Cowltopus Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well. We're getting ready for winter here. I'm sure it will show up some time soon! Our temperatures have been a bit cooler, but still pretty warm for this time of year. And it's been dry!! But we're supposed to have a cold front come through on Tuesday night to drop a little snow for us. We really need it! 

I was able to finish my Cowltopus designed by Laura Nelkin. This project was a Mystery Knit-Along (MKAL) so we didn't know what we were knitting until the final clue came out. I've finished the last two clues, finishing the cowl, since my last post. In the third clue we joined the bottom of the hood into a circle and started to knit the base of the cowl:

Cowltopus - Clue 3

And, as you probably guessed, we finished up the base cowl with the 4th clue:

Cowltopus - Clue 4 Front View

Cowltopus - Clue 4 Side View

The knitting in clues 3 and 4 use a technique called "brioche" which creates a really fun squishy fabric. I think this cowl will be wonderful on cold winter dog walks!

I also spent a couple of days this week putting the binding on my Baby Elephant quilt from Lickety-Split Quilts for Little Ones written by Laura Bevin:

Baby Elephant

I didn't have enough of the purple fabric from the quilt top to use for the binding, but I was able to find another fabric in my stash that matches the shade of purple perfectly! I like to hand-sew my bindings so it takes a while. The hand sewing is tedious, but I really love how a perfect, full binding looks and feels. The entire time I'm stitching, I'm bitching in my head about how long it takes and how sore my finger gets (I have never been able to use a thimble), but at the same time I'm feeling this intense satisfaction and joy at how wonderful the finished edge looks and feels, and I keep going back and touching the finished edges. Crazy, I know! Now I just need to do the quilting on the elephant and on the background of the quilt. I'm going to be doing simple stippling in the background, so that will be quick. I'm planning to do Angela Walters' meandering flower design in the elephant, to thematically match the roses in the cornerstones. I'll make another ByAnnie bag so I can practice the meandering flowers before I stitch them on the quilt.

Finally, I started working on my Millefiori quilt. I'm making La Passacaglia designed by Willyne Hammerstein using Tula Pink fabrics. This week I finished the first two rounds of the first unit:

La Passacaglia

I have a long way to go, but I'm liking it so far!

Finally, I thought I'd share a picture of our latest visitor:

Visiting Moose

This guy spent the day last Tuesday relaxing in the neighbor's yard, about 15 feet from my fence. Grace was really good! She ran over to him (on her side of the fence) and gave a few barks when she first saw him, but then she just ignored him for the rest of the day. He is so beautiful!!

Nancy