Oops, it's October!

So I horded about an hour and a half. That would make my total 11.5 hours.

I've also become a little over-committed to soccer, Odyssey of the Mind and our church's annual giving campaign. I love it all, but not a lot of time for those lonely projects.
I've also been reading a lot more. True that some of it is junky brain candy, but some of the books have been quite good.

Hopefully the OM stuff will settle down shortly, and the annual giving should settle down a lot at the end of the month. Soccer...well that never ends, but it's manageable. And the kids are getting better about not letting their school papers lay around all over the house. Their socks however...

So, Catherine, where did you finish up?

Margie

Knitting and Stuffie clothes

Well, on Tuesday I took Smallest with me to a sewing group that I infrequently attend, but now that it's summer I have a little more time for. I brought the cream baby sweater and she brought felt for making stuffie clothes.

When we were in Canada, we picked up the habit of calling stuffed animals "stuffies" because that's what they called them there. It's a cute word.

Smallest was much admired by our host's 4 year old daughter, and she had lots of fun with that. It's not every day that Smallest is the coolest girl around!

I knit for about an hour, I am at the point on the sleeves now where I will really have to pay attention to what I'm doing, so I will require some uninterrupted time for that.

Here's a link to one of the Pullip lady's posts on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRj2znjc7rM

They really are most amusing, especially the pictures at the end.

1 hour for me, 10 hours total.

Margie

Picture Fest

As promised, here is Smallest in her dance get-up. She's with her teacher.

Well, it's just been Middle and me here for a couple of days. Smallest is chillin' with my parents for a week, The Boy is at summer school camp and Darling has gone off on a business trip. So, to fill the time, Middle has been watching videos on YouTube of this woman making clothes for her Pullip Doll.

I think Pullip Lady needs to get a life, but she does sew well.

Anyhow, the result is that we've been making many clothes for a Liv Doll that Middle obtained from a friend when we were visiting Calgary.

And we've been making clothes for a rag doll that Middle is giving Smallest for her birthday. Shhh! Don't tell! It's a surprise!

So...we started on Friday and have put in many hours. About 5 on Friday, Saturday we made a nightgown for the doll that I failed to photograph, and I tried to crochet a little animal but was using the wrong hook size, so that's another 2 hours or so there. Today we just spent about 2 hours making two more tops for the doll. And I have a plane trip to go pick up Smallest coming up... maybe salsa will be mine this time!

Catherine - the blanket is most impressive! If your friend is not appreciative enough, I'll take it!

9 hours for me, 9 hours total.

Margie

Slow and steady!

A funny story, unrelated to sewing: I was sitting on the subway this morning, and this woman standing up in front of me sneezed all over me. I spent about 3 seconds contemplating what to do, then realized I had some kleenex in my bag. I got one out, and was busy wiping myself up. Then I looked up and the woman next to me was doing the exact same thing. We both started laughing so hard, we couldn't get it together until the next stop.

Tonight I cut out pieces for ~5 squares and sewed one up, working for 50 minutes total. It's not my favorite square ever - a bit too much dark green - but it'll do.

3 hours, 35 minutes so far.

Catherine

Blanketrageous!

Ta da!! The blanket is done. Evil Twin and I decided today was the opportune time to wrap this project up. I did three more rows, then he did two rows and cast off (which took a couple of attempts, as he was trying to match the other edge, and succeeded quite well). I sewed in the loose ends, and then we both laid it out and sprayed it to block it out, mostly to make the top and bottom edges even. Googles had told us that mohair doesn't like to be wet, which is why we didn't soak the whole thing. All told, I worked for 1 hour and 45 minutes. And it looks really great. See? The spray bottle is there for comparison. It's about 3' x 5'.

Once it dries, we'll ship it off to England, as the wedding is only 5 weeks away. Yow!

2.75 hours for me!

Catherine

Three strikes and I'm done

Well, I started this competition with a tiny bit of hoarding - I cut up two squares yesterday, which took 20 minutes. Today I was going to sew up two squares, but the square I was working on was determined to frustrate me - several bent pins, and I had to redo three seams - two got some extra thread caught up while I was sewing and I ran out of thread on the bobbin during the very last seam. Boo! Anyway, that took 40 minutes, so I'm off to a good start!

1 hour.

Catherine

Two by two

I spent 45 minutes sewing up two of the three squares that were all cut up (well, 43 sewing and 2 ironing and getting out the pins and scissors and such). I'm up to 81 finished squares! I was hoping to do more this week, and even get to >15 or 20 hours, but this will do, I think, to count as a win? I hope so, as I have been dreaming of Roberto's in the last few days.

I was also thinking that I could (indeed, should) get in the habit of doing 2 squares a night. It's such a short amount of time, and then I would be able to knock the rest of the squares out in the next month. Maybe there's some end in sight to this silly quilt.

13.5 hours for me!

Catherine

Fabric vanquished!

Today I spent 1 hour, 45 minutes cutting up the rest of the fabric that I have, so I am primed and ready to make quilt squares like crazy. I also ironed the two squares that were sad and mushed, so now I have 79 fully finished squares. Tomorrow I will tackle the sewing!

I may have to buy some more fabric.

12.75 hours!

Catherine

The quilt rears it's multicolored head

Oh, yes. The quilt squares have returned from their extensive banishment to the other side of my house. Which is approximately 11 feet from my sewing machine, but still the mental separation was large. I discovered I have three squares' worth of pieces to sew up, plus I counted how many squares I have now (77 all pretty and ironed; two need ironing), and then I looked at bit at the fabric that I have. I spent about 45 minutes cutting fabric into strips, and then realized that I was really bored, so that's enough for today.

The deep philosophical question I will wrestle with overnight is, am I really going to make 144 squares???

But! 11 hours. You (hopefully) can't catch me, Seester!

Catherine

Hoarding. I does it.

Okay...

Well, I realized (after prompting from Seester) that I hadn't put up any of my hours for Smallest's costume preparation.

So, here's my best accounting...

After I made the practice skirt, I was told that the finished product needed lots of "bling" so we started over with a sequined hot pink fabric for the skirt, and a new fabric for the petticoat, with more netting to generate more fluff.

The cutting and sewing together didn't take too long, but the netting has been a major pain. So I'm going to guess that it's been about 7 hours so far to get where I am now.

Currently, I've just finished putting on the teddy bear (rather than a poodle, as she's dancing to "Teddy Bear" by Elvis) and I'm about to put on the sequin trim leash. Thought about doing it by hand, but now I'm going to pull out the machine. After that, it's hair and show bow time and then I think I'm done with the costume. That's good, because the performance is tomorrow!

I'll post a picture of Smallest in her get-up.

7 hours for me. I guess that's seven hours total. Still six days to catch up...

Margie

Mohair, redux

Well, I suggested the idea that we take out the border and put in one more block, and Evil Twin was willing. So, we spent a bit of time undoing ~9 rows and rethreading the needles, and then Evil Twin did the final block. I just did one row to get the border going again (knit/purl x 5000), and now we're ready to finish it off (again).

Just 30 minutes for me, though that does take me into double digits (10.25 hours overall). Yeah!

Catherine

Miscalculating

It was not great weather this weekend, so Evil Twin and I got a chance to knit on the blanket. We were banking on the border taking more yarn than the blocks, which in fact it did not, so we ended up with almost an entire extra ball of yarn. Is it worth undoing to add in another block before closing it out? Maybe.

Hmm... maybe.

Anyway, I worked for 2 hours to do 10 rows. And in between my two shifts of 6 and 4 rows each, I went and took a nap. What a great day!

9.75 hours for me!

Catherine

Mohair mania!

I'm sorry, but I have a tiny bit of hoarding to report. Sunday (1 hour 20 min) and Monday (5 hours 10 min) I worked on the blue blanket for my friend, to the overall tune of 6.5 hours. The really fun thing about the work I did on Monday is that Evil Twin and I decided that we should take turns doing one block at a time (each pattern block is 6 rows), so that it will really be from the both of us. Evil Twin is just a little bit slower than me, but we are good relay partners. So he also worked many hours that day, with the result that the blanket is nearly done!! Just one block left and then a 10-row border to match the other end; we don't think there's enough yarn for two blocks. And we do have to tuck in all the ends, though we need to buy an enormous needle for that - the yarn is ~1/3 inch thick. The side effect is that Evil Twin's house was fairly covered in mohair dust - it was all over our clothes, socks, hair, and definitely the floor. We spent a good amount of time pondering what alternate purpose the mohair could be used for, but didn't make it very far.

Hopefully my next post - needle pending - will be to show a lovely finished product!

7.75 hours for me.

Catherine

Something blue...

No, don't get excited. My friend and former officemate is getting married in August. In moving out of the office (and country), she left me with a giant trashbag filled with a half-made blue mohair/wool/acrylic blanket with the cutest triangle pattern (from what I understand, made by her mom; it remains unclear to me why it wasn't finished), sitting on size 15 knitting needles. She knows I like to knit, and so was just getting rid of the yarn by giving it to someone who might use it. But what she doesn't know is that Evil Twin and I are planning to finish the blanket and send it over as an early wedding present. Bwa ha ha!!

Somehow I doubt she'll wear it on the big day, though...

1.25 hours for me! Sadly, that's already more than 50% of what I got in the last 3 months...

Catherine

I'm a Hoarder!

It dawned on me that the end of March marks the end of our first quarter of Competition Year Two (if you can call this competition).

I've been teaching Middle to use the sewing machine and making Smallest a poodle skirt for a dance that she'll be doing, so I've done some sewing that I need to report.

It took about an hour for the skirt, then I've worked about an hour on the petticoat so far, and about two hours on Middle's shirt. She lost interest, so now I'm finishing it. We cut it out together and put most of the top together before she had better things to do.

So I'll go with 4 hours.

7 hours total.

And a happy birthday to you, Leetle Seester!

Margie

Strike that, reverse it

I spent the last week grumbling over that square I'd made badly, so I took out the last three seams and redid them. Much improved. I also did one other square. My bad sewing last week made me sufficiently nervous that I sewed really slowly, because all that took me an hour. I had plans to sew more than that, but all this yummy salsa I've been eating all weekend is numbing my brain...

2.25 hours for me!

Catherine

2011: Return to sewing mountain

Finally I have done some sewing. With no particular inspiration, I went back to my quilt, and sewed three squares up in an hour. Except, one of the new ones is pretty uneven - see? I have to think about whether it might even get the axe (or the seam-ripper). How many am I supposed to be making again?? Anyway, I've got 4 more squares ready to go, so hopefully that won't take another month to get to.

Also, a very small amount of hoarding: I spent 15 minutes working on my crochet creature during the Superbowl, and a few minutes the day before that helping someone (who shall henceforth be called 'my evil twin') learn how to knit. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had some secret tips to pass on!

1.25 hours for me!

Catherine

Woven bracelets

Well...

During Christmas break, I didn't do any knitting, but I "helped" the girls with some woven bracelets they had gotten a while back. Not sure just how long I spent on it, but it was at least three hours. Nice, mindless work. And the girls love the results.

I'll have to get pictures shortly.

3 hours for me! (are we doing this again?)

Margie