quilt binding

Making my pieced binding was a snap (I followed instructions on a tutorial found on Crazy Mama Quilts) and attaching it to the quilt was also pretty easy, but it's taking me a LONG time to sew it up by hand. But I'm about 2/3 of the way done.

Pictures of the finished thing one day soon, I hope....

domesticity

What a productive weekend I've had! Here's what I accomplished:
Quilted: 1 baby quilt (now I just need to make/sew on the binding)
Fixed: squeaky sewing machine
Found: lost knitting project (my Snicket socks...they're at a theater in Denver and will be mailed back to me Monday, hooray!)
Cleaned: kitchen floor & bedroom carpet
Cooked: oven French toast for Sunday morning, risotto for dinner
Swam: 1300 yards
Spun: a little bit of yarn
Teased and carded for spinning: about half my wool
Here's a picture of this week's spinning wheel:Isn't it sweet-looking? And here's a look at my yarn. It certainly looks homespun...but it's yarn, after all:

wool

I started my first spinning class this week. We learned how to prepare wool for spinning (washing, teasing, and carding it) and how to use a drop spindle. This is about 8 ounces of the stuff (the teacher bought a single 5 pound fleece for the class of 10 students and divided it up among us). Here I am, spinning with my drop spindle:It is somewhat perplexing and totally unlike anything else I've done before. Also somewhat tiring for the arms. But fun--I'm very much looking forward to my next class, when I get to use a wheel!

This is what I made for dinner last Wednesday night: halibut with white wine and capers, green beans, and creamy polenta.

vacation knitting

I've done very little knitting on my spring break (somehow it doesn't feel right to bring out wool and needles while I'm sitting on the beach) but I did spend a couple hours on the plane ride to maui working on these lemony snicket socks. They are slow going but kind of cool-looking, I think. I don't have a cable needle with me, but I've been using a toothpick as a substitute.

Here's a gratuitous beach shot to fill out this posting...

FO: turn a square hat

Pattern: Turn a Square by Jared Flood, found on Brooklyn Tweed.
Yarn: MC=Sportivo, CC=scraps (who knows what by now...)
Modifications: Because my MC yarn was quite bulky, I didn't get gauge for this, I got 4sts/inch instead of 5, so I cast on 76 sts instead of 96. Then, when I was doing the decrease rounds, I stupidly misread the directions and kept decreasing every other round until I had 20 stitches left instead of switching to decreases every round with 32 stitches left.

It was about time I chose a project that I could whip up in a weekend! With all the sweaters I've been attempting lately, I have missed instant gratification knitting. This was a great, easy pattern and I'm very happy with the results.

quilt back

I finished my quilt back a couple of weeks ago, but haven't yet figured out how to put the whole thing together and quilt it...so I'm sort of stalled on this project. I've missed sewing. In the meantime, I did make a couple more pincushions, but no pictures yet. Anyway, this is probably the last quilt-in-progress picture I will post, until I can show the completed thing, which may not be until June.

FO: shawl collar sweater

I would count this sweater as a dismal failure. I sort of made up the pattern; that is--I loosely based it on starsky (found on knitty.com) but I left out the belt and the cables, and I was nowhere near gauge so I had to do a lot of math to figure out my stitch counts. And the finished product looks nothing like the original sweater. I used knitpicks decadence, a bulky-weight alpaca that has been discontinued, in a caramel color that, turns out, is very unflattering to my complexion. I think I will be giving this one away or stuffing it in the very back of my closet.