Quilting Update

I've been working on getting some things done, since we'll be going to visit my parents for 10 days then my MIL and niece will be here for two weeks. We're going to have a great time but I don't anticipate getting much done in the next month.

Here's a quilt top that I need to get quilted for the July meeting of the Oklahoma Machine Quilters Association. It's a Same But Different quilt, and about 20 other guild members will be making the exact same top and quilting it. They'll all hang at the Winter Quilt Show in Oklahoma City (among other places, hopefully) as a display of the many different ways the same quilt can look depending on the quilting.

Put on your sunglasses, it's bright.

I'd just like to state that I had NOTHING to do with either the design or the color choices.
Luckily it was quick to put together, but I'm not feeling real cheerful that I'll have to buy that neon orange thread just for this quilt—I don't anticipate a need for that color often.


This next quilt is one I started at a workshop with Mary Ellen Hopkins in (I think) 2002. I'm going to put one more border on it and I think it will become a Quilt of Valor. I know it's not patriotic, but not everyone wants a patriotic quilt (and I've got a few more UFOs that are patriotic that will be Quilts of Valor).


This quilt is my Mom's, and I'm trying to get it done to take to her tomorrow.



And now I've got to get back to work, getting ready to leave tomorrow.

Have a great week, everyone!

Illness, New Windows, and Yarn!

Yeah, another not-very-creative blog title.

It's been a long stretch of illness around here. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning DD had some tummy issues (nausea, vomiting), but was all right by Saturday afternoon. Sunday I spent most of the day in the bathroom, Monday DS had the sickness, and Tuesday it was DH's turn. Yesterday and this morning it was my turn again, but I did manage to avoid throwing up. Yay for small mercies!

Enough of that!!


Today the windows are being installed and I'm just thrilled! Here are some pictures:




NO MORE GRIDS! It's so nice not to have those in the windows. It's already a HUGE improvement over the windows that were in there.

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Here's some of my recent spinning:


It's100% Targhee that was FULL of noils so I knew I wasn't going to end up with a smooth, even yarn. I'm pretty please with how it turned out though!

It's 200 yards (give or take a few) from 3 ounces, which makes it around a worsted weight. I Navajo plied it for a three-ply yarn.

I dyed it a while back, and then I decided to run it through the drum carder I'm borrowing, since it was already full of noils and I figured I wouldn't ruin the fiber any more by playing.

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This is one of my Mom's quilts that I just finished quilting. I'm trying to get hers done so that I can take them to her on Wednesday, but we'll see. Two more to go, although they're small.


More stuff later!

Disappointment

I'm horribly disappointed. I spent much of yesterday getting ready to have five of the nine windows in the house replaced (removing window treatments and blinds, moving furniture, etc) and it started raining last night, so now we've had to reschedule for Thursday and HOPE that the weather doesn't continue to be stormy and icky.

The guy from the window company said that they could come out and do a partial installation, but they wouldn't be able to do the mortar work until it stops raining for a while. Then I thought about the mud outside both windows and the fact that the installers will be going in and out, and decided that waiting will be better in the long run.

How disappointing!!! I was really looking forward to new windows, not to mention that I'm not going to put the blinds back up for three days, so we'll deal with no blinds for a little while. Sigh.

I just had to vent a little bit.

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Here, look at a sock progress picture, but don't look at the funky sandal tan.

I start these last weekend and haven't touched them for a few days, but I'd promised a picture a while back so here it is.

The yarn is Plymouth's Happy Feet, and it's not as contrast-y in person as it is in the picture. The lace pattern is slightly more obvious in real life. I'm doing them two at a time, toe up, using magic loop.

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I've been doing a little bit of spinning, trying to get the rest of that noil-y Targhee roving spun up that I dyed and re-carded. It's totally full of noils which is really disappointing (it came full of noils, which is why I dyed it—I figured it would be a good first roving to dye since if I felted it, it wouldn't be a great tragedy), but I'm going ahead and spinning it thick and thin. I'm planning to navajo ply it. Not sure what weight it'll come out, but possibly heavy sport to DK.

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And now it's storming again so I'm going to shut down the computer and go clean out the sewing room so that I can actually work in there, and I might just sulk a little, too. ;-)

K.N.I.T. Guild info

This is for Nancy, who left a comment on the last post but I don't have a way to contact her back.

K.N.I.T. stands for Knitting Needles In Tulsa, and we meet on the second Monday of each month. Meetings start at 7:00 at the Schusterman-Benson library's meeting room.

During the summer months (June-August) we don't have "formal" meetings with business and a presentation--not that we're a formal group at all--just show and tell and knitting and gabbing. :-)

Our non-summer meetings have guild business, a quick book review, a program of some kind that usually lasts around 20 minutes (unless I'm doing it, in which case I usually go on and on for about 30 minutes LOL), and show and tell. Meetings usually run for an hour to an hour and 20 minutes, and my favorite part is show and tell.

This year we'll have Sally Melville as our workshop teacher, which will be held October 18th and 19th. The registration will be open to guild members only until August 11th. After that others outside the guild will be able to sign up if there are open spaces.

If you have any questions about the K.N.I.T. Guild, please don't hesitate to ask. You can email me at kat @ piecefulstitches. com (remove the spaces).

Quilt Show is Done (and so am I!)

The Green Country Quilter's Guild show was Friday and Saturday and it went really well. I'm still not recovered from it but hopefully I will be in another day or so. I had a horrible charley horse just below my knee on Friday night/early Saturday morning and it's still incredibly sore, unfortunately. Whine whine whine.

While I had my quilt patterns there to sell, the main purpose of being there was to advertise my machine quilting and I definitely got my name out!

By request, here are some pictures of my booth:




I pinned patterns up on each of the quilts so that it was obvious which pattern went to what.

One of the thing that really surprised me was how many people LOVED the brown Bear Paw Frolic quilt at the back. Probably half of the people who came into my booth loved that one. I made that quilt about six years ago and had to really search out browns, but apparently brown is IN this year and it caught a lot of people's eyes. You never know about people!

My location wasn't great and they really messed up my information in the show program (didn't include my business name, email address, or web site--argh!!) and I have a nasty suspicion that I only got about half of the foot traffic that went through the vendor area. Oh well, not anything I can do about that, but I'll think very hard about signing up to be a vendor at the next show in 2010.

I discovered that if I sat down and knitted, but still greeted people as they went by, I had a lot more people come into the booth. As a result I got a fair amount of knitting done on my socks. I'll try to get pictures a little bit later.

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On Friday night I was totally exhausted, but I needed to do something that wasn't quilt related, so I finished the chart of the Rona Shawl from KnitPicks. I was chatting with a fellow Raveler and she mentioned that the Rona Shawl might be the next big project to go through the knitting world, but I said that since it's not charted I doubt that'll happen. The pattern has been out for a least a year but I haven't seen many finished projects.

Personally, I don't work from word patterns (as opposed to charted patterns) because, 150% guaranteed, I will totally mess it up. I think it's the dyslexia in me, but working from written instructions is horribly confusing for me. I have to cross out each step as I do it or it's a disaster. If I can work from a chart the project just flies by.

I haven't knitted the shawl yet but I think I'm going to start it using some of my handspun.


If you've purchased the Rona Shawl pattern from KnitPicks and would like a copy of the chart (but please keep in mind that it hasn't been test knit yet), I'll be happy to send it to you as long as you can give me some confirmation that you've purchased it. Email me or leave me a comment (with a way to contact you) and I'll send you more details.

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Tonight is the monthly K.N.I.T. Guild meeting (Knitting Needles In Tulsa) and I'm looking forward to it. During the summer months there's no formal meeting or program, but at the September meeting I'll be giving a program on short rows. At least I'll have plenty of time to get ready for it. ;-)

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Thanks for all the well wishes for the quilt show! Now I can relax a little and maybe get caught up on my blogroll, since I currently have 1108 unread posts....

Quilt Show is Almost Here

Sometimes I wonder if I've lost my mind, and sometimes I'm sure of it.

The quilt show is almost here, and I'm getting close to being ready for it. I'm sure my family is more than ready for it to be over so I can return to being a rational person again.

This year I'll be selling my patterns, which meant I had to make a sample very quickly. I realized that I didn't have *any* samples of my Sparkling Star Chains (the quilt with the black background a few posts ago) so that created a slight bit of panic. As of yesterday it's done, complete with a hanging sleeve, so that's a relief.

I'm entering three quilts of my own in the show, and of course I couldn't be ready ahead of time and have the hanging sleeves and labels on, so that's what I did all day yesterday.

One of these days I'll start planning four times more time for projects. I'll try to take pictures of the finished Sparkling Star Chains quilt today, hopefully.

Tomorrow I'll go to the fairgrounds and set up my booth, then the show is Friday and Saturday. My wonderful hubby is going to take Friday off work and stay with the kids, and Gillian is pretty excited about seeing all the quilts. I'm hoping that my hubby will watch the booth for a few minutes so that I can sneak off and look at the quilts.

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Not much knitting has been squeezed in, and what little knitting has gotten accomplished got ripped out last night. I'd been working on some toe-up socks of my own design and last night I finally made the decision to rip out what I'd done. I was almost 2" into both socks and it was really obvious that they were going to be too big. On my huge feet that's pretty amazing!

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A few months ago I'd pre-ordered Laura Lee Fritz' two new books and they arrived Monday. I love her work, and I was fortunate to take a class from her about six years ago. Her class and can-do attitude have made a big impact on me and my quilting style and these two books are very exciting.

I just wish I'd had them a long time ago!!

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The quilt show is put on by the Green Country Quilters Guild, and will be held at the Central Park (a brand-new building) at the Tulsa Fairgrounds, Friday and Saturday June 6 and 7 from 10:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.

I'll be there selling my patterns, so if you're in the area come see me!