I got the scarf fringe added — just in time for the snowstorm on the blog! LOL I forgot it’s set to automatically turn on the snow on the screen. It is turned on for a couple weeks if I remember right and today must have been the “start” day of the winter storm. Good think there’ a warm scarf to ward off the cold.
No purl ribbed scarf – started 10/2014 finished 11/30/14
I have a sewing room again! Not just a really large closet like room full of clutter. LOL but a clear table to work on and things put back in place. And its been rearranged for winter sewing — my table where I work moved as far away from the window as possible to stay clear of any cold drafts. Just a couple of things on the window sill to sort through and a pile of fabric to get off the ironing board. I moved one of the fabric shelves into the closet so was able to bring the wooden arm chair from my living room into the sewing room — which makes space for the Christmas tree in the other room.
The only casualty — my printer cord. I was just going to print something and when I moved the printer, I must have either stepped on the USB end of the cord or rolled over it with my chair — it’s bent out of shape and no way will it work as is. But, if that’s the worst casualty, which can easily be replaced next time I’m out shopping, then that’s pretty good.
So bedroom and sewing room decluttered. Next up (but not today!) the coat closet (the true catch-all place for anything and everything — except coats it seems) and then the kitchen cabinets.
But time for a treat since I’ve been working so hard and a fresh cup of coffee since I think I’ve reheated this one several times because it’s gone cold. Next – I’ve got a scarf I finished knitting a while ago that just needs its fringes added; I can then mark one more item on the done knit from the stash pile.
Hmmm I just spied those three Halloween blocks on the far right of the big design wall — I thought I put all those away yesterday! LOL I must have gotten distracted. Must go put them with the others right now so they all stay together.
I love breakfast on the weekends. During the week, it’s my latte and maybe grab a scone at the coffee shop, but at home on the weekends I usually eat brunch rather than breakfast and lunch and I love muffins, biscuits – all those yummy things. Give me a good omelet and a warm muffin and all is right in my world.
Today, however, I woke up thinking about waffles and cornmeal muffins. I love waffles but don’t make them often. I knew I didn’t have enough cornmeal left for muffins but a half batch of waffles – that might be possible. So waffles are mixed and just waiting for the waffle maker to heat up and syrup is simmering on the stove, nearly thickened to the right consistency.
So the really important question of this morning…. are you a Belgium waffle person or a skinny waffle person. I am a skinny waffle person and when my old waffle maker died I had to search for a long to find a waffle maker that still make skinny waffles. I like them crispy on the outside and leftovers get frozen to pop into the toaster. Here’s the recipe I’m trying today Cornmeal waffles. Now to see if the waffle maker is ready.
It was ready – they were good. I’ve now had my waffle fix for a while and there’s a few to toss in the freezer for some other day.
I was doing a little playing in EQ this morning while trying to decide what was for breakfast so here’s a little eye candy. I was playing with some different settings (horizontal versus vertical) using the same block
Here’s horizontal
It’s okay but it’s much more interesting when it’s set on point here.
.
Then there was this design — same setting for both of the images of this quilt. It uses three different sizes of the same block design. The first one is okay.
but adding in more colors makes the circular design pop out. I love those straight pieced designs that give a curved secondary appearance.
Enough play – need to finish the last of the cleaning in the sewing room.
…icicle lights that is. It was a wet business tho from the snow melting off the deck above me. But warm outside – must be at least 40 degrees and the sun was shining. So it was a job well done before the temps take a drop. Much easier to hang lights when the cords don’t freeze all kinked up and your fingers aren’t turning numb! 🙂 And I found the light timer which I thought I had lost. Now to see if I guessed the right setting for them to come on dusk to dawn since I don’t actually have the instructions anymore.
I was going to get all kinds of other things done today too but I’ve spent way too much time searching Ravelry patterns trying to decide what to do with this yarn. I had put it in a cabinet where yarn does NOT get stored but on my quest to declutter and get things in their proper places, I pulled it out.
I had bought this a while ago a LQS and I keep looking at it and petting it because it’s so soft and I love the soft colors. It’s 100% baby alpaca so will feel so good next to the skin. I just wasn’t finding any patterns so I think I’ll just make a color block cowl. the yarn is so soft and drapey that I think the edges would definitely curly so I’m doing to knit it in a tube so there is no “edge” per se. Something similar to this but I may add some thinner stripes in too where the color changes.
I did get a few other tasks done that were on my list — did run to the grocery store so just have to decide which goodies I want for dinner. I can’t believe it’s already 4 pm. but then I get my second wind on the weekends in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe I’ll finish straightening up the sewing room then.
But now it’s time for more coffee, and to finally finish going through the last of the DVDs and videos to decide what else needs to be gotten rid of. Who accumulated all of them anyway! 🙂 – keeping only my favorites that I’ll re-watch – great knitting or sewing accompaniment. But there were a lot I got rid of – my goal is to get them all back on one small shelf unit without them being crammed every which way to get them to stay on the shelves. Clutter beware – next is the magazine stack to weed out and add to my dumpster bag – and then to figure out if I need to rearrange any living room furniture in order to have a place to put the new Christmas tree when it arrives next week. Ah yes – have to deal with the old tree too….. but that can wait. A bit more tidying and then I shall reward myself with some knitting.
I’ve got some sewing planned for tomorrow I think – need to get the last rows sewn together on the wedding quilt.
When you get done with a project and realize – dang I screwed up. As I was casting off the last stitches I realized I had strayed from the stitch pattern I had been using. That’s what I get for putting the project aside for awhile and working on other things and never writing down how I was making it.
It’s done, but it has some major issues – I think it’s headed to the scrap heap.
Two projects off the needles this week — both Just Enough Ruffles for the Indie GiftAlong2014. The one I posted a photo of yesterday – love it in that ombre yarn.
And here’s the latest off the blocking board. This one is super soft.
I’m finishing off the bind off on a cowl tonight too, only a few stitches left to go – so several finishes will get added to my “use the stash” tally this weekend. (Good thing the Wollmeise won’t arrive until next week) 🙂
Well – many coffee breaks, several bite size pumpkin chocolate chip muffin breaks – but I accomplished a lot. After deciding I did want a skinnier Christmas tree, got that ordered so it should arrive next week. Now does that mean that that really huge Christmas tree plastic storage tub should be used to store yarn instead????? No…definitely not. Hopefully the smaller tree and most of the ornament containers will be able to fit in side it instead of only the tree – that’s my hope anyway. (But ….then again….. that tree tub would hold a whole lot of yarn!)
Speaking of yarn – I have managed to get two items finished for the Indie Designer Gift Along on Ravelry. Both are from the Just Enough Ruffles pattern but one I made longer than the pattern required — that was a whole lot of stitches to bind off on the ruffle let me tell you! LOL This is the longer of the two.
Here’s the first one which just came off the blocking boards.
The yarn is Freia – an ombre yarn and the colorway is Flare. The other one is still drying along with a cowl I blocked.
And further speaking of yarn…. there was a Wollmeise update this week — well actually there were two but I totally missed one of them which is just as well. And for a change, by the time realized it there were actually more colors left than just greens (there are always a lot of different shades of greens but it seems like that’s all that ever is left by the time I look at them). Anyway, I wanted some gray or black so some such neutral DK to mix with some other DKs I have for a striped sweater. So did not go crazy and order a lot – just a few. It’s so hard to get a sweater quantity of a specific color that I decided to go the color block or striped route and have been collecting colors for that. I thought about ordering more but decided no. Such willpower, huh? Actually I think it’s that all this cleaning out of closets the past few days has me thinking I have too much crap stuff. 🙂 Anyway – I shall maintain this resolve and totally ignore the fact that both TLE’s and ESK’s Black Friday sales are tomorrow.
Time to check out my bus schedule for tomorrow since my normal bus doesn’t run (since the Capitol Square will be sort of a ghost town with not many people working) and figure out what time I need to get up to catch the other route to work. Then there’s a knit baby blanket I need to bury ends on and I hope to finish off the last couple rows of a cowl.
There are many things to be thankful for on Thanksgiving (which I am thankful for every day of the year) — wonderful family, good friends, health, activities, creative outlets and job I enjoy, as well as the fact that the part of the tooth I broke off yesterday eating a raw carrot did not also take the filling out with it so it doesn’t hurt and hopefully won’t start hurting before I can get something done with it (heck with that healthy food – I may switch to only eating donuts – they don’t break teeth).
I’m also thankful for the delicious smelling (and tasting) pumpkin chocolatey goodness I just took out of the oven. I wasn’t in the mood for pumpkin pie (and really didn’t need a whole pie here to eat myself even if it wouldn’t break teeth like crunchy carrots) and decided to make some pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for my breakfast — a large batch since I’ll be taking the leftovers into the office tomorrow to feed some of the skeleton crew that will be there. I used this recipe . And since I didn’t want to wait for the first pan to be done – I made then in various sizes. I ended up with a dozen (minus the taste testing one) regular sized muffins, one and a half dozen mini muffins, and two jumbo muffins (made in two individual silicone bundt cake type pans – they turn out about the size of those jumbo muffins in the stores). And it smells like cinnamon and pumpkin in here now – as it should on Thanks giving.
Since I forgot to pick up the ingredients to make homemade stuffing, I’ve decided to save my little Cornish hen (which I wanted the stuffing to go with) for another day – maybe the weekend – and I’ll be dining on another favorite I love since I remembered there’s a bunch of fresh mushrooms in the fridge – Chicken Chablis. Yum, my mouth waters just thinking of it.
Now my dilemma is what to do today. In my cleaning out of the bedroom closet last weekend, I came up with a new plan for the sewing room closet organization. I worked on it a little last night but am debating if I want to work on that, knit, sew, go put up the outside holiday lights, etc. But I just looked at the temp outside (19) and think I’ll wait to do lights till the weekend since it’s supposed to be mid to upper 30s. I also, when cleaning the closet, pulled out the Christmas tree tub but I’m debating if I want to put up my white one – it’s big and that means trying to rearrange furniture to find a place for it and there’s only so many places I can move things around to. I didn’t put it up last year because I was just too busy but I do miss seeing all my ornament collection. I’m thinking of getting a new tree I saw – it only takes up about a 30″ diameter footprint – tall and skinny.
I do have two scarfs to block – finished those off last night; fringe to add to another scarf; about 3 rows left to finish a cowl — I need to finish some items to improve my “knit from the stash” numbers.
And there’s a quilt to work on — check out this fabric that arrived yesterday
I’m also thankful for my friend Sandy at Hoffman California Fabrics – and not just because she sends me fabric when I ask — she found me several years ago and enabled me to get my quilt designs out into the wider world on their website.
I needed a border fabric for my Asian quilt I’m making, found this on Hoffman’s website, emailed Sandy, and a couple days later it arrive. It is absolutely perfect for borders on this quilt.
Okay – enough dilly dallying on the computer – I’ve got things to do – haven’t decided exactly what but there’s plenty to choose from!
It was a busy day yesterday. Winter sweaters located, summer stuff packed away, bag of clothes to get rid of…. space bags all resealed and stored back in the closet which was rearranged. A job well done – not quite finished but nearly. If only the space bags didn’t crease everything so bad that you have to rewash perfectly clean items just to get the creases out. LOL But several loads of laundry later, I have a couple stacks of sweaters ready to wear and nearly all the regular laundry done.
As usual I would get sidetracked from time to time — wanted to make some gingerbread cake and went looking for the recipe and that one page was missing from my cook book (okay it’s an old loose-left version of Betty Crocker and there are probably more pages missing than just that one) but this led to having to clean out the cabinet above the fridge where all the cook books and a large stack of Taste of Home magazines were out of control. There really are only about 3 cookbooks I use — all the rest have been piled I a bag to get rid of. No reason they need to take up storage space when I never use them so won’t miss them.
Never did find the missing cook book page, but a little search on line and I found this gingerbread cake recipe. It is delicious – I highly recommend it.
Hopefully today the wet on the sidewalk is really just wet and not ice so I can make it to the dumpsters and mailbox. Oh good grief – I just looked at the weather on my homepage and it says it’s 49 degrees outside – heat wave and not ice out here. Gray and foggy and gloomy but I don’t mind that. Maybe just maybe I’ll get the outside holiday lights up. But now that I know it’s warm out – time to get dressed and load up my garbage/recycling bags and head out.
I’ve received inquiries about the pattern I’m using for the Asian print fabrics I’m stitching on. My fabrics are just from the stash but that pattern was design for a new collection of fabrics from Hoffman California Fabrics called Kotori. You’ll have to check Hoffman’s website – the pattern isn’t listed among their free patterns yet but it will be once the fabric line it is designed for starts shipping out to shops. The actual pattern has a bit of applique on it which I didn’t include on mine due to the fabrics I was using. Here’s what Kotori Fans looks like. My friends know I’m not fond of pinkish colors but this first colorway – Petal Silver, I just love the best of the three colorways.
What ISN”T on the needles? I definitely have a bad case of SOS — no, I am not stranded on an island, in this case it would be ” Shiny Object Syndrome”! And the objects don’t necessarily even have to be shiny. Yarn for instance can distract me in a second to casting on a new project.
This the group of projects I gathered up from various locations around my usual knitting chair. All scarfs of one type or another.
The “Oh Helen” scarf in the back.
Moving forward the next two are both Just Enough Ruffles – I’m starting the ruffle part on both. The multicolored orange/purple is half as wide again as the blue one (blue one was made to pattern instructions). Increasing all those ruffle stitches can take a while and it can take even longer when you made the scarf longer AND only increased the stitches on a one on one ration rather than the two to one the pattern calls for. So after doing the first increase row with not enough stitches, I did a second increase row which I just finished — it should all work out pretty much the same.
Isn’t the light aqua/gray yarn knitting up pretty? I love the look of it. The Just Enough Ruffles are part of the Indie Gift Along – if I get them done.
and then this 
yarn arrived this week — both for Indie Gift Along projects (for me).
I couldn’t resist the Malabrigo Rios Purpuras — that color is so pretty and it’s for Andalusian Cowl. Shaker Rib makes such a fun squishy fabric– it doesn’t feel heavy but it feels thicker and I think the way it’s knit helps trap heat between the layers – that’s my theory any way In any event, with the bitter cold of last week – I’m wanting this done soon so I can wear it over my winter coat to help cut the wind.
The blue yarn is Malabrigo Finito – superfine merino and that’s what I think of it — it’s “super fine!” It feels so good. I have one cowl made from some and it’s so cozy – light, but warm and oh so soft.
I did venture out earlier this morning – it’s much warmer than it has been but that has just meant that instead of snow, we got freezing rain over night. I could see someone had put salt down (sparingly) and it felt so warm I figured it was mostly just a wet sidewalk so decided to take the garbage out and get my mail. Hmm… my sidewalk was “mostly” just wet and not icy — but when I stepped into the parking lot it was a sheet of ice. At that point I was halfway to the dumpsters but it was just too hazardous — but it’s early and should warm up a bit more so I can try again later. LOL I am hoping that the ice melts on my patio so I can haul my little step stool out there sometime this weekend and maybe get the outdoor icicle lights put up since it actually feels quite balmy out there at the current 34 degree temp, tho it’s quite foggy.
So… a good day to sit and kit or sew don’t ya think? or maybe bake something…… anything to avoid the task I NEED to do — I pulled all the space bags with sweaters, etc shrunk into them out of the closet this week to try to find something warm to wear — they are tossed all about the bedroom so I need to pull out what I want, de-wrinkle them, and reorganize the closet a bit (okay a lot) – but that does not sound like much fun!
Justquiltin with Denise Russart 