Returned property

We got the grandparentals moved out of their house (by no small act/and/or miracle of God) last week. In one of their (the grand parents) many moves, several of the family quilts had disappeared off the truck, so I knew I'd never get one. One of the impetuses for learning to quilt myself; I could copy them, which I've begun to go. Of course now I'm to the point that the quilts I really want to make a above and beyond the ones the family has left. 

So when grandma handed me back my quilt I was a little disappointed. At least it wasn't on the free table with my great grandmother's iron, which I thought was cool and snagged but still. She had asked for it 10 years ago. Trying not let it bother me. 

It is a little too big for the rack I've got it I but its nice to look at. And it's a nice reminder of how far I have come as a quilter in 10 years. 

Twinkle twinkle

Another one for the baby books.

Fastest last minute gift.

A tea wallet. Go. (But not the smartest way of going about doing it.)

Materials: 20x13 piece of fabric. 2 inch bit of quarter inch wide elastic. A button. ( you could also do this with snaps, but I can't find them) 

Sew a quarter inch seam (Not pictured) down the long side of the rectangle. Press seam. 

Fold ends in 1/2 inch; press. Sew closed with quarter inch seam. 

Fold up a pocket on each of the long sides. Pin and sew the ends down. Sew pockets slightly larger than a bag of tea. 

This arrangement should allow for six pockets. Fold as follows:

Open. 

First fold.

Second fold.

Last fold. This is where you position the button. Stitch down a button. 

Attach elastic on opposite side of wallet on inside of fold.

This is not how I recommend, or when I recommend doing it. I should've done this before the wallet was constructed. Oh well.

Fill with bags of tea for your friend and gift.

seeing green ... or "please don't make me have to find and buy more of just this fabric"

I meant to buy plastic bins to store in progress projects in, or at least, the fabrics... right now my studio apartment looks like a fabric shop exploded. I have three quilts being pieced right now and one on the hoop. It's a little nuts. Also, I ran into a little problem. More accurately, a shortage problem. One where I didn't buy quite enough fabric to finish a project, I've got nothing that matches the description in my stash and the shop I bought it from is 25 miles away. Ish. I really don't want to drive that far for a number of reasons I won't bore you with. That said, read on.

For the green Moda variation quilt that I am currently working on [picture provided for reference of the original],
I wanted to sash my nine patch squares with a solid green. I have 4 different shades of green. 13" of one, 30" of another, 18" of another, kissing 36" of still another [and another piece that matches one of the mentioned colors that is almost 2 yards... so we'll save that for the back and piece something together] making a total of 97" of useable solid greens to sash the 9 patches with.

My nine patches are 7 3/4" square; each block needs two [2] short green strips and two [2] long 12 1/2" strips to sash it. Which, when I discovered at 11PM, is where things got interesting and I realized that my initial plan of having a 6x6 set might not be necessary. Especially since a 6 x 6 block set of this size won't fit in my living room. Also, I'm not going to leave white space between my blocks in the border. There's more than enough green in my stash for an entirely green pieced border to go all the way around. And I don't have enough of my background fabric to create that. [And someday, I'll be teaching grammar and the fine art of writing to small children. ;)]

The Moda website only specified having two jelly rolls for this recipe, one of print and one of solid. They mentioned a half yard of coordinating fabric for "border" and an unspecified amount of yardage for the back [their's sizes out to a twin] I purchased 2 yards of a creamy fabric to use as the equivalent of my plain jelly roll. Just looking at this thing, one jelly roll did not seem to be sufficient to accomplish what they claimed it would set out to do, and no one seems to know exactly how much fabric is in a jelly roll. REALLY?!
A side note about the other difference between the Moda directions and what I'm making... I'm not cutting to jelly roll width, which is apparently 2 1/2". I'm cutting everything by hand and went with a 3" width for my strips, which made the overall size of this project bigger anyway.

This one's gonna be close...

I started cutting the length of the fabric, six strips the length of the two yard cut so I ended up with something a little like this...

There is no room for strips 5 and 6 to go on the ends, but they are cut - I know it'll shrink up a bit when it's sewn together, but it will have to be sashed some more after that. I cut long strips mostly because I hate piecing. Had I known at the cutting counter that asking for two and a half yards instead of just two would have yielded me exactly what I needed to make non pieced strips for the outermost border around the pieced square border and all the short little cuts I needed, I would have gotten two and a half yards. But I don't do that kind of math. Certainly not in my head on the fly. Ultimately, I didn't cut from selvage to selvage for any strips 44", I cut the entire piece of yardage into long strips.  Since there is only about 27" of the cream boarder fabric left, I'm just going to leave it off and either try to buy more from the shop I got it from or start with something else.

This creamy sashing fabric looks so much better in person; it has a subtle greet pattern [one of the reasons I picked it]. I'm not sure why that is. The looking better in person than in a photo bit. I used all 97" of solid greens for sashing... there was a little bit of waste - a rough inch shaved off here and there with maybe one or two extra sashing strips and was, without planning ahead, able to create the X pattern. Which you can't really see in this picture because the living room is small, the picture is cut off, and the upper left most corner block is actually sitting on top of the grey bin.
[I apologize for the creepiness of the Lyd in this picture. She doesn't usually look possesed.]

Sometimes I'm terrible at visualizing things, so I brought the w.i.p. top over to a friends house who has double beds. The top is presently set as seen in the picture above... and it fits on the top of the bed! Which means that with the solid border and the pieced border and all the sashings, it will look great and fit on the bed with a little extra drape. All was fabulous until I got to the second to last border, where there was enough to go sash two sides, and no more. And I discovered that I actually needed something more like 3 or 4 yards to accomplish this sashing task [the 4 accounts for matching binding]. The good news in that I have about 10 months before I need to have this quilted, so I have my winter project cut out for me. Also, when the recipient upgrades to a bigger bed, this thing will still fit. As long as there is no upgrading to a California king or something.

And in case you were wondering, here is the link to the origional project: Sweet Menagerie Nine Patch

two for one special, or beware of friends bearing macy's bags

I have quilt tops languishing in limbo, waiting to be finished, and while they are waiting to be finished, I'm working on other projects that need to be finished.

Like a green nine patch. Which doesn't need to be finished but does. If that makes sense. I'm basing it loosely off of Moda's Sweet Menagerie. Loosely for several reasons. First, I had a bunch of green stashed away and wanted to do something with it, and I'm not using the two jelly rolls called for [some jelly rolls have 40 strips and some have 42... seriously people? SERIOUSLY?! are there no industry standards anywhere?!] I'm making it up as I go along, figuring that with something in the neighborhood of 20 fat quarters and an odd assortment of random bits of yardage beyond that, I'm probably good to go. Also, jelly roll strips are cut at 2 1/2 inches wide, and I started cutting 3"... so my quilt is already going to end up bigger. Don't ask me how much. I don't do percentages and I can't even tell you what kind of math I'd need to figure out how much bigger my quilt will end up being from theirs if each of my squares is going to be 1/2" bigger. It's why I love 1st grade math. The green nine patch will have it's own posting at some point, and likely instructions... if that's not copyright infringement?

Second, Moda's is a twin quilt. I want a double, so I need at least one, if not two more rows of squares. Imagine this picture with not 4 x 6 squares but 6 x 6 and that will be my quilt. Ish.





Third, mine will be all green and a little less organized, if you can't tell from the picture of my squares. My nine patches will be sashed with a solid green instead of a print. Instead of white, I'll use a cream print [the Moda site said one jelly roll of white. I have two yards of a cream. That should do it, right?] I'll keep the solid border, but it'll be green [surprise] Instead of a checkerboard, it will be whatever is left over of the sewn together green blocks and the assorted leftover green yardage [that didn't make it into the nine patches], of which there is a lot. Allofthemtogether. I have a Peter Rabbit square that I'm going to throw in there as my humility square. Because it has green. He looks so chill, chillin' on his cabbage. I don't do kitch, but I've got my reasons for Peter Rabbit.

 

 that there is my pile of nine patches, pinned up and ready to be stitched together.

I was gifted with a Macy's bag full of fabrics, and part of that was a partly finished quilt. I. Hate. Sewing. Stars. I hate sewing triangles and I hate putting together triangles. I would not have picked this. I would have seen the picture and said "oh, that's nice" and kept right on moving. But I've got this, and I'm going to finish this. And all the little stars, too. In all it's patriotic glory. There's more to it than this, a stripe and checkerboard motif that looks a little like a flag bunting going all the way around the outside. I'm not sure if this is something I'll keep or if it's destined to become a Quilt of Valor. This is just one of those finish it and see what happens. A whole bunch of patriotic fabric came with it, and whether I keep any of that remains to be seen as well. The local branch of Project Linus was flooded in the recent summer storms, and they are in the process of cleaning out; it's possible I may donate some fabric to them.

we be jammin' - a canning story

If you've read this before, and it sounds different, that's because it is - I've done a little editing. If you've never canned, or you know me, think of this as the family vacation you went on with the best of intentions, everything that went wrong did so the whole think became a running joke and you kept a smile on your face for the duration and now you laugh about it, sometimes hysterically. These are the sorts of things that make for the best stories.
But seriously, if you've never canned, read this and learn from my mistakes if you're serious about doing this. Or read it and laugh at me, schadenfreuda being what it is. ; )

And, in case you were wondering, we put up strawberry, black raspberry, blueberry lime, mango raspberry and peach jams, peach-apricot and mango-peach-apricot butter and grape jelly.

Canning is a bit like riding a bicycle - you do remember what you're doing once you get on, if you haven't done it in a while - the last time I canned was over holiday break the first semester of graduate school. I actually had an abundance of time, I didn't have crippling migraines and I wasn't in a mad panic about starting student teaching. It was also the dead of winter, and I was at my parent's house, and we were very interested in keeping the kitchen toasty. My mother smiled that knowing sort of mother smile that says I'm going put the training wheels on, step back and watch you do this by yourself. You'd think I'd recognise that smile by now.

The Ball canning website describes canning with something of an idealistic air with that perfect model kitchen modeling their canning products- which, if you're doing it in the heat of the summer in an air conditioned house, and you don't have small children around hanging on you, yes, is pretty fabulous. I did it in my friend's galley kitchen with the back door hanging open, watching a thunderstorm rolling in, watching as her golden retriever paced up and down the basement stairs, and the roommate's lab weaved under our feet, hoping for a smackerel of something. Canning seems remarkably easy at first blush. I'll just cook this and voila, how hard can it be? Like Snow White and her Cute Creatures of the Forest, everything will magically take care of itself. Because what might not be abundantly obvious from the recipe is that you have to first clean and then sterilize your jars and your lids. And they aren't sterile if they aren't hot, which means they have to stay hot. And you're going to have, if you didn't go out and buy the fancy electric jam maker [who has money for that?!], three pots on the stove going full bore, or have a roasting pan in your stove full of water with your jars in it, if you don't have a dish washer [Nigella Lawson says jars straight out of a dishwasher are sterile, and I believe her. But we didn't have a dishwasher] And more sugar than you ever thought you would ever have to purchase in one go in your life - grape jelly, for instance, calls for 7 cups of sugar for one batch. Depending on what recipe you chose to use. Oh, to be blissfully ignorant again.

Canning isn't for the faint of heart. Its more possibly for the slightly masochistic. Or for those that, for a double dose of redundancy, enjoy schadenfreude [especially if you're reading this and have no interest in actually canning yourself ; ) ].  Truly - it's a hot, sticky business in the summer time without A/C, so if you get faint easily, beg borrow and steal a cool kitchen. It's also not something to be undertaken at 7 PM with work the next morning and 8 varieties of fruit to be put away. All that said, the results can be epic. By epic I mean the best thing you ever ate. Because after all that work, it will be the best thing you ever ate. In small doses. The grape jelly? heaven in a jar.

I had most of the things you need to can properly when I did most of my canning with a friend at 7 PM with work the next morning and 8 varieties of fruit to be put away. Thankfully she is a night owl and was able to finish up the last batch of jam while I went home to saw logs at 12:30 AM. We're the kind of people who enthusiastically undertake a project and then realize there might be more to it than we first thought. Maybe don't try to can 8 varieties of fruit starting at 7PM. Maybe only try to can 2. A for enthusiasm, right? After the first canning adventure I decided to finish up my remaining quart bag of strawberries. I did the smart thing and brought the recipe book to the store with me, so I'd know how much to buy when I got there, since strawberry picking season is over. And lo, mangos were $1 each. And I had made [accidently] a smashing mango-peach butter a few years ago. So I bought peaches. And apricots, since they were there.

I said that when I was canning with my friend, I had mostly everything I needed to can properly. I mean that I had access to a canning bath [read: giant pot] to put the jars in for the water bath and the cage [it keeps the cans from banging into each other in the boiling water bath] for the jars and all the et ceteras. Read on.

Second Round...

I started canning at the saner hour of 9:30 this morning, and I started with strawberry jam. And I decided to put it up in large jars because who doesn't like strawberry jam? In the war of the best PB&J, it's either grape jelly or strawberry jam; of the two, there's never enough. There's no going wrong with the big jars.

Except that I don't have a canning bath; I left it at my parent's house and I borrowed the friend's. I don't even have a tall stock [read:spaghetti] pot. I had to borrow something from Upstairs that barely covered my tall jars. I put a cotton dishcloth in the bottom of the stock pot, filled it with water and set it to boil. The cotton cloth was to keep the jars from sliding around on the bottom of the pan when the water began to boil. When the going gets tough, the tough improvise.

Remember when I mentioned the three pots on the stove? This would be it. I would have put a roasting pan filled with boiling water in the stove to keep jars warm and sterile, but at 12:30 AM, I was too tired to think straight, and I left it at my friend's house. So no roasting pan. : P Roasting pan, full of hot boiling water inside the stove, would have kept sterile about a dozen of the half pint jars, or anything that was smaller than that. Alas...

That yellow stuff in the red pot would be mango-apricot-peach butter. It's pretty fabulous - I followed a recipe for peace butter and made sure I had the right final puree amounts for the recipe. In the middle of all of this, Upstairs is having a window replaced, and the fellow replacing it knows of my endeavours and has brought me 5 more jars and a packet of lids. He has my undying gratitude. [I gave his family several varieties of jam for Christmas a few years ago; methinks they might be wanting more...]

Sorry the pictures are blurry - I'm a righty and alas, I only have one right hand, which is doing all the heavy lifting and stirring. The picture on the right side is an example of a hard or roiling boil - boiling even while being stirred - which is what jam needs to be doing before you can put it into sterile jars. The jar in the picture on the right is full of water and is helpful in keeping the sugar off the spatula and in turn off the inside of the pot. The left is my valiant attempt at keeping my lids and jars sterile until ready for use.

Things I have learned and/or are useful

have a tea kettle filled and boiling. This sounds counter productive, but water is evaporating out of pots that are boiling, and the jars have to be immersed - read: covered - by boiling water. Nothing is more irritating than dropping your jars into the bath and finding out that there isn't enough water in there. So you add some water. But now the water isn't boiling because it came out of the tap. Curses. So, tea kettle filled with boiling water saves the day. I have an electric tea kettle that shuts itself off when it's done doing it's thing; it was one less thing on the stove and it was great. Also, you can make yourself a cuppa when it's all done. Because you're going to need to replenish the fluids and want to collapse. So keep a pitcher of water in the fridge and pound the fluids.

Use a larger pot for cooking the jam than you think is necessary because cooked sugar has a habit of exploding. Not like boom-kapow action movie exploding but frothy bubbly Glinda the Good Witch of the North Kristin Chenoweth exploding. True story. Also, cooked sugar burns like none other. 

Ball Canning is in the business of selling things [duh]. I made do today with a knit cotton cloth on the bottom of a pot, and although a taller pot would have been much nicer for the big jars, the tiny jars were completely covered which was the end game. By reading multiple sources, I learned that some things can actually be made in your crock pot. And let's be real, it's jam. It's going to stick to everything no matter what the no-stick label claims, so be prepared to scrub after using upwards of 4 cups of sugar to a recipe.

Do your homework I have a master's degree, which means I have spent a lot of time doing homework. Like I said, some of those recipes called for 7 cups of sugar. 7 CUPS OF SUGAR!!! What if I don't have 7 cups of sugar? What if I don't have enough pectin or enough fruit or...? I discovered that there is no room for playing with the amounts in a recipe, but chances are there is another recipe out there with different amounts - so we'd consult the books before we got too far into an enterprise. One recipe for grape jelly may call for 7 cups of sugar and 5 cups of juice, another may call for 5 cups of sugar and 3 of juice plus a little pectin. Having the different sources was super helpful. It kept the kitchen panic down. My sources were the recipe section of Ball's canning website, my friend's recipe book and "Saving the Seasons" by Mary Clemens Meyer and Susanna Meyer. [The link should take you to amazon.com]

The food processor is one of the best inventions for the kitchen. If you don't have a food mill. The Kitchenaid is also in my top five. Right up there with automatic coffee makers and dishwashers. I'm currently one for four. 

Think it through, think it through, think it through. Put the normal stuff in the big jars and the unusual stuff in the small jars, and what you consider the super fancy and/or really weird stuff in the really small jars. And then save a few small jars for the inevitable end of the batch that doesn't quite top of the jar. Which shouldn't happen, but frankly does, because that's Murphy's law. For example: the stuff you really like or your friends really like and you know that you/they're going to eat, put that in the big jar - pint, quart, what evs, because it won't be long for the world. [This is jar A]. The "I'm testing this recipe out for the very first time, and I don't know if I'll like it" or the "Jeeze, these were expensive ingredients!" put that in the tiny jars, the goofy fancy really tiny ones, or the half pints. [These are jar B]. Why? That way there isn't a ton of it open at one time. And if you're gifting it, use your judgement on the size of the jar based on A or B. If your friends love it, give them a bigger jar. Split the recipe over A and B size jars.

Add caption

Where there is a flame... there's hot stuff. You're bound to get burned, by say, boiling water splattering out of a pot. That kiddy gel ice pack with the soft, fuzzy character cover that your mom said you were way too old for? Way more handy than trying to wrap a wash cloth around an ice cube, easier to hold on to and softer than aforementioned ice cube in a dishcloth. This is what plausible deniability looks like... I may or may not own one that looks exactly like this

Put out the APB for jars. Seriously. Don't buy them if you don't have to. Get your friends to give them to you, because everyone has one or two laying around. So if five people give you 2 jars, you've got 10 already. Go buy a pack of lids and rings. That said, if you know me, and you're reading this... I could use some more jars...

finish lines

It's been raining here in the north country the last few days, but I managed to sneak in between the sunshowers to get some pictures of  these before I hand them off to the recipients. 

I also managed to finish the tee shirt monster. Instead of being the intended throw size, it fits on a twin size bed. I used scraps and leftover strips of flannel from other projects to make the back rather than purchase fabric specifically for this project, since it was a project mostly about purging things I wasn't using anyway.  

quilted mile.

One of the huge perks of living in below ground is that the temperature stays pretty consistent. The downside is that if the folks upstairs decide to run the air conditioning, my apartment turns into an icebox, since hot air rises and cold air sinks. I'm currently running a space heater, wearing long pants and am bundled up in a sweatshirt, and suffering from a virus no doubt brought in by one of the children at pre-school. My immune system is going to be fabulous by the fall.

Being cold [and having the chills] means that curling up under a quit to work on it is not such a big deal in the summertime. At least, in the A/C. The Attic Windows quilt needs it's edges bound, and it's all done [yay I met my deadline!]

And I've been working on another baby quilt for some cousins who are expecting a girl in September. I had a cheery yellow duvet that I had sewn up but that I was never really happy with, so I repurposed it for this, and I'm using pearl cotton to quilt it.

When I made the duvet, I bought some matching fabric and cut strips of random widths and sewed them together. When I had new chunks of fabric comprised of the old strips, I cut out new strips that were 4 1/2 " wide and sewed them end to end so that I ended up with one very long strip of 4 1/2" fabric that had many different width stripes of fabric in it. I eventually wrapped it around an empty paper towel roll until I was ready to use it.

Pearl cotton is my new favorite. As of 6/27, this puppy is finished, and just needs to be bound. 

it's the silly things; fun for Friday

A friend of mine brought this to my attention on Facebook, and I am completely fascinated.

Out of Print Clothing

Mostly because they have several of my favorite reads. And some I've been told I should sink teeth into. But also because when you make a purchase of a tee-shirt, e-reader jacket, phone cover, stationary, etc, a book is donated to in-need communities. [current special as of publication is Sci-Fi. So Wrinkle in Time apparel is on sale...]

an actual bound-like-a-book cover case for my kindle.
[cough-cough. also available, The Wizard of Oz, Jane Eyre or Babar. cough-cough.] 

tee shirts of some of my favorite books...

...and books I should read

Also available were titles such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Caps for Sale, Corduroy, Frog and Toad are Friends, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Harry the Dirty Dog, In the Midnight Kitchen, and Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. Which, for Read Across America Day, if you didn't know where your One Fish, Two Fish tee shirt was, and didn't feel like being a character, would be a fabulous nod.

Sometimes, it's the little things that get you through the day. Or week end. Which ever. 

A sock, not for Fox. The First.

Sunday night, a few weeks ago:
Was ready to graft the toe closed of the sock [YAY!!!] Looked up and practised the Kitchener. Kitchener fail. Not only was there a hole in the middle of the toe of my perfect sock, but the ends were all pointy. Eww. And when I tried to carefully take it apart, the whole toe unraveled about five rows. Decided that I wasn't about to try it again unarmed and unaided, so I reknit the toe of the sock up to the graft point and packed it in my bag for Monday, with the intention of making a detour at the yarn shop on the way home for instructions at avoiding destruction from a trained professional. I know when I'm out of my league.

Mentioned my knitting woes to Miss Honey. She said this is why she doesn't knit. But oohs and awws and thinks the sock is lovely just the same, concurring that seeking professional help is best course of action. [she doesn't knit. would love to, but has never had the patience. or something. I'm not yet convinced that she just needed thicker yarn and bigger needles - the Frankenstein approach to knitting... make it big so you can see everything. Also, pretty instant gratification.]

Monday, the day after the aforementioned Sunday:

Stopped at the yarn shop on the way home from school. Handed them the sock and said "Kitchener, please?" and learned that I should have knit a little more foot, decreased without a knit round in between each decrease and left more stitches to Kitchener with. Also, I should have left a ridiculous amount of yarn tail. Also learned that I should have cast on less stitches and used smaller needles. Or just used smaller needles. But what's done is done. Will just make sure the recipient knows where to find me so I can darn any holes that appear from my ][apparently] loose knitting.

[that's my hand inside the sock.] 

sock 1 and the start of number 2. slow going.

These socks are super stretchy. They're just long enough for person with a size 8 wide foot [le moi] but would give a little longer if necessary. [actually, I have no idea what size my foot is... rumor has it I could wear a 71/2 if it were wide enough.] Here's hoping they fit the intended recipient. Better still, I get the second one done in a timely fashion, since it took a month of on again/off again knitting to get the first one done.

knitting for other people is hard, especially if you want the gift to be a surprise. Will they like it? Will it fit? How do you go about finding out what size they are without it being obvious what you're trying to figure out? What if they hate it? What if it's too big? How do you deal with that? Here, let me trace your foot on a piece of paper, tell me your favorite color, and I'll get back to you in a few weeks? Hrm, right. 

owl be darned.

it's been almost two years since I initially posted on this; [but a really long time ago] I discovered that a ceramics company had an owl canister that I really wanted to paint [cue the dream sequence music to travel back in time] In the last two years, they added two sizes, and a mug, and I got a set of salt-and-pepper shakers for Christmas this past year. And I realized that I never updated about it at all. The big canister, the Great Horned Owl, is cookie jar sized. The Snowy Owl holds a small bag of brown sugar. The Scopes owl is very small, and holds either hard candy/ a large bag of cough drops or matches and a lighter or what ever else I can think of in small quantity.

As I planned, the canisters turned out to be Hedwig and Pidwidgeon, and the largest owl is a Great Horned, which is something or another in the Harry Potter series. I just don't remember whose.

This really cute necklace was a present for my birthday this year [as were these pants!]




And there was this super cute owl planter that I painted, just because it was there. It's staring at me from across the room holding my sewing scissors, reminding me of something I said earlier, and someone who was staring entirely too much this morning and weirding me out [am I the only person in the world who pops out with randomness when they feel nervous?! some days I swear I must be!] Wise of me to say what I said? Likely not. But I'm highly sensitive about being stared at. Next time it happens, I just might pop out with something [polite] about my skirt being stuck in an awkward place or something, because I'm uncomfortable and I'm tired of it.

Worst picture ever; the top part is more green [seafoam], the bottom is more blue [turquoise]. It's the lighting in the picture.

Have you had enough of the owl goodness? Apparently there's earrings that match the necklace. I'm on a thusfar less than successful man - erm - owl-hunt.

double lace rib stitch socks

lest I forget my sock pattern, I'm actually going to write it out here in bits and pieces.

materials

4 dpn size [?] needles; they're smallish. I'm guessing they're about size 4 or 5 US. I have no idea any more, I lost the needle gauge.

Paton's Kroy sock yarn [or other fingering weight yarn] solid color of choice. [I'm using Gentry Grey]

Helpful terms

k- knit

p - purl

yo - yarn over [I make mine such that it's a snug loop with an x under the bottom of the needle - probably a horrible explanation, I know, and probably not what I should be doing]K2tog tbl - knit 2 together through back loop

yfrn - yarn front around the needle  - nice video explanation for clarification

the cuff - 

picot cast on, with multiples of 3. 

cast on 3 stitches; bind off the last two as per picot cast on instructions. pick up the center bound off stitch of the picot as you go, for a total of 56 stitches. join the ends [I cast on 60.]

Row 1: Begin Double Lace Rib Stitch

• Row 1 (Right Side): *p1, yo, K2tog tbl, p1, k2; rep from * to end
• Row 2: *p1, k2; rep * to end
• Row 3: *P1, K2tog, yfrn, p1, k2; rep from * to end
• Row 4: *p1, k2; rep * to end

work in DLRS until desired length of sock cuff is met. 

begin heel flap. 

at beginning of new row, divide stitches evenly onto two needles - 30 on each needle. 1st row is a right side row. Working in stockinet, row 1 is knitwise; row 2 is purlwise. Work in this manner until heel flap is desired length. 

turning the heel

begin shaping with a wrong side row

R1 [wrong side]: p17, p2tog, p1, turn [there will be left over stitches]

R2 [right side]: s1, k7, s1, k1, psso, k1, turn.

R3: s1, p8, p2tog, p1, turn

R4: s1, k9, s1, k1, psso, k1, turn

R5: s1, p10, p2tog, p1, turn

R6: s1, k11, s1, k1, psso, k1, turn

R7: s1, p12, p2tog, p1, turn

R8: s1, k13, s1, k1, psso, k1, turn

R9: s1, p14, p2tog, p1, turn

R10: s1, k15, s1, k1, psso, k1 [20 sts]

working the instep gussett

with right side facing, pick up 14 sts along the side of the heel flap. Knit 15 of the 30 stitches on the other needle that we've been ignoring until now. Knit the other 15 and then pick up 14 stitches down the other side of the heel flap on the same needle as the 15 stitches. There should be 3 needles; 1 along the bottom [the heel], two each holding 29 sts. Should form a triangle. Knitting should be in a counter clockwise motion. 

First row of the instep decrease:

knit across the heel [needle 1], and along the second needle. 

on the 3rd needle,* K to last 3 sts; k2tog, K1. 

needle 1: knit across

needle 2: k1, s1, k1, psso, knit to end. *

this is a round 1

round 2: knit.

repeat rounds 1 and 2 until there are 60 sts.[or in my case, 54. because i can't count.]

... and that's as far as I've gotten with these socks so far. 

it's finished!

put the final stitches in Ordinary Time at 6:20ish PM on Christmas Eve.

The recipients were well pleased.

home stretch

Really bringing it down to the wire on the Ordinary Time. Quilted for an hour and a half at a friend's house last Thursday, quilted while watching four of the five 55 minute episodes of the 1980 Pride and Prejudice miniseries -  subjective research for a friend concerning my opinion on who the best Darcy was, Firth, Macfayden or Rintoul - and half of season six of Bones, and now part of season seven.



I'm so close to being done; it's this side of 1730 hours. A few more episodes of something, or a movie, and I think the quilting will be in the bag, I can sew the binding on.

That is, if I can find the binding... oh well...

finals are cramping my style

ten days 'til Christmas. Clearly, you can discern my religious convictions and affiliations from that statement. You know what's not done? My Christmas present quilt isn't done, that's what. 3 squares out of 12 are done. I'm not going to quilt the corner blocks at this rate, which will make the question of where to affix a label easier.

The two in the middle, I think, are done, plus one on the side. I have a project in mind for the excess Kaffe Fassett Ikat Streak cherry red fabric that's on the back. Of course, all I want to do is work on it - this and the new red project, but there are several constraints keeping me from both. Grumblemumble.....

As the bulk of my work has been turned in, I am suffering from a major case of procrastination and writer's block. So I'm writing, and hoping that somehow, this will get things unblocked. Forgive me if you feel the need to whip out a thesaurus; I do have to write for a graduate class... there's a word I'm looking for... it's not vernacular or dichotomy... discourse! The paper is about language. Thus I am assembling the adult, academic vocabulary for this discourse. Ahem.

We put lights up outside the house a few days ago. No robotic reindeer, no chase or icicle lights hung from the dormers. Simple white lights, carefully entwined around the lamp posts, and the trunk of a bush of unknown species growing on the edge of my patio. It is now amusing to watch the birds and squirrels attempt to interpret the addition of the these things to the bush where the feeder is located. While I have best wishes for the birds, I was rather hoping the squirrel would electrocute itself when it began gnawing on that one bulb a few seconds ago... the bush is lovely in the dark, if a bit overly luminescent. There is neither a timer or a light sensor on the plug or the lights, and even with the blinds down, covering the window in my room, the glow from the this bush pervades the darkness of the apartment.

My two foot faux tree is upright, lit and decorated. The advent wreath, devoid of purple and pink candles this year for lack of time (I think God will forgive me), replaced by white and a red candles, is also up.

Later. Much, much later...

I did mostly unblock my writer's block; however, it's taken ten hours to do so, coupled with a three hour run down to the public library to cram in some last minute research, and the remembrance that I still have half the project to wrap up tomorrow, along with a three and an half hour mathematics final, and a separate three page mathematics assignment, both due by 11pm tomorrow. I have recollections of feeling this way at the end of summer term, the most notable differences being that I am not dehydrated and suffering from a week long migraine.

Discretion may be the better part of valour at this hour; I'll work on the mathematics tomorrow morning when I am fresh rather than try to ponder theory after having wrung out my brain.

less than ordinary

Tuesday I had an interview south of the city for a subbing position, so afterward I decided to swing by Quilter's Corners in Finleyville, which I'd been promised had considerable wow factor. I wasn't disappointed. I'm not sure they could get more fabric in there if they tried, but it did not feel overcrowded. They had a wonderful selection of batiks and hand-dyed, reproductions, "shabby chic", and black and white. The three previous I would have intentionally gone for, but did not end up purchasing anything from those categories.

I wanted 2 yards of a wide backing in a deep purple for the back of Ordinary Time, which they didn't have, and frankly I wasn't surprised. I spent a while looking at the batiks, convinced I'd find a suitable purple for my plans. I wound up with 5 yards of a Kaffe [and I didn't realize it's pronounced Kaif] Fassett weave that they had in this amazing red amalgamation.

Not what I had planned on. But I haven't seen anything else that spoke to me and said "I'm the one!" the way this red did. The recipients have red accents in their living room. It's so luscious and subtle at the same time, that I think that will be appealing, and when folded over, will pick up the red in the top without conflicting too much with the green print, which itself has flecks of red in it. I almost wish I'd have seen this first; I'd have just done a throw for them out of this and done a whole cloth which would have saved a whole lot of time. That is life.