testing

I'm just testing to see if I can post, since Blogger won't keep me logged in to comment anywhere. 

Checking in

I just wanted to drop a quick post to shake the dust of this lonely little blog. I have been busy with crafting, which explains a little why I've done so little blogging. Well that and the fact that the last 6 months of last year were hell for my family.

I am getting stuff done and will starting blogging about all that and post pictures once the weather is nice enough to drag my quilts outside for a proper photo session.

Can I have Spring now? Please?

a small update

So I've been plugging away over here trying to move projects forward. Maybe not finishing anything, but moving forward just the same. One thing continues to chew at me. This whole Jinny Beyer palette non-sense. I've got the strips cut for the Woven Ribbons projects, yes I'm making 2 of them and hope to sit down with my sewing machine this week and get the palette blocks pieced. I'm currently marking the triangles for the Snowbirds quilt I also cut fabric for. I've been referring back to the photograph of the original to see how far along my marking is coming and I've come to realize something. My quilt isn't going to look like the original. My Woven Ribbons won't look like the original either because the palette was completely redesigned and colors shifted between the time I bought my box and today. This is what I get for hoarding fabric I suppose. Now, this hasn't chased me off either project, but it has irritated me about how the palette has been handled. I wonder how many other quilters out there did what I did? I wonder how many will try to take the old palette box and try to make a new quilt out of it? Small lesson learned.

Of course my latest push to get these projects finished is I want desperately to make a mixed pieced and applique quilt. I have EVERYTHING I need to make it, right down to the quilting stencils. I have made a quick list of projects sitting around here, ones not in boxes and I won't start the new pretty until I get these 6 projects pieced. So every day this month I'm working to get them finished. Let's see how far I can get in the next 19 days.

Better late than never

Here it is, in all it's sunshine glory, my Sunshine Coin quilt. Turned out pretty damned good if you ask me. Two lessons learned with this quilt. First, never start the quilting until you know how you'll quilt the entire quilt. Second, just get to it. I stalled over the outer border, even after I decided how I was going to quilt it because I thought it would be complicated. It wasn't.

So, now the Dear Jane cheater panel is in the hoop waiting for it's first quiting stitches. The problem now is it's so warm that in the evenings when I normally quilt the last thing I want is to have a quilt on my lap. It's another one of those "shouldn't take too long" kinda projects. Let's see how long this one will be sitting around.

Well it was a thought

Yeah, so my brilliant plan to cut a couple quilts from my Jinny Beyer palette box has been shot to hell. Apparently when the box was put together it wasn't put together in order . . . or so I thought then I compared by palette sample cards to the website . . . not only did she update fabrics within the palette over the years but she also changed the order of the fabrics. What does that mean? It means I've wasted over an hour of my day trying to organized fabric against an obsolete tool. The website was also a waste because she doesn't organize the fabrics by number. I know, what the f@#* was I thinking? I mean the fabrics are only organized by number why in hell would she organized them on her website by number? Silly human what was I thinking?

The day's plan has been shot to hell.

I've wasted money on fabric I now cannot use as planned and the box this fabric was in? Yeah, it's been broken down and added to the pile of cardboard in the garage headed to recycling.

How pissed I am at this cannot be measured. Simply cannot be measured.

Just a little update

Yeah, I know I was going to get better at this wasn't I?

First thing, I realized last night that yesterday would have been perfect, perfect I tell you, for blocking one of my shawls. Too bad I didn't think of it during the DAY. Oy. Having a sunny 70 degree day in early March fried my brain apparently. But it was wonderful.

Second thought of the last 24 hours is why I am not able to use up my fabric as quickly as I'd like? Actually the same question could be posed for my yarn. I thought this little granny hexagon sampler would just soak up yarn, I mean doesn't crochet take up significantly more yarn than knitting? Apparently not enough. So here I am three weeks later and I'm still trying to use up this damn bright acrylic yarn.

I also thought I'd found the perfect couple of projects to use up my Jinny Beyer palette fabrics. I went crazy a couple years ago and bought the entire fat quarter box and here it's sat ever since. The larger quilt I was going to use it for . . . it's just beyond my design skills at this point. So I found not one, not two, but three quilts and are designed for the palette box and guess what? I'll still have half the fabric left over when I'm done. I knew I'd have leftover. I figured I could stash it and use it for an applique project, some applique project but seriously people. Just once I would like to find a pattern, pull some fabric and use it all up.

A little knitting to report

You like? This is my second Ulmus shawl/wrap. I started this sometime in . . . October maybe. Yeah it didn't take me that long to knit I just hit the typical mid-project boredom. I steamed through the last third in 3 days and I'm thrilled to have it finished. Haven't a damn clue when I'll get around to blocking it as doing so inside takes more hours than I'm willing to give any one project. So first nice day in the Spring I'll block this.

This isn't the best picture and I'm sorry but I have a bit of a love/hate with this project. The yarn, I ordered it to make another large Ulmus wrap but well . . . the yarn doesn't look this nice in person. Ordering yarn sight unseen and be a real problem, especially from the company I bought this yarn from. These are my second pair of Monkey socks and the pattern is insanely easy. Again, they're not blocked not that I think they really need it I just need to rinse them. Hopefully soon I'll tackle that.

The sunshine quilt is nearly finished. I got the body of it quilted last night. All that's left is to mark and quilt the borders. Another example of how I need to plan out the quilting before I start. Oh well. It's put aside for a couple days while I tackle another pre-printed panel, this time it's the Dear Jane panel.