fo: baby quilt

Began: December 28, 2008
Finished: April 22, 2009
I've finished the quilt, and now that the parents-to-be have seen it, I can post pictures here. Here is the back:I looked at so many quilts online to find inspiration for this quilt, but I pretty much worked out the plan for it myself. I used various pictures as templates for the appliqued animals--I think the only one that I found from a quilt pattern was the giraffe, from Oh Fransson!, and I modified that one, too. I started by creating different animal blocks, knowing that I wanted to have 9 blocks with a different animal in each one, and white sashing in between. Several quilts from Crazy Mom Quilts inspired me to do the blocks this way, alternating borders of white with the prints. She also inspired me to do a pieced back, although I came up with the design for it myself. I had to have that extra strip of small patches of prints on the back (they were 4.5" squares) because the back just wasn't going to be quite wide enough without it.

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.