For the Birds….

Check out the birds — I took these photos while at my Aunt’s.  She has birdfeeders outside both her picture windows and there was a constant  stream of brightly colored birds.  I was taking the photos through the window so some of them are not as clear as they could be but I had to be quick  or the birds would see me since I was only about 2 feet from them taking the photos.

The orioles are probably  my favorites – mostly because I don’t see those around my house.  The yellow finch looks all puffed up in the second yellow finch photo since he was trying to dry his feathers off after a recent rain shower.  I occasionally get finches but not these pretty ones.

I also love the rose-breasted grosbeak – wish I had all those brightly colored birds at my feeder but I guess I’ll just continue to feed my cardinals, sparrows and wrens even tho they are not as colorful a flock as these lovely birds are.  The bluebirds were more elusive – I could see one sitting on the top of the bluebird house at the bottom of the yard but it wasn’t close enough to get a photo of.  It was keeping watch – there are eggs in the nest in the bluebird house.

Today it looked pretty much like in these photos here. It would rain and then stop and then rain and then stop.  It seems to always start against just as a friend and I were getting out of the car and running into a shop or restaurant this a.m.  And the temperature took a sudden drop this a.m. as well.  Someone should have remembered a coat and/or umbrella but neither of us did. LOL

Got a bit of sewing done on a baby quilt and made my list of what size pieces I need to cut for my Camp Loopy Safari sewing project – tho can’t start on it until after the weekend.  So back to my sweater – which I’ve now reached the armholes on.

On the Needles – Friday 5/29/15

My blue sweater isn’t finished yet –only about an inch or two of the sleeve cap to go on the last sleeve.  But, since I was going out of town last weekend, I needed something else to take along to work on where I didn’t really have to pay attention.  So I cast on this sweater.  Note that this is the worst photo ever.  Hot pink my sweater is not — it is actually bright cherry red but that’s such a hard photo to photograph in my sewing room on a gloomy rainy night.  So just pretend it looks bright red.  This one is Cascade Ultra Pima Cotton.  It will be a 3/4 length sleeve button cardigan. The back is plain and there will be a bit of design up the front along the button bands.

Now the second photo — those colors are perfect!

That’s my Loopy Legend yarn – Denise’s Gannets.  The only downside of it — oh the yardage that will add to my stash knitting tally! 🙂   I have three different sweaters nearly done — two need blocking (after I finish that last sleeve cap) and the other needs the front/neck bands added.  If I ever stop starting new projects, I’ll be able to make some headway on that stash knitting tally.  In the meantime, I have to go add 3,045 yards on for my Gannets yarn. 😉

Loopy Legend – Denise’s Gannets

  My Loopy Legend yarn has arrived at The Loopy Ewe!

What’s a Loopy Legend – someone who has purchased many many hanks of lovely yarn and reached the award level where you send in an inspiration photo and they have a yarn dyed based on that photo in your name and you get a free hank of it.

Here’s the photo I sent in of a Gannet – I love the shades of yellow and gold on his head and the blue/gray of his beak.

And here’s what Lorna’s Laces did with the dying of the yarn.

 

I absolutely love it!!  Yes, more yarn had to be ordered  and is on its way to me. I think I will be making a sweater out of this.  I will need to do some swatch to see how it looks knit up – will it pool or not – then again I may just wing it and if it pools so what.  But I absolutely love all the colors in it.

Do you need some Gannet yarn – check out The Loopy Ewe to get your own.

BLOCK PARTY PICNIC QUILT ALONG POSTPONED TO JUNE

It turns out I am not going to be available to do this quilt along Memorial Day weekend as previously planned.  It will be held a weekend in June – new date to be announced as soon as I figure out which one.  If you haven’t gotten your fabrics yet, there’s still time.  The yardage and other general info is on the Block Party Picnic Page – click the quilt image in the right sidebar on the blog to get there.

State of the Fabric Stash Report – 5/17/15

With all the curtain making yesterday for the sewing room and the bedroom, fabric has left the stash and been put to useful use.

Seven yards used for the curtains this week.

That brings the year-to-date totals to:

Fabric Purchased:  21 yards

Fabric Used:  60.75 yards

Net fabric used from stash: 39.75 yards

Click the Fabric stash button in the block sidebar for photos of finished projects, and other stages of projects I’m tracking this year (new projects started / UFOs making it to tops, etc).

Have I said how much I love those bright orange print curtains I made for the sewing room?  Even on a dark, overcast morning like today (feels like it will storm any minute), they make the sewing room so much brighter and cheerful.

Today’s plans — gets some laundry going, doing a bit of straightening up, and get back to quilting on the wedding quilt which has been languishing.  I was going to run a couple errands but since it looks like storms are supposed to be moving through all day, I think I’ll do those another day.

Showing their true colors

So here’s a better shot of the true color of the curtains now that that sun isn’t glowing behind them.

And I just realized BONUS! — all this curtain fabric used to add to tomorrow’s stash report.

Somewhere I think there’s a piece of fabric that has the same color as the bedroom curtains do that I was going to make pillow covers or something out of so I need to search that out tomorrow and see how much of it I have.  Should be able to do something with it and the left over curtain fabric.  Tomorrow, tho, I think I need to get back to some machine quilting.

 

And don’t forget – it’s the third Saturday of the month – which means this month’s installment for PatchKats was uploaded this morning so don’t miss out if you are collecting those patterns.

 

And yet more curtains…..

I’ve been in this apartment at least 8 years (if not longer, I can’t remember for sure) and off and on I’ve thought about making curtains for the bedroom and sewing room.  There are blinds on both windows (well here WERE blinds on both windows – you may remember the frozen blind / breaking blind story) anyway, I don’t know why I never seemed to get around to making curtains – I think part of it was I just couldn’t make my mind up about what fabric to use.    But I’m on a roll.

I can’t remember how long ago I bought the fabric for the bedroom curtains but it’s been sitting and waiting, and waiting and since I finished off the sewing room so quickly, I decided to grab that fabric and figure out what I wanted to do.

Well, did some stitching, pulled out the rod and there they are.  They aren’t quite done yet – I put them up so I could see how much I need to hem them and then they need a good pressing but I like the way they turned out.  You can just see the bedpost to the right of the lamp that shows the painted color of the bedroom furniture below the finial top – the curtains go great with it.

And as my reward for all this sewing since I never bothered to  make lunch  – the delivery guy should be showing up any time now with my dinner.

 

 

Mission accomplished

  A bit of reworking and I now have curtains – nothing fancy but they definitely brighten up the room.  While the main color looks yellow in my photos, I’ll have to take a photo at night when the brightness (yes the sun actually came out) is not shining through them.  They are actually very very orange and the top section I added is orange, red and yellow stripes.

Actually it is this fabric  and this one.  Actually on my computer monitor they are not quite as bright as real life.  But they most definitely brighten up the sewing room.

Not exactly what I was envisioning

I made my curtain for the sewing room – just quick and easy, pulled out the rings and clips and got it in place.  Dang — I was totally forgetting that with the fullness of the width of the curtain and the loop and hooks it hangs from, that it would sag down along the top and that’s definitely not a look I want on this window.

 Yep – not liking that, so I think my new plan will be to add one of the coordinates I bought of this fabric line (stealing from my  planned quilt so will have to reorder whatever I use), and add it on to make the curtain longer.  Haven’t decided if I want to add to top or bottom but then I’ll add a casing along the top to just slide the curtain onto the tension rod and take off the loops and hooks.  Now to go pull out the other fabrics to see what I might want to use.

On the Needles Friday – May 15, 2015

Same picture as last time — but I have made progress.  One sleeve was finished this week but it’s just not exciting enough to bother to take a photo of.  Cast on the second sleeve and have about three inches of that done.  I may be playing yarn chicken on this one – I “should” have enough left to do the button bands and neckline but it always makes me nervous as I see those balls of yarn disappearing.   Oh I just spied one of the balls of yarn not where it should be – I think I brought one into the sewing room to look it up online and see if I could order more if needed – whew – one more little ball of yarn than I thought I had so I do think all will be well.

This is my CustomFit Cardipalooza KAL project — which means its supposed to be done by May 31.  I don’t know if that will happen but if not, it shouldn’t take much longer than that to get done.

This evening’s plans — movies and knitting until the wee hours of the morning (my usual exciting Friday night plans — but it’s a great way to relax after a busy work week).   Tomorrow – well since I finally managed to get the new shower curtain done last weekend, I think this weekend I’ll tackle the new curtains I want to make for the sewing room.  I could decide on what fabric to use (and really didn’t want to buy more since there had to be something here that would work) and realized I have some bright (yes bright is not an understatement) very large floral print that I bought as backing for my Block Party Picnic quilt but I’ve decided it really needs to be curtains and any leftovers I can use to piece a backing for that quilt.  And these curtains are going to be super easy since I have curtain rings that a little clip hangs down from — just stitched a header hem and hem the rest of the way around and clip them on and string on the tension rod and insert in window.  And actually I’m contemplating just doing one curtain that I can push to either side, rather than two halves that open from the middle.  One of those windows I rarely open because the upstairs neighbors dryer vent is above it — since I’m allergic to a lot of scented things, her dryer sheet smell is not something I want blowing in my window so I think a single curtain it may be and I don’t have to worry about it not hanging exactly straight if it’s in two sections. 🙂