Been A Long Time!

 Hi all -

I apologize for another long silence. Life has been busy and I just started working for a different company so some things had to fall off of my plate. I've continued to work on things, but it's been a bit slower. And I'll be going to Kansas City again in another week or so to help my sister through replacing her other knee. I'll be there for another 5 weeks, so I probably won't post again until I get back. So, let's get to it.....

In my previous post, I had finished knitting my Halloween advent calendar hat, All Treats, No Tricks designed by Amy Gunderson. At that point I was waiting for the perfect pom-pom to come back into stock. It reappeared and I was able to snag one, so here is the finished hat with the perfect pom-pom:

All Treats, No Tricks

The colors aren't great in the picture, but the pom-pom is black with bright pops of color and really is perfect for this hat!

I also knit another hat since my last post. This one is the Boulder Beanie, also designed by Amy Gunderson:

Boulder Beanie

This was the September 2021 Jimmy Beans Wool Accessory Club project. It was a lot of fun since it had both stranded colorwork and baubles, done a different way from other patterns I've tried. And, again, I found the perfect pom-pom to top it off. I really love this hat!

I found I was enjoying whipping out some smaller projects, so I pulled out the January 2021 JBW Accessory Club project. This one was the Rosemary Cowl designed by Alison Green:

Rosemary Cowl

This picture is prior to blocking. The cowl is blocking now so it will be cleaner when that is done.

In the interest of making progress on some of the WIPs (works-in-progress) that I have sitting around, I pulled out my Aquifer scarf designed by Laura Nelkin:

 

Aquifer

This is another really interesting knit and it is turning out so soft that I can't wait to finish it!

The final knitting project I'll share today is this year's Craftvent project from Jimmy Beans Wool. As the name implies, the Craftvent project is an Advent Calendar project. They do this every year and this is my third or fourth year participating. This year's project is the Festive Wrap designed by Ambah O'Brien. The project comes packaged in this pretty, sturdy box:

Craftvent Box

Inside the box, there is a drawer for each day:

Inside the Craftvent Box

Most of the drawers hold a small ball of yarn, like we got for day 2:

Craftvent Day 2

Others contain little surprises. So far, we've gotten the needles for knitting the shawl and a nice project bag:

 

 

Craftvent Day 1

Craftvent Day 4

Here's what I've done so far:

Festive Wrap

So far, I'm up-to-date. I hope to knit today's portion tonight.

Finally, I also worked on an embroidery project. This is the Cape Flower Needle Keeper kit designed by Sue Spargo:

Cape Flower Needle Keeper - outside

Cape Flower Needle Keeper - inside

For this project, I started with an organizer made by Yazzii. I then appliqued the felt pieces and did the embroidery on the finished piece. I thought this was an interesting idea and wanted to see how well I liked trying to work the stitching on a finished item, where you have to deal with burying your knots behind the fabric in order to hide them, without poking through to the inside of the organizer. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, but I didn't really enjoy it so I probably won't do another project of this type. Here is a close-up of the applique and stitching:

Cape Flower Needle Keeper

Well, that's all for this post. I hope you enjoyed my projects! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!!

Nancy

Fright Club Hat

 Hi all -

Fall is in the air. It's starting to cool off here and the leaves are starting to turn. It's a beautiful time of year! Here is a picture of the aspen grove on my property right now:

The colors are more beautiful than I could capture on my camera! And to show how beautiful my property is, here's one of the boulders framed by a lone aspen tree:

And the beautiful view from my yard, including a bit of the pond across the street and a couple of the ridges just south of me:

I find it all breathtaking! I just wish the pictures could come close to what it looks like in person!

The main thing I've been working on is the smaller Jimmy Beans Wool (JBW) Fright Club project. Every year, JBW puts together a couple of "advent" calendar projects for Halloween that they call their fright club. There is a larger calendar that has 31 little surprises that you can open up each day in October, and there is a smaller project that has 13 little surprises. I usually get both projects because I think they're a lot of fun. Since I have the larger project to do in October, I decided to do the smaller project in September. The smaller project is the All Treats, No Tricks hat designed by Amy Gunderson. The surprises for this club came in cute little boxes:

Fright Club Boxes

Most of the boxes contained little balls of yarn for knitting the hat, but several fun surprises were also mixed in:

Halloween Tag for Hat on Day 4

Halloween Stitch Marker Necklace on Day 7

Candy and Fake Tattoo on Day 10

Finishing Supplies on Day 13

The project is a hat. I chose the bright colorway:

All Treats, No Tricks

This is a stranded colorwork pattern, which isn't my favorite technique but I'm getting better at it. Here's how my stranding looks on the inside:

 

All Treats, No Tricks Inside

It has a cool double brim that has ribbing on the inside to keep the hat secure.

 

All Treats, No Tricks Inside Ribbing

And I put the tag from day 4 on the brim for some extra jazz. I'll probably get a fun fake-fur pom pom to put on the top. Grocery Girls has a black pom pom with multicolored highlights that I think would look really cute. I just have to get around to ordering it (and hope it's in stock).....

The other knitting project I've been working on is my Comfort Fade Cardi designed by Andrea Mowry. I've got the right sleeve finished and am now working on the left sleeve:

Comfort Fade Cardi

After I finish the sleeve, it'll be on to the collar/front band. That part will take a while since it's got a shawl collar, which will be quite a bit of knitting.

I've also been really into hand embroidery lately. I've had my Birds on Parade bag kit, designed by Sue Spargo, sitting around for a while so I decided t finish it up. I had finished the applique and embroidery called for in the pattern a while ago and had decided to add some extra applique and embroidery on the back of the bag since it seemed like a waste to not decorate that space. I just had a little bit more embroider to do on the back, then I was able to sew the pieces together into a bag. Here's the front of the bag from the pattern:

Birds on Parade Front

And here's what I added to the back. It's so hard to decide when to stop with the hand embroidery!

Birds on Parade Back

And, just to be complete, a peek at the inside:

Birds on Parade Inside

I decided to use some of my own fabric for the lining rather than using the fabric that came in the kit because the supplied fabric was directional, but was cut so that it would be sideways inside the bag and that bothered me. I also changed the way the bag was constructed from the directions in the pattern. The pattern directions would have resulted in raw edges inside the bag and I like a clean lining. It was a pain to construct the bag my way because the outside was designed as a single piece, but I figured it out and really like the result.

The other embroidery I've been working on is a pair of pre-marked pillowcases. I picked these up at Joann's as a little prize for myself on my birthday while I was in Kansas City. I'm still working on the first pillowcase:

Retro Cats Pillowcase

It's been kind of fun working on an old-fashioned project and I think it'll be fun to sleep with these!

Nancy

I'm Back....

 Hi all -

Sorry for the long absence. It ended up being a long summer for me. My biggest concerns were my sister and Lance. 

My sister has had a lot of knee pain for several years and she finally started looking at knee replacement surgery. She is the one who lost her husband in January, so she is newly living alone. So I wanted to be there to help her out after the surgery. She was able to get the surgery scheduled for early August and I came out to help her for 5 weeks. Luckily she was able to schedule it so that her daughter, who is a traveling nurse, was able to be there, too, to help out. I mostly took care of the dogs and encouraging my sister to do her PT while her daughter mostly took care of the nursing. The first week after the surgery was a bit tough because the drugs, the pain and the worry made my sister a bit grumpy, and she can be pretty grumpy when she wants. I think one of the things that got to her was the in-home PT person used the worry about not breaking up the scar tissue in time as an "encouragement" for her to do her exercises. She would say that she had to work hard to break that up because otherwise it would be permanent and the replacement would be a waste of time. What she didn't say was the time period where you need to worry, which ended up being on the order of 6-8 weeks rather than 6-8 days. Once we realized this and once my sister started making progress, things got a lot better and it was a wonderful visit. My sister had been thinking about getting both knees done at once since she's a "get it over with" type of person, but she ended up being very glad that she decided on one at a time for this! She's doing incredible now and is working on scheduling her other knee. She's hoping to get it done in December so it counts towards this year's insurance to save money.

Lance is doing really well, but there are always more concerns and more work as he gets older. He's now 14.5 or 15 years old (he was a stray so we don't know exactly) and he has degenerative myelopathy, which is a spinal cord disease that makes his back legs weaker and weaker. So he has a difficult time walking and has trouble with incontinence. To add to the fun, he also had a liver biopsy earlier this summer. It's pretty major surgery for a dog his age, but the vet had found a possibly-cancerous liver nodule during an ultrasound and it was early enough that he could remove that nodule before it could spread so we did it. It turned out that it was benign. The first week after the surgery was tough because, although he ate at first when he got home, he stopped eating after a day or so and ended up losing 3 lbs in a couple of day. He also couldn't use his back legs at all for a couple of days and his incontinence was out of control. We ended up taking him off of the after-surgery meds and he got back to his usual self.

Because this just wasn't enough, my washing machine decided to break down and it took about a month for them to be able to deliver my new one. I live in the mountains so delivery trucks only come up here once a week so it can be hard to schedule. And my house was hit by lightning which knocked out everything that was connected to the outside world -- internet, land line and satellite TV. It took about a month to get everything replaced and set back up. But we're back to normal now!

On the plus side for Lance, I was talking to the lady at the Post Office one day and we talked about how expensive dogs are as they get older. I mentioned that Lance had DM and she told me that she had a doggy wheelchair that someone had given her for her dog, who passed away earlier this year, and she had been looking for someone to pass it on to. It turned out to be the perfect size for Lance so she gave it to us. We got it just before going to Kansas City, so I was able to teach Lance how to use it on flat land before coming back home to use it on rougher terrain. Here is a picture that my niece took when she passed us on a walk one day:

It's not a great picture, but you get the idea. The wheelchair is designed so that it supports his back end, but he can still use his back legs a bit so they get exercised. It's not something that he uses all the time because we want him to use has back legs as much as possible and it's not practical in the house or in my yard, but it does allow us to go for short walks again.

But that's enough personal stuff. Now I can share what little I've been working on. The biggest project I've been working on is my Open Minds MKAL shawl designed by Laura Nelkin. An MKAL is a "Mystery Knit-Along" which is a knitting project where you don't know what you're making but you get a little piece of the pattern periodically until you have the project finished and finally see what it looks like. Some people chose their own yarn based on Laura's guidelines, but Laura also offered some kits and I was able to snag one of those. I kept up fine at the beginning, but got behind when I visited my family for a week in the spring and haven't finished the project yet (story of my life....). This pattern consists of 6 "clues." Here is my shawl after the first clue:

Open Minds -- Clue 1

And here it is after the second clue:

Open Minds -- Clue 2

The third clue was the mirror image of the second:

Open Minds -- Clue 3

This is where I fell behind. So I started getting the clues and seeing how the shawl went together, without actually knitting it. Based on the construction, I decided to skip clues 4 and 5 and go on to clue 6, which fills in the back of the shawl:

Open Minds -- Clues 1, 2, 3 and 6

The reason I did this is because clue 6 uses a specific amount of yarn while clues 4 and 5 are written so that you can use up your yarn. You are told to reserve a specific weight of yarn for clue 6, but by doing clue 6 first I didn't have to fudge that measurement so should be able to use more of my yarn than I could have by following the clues in order. Now I just need to finish up.....

I also made some more progress on my Comfort Fade Cardi designed by Andrea Mowry. I've finished the body and still need to add the sleeves and the collar. Here is the front of the cardigan:

Comfort Fade Cardi -- front

And here is the back:

Comfort Fade Cardi -- back

I hope to make more progress on this soon because I'm really loving how it's turning out!

My final knitting project is the Rock & Roll Scarf designed by Amy Gunderson:

Rock & Roll Scarf

 I started working on this because I needed an easy project to work on while at my sister's house. This is a simple pattern, but each row takes a while because it's knit across the scarf rather than end-to-end so there are 500 stitches on the needles. I'm making this a little bit wider than specified in the pattern because I want to use up as much yarn as possible. I have about 6 more stripes and I'll be done.

I also did a little bit of sewing. A friend of mine is retiring after working 40 years at NCAR, where I worked for 23 years. As a retirement gift, I decided to make her a project bag. She loves chickens and used to raise them so I used some chicken fabric for the bag:

Chicken Bag -- outside

Chicken Bag -- lining

I think she's going to love this!

Well, that's all for now. I'll try to keep in touch better in the coming weeks.

Nancy

I See Spring Finished

 Hi all -

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers out there! I hope you are having an incredible day!

We're still in our spring/winter cycle here. It was beautiful for the last couple of days, and now we are starting to get the next snow storm. We're again forecast to get 1-1.5' of snow by Tuesday morning. If we get that then this will be the 5th foot-plus storm in 5 weeks. Looks good for fire season this year!

I'm excited to have finished my I See Spring sweater designed by Joji Locatelli:

I See Spring

It only took a couple of hours to pick up the stitches and finish the neckline, once I got myself motivated. I love how it turned out! It's a good weight for spring and I've been wearing it a lot in the evenings.

I had to get my current sweater finished so that I could start on my new sweater. Now I'm working on a Comfort Fade Cardi designed by Andrea Mowry. I'm making this sweater as part of a knit-along (KAL) with the Grocery Girls podcast. I really enjoy this podcast and it has introduced me to a bunch of beautiful yarns and interesting designers and patterns. They are sponsoring a KAL of this pattern running from March 19 through June 19. I got a late start, but I'll try to get mine done on time. They will be drawing prizes for anyone who has finished. There are a lot of people in the KAL so it's unlikely I would get a prize, but it's still fun to try! This pattern makes a faded sweater, which means that you slowly move through a collection of yarns while knitting the sweater. These are the yarns that I'm using:

Comfort Fade Cardi - yarns

I love these beautiful colors! I've been working hard on this project and I've made some good progress:

Comfort Fade Cardi - current progress

It shouldn't take too much longer to finish the body, but then I'll have the arms to finish, which always take a lot longer than expected, and the pattern has a shawl collar which will also take some time. It'll be fun to work on and will be a beautiful sweater, even if I don't make the finishing deadline!

My final knitting project hasn't really been started yet. It's the Open Minds mystery knit-along (MKAL) designed by Laura Nelkin. In a MKAL, you don't know what you're knitting until it's finished. You are told what supplies you need (or you can buy a kit) and you get portions of the pattern (called "clues") periodically until you've finished the project. I decided to just buy a kit because Laura puts together beautiful kits. Here's the kit I got, along with the project bag I'm keeping everything in:

Open Minds - kit contents

In some MKALs, you don't know anything about what you're making until it's done. For this MKAL, we do know that we're making a shawl and that it has an "interesting" construction. It includes optional beads, which add to the fun. I love doing Laura's MKALs because they are always interesting knits and I always learn something. They mystery part is great because it allows me to work on a project that might be too intimidating if I saw what I was going to make before I started. There's also support from everyone else who's also working on the project, so I can get help if I get stuck. And Laura is incredible about answering questions. And even if I don't need help, I usually learn something or get unexpected pointers from reading the answers to other people's questions. It's really a lot of fun! So far, we've just gotten the supply list and instructions on making our gauge swatch:

Open Minds - gauge swatch

Since everyone knits differently, the gauge swatch is important so that you can determine which size needles you need to use to get results that match what the designer got. Getting the right gauge not only helps you get the right size project in the end, but also helps to ensure that you don't run out of yarn.

Aside from knitting, I've also made progress on my Christmas banner felt applique project:

Most of the larger pieces are attached, so now it will mostly be details that I'm adding. Once I finish this project, I'll probably start on a felt applique Christmas stocking for my brother-in-law. My mom made Christmas stockings for all of her kids and the grandkids, but we've been using generic stocking for spouses. So I want to make stockings for my brother-in-law and for my niece's husband at some point so they will have nice stockings, too. Nobody is expecting them so there's no pressure if I don't get them made, but I think it would be nice.

Finally, I made a little bit of progress on my Count the Stars cross-stitch project:

Count the Stars

It's not much, but every stitch gets me closer to finishing.

Nancy

Dachshund Finished

 Hi All -

Wow, time just keeps flying by! I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted! It really feels like it's just been a week or two. Before we get started, I need to let you know about a change on the blog. The old mechanism that I was using for distributing the blog posts through email is going away. Google has decided to stop supporting it. If you are currently signed up to get email notifications of new blog posts, those emails will stop soon. So, instead, I've provided a link to the right so that, if you want, you can sign up to get emails about new blog posts from Bloglovin' (thanks, Terry, for providing the example on your blog, On Going Projects, so I didn't have to figure out what to do myself!). I've only had one example email from Bloglovin' to see how it works, so the jury is still out on whether I like this mechanism. My first impression is that I don't like it as well because instead of getting an email with the blog post inside, you instead get an email with a link to the blog post contained within the Bloglovin' interface. That's just not as clean to me. I also got an email with other blog suggestions when I first signed up so I thought it might end up being like Instagram, which I won't use because of the excessive emails, but I've only gotten the single email so far so maybe it won't be so bad. Anyway, I hope the link is useful to anyone who like email notifications like I do. And if anyone knows of a better email notification service, just let me know.

Anyway, back to more interesting topics. The biggest news is that I'm now fully vaccinated. Yea!! I got the J&J vaccine two weeks ago yesterday, so I'm now at my maximum immunity. And I had no side-effects what-so-ever, so that was nice. The only near-term changes this makes for my life is that I made the dentist and auto mechanic appointments that I'd been putting off. Both will make me feel better! It also means that I'm ready to go to Kansas City if my sister needs me. She's been having trouble with her knee and her doctor has recommended a knee replacement. She lost her husband in January, so I told her that I would come out and help her if she gets the replacement. I hate to think of her alone in the house (with her 3 large dogs) and falling down or getting stuck somewhere or whatever with nobody there to help her. She, of course, initially said that she would be fine on her own, but after thinking about it she seems to be more receptive to help. So now I'm ready to go if/when she decides to have the surgery.

Enough personal stuff -- let's get on to the crafting.....

I was excited to finish my Dachshund cross-stitch that I'm making for my (other) sister and her husband:

Dachshund

I love how it turned out! It looks so much like Annie! What an expressive face! Now I just have to get it framed. Since I'm vaccinated, I'll try to remember to take it in next week when I have my car appointment.

I've also made good progress on my Christmas banner felt applique project:

Isn't that cute? It's moving along pretty quickly. My only concern is that it might not hang well because I think I over-stuff it. My tendency is always to stuff things like you would a solid stuffed animal, but that's not appropriate for a piece like this. I do make a concerted effort to scale back on the stuffing, but it's still probably a bit much. But I still love it!

Since I finished Dachshund, I looked through my stuff and picked up a couple more cross-stitch projects that I had started in the past. The first is called Count the Stars. When I picked it up, I just had most of the moon finished:

Count the Stars -- initial progress

I've been plugging away on it and now it is mostly finished:

Count the Stars -- current progress

This is another small piece, stitched on 18-count Aida fabric, so I need to use a bright headlamp when stitching on this project so that I can see what I'm doing. And the dark fabric makes it even harder on the eyes. But it's still going fast!

My other cross-stitch project is called Mime With Cat. This is a little bit different type of cross-stitch project as an image is painted on the Aida cloth, and I cross-stitch on top of that image. That makes the pattern a suggestion rather than an exact count of stitches in any area because what you stitch depends on how the image lines up with the fabric. This is what the project looked like when I picked it up:

Mime With Cat -- initial progress

To give you an idea of how the stitching interacts with the painted image, here are some close-ups of some areas:

And here is my current progress:

Mime With Cat -- current progress

You can see that I'm currently working on the pink ribbon in the image. You can compare that with the completed blue ribbon to get an idea of how this project is done. I know that some people don't like clowns or are afraid of clowns, but I love them. I think they are so joyful and the mime clowns are so elegant! When finished, I'll get this project framed so I can display it with some small mime clowns that I made before:

These just make me smile!

Finally, I did do a little bit of knitting. I have a bunch of wonderful knitting projects waiting for me, but I've been having trouble getting motivated. Sometimes I can jump-start my mojo by making a quick and easy project. So I decided to make a River Crossing Hat designed by Amy Gunderson:

River Crossing Hat

This was a quick and easy project, knit with a soft, chunky yarn. I love how the stitch pattern looks on this hat. I just didn't like the height of the hat. It fits my head, but just barely. So I'll put this hat in my Homeless Shelter bag and, if I make another one for me, I'll repeat the stitch pattern a couple of extra times to make the hat taller.

That's about all that's going on here. We've continued to get more snow -- a total of over 2.5 feet in the last 2 weeks. I love that we are getting all of this moisture so, hopefully, we won't have such a severe fire season this year. But I'm also really ready for the snow to melt away. Lance is over 14 years old now and he is losing some neurological control of his back legs, so walking through this snow is a bit hard for him. He's doing really well and is completely healthy otherwise, but his back legs collapse sometimes when we're trying to walk through deep or unevenly packed snow. It'll be nice when we get back to bare ground so he can enjoy the walks more and do some wandering around! But we'll still take all of the moisture we can get!

Nancy