Northwest Washington. I’ve never gone before, but decided to give it a try this year. I really only had an afternoon in which to accomplish this, but was able to make it to 8 shops – the minimum to be entered into the drawing. It was fun to see the different flavors of the shops. One specialized in funky, fun yarns, another in Shetland and other natural wools while several were all around great shops. Two of them stood out for me, and while I had no plans to purchase anything, temptation got the better of me, which did not surprise my husband at all!

The first shop is Knot Just Yarn. Wow! Lace knitting Mecca. They had a gorgeous selection of lace yarns and samples, along with many other beautiful yarns. Each shop featured a free pattern and offered yarn to go with it. This shop featured its own brand – Eweneek hand dyed yarn along with a pattern for a beaded shawlette. The yarn is a soft merino/nylon/bamboo blend. I chose the color Quicksilver with pewter beads:

The shop is pretty convenient in island terms. I do have to go to the mainland, but it’s in the same area of town as JoAnn’s, Michaels, the mall and Costco. I make a trip at least once a month there, so it would be easy to stop by and get tempted again!

The other shop that really appealed to me was Serial Knitters in Kirkland. I had heard a lot of buzz about this shop, and they did not disappoint! This is just a great all around shop. They are small, but packed with a wide selection of what I call workhorse yarns. Lots of Cascade 220 and tons of fingering weights to choose from. Their featured pattern was for a darling scarf and the recommended yarn was Periwinkle Sheep in the most gorgeous array of colors I have ever seen! Here’s what jumped in my basket:

Something else kind of jumped in my basket too. There was a gentleman knitting there and he had a Yarn Buddy holding his yarn. This was just what I have been looking for to keep my yarn from rolling all over. I don’t like pulling from the center because the yarn twists and with lace weight, the ball will collapse in on itself and make a royal mess. There was a wide selection in all kinds of beautiful woods and I chose this one out of Purple Heart. It spins on ball bearings and has made knitting off this slippery ball a breeze!

This particular yarn is Apple Tree Knits Stellar Lace Gradient. It has a high silk content and quite slippery, but beautiful to knit with. I was really worried about this ball exploding, but now it’s securely contained by the Yarn Buddy. I’m using this to knit Rose Window, another project with lots of beads. I seem to obsessed with them lately!

The weekend was not all knitting. My main reason for going down to the Seattle area was to spend time with family. On Saturday we took Isobel to the Space Needle and the Pacific Science center.

The hissing cockroaches were a big hit! Then on Sunday my sister treated me and Abby to a wonderful bruch cruise around Lake Washington and Lake Union:

All in all a successful weekend!

 

Over the past week or so I have placed a LOT of beads on Evenstar! So far about 1,850 and I’m a little over halfway around the border. I think the grand total will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,800. I think I’m getting pretty good at it and have decided on my preferred method. Drumroll, please.

 

The Fleegle Beader. As I mentioned there is definitely a learning curve involved, but all of a sudden, it just clicked and I find it the easiest, most convenient method. I found that about every 10-20 beads I would come across one that just didn’t want to cooperate. I discovered that some beads have a hole that’s just slightly too small. Once I decided to stop fighting those beads and just put them aside, things went much more smoothly. I’ll keep those and if I run out of beads at the end, I can always place those using the floss method. Only 380 rows to go! I will also be ordering the larger size Beader to try out as well.

In the meantime, I needed something a little simple to rest my mind and hands, so I have started the Wilshire Shawl.

This is KnitPicks Shimmer in Blue Glass. I had started several other shawls with this, but it pooled unattractively. This, however, looks as of it is going to work just fine. This is what I consider “mindless” lace – no big surprises and lots of stockinette stitch when you just want to let your mind wander.

My mind has needed the opportunity to wander a bit lately. I find myself just a tad over committed. I had told myself that I would just say “no” to new commitments, but two came up that we’re so very important that I felt led to agree. On the plus side, they are both pretty short term and should be over by mid-June. So I’m kind of in survival mode right now and my knitting is keeping me sane. Oddly enough, having a complicated project like Evenstar keeps me as sane as the simpler ones.

Adding into all the other activities, I have our Annual Spring Tea coming up this Saturday. I had promised Mei-Mei a new dress, and I finished it with time to spare:

Mei-Mei’s pretty easy – as long as it’s pink and sparkly she’s good. And if the skirt twirls, it’s even better. This dress accomplishes all of those! Here’s a close up view of the beaded ribbon:

Isobel is a little tougher. Getting her into a dress is impossible, so probably the best I can hope for is clean jeans! So I made her a cute hooded tunic to go with whatever she decides:

I was not over impressed with this pattern. It was very poorly written and I will not be making it again. So I’ll need to scour the pattern books to find other things to sew for Isobel. Or, I could just knit for Isobel and sew dresses for Mei-Mei. Mei-Mei doesn’t seem to care much for sweaters I make, but loves the dresses. Isobel is just the opposite!

I got a chance to go on a photo adventure with my good friend Bethy last week. I’ve decided to hone my skills using only my iPhone camera. We got some beautiful pictures of a unique piece of driftwood that has always captured my imagination. Here are two of my favorites:

 

 

I love beaded shawls! Yes, they can be fiddly and even tedious to knit, but the finished fabric is so decadent and delicious. I just love running it through my fingers. And the sparkles – oh, the sparkles! In an effort to address the tedium of placing the beads, I’ve been experimenting with the different methods:

At top is a #14 crochet hook. It is by far the fastest and easiest method. The downsides are that you can only load about 5 beads at a time and the #14 won’t accommodate anything smaller than a #6 bead. For lace weight yarn I usually use a #8.

In the middle is the super floss. This is the securest method, offering the least chance of having beads roll all over the floor. It also holds the most beads. It’s a little slower and more fiddly than the crochet hook, and because it’s floppy, it’s hard to carry next to my knitting needle with my right hand. I end up dropping and picking it up a lot, which slows me down.

At the bottom is the new Fleegle Beader that I just got from the Gossamer Web. I was really excited about this as the perfect solution. I sat down to use it, and after about a hour was ready to chuck it across the room, to join all the beads that were already there after falling off! I tucked it away in its little tube and proceeded on with Evenstar’s border using the floss method. This morning when I sat down to knit, I decided to give it another try, and doggone if it didn’t work! There is definitely a learning curve and you have to get used to putting tension on the yarn and then pushing the bead up and over rather than pulling the yarn through, which is what you do with the other methods. So this just may work. I’ll keep you posted. So far, 5 repeats of the border done – 51 to go!

With all this lovely beading going on, I had to force myself to work on Dark and Stormy, but I did and finished the knitting.

I’m not at all happy with it. As you can see on the right side of the picture, the shoulder area bunches up terribly! I’ve looked at other finished sweaters and I see that in some of them too. I wouldn’t be adverse to ripping out the collar and trying again if I knew how to fix it. This one may have to simmer a bit before I figure out what to do.

In the continuing saga of Ben’s sweater, he kept ripping out the elbow, so I finally relented and sewed on elbow patches.

I guess the upside of this is that he loves this sweater and wears it constantly. That makes it all worth it!

I can’t believe that Isobel will turn 8 this week! Where has the time gone? She did her science fair project on the Australian Walking Stick. Hers is named Popcorn. Doesn’t she look grown up?

 

 

Many years ago, just after I got married, I was into crochet in a big way. One year everyone got intricate doilies for Christmas. Strangely enough I didn’t keep many for myself, so few remain. Recently I was reading my favorite blogs and came across a cute little baby blanket crocheted by Vera. She kindly responded to my inquiries about it, I did some stash diving, rustled up the correct size hook and went to town.

I’m finding the crochet a nice change of pace. I don’t think I’ll be jumping ship from knitting anytime soon, but may do more than one of these little blankets for our hospital project. They do go fast!

I’ve been working away on Dark and Stormy and am into the long slog of the shawl collar. I only have an inch and a half to go, but it’s so heavy that it’s not much fun to work with. I’m getting a little nervous about the fit. The sleeves are too long, but that’s easily fixed since it’s knitted top down. But the shoulder area seems a little “wonky”. In looking at other finished projects some of them seem that way too, so I guess it remains to be seen if that will block out, and if not, can I live with it?

Can’t seem to figure out how to rotate the picture in Blogsy – I’ll work on that!

I’m planning a big lace project for my summer knitting. As soon as I saw Fire Dance I knew I had to do it. I preordered the kit in a gradience with beads. Yeah, call me crazy. First, though, I have to finish Evenstar. The body is finished and I have made three aborted attempts to start the border. I made the mistake of trying to work on it when I was tired. Late at night with size 11 seed beads is not a good combination! Perhaps it’s just as well that I had to frog back because I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have enough beads. I can’t remember where I got these, so can’t get more. So I ordered enough size 8’s, which is what the pattern calls for. I also ordered a beader from the Gossamer Web. Every time I turned around I was dropping beads off my crochet hook, so I think this will be less frustrating. I’ll give a full report when It gets here.

In other news, I’m going to be reopening my Etsy shop. I see a market for iPad and Kindle cases and have found a design that is versatile and open to so many ideas for decoration. Here are a few of my prototypes.

They are fully lined with no raw edges and have an outside zippered pocket. They will fit an iPad mini (with Smart Cover), a Kindle Fire and of course, any of the smaller Kindles or other ereaders. They do not fit the larger iPads, but if these go over well and there is an interest, I may offer those as well. And they can certainly be used for other things as well. Stay tuned!

 

Well, I did it! It wasn’t pretty, but I did it. There were several things I was worried about. First was the weather – I was afraid it would rain. And it did! In fact, I heard that the marathoners, who started earlier and joined in with us about halfway, ran into hail. Thankfully we only hit rain, but it really didn’t seem to affect me much, which surprised me. The second thing that worried me was my knee. It held up just fine. I ended up doing a combination of light running, walking, power walking and about everything in between. I was worried about finishing last and I didn’t!! I was especially proud of Abby, who ran a 2:17 which put her about midway in the rankings. Not bad for a beginning runner. My time was “ahem” a little longer, but the fact is, I finished! A nice perk was that as I came across the finish line, they called my name over the loudspeaker and a city councilman, who just happened to be my brother-in-law, was there to present me with my medal.

I don’t think we looked too worse for wear, but we were soaked! Will I do it again? Maybe, but it’s kind of like childbirth. I have to forget this one first.

Today I took it really easy, dosed myself with Ibuprofen and have spent most of the day watching BBC mysteries and knitting. I’m engaging in a different kind of marathon and trying to get Dark and Stormy done. I am agreeing with Lorette that I’m not too keen anymore on seamless sweaters. As much as I dislike seaming, I think I’m disliking even more having this huge bulk of sweater in my lap to turn as I do the sleeves. But I am getting near the finish line! Maggie approves.

I’ve just been listening to the news and my heart breaks about the news from Boston. Yesterday some of the marathoners running alongside us were running to qualify for the Boston marathon next year. Such evil in the world!