Nearly Finished!

It was a productive week, I'm happy to say! Realized at some point that there's no floor space that's safe to pin on and large enough for a queen-size quilt inside the house. So...a couple of days ago I set myself up in the garage after carefully sweeping up any dust and dirt. It was freezing out there! Worked out pretty well, though. Here's "Life is a Promise, Fulfill It", and all the layers stretched out and ready for pinning. Before I started the layering process, I decided to try to get one shot of the entire quilt top, for posterity. Not easy...had to perch on a ladder and it still isn't really satisfactory. I need a design wall!

Back in the house, after all the hours of pinning, sore knees, sore fingers, but that quilt is all pinned together!

Here's how I reworked the top border to balance Katie's name a bit.

Y.esterday and today I cloistered myself in the sewing room and got the entire top quilted! Hooray! Also got the binding strips prepared, so tomorrow I will sew those on and start on the hand sewing of the folded-over edge.

This baby is nearly ready for its new owner.

Another BIG thanks to Tonya...I needed to swat up on the wonky letter instructions again when I did these borders. I'm really happy with how they turned out!

Quilts and Shawls, Oh My!

Well, woo-hoo! Yesterday I finished piecing the words for Katie Rose's quilt, at last. I forgot to take a picture of the entire center section when it was spread out on the guest bed, and we've got company coming any moment, so a pic of the full center will have to wait until tomorrow...but here it is with the center section folded up and pieces of the light pink border fabric laid out around the edges, so I could make sure the phrases are going to fit along the sides. Looks like they will! I'm hoping all these words in the border won't make it looke like it's from the Ransom Note School of Quilting! Now the hard part comes: sewing each letter to its tiny piece of background fabric, allowing for extra space between words, and then adding the extra border strips to top and bottom of the phrases so the overall quilt size will be correct. Not to mention deciding what to do about the backing...and THEN there's the actual quilting. Keep your fingers crossed that I can keep this momentum going and finish this quilt by the 29th, when we leave again for California.

And I have an actual FO to show, too: the Adamas Shawl is finished and here's the proof. All up, I think it ended up taking about 1200 beads, size 8/0, and that was a real exercise in patience! I like the effect though - especially as the beads add just a bit of weight to the outside edge, making the shawl drape very nicely. So, I pressed DH into service this morning for a bit of a photo shoot.

All in all, it was really a fun shawl to knit. Next up will be a very dark purple, almost black, mohair blend, with more beads, but I need a break from beading for awhile, first!

No pics yet of the new cardigan, Amused, but that's going well, too. I started the second sleeve this morning, so it will be finished this week for sure. Pics next time!

That's Why We Call It "Fall" in the U.S....

So we are home, after an uneventful flight. DH still has a wretched cough, and finally went to the doctor yesterday -- secondary infection, following his bad cold of two weeks ago, resulting in the need for antibiotics and rest. Since the swine flu fear is everywhere, he is to avoid socializing until he is feeling better, and if he gets worse we must have a throat swab taken at the local hospital, just to be sure. No fever, though, so it's doubtful if it's anything but the result of overdoing work duties while he had a cold.

Add to that the fun of jet lag, and this is probably not our best week ever! Still, as you can see from the above photo, autumn has landed in Exeter big time. This is one of five big buckets of leaves that had accumulated outside our back door. Nice mulch for the perennials...

Not much sewing or knitting at the moment. Hope to be feeling more like doing something in a day or two.

Farewell to a Sweet Friend...

I have postponed writing this because there is so much sadness for DH and me. We got news a few days ago that our beloved Spike was found dead in her kitty condo a few days after we left for California.

This is a pic of Spike taken in 2002, when we lived in the Sierra Foothills in California. She spent most of her time in DH's office, so we called her the Secretary Kitty.

A word or two about her name might be called for. Spike and her sister, Rosebud, were born under a house in Ione, CA in 1996. A predator took several siblings, so the people whose house it was rescued the remaining kittens and looked for homes for them. We adopted these two adorable furballs in a flash. A visit to the vet for first shots and a general physical inspection was called for, during which the veterinary assistant said, "Well, this one is a girl, and that one is a little boy," (indicating Spike). So we duly named them Rosebud and Spike, and a few months later were shocked when Spike came into heat! We tried to rename "him" -- Suki stuck for a week or two but just didn't come trippingly to the tongue. So we bowed to the inevitable and considered her to be our little biker chick kitty.

Spike had the most loving nature of any cat we've ever had. You could always count on a few gentle licks from her oh-so-soft tongue any time you petted or combed her. Over the years, she gained a few pounds (haven't we all?!) and came to be known as "one of the fat ladies," along with our two other female cats, Cassie and Chloe. (Rosebud had disappeared several years ago...she refused to sleep in the house, preferring a large knothole in a gigantic oak tree on our country property there. We believe a bobcat or mountain lion took Rosebud while she slept.)

Rebecca, our petsitter, told us that when she came in to feed the cats and clean their boxes, she found Spike stretched out on the grass, looking as if she had stretched out for a nap in the sun and just never woke up. Spike was Rebecca's favorite of our seven cats, and she is feeling grief-stricken, too.

We will miss our little Spikey more than words can tell...so sad, so sad.

All Knitting, No Quilting...BAD Quilter!

For some reason, I've been feeling like knitting instead of working on "the" quilt, so I thought I'd share the most recent FO: This is Hypoteneuse (Rav Link), by Anne Hanson of Knitspot. It's really large, and very drapey and soft. Knitted with KnitPicks Swish DK, a really lovely, soft, altogether wonderful yarn. The pic below shows how long it is...it was windy today (surprise, surprise!) and you can see it flipping around in the breeze.

And I realized I never posted a pic of the pink alpaca shawl (also Rav link) in its full glory, so here it is. You may remember the disaster of the big hole that appeared in one corner as I was blocking it. Fortunately, I don't think it's too noticeable, but just to be sure, that corner is at the BACK in this pic.

And the obligatory close-up, to show off all the lacy detail. The yarn is Misti Alpaca Laceweight, and it's light as a cloud. Still provides a bit of warmth on cool evenings, though, because it's alpaca.

I've also begun work on another shawl, Adamas, (another Ravelry link) using that glorious KnitPicks Shimmer (alpaca and silk laceweight) in the color Cumulus (a pale, shaded taupe), but no pics yet. Right now it's just a puddle of loops on the needles.

One of these days I need to get back into the quilting studio, but that means back to cutting a zillion small squares for the sashing, and I just don't feel like cutting fabric at the moment.

We leave for California on Easter Sunday, for a couple of weeks, so I may postpone the cutting till we're back...on the other hand, think how happy I'd be to return home to a nice pile of neatly cut squares, just waiting to be stitched into star points on the sashing pieces...hmmmm, wonder how I'll resolve this...

More of Tonya's Inspirational Letters!

Well, the journey has begun for Katie Rose's quilt. Here is a shot of the first quadrant of blocks with their sashing and star cornerstones. I've laid the first pieced letters on top: Katie Rose. As you may or may not be able to see, I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board for the "OS" of Rose...the O is too big and clunky, and the S is made from too busy a fabric. Try, try again! I do like the "Katie" part, though. I'm finding there's a little learning curve to come back to the free-pieced letters after a few months away. My brain needs to readjust...kind of like with paper-piecing, only not quite as "backward and upside down," if you know what I mean!
You can see the actual blocks and stars better in this upside down shot (taken from the other side of the ironing board. I like the look of the dotted sashing, and the deep pink stars.

I'm kind of rushing to get a bit of something together for this quilt, because I'm giving a little talk about my quilts tomorrow to a local group, and they'd like to see some of my work. Since I give away most of my quilts, I don't have a lot to show, so I thought they might like to see this one in progress. Hope to have the actual quilt finished and delivered by the end of June, so I need to keep on keepin' on. As you may remember, I have a LOT of words to make for the borders. First up will be side one: Life is a song -- sing it. I think I'm going to use one color family for each phrase, using maybe one fabric for the "Life is a song" and a deeper tone of the same color for "sing it." What do you all think?

And how about the obligatory kitty pic? This time with DH in the picture, too. He said this picture should be captioned "Ross and Cloudy...Working"

There's some knitting going on, too, and I'll be attending my first Southern Highlands Stitch 'n Sip (sounds a lot nicer than Stitch 'n Bitch, doesn't it!) gathering tonight. This little group was recently begun as a forum on Ravelry by Clovelly, and now, at her instigation, we're actually getting together in person -- face time! I'll try to remember to take my camera...

Deja Vu All Over Again...

Here we are in the boarding lounge at SFO (San Francisco, for non-Californians), having had our flight cancelled last night, after four hours sitting on the tarmac with no news and nothing happening. After scrubbing the flight at around 2AM, they put up in hotels those people who didn't have a place to stay in the Bay Area and told everyone else to go home and come back at 9AM for an 11AM departure. We could have gone to our apartment by taxi, but we didn't like our chances of getting to the apartment, sleeping a couple of hours, and and then making it back to SFO on time, given that it's raining and we'd be in rush hour traffic, so we spent the night on the benches in the terminal.

Keep your fingers crossed that this 11AM flight actually goes...our kitties NEED us at home!

Wow, looking at the grammar and syntax of that first paragraph, I can see I'm sleep deprived (or maybe just crazed!)...

Next post from Oz, one hopes...