Project Dreambird Takes Wing

Will you be joining Judy and I as we work on our Dreambird  shawls?   Judy and I have both admired that pattern for a long time and we’re finally going to jump in and give it a whirl.  It’s always more fun when several people are working on the same project – showing photos of their progress, yarns they are using.  Judy will be providing linky boxes so we can share our yarn (share photos of our yarn – no we are not sending you our yarn) and our progress and cheer each other on to the finish.

We plan to start the end of August after Camp Loopy is done and there’s no finish date – it’s not a race, it’s just a project  we plan to start then.  You can find more info in Judy’s blog post here  explaining what we are up to  rather than me repeating it all here.

The first, and probably hardest decision will be choosing what yarn I want to use.  I keep looking at the hundreds of project pages in Ravelry hoping it will help me decide what sort of colors I might like or what kind of yarn I might want.  The bright one on the black,  the more pastel one with white background, fall colors and tan — Noro Silk Garden, Poems Sock Yarn, Unisono, Crazy Zauberball, Woll Butt Sheba (okay that one I tossed in I cause I think it’s a funny name), Drops Fabel, Kauni, Knit Picks Chroma, Mini Mochi —and then some of them I like are done in sport weight, some fingering weight — hmmm wonder how big it would be in dk or worsted weight??? so many choices.  Or you could just use your scraps (you do realize I won’t be going the scrap route and WILL be buying new yarn right????) LOL

So who is up for the challenge?

A Box of Fun, A Box of Lovelies, and a lot of craziness

  Yes my Box Of Fun from The Loopy Ewe arrived today with my yarn for the 2nd Camp Loopy project.  Little Loopy is guarding it and studying the pattern since I put him in charge of finding the right needles size for this pattern  — he knows it will be a daunting task since I have circular needles scattered all over the place but he has until July 1 to find it.

Then there was the Box of Lovelies — no that’s not a subsidiary of the Loopy Ewe.    It was a box of lovely fabrics.    I have no idea now much yardage was in that box — a lot! — and I’m not even going to think about what that fabric would do to my stashbusting report (1) because I haven’t really been keeping track of what’s coming in in the first place, I’m more or less tracking what gets used as I finish projects and (2)  gift fabric doesn’t count towards stashbusting in my sewing room!!  Suffice to say, if I were tracking fabric in versus fabric out so far this year, I am deeply deeply in the red so I will stick with just tracking how much fabric I’m moving out of the sewing room.

But in these photos you can see I’m not deeply in the red — I’m deeply into turquoise and peaches and greens and purples Oh My!  It was a wonderful box of hot off the presses (just released at Quilt Market in May) batiks sent by Hoffman California Fabrics.  I am sooo in batik heaven now.

I can’t wait to go spread them out and check them all out.

There is one project specifically planned for some of these but the hard part will be chosing which ones to use for that project.   I may need to plan another weeks’ vacation to stay home and sew again!!!

Here’s the newest photo of Wingspan.  I’m just starting the seventh wedge.  I love the way it’s turning out and I can’t believe how easy it is to do.  After the first wedge, you don’t even need to following the pattern anymore.  I shortened my wedges on this one so I wouldn’t run out of yarn since I want to make it longer than the pattern calls for but I may need to make another one with normal length wedges.

Wingspan was my precursor to work on before trying to tackle Dreambird.  Judy – yes THAT friend Judy, and I had been emailing about making Dreambird.  And see her post from today here where she’s talking about it.  People called her crazy – I call her adventurous,  (I also call her a bed short sheeting sneak but she knows that!), willing to try new things (and if this doesn’t work out she’ll have a few things she will be calling ME so it’s a good thing it’s a long way from Texas to Wisconsin).   But I have publicly thrown down the gauntlet (in other words left her a comment on her blog — hey that’s the same thing as throwing down the gauntlet in cyberland)  that YES, we will make Dreambird after all the Camp Loopy projects are done and her garden harvesting, canning, freezing, drying peak has slowed down – it will be a duel to the finish….  Oops got carried away there….. no dueling….. what I really said was:

YES!!  WE WILL make it after Camp Loopy and when your garden slows down That will give me time to search out the right yarn I want for it. since the original  yarn I bought for this, the colors were not what they were portrayed on the website so I need to find something else.  I think we can do it (despite you giving me more credit for my knitting skills than I really have) LOL
 I’m not saying it’ will be easy and it certainly won’t be something I can work on on the bus,  but in reading through the directions it looks like one of those patterns that will make sense as you are actually doing it (and if you ignore the schematic drawings because those are just plain crazy looking) VBG.  It’s just short rows — we’re not afraid of short rows! (should I get us t-shirts printed with that saying on it?)  So prepare yourself woman – the gauntlet has been thrown down — we can do this despite those that may think us crazy.

I’m still thinking I may have to get t-shirts that say “We’re Not Afraid of Short Rows!”.  ROFLOL   but I may need to put on the back of mine in little print “But I am a little scared of Judy if this doesn’t work out.” 

Mini Cupcakes

 As I was putting the other stuff back in the hatbox, I decided to keep out the little cupcakes and do something with them.  I remembered the  “sprinkles” fabric I had bought to go with some of the larger cupcakes (which reminds me that the large cupcake blocks I found in the hat box are NOT the only cupcake blocks around here.  Those were leftovers or ones I didn’t get finished when I got all the cupcakes for the swap finished.  In one of the other UFO/swap boxes there is a very large order of cupcakes!

At first I just set the cupcakes like a 9 patch with plain sprinkle blocks between them.  That was too dull so I ripped them apart and added a bit more color to the alternate blocks.  Now I just need to decide if I want to simply bind it with the sprinkles or add some other borders to it.  But that’s something I’ll contemplate another day.  It’s way past my dinnertime!

It’s been one of those days….

where I can’t settle on one project.  Those days are usually the best for cleaning out bits and pieces here and there that get stuck in boxes and baskets to deal with another day.  So, I’ve been meaning to clean out some of the UFO storage tubs in the sewing room and decided I’d start out with just this hatbox.

  I mean how much stuff can that hat box really hold?

As I was clearing the rest of the stuff off the table to make room…oops…..

 Hope I didn’t really need that square for my quilt.

So once I dumped out the hatbox — here’s some of what I found.

 Oh no!! Not more cupcake blocks.  LOL  Yes   there’s pieces ready to applique for another 20 or so blocks and a little stack of mini blocks.    I kept the mini cupcakes out – I want to make a mini wall hanging out of them.  I think they are about 4.5″ blocks and I’ve got five of them so I may lay them out like a 9 patch block but have to decide what I want to use for the alternate squares.

Oh and lets not forget these four pastel frosted cupcakes.   The two on the right aren’t stitched down yet.  The frosting fabric and cupcake fabrics are all from the same fabric line.  I may make something separate from the other cupcakes with these four.

I also found these — we held a quilt retreat in New Braunfels, TX and one of the gals embroidered the info and year (2006) on the upper Texas hankie and the fabric map below as also from one of the gals.  I need to put them in the box with my quilt from the Texas Romp swaps because I plan to use them in the backing of the quilt.

Then there were the miscellaneous stuff (oh no — more appliqued hearts too! — will they never end?) I know there are many more heart blocks in the UFO boxes too despite the fact that I have made and donated many heart quilts already.    What can I say – the winters are long and if I have nothing else I want to work on, I always had a bunch of hearts cut and ready to stitch.  Thank goodness I went back to knitting so I’m not making any more heart blocks.  There’s a light butterfly print fabric cut in squares that I must have planned to alternate with the hearts in that project.  It would make a cute girly baby quilt.  The triangles were left over from a project and will most like become a potholder and the red/black  block is an idea was working on for the fat quarter swaps we did on TQP of black and white prints, red and white prints, and red and black prints –I have lots of those in the stash, and thanks to a friend, a stockpile of black buttons to sew on the center of the blocks.

The baggie of 30s repos HSTs — they were the “bonus” corners off some stitch and flip bowtie blocks.  In a moment of insanity I decided to keep them.  It will take many more moments of insanity to actually do anything with them since they all need to be squared up to 1.5″.  Who kept those dinky things anyway! LOL   But they would go nicely with my 122 heart (yes more hearts!) blocks that will finish 4″ square — again all 30s repos and solids.  They’re cute little hearts and would make another darling baby quilt.

Various odd blocks, leftovers and “uglies” have been removed from the hat  box and relegated to the recycle box.   If I know I have no intention of completing it, no longer like it, or never did like it (yes there are a few of those) to the recycle box it went — time for a good clean out even if I am starting small with just one hatbox.   But, what I had forgotten were in the hat box were these blocks - the cabbage roses.

Forty-six blocks in this batch — they are on two different backgrounds but both are by the same manufacturer and have the same colors in them so they look really well together.  There are more cabbage roses blocks (yes, if I remember right this was another winter project) but the others are on different colored backgrounds and include other fabrics.  These were made from a large fat quarter roll I  bought at another quilt retreat.  I think I may leave these up on the design wall.  I need to press them and not all of them are squared up to size yet, but I think I’ll contemplate how I want to set these together.

So the hat box is repacked, less stuff than it started out, but now it contains only the stuff I think I actually will finish — or at least at this point in time I intend to finish them.

Tails are done

  Tails have been added to two of the birds so I’ve got the top knots left to add to the middle bird.

 

 

And three wedges knit on Wingspan.

 

 

 

Now to figure out what I want to work on this afternoon.

Wingspan restarted

I ripped it out and restarted with a smaller “wedge” and things are moving along well now.  I’m just a row or two into the third wedge.  This is super simple to make but I’m always in awe of the people who come up with these ideas.

Wingspan Poems Sock 955

Quilts for the Auction

The golf outing fundraiser auction for the Komen fund sort of snuck up on me and I didn’t get one of the projects done I wanted to for that – the ladybug quilt.  And another I previously made that I thought I might donate, I may send the pattern to EQ Boutique and if I do, I can have them photograph the actual quilt for the pattern so I’m hanging on to that one for a while yet.  But, in the stack of finished projects, there is always something to choose from.

  Frozen Delights will be one of the quilts donated for the auction.  This is the first version of this quilt I did and released on the blog – which has both pieced and appliqued blocks.  There’s a block collection of Frozen Delights available through EQ Boutique – those are all applique blocks  from this project along with additional blocks not included here.  I still have plans to make a mini version of Frozen Delights for myself.

 

The other two projects that will also be going to the auction are Flitterin - a free project on the blog released on my birthday last year  and the stained glass table runner  made from left over pieces from Pinwheel Posey and sparked a similar version, Let It Shine, used for a Stitchin with Justquiltin project.

Hopefully they will raise a few $$$ for the cause.  They are now washed and dried and I just need to do a final once over of any threads tails I might have missed.

 

Afternoon coffee break time….

Poems Sock 955

Ah – figuring out where I left off on Wingspan was not difficult so I’ve knit a few more rows.  it takes a lot of rows to complete one “wedge”. Where that marker is now (the flower) – that has to move all the way to the bottom left and it only progress three stitches every other row.   For some reason I also started these on a slightly larger needle than called for 3.75 mm rather than 3.5 mm.  If I knit tightly that probably would be a big deal but I don’t knit tightly so I’ve been debating if I rip this back and restart on smaller needles or just adjust the length of the wedges so I have enough yarn to make enough wedges.   I hate ripping but I think it will continue to bug me and since I was thinking about adding an additional wedge or two, I think I’ll rip it back, leave it on the same size needles (because I like the little airy look to it) but shorten the length of the wedges.  I have had more false starts lately. LOL  Maybe that’s why I set it aside after I first started it — debating what to do.  Anyway I think it will be lovely in this yarn so can’t wait to get farther on to more color changes in it.

Sewing room was put back in order (more or less – I have room to work on the table once again), quilts for the golf outing auction are in the washer so I can deliver them Monday, applique pieces are ready for wall hanging, so I think I’ll go rip this out and next time you see a photo of it, hopefully it will be much farther along in a shorter wedge version.  It actually is rather monotonous knitting – easy to pick up and put down – so think it will be my bus riding project this week.

Saturday’s plans

It’s been sort of a lazy morning around here.  I did finally get moving and made a quick trip to the grocery store and straightened up the dining table a bit which is a catch-all for everything and took out the trash.  Is that enough work for one day??

Last night I spent quite some time going through a large basket of yarny things.  Yarn I had bought over the past month or two that never made it farther than a basket in my living room, and I spent a good part frogging a couple scarfs I had started when I was trying to figure out what yarn to use for Dad’s scarf.  The rejects I had just taken off the needles and set aside.  So now they are wound back into balls and put away for some other project, along with the Irish Mesh scarf which has been frogged.  I may try making that one again with a different edging and maybe even worsted weight yarn to see if that will help stop the curling but that’s a project for some time in the future.  And then here were all the patterns I had tossed in that basket — some culled out and tossed and others (especially sock ones where I know I only have one sock done) set in the unfinished sock basket so I can find them back later.  Why is yarn, like fabric, a never-ending clean up and mess up kind of thing?  LOL  but thinks are nearly back in order in the yarn arena.

I have been wanting to make the Dreambird shawl.  I think its amazing.  If you click on the link to Ravelry and then click on the Projects tab at the top (currently it says 825 projects but that may change – and you may have to be logged in to Ravelry in order to see the projects – I don’t know)  but anyway you can see hundreds of these shawls in all kinds of yarns and colors.  They are stunning.    It will probably be a challenging one to make.  But in my cleaning last night I pulled out a project on the needles, barely started, with no pattern with it.  I looked at it for the longest time and then finally figured out it’s Wingspan.  Wingspan is another gorgeous shawl that also uses long color change yarn.  I can’t remember how long ago I started it – sometime last year - but I know I started it to sort of work my way up to Dreambird to figure out how you knit those wedges on to each other.  So now to reprint the  pattern and see if I can figure out where I left off.

After that – I need to tidy the sewing table as usual.  And while putting things away, I hope to discover where I have currently hidden the box of freezer paper.  It’s not like it’s a small box but it’s not in the usual location.

Before I put all the fabrics away, I want the freezer paper to cut out the head and tail feathers for these birds and get them appliqued today so just maybe I can start quilting this one tomorrow.

So time to get busy and while I’m tidying the sewing table – contemplate if I bought anything good at the grocery store  for lunch.

On the needles, off the needles, into the trash???

First – what’s ON the needles that I’m currently working on – one of my pairs of socks I started for the pooling challenge that wasn’t really pooling – more like spiraling around the leg –  and I didn’t get finished anyway. 

But I love the yarn - Three Irish Girls Adorn Sock - squishy soft – and after I finished my Camp Loopy 1 project I picked these back up.  The second sock was only about 3″ of leg when I picked these back up to work on during my bus ride and now I’m close to finishing the gusset decreases before moving on down the foot. I hope to get this pair finished this weekend.

Second – what’s OFF the needles…Dad’s scarf and hat set for his birthday.  Just needs a little blocking and it will be all set. 

Third – what may be headed for the trash??  Well as I was looking for the socks above to work on, I dove into the knitting basket of UFOs and came out with the third photo:

  The Irish Mesh Cowl.  It’s not really headed to the trash but will be frogged. It’s too “curly” at the edges and if it’s doing it on the needles, it’s going to do that even when blocked I think and I won’t like it.  I like the yarn (which has hints of purple and green among the gray which are hard to see in this photo) so will find another project for this yarn.

And then I came out with the project in the last photo — my Rockefeller which was a mystery KAL.  Mystery KAL’s much like mystery quilts, can be lots of fun – I like doing both but that doesn’t mean I always like my yarn/fabric choices for the project in the end.   In this case, I love the yarn – Crazy Zauberball but I don’t love it in this shawl pattern. 

As for the pattern itself – I don’t want to invest the second ball of Crazy Zauberball and the blue into it since I don’t love the pattern – I’ll use that yarn for something else I will love.  There are things I like about this pattern – like the top section of it – the wedges – which are really similar to the Spectra scarf which is one of my favorite things I’ve made.  But I don’t love the I-cord that connects that section to the middle section – it seems too tight and makes a weird ridge.  I may have knit it too tight but in the finished shawls there are a lot of them that look similar and it made the shawl lay weird when they were modeled which I didn’t like.    I love the design on the lower edge too, but the middle section – not enamored with it and the yarn is overpowering in it.  When looking at the finished designs, the ones I liked the looks of the best were solid colors.   It still needs two sort of pennant shaped sections added to each straight edge so that you can tie it but it’s just not my style so I think it will hit the trash can — oh I know some of you may be gasping at that fact but seriously sometimes projects need to simply be tossed cause they will only sit in a box or basket for the rest of their life so please don’t tell me how terrible you think that is or what else you would do with it – I’m cutting it loose and I’m quite pleased with my decision to let it go.  There are way tooooooo many stops and starts and woven ends in this project to even rip it apart to reuse the yarn - it would all be random pieces.

The really bad news – when on the search for my next Camp Loopy pattern I came across several patterns to add to my library for new projects that I wanted to make.  So I’m really itching to start something new but trying to tell myself I shouldn’t since there’s many projects to finish up and a new Camp Loopy projects starts July 1.    Maybe I should just go digging in the UFO containers again to see what else I can find in there to hold my interest so I don’t start something else new.

Oh – what new patterns did I find you wonder — well here’s links to just a couple.

The rope basket — I so love this one and have added buying “rope” to my shopping list .

Uisce – I’m usually not fond of making side to side shawls but I do like the looks of this one.  There are several patterns by this design I really like, for instance her Nepal Wrap - I love the texture in that one.

The Imposter’s Shawl - Love the texture in this one. too.

Juliet -  but I wouldn’t do it in bulky yarn — seriously I have enough bulk going on my own I don’t need to wear bulky yarn too! LOL

Okay back to my socks and working on the many knitty in progress projects rather than starting something new.