A Little Yarn On The Side

I'm not sure what my excuse would be for the rest of the week, but Thursday we flew to California to visit Andy's parents and just got home Monday night, so the only crafting here has been some travel knitting: Since I'm trying to do 3000 yards for the Mad Dash, a lace project was a spectacularly bad idea, but it's really portable.  This is the Begonia Swirl shawl, and it does make perfect travel knitting.  Now, of course, it's all I want to work on and I have some bulky yarn to get back to--which has all been a pretty moot point as since we got back I've been busy with cats, unpacking, laundry, etc.  But I am hoping for an actual Finishing Friday this week!

February ends as a not-too-noticeable month: Yards of fabric used:  3.1 Yards of yarn used:  1318 (which includes the 315-yard skein sold) skeins of yarn used:  7 Projects completed:  8 But with 90 more projects to go before the end of the year, somewhere there should be a noticeable difference in the sewing room, right?

....fast.  And over.  Hiking, a Fat Tuesday blues concert, a discussion group--it was busy.  There was also a lot of walking, but not a lot of crafting as I am still very fond of sleep. I thought I'd get some done over the weekend, but we were out most of both days and I was worn out by evening and I get into enough trouble in the sewing room when I'm well-rested.  So yesterday I managed to spend a little time in the sewing room.  The green jacket is progressing, there was some work on the red and white table runners, and my careful plan to make sure I created an even distribution of blocks failed badly, so with the last three squares, I just put them together and we'll see which blocks they create.  I think what I might end up doing with these blocks will be laying out the table runners all at once to see how many I have blocks for, which blocks I need, and going from there.  I have a feeling there will be one runner with a very scrappy look....

No crafting of my own today, but we did spend the day admiring the wonderful artistry of others: http://s1373.photobucket.com/user/marleenk1/library/2015%20Idaho%20Artistry%20in%20Wood%20Show?sort=2&page=16

After spending so much of the last 4 years in bed in pain, I am still amazed by how much stuff one can do in a pain-free day.  And by pain-free days in general.  With my Mad dash yarn all ready and waiting for Sunday's knitting kickoff, I decided to get in a project I've been wanting to try--a white rope bowl with variegated thread: I used Sulky 30 wt. blend-able cotton thread, and found that it used almost the entire 500 yards AND created THE must fuzz I have ever seen.  Sulky is a great thread company, so it isn't a fault of the thread, but the sheer volume of thread used and using cotton instead of my usual polyester meant my next project was cleaning the machine thoroughly.  I'm pleased with the bowl, though having to change the bobbin frequently left some noticeable spots on the bowl, so I am going to add a button to cover up the biggest one.  Still, I had bought the thread specifically for this purpose and now I've done it.  YAY! And my machin...

Thanks everyone!  If you didn't notice, I am more than a little thrilled with the first table-runner top.  I was questioning my fabric choices all through the sewing of the 96 strips, and it's a relief to see how well they work.   Now I need to mark the edges for trimming and then move on to backing and batting, but so far I've been tidying and vacuuming most of the morning.  Let's pretend like you can notice a difference: So far I haven't found any fabric that I didn't know I had, but some of it isn't in my project book, so I've been adding as I go.  Boy, do I have a lot of projects ahead of me!  Maybe I should just lock myself in the sewing room for a month and see how I do.... I have the first blocks cut out of the red and white projects, and have been playing with layouts: It seems I could have controlled the orientation of the blocks, because I have 2 sets of 4 and 2 sets of 6, but now that I have a mix of both, I'm going to continue...