Cold and colder

That’s what today has been. I was glad to finally get home, crank up the heat, and thaw out.  I think we reached 4 degrees with wind chills 10 to 20 below.  It’s definitely a quick brisk walk to and from my bus stops. No one is wasting any time standing around outside.

I did work tonight on the backing for the Heart quilt.  It kept telling me it wanted me to just piece some of the batik/hand dyed pieces into backing.  I hate piecing backing.  And I knew there were not many large pieces (1/2 yard or fat quarter or larger) in the batik hand dyed stash because most started out as FQs and have been used in various projects.  The batik stash has never really made it to the shelves of the official stash because they are not necessarily pieces that will fold easily.  So I found their suitcase, which I had forgotten I had empted most of the other fabric out of (the civil war repros) so they’ve been tossed around in the half empty suitcase and are a wrinkly mess as you can see here.

  So I plopped them uncerimoniously on the couch and started digging through to find the largest pieces.  I ended up with this without having to do too much piecing.

So tomorrow I may get ambitious and straighten up the rest of that pile, sorting fat quarters or larger to go in the stash, scraps to the scrap bin, and maybe cut the rest into strips. I’ve got a strippy pattern I’ve been wanting to try and many of the batiks are stacked in single layers since I had cut the Autumn Ripples Wedding quilt from them and left them stacked that way so easy to chop into strips.

Tomorrow I plan to get the heart quilt layered and start machine quilting.

The latest socks are coming along nicely too.  After deciding the metal needles are too short, I ripped the 2″ or so I had done back to the start of the ribbing and switched to the bamboo needles because my largest bamboo were a bit smaller than the metal.  Didn’t want a change in size mid sock but hate tight ribbing so left that as it was.  Now I just have to remember to start the second sock on the larger needles.

I like the yarn but it is pooling into wavy runs of color down the ront of the sock and the back is fairly plain.

Here’s the front.

and the back looks like this.  There really is not that much difference in the actual color shades – the first picture turned out dark.  I kind of like the color runs down the front. They will be interesting to say the least – especially since it’s a toss up as to how the second sock will pool.

Now I think I’ll clean up the table so I’ve got it ready to lay the quilt out on tomorrow and then head for my jammies, a movie, a quilt to keep warm under (I can feel the cold coming up from the floor – I hate heat vents in the ceiling) and knit for a while.

Denise

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