A Little Yarn On The Side

Last night my "helpers" and I finished two more striped ornaments, and kept an eye on all suspicious (meaning "dog") activity in the neighborhood.   (We try to do our bit for the community) It seems that we have had our "nice" summer weather, and have moved on to the "hot and horrible" phase.  For crafting, this means that the morning of Finishing Friday--like all mornings--will now be spent in trying to keep the garden alive.  The afternoons, which will now be mostly in the 90s or higher, will be spent somewhere with air conditioning.  I know temperatures are rising and everything, but I still wonder about people who lived here before air conditioning.  Did they just spend the summers naked? This afternoon's stay-in-the-airiconditioned-house project was: more ornament shapes!  I decided to try out some new shapes, and I thought cookie cutters might be a good source, and these are the ones I found.  We might have more, but I woul...

I've been thinking about a new ornament design, and this afternoon it was a bit too warm to work in the garden, so I thought it would be a perfect time to try it out. First, I dug out 5 blue Christmas fabrics, ironed them just enough to get by, then cut two 1 1/2-inch strips and one 2-inch strip from each color.  Then it was time to play with one of my favorite feet: I have 3 different 1/4-inch quilting feet (one came free with the second Husqvarna), but this is the only one I can truly manage 1/4-inch seams with.  While I think I'm staying on the edge of the other feet, I don't always stay as close as I should.  This one has a guide for me to use, and I am happy to say that even I can manage 1/4-inch seams with this one.  I laid out the strips in the order I wanted, sewed them each together with the 1/4-inch seams, then pressed the seams toward the dark fabrics.   One thing that always amazes me with fabric is this: every last one of these fabri...

The new bag has received kitty approval, and I'm actually possibly considering making another one--though with some edits.  The bag sags toward the bow way too much, and at least needs the striped band on the other side as well, if not a second bow.  I'm not saying I'm quite this crazy yet, but if I get there, should I stick with the white lining (which could use a pocket), or should I branch out and match the pinstripe with red: I'll admit, I'm not usually very daring with color, but I think I could make a second bag (without as many errors, even) for a Christmas gift.  What do you think? I have been just a bit under the weather again, so there has been mostly knitting today.  There's a new ornament,  bringing me to 142, and progress has been made on the new sock, which will be either a birthday or Christmas gift for Andy (as he already knows about them, I don't have to be sneaky).  The pattern is hard to see, but it's a nice, stretchy...

It's now been 7 months and one day since I bought any yarn, fabric, thread, or other craft supplies.  I'm sort of proud of myself--which I can't say very often when discussing the purchasing of yarn or fabric.  I have made two overall spending exceptions this year.  The first was the book for the Great Discussions group--technically the $20 covered the book and the dvd for the group, so I still view it more as a fee for the class than anything else.  The second exception is a new pair of sunglasses.  Mine broke about 5 years ago, which was bad enough, but now that I have new contacts and am wearing them more often (like, as I'm actually supposed to), and contacts tend to make eyes a bit more sensitive to light.  I did think about it for about a week, but I decided eye damage in pursuit of a spending ban was taking it a bit far even for me. And why I can't do moderation in any form:  as soon as I made one exception, I immediately wanted to go on a ...

With the amount of seams I've done on this, I think I could have had an entire wardrobe.  Instead, I have: a bag.  It's a nice bag, but it is definitely going to be an only child.  I love the way the stripes are played with: but with a band and bow only on one side, the bag sags a bit on one side.  I think the bow may sag a bit over time as well, so I'll probably need to stitch it into place.  I do like the new edge-stitching method, which works really well if one is stitching fabric of uneven height.  That was good.  The pattern, however, isn't.  I'm not sure if you can see this,  but right after having you fold the bag in half and sew the edges, it tells you to line up the bottom seam and side seam to make the bottom pleat.  Which, of course, is a really stupid instruction in a bag that you have just created by FOLDING fabric. Not to be outdone by a bad pattern, today I made every mistake I could think of.  Fir...

Tracking one's yardage is more fun some months than others.  For May, I have a dismal: skeins of yarn:  3 yards of yarn:   767 yards of fabric:  3.875 (which at least beats the zeros for March and April) ornaments:  20 Today is the 151st day of the year and I've made 151 ornaments.  Someone had better get busy--canning season is coming!

Mostly of the really bad sort.  I did manage to get all the buttons sewn onto the new dress, which is when I discovered I put the buttonholes on the wrong side.  To be fair, I was partaking of a white chocolate martini while sewing the buttonholes, but I'd marked the silly things BEFORE the martini, so I have no excuse.  I really did look at the picture on the pattern and think I was putting it on correctly.  Oh well--it's certainly not the ONLY thing in my closet with buttons on the wrong side....... I am finally ready to show you Saturday's project.  For once, Husqvarna's website posted a free pattern that did not require buying a whole new machine or $500 accessory, so I decided to make their striped bag . I should have known better.  If Husqvarna can't get money from customers, they're not really interested in anything, so the pattern isn't great.  There's an 11 by 12 piece required, but they didn't mention which way the stripes were to g...