SewFlakes!

One the local quilt shops, Sew Flakes, is having a Great Sewing Room Tour, and I (as Pieceful Stitches Designs) am a sponsor. I've donated two copies of each of my patterns as well as a gift certificate for $25 off machine quilting.

Go check them out!

Speaking of quilting, a while back I made a slideshow function of the customers' quilts I've done this year, which you can see here.


Every so often I get the urge to dye my hair and I did it again yesterday:


You can also see the blue pearl necklace that I made yesterday. It's a single strand, knotted between each pearl, and long enough that I can wrap it around as a choker. I see more like that in my future.

I think this hair color looks more natural than my natural color with my skin. The really funny thing is that the kids didn't notice until Greg said something. LOL! [This stuff is supposed to wash out after a month or so.]


Speaking of Greg, he's started building a bed for Gillian and she's been helping.


Greg has developed an allergy to sawdust, and I'm thrilled that they're wearing masks and safety glasses. YAY!


I'm terribly behind on my blogging, and so I'm going to continue with some catch-up stuff.

Last week was the annual scrapbooking convention, and I took two classes. The first one is called "Boxerpalooza" and is where they give you lots of scrapbooking stuff from their company (Boxer Scrapbook Productions) and show you ideas to use it. I got a lot of excellent tips as well as cool scrapbook supplies. One of the owners is a quilter so we chatted about fabric after class.

The other class I took was "Four Pages, A Bazillion Photos" and it was neat--they had some good ideas for putting lots of pictures on a page. Here are two of the four pages (without pics--I haven't gotten that far yet):



I also did a Make and Take from the Tattered Angels booth, using Glimmer Mist:



It was really cool, and I now understand more of the appeal of Glimmer Mist.

I also did some shopping. I couldn't resist a bunch of clear stamps, especially since the big ones I got were $3!!!


Now I just need to *use* them. LOL!

On the knitting front, I finished a pair of socks:




The yarn is some that my wonderful Aunt Louise sent a couple of years ago (I don't use sock yarn all that quickly, but I sure enjoy making socks!).

I also made a headband to use up some of my leftover sock yarn:

That's Mountain Colors sock yarn and it bleeds read like nobody's business, which is why I didn't send it to my Mom to use in her sock yarn blanket.

And I finally found a project that would successfully use the Disco yarn that started to be two different pairs of socks:

That's the Lacy Baktus, with an edging I stole from something else (I think a stitch dictionary--I'd have to look to be sure).

And last up on my catching-up list, this basket that we made in spinning guild at the August meeting:


It was fun to make! The teacher had the bottom and first round one for us or we would've been there all day. :-)

I think that's about it for the moment. I've been doing customer quilts but you can see those in the link at the top of this post.

I hope you're all having a great weekend!

First Day of School

The kids are now back in school! Ryan is starting first grade and Gillian is starting fourth grade. (How the heck did that happen?)

They've been *so* excited about going back to school and seeing their friends. It's wonderful!

I had to make them get back out of the car so I could take these pictures—they were already in and waiting to go!

Ryan got his hair wet and spiked it a little:

And Gillian did her own ponytail. (I had to really persuade her to hold still and get the picture-taking over with so that we could get back into the car and GO. LOL!)

They're just a bit excited.


They practically jumped out of the car as soon as I told them they could unbuckle, and they never once looked back:


Happy first day of school! :-)

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. :-)

New addition to sidebar: Magic Loop socks

This is a quick update post (I'm once again ridiculously behind in posting, but I'll add a whole bunch later).

A couple of years ago I made up a handout to show my technique for doing two socks at once, top down, using the magic loop method (see tutorials in sidebar).

I'm adding the PDF with my illustrations about how to do the heels on two socks at once. Here's the direct link, or click in the sidebar.

This weekend is Fiber Christmas in July and I'm teaching four classes, so I'm frantically getting ready for that.

That's all for now!

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Happy Independence Day!

Happy (late) Independence Day to my fellow denizens of the U.S.A.!

I slept for most of the day (I've got a sinus infection, I suspect), and Greg took the kids out to buy fireworks. They came back with quite a haul!

Here are the kids, with their chairs in the middle of the cul-de-sac, enjoying the neighborhood display:


That's Greg on the right, lighting a sparkler for Gillian, with Ryan in the background.


They got some of the bigger fireworks, and it was cool to have them right above our heads. I got two neat shots:





I even got a picture of Greg:


This is one of our favorite fireworks. It's a Purple Rain Fountain:


They go for a surprisingly long time. The kids had a great time with sparklers, and with a really long shutter speed I got some fun pictures.


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On the knitting front, I finished a Laminaria shawl and sent it to my dear friend Kathy for her wedding, which was Friday. I don't have any pics of her (yet) but here are some I took before sending it:




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I'm participating in the Tour de Fleece again on Ravelry, and I spun up some beautiful fiber that my Mom and Karen bought for me:




The color isn't *quite* right on this pic, but it's too pretty and shiny to not share:



And here's the final collage I posted on Ravelery:


I hope everyone has had a great weekend!