A Little Yarn On The Side

Whew!  Here it is, the last day of the year, and I haven't committed to any completely idiotic crafting goals yet.  Eke! Ideally, I'd say "use up 100 yards of fabric," but in case it has escaped your notice, the only year I have managed to do that was when it wasn't a goal.  So, it ISN'T a goal this year.  Nope, not at all.  Totally Not A Goal.  But if I do manage to use up that much fabric as a pure, unrelated coincidence , that would be really, really great.  Aside from finishing 100 projects and the usual "read or listen to 100 books," I didn't do very well on my goals this year.  I did 3 threads on the never-ending cross stitch project instead of 12, none at all on the needlework project, finished 1 sewing WIP instead of 3, finished 1 knitting WIP instead of 3, and unless I manage the sewing day of all sewing days today, am going to have used up about 56 yards of fabric for the year. I'll have also knit about 55 balls of yarn, so I...

Wow!  THAT was a busy holiday season!  We had friends over for dinner Christmas Eve, an open house Christmas night, and would have had our holiday party Sunday night had I not picked up a very nasty little bug that forced us to cancel it.  BUT, I didn't miss anything because of my back, which is very exciting.  Hope you all had a great holiday season as well!

Happy Holidays from Château Sutton-Goar! 2014 was a big year here at the Château as Andy turned 50 in July and celebrated by running a marathon in June.  While this disqualifies him as a professional party-planner, it was his longest run ever and involved several months of training.  And blisters. Because there should also be fun associated with a birthday, we had friends over for a big birthday bash in July, and in August went to Victoria, British Columbia for a week.  We had originally planned to take a train trip across Canada, but decided that once the novelty of the train wore off, it was really going to be a week of mostly sitting.  Victoria, on the other hand, is a city built for walking and with some newly acquired mobility(Toni, not Andy), we did just that.  This was our first trip together that involved staying in one place for the entire week, so we found a nice family-owned hotel with a kitchenette facing the beach, which I thought ...

At least I'll still get some crafting done when my fingers need to rest.....

I must have been just a teensy bit smug about the fusible interfacing yesterday, because when I got a chance to finish the table runners up today, the two new ones were STILL wonky where I had embroidered them.  One of them doesn't even really flat.  But, they're done.  And we'll keep one of them.  In time, I might even forget the stress and trauma involved in making the darn things.  It just isn't right now...... Andy and I had a wild date night last night:  Costco!  During the holidays.  Yep, it might actually be the bravest date we were ever on.  We're having friends over for dinner Christmas Eve and I want to serve baked ham (it was my grandmother's tradition), and they have really nice hams.  We also needed a new iron.  The old one has been acting up for a while, but by Friday it had progressed all the way to shutting off every time one tried to iron things but NOT shutting off even when I was trying to shut it off. Sou...

I'm not wrapping anything and will only be sending Christmas cards if I need some time on the heating pad today (which is probable as I had physical therapy yesterday).  This morning, I am crafting!!!!!!!!! Melodye had a great suggestion for the problem table runners--either doubling the stabilizer or using tissue paper.  I always forget how useful tissue paper can be in the sewing room--apparently I prefer to struggle with things.  But having a PLAN prompted me to stitch up the remaining little monsters strips this morning, which is when I discovered that the problem was in the tan fabric itself.  It's a quilters cotton I bought from Hancock Fabrics, and it is bizarrely stretchy for cotton.  All woven cotton stretches on the bias and a bit in the crosswise direction, but I struggled to even get the strips sewn onto the darn stuff.  I'm not a good quilter, but usually even I can manage straight seems on square pieces.  At least this explains the pro...

Is everyone else having this sort of December?  The remaining packages were shipped off last night, and with that, most of the wrapping is done as well.  Or at least it feels like it as I can dawdle a bit on the gifts we can hand-deliver.  Christmas cards are in-progress and I think I only have 2 parties to attend this week--so far at least.  Ho! Ho! Ho! This morning that darn cat Theo woke me up at 2:00 AM because he was feeling lonely and in need of a cuddle, and I couldn't get back to sleep.  I have never been able to nap, but Theo, after a busy night of keeping the humans awake, slept most of the day--in spite of me waking him up regularly just to retaliate.  (I might be a little cranky when I only get 4 hours of sleep.......)  Such days are not the days for high-mental-function projects, so there are two new mitten ornaments.  I haven't made many of these this year.  But we've given away almost all the wooden ornaments Andy made,...

My last post was almost a week ago.  Wow.  At least everything has been good-busy since then.  Saturday we had tickets to the matinee of "Jersey Boys," which was FABULOUS.  And, We took a "selfie!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  I can't even tell you how proud we were of ourselves for this. The show was wonderful--I just couldn't even begin to describe how much fun it was.  THEN we went from there to a "Tom and Jerry" party, which is a drink besides being a cartoon character.  You know how exciting it is when your friend marries someone you like because then you can truly enjoy being with both of them instead of just tolerating the spouse/significant other?  Well, in this case the party was hosted by one of my favorite marriages ever--I knew both of them independently and for a really long time before they ever got married.  When they got married it was fabulous and now they have two cute kids and the Tom and Jerry party is a family tradition dating ...

I was trying to be responsible and bought only a yard of the red metallic red fabric because I wasn't sure it would work as a garland, but experimenting with TWO yards would have worked even better.....

It's December!  I'M NOT READY! But there are 10 new kimono ornaments tonight. Some have already been put on the tree, some are in the gift bin, but these are the two new color combinations.

Wow!  Was that a fast week for everyone else?  It was here--fast and busy.  Whew! For Thanksgiving we headed up to my parents' ranch two hours away.  Because it's such a long drive, I've only been there once in the last 3 years, and paid dearly for it later, so it has been a while.  The ranch used to belong to my grandparents and is now a corporation between my mother and her twin sister and their husbands, and is now up for sale, so there's been a great deal of cleaning and sorting.  Since I haven't lived there in over 20 years, anything I wanted of mine I've long since brought home, but I did find an old box that belonged to my grandmother that always had spools and small toys in it when I was a kid.  Some of the spools are wooden, so I brought that and will clean it up.  Originally she used it to carry bottles for the twins when they traveled.  It's just one of those things that is totally worthless but carries fond memories.  My mo...

I am sort of tempted to tell you that I cleaned the sewing room today, but since that seems to imply that either the sewing room should look at least somewhat cleaner OR, as is usually the case in my world, that I have just misplaced a bunch of things that I will spend hours looking for in about 6 months, that would (hopefully) be inaccurate.  Maybe the appropriate thing to say is that I have achieved a new level of personal growth, because I am donating crafting books and magazines to the library. When you have recovered from the shock, let me say that it started with this: I had gone into the sewing room to look for a book, and ran across the Christmas quilting book, which is the misguided source of the disastrous folded-ornament attempt to make the ornaments on the cover of the book.  I am generally a very big fan of books and usually find them quite friendly, but there are a few bad apples in every society, and this one insists on taunting me with the cover picture ...

Thanks to everyone for your well-wishes.  Apparently, they worked, because I was feeling better by Wednesday.  And, I was able to put my time on Tuesday to good use--finishing a beaded scarf.  I'm blocking it with a few others today: Theo is sulking because I won't let him lay on them, and snatched this out from under him before he could fur it up.  I liked the look of the table runner as it is so much that I decided to not quilt and bind it, so I just sewed a backing on with the right sides together, turned it right side out, and then edge-stitched it with the gold thread I used for the lower leaf.  I am REALLY pleased with how it turned out--in fact, I think I need to make at least one more so we get to keep one. The cold is hanging on,   and these have been hanging off the roof for a week on the north side of the house.  I think it was finally supposed to get above freezing today, but they're predicting freezing rain tonight and m...

Boise has been setting records for low temperatures this week, which isn't quite as bad as it sounds.  Most of the windows in our house are covered with really nice blinds, and any doubts I had about them keeping the house slightly warmer have been dispelled by: frost on the inside of the windows with drawn blinds.  This is good to know, because in a few years I am going to have to address the fact that no matter how expensive or well made blinds might be, the strings that operate them are all cheap pieces of junk with the sole purpose of getting twisted and breaking.  I don't know if they can be restrung or if I'll have to buy new blinds entirely--I thought I'd save looking into those fun options for when I absolutely have to.  In the meantime, I am keeping the blinds drawn against the balmy 15 degrees we're enjoying now, and the record-breaking 3 degrees overnight. On the one hand, as a knitter, this sort of weather really makes my obsession hobby look re...

Did I mention we were picking tomatoes as late as Sunday?  We finally planted the garlic last weekend because it just hadn't been cold enough any earlier.  Our historical frost date is October 10, but with rising temperatures, it's been getting later and later, but this was definitely the latest.  Then Thursday and Friday, we received Idaho's new record snowfall for November. Pretty, but Theo was really sulky: He and Calisto have been hunting voles in the backyard every day, and in spite of being a long-haired cat with hair between his toes specifically FOR walking in the snow, he has absolutely no intention of going near the stuff.  Instead, he decided to "help" me embroider a lace ornament.  Luckily I got the machine stopped before a cat laying on the embroidery hoop messed it up, and it did free up my crating table, so in a desperate attempt to grab some fabric yardage before the year is up because Christmas is coming soon, I took the 4 yards of...

Or probably 100.5 Because it had been hanging around for a few years, I thought it would be nice to finish the mitten garland for project number 100, and depending on how one wants to look at it, it was.  All the mittens are attached to the garland,  but I'm going to need some more mittens: The intent was there, but I don't think it really counts as "finished" yet, since "finished" usually means "not requiring any more effort." So, that left it until today for, a finished table runner!!!!!  As I ended up using the second piece as the backing, there's not going to be a second one right now.   I'm a bit tired of ribbon right now: Theo, on the other hand, is not: Winter arrived here yesterday, which is also known around here as "humans entertaining the kitties" season.  Tonight after helping me with the ribbon, he tried helping me with the blog,  then moved on to "helping" me with the leaf table r...