A Little Yarn On The Side

OK, I had my to-do list all lined up for the day......and most of it didn't happen. Want to know what did happen? KNITTING! That's right--I actually sat down with sticks and strings and added some length to the August scarf while TOTALLY IGNORING my list. Which is all my book club's fault. I have been a member of a book club for around 10 years. At first we were quite diligent & even did some research on the books or came to meetings with printed discussion questions. Then as we grew closer & started experiencing more life events together, the book discussions grew shorter, the meetings moved to evenings in order to accommodate wine, and personal life discussions took center stage. Then for several years we became "The Group Formerly Known As Book Club," which was perhaps more appropriately named but less diligent about getting together. I think it struck us as odd to have regular bi-monthly meetings to NOT discuss books. This summer, however, we h...

Which is in the dryer right now, so you'll have to take my word for it, but I got the clothes done under the one-month-late deadline (the ON TIME gift idea being completely foreign to me) and now 4 more yards of fabric are out of the sewing room. Yippee!!! That one still can't even see the floor is a topic for another day.... [And incidentally, due to the differences in language usages between English-speaking countries, if you logged on yesterday to find that I had announced that my loving spouse had underwear, I apologize. He does, of course, but this isn't really that sort of blog.....] I also finished up the second skein of yarn on the August scarf, so I got to move ALL the tallies today--a big day for me indeed. Still, I'm missing a bit of the crafting drive I had last year, which I think is because I don't have a goal for the number of projects to finish this year. So, in my normal this-sounds-like-a-good-idea-right-now sort of spirit, my crafting goal f...

....but I don't knit as much as I used to. I use to do it on lunch breaks from work--and in the last year at my job, it was basically to break up the misery of trying to sell large phone systems in an economy where no companies could get credit, no one was sure what the future would bring, and the contacts I had at companies were disappearing on a regular basis. Knitting brought me sanity. Now I'm not working, I have planted a garden TWICE the size of last year's garden, and I don't seem to be as stressed. Either that or with this much garden, sanity is not really welcome around here right now........

Finishing Friday worked!!!! The pants are done and the shirt is past the collar!!!! Shirt collars are perhaps my least favorite part of sewing. It's a close race between zippers of any sort and shirt collars. Luckily, women's clothes rarely have them. Unluckily, Andy positively refuses to wear women's clothes, so I am stuck with shirt collars. I don't know why they bother me so much. Maybe it's that whole trying-to-get-pointy-collars thing, or that they are always two-part unless your spouse is more tolerant of Mandarin collars than mine is. Maybe it's that they are so tricky, and unlike zippers, are extremely noticeable, so all errors really must be fixed. At any rate, forcing myself to sit down at the sewing machine for two hours got me through it. And the threat of dragging out the silky blouse-that-must-not-be-named if I gave up on it didn't hurt any. Now I just have the sleeves to attach, buttonholes to make, and a shirt hem to do. Yay! And a...

If you've been following this blog, you might have noticed that there have been projects that got a lot of attention for a while, then just disappeared, never to be mentioned again. I know there are 18 current knitting projects counting the new scarf. The number of sewing projects....well, I don't think I'm at the point when I am truly ready to face that number, but a small sample.... This is the quilt top from a quilting class I took TWO YEARS ago. I think it needs one more sash attached, then to be quilted. This was cut out to be a dress and a skirt. The skirt is done (and even worn) but the dress..... This is to be a summer tablecloth that got set aside when I ran out of material & stayed set aside because I had other projects I wanted to work on. This is a Christmas lap quilt that was set aside for no good reason. This was set aside for its own protection as it was in danger of being shoved into the blender. This was set aside when we decided not to host a Hall...

After getting all the attention yesterday, Theo was in place early today and just begging for some tummy rubs The ham. The napkins are trimmed, washed, and ironed, and three sets of six napkins each are ready for Monday's "Soup Night" salsa tasting and I have used my "Martha" quotient for the month. Too bad, as Andy's birthday present clothes still aren't done..... The scarf, however, being intended for no one in particular and having no deadline at all is getting lots of attention and may be done before the month is half over. I'm using some yarn that I have had in my stash for several years, and after I used up the first skein, I went to the bag and pulled out this I have had yarn break in a few places because I wound it too tightly, but this wasn't tight. It's a Patons superwash & it has been discontinued for a while & maybe this is why it was discontinued. I noticed on the first skein that there were some places where strands h...

And it doesn't bother me in the slightest that it was a brand new one and that all the ones "in progress" are still "in progress." Did I mention that I leapt off the fabric wagon many months ago? It's one thing to buy no yarn for a year, but fabric is a bit harder as things come up and I've only been stashing fabric for a few years. Anyway, the August Soup Night is on Monday, and it was originally going to be a salsa tasting as I assumed I would have had time to make a few new salsas by August. I failed to discuss this plan with the tomatoes however, and I am now just hoping to harvest our first tomato by Monday. So I have changed the event to a salsa cook-off, and decided salsa cocktail napkins to give as prizes were in order, so today I made 18 napkins: The problem now is that they are so cute that we want some for ourselves, so I'll be headed back to Joanns soon. I am still counting the 2 yards of fabric used in my stash tally--even though ...