Category: crafting

A Friday

Spinning up some colourful BFL.

A skirt in progress! This linen one’s been cut out for ages (seriously, years) and I just finally sewed it up. Just needs to be hemmed.

(Whoops, the waist elastic is a bit unruly! Need to tack that down.)

New yarn!

The awesome people at Lantern Moon sent me some of their new yarn to try out. Indochine is 100% silk, sport weight, and 134 yds per 50g. This dark purple colour is lovely! The yarn has a nice silky crunch to it and lots of plies (which I like). Can’t wait to cast on with it! I have a few ideas.

Finally, I have a few more posts up on Craftsy! Check them out, won’t you?
Essential Hand Spinning Supplies
Fiber Terminology
Choosing a Spinning Wheel
Handspun Yarn Structures

I hope your weekend is sunny and fun! I’ll be going to a baseball game tonight (my first), and doing some more gardening.

June 6, 2014
This and That in the Sunshine

I haven’t much knitting to show you – I have so much secret deadline stuff on my plate! I did finish my new shawl design out of 1 skein of Wollmeise Twin, and I love it. The pattern will be out as part of a small collection, hopefully next month.

I like to keep my knitting to the work day if I can, and do other things at night like sewing – but lately playing Minecraft has been taking over the evenings! That game is a total time suck, and we’re only playing on the PS3 where the world is limited. So I haven’t been hand quilting much, but seeing the rolled up quilt on the back of the couch makes me happy anyway. It looks like knitting!

We spent a good amount of time this weekend on the porch, tidying, mixing soil and compost, and planting out some of my giant tomato “seedlings”. Dale’s been playing with my camera, and he took some good shots. It’s really nice having the documentation of how things progress out there.

Shelling peas – we won’t get a ton of them, but I like the way they look. Plus nothing beats eating fresh peas right out of the garden.

Basil in with a tomato – the variety is Italian Large Leaf. I also have some Purple Opal basil that hasn’t come up yet.

I need some better plant labels.

Tomatoes, left to right: Ivory Pear, Matt’s Wild Cherry, Eva Purple Ball, Black Cherry. The two on the right are these ones, they must be relieved to be out of those yogurt containers! I have four more tomato plants in the process of hardening off. We’re definitely going to need a few more bins to plant in, a few more tomato cages, and more plastic netting to keep the squirrels out.

May 27, 2014
Jelly Roll Race Quilt Top

I bought a Comma collection (by moda) jelly roll last summer, and started hand sewing some of the strips together, only to stuff them into a bag for a long time. I needed something easy to sew on the machine this past long weekend, so I unpicked the handsewn seams and worked the strips up into a Jelly Roll Race Quilt!

Dale caught some good photos of me basting. I decided not to use all the colours in the jelly roll – I took out the pinks and greens, and added in some other fabrics for an overall palette of black, grey, white, blue, and yellow. I followed the excellent instructions from Blair of wise craft, sewing the strips together end to end, then folding the strip in half and sewing an edge together, folding that in half and sewing an edge together, etc. It’s kind of difficult to explain in words, but really easy to do!

My strips are shorter than they were originally – I cut the strips in half so that it would be easier to blend in other strips cut from fat quarters. I didn’t really calculate what size it would come out to, so it while it was wide enough, it wasn’t long enough for the bed! I decided to add grey borders to the ends, which look similar but were done a strip at a time to make sure I got the right dimensions.

I made a backing from some larger pieces and scraps, and sandwiched it all up. I actually had a piece of batting the right size (60″x80″) without checking before I made the quilt top, though I do think I might lose an inch or two from the width when it comes time to trim it. I’m planning to hand quilt it, and have quilted few simple lines on it so far. It’s fun!

Unrelatedly, I bought these buttons at the Purple Purl yesterday. They’re made by Debra Barnes, aren’t they lovely?

May 21, 2014