Herb garden fini!

First: some celebration! The herb garden cross-stitch is framed, delivered, and enjoyed by the recipients. Here's a photo back from them, since I forgot to take one before mailing it. Isn't the frame so cute?! I will be interested to see if/when they spot the one big mistake I made (or should I say, if/when they tell me that they spotted it).

Second, since I have a fair amount of travel going on at the moment, I have started a new big project to occupy the long flights. Here is the pattern and my efforts thus far. I actually really started with a different piece of fabric, but unfortunately discovered on the first leg of a long flight to the UK that it was too small (despite the instructions seeming pretty clear that it should fit, sigh). Fortunately, I had a few hours free when I arrived in London, and took on an expedition to find more. This introduced me to the idea of haberdasheries - amazing to see fully-formed fabric stores inside of department stores! And amazing to see cross-stitch fabric in big bolts of cloth! And the second haberdashery I had visited was in a beautiful old building that was worthy of photos on its own. The third (and final, phew) haberdashery was extremely busy with people buying large amounts of fabulous fabrics, which made more sense once I realized I had stumbled on London Fashion Week.

In terms of cross-stitch, I still need to finish the final entry in my brother's birthday present, sadly the only thing that was on my moldy old (but now updated) project list that I a) hadn't finished and b) still know what it means after years away. Soon...

- Catherine

Napkins abroad

Margie, those doilies are so cute! Maybe you could turn them into a circular bag that would hold hoops and thread and scissors and stuff to use for other projects? Or, a travel bag for cords that would be happy to go around a circular case rather than square? Will keep thinking. :D

My post was confusing - the "width" I was talking about was the way that I aligned the long edge of one purple fabric with the quilt; I should have put the quilt in the middle of the edge strip, but I started them flush, and then cut off the extra when I got to the other side. So I couldn't just take the seam out and fix it. I also like the actual width of the border, fortunately. :D

Now, some sad news: I have put the unfinished napkin fabric... somewhere. I had it on top of the sewing machine and clearly went through a cleaning frenzy of some kind, and they are momentarily in another dimension. I have looked in every closet we have. I went through my big fabric bins. I have the feeling they are somewhere so obvious, and I am just overlooking them. It is maddening. 

Now for other quilt news! A few months ago, I asked in my husband's family group chat if anyone wanted a quilt because I have far too much fabric, and (fortunately) only one person (Oldest brother) said yes. I have been looking at quilt patterns in my own books and in some of Margie's, and ended up with ~10 patterns that I thought would be fun to work on for them. I sent the photos to Oldest + his wife; she landed on two as her favorites, and Oldest (unknowingly, I'm sure) picked the more complicated to make of the two. But, I agree that it is a beautiful pattern (grandmother's flower garden), and I'm excited to try something that increases my skills a bit more. Here's a photo (taken from diaryofaquilter.com).

Should be an interesting year of quilts!

Catherine

PS, the title is a shout-out to a terrific Terry Prachett book, Witches Abroad. I hope my napkins are having as many adventures as the witches did.

Getting it together

 When we moved into our current house, one of the perks was the large closet in the ground floor bedroom.  Initially, it was pretty tidy.  Jeff had some tools in there, I had a lot of craft stuff in there, and The Boy also had stuff in there, as it is his bedroom.

Over time, things have accumulated in there.  We've collected stuff from both childhood homes, there are old computers, dance costume parts, and other bits and pieces.  Storage space was limited, not many shelves, and it's really been bugging me (and apparently Jeff too) so a couple of weeks ago, we measured and ordered some sturdy shelves.  Jeff put them together on Saturday and took out two shelves for hanging clothes (There is still one area, more than enough for The Boy) and picked up some storage bins to put things in.  It has made a huge difference already!  It's made the closet much tidier, and we're getting rid of stuff that we don't need anymore.  It's also easy to see what's inside the boxes now.  I did some photo sorting and came across lots of things that should go to my ex, so that should be fun for him as well.  Lots of pictures of his parents.  

Other than that, I've been working on the new cowl.  It's fun, I might make it larger than intended, if I can do the math to add increase rows.  I think there will be a lot of yarn left over and it would be nice to use up more of it.

I did discover some old projects that were completed, and also lots to work on.  So many projects, so little time!  Time for a new list, I think?  Here's one of the old projects.  They were intended to be doilies.  One was worked when I was in Elementary school, and the other I probably worked on in the last ten years.  I don't know what to do with them, they're not something I see a need for.

Anyhow, that's about what I know.  Trying to figure out what to do with All The Things.  I also discovered I have lots of fabric purchased to make specific quilts, so I might delve back into quilting at some point, clear out those bins!  

I like the purple border, Catherine!  The size looks okay to me?  You could always put another border around that one too?

Margie

A border blunder

Well, I was all excited to dive into the border today, but didn't stop to plan it very well. I had originally thought I might do a diagonal edge at the corner where the border strips intersect (I know there is a name for that style, but I forget), but decided to make it simpler and just have each strip flow into the next one. But, I forgot to leave extra width on the first one and then cut the fabric before I got around and realized my mistake. 

I decided to finish the last seam to see how it looks and... yep, it's lame (compare the top right corner vs the rest). I don't have a lot of the purple left, so the only solution available is to truncate all of the strips and make the corners into separate squares. The rest of the purple fabric was also in the pile where Nairo was sleeping, so I'll throw that in the wash today and hope to rectify this tomorrow!

In good news, I think the plain purple border does make the chaotic interior feel a bit less chaotic, so I'm making some forward progress. :P

- Catherine

Bugs and borders

Last Sunday I finished cutting all the napkin squares for my friend - I decided on 6 in each pattern because they have a family of 5, and then they can have a friend over. I also cut the border pieces for the fish quilt, so next time I am with my sewing machine, I will sew all of those up!

Nairo was a very good supervisor. He also (on Monday) decided that the perfect place for a nap was on the backing fabric for the quilt, and of course the child's grandmother is allergic to cats, so now I have to wash it again. My fault for leaving it out in such a welcoming comfy way. :P

Today I am not with my sewing machine, so I will work on the final bug for our brother - all that's left is adding the sparkly thread around the edges, but I had misplaced the thread, so that makes things difficult. I don't think I can finish today, but will prioritize until it's done (as the relevant birthday was a couple of days ago). Photos to come! 

- Catherine

Welcome back!

Hooray for Catherine and Quilts!  Nairo is indeed the Most Helpful Boy.

So...

My last post was pre-Xmas, so here's what's happened since then.  I finished all the hats!  After I finished Middle's hat, we decided it was too small (I dropped down a needle size for the brown portion) and they wanted a longer brim, so the hat was unraveled back to the green edge and corrected.  It's been completed and that's downstairs waiting to be mailed off.

I started a cowl with some lovely Road to China Light yarn from a company I can't recall the name of, but the RtCL is the yarn name.  It's very soft and was a present to me from Jeff.  He got it in August when we went to New Orleans after I dropped Smallest off at Balletland.

I had some surgery to remove naughty parts, and am currently recovering from said surgery.  I finished the cowl and have started on another cowl (Aurelia Cowl) with yarn I got while dropping Smallest off.  It's Blue Sky Fibers Skyland yarn in a lovely green color.  The colorway is called Comet, and I'm a little baffled by that.  Not what I would have expected of a Comet color.  Ah well.

This is the finished cowl, not a complicated pattern.

This is the swatch for the Aurelia Cowl, for which I got gauge on the first try!

After this, I'll probably return to finishing the purple top that I started a while back.  Then, who knows!  There is a lot of yarn waiting to become things.  I did start some Xmas socks for Middle and Smallest, so that might become my TV knitting for a while.  There are some sweaters for Smallest on the list as well.

Oh! And I finished the bug too.  I clearly had gotten the missing gold thread at some point, so it was just a short job to finish it all up.  Catherine, were the bugs presented to him?

Also, what may be one of the best parts is that we got to see Catherine here in Houston during a LONG layover!  We had to go to Pappasitos and eat tasty food!  Here she is with Jeff and The Boy, and then getting some lap cat time with Ginny, Lover of Laps.

I think that's it for now, looking forward to a fun weekend, we are going to see Women & Juliet performed by an amazing British company.  There are 4-5 people and they play multiple parts and perform beautifully.  We've seen them do other Shakespeare plays in the past.  In fact, one of my early dates with Jeff was to see them, as he's a fan of theatre.  

Margie