More Knitting

 Hi all -

First, last post I forgot to include a quote to finish my quote challenge from Terry Knott. (She's been doing some interesting quilting that she shares in her latest blog post, if you want to check it out.) So, here is my final quote:

"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." -- Maya Angelou

Definitely something I need to remember!

On the quilting side, I've continued working on quilting my Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt. There's really not much more to see than I showed you last time.

I've done a bunch more knitting, too. I realized that I should include information about the pattern with each of my knitting projects to acknowledge the designer and to give me a reference if I want to go back and make something again. So I will try to do that from now on.

My first hat was from the Spiralini Hat pattern by Jane Tanner of Knit Jane Knit. This was a pretty cool pattern because the spiral is created by the stitches that are used, not by offsetting the pattern with each round. I was really surprised at how this worked. Here is a side view of the hat:

And the top:

And here is Lance modelling for us:

Doesn't he look debonair in this slouchy style hat???

My second hat is called Brambles by Amanda Muscha of Strange Knits. What drew me to this pattern was how it looks from the top:

Isn't that cool? And here it is from the side:

Lots of cool cables! It's hard to see the hat on Lance:

My final hat for this time is the Butterfly Hat by Sofiya Cremin. Even though the description was good, it took me a while to figure out how to make the butterflies. I think I had a picture in my head of how the butterflies would be made before reading the instructions and that kept me from understanding how to do it at first. But once I got it figure out, everything went really well. Here is a side shot of the hat:

And a close-up of one of the butterflies:

Isn't that cool? And a shot of the top:

 Finally, my beautiful Lance showing it off:

Since I was getting sick of the pink yarn (yes, there's still quite a lot left!), I decided to pull out some fun yarn and make a cowl for my sister for her birthday next week. I used the Fir Cone Cowl pattern by Vermont Farmhouse Designs. The color of the cowl is actually a little lighter than in the picture:

I decided not to have Lance model this one because it was so nicely blocked that I didn't want to mess it up.

Lance has been having a lot of fun lately enjoying the spring snow before it disappears. Last weekend we still had quite a bit left from the blizzard. While I was hanging the laundry on the line, Lance was running around the house like a crazy dog. Here he is mid-leap:

Then he would come to a screeching stop and sit completely still on top of the piles the come off the roof:

It was hilarious!! I tried to take a little movie, but I couldn't figure out how to do that on my camera. Oh well, the pictures are still funny!

Finally, I started to work on my Hoffman Challenge quilt. As promised, I'll scroll down the page really far so if you are also working on the challenge and don't want to see what I'm doing, you can move on. Thanks for stopping by!











































For those of you not familiar with the Hoffman Challenge, Hoffman is a fabric company who picks a fabric each year and you have to make a quilt using that fabric in whatever way you want. There is no specific minimum amount of the fabric you have to use in the quilt, the fabric just has to be recognizable in the top. This year, for the first time, there are actually two fabrics that you can choose from, one with a white background and the other with black:

The black and white made me think of yin-yang so I thought I'd make a large yin-yang symbol. I started off by printing out a large symbol (about 27" square). I plan to use the 6-minute circle technique described by Dale Fleming in Pieced Curves So Simple for all of the curved piecing. To do this, I need freezer paper patterns for the different curves, so I cut the printed pattern so I could trace around it:

Then I started preparing the freezer paper. I've read that freezer paper shrinks when ironed, so I ironed each individual piece:

The pattern is wider than the freezer paper, so I ironed two pieces together to get the needed width:

I did this twice, then ironed them together to get a double-thick piece. I rotated the top piece 90 degrees so the seams would only cross in a small place:

Then I traced around the pattern:

I need the part outside of the circle for piecing the final yin-yang symbol to the background so I cut carefully on the line and put that piece aside. I used a rotary cutter to start the cut since I needed both the inside and the outside to be pristine, then finished the cut with scissors because I was worried about going off the line with the rotary cutter. I then cut the yin and yang apart in the pattern and traced that boundary:

With some careful cutting, I now how two patterns for the yin and the yang:

I'll let these sit for a bit while I decide whether I'm going to use the Hoffman fabric for the yin and yang, or I'm going to use solids for the yin and yang and use the Hoffman fabrics somewhere else.

That's it for now. I hope you're finding some time to follow your passions and feed your creativity,

Nancy