Milestones

Some days milestones in our life become millstones dragging us down.


I celebrated my sixtieth birthday a couple of weeks ago which is a great milestone in my life.  I think it can now officially say that I have fewer years ahead of me than behind me.  I still get up every morning feeling that everything that happens after I wake up is a bonus.  I still can't sing in tune, dance to any known rhythm or cook like a gourmet.


My birthday has lifted a great weight off my shoulders because now I feel like I don't have the time necessary to learn to sing in tune, dance to a rhythm or cook like Julia Child before the big blackout.  Huge relief!


In other ways, being sixty has set a couple of millstones on my back.  I think I should be wiser, less impulsive and more dignified in my demeanor. I realized that it just isn't going to happen when I came across a great project to mark my birthday.


In a recent issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine I came across an article on making Prayer Flags.  The article is full of inspirational flags and I decided to mark my birthday with my own version of prayer flags...not so much that the prayers would go to God for her help but that they would remind me of things that are important to me.


There are traditionally ten flags in two sets of five colors.  My interpretation went something like this:

1. Blue = space.. >the final frontier> rocket ship > seek > imagine
2. White = air....wind > explosion > breathe
3. Red = fire..  burn > cleanse > discard
4. Green = water ..  flow > wave > sooth > dance
5. Yellow = earth.... dirt > grow > bloom

Starting  with the ideas above, a base of marbled fabric that I had experimented with many years ago and thread that matched the prayer flag colors, this is what I came up with:


(Oops! Blogger is telling me i have run out of space event hough I am at only 52% of usge..  check out my facebook wall for an image  )


Yes, I only did five, but I can see them from my living room window and every time I glance that way, I think of the concepts shown, smile and another millstone falls off my back.  Who cares if I am not wise, less impulsive or dignified when I am sixty.  After all, I still have a few more years left, and they may come in time...or not!

When Life Gives You Lemons....

In this case, I could not find a suitable border fabric for my latest 1600" quilt.  In case you have forgotten, a couple of weeks ago I posted about the 1600'" Quilt I had created during a session of Saturday Strippers.  Here is the link if you have forgotten.

My problem was that I wanted a patterned fabric for a border and couldn't seem to find one that would work.  Of the three solutions I suggested then, I finally decided to go ahead and try to make my own fabric.

With that in mind I cut samples of three different black fabrics I had in the house and applied a little sprayed bleach to each of them.  Friends convinced me that one of them looked pretty good and I went off to make more.

I laid out the black fabric on the driveway and laid old clothesline, a dog tie out and some pine needles on it.  I then sprayed it with a 50% solution of bleach and water.

One hour later this is what it looked like.  I sprayed it a little more and proceeded to wait for more magic to occur.

 After two hours, this is how it turned out, with the ropes and pine needles removed.

After a quick bath in 1 teaspoon of sodium bisulfate (Pro Anti-chlor from Pro Chemical and Dye) and 2 1/2 gallons of warm water, to neutralize the bleach, I dried it on the clothesline 

I had used to make the patterns and strung up among the trees in the back yard.  Once dry, I applied it to the quilt top and this how it turned out:

I think it turned out well.  I am now looking for an opportunity to lay it out on a large surface for basting because I have lots of ideas on how to quilt it.

This bleaching technique is definitely something you should add to your skill inventory as it it is so useful when confronted with dull, solid color fabric.  The plain cotton curtain over the window of my back door is now covered in various loopy designs after I used a bleach pen on it and some wonderful bright pink rayon yardage ended up with a bunch of lemon yellow speckles after bleaching using a spray bottle.  And check out this wonderful little quilt where the leaves seem to be floating on air.

BTW Paul says this quilt is a little girly because there is some peach in one of the fabrics.  I guess I can keep this one for the dogs and me to use because we don't care if it's a little girly.

Lace KAL

Sometimes a random thought just takes over your life.

Nothing too loud or strenuous, just a little tickle that says...this is a good idea, you should try this, be a rock star.

Okay, maybe not a rock star, but I know you know what I am talking about.

The little idea was presented to me during a telephone call from another member of Knitting in Kingwood (KIK).  It had been suggested to her that the two of us work on a Lace Knit-a-Long (KAL) for KIK.  A KAL is when several individuals commit to knitting the same project at the same time.  It is a great way to stretch your knitting skills, learn a new technique and discover any potential problems with the pattern.  Our KAL would last all summer so it needed to be a little complex but not impossible for the average lace beginner.

My Long Sweater Jacket was a KAL.  Most people finished it in a couple of months.  It took me much longer but the comments from the other knitters really helped me to make something that fit me rather than too small like most of the other sweaters I saw.

Teresa and I looked for a pattern to use.  At first I thought we would use the Nancy Bush sampler scarf as the pattern but I found one in Love of Knitting that clearly would make a great KAL.  The pattern is called the Lacey Green Scarf by Ginger Smith and this is how mine came out:

Okay so it's not green but it is certainly lacy and it is a scarf.  The yarn is Shadow from Knit Picks. The Lilac color was a closeout and cost me less than $5.00.  I love the drape and I must admit that I am learning how to count these lacy patterns most of the time.  This pattern is well written though complex and you do need to pay attention to what you are doing.  Mine came out to about five feet long and eight inches wide at the ends to about six inches in the middle...and that taper was part of the pattern!

I did not notice any huge problems until I was blocking it out.  I discovered that I reversed a couple of rows which made one of the patterns a little wonky.  I probably should have re-knit that portion but my lazy side took over and now I just point it out to people.

Hey, this is a learning experience not a contest...right?
 
Why do I keep torturing myself like this?  Well, there is this little voice that keeps telling me to try something new, it's a good idea, you could be a rock star...at least in my little bit of the world where all things are possible, even wonky knitting passing itself off as lace.

The 1600" Quilt Revisited

Last October I wrote about the 1600" quilt concept.  If you don't remember that far back you can check it out here.

Go ahead and look at it now, I'll wait for you to get back.

That quilt was not a real 1600" quilt but it paid homage to the concept.

This past Saturday the Strip Club decided that we would all work on genuine 1600" quilt tops and even make it into a race.

The race part never really happened as we were very distracted by all the great food everyone came with including ribs from Sweet Sadie's.  Yum, Yum!

I did get my top done and this how it turned out:

This time I did use a real jelly roll of forty different 2 1/2" strips called a Bali Pop in the Coconut colorway.  It came out to approximately 66" x 50", a good size for a lap quilt but I wanted it to be a bigger 'snuggle up on the couch with two dogs' size.  So at the same time as I bought the Bali Pop I also bought a few possibilities for borders as all the batiks were on sale for $6.99 each... a real bargain these days.

Here's how the chosen border fabrics will not work with this quilt:

Actually I can't show you the border choices because Blogger and Google want to charge me for photo storage....WTF!

Take my word for it though, I am either going color blind or choosing border fabrics before a top is completed is never a good idea.

As my chosen border fabrics do not seem to be working I have two other possibilities I may try.  One is to border the whole thing in plain black with black binding so that it looks like a frame for the colorful strips.  The other is to experiment with bleaching out some of the black fabric that I have to see if any of it can be used as a wide patterned border of black and cream with a thin solid black first border and solid black for the binding.

Not sure how it will all work out but I am very pleased with how the top turned out and know that this will be a technique I will use again and again and again.

The Problem with Knitting

I was cleaning up my knitting supplies the other evening and decided that there is real problem with knitting.  Not so much the actual act itself but the amount of stuff you can accumulate in the pursuit of knitting.

To knit successfully all you need to is a pair of sticks, a length of string and the knowledge of six techniques - knit stitch, purl stitch, casting on, binding off, increasing and decreasing.

Everything else is a variation on the basics.

Let's take those sticks as an example.

Most beginner knitting books suggest that a beginner purchase a set of needles and a skein of  yarn.  Already the beginner is in trouble.  There are a huge variety of knitting needle sizes depending on the tradition you are following or where you shop.  There are US sizes as well as needles sized based on millimeters.  There are little gadgets that help you determine which size needles you have.  I have one that shows US sizes, millimeter sizes,  Canadian sizes, UK sizes and French sizes.  The typical beginner size of needles is a size 8 US.

Once you have determined that you have the right size of needles you need to determine the right type of needles.  Needles come with single points and double points, can be long or short, with long or short cables and made from plastic, celluloid, metal or wood.  Heck, even your figures can be used as the sticks for a knitting project.  Typical beginner's sticks are single pointed and short (about 8"long).

(While cleaning up my knitting needles I came up with about 100 different sets of needles, some that I have purchased, some that I have received as gifts, some that I inherited from my female relatives and some, I am sure, were created by little knitting elves.  I whittled it down to only one size of each needle in each type which took it all down to about fifty sets.  The discards have been further whittled down to those that are actual sets, which will be donated, and those for which I don't have a whole set. Not sure what to do with those but I am looking around for ideas.)

Then we come to the yarn.  Some skeins of yarn are called worsted weight in one region, can be called DK (double knitting) weight in another.  The amount of yarn, in yards or meters, varies by the total actual weight of the skein which may be stated in grams or ounces.  A combination of the actual weight of the yarn with the length of the yarn in that weight determines what you call it...lace, DK, worsted and many others. Over and above this yarn can be made out of anything that can be spun.  Cotton, linen, wool, acrylic, silk, rayon and bamboo are all on the shelves these days.  Each fiber has different characteristics as to durability and cleaning. There are many weights of yarn from lace weight to super bulky.  The typical starting weight of yarn is worsted weight and made out of acrylic fibers.

(My yarn stash is in better shape than my needle stash as I have a use for each skein, no matter how acquired.  I do have a little problem with bits left over from completed projects but they are slowly, very slowly, making it into caps for the pre-schoolers at the local Head Start program this coming Christmas.)

So here is our poor beginner with six sets of needles called size 8, twelve skeins of worsted weight yarn and they have not even read the first page of instructions.

There are also lots of other tools you can purchase, like stitch markers, yarn needles, cable holders, rulers, scissors, yarn barns and a million other tools but sticks and string get you started.

Once you actually decide to learn how to knit, you then need to determine your style of knitting.  There are two basic types, picking (also called Continental) and throwing (also called British).  There are also many variations depending on the local tradition.  Before you even take your first stitch you need to build your foundation row by casting on.  Every teacher of note has their own favorite cast-on from simple to complex and I am sure there are whole books discussing the merits of each style.  The complexity of such a simple activity as knitting, can turn off the most dedicated student.  The most basic is called a Backward Loop Cast-on and even my middle-schoolers can master it in about ten minutes.

Do you see where I am going here?

I love knitting but I am getting overwhelmed by the stuff.  The stuff can consist of the tools and materials but it also consists of the knitting police who will tell you a better way to do something even if you are getting good results from your method.

How do we combat the problem of knitting?

May I suggest the following:

• Buy only what you need and keep track of what you have on hand.
• Use what you buy in specific projects not stored for 'something' in the future.
• Learn to knit, and continue to knit with, people you like rather than with 'experts'.
• Take a class or two with the understanding that you will learn only a few new ideas per class.
• If it works for you then it is right, if it doesn't, ask a good friend for their method.  It might work or it might not.
• Discard the stuff you hate...donate it, un-ravel it or just chuck it.

I have all my knitting stuff under control right now, even to ignoring expert advice with a smile rather than a scowl.

Don't let your knitting stuff get you down.  Just sit back, turn on a movie, pick up your sticks and string and make something.

To Copyright or not to Copyright

....That is the question, at least for some designers out there.

Recently I have read a whole slew of postings about fabric designers saying that their copyrighted fabric designs cannot be used in anything that is sold for money.  I have also seen a bunch of quilt designers saying that their patterns are copyrighted and you can't make a quilt from their patterns and have it judged in a show without the designer getting full credit and giving their permission for it to be shown.   Can anyone out there make a quilt exactly as it was shown in a pattern?  If you can, then it is a copy so why bother making it in the first place?

As far as I know none of these issues has been litigated fully...that is a judge has not ruled on the legality of all these threatened lawsuits.

I decided to make my own test of all of the issues by making something based on a copyrighted design and see where it lead my not-so-legal mind.

I purchased the April 2011 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting because it had an article about Edyta Sitar... a recent guest of the Kingwood Area Quilt Guild.

Edyta designed a handbag that had some interesting lines in it so I decided to make a copy.

Here's how mine came out versus the original article:

Does my bag even look remotely like the one in the magazine?

Should Edyta get credit for designing my bag?

I believe the most credit she could get would be as an inspiration for my bag but even that would be a stretch as my bag is different than hers in the following ways:

I redrew and re-sized the pattern to meet my needs.
I used pre-quilted fabric rather than custom quilted fabric for the body of the bag.
I added interior and exterior pockets.
I eliminated the gathered embellishment.
I eliminated the gathered corners and turned them into tailored ones.
I did not hand apply the binding and used a double rather than single layer of binding.
I reinforced the handle with heavy nylon rope.

What about these other bags I have made that contain similar design points:

If I ever sold this bag would I need to get permission from all of these designers and pay them royalties for specific design elements?  And let's not forget that I bought the fabric at JoAnn's so maybe they should get credit as well.  And what about the threads I used or the old binding from the bottom of the stash?

I think you can see why I am so confused by all this craziness.

If you want to copy my bag, I have a pattern you can trace and I won't make you pay royalties but it would be nice if you gave me some credit somewhere sometime when you are become a big time handbag designer for Dolce and Gabbano.

Sock Knitting Master Class

No, I did not take a master class in sock knitting but I did buy a book of the same name that was written/compiled by Ann Budd, a knitting rock star.

The book is very comprehensive and you can find great information on all aspects of sock knitting.  It even discusses all the various ways to knit a sock with different tools... four or five double pointed needles, two circular needles, one circular needle and the magic loop method.  The DVD is pretty good and if you are a visual learner the DVD is a real bonus.

What I like is that the author is not married to a single method of knitting socks.  Every method I have ever heard of for top down and toe up knitting is included.  You can sample the methods and find what you like or dislike before committing to a full set of double pointed needles or short circular needles or more importantly, purchasing patterns or books using a particular method that you find out that you hate.

I tried out one of the patterns for toe up knitting by another knitting rock star Cat Bordhi.  Cat is known for her use of two circular needles to create her toe-up socks and the pattern also introduces Judy Becker's 'Magic' cast-on (not so magic, just tedious IMO) and Jeny Staiman's stretchy bind-off (good choice for the sock pattern I tried).  The pattern is called Pussy Willow Stockings.

This is how they looked in the book:

Very pretty!

Here is how one of mine looks:

Not so pretty but definitely adequate.  The yarn I used is from a company called Nako and is 50% wool and 50% acrylic so they should be very durable.  I like the variety of colors in them though the yarn had a tendency to split while I was working with it.  I have no idea where you could buy this yarn as I received it in a yarn swap this past Christmas and I see on the website that this yarn is made for the Turkish domestic market.

The instructions were well written though you really need to keep your eye on them or you could easily get lost.  As in most books like this, every pattern is by a different sock designer so you can get a good overview of each designer's style.  The pattern I used will probably lead me to seek out other patterns by Cat...though I will probably not use her two circular needle method of construction as I am addicted to my beautiful double pointed needles from Knit Picks.

If you want to sample different sock knitting methods this is the book for you.  It is not for the beginner for their first sock....that pattern would be the 100 gram sock pattern in this post.  I'm going to try some more patterns from the book as there are some other intriguing construction methods just itching to get on my needles.

Five Years

Five years and two days ago I was told that I was being laid off from the Big Bank where I worked.  After twenty seven years of service they caught up with me and determined that I was no longer needed.

Five years and one day ago I started this blog because I knew I would need to write even if it wasn't financial analyses of the performance of certain groups within the Big Bank.

Five years less nine days Alex came into my life.

Right now I am a little over-whelmed by all the things that have happened in the past five years.

In so many ways I am not the same person today that I was then.  I became an orphan, took up knitting again, spearheaded a charitable sewing group, lost my gall bladder,  developed RA, made some true friends and lost some not-so-true friends, decided to tough it out and not look for a new paying job and, in a couple of months, I will turn sixty and officially be eligible for many senior citizen discounts.

In so many other ways I am still the same person.  I still do not suffer fools gladly, cannot sing or dance without causing pain to myself or others, or keep a 'company ready' house.  I still insist  that I should do my own lawn mowing, though my neighbor insists on doing the front lawn.  My teeth are still crooked and my allergies just keep getting worse.

And every morning I wake up and I am glad that I did.

Not a stellar record but that's my story and I am sticking to it.

Twinkle Quilt

I am so excited that I was able to actually finish a quilt this past week.  I started Twinkle, from the Kim Brackett book 'Scrap-Basket sensations', back in January and it has taken me this long to get it together, basted and quilted.  A long drawn out process but I think it was worth it.

It came out at about 70" square which is larger than the original design because I added two extra rows.  The fabrics came primarily from my South African indigo stash of fat quarters with the stars all coming from the same piece of fabric that had four shades of yellow in it.  That outer border was actually ordered over the phone from Stitchin' Heaven when they ran out of the fabric that I really wanted for the border.  I think it all works together.

A surprise for me was that the indigo fabrics only bled a little in the wash.  I used a whole handful of color catchers and they came out bluer than they were before but not solid blue.  The lightest yellow looks a little duller to me but my fears of everything turning blue seem to have been misplaced.

This Saturday is another meeting of the Strip Club and I think we are supposed to be working on UFO's.  I'm going to bring something that has been sitting in my to do pile for several years...another quilt but totally different from a something made from strips.

If you like the quilts I have made from this book, go buy the book.  I have to buy another one as I destroyed my copy with large cup of cup with cream and sugar.  What a sticky mess!

 And even if Alex likes this quilt it will not go into the bathtub with all the other doggie quilts!

Puzzled

About ten years ago I participated in a Block of the Month quilt program based on the Yikes pattern from Maple Island Quilts.  Every month I got a lot of fabric to make four blocks in a variety of large size basic block patterns.  Even if you don't quilt you have probably heard of Log Cabin or Courthouse steps blocks.

Here's how it turned out:

Pink, turquoise, black and white batiks made for a dramatic quilt and the construction allowed for any inaccuracies to be hidden by offsetting the rows.  I worked for hours on where to place each block but, in the end, Lady Jane (my Italian Greyhound then) mixed up the blocks so the placement ended up more random and less pleasingly placed.  I still love it for its energy and cheerful vibe.

I was about an hour from finishing up the quilt top when Paul saw it and asked for it for his bed.  He moved out a couple of months later and I haven't really seen it in many years.

Fast forward about eight years...

I was at his place the other day and saw it in a heap in the laundry room.  Thinking I would do him a favor, I decided to bring it home and wash it for him.  I dumped it in a heap on MY laundry room floor and went to let the dogs out.

THEY WENT NUTS!  Sniffing it, pawing it, rolling on it and exploring under it all the while wagging their tales and making general happy puppy sounds before they would go outside.  Good smells mean that Paul has been using it a lot or that someone doused in  'essence of beef'.

Imagine my surprise when Kelis, while trying to get out from under it, got stuck trying to crawl through a hole in it.

A HOLE!

Not just one hole BUT THREE HOLES!

I should not be surprised as the dearly departed Kimora chewed on everything she could when she was a puppy and I am sure these holes are her handiwork.

I am not distressed by the holes, they only show that the quilt has been well used over the years and, as I always say, I make utility quilts not heirlooms to be preserved for future generations.

But really... three holes seem a bit much.

So this weekend I will be trying to decided what to do about this quilt.

Here are the options as I see them:

1. Toss it out.  Not really an option a I still love it.
2. Carefully patch it to invisibly hide the holes.  This could take a very long time to find the exact matching fabrics and may never look as it did when brand new and, with my luck, Alex will chew a new hole in it just to show he can do it.
3. Patch it without concern for how it looks.  A black patch covering all three holes would make the quilt usable again but will not be very aesthetically pleasing.  Then again, a patch is a patch is a patch.
4. Cut out one big hole, bind the edges and make it a doggy door.  I am intrigued by this solution as it would give Alex and Kelis a new game.  Then again, with my luck, I would get my foot stuck in it  and rip a bigger hole. 

So, while I am getting some work done this weekend (cleaning, planting and de-cluttering) I will be puzzling over what to do with this holes.

And Bill, I will not use red to fix it!