Yummy vintage fabrics

Yesterday I snatched up these lovely vintage fabrics at a local vintage sale. They are all cotton, and seem to be screaming out to be part of a quilt don't you think?

These are from the 70s I believe:

And these are much older, not sure which decade though:

They are so sweet and lovely, I like to take them out and unfold them and stroke them and carefully refold them and then put them back.

The thing is, I parted with both my sewing machine (which was beyond repair anyway) and most of my fabric stash about a year ago, after finally coming to grips with the fact that I would never really take up quilting again.

Oh well, I guess I will have to ask for a sewing machine for Christmas now....mmmm.... more unfinished quilt tops...that's what I need.

I have so much fun piecing the tops, and then when I am faced with the thousands and thousands of stitches needed to actually quilt it, I get scared and hide. I know, tying a quilt is an option, but it just doesn't seem like a quilt unless it's been quilted you know? Tied quilts always seem more like comforters or duvets or something to me. Perhaps machine quilting? The very talented lady at yarnstorm makes gorgeous quilts and does all the quilting by hand. And she seems to be able to get it done in less than 3 years. I wonder what her secret is. I'll have to ask if she uses a hoop when she lap quilts, or if she just pins the hell out of it. I think it would go much quicker without a hoop. And probably sticking to more basic overall designs would help too....parallel lines or something.

rain and baby hats

I'm working on a baby hat for a friend who is due to give birth any day now. She lives in Colorado, which I hear is quite cold. I am using Flash, which is my favorite yarn for baby knits. It's 100% cotton, super soft, machine washable, and comes in candy-like colors. I hope to have enough yarn in these two skeins to make two: one in solid blue with the variegated yarn for contrast, and another in the variegated yarn using blue for contrast. I am going to try to make one a little larger than the other, so hopefully at least one will fit. I have the hardest time sizing baby hats. No matter how exactly I match the gauge, they always seem so impossibly small when they are done. It's difficult to picture just how tiny these little new people are unless you happen to have one on hand to measure.

As for the straight neck sweater mentioned in an earlier post, due to some very, very bad behavior on the part of my dog, Bean, I will not have enough yarn to make the sweater. (If anyone comes up with a way to wind yarn into a shape that is less tempting to dogs than that of a ball, please let me know.) I am researching some sort of tank in a similar shape.

Rainy weekends make for prolific knitters.

Scribbles

From time to time I like to draw in my diary. Now I'm no great artist or anything. I like to draw as a form of meditation. I try to make myself forget about what my mind is registering and draw what my eyes see. It's not as easy as it sounds. For example, if you were to draw your living room chair (which would be a totally normal and hip thing to do, by the way), you might be thinking "chair" as you put the pen to paper. This one thought affects the drawing because your ideas of what a chair looks like (whatever picture comes to you when you hear the word) will superimpose themselves onto it. It is much harder (and makes a better drawing) to draw it as if you have no idea what a chair is supposed to look like. As if you have never in your life seen anything like this. You are just drawing this object in as much detail as you can, line-for-line, according to what you see with your eyes. You just have to trust that the drawing will look like the chair in the end. It's an exercise in faith, really.

On a less cerebral note, looking at the picture I notice that I spelled my husband's name wrong. I am married to Bryan. Although I have nothing against Bran, I am not in a relationship with it.

Another project started...

I titled this post this way because it seems that if I wait to post about finished projects, this will be a very boring blog. I have, at this moment, more than twenty knitting/crocheting/sewing projects that vary in degrees of incompleteness. I don't think that I am unique that way. I am trying to stick to a rule I made for myself: I am not to start a new project until I finish an old one. I realize that the net effect of this rule is nil, as I will always have about twenty undone projects lurking around the house. But I'm okay with that. This is some gorgeous cotton yarn I got when I went to Argentina. I love to find yarn that is more obscure. Not so easy to get a hold of. For instance, this yarn came with no label, no dye lot, the color is not even named. That makes it very exciting to come up with what I want to make out of it. I have to be creative. I am the kind of person who will find a pattern I like and then go get the suggested yarn. I would rather be the kind of person who brings home a yarn she is drawn to, lives with it for awhile, and then decides what would be the best way to use it.

I think I will use this to make the boatneck sweater from Hollywood Knits. Only I want to make it without using a double strand of yarn. This means math. And lots of it. I will post pictures as it comes along.

On a related subject, has anyone else noticed how patterns give different instructions for different sizes, but that these only differ by an inch or two? For example, this pattern's largest size differs from its smallest one by only four inches. That's four inches of circumference, not width. The size range seems to be even less than what one finds in the stores. I'm a size 10, so I'll make the large and just hope for the best!

Kitchen redo

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working on our kitchen. I wanted to make it look a little more interesting (it was just a white box), and to add some more storage (a small white box). Here are the results:


That whole wall used to be just a big blank space. I am really proud because I built the shelf/ pot rack myself. I love my cordless drill!! I wonder if any other women feel this way...

Hello there!

Although I have had lots of fun maintaining my dog's blog, I have decided that it would be nice to post about other things too. So this blog is for all things not related to Bean.