I made several inches of progress last night on my Shore Ledges sweater.
I do like the feel of the fabric this yarn is making.
I pulled some yarn yesterday to start on a second swing cowl since I love the first one so much.
but how cool is it that the designer has my cowl as the cover photo on Ravelry for her pattern. Very cool indeed! Off to do some knitting.
So here’s the Short Stack I started with, along with one fabric I could add for the challenge which is the solid dark mushroom color.
And after my applique and adding of borders, here’s what’s left of that Short Stack…… just scraps for the trash.
Here’s what I have so far on the design wall with the light border section added to the right and top. I used nearly every single scrap of the fabric used in the wings — that one is my favorite out of the group.
I could end it like this, or I could add a final fabric border like in the second photo of the blue fabric which is only used in the eyes/eyelids.
I leave it up on the design wall for a while and decide later what I want to do but I think I may leave the blue off.
Can’t believe it’s already headed toward dinner time — need to clean up my mess but want to cut the binding strips first so that I don’t accidentally grab that fabric and use it for something else!
Then I’m definitely going to find a quilt to get comfy under while I spend the evening knitting. It just does not want to stay warm in here even tho the heat is turn up quite a bit from my usual 60 degrees or so.
I did go a bit crazy on my knitting last night. I wrote down the number of repeats I needed to do of a decrease sequence so I could mark each one off as I completed it and even tho it was right there in black and white to repeat 12 times, I had just finished repeat 14 when I realized I had written down too many to do. No idea how I managed to add two extra repeats when I wrote it down – but actually I needed part of the 13th repeat so only had to rip back about 6 rows which I fixed this morning.
Time to tidy the sewing stuff and stick it back in the sewing room and close that door to keep the cold air in there! and not in my living room. 🙂
Plain borders added, flying geese added to two sides. Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with the other two sides since my leftovers from the Short Stack are dwindling. I may just add a strip to the other two sides of the light fabric used for around the eyes. I think it needs a lighter color on the other two sides to balance the colors or I may leave as is – time for a coffee break to contemplate my scraps and see what I can do with the last of them.
I was looking through the photos on the Justquiltin Flickr group and when I got to friend Janet P’s version of Percy Penguin – I realized my Percy, which is one I actually finished – was hanging in the closet! This is perfect Percy weather so I pulled him out of the closet into the light of day. He would love the minus 12 temps – me, not so much! 🙂
He needs a hanging sleeve – or he may go to the office since there’s a couple large sections of fabric covered cubicle walls that I switch the wall hangings around on to add a bit of color to our area (and I don’t have to bother with the hanging sleeve.)
The center of Too Tired to Give A Hoot is nearly complete – not a bad days’ work play. 🙂 He still needs his feet so he doesn’t fall off that tree branch and I may go back later and hand embroider the upper part of his eyes – like where the pupils would be but will wait to see when I’m all done if I want to do that. I’m also debating if I want to applique his feet or hand embroider those in too. Will have to see what colors of pearl cotton I have that might work for his feet. But in the meantime, I can square this up to size and then start thinking about borders.
I did make the most of one fabric – since it’s a challenge and I can’t add any more fabrics to the Short Stack and taupe I’m using. The light blue on the lower part of the eyes is really the reverse size of the blue print that makes up his eyelids.
Day two of vacation tomorrow will be spent at home again. The temps tomorrow – worse than today. Wind chill here is supposed to be 30 below but the actual temperature at my folks is supposed to be 27 below so I don’t even what to think of the wind chill there. It would just not be smart for them to be driving up here in weather like that so we’ll wait and see what Wednesday brings weatherwise.
In the meantime, I think a bit of knitting is in order.
I spent part of the day working on my Loopy Fabric Challenge project I decided I would make this design – or at least start with the center to Too Tired to Give a Hoot
and see where I go from there. It currently looks like a giant egg with wings.
I’d be farther along except I was so warm and snug under my quilt watching a move as I was stitching that I took a bit of a snooze. I hate that – slows down progress. LOL
Plus when I woke up I had to think really hard as to what day it was and just why I was at home. 🙂
Now to go cut out the face features which are what bring him to life (or at least wake him up a little). And I’ve got a bit of the right wing left to stitch in place. I need to use all five of the fabrics from my short stack plus the extra fabric I could add (my tree fabric) but shouldn’t be hard to do – especially if I add the flying geese borders.
Like so many places across the country, absolutely frigid temps prevail the next couple of days. We’ve already gone past the normal amount of days we have where temps don’t get above zero so it can stop any time now! 🙂 And thanks to the snow of yesterday, which really wasn’t too bad, but the mix that fluffy stuff with the winds of today and I definitely won’t be headed to my folks today. The roads are closed between me and them due to the blowing, drifting snow and white out conditions. We’ll try again tomorrow.
In the meantime, I just might get to a little sewing. I’ve got my Loopy Fabric Challenge which with this weather delay in my leaving, just might mean I get it done before the end of the month since it’s a simple little project.
There just “might” have been some yarn purchasing yesterday too. There was a one-day sale which a certain friend told me about. 🙂 But I consider it her public service announcement because it was a great deal, a yarn that I like and the timing was perfect. I keep going back to look at that sweater pattern I posted a link to yesterday or day before – whenever – called Unbalanced which I so love the striping on. Well wouldn’t these colors look great in it? 🙂
Yes that’s what I thought too so when I get back to the office next week, they just might be waiting for me. I’m going to have to knit faster to counteract the influx of yardage!
In the colder weather I have not been making the trip out to the mailboxes – dang I should have picked an apartment closer to the street but then I wouldn’t have the woods right behind me. Besides – it’s usually just bills in the mailbox anyway so no need to collect them every day. 🙂
But sometimes there is something fun…… like the advance copies of the March/April Quiltmaker issue that have probably been sitting there all week. I had forgotten they should be coming around this time so it was a fun surprise.
And inside…. Spinning Pinwheels. It’s always interesting to see what Quiltmaker names the designs since some I don’t have names for or they change the name. It was even more surprising since I thought they were using a different one of my designs for this issue. A bit of a snafu in communications since when I was writing the blurb that shows up in the magazine next to my photo, they sent me the image of the other quilt and that’s the design I was referring to when writing that blurb. Luckily, what I wrote sort of applies to both designs or it might have sounded a bit goofy. LOL
So I’ve got a couple extra issues I’m willing to part with. If you do not subscribe to Quiltmaker magazine and would like to win an issue, it’s very simple. Just leave a comment on this blog post – but only one comment per person (so please do not sign up with multiple email addresses). You must live in the United States in order to be eligible for the drawing. If you have never left an approved comment on my blog, it will hold your comment until I approve it so don’t go crazy on me and leave multiple comments if you don’t see it appear in the comment list. I will be approving them before I do the random drawing.
Time to finish off the last of my cleaning and then find duffle bag so I can pack my vacation stuff. I’ll be glad not to be standing on the corner waiting for the bus tomorrow morning in the below zero temperatures and hopefully between here and where I’m headed they don’t get as much snow as was earlier predicted for today and tomorrow or I may have a stay-cation after all.
The Miss Babs yarn I’m using for my sweater is one of her Yowa-Whatta Skein! hanks and it is a Yowza for sure. I was winding a second hank to take along on vacation with me and just look at the size of it. It’s a lot of yardage and my ball winder is at its max winding it. But it’s nice to have that much yardage in one hank when making sweaters — less ends to weave in (I hate doing that) and less hand dyed color differences to worry about.
I recently saw this sweater pattern on Ravelry. I love the skinny stripes just on one side and then the opposite arm – and the cowl to match is a great touch along with all the colored buttons. I love the look of striped sweaters but I really don’t want stripes going all the way around me — this is just the right touch of stripes using them just on one side. I may have to think about doing that on my next CustomFit sweater. The hard part would be deciding all the different colors to use tho I do really like the color combination that designer used.
So many knitting ideas — but definitely a lack of time. LOL But I do hope to make some significant progress on this sweater while on vacation.
Plus I’ll be taking along this yarn – I still need to decide what pattern I want to use. It’s Three Irish Girls McClellan Fingering (merino/bamboo/nylon in Cair Paravel. It will be some sort of scarf/little shawl or cowl type thing since I don’t like bamboo in my socks and I have two hanks so can make something larger. The color combination is so pretty so I’m anxious to see how it looks when knit up.
Plus I’ll have my socks in progress so if I get tired of working on one project, I’ll have another to choose from.
In between doing some cleaning around here and several loads of laundry, there was some knitting time. This are coming along nicely on this sweater. Amazing what the correct measurements can do. My row counts and the measurements in inches actually correspond on this one — that did so not happen on the green cardi I was working on. LOL
From about 1-1/2 inches knit last night to another 5 inches or so added this afternoon. I do love this shade of gold.
Justquiltin with Denise Russart 