Dancypants

 Have I used that as a title before?  Who knows...

Anyhow, I am heading to DC this weekend to watch Smallest perform with her dance company.  Yay!  She did master the tricky turn and did not get replaced in the piece.  Whew!  So much drama in a dance company.  Ooh!  That makes me think about our choir TV show.  Maybe there should be a couple, one can sing and the other dances!  Twice the drama!

We just found out that her ballroom coach's wife is pregnant, so I suspect there will be a quilt made while Smallest is home this summer.  Fun!  I will have to knit some cute things too.  Fun!

What else...

I'm almost done with the cowl.  It is slow, because it takes two rounds to make one row because you knit every other stitch in the row below.  I think I am at row 57-ish?  I counted Middle's cowl and it was 67 rows, so that's about 20 more rows, plus about six plain knit rows and a bind off.  The end is in sight.

I've made some progress on Jeff's sock, but still a ways to go.  I really need to do the neck of the sweater for Smallest!  Then I can deliver it this weekend.  Maybe tonight?  

Work is still crazy, and I really get frustrated with the International Office.  Alas.  The uncertainty in research funding makes things a little bananas too.  We're starting to apply for non-federal funding to try to shore things up a bit in case the NSF has trouble.

Other than that, I don't know too much?  I'm excited about airplane knitting time this weekend!  I've also started thinking about my work meeting this summer (at lovely UIUC, in Urbana-Champaign!) and all the knitting I can do!  I'm not in charge of anything, so it's a sit in the back and knit meeting for me.  Yay!

Fun fact, Middle's significant other has applied to UIUC for Creative Writing grad school.  We are hoping that they'll get in.  There's one other place they're waiting to hear from as well.  Waitlisted at both schools.  

Happy Wednesday!

Margie

Procrasticleaning

 So... I should be working right now.  However, it's a beautiful day here and I want to be doing other things.  After this, I will get to work.  Really.  I promise.

Smallest finished the quilt.  It is not perfect, but the washing made a lot of errors less noticeable.  She chose an aqua colored binding, which I think looks great.

She may be back home with us for the summer, which would be lovely.  

I have made a little progress on the cowl, I think?  And today in church I worked on Jeff's sock.  I got past the gusset decreases, so now it's a straight shot to the end of the foot.  I just have to maintain the stitch pattern and all will be well.  

I still need to do the neck of the sweater for Smallest.  I'll have to sneak that in somewhere.

Work is super busy right now (thus the working on a Sunday, which I usually do not like to do), so there hasn't been much goofing off and with the visitors, there hasn't been much free time.  I did officially quit the Stewardship committee this week (yay!) and so I have very few church obligations right now.

I have a top that I started a couple of years ago (even before your sweater!) and I'm almost done with it, so perhaps after I finish the three things above, I can focus on your sweater and this other top.  Things to think about...

There is other exciting news, but you should contact Smallest about it, I don't want to steal her thunder.  We should also be hearing about Middle's significant other's grad school applications soon also.  Lots to know!

Margie

Multicraftual!

Smallest is here for a week to deal with some medical stuff, so she decided that it would be the perfect time to make a small quilt for work friends who are having a baby.

She bought a "jelly roll" of strips with stars, sewed them together in groups of three, I cut them into squares, she pieced the strips and then put the strips together and voila! the top was done!  She pieced the strips on Friday, put the top together on Saturday, and then yesterday (Sunday) we made the sandwich and she quilted it with a simple rectangle pattern.  Is it perfect?  No.  It is cute?  Absolutely!  She's going to put the binding on today while I"m at work (probably).  We got some bias tape binding over the weekend to make it easier.  She didn't want to deal with a border, so that makes things easier also.

The backing fabric is fairy tale characters, which is very cute also.  Here is the progress:

The squares before piecing.

The squares after piecing.

The quilt sandwich after quilting.

So that's been the fun with Smallest.  She leaves on Wednesday, so there is time to finish it up.  It was very satisfying when, after trimming the edges for the binding, the corners all matched when I folded the quilt.

So... what have I done since my last post...

Administrator-land is getting easier, maybe?  I've made several mistakes and I am learning many things!  I am hoping that it will go more smoothly as we go forward.  We have an NSF Site Visit in May which is a Big Deal, so that needs to go smoothly.  We have a proposal to submit to the NSF before April 11 which is also a big deal.  

The water leak has been repaired, but the street has not been repaired.  I am annoyed.

I finished the first sock for Jeff and have turned the heel on the second sock.  I thought I had a picture of that, but alas, I do not!

I disassembled a cardigan that I made last year, I think? I didn't really like the fit.  The magic of yarn.  I will find a better pattern for it.  I actually bought the yarn to go with a specific pattern, so maybe I should try that one.

The yarn for the cowl did indeed arrive at last and I've been working on it for a bit.  It's over three inches long, probably?  It will be around 10-12 inches total.  I like the colors and the ribbing pattern.  It looks green on one side and grey on the other, but if you stretch it a little, you'll see the contrasting color between the ribs.

Other excitement - our neighbor decided it was time to take down some trees that were in the fence between our yards.  Jeff and I repaired the hole from the front tree the first weekend in March.  Here's our handiwork!

We had Sarah, Javi, and Lauren in this past weekend.  They came to go to the rodeo.  It was lots of fun, we ate too much, and they went to the rodeo with Jeff while I stayed home with Smallest.  A good time was had by all.

It does occur to me that I need to finish her sweater before she leaves.  Maybe I should do that tonight...

Have a great time on your trip!  ICTP is pretty neat.

Margie

Quiltabulous!

In order to have a quilt for the long-arm experiment, I offered to make a quilt for a local friend. On Sunday, we talked all about patterns and colors and sizes, oh my! She is so excited AND picked a really simple pattern to execute and some very fun fabrics out of the samples I had brought over (those elephants!!!), which makes the whole project much more fun for me. 

I've got some accounting to finish for a non-crafting side project, but then I will turn to doing all the math/getting extra fabrics for this one. In good news, the instructions (see photo) are very clear about how much fabric of different intensity I need, and give a really good tip for how to sew 8 squares at once - so handy! I also need to reach out to an actual long-arm operator and make sure I have all their rules in mind for how much extra fabric they need. 

Very exciting. :)

While I'm doing math, I will return to my grandmother's garden quilt to figure out how much white fabric I need to join up the flowers. After a year of sewing at every possible moment, my hands are itchy without something to do!

In the meantime, I've been continuing my work on the mystery cross-stitch. I have decided this one is fated for another pencil case, maybe for me this time? Here's the latest:

- Catherine

The tiniest pillow!

I have finished the cutest little pillow ever - I had it mostly sewn and stuffed yesterday, and sewed up the final seam during a call this morning. I have put it in Nairo's window seat, where he likes to sleep while we're watching TV; now we just have to see if he'll use it! So exciting. 

I also finished up the last two pencil cases - I had to redo both after I ironed interfacing to the interior fabric, rather than the exterior. I naively didn't realize how much of a difference it would make, but it was a big one! Unfortunately, for Nina's bag (the green checkerboard), I didn't have enough of the interfacing or the interior fabric left to make a single big square, so each is kind of its own checkboard of interfacing bits and yellow seams. I think the seams inside are pretty invisible - the top half of the yellow fabric (closest to the zipper) is one bigger piece. The structural support from the interfacing is also a bit lacking, but I think it'll still get the job done.

You may notice the aspect ratio of Darren's second fish bag is a bit different - he asked for a deeper bag so he can put his little notebooks and calendars in. I didn't have enough fish so the swirly ribbon is just extending the fabric. It doesn't really match the interior green, but close enough? 

Yay for my first three projects of the year wrapped up! I've even already mailed the pencil case out to Nina, bonus points. 

- Catherine

25 for 25

Happy new year, seester!

One of my big aspirations for this year is to keep the momentum going with all of my sewing projects, including: 

• Finishing Darren’s second pencil case 
• Finishing Nina’s pencil case 
• Finishing the pin cushion and scissor keep that Mom did (I found a taker!) 
• Doing my first experiment with long-arm quilting 
• Making two little Japanese sashiko samplers into a tiny pillow for Nairo 
• Some mending/remaking of clothes 
• More work on the grandmothers garden quilt  
• And other things! 

Obviously, if I am to have any dream of succeeding with this goal, some of the projects will have to be smaller in scope than others, but I think the list above has some good easy things to pair with the more ambitious efforts. 

Speaking of smaller: last week for Arts & Crafts with Mom, I picked up this little cross-stitch again. The fabric is so small I have to take off my glasses to see properly! I need a plan for what I’ll do with this once I’m done. Perhaps another pencil case in my future?

Also, I didn’t get a picture of three pencil cases I made in December for my team at work - here they are, along with Martha's pencil case (the one with the crazy fabric)! The superhero guy is an inside joke that I turned into custom fabric; my first time trying that and it was definitely a success!

Excited for more fun this year!

• Catherine

I got some... satisfaction!

I know Mick Jagger was unlucky when it comes to getting satisfaction, but I have just done the MOST satisfying thing I've done in a while and wanted to share it.

I have taken over as the head Administrator for our group.  There were two other people who both retired in December.  I am now the boss of all of you.  

The first thing I did last week was to change the passwords for our email listserves from things like !9Gr33N18 to something that is easy to remember and type.  No one is going to hack our listserves.  There are four of them, and I made them all the same!  Aaaa - feel the power!!

Then, earlier this week, I was getting something out of a storage cabinet and the thing I wanted was blocked by a bunch of those silverware packs that you get from caterers/to go food orders.  We have those all over our area, because we get catered lunches a lot.  Not box lunches, but stuff that has multiple annoying boxes and sauces and bread, etc, and they always bring us those silverware things.  I realized that I now have the power to Throw Things Away!  So today I did.  Oh so satisfying!  There were four big paper bags (bigger than a grocery bag) worth of silverware in packs, plus loose plasticware.  All gone.  Big styrofoam cups?  Gone.  Random assorted paper plates/styrofoam plates/plastic plates?  Gone.  Old lids for coffee cups with no cups?  Gone.  I consolidated four cabinets down to two, one for food and one for drinks.  It was delightful.

Now I'm wondering what I can do next!  

We have a whole bunch of mailboxes in the student office area and no one seems to use them anymore.  There's lots of mail in there for people who have left.  Maybe that's the next thing to clear out!

Other exciting news - back on Monday I reported a water leak on the city website.  There was water bubbling up from the ground in two places near a fire hydrant.  I walk past this leak every day as I come to and from work, so I've been interested to see if they're going to fix it.  Yesterday when I left, I noticed that there was a lot of silt coming up with the water and getting carried along the gutter.  That didn't seem like a good sign.  Sure enough, this morning when I was heading in, this was what I saw:

This is from the far end of the block.  You can see the water in the street closer to the corner where the leak is.  I'm guessing that something ruptured more significantly overnight.  In the next picture, I've put a circle where the fire hydrant _should_ be.  I don't know where it went!

Later this morning, I saw a city repair vehicle come and now the water is gone from the street (I can see it from my office window) so I'm curious to see what will be there when I go home!  I will take another picture to share.

Otherwise, I got a notification that the yarn for my cowl has shipped, so hopefully I'll get it early next week and I can get to work.  I'm past halfway done with the second sleeve for Smallest's sweater, so that's encouraging.  I got to talk with her yesterday and hear some good ballet drama.  Maybe we need scandal sheets for ballet companies.  There's got to be a lot of good gossip!

Margie