Quilty Goodness

One of the quilt blogs I read regularly has started a quilt a long with another blogger. I have always wanted to do a quilt a long or knit a long but it seems that whenever I happen upon one it has ended a long time ago or it is not something I want to make. There was the well known Central Park Hoodie knit-a-long that I missed out on though I did buy the pattern on Ravelry and still plan on making it one day. So, when I saw this Farmer's Wife Quilt a long (FWQAL) just getting started I was in! I immediately ordered the book from Amazon and then we left to go camping, which helped to get my mind off the agonizing wait for the book.
In the meantime, I am following the other people in the group on Flickr and Twitter. There are some nice blocks posted and it sounds like a there's a big following.
Now is your chance to join in if you are a quilter. Come on, all the cool kids are doing it! You're not afraid are you? On second thought, maybe you shouldn't. It's very difficult, for experienced quilters only. (lol!)

So, yesterday I got the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt book in the mail so I am ready to start!

Today I am going to start with 2 blocks. I am choosing 2 easy blocks with only 2 templates -#1 and #3 if you are using the templates, OR a 2.5" square and 2-7/8" square for half square triangles if you don't want to use the templates.
Now I just need to head down to my lair and start digging through all my bins of fabric. I do enjoy selecting fabrics but I don't have my fabric organized yet, so I am not looking forward to the digging part.  My plan is to gradually get these cubby holes up in my lair all along 1 wall.
 

So far I just have 2 shelving units up which is holding my yarn stash. I got these from Target for $50 each. They are perfect for my needs! Two units holds 5 big bins of yarn! And, they have the fabric drawers in all different colors, and the top provides a nice shelf for more storage.
Here's my current fabric situation. Yechh!

I hope you will join the QAL. It should be fun. Have a nice weekend!

The Wooly Ones

This is a brief posting to try out my blog app on my ipod touch.
My goal is to get a few pictures up with some words about each hopefully near the picture.



This is Biscuit looking kind of drooly.




Buttercup seems happy with her haircut.

Knitting the Mona Lisa

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to the podcast The Knitting Show and they mentioned this couple who designs illusion knits. When I saw the Mona Lisa design I had to do it.

I ordered the yarn from KnitPicks. I'm using Wool of the Andes sportweight in a dark brown and cream. This is how far I am as of today.

I am just beginning to see a little bit of the design if I flatten out the knitting and look at it from the side. It is still kind of hard to capture on  a camera though. Overall, I really am enjoying knitting it and it is much easier than I thought it would be. I will post updates as I progress.

Sheep, Dogs, and a new Camera

So I finally got a little purse sized camera for my birthday. I really like it and have figured out how to download my pictures to our (linux) laptop. It couldn't be any easier. My old camera works nice but it's big, eats batteries, and only loads to our old, slow, turdy computer with Windows. So now I'll be blogging my guts out! With pictures of everything! Wheeee! Above is a picture of our dogs Rex and Clover. They are Great Pyrenees and live outside in the barn with our sheep and cats and do a good job of guarding them from the coyotes.

Here are the sheep nibbling on some hay. They are wearing their coats to keep their lovely fleeces clean. Without the coats on they will get hay, straw, burrs,etc. all over their wool and nobody wants to spin that. These two pictures are just my test pictures from the first day with the camera. I'll be back with some closer shots of the animals.

Bears and Sloths

My first bear for the Mother Bear Project. I finally gave him a face after about a year of shuffling him around my studio. Poor thing, another victim of my procrastination.
Actually, what prompted me to finish him is that I will be going to the big knitting convention in Illinois -Stitches Midwest, this weekend, and I read on ravelry that there will be a booth where they will be collecting these bears. So after finishing this bear, I quickly started another girl bear. I figure just turning in one bear would be kind of pathetic, so I should at least make one more.

This is going to be a girl bear with a striped dress -It will have a skirt attached. They are really quick and easy, (if you don't put it away for a year somewhere in the middle). They do look kind of strange until you embroider a face.

Boomoo returns:


I also finished the Boomoo the sloth pillowcase mentioned in an earlier post. It has been finished for a while now, and has seen much use.

I only had 1 yard of fabric so I didn't have enough to make the pattern go horizontally on the pillowcase, which would have been better, but Zane doesn't mind at all. He picked out this really cool black swirly fabric to go on the end himself!

Cranking Out Some Sweaters

I've been doing a lot of knitting lately making plain raglan sweaters. Why? Because for me they are very easy and relaxing to knit. Miles and miles of stockinette stitch. I also have come to realize that plain pullovers are really what I wear most often in the fall and winter, so I needed to add some to my wardrobe. So here is the black raglan drying. Notice the terrible color quality of this picture.



And here is the green sweater drying. Now take a look to the left - you can see a bit of the black sweater -notice the really nice color quality of the black! What the hell! Why can't I get the black to look that good in the main picture?

Anyway, moving on...



I dug out this old handspun cardigan I started a few years ago and got back into it. I bought this Merino roving from The Fold a few years ago. It is a very soft almost black roving with bits of red and blue in it from Ashland Bay. You should be able to get it from any fiber shop that carries their products. In this picture the color is very accurate.



I still need to spin up the rest of the roving, even though I think I might have enough yarn spun to finish the sweater. And here...the color is way off again.



This is the wool spun up into a two-ply. Again, color is perfect in this shot. Maybe I need to get a book on taking better pictures.

Boomoo the Sloth

I recently received my first fabric order from Spoonflower. If you are not familiar with Spoonflower it is this really cool site where you load your own artwork and have it printed on fabric! It is so much fun and really easy -even those of us that are technically challenged can do it.
I created an account ages ago, but I was a little intimidated by all the other people on the website that are cranking out really wild fabrics, so I spent a long time trying to come up with something suitable to experiment with. Well, lo and behold my 8 yr old son was at the table drawing his current obsession -Boomoo the sloth. I opened up our drawing application on our computer and had him draw Boomoo on there, then I loaded it in the Spoonflower site and ordered a yard of fabric.


The fabric arrived in about 10 days. We are all pretty excited about it even though we didn't do much with color. Now we have to think of something to make with it. Maybe a pillowcase? I will keep you updated.