Too Many Green Apples Will Give You a Tummy Ache

 It's done!  It's done! After being a neglected UFO for the better part of 5 1/2 years, it's done!

And I adore it!  I don't know why I kept putting this aside.  I love the combination of turquoise and apple green.  I love the soothing repetition of garter stitch.  I love how slimming the style of this jacket is.  So what kept me from finishing it for so long?  Seriously, this might be the longest it has ever taken me to finish a knit project.  We won't talk about the quilts, lol.

It can be worn open.

 Or closed.  No, I won't hold it closed with a dpn.  I'll find a beautiful shawl pin.

I think I like the back of these jackets the most.

And the pinstripe down the sleeves is a nice touch!  I'm going to wear this as much as possible this fall/winter.  This one is so much more fun than the blue/grey/black one I made first.

Since I finished this week's knit project, I went to the handy random number generator to pick out a new project to concentrate on for the rest of the week.  It chose a lacy little stole/scarf that I cast on last fall.  It took me a few minutes to figure out where in the pattern I was, but I'm now knitting happily away on this.

Waffles ... but where's the chicken?

I've been working almost exclusively on the Mermaid jacket in the evenings while watching the boob tube.  The first sleeve is finished, and the second is just over half done.  I see an end in sight!  Of course, now all my cross stitch projects are languishing, but I'm sure I'll get the stitchy bug back when this jacket is finally a FO.

I finally ordered the supplies I needed to do a weaving project.  The heddle and extra shuttle I needed are shipping today, and hopefully the yarn will ship in the next day or two.  I'm really excited about this project.  This will be the first thing I have had on the loom where I have to read a draft and follow a pattern.  I've been doing fine all these years just warping how I see fit and doing plain weave.  I'll be making the waffle weave kitchen towels pictured below.  I have blue, green, yellow, and orange yarn coming in.  I wasn't sure which combo I wanted, but this way I can make several matching sets.

Depending on how this goes, I may try a 4 shaft pattern next.  I'll need to get heddle blocks and extra heddles for that, but it will be fun to see what I can do with my rigid heddle loom.

Don't You Hate When Your Peach Is Out Of Place?

 I really liked this quilt until I saw this photo.  In person, the purple looks nice.  At least I think it does.  There's some of this color purple in the print.  This photo makes it look out of place, but it's done now, and I'm not going to take it apart and use something else as a border.  Why not?  Because this top has been waiting for 20 years to be complete and I just can't bring myself to take it apart.

Besides, I already pieced a back together using the same fabrics. And used leftover strips to make a scrappy binding. I like the back.  I like the binding.  Even in these photos.  Maybe it's the peach that's out of place, and not the purple.  I am not willing to redo the entire top to replace the peach, especially if I don't have it in me to replace a border.  Oh well, it's done and that's all there is to it.  I'm going to machine quilt this one with my walking foot.  I'm thinking 2 spirals, upper left corner and lower right corner, that meet and overlap in the center.

 Remember this guy from last week?  I got the top all sewn together, then couldn't find a single place in my house to get a picture of it without having to move furniture around.  The best I could do was a spot in my bedroom.  These photos will have to do until it's completely finished and I feel like moving the dining table off to the side of the room.  This is the best I could do for a "full" photo.

So I tried to do a top half/bottom half kind of thing.  Still not really good.  I was standing on the bed and if I held my camera any higher to try to get more of the quilt in the frame, the ceiling fan blades got in the way hahahaha.

I am hoping to do some free motion quilting on this one.  The kit came with quilting suggestions, so I'll give them a try.  I bought a new darning foot for my machine yesterday and tried it out.  Much better than the one I had.  No more skipped stitches, tangled bobbin thread, or other such tension issues.  I've been practicing on some scraps I had laying around.

Block 2 of my Civil War Sampler quilt is done.  I have been so tempted to keep making blocks for this, but I am trying hard to keep it to one per week.  I have so many other tops that need to be finished, the last thing I need is to get sidetracked with yet another large project.

Wednesday Embroidery

I try to do a bit of embroidery work each day.  Some days I get really caught up in it, and accomplish a lot.  Other days, I'm lucky to get just a few stitches done.

This past week, I've been working on the portrait of Doppler cross stitch.  It's been slow going since I'm not working on this during the day, on my lovely porch with all its natural light, and gigantic magnifying lamp.  I've been trying to work on this in the evenings, with no magnification, and an Ott light.  That there is 28 count fabric folks.  And my eyes are not the eyes of a 20 year old anymore.  I'll be glad when the training with Sebastian is over and I can sit out on the porch with him, and not worry about him going through a window because he's lunging and barking at someone walking their dog down the sidewalk.

I will probably only do monthly updates of this embroidery piece.  I haven't been able to work on it much, for the same reasons I'm not doing my cross stitch on the porch.  This piece really requires me to use that magnifying lamp, and it's just too much a pain to drag it in the house, then drag it back out again, so this hasn't been worked on much at all over the past several weeks.

I am learning a lot stitching this though.  Most of the stitches are new to me, because my embroidery has mostly been limited to cross stitch in the past.  I am really liking the long and short stitch used to fill in those large leaves on the bottom.  It's just too easy to shade them using this stitch.

I had never done either stitch used to fill in all the small leaves, but I think they turned out pretty good.  I might take out that yellow outline though.  It seems too heavy using 2 strands.  I'll wait until all the leaves are done before deciding though.  It might just be that more of the work needs to be done around them.

I am really excited to get to the hummingbirds.  There is a ton of green in this piece.  Feels like it will never get done!

Photobombing Shoes and Sleeveless Jackets

Apparently, I am unable to take a photo without a shoe photo bomb.  I usually crop them out, but you know what?  They want to be in the photo so much, let them be in the photo, right?

As ever, I have too many knit/crochet projects in the works.  I just popped over to my Ravelry notebook to count them, and discovered that I have 17 right now.  18 if you count the gift I'm making that I haven't put in there yet, and if I'm going to be honest about my issues, I should count it.  Earlier this summer, I gathered all those various and sundry projects up and put them in storage bins.  Now I know where they are!  There are 5 that aren't stored in there, because they are the ones I've been rotating through, trying to put a dent in the madness.  I've been doing pretty well not starting a bunch of new projects.  This is a good thing, since my storage bins are full!  Don't get me wrong.  There are plenty of projects I am just itching to get going, but my goal is to finish 3 that are already started before starting a new one. My biggest problem right now is I can never seem to decide which project I should work on.  I've given up deciding, and am leaving it up to a random number generator.

This week, the handy RNG has chosen the Mermaid jacket.  This poor thing has been in the works since December 2008.  For at least 2 years now, the body has been completed, and it's only been missing its sleeves.

When last I worked on it, I completed this much of a sleeve.  That's right, more than half.  Then I put it away!  Why on earth would I put it away when I was so close to the finish line?  I think this one is going to stay on my radar until done this time.  I just can't see putting it away yet again.

My finishes this summer are going to have me ready for the cool days of late fall!

One Year To The Day

It's been quite some time since I've updated this blog.  One year to the day, in fact.  I've been over on Facebook, but lately, Facebook is making me sad.  Too many political and religious "shock value" posts for my liking.  Too many hateful memes being posted.  It's about all I see, so I decided to come back here and post.  Hopefully I'll pick up some readers.  If not, no biggie.  I enjoyed writing here in the past, and I'll enjoy it again.

I have a problem with quilts that started 20 years ago.  I love them.  I love choosing patterns.  I love choosing fabrics.  I love piecing them.  And then comes the quilting and all progress stops.  I started hand quilting one of the tops I made, but it was taking forever, so I made another top.  And another one, and another one, and another one.  I must have completed 10 tops in the time it took me to hand quilt that first quilt.  I tried machine quilting, but it didn't go so well.  I was able to finish a few small wall and lap quilts, but all the other tops I finished wound up folded up in a box and languished.

Every 5 years or so I would get the quilting bug again, buy a pattern and fabric, or a kit, and sew yet another top or two before remembering that I never got the quilting done.  I even found blocks completed for quilts that had not been put together into a top.  Now, I have discovered tons of information on the internet and I am finishing those tops left and right.  No more pin basting for me!  I tried spray basting and I'm a convert.  I got myself a walking foot, and took a Craftsy class on machine quilting.  Love the ideas shown in that class.  Why I thought that I had to do free motion quilting is beyond me.

This week I am working on three quilts.  The first one is a kit I bought 10 years ago.  Before I moved to Wisconsin, 2 years ago, I had all of the blocks done with the exception of the center one.  I got that one put together yesterday.

Today, I completed the center medallion.  Love the colors in this, and am excited to get it completed and quilted.

These are the other blocks that will border that center medallion.  I am rather pleased with the way these turned out.  I'm getting much better with my piecing.  The points are actually points!

I spent the better part of yesterday in my sewing room working on quilts.  The one below was actually just 9 patch squares.  I decided to turn them into disappearing 9 patch.  Now I just need to pick up some fabric to use as a border and get it quilted.

All that's left to do on this turtle wall hanging is sew down the binding on the back.  I bought this as a kit shortly after moving here, and finally got it put together.

Turtles were appliqued with fusible webbing, then I satin stitched around them.  The quilting is a simple wavy line using variegated thread.

Busy Month

Well, it's obvious that I need to get a bit better at blogging.  I had things to post, I just kept putting them off.  The more I put off, the more I have to do, and the more daunting the task seems to be, so I put it off again.  Vicious circle.

Oh well.  Better late than never.

I finished all of the squares for the Stitch-cation afghan I'm making along with my mother, and two friends.  Working on bordering them in dark brown now.  Once that's done, I just need to sew them all together and add a border around the entire afghan.  Hopefully will have this finished within the next week.

Also finished two baby blankets.  The Robo-blanky I was making for a friend, and a super cute flower blanket made for my new great niece.

Quite a few other items in the works, but I think I'll leave those for another day :-)