notes on designing for the Twister Tool

 This post is mostly self serving, since I have messed up on calculating yardage for TWO quilts now:

Use the first piecing dimensions for the border calculations, not the finished size!!!!

On both the Christmas table runner and Gillian's Christmas gift quilt, I made the border calculations on the *finished* quilt size, which is 3/4 of the size of the *pieced* quilt size.

This is such a great technique, but the fact that I've made the same mistake twice means I need a reminder to myself.

So far I've made this small quilt to test the technique, and it turned out great! However, it was totally slapped together and I didn't actually plan it out.

Gillian's Christmas gift quilt, that she's doing the piecing for, is going to be fantastic once we get it done. Right now she's almost done sewing the rows together, although in the photo below it's in the planning stages.

I failed to purchase enough black flannel from Missouri Star Quilt Company (where the layer cakes came from), but hopefully the local quilt shop will have a comparable flannel we can use for the inner border that has to be added before we make the twister cuts.

Gillian's quilt started with 10" squares.

My Christmas table runner is on hold until tomorrow when we'll run to the local quilt shop and hopefully they will still have another yard left of the fabric since it's a bigger version of the blue-and-white one, where the background and border need to be the same fabric. It's ridiculous--the finished one will be around 120" x 12". 

In this photo it's in three sections, although I've since sewn the three sections together:

My table runner started with two charm packs (5" squares), then I cut too many background squares (also throwing off my calculations for the border fabric), but hopefully it will all work out.

Cross your fingers for us. :-)  

OH, I forgot to say anything about my new design wall!

I'm finally organized enough to be able to use a design wall (things are unpacked, the area is cleaned out enough to access a big enough wall space, etc.) although the room is not clean by any stretch of the imagination. I have a LOT of stuff that I need to organize in a better way, but I'm getting there. Creativity is messy, and making a mess is faster than cleaning it up.

Anyway, the design wall is two 8' x 4' sheets of 3/4" insulation, and I trimmed 13" off one side so that it wouldn't cover the power outlet at the bottom of the wall. 

Christmas/holiday cards

 This year I'm getting my act together kind of (not really) early enough to get hand-made cards in the mail.

I fell in love with a Christmas tree pop-up die set, and so far I've got 20 cards assembled as far as the tree.

Here's a little forest last week:

(That's my amazing desk that Greg built! Better pictures when that area is a little more clean.)

Once the trees were done, the decorating could begin and that's the part that's taking me a bit longer. I've got nine cards finished as of yesterday.

You'll have to use your imagination as far as which insides go with which outsides. 

The remaining 11 will be variations of those, most likely. 

The rest of the cards I'll send out will be a combination of a less complex card design and some purchased cards.

Happy Holidays!

The kids and I are in Idaho, and my parents' house, as is my sister. It's darn cold here--around 20 degrees F at the moment--with lots of snow. The kids are loving it! (The pic above is my parents' British phone booth that they brought back when they moved back from England.)

The day before yesterday Gilly made a snowman:


and Ryan had a good time investigating the tree:



Yesterday was the Great Dyeing of 2010. Last year Karen and my Mom helped me dye the roving that I spun into yarn for my Bono Kimono (which just needs to be blocked and then seamed), so this year I told them I'd help *them* dye.

We dyed six pounds of roving.

The four braids on the left are my Mom's Polworth roving, and the three on the right are some of Karen's Polworth.


The pink/orange/purple on the left are Karen's merino/mohair roving, and the ones on the right are the rest of the batch of Karen's from the pic above.

Here are the rovings before we braided them:

And another gratuitous shot on the drying rack:

We've been busy indeed! :-)

ETA: I've gotten a couple of questions about what rovings are. They're basically long lengths of fiber that's been cleaned and the fibers have been aligned so that they're (mostly) going in the same direction. The proper name is actually "top" but "roving" is a more commonly-used term (although it's not correct--"roving" has the fibers *not* aligned). Here's a good explanation.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I'm so full I can barely type. :-)

Greg made an amazing turkey, as well as really, really, really good red-skin mashed potatoes from our garden!

I hope all of my fellow Americans have had a fabulous meal with great friends!


Yesterday I looked out the kitchen window and saw a cardinal. It wasn't bright-bright red yet, but it was still very pretty.


The kids' project for yesterday was to decorate the tree (which they talked me into setting up Sunday, the stinkers). Ryan did most of it, and he did a darn good job!


It's a little early, I know, but the kids are trying to squeeze the most out of the holiday season. LOL!


Happy Turkey Day!

Tulsa State Fair stuff

I dragged the whole family up to the fair grounds and we turned in our fair entries.

I, of course, had tons of last-minute stuff to finish, the most-recent item being this bag:

I put a lining in it (deliberately long, because I'm anticipating that the outside will stretch a little as I use it). It's got a pocket on each side and in the side seam there are two lanyards with hooks for keys and my wallet, so that I can dig them out quickly.

I also (finally) finished my Hey Teach sweater, which is unfortunately too big (but not huge on me) so it's still wearable.

I'm calling this my Ridiculous Doily, for two reasons: 1.) it's done out of size 30 crochet thread; and 2.) it's done out of size 30 thread because the Tulsa State Fair category for "Lace" specified that said "lace" must be done out of size 20 thread or smaller.

Seriously.

It's pretty darn obvious that whoever came up with that ridiculous rule didn't pay attention to the nine entries in the "Knitting: Adult Accessories" category that were lace, and not ONE used "thread."

Thus, this is my Ridiculous Doily, made expressly to enter a knit item into that category:

I think it's around 14" across, although I didn't measure it before I turned it in.


The other last-minute project is my rubber-stamped scrapbook page, entered in the Rubber Stamping division. The rules stated that the entry had to be "70% stamped" so I stamped the brown paper, the tag, the ribbon, and the blue paper in the background.

Last week I posted about the flowers I was making using scrapbook paper, and here's the finished ornament:


I made a tassel out of gold embroidery floss and I think the whole project turned out really nicely. The tutorial can be found here (part 1; part 2 is at the end).

I just realized that I didn't take pics of the kids' Lego entries. Bad Mom! I'll be sure to take pics at the fair itself.

The fair opens September 30, so hopefully we'll hear pretty quickly after that if anything won.


The *best* part of the day, though, was meeting IndigoGentry and Saradippity, two of my fellow Ravelers. They're just as awesome as I thought they'd be.
I hope you're all having a great weekend!

Fiber Christmas

I still need to blog about our fabulous trip to Idaho, but first I'm going to post about Fiber Christmas in July that was this Friday and Saturday.

I ended up teaching three classes (Magic Loop Socks, Common Knitting Mistakes and How To Fix Them, and Designing Your Own Socks), and I got really good reviews about all of them.

Of course I turned right around and spent almost all of the money I got from the classes. :-) This is my big fiber purchasing opportunity for the year, and as usual I might have gone a bit overboard.

This is alpaca, bamboo, and merino:


They were clearing it out so it was $2 an ounce. I got four ounces of each of the browns, and three ounces of this gorgeous 60% merino/40% bamboo fiber:

These next two I got in a Dirty Santa swap. I've never worked with pencil roving before so it'll be neat!



I fell deeply in love with this fingering-weight yarn, and it'll probably become a double-knit cowl. I just need to decide what other color to put with it, although I'm leaning toward a cream or off-white. We'll see!

I'm not sure what breed this is, but I got it from Kate at Lowder Colors Farm's stand. It's 4 ounces and really soft. It looks fairly long-stapled so it'll be interesting to spin up.


This is something I snatched out of Bridgette's hands as she was going to give it away as a door prize. It's 100% silk and luscious.


I kept wandering by one of the booths and this particular braid yelled my name:

It's merino with "sparkle" although the sparkle didn't show up in the picture. It's not like Angelina or glitz, and it's going to be another interesting spin because I haven't worked with it before.
This braid yelled at me, too, and it's merino and silk. I'm way into browns this year, if you haven't noticed. They're just pulling me. :-)

I bought a few other things but I'm not going to photograph them right now (maybe after Christmas!).

I also want to post some of the websites for some of the vendors, but that'll have to wait until I'm a bit more organized. I'm still recovering from two really, really busy days right after coming home from a busy week in Idaho. :-)

Getting Back to Normal

That's not quite the right post title, but I'm not feeling creative. :-)

My parents and Karen left yesterday to go back up to Illinois. My parents will fly back home on Saturday morning.

The day after Christmas Karen and my Mom helped me to dye up a pound and a half of the Finn top that Karen gave me for Christmas (see previous post).

Here's the finished stuff:




I wanted a bit of variation among the braids so I'm pleased with the differences.

I can't wait to get started spinning it up, but I have some quilts that need to be finished first. My dear friend Kathy sent some tops to be done by mid-January and I desperately need to get my Mom's quilt finished that I've had for more than a year. (What's that saying about a landscaper's yard that looks horrible, or a plumber's house that has leaky plumbing? Yeah.)

Speaking of quilting, my Mom got me this ruler set to make a Storm At Sea quilt. I'm very excited about it as I've wanted to make one of these quilts for years but I didn't like the methods I knew of to make it. I think this template set is going to make a huge difference in the ease of piecing it.

Here's an idea of my plan:

It's going to be huge—just under king size, at around 95" x 104". We like wide quilts on the bed, but they don't need to be too long since we have a big foot board.

I'll use lots of different blues but I'm thinking I'll keep the background in just plain white. We'll see though. I haven't done the calculations to figure out how much white I need, and I might go with a white-on-white print rather than plain white.

The layout with the border above is from the book that goes with the templates, and it's a great book. The author really plays with the layout and has some really different and fabulous ideas.
That's about all from around here. I'm going to attempt to get thank-you notes out today, as well as some of the Christmas stuff put away. It's almost noon, though, and I haven't showered yet. (Not an auspicious start for getting a lot done today! LOL!)

I hope you're all having a great week so far, and staying warm.

More Christmas Stuff

What a great day it's been! I'm sitting in my new chair on a chair pad that doesn't hurt my feet, there are fantastic smells wafting through the house (it's great to have Karen here sharing her gourmet skills!) and the kids are in heaven playing with new toys.

What does my new chair look like, you ask?

I'm definitely spoiled! ;-)

My desk area is slightly more messy than normal, but if I told you it's cleared off most of the time I'd be lying.

Speaking of new toys, Gillian and Greg spent 5.5 hours (Greg timed it) putting together Gillian's Lego kit she got for Christmas.

Here they are, working on it this morning:

In the picture Ryan is waiting (ever so patiently) for me to help him with *his* Lego project, a dump truck. I think it took us about 30 minutes, although I wasn't timing it. One of these days he'll put his OWN Lego kit together. LOL!

Here's Gillian with the completed Lego kit:


One of the gifts for the kids this year was knitting, fulled clogs. The fit on both pairs needs to be fine tuned, but that'll come tomorrow. Here they are:


They seem pretty happy with them!

Here are some of the gift I got:

That's a sling for my bowling ball from Karen, and a great mini journal and pen from Aunt Louise. I didn't manage to get a picture of the neat earrings and wine bottle cork she sent.

This is a wonderful kitchen towel that my Grandmother embroidered:

Isn't it great?

My sister, Dr. Karen, got the Starmore book for me, as well as Neil deGrasse Tyson's Death By Black Hole. (I showed it to my Dad and he's reading it now, so I don't have it in the picture.) Also in this picture is a set of soaps from my MIL and a set of seedless preserves from my Uncle Scott and Aunt Carol. I told you I'm spoiled!


This next item is just wickedly cool. My parents took one of their old spinning wheels to a man in Montana and he makes these niddy noddies and their cases by hand. His name is Steve McEwen, and if you want his address, send me a message.

Here's the case:


Here's the niddy noddy with the pin pulled out to release the yarn that's been wound. The pin on the thong goes through the cross piece and holds it in place during winding.

Mine is made of burl maple and Karen's is made from oak, we think.

Here are some more presents. The body wash and scrubbing mit are from my MIL, the three lotions are from Karen, as is the tube of alpaca (more about that in a sec), and the bag is from my parents.

Here's a detail of the alpaca. It's 8 ounces of adult black alpaca, and it's just luscious!


Karen also gave me 42 ounces of Finn roving, which is going to get dyed and hopefully become a Bono Kimono (Ravelry link). It's more yellow in the pic than in real life, but it's certainly not white-white-white like the snow.


The snow has been rather surreal! It's so bright during the day that I didn't even turn on the lights in the bedroom until it was getting dark. Impressive!




Stay warm and enjoy the weekend!