July Roundup

This month I managed to finally finish the Rob-Peter-to-Pay-Paul quilt top (Yeah!!).

It is 56"x70". It will stay a top until I am ready to quilt it in the fall.

I spun everyday for 24 days (and then cleaned my spinning wheel and put it away for a while).

This is all that I spun during the 2013 Tour de Fleece - 600g of yarn in total. The brown yarn was fibre from SweetGeorgia yarns, and the rest are my hand dyed fibres. Now I have some knitting projects lined up!

Speaking of knitting, I finished up two pairs of socks this weekend.

The blue ones are my first pair of toe up socks (the pattern can be found here). The grey ones are the July 2013 Mock (mystery socks), from the Ravelry group Sock Knitters Anonymous.

I finished my Blocks of the Month this weekend too -

Pieces of Time BOM blocks.

Ostrich BOM - this month "Seminole" was chosen.

Art Quilt of the Month - the piece of fabric was cut from a piece of sun printing I did last week (it didn't quite work like I thought it would, I think it was too hot and dried too quickly). The quilting is a spinning design, since I did so much spinning this month. I added a painted sun after it was quilted, just to represent summer (it is in contrast to my January art quilt which represents a blizzard).

Last week I spent some time at my parents home, and only went down to the lake once (we were busy working).

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!♥

Tour de Fleece

This month I am participating in an online spinning challenge called Tour de Fleece (it runs the same time as the Tour de France, but a different kind of spinning - I am amazed how many people are participating, every day there are about a thousand posts/pictures on the main thread - we can each post one per day, and there are over 7000 members in the group). 

So I have been spinning everyday for the past two weeks, this is what I have done so far (all 100 gram bundles) -

This is a 75% super wash wool/25% nylon blend for socks that I dyed (after spinning the first bobbin, I re-dyed the second half darker, because I thought it was too light).

I really had to concentrate on spinning even for this skein, which is still a challenge for me.

This is bluefaced leicester wool from SweetGeorgia Yarns in Vancouver.

I didn't stress about spinning this, and it came out to be the thinnest yarn I have ever spun - a lace weight. I really enjoyed spinning this one (BFL is a great fibre to spin). I did "Fractal Spinning" - it will show when it is knitted.

Now I am working on these bundles of Merino wool that I dyed to coordinate with each other.

This will be a thicker yarn. I will ply the two separate colours together.

I dyed some more fibre yesterday - so much fun!

This is such a great challenge, and I will have all kinds of knitting projects lined up for the fall!

Hopefully fall is a long way off, because I have been enjoying summer!

We took out more grass this year, but this time added mulch and trees.

The vegetable garden that went in so late is doing well.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!♥

BOM's, AQOTM, and a KAL

The end of the month is always a flurry of sewing to catch up on for me!

Here are my Ostrich Block of the Month (BOM) blocks - 

This month was "Stars", I made two 9" Ohio Stars.
Here are all of my blocks so far -

These are my Pieces of Time BOM blocks (7.5" blocks) -

and all of them together (plus the pattern - a long way to go) -

My Art Quilt of the Month (AQOTM) was inspired by all the roses blooming in the garden -

I even used a leaf as a stamp for the quilt (just painted the back of a leaf with gold fabric paint).

It is 6"x8". The rose photo is an altered photo of a rose in the garden, that I printed on fabric. Something different for this month - no beads! That was a challenge for me!

Here are all six AQOTM so far  (hard to believe that half a year has gone by) -

I participated in a mystery Knit-A-Long (KAL) for June from Craftsy. This is the first time I have ever done something like that. It was exciting to get the beautiful skein of yarn in May, and then wonder about what we would be making in June.

It is a lace cowl. The yarn is a silk and mohair blend that is as thin as a hair and floated, plus it was knit on large needles. I have never knit with anything so fine and it was a challenge (one person said she felt like Charlotte spinning her web).

It also had a 16 stitch cable at the start and end of the row which was another challenge - once the instructor added a video on how to do that, things went much smoother for me. Everything was well explained and it was nice to knit along with others.
It is very rewarding to finish something so challenging. It is so soft and light, I look forward to wearing it. If you click on the link, you can see how it can be worn.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!♥

Knitting and Dyeing

I haven't been spending much time on the computer, but I have been doing lots of other things.

Summer is finally here and I have enjoyed working outside!!

Things are growing and blooming, which is so nice after that incredible long winter.

I have done a bit of sewing on the Rob Peter to Pay Paul quilt -

I also finished knitting a sweater -

This is The Seamless Artemisia Sweater from Craftsy.

It is such a great way to knit a sweater - from the top down with no seams, so I tried it on as it grew to make sure that it fit just right (it is 30°C/86°F today and hopefully it will be a long time until I need to wear a wool sweater!).

The only thing that I did different than the instructions was to knit the sleeves two at a time, using the magic loop technique (like I knit socks).

Yesterday I dyed some wool ready for spinning.

It is the first time I have tried this and it went very well (I used acid dyes - just need vinegar to set the dye, and I steamed the bundles in an old canner). The top pastel one is wool and nylon for socks, it came out lighter than I expected. This is the fibre before steaming -

This Saturday the Tour de Fleece starts - it is a month long online spinning challenge (runs the time of the Tour de France), so I am all set.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!♥

Another Stash Buster

I cut out another stash busting quilt -

This time with Asian fabric (I did buy 3 metres of beige to tie it all together, and to be able to make something a useable size - so not a true stash buster). I just had lots of little pieces and so it is nice to be able to make something with it.

I used the Rob Peter to Pay Paul GO! die for the cutting.

This is the layout (I think it will have to remain on the "design" floor until it is sewn together). The design creates circles - I cut out sets of four "melons" for each circle. Now for lots of sewing! It will be 54" x 70".

The last of the tulips from my garden - I planted these ones last fall.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!♥

Blocks of the Month for May

Once again I waited until the last minute to complete my blocks of the month for this month.

This is the block for the Ostrich BOM - this month it was "Circles", so I made a few different Drunkard's Path blocks to make a circle (these are cut with the GO!). It is a 14" square.

These are the "Pieces of Time" blocks for my online quilt group BOM.

We have had a couple days of rain and wind, but it looks like the sun was attempting to shine this evening.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!♥

Still Here

At the beginning of May I went to a quilt show in Morden (Sorry I no longer show quilt show pictures on my blog because of Pinterest - even though I ask people not to pin them, they still do. I feel it is wrong, because it is not my work. It is a shame because there were some amazing quilts! And great ideas - a couple of quilt tops were dyed after piecing to make the fabric more coordinated - a great way to use mismatched scraps - I see this one in my future.) There are a couple of photos on the Barnswallow website here.

As usual at quilt shows I met some lovely people, and bought some much needed items!

This piece of hand embroidery was made by a woman in South Africa as part of Tambani - each piece comes with a card with a photo of the woman that made it.  The pieces represent folk tales. Be sure to check out the link, it is such a great job creation project - you can also buy them from Canada (shipping to the US too) and Europe).

I turned the piece of embroidery into a little wall hanging - 14.5" x 16.5" (the piece of embroidery is 7" x 8"). I machine quilted in the ditch and around the embroidered figures, but thought that hand stitching would look better than machine quilting, and so I used black pearl cotton for the "big stitch" quilting. I also added some beads.

Each piece also comes with the a pamphlet of the folk tale - this one is The Rejected Wife - a story about how a woman and her five sons overcame adversity and triumphed (Alex Anderson reads the story here).

Since I now spend much less time on the computer, I have more time for other things -

I have been making jewelry.

Spinning is going well. This is 100g silk and merino from SweetGeorgia, in the colour way 'Maple'. It is about a sock weight yarn.

I divided the fibre in half, and spun one half with all the colours randomly (the bobbin on the right), and for the other half I spun all the brown, then all the red and finally all the yellow (the bobbin on the left). Now that it is plied, you can still see the long colour change. I plan on making a shawl with this skein.

I am also trying my first pair of toe-up socks (this is some self-stripping yarn I had). While buying the piece of embroidery, I met Clara (from South Africa, a volunteer with Tambani), who was knitting two at a time, toe-up socks and she kindly sent me the link for the pattern she was using (here is a link to part one). I like socks as a "take-along" project, since it is easy knitting.

My sweater is also coming along, I am up to the hip shaping increases. I have to knit about 7" on the body and then the long sleeves.

It is so nice to see the leaves on the trees after six months! Time to get outside and work in the yard.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!♥

Some Things

Last week we went to see Fleetwood Mac in concert! It was fabulous, and a dream come true for me. 

sorry - not the clearest picture

This month's art quilt has a line from my favourite song - "Landslide".

The fabric is a piece of my hand dyed fabric, that I painted before quilting, and then added some more details with paint, pearl cotton and beads after machine quilting. It is 6" x 8"

The stack of art quilts are growing, and I think I have figured out how to "bind" them together in to a book  - I plan on attaching a couple of metal loops of the side, and stringing a ribbon through them. I will also make a front and back cover for the book.

I also finished a few other things -

This is a scarf from the Craftsy class Explorations in Brioche Knitting. I made it from Merino wool that I spun.

Surprisingly I made something practical too - my youngest asked me to make him a pair of pyjama shorts (made out of leftover quilting flannel though, at least they are just one colour - he was happy).

I have another knitting project on the go - this is a top down seamless sweater - a really lovely way to make a sweater because you can try it on as you go. I am knitting it in the round with interchangeable needles (mine are Addis Turbo), the needle for the right hand is the proper size for gauge, but the needle for the left hand is a smaller size so that the stitches slip over easily as a I knit (I tend to knit tight and this has made a big difference).

Things are finally starting to grow around here - tulips are blooming, trees are budding and hopefully it will get warmer!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!♥