Grand plans and grasslands

Well, I had the best of intentions to sew a lot on our brief camping trip this weekend, but between the early darkness, trying to follow roads that turned out to be giant ruts of mud or had gates closed, and admiring the scenery of northwestern Oklahoma (no really! Black Mesa is beautiful), I didn't even open my sewing bag. Actually, my one point of contact with my sewing was when I was reaching into my larger bag to get something else and stabbed myself with some of the pins. Rude.

Anyway, here's a photo from Thursday - you can see that I have finished yet another flower and I'm only one seam away from finishing the red (top middle). I was catching up on a few webinars. :) The nice thing about making the shorter strips and priming the longer seams (where you can see the "V" of the two strips together) is that when I do convince myself to pick up one of those, I tend to mindlessly follow along until the seam is done. And it's only 4 of those big seams for each flower, so I don't need that many kicks-in-the-pants.

The coming two weekends are blissfully empty of too many plans, so hopefully I'll keep momentum going. 

Full flowers: 42/64 (5 started)

- Catherine

23 and me

Behold, I have finished another flower! I had a nice few hours yesterday morning of finishing an audiobook and sewing, and so completed the orange flower while making progress on others as well. 

I also got an unexpected phone call from a lovely friend, and so used my one free hand to pull out the pieces for ~10 more flowers and arrange them in pairs so they're ready for sewing. Not picture worthy, but it'll save me a minute or two once I open those packets back up. 

And yes, Margie - I work on these during "Arts & Crafts" time (with Mom). Some weeks it's the only time I work on them, so good to keep things moving along!

I have done some research previously on local long arm places, and the websites have lots of good information. The quilt I was working on at the time was my giant heart, which did not have a lot of extra fabric (which is what they typically require), but I should have more flexibility with this one. Still, I would rather just make sure I have all the rules and regulations down before subjecting my handmade quilt to the machine. And it'll be a nice change of pace. :)

So much knitting!! You can't be stopped. Happy anniversary, and have fun in Austin!

Full flowers: 41/64 (5 started)

- Catherine

Car knitting

Go flowers go!  You are making good progress!  Do you work on them when you're with Mom?  They are so cute and cheerful.

If you find someone who does long-arm professionally, I don't think they'll make a mess of it, and they should help you with information needed to prepare the quilt?  They might also have suggestions about quilting patterns.  I bet you could also google it and find some ideas.

Next year - put it on the calendar - International Quilt Festival.  Houston.  It's earlier next year! Oct 9-12.  The quilts are amazing.  There are classes too, if you are so inclined.

I finished the socks for Middle.  One might be smaller than the other?  But the bigger one might be stretched out because I've tried it on?  I need to check.

I'm working on socks for Jeff now, and I realized that I've made him exactly the same socks before.  Oops.  He said he doesn't mind, so I'll put a different colored toe on them and I'll do something different next time.

I got some yarn for Sarah's mittens, but it was the wrong color to go with leftovers I had from their hats, so I've ordered more and will commence knitting.  I will swatch tonight and start tomorrow.

I also finished the blanket, but I need to give it a bath.  I like how squishy it is.  I also need to get Katie's address so I can send it along.

I've started a sweater for Smallest, because she is in a cold place now.  It's cotton, so not terribly warm, but I had the yarn already and needed to get it done.  There might be discussion at Xmas of warmer sweaters.  She has a wool one but she confessed that she doesn't like it a ton because it is a little itchy.  Alas.  I'll find something better for the next one.

We had a nice dinner for our anniversary.  Rice Homecoming was fun, I saw lots of people.  We're heading to Austin this weekend for the Texas Woodworking Festival.  This means I'll have at least five hours of car knitting.  Yay!  Mittens are quick, so I am hopeful that I can knock out some mittens.  The only downside to car knitting is that Jeff keeps pointing things out to look at, and we play a Whataburger spotting game, so he's always winning that.  Ah well.

Other than that, and overwhelming existential dread, things are pretty good.  I hear you got some snow!

Quilt oddity

24... 23... 22... 21...

For some reason I feel like it's time to start a countdown, even though there are still so many flowers to make! I hope Major Tom would approve. 

I finished the nearly-done flower, and have made good progress on the others already underway & a new one. See?

The clumpy bits at the bottom are two different red flowers, demarcated by the three-hexagon bits in the center, in case that's not obvious.

There are now 9 weeks left in the year, so I would have to complete 2.66 flowers each week in order to finish. I'm torn between "Yay, that's an ambitious but achievable goal - I will dedicate the time to make it happen!" and "Oof, that is ridiculous, and I shouldn't set unrealistic expectations that will just depress me when I don't finish on time." I also have two other goals (related to reading and walking) that could work in my favor (audiobooks) or against (hard to walk and sew)... we shall see!!

Full flowers: 40/64 (3 started)

- Catherine

Pushing 40

My flowers must be facing a midlife crisis, because we are only one seam away from 40 complete flowers! Very exciting. 

I went to a charity quilt sale recently and was reminded how cool quilts can be when they are actually quilted properly. I think I will plan to get this one done on a long-arm machine, if I can find a pattern that will play well with the flowers - I've certainly invested enough time already to make it worth doing nicely. 

That also suggests to me that I will need to pause on this quilt at some point and work on another one - I have never used one of those machines before (or had someone use it on my work) and need to test out the process in case the person/place I find makes a mess of it, or if I make a mess of it - there are a lot of specific instructions about how wide the edge fabric needs to be, etc. I will try to keep my momentum on the flowers and then we can pause during the endless white hexagons in the middle!

Ta ta for now!

Full flowers: 39/64 (3 started)

- Catherine

Nails + tires

Look at you!  You're over halfway on all your flowers!  Good job.

I love web meetings where I don't need to take notes.  We have a weekly seminar on Tuesdays that I need to observe for trouble, but I don't need to pay attention, so that's knitting time.  I am also recently took an Excel class at work that was online that I decided to screen record so that I could refer back when I needed help, so that was also knitting time.  I have an in-person training currently that is mostly stuff I don't need to take notes on, so I sit in the back row and knit then also.  It's been very helpful!

As a result, I'm almost done with the festive socks, and just this morning I've reached halfway on the blanket for Carroll's grandbaby.  I did finish Jeff's scarf and he received it for his birthday.  We talked about various ways he can wear it, which was fun.

Once I finish, I have some Xmas mittens to make for Jeff's older daughter and her husband.  They want mittens that will allow them to hold hands with mittens on.  Ravelry has several patterns for "Lover's mittens" that are exactly that!  So, it's about to be mitten time.  And I think I need to make her a new hat.  The one I made her last year seems too small.  And then there are some other socks I want to make, and your sweater to return to.  I still need to do some math.

Jeff is currently making some shelves for the closet in the front room, that is Sarah and Lauren's room, but also just a room with a closet full of stuff.  Adding shelves will help make it more functional.  Yay!  The Boy and I have had colds, I think because of allergies.  We are almost done, but they are lingering.  Boo.

Oh - Smallest and dance!  We headed up to Virginia the second weekend of August and she decided that she didn't want to take a large amount of stuff because she didn't like driving with the UHaul trailer.  So we were zippy and got there in two days.  The drive up was nice, and uneventful.  We did notice that the tire light was on the second day, so we put more air in the tire.  Once there, we ran some errands and then made a plan for Ikea.  On the way to Ikea, we noticed the tire light was on again, and when I went to put air in, I saw a nail in the tire.  No bueno!  There was a tire place right next to Ikea, so we headed in with the car.  Long story short, there were nails in two tires, and chunks missing out of the third tire and they were all pretty worn, so Smallest got new tires.  Her dad paid for them, which I appreciate.

Ikea haul went well, we assembled lots of furniture, and she is happy with her space.  She has nice windows that make her plants happy.  She was missing some boxes from storage, including the one that had all her bakeware in it, but we replaced the essentials when we got there, and her dad sent her a new set to replace the one he had given her before.  That was very nice.

I think that's pretty much it.  Things here are slow, we're trying to decide what we want to do for our anniversary.  This year would have been #30 if Ex and I had stayed together.  While I'm glad we didn't, seeing other friends share anniversaries stings a bit.  It's definitely possible to get there with Jeff, if we both stay healthy!

Do you have a favorite flower color to make?

Margie

See Cat sew

 My sewing break has paid off - I am reinvigorated to work on my flowers! I have finished three more, and am 5 seams away from having 4 more complete. See? The first photo is from a week ago, and the second is from just now, to capture more progress. 

The first push came courtesy of sewing in the car on our way to/from western Colorado, where we stayed in a cute campground along the Colorado river, visited Colorado National Monument (why that isn't a national park is beyond me), and attempted to go on a winery/bike tour, only to be stymied by some very pokey plants that gave me two (!!!) flat tires. 

The second push came courtesy of a 6 hour training at work (which unfortunately turned out to be partially redundant with another training we'd had in July, which I just caught up with the night before) and some other meetings where my presence was necessary, but there weren't a lot of notes to take.

As a result of all this forward progress, I've had to pull out some new sets of hexagons to start on; when I get to the end of the longer seams and have short threads left over, it's nice to use them for shorter joining-of-individual-hexagons rather than starting a new long seam and having to knot off/start over partway through. 

Very exciting! I also have some events coming up that should lend themselves to sewing; let's see what happens. :)

Full flowers: 35/64 (5 started)

- Catherine