Knitting the Blues

Wordless WIP Wednesday

I've been working on all this with a present I bought myself.

2012. Five. $1.88. Okay, nearly wordless. More details to come.

Round Two

This is the second post I have started tonight. The last one started like this:

I've been blogging for a little more than eight years! Hard to believe and I always miss my 'blogiversary'. 

I think I was going somewhere with that, but wherever it was has escaped me.

Anyway, I still have stuff that I've done and been doing and am doing to share, but it will be dragged out into manageable little bites. What that means is, I don't want to give up the blog, but I'm so busy doing the stuff I'd like to blog that taking a break from them is hard for me.

None of this will be in any particular order.

And then I went off on a tangent and decided it needed photos I didn't have, even though I had photos for the direction I thought I was going in. So now I'll show you this:

Look how Christmasy my house can be. This is a table runner I started in 2009. The pattern is called Geese In The Forest (flickr pool-lots of great versions here), it is paper pieced and I do plan on making an entire quilt at some point. The blocks in the original pattern are smaller, I upsized them about 25% to get the size I wanted for the runner. This version was partially quilted for two years. I finally finished it after Christmas 2011. Just in time for the new year! No matter, I was fairly thrilled with it and love it. Some closer up shots:

See the Santa in the corner? I have been meaning to write a post near Christmas about that Santa. He has been with my nearly my entire life. My kids call him Creepy Baby Santa and my mom (some of you will understand this) has started collecting them for me. yay. My girls can take them as they leave my house, I only need my original.

There he is, all brand new. There I am, nearly brand new.

Straight line quilting. Intentionally uneven.

Okay, it was intended to be even, but I was using the edge of my walking foot as a guide and as it turns out when the needle on my machine is in the 'center' position it is not exactly centered to my walking foot. Go figure.

Once I discovered that, it seemed a lot more fun to 'intentionally' quilt unevenly than intentionally pick out quilting lines. In the end I love the uneven look.

Originally I had planned to only stitch in the ditch around the blocks and the block elements. Had I stuck to that plan it would have been finished in 2009. Ha!

I wish I had been better at documenting the amaryllis plants. The one in the above photo had two bloom stalks, each with five flowers. Seriously! It was awesome!

I can't wait for next Christmas to get here! Maybe I'll have to have a Christmas in July.....

2012. Four. $1.90. So, I started this second post intending on showing a totally different quilt, but decided I needed more photos for that. The ADD. It is alive and well and living in my head.

There Is An Audible Membership to Giveaway!

I knitted this hat before Christmas. It's R2D2. Fun, right?

It was a PITA.

• Pattern:  R2D2 Beanie at Clarissa Knits
• Yarn: Plymouth Encore
• Needles: Size 7
• Cast On:  Ummmm.....December 18, 2011?
• Bound Off: A day or so after Ummmm.....

This was a really easy hat to make and I made it the way the pattern called for, I wouldn't again. That's because I hate duplicate stitch. Next time, provided there is a next time, I would probably knit it flat using bobbins for the larger sections of color. Or not. I mean, how many people do I know that will want an R2D2 Beanie?

Possibly the folks at Volkswagon. Remember this?

I love this one:

I got the biggest kick out of that when I first saw it. Takes you by surprise.

I'm so sore tonight. My PT really beat me up today, but in a good way. At least I hope it ends up being in a good way, but right now? Just sore.

Well, this is not the post I intended to write, but the photos that I thought were on my laptop were not which means I either haven't uploaded them yet or I plain old haven't taken them. Could be either one. I have knitting and quilting and stuff and a giveaway that I won.....

Hey, speaking of giveaways, I have one to follow through on before it expires on February 29. Who gets the three month subscription to Audible.com?

Drum Roll Please! (Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.............)

BRITT!  Hooray! Britt needs to email me asap with her contact info so we can get this going.

I hope you'll indulge me one more video, but this one is great. You can thank Britt for this, I first saw it on her blog:

2012. Three. $1.92. Back when I was blogging more and complaining about Typepad more I finally figured out how to do a centered, bulleted list. I've forgotten, but it is my mission to figure it out again. I will prevail!