First Blog Award

I've seen lots of blog awards around, but this is the first one I've received!


Thank you, Kathy! It really made MY day to get this! I'm a little behind on my blog reading and I just discovered that Andrea of Bad Cat Designs (you MUST check out her luscious lace designs) also gave me this award. I'm feeling so loved!!

I'm supposed to pass it on to 10 blogs and it's so hard to choose! I subscribe to 106 blog feeds and I find more all the time. I'm going to give my 10 to blogs that haven't received this award yet and try it pass on a little bit of the happiness that I feel.

In no particular order:

1. Anne has been a really bad influence on me--she's gotten me into crocheted snowflakes and lots of other fun things! She's working at a yarn shop to die for now, so she's not posting as much, but she's still inspired me to try a few new things.
   
2. Delores of As the Wool Turns helps keep me in touch with what's going on around here, and she's really good at bringing to my attention neat projects that I've overlooked.
   
3. Alicia Quilts; her blog has inspired me to pull out some projects and figure out a plan to finish them.
   
4. That Logan Chick, because not only is she a lot like me (although we've never met--I'm just guessing from her blog!) but she has a lovely shawl, Beatrice, that makes me happy to look at.
   
5. Sivia Harding's blog, Skitter Skatter Knitting. Such gorgeous knitting projects! She's my personal enabler, and I love her taste in yarn and lace.
   
6. Kristina's blog, Beadntat By Design, has lots of wonderful pictures of her lace projects, as well as some socks and butterfly pictures.
7. Debi over at FluffyKnitterDeb has some pictures that inspire me and who could pass up pictures of the newly-dubbed Bubbah? I think I like that better than P-Man but gotta get used to it. ;-)
   
8. I love reading Eva's blog, and she's so good to respond to comments--much better than I am. (But then, too, she's got a Wordpress blog and those require an email addy when you comment, so she doesn't have to go track anyone down! That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)
9. Some people just amaze me at how productive they are. icandyarn is one of those people. When does she sleep?!?
10. Becky of the Moonfrog blog, another knitter who gets a lot of stuff done.
    

It was so hard to choose! There are so many wonderful blogs out there, and I've tried to give to people who deserve this award but haven't gotten it yet. Gotta spread the love around!!

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On the knitting front, I'm nearing the end of the red shawl, a design I'm testing for Sivia Harding. It's been a fun knit and I've really enjoyed it! It's at the stage where it's all bunched up the needles so not terribly photogenic. Hopefully I"ll get it done by the time Hat Attack starts....

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I pulled out my wonderful Fricke spinning wheel and did a little spinning this evening after the kids went to bed. Last year at the Snake River Fiber Fair I got some soy silk roving, and I finally decided to tackle spinning it. I'm going for a fine lace-weight yarn, two ply, and trying to put enough spin in it. I was originally going for a single ply but I'm just not experienced enough at spinning yet to try a single ply in soy silk that won't be totally overspun. I'll take some pictures in the daylight tomorrow (I hope!).

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Before I pulled out my wheel, I finished the quilting on my Checkerboard Chains quilt! I started this top before my son was born and he just turned four. I think I was severely sleep deprived because the piecing job is really pathetic. I had a lot of squares that I forced to fit for some reason. Not sure if I just did a bad job of cutting them or what, but the quilting made a sow's ear into a silk purse. I put the binding on, took it off the machine, and trimmed it this evening so all that's left is to hand-sew the binding down. That'll probably take me through the end of the week since I'm kind of slow at it (especially with the kids wanting my attention).

I'm thinking about calling it my "Finished is Better Than Perfect" quilt.

I took some pictures of it while it was on the machine but I haven't downloaded them from the camera yet. Since it's almost 1:00 in the morning, that's going to wait until after I've slept!

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Yesterday I got my first TWO official customer quilts. It was a bit overwhelming to get two within hours of each other, but now that I've gotten my quilt finished I can start to work on those. I'm thinking about starting a "business" blog that would have mainly customer quilt pictures (with the customers' permission). What do you think, gentle readers? Would you prefer quilting stuff to be on a separate blog? I'd continue to post my personal stuff here.

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Tomorrow (well, today really) is Superbowl Sunday, so I hope everyone has a good time! I don't know what we're going to do, as neither one of us really cares about it. We've talked about taking the kids to the zoo but we'll see--there's still SO much to do around the yard to recover from the ice storm in December. Greg got his chipper back from the small engine mechanic and says it's running really well (for the first time in a long time) so he might tackle the huge brush pile in the front. We'll see what happens.

Be safe if you go to a Superbowl party--don't drink and drive!