Dreaming of Tuscany Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm! It's been a crazy week for our country! We've been very lucky at my house with only one day of subzero temperatures. The rest of the time it's been beautiful here. We did get a foot of snow last week, but we usually have more of that up here and need a lot more so hopefully that will keep coming.

I don't have many pictures to share today, but I'm excited about my latest finish. I finished working on my Dreaming of Tuscany cross-stitch project:

Dreaming of Tuscany

I really love how it turned out and the beautiful colors! I'll be saving it until this summer when I'll get it framed and hang it in my bathroom. I'm waiting until this summer since that's when I expect to be vaccinated. Although I really want to support the small framing businesses in their time of need, I'm not comfortable yet spending time in a framing shop making all of the matting and framing decisions until I've had my vaccine. At that point I'll also get the cross-stitch of my mom's that I finished a little while ago framed, too.

Since I've really been enjoying working on my cross-stitch projects, I picked up another WIP (Work In Progress) that I've had sitting around for years. This one is called Fanciful Butterfly and I think I will be able to finish it up pretty quickly.

Fanciful Butterfly

I remember putting this one aside years ago because it was a real pain to stitch the white thread on white fabric at 18 stitches per inch. It's difficult, but it sure does turn out elegant! Now that I've picked this up again (and am using a headlamp for bright light while I stitch), it's actually coming together very quickly and I think I'll be finished with it fairly soon. This one is smaller and I think I will end up stitching it into a project bag.

Finally, I stitched up another Twistola headband designed by Laura Nelkin.

Twistola

Twistola, full view

I made this one out of some yarn that I had in my stash that's not as fuzzy as the yarn that came with the project. This yarn allows you to see the details of the cables better and is a little less slippery in my hair. I have extremely straight, shiny hair so it can be hard to keep headbands in place.

That's all of my projects for now. The last thing I want to share are some pictures of Lance from the day I brought him home. I adopted him on Feb 16, 2008. Hard to believe we've been together for 13 years! Damn, he's cute!!

Nancy

Making Progress

Hi all -

Sorry for the long silence.  I ended up going to Kansas City for a couple of weeks. At the time I left my house, my brother-in-law was getting ready to go into hospice so I wanted to be there to take care of my sister's dogs so she could concentrate on him. Of course, it takes a while to get everything organized, so when I arrived at my sister's house, she was at home collecting her stuff for the transfer to hospice, which was supposed to occur in about an hour. But when she got back to the hospital, she found that he had passed away while she was gone. It really was the best outcome at that point because he was in pain and the pain medications really messed with his head. So we ended up spending my visit making the arrangements and going through his stuff to try to get as much accomplished as possible while I was there to help. Ironically, the mat that I made for him and mailed on Dec 21 was sitting on the porch when I arrived on Jan 4, so I could have just brought it with me rather than shipping it. I like to support the post office, but for this package I really should have used FedEx or UPS. So that's why I've been absent for so long. But now that I've been back for a couple of weeks, I've been able to make some progress to share with you.

The project that I'm concentrating the most on right now is my cross-stitch project. I feel like I'm on the home stretch so I'm really motivated to finish it. Here's what I have so far:

Dreaming of Tuscany

This project is really starting to take shape! The top 2/3 is completely finished, including the backstitching that has to be done after the cross-stitches. I try to do a lot of the backstitching when I complete different sections of the project because the backstitching can take a lot of time and it's depressing to end up having a week of backstitching to do when you feel like you are almost done with your project! I'm really loving how this looks and the colors make it perfect for my bathroom. I think I'll enjoy looking at it there every day.

My other exciting project is my current sweater. It's the I See Spring sweater designed by Joji Locatelli. I'm about halfway done with the body and have finished the first sleeve:

I See Spring

 Even though the instructions have you finish the body before working on the sleeves, I like to finish the sleeves as soon as possible because there is less bulk in the sweater while you are twisting it when knitting on the sleeves and because knitting the narrow rounds of the sleeves is harder on my hands so I like to get it over with as soon as possible. All I have left to do on this one now is to knit the other sleeve, finish the body and knit around the neckline. I might do the neckline before the rest of the body, too, since it will again be easier with less bulk and I hate picking up stitches so I'll be able to get that over with, too. I love the weight and feel of this sweater. The yarn is a wool/silk mix that I think will be really comfortable.

I did go ahead and take a break from the other projects to knit a quick headband. This was the February 2021 Lola's Choice project that I got in the mail last week. The kit came with a really soft, fuzzy yarn that was wonderful to work with! The pattern was Twistola designed by Laura Nelkin and I was able to knit it up in about 4.5 hours.

Twistola flat

Twistola "worn"

I'll probably make several more of these as gifts!

Last but not least, I finally sewed together the bag that I made for myself out of the fabrics that I used for my niece's wedding wallhanging.

I love how this bag turned out and will try to work some hand embroidery into more of my projects. I think it really adds some fun and detail to things!

That's all for now. I hope everyone is staying healthy and happy!

Nancy

Ottie's Mat

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! Mine has been quiet and uneventful. I live alone in the Colorado mountains and my family lives in Kansas City, so I just stayed home and relaxed. I am taking some time off work, though, to get away from the grind and hopefully get some things done around the house. I have gotten some work done on my projects, so that's good. And Lance is getting some nice walks!

My first project was a mat that I made for my brother-in-law, Ottie. He was just diagnosed with lymphoma and has a bunch of swollen lymph nodes in his abdomen that are making it hard for him to breathe. My sister said that he often kneels by the bed to ease his breathing, but the carpet is making his knees raw. She wondered if I could make something that would be soft on his knees, but wouldn't slip around or scrunch up. I was thrilled that she had found a way that I could feel like I was helping out, even if it is in just a small way! My first thought was to make a flannel mini-quilt. I could sew some of that gridded rubber stuff that you put under a rug to keep it from slipping on the bottom to keep it in place. I could also use some stiff stabilizer to keep it from scrunching up. I thought I could use some high-loft polyester batting to comfortably pad his knees. She asked for this on the Friday before Christmas, so I wanted to get it made and into the mail as soon as possible since I knew it would take a while to make its way to KC. With these things in mind, I started looking at my supplies. I found some really nice flannel that my mom had given to me years ago. It was really soft and thick so it shouldn't wear out quickly. For the backing, I found some nice microsuede that I thought would hold the mat in place on the carpet. I also found some high-loft batting that I use for trapunto:

and a very stiff fusible stabilizer that is stiff enough for things like ball cap bills:

When I described what I thought would work, my sister asked me to make it 24"x36". I was happy to get some guidance since I wasn't sure what would be best!

To start, I had to figure out how to cut everything. The flannel and batting are pretty unstable and stretch pretty easily in all directions. So I decided to start with the microsuede. I cut it approximately 26" by 38" since the size didn't have to be exact and I wanted plenty of extra for the seam allowances. The microsuede was a little hard to cut because I couldn't fold it over so I could make the cuts in one motion. Instead, I had to make part of the cut, then move the fabric and the ruler and make the rest of the cut, trying to keep everything straight in the process. It actually came out pretty good! I tackled the stabilizer next. I had both fusible and sew-in versions of the stiff stabilizer. Because the stabilizer wasn't wide enough to be able to cut it as a single piece, I decided that it would be easier to use the fusible version of the stabilizer. I've used an iron on the microsuede when making bags with it, so I felt pretty sure that I wouldn't ruin the microsuede with the iron. I wasn't sure if the stabilizer would stick to the microsuede, but it worked like a charm. I used a damp pressing cloth, like the instructions said, and fused two pieces of over-sized stabilizer to the back of the microsuede, then trimmed everything to the edge of the microsuede. I overlapped the pieces of stabilizer by a couple of inches in the middle because I didn't want the mat to fold over on itself or be unstable in the center.

Next, I tackled the batting. I decided to use 2 layers of batting to get the padding level that felt right to me. I laid out the 2 layers of batting and put the microsuede on top with the wrong side of the microsuede against the batting. I first did a rough cut around the edges, making the batting slightly bigger than the microsuede. I used the large Clover magic clips to hold everything together, and I basted around the edges of the microsuede to keep the layers together:

I couldn't really get a long basting stitch because the feed dogs didn't move the batting very well, but it still worked. With the layers basted together, I could now use the rotary cutter to trim the batting to the edges of the microsuede:

Now it was time to deal with the flannel. Just like I did with the batting, I cut the flannel a little larger than the microsuede, used the magic clips to hold the layers together, basted around the edges and trimmed the excess flannel. I sewed them together with the right side of the flannel facing the right side of the microsuede because I decided that I wanted to have a clean edge without a binding. I knew it was going to be hard to turn everything right side out, but I decided that this was what I wanted to do.

With everything basted together, I was ready to do the real sewing. I wanted to do rounded edges, so I drew the sewing lines on the back of the flannel with an air-soluable marker, rounding the corners with a bowl:

I sewed around this line, leaving about 18" open for turning. I trimmed the corners with my pinking shears to reduce the bulk there:

I used a seam ripper to remove the basting stitches where I left the opening for turning, then turned the mat right side out. It was quite a job turning it right side out with the stiff stabilizer, but I think it was still easier than putting on a binding and it gave a cleaner edge. I edge-stitched about 1/8" from the edge around the perimeter of the mat to close the opening that I'd used for turning and to keep the edges in place. Then, I sewed around the perimeter again, about 2.5" to 3" (I don't remember what I used) to keep the batting from shifting through time. Here's how the top of the mat looks:

And here's the back:

I really like how it turned out and hope that it meets Ottie's needs! I boxed it up and got it in the mail on the following Monday morning. I couldn't fold the mat because of the stabilizer, so I had to roll it up and put it in a fairly large box. Hopefully, it gets to them some time soon! According to the tracking, it went from my post office to Las Vegas, where it arrived and then departed again on the 24th. Since then it's been in "In Transit" limbo so I have no idea where it is or when it'll arrive. But the post office usually ends up coming through so maybe it'll arrive tomorrow.....

The other project that I've made good progress on is my advent calendar shawl project, the Tidings to Yew shawl designed by Amy Gunderson. If you remember from my last post, this project comes packaged in 24 little bags that you use as an advent calendar. Each day you get either a little ball of yarn to complete that day's portion of the project, or a little surprise. I did end up getting a little behind, but was able to finish the project over the weekend:

The knitting is finished and the ends are woven in, but I still need to block it and then trim the ends. This project was designed as a shawl, but I'm going to block it thinner to make a scarf since I'll find that more useful. I might use some of the left-over yarn (there's a LOT of leftovers) to make fringe. I'm still deciding on that.

I've also made progress on my I See Spring sweater designed by Joji Locatelli. It's actually starting to look like a sweater now!

All of the hard work is done, and now I can just sit and knit without thinking. Since I find the sleeves tedious (knitting narrow circles is harder than knitting the big circle around my belly), I'll probably knit until the end of my current skein of yarn, then attach the sleeves before finishing the bottom. That way I get the tedious knitting out of the way as early as possible.

Finally, I've also made good progress on my cross-stitch project. Cross-stitch takes a lot of time, but I love seeing the picture emerge as I go along!

The top part is all done, including the backstitching which has to be done after the cross-stitching. Now I'm concentrating on the middle. I'm over half way done at this point, so that feels good!

Nancy

Working on Craftvent 2020

 Hi all -

Christmas is fast approaching and it's starting to feel like winter here. I usually spend this time of year scrambling to finish making Christmas presents before my trip home. But our strange COVID year continues and, since I can't travel home, I'm skipping Christmas this year. That seemed a lot better than trying to mail packages back and forth at a time when the post office is completely slammed. I'll really miss my family, but it's a bit of a relief to not have to worry about all of those Christmas projects. I assume we'll have a family zoom meeting sometime over the holiday, like we did the Sunday after Thanksgiving. My sister (who took over the "matriarch" role after our mom passed away) is responsible for the scheduling of all of that stuff. We have a nurse and a respiratory therapist in our family who generally work holidays and odd hours, so the scheduling can be a bit difficult. It's so nice that my sister is willing to do all of the organizing! My sisters are the best!!

So this year I'm getting to work on whatever projects strike my fancy. The main project I've been working on is my Craftvent project from Jimmy Beans Wool. Every year, JBW has a special project that is packaged as an advent calendar. They always have a couple of color options and have a knitting version and a crochet version. This is my third year of doing the knitting version. The calendar is a lot of fun. It's set up so that you have a little package to open every morning until Christmas. The package will either have a little ball of yarn that is used in the next section of the pattern or a little surprise. Last year, the packages were these cool little tins with magnets on the bottom with a metal board so they can hang on the wall:

The daily labels were little slips of paper that cover up the window in the tin. Now I can use these tins to store little sewing and knitting notions on the wall:

This year the packages are little draw-string bags. For example, here's the first day's package which held the knitting needles for this project:

Now, each day we either get a little ball of yarn to add to the project:

Or a fun little surprise:

This year's project is the Tidings to Yew shawl designed by Amy Gunderson. Here is my version so far:

This has been a really fun project to work on and, although it is designed as a shawl, I think I'll use it more as a scarf. I might even use the left-over yarn to make fringe on the ends.

I've also done a little work on my latest sweater, I See Spring designed by Joji Locatelli:

Last time I had the upper back part done. This time I picked up the stitches on the left shoulder and knit the right upper front down to the point where it will connect to the upper left front once I get that added. For the other knitters out there, this is the first sweater I've made that uses short row shaping. My wrap-and-turns are a bit visible so I might not be picking up the wraps correctly. It doesn't look too bad so I'm going to leave it and continue to do things the same way for this sweater, but I'll have to do some practicing after I'm finished with this to see if I can figure out the right way to do this. I'll also try some other methods of short rows to compare with this one to figure out what method works best for me.

For a change of pace, I've also been working on my current cross stitch project:

Cross stitch is a pretty slow craft so it's hard to see the progress without comparing it with previous pictures, but I've mainly been concentrating on the areas around the outside of the arch.

That's about it. I hope that everyone is staying safe and healthy! It's a difficult time, but the more carefully we follow the restrictions, the quicker we can get back to normal. 

Happy Holidays, everyone!!

Nancy

Westbound Car Coat Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was fine, but nothing special. My family is all in Kansas City except for a niece who is a traveling nurse currently working in Atlanta. So I just spent the holiday at home with my pets. It was nice and quiet! We had a family Zoom meeting earlier today to celebrate the holiday and that was really nice!

As usual, I've been doing a lot of knitting lately. I seem to be really into knitting sweaters right now. I finished my Westbound Car Coat designed by Lorna Miser.

I wasn't sure if I would like this style, but it came in a kit that was cheap and a longer sweater (it hangs to the top of my thigh) will be really nice when it's cold, so I made it anyway. I love it! The pattern has you make a belt, but doesn't say anything about belt loops. I knew it would annoy me to have to keep track of the belt without loops so I thought about it for a while and decided to make the loops out of perl cotton. I didn't want to make the loops out of the yarn used for the sweater itself because the yarn is a bit rough and I didn't think the belt would slide through the loops easily enough. The individual strands of the perl cotton were too thin so I braided 3 strands together to make the loops. Here's how they turned out:

I think these will work, but if they don't I can easily cut them off and try something else.

Since I finished one sweater, I needed to start another. I looked through my yarn and decided to try the I See Spring sweater by Joji Locatelli. This is a lightweight sweater designed for spring, but since I tend to be on the warmer side I'll probably be able to wear it year-round. So far, I just have the top part of the sweater back started:

This yarn is a wool/silk mix that I think will be really comfortable to wear.

I also got my Cowl-O-Ween project designed by Amy Gunderson finished.

I love the bright colors! It's also the perfect length of a cowl for me. I can wear it as a single loop when it's warmer out and I just need a little bit of something on my neck. Or I can double it when it's colder. And if I don't have a hat, I can double it but put the second loop over my head to cover my ears. I think I'll be wearing this one a lot!

At the end of October I received my October installment for the Jimmy Beans Wool shawl club. This project uses the Coral Coast Wrap pattern by Ambah O'Brien. I got that installment knit up and now am waiting for the November installment that should arrive any day now.

Although I haven't made it yet, I also received the November Lola's Choice club project. This time it's the Abaclet bracelet designed by Laura Nelkin. With each Lola's Choice project, Laura includes a surprise prize. Here's what was included in the kit this time:

The extra prize is a roll of knitting toilet paper. Each sheet on the roll has knitting information printed on it. So you can either use it as a reference, or it's there for you pandemic emergencies! How appropriate!

My thumb was getting sore from knitting the car coat and I was really needing a change of pace, so I pulled out and finished the cross-stitch that my mom had started before she passed away.

It was nice to get this one done since it's a Stoney Creek design and I usually avoid these. They have a lot of beautiful designs, but they make their designs by scattering colors around rather than using blocks of color. The result is beautiful, but it's really time-consuming to do all of the tedious counting and it's really easy to make mistakes. I'm more drawn to the clean look of the designs that use larger blocks of color, as you'll see with my next project. But before showing you that, I thought I should show you the matching piece that my mom had made and had hanging on the wall when she passed.

When the COVID vaccine becomes widely available and we start to get this pandemic under control, I'll get my finished piece framed to match the older one.

Finally, since I finished my mom's cross-stitch project, I went back to one of my projects that I had started before she passed:

As you can see, this pattern has larger blocks of colors, but still has a lot of beautiful detail. The blocks of color also make the image look cleaner to me. I'm not sure how I'll use this one once it's finished. I'll probably frame it, too, but I'm running out of wall space! But I have a lot of time to think about that since cross-stitch is a fairly slow craft......

Nancy

Back to Normal

 Hi all -

Sorry for the long delay in posting. It's been a crazy month! As some of you know, the CalWood fire started on Sat, Oct 17 about 3.5 miles from my home. We'd already been dealing with heavy smoke and dark skies for about a week from the East Troublesome fire west of the Continental Divide. This picture shows the darkness we were experiencing in the middle of the afternoon on Oct 16:

The camera lightened the colors up a bit, but this gives you a good idea of what it was like here. And this picture gives you a good idea of the amount of smoke we were getting. Again, this was all smoke and was mid-afternoon:

It was crazy! And this was all from a fire that was a long distance west of us, on the other side of the divide.

Then, on Oct 17, I was doing stuff at home when I decided to check my email. I have things set up so that any time someone posts something to our neighborhood electronic bulletin board, I get an email message. When I checked my email, I had about 100 messages and when I started reading them I found out that a fire had started at CalWood, which is an outdoor educational institution just east of the road between my neighborhood and Jamestown, the nearest town to us, just down the canyon on the way to Boulder. As you can imagine, this was pretty scary news! It was extremely windy that day, as it had been for the entire preceding week, so I knew that there was a good chance that this fire was going to blow up! Before I could get through all of the emails, our power went out. This added to my fear since we don't have cell coverage at my house so, without power, my only access to the outside world is my landline. But luckily the landline stayed on, and I'm also lucky enough to have some really good friends who helped me through the weekend.

First, I called some wonderful neighbors who I used to work with and who have a generator and cell coverage and found out from them that we were under a pre-evacuation order. So I packed up what I thought I might need in my car and got the cat carriers ready in case we got an evacuation order. If I didn't have the cats, I would have just packed up the dog and left at that point, but it's harder to do that with cats. They had never been away from the house in over 12 years except to go to the vet and not a lot of people are willing to take cats into their homes.So, instead, I just got everything ready and started the wait for more information. I kept in contact with my neighbors and I also had a wonderful friend down in Longmont who was calling me periodically to give me what information she could find. I don't know what I would have done without my friends!! Still, it was a difficult night, trying to sleep in the dark house without a way to get updated information and with the wind screaming outside, worrying about how I would get 2 cats into carriers in the dark if we did get an evacuation notice in the middle of the night and worrying about not getting the notice if one went into effect.

The next morning I kept in contact with my neighbors and friends, and found out that another fire, called the Lefthand fire, had just started near Ward. This fire was also about 3.5 miles from my house, but this one was to the south. We were starting to get surrounded by fire, which is a problem up here since there aren't a lot of roads up here. In the early afternoon, our power amazingly came back on and my internet was somehow working, so I got on the computer and started getting updated information. Within an hour, I got an evacuation notice text on my cell phone. (I never got the notices on my landline, like I was supposed to, so I was lucky that the power and internet came back on!) So I called my neighbors to make sure that they knew about the notice, packed up the pets and left.

Again, I was pretty lucky to have more wonderful friends in Erie who offered to put my pets and me up in their home until I could go back to my house. Have I mentioned how lucky and grateful I am??? They took us in and made us feel right at home! Well, Lance and I felt right at home. The cats, Wesley and Buttercup, weren't as happy to be there. They spent the first evening hiding on top of the cabinets in one of the bathrooms:

Once they saw where I was sleeping, then spent most of the rest of the time under my bed. Wesley started venturing out after a day or two, but Buttercup is shier and she spent most of the time hiding under the bed. Poor little girl! But at least they were safe! And it was really nice for me to actually spend some time with other people. We decided to not wear masks since we were living in close quarters and we had all been very good about limiting our contact with others. So, we just extended our bubble to include each other for a little while. It was so wonderful!!

We ended up staying at my friends' house for four days. Our incredible firefighters worked hard to get the fire under control and we were allowed back into our houses on Thursday evening. We were even lucky enough to have the power back on when we got home. The firefighters and sheriff worked hard to get us back into our houses so we could winterize before the big winter storm came in on Saturday, bringing about a foot of snow and temperatures near 0. They knew that we needed to get back into our homes to open up pipes to prevent freezing and were working on finding a way to let us back in temporarily, but ended up having enough control of the fire to let us back in permanently instead. To add to the "fun," on Thursday night the East Troublesome fire blew up and actually jumped the Continental Divide about 20 miles from my house and they ordered evacuations of Estes Park. Did I mention that this month has been crazy??

The winter storm was a big help with the fires, although it's going to be a while still before even the smaller local fires are actually put all the way out. The Lefthand fire is 100% contained and the CalWood fire is 76% contained, with the other 24% of the boundary being in terrain that is too rugged to build a containment line but is near a road that should keep the fire from spreading into residential areas. These fires are not expected to cause any more damage. I let the Boulder Office of Emergency Management know that I didn't receive the expected evacuation notices on my landline and they are working on trying to figure out the problem, so hopefully I'll get the notices if this happens again, which is likely with the current state of global warming. So now we're just getting back to normal.

If you made it this far in this post, I'll reward you with some project progress. First, I was able to finish my Iva sweater designed by Rita Maassen:

Didn't that turn out nice? There's a little mistake in the cable in the yoke, but it's hard to see so it's not a big deal. I'm really enjoying knitting sweaters, so I started working on the Westbound Car Coat pattern by Lorna Miser.

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but this is a cardigan that is knit from the top down. The picture shows the back of the sweater. I've just gotten to the point where the sleeves separate from the body. This is another kit that I bought from Bluprint some time ago when it was on sale. I'm going to really miss these cheap kits that we used to be able to get from Bluprint!

I also received the September installment of my Jimmy Beans Wool shawl club project. This is the Coral Coast Wrap designed by Ambah O'Brien. I hadn't knit the August installment yet, so I got both installments done this time:

I think it's looking pretty good!

Finally, I made progress on my two Halloween advent calendar projects. The first project is the Haunted Handwarmers designed by Amy Gunderson. This calendar has 13 packages. I got it started, but haven't had time to finish this one yet:

The other calendar project is the Cowl-O-Ween cowl, also designed by Amy Gunderson. This calendar has 31 packages, so it takes you all the way to Halloween. I got behind while we were evacuated, but I've been working on this one since we got back and I was able to get back on track:

Tomorrow's package will have the last ball of yarn for finishing the cowl, then Saturday I'll get a little surprise package. We've already gotten several fun little surprises so I'm looking forward to seeing what we get then. Here are a couple of the surprises that were included:

I've really enjoyed these Halloween projects!

Well, that's about it for me. I hope that everyone is staying safe and healthy!!

Nancy