Welcome 2011

Yes, I know I haven't posted anything in a long time. I'm sorry about that, but the end of 2010 was not a very good time for me. Things are looking better now and it's time that I update my blog.

When I look back at 2010, one of my major accomplishments was finishing my whirligig quilt. I have more quilts than I'll ever need so I gave whirligig to my good friend, Pat. Here's a photo of it. Frankly, I'm glad it's over. Working with all that black got tiresome. But it's finished and Pat seems to really like it.


Our family had a nice Christmas gathering at my brother's house on Dec. 18. We always gather on some day other than Christmas. It was great, as usual. Lots of good food and even more conversation. I took along a bag full of things I had knitted so everyone could take their choice. The best part is I came home empty-handed! :-)

So far, 2011 has been good to me. I have tried off and on for several years to learn how to knit socks. Up to this point, my efforts were not successful. However, after Christmas, I pulled out some sock yarn I had on hand and my needles to see what I could accomplish. I found a sock pattern on the Internet that made more sense than the patterns I had tried before. And now I have completed two pair of socks. The first pair was definitely a first effort! One sock is a bit bigger than the other so I've been using them for my bed socks and they work great. Unfortunately, we have had a lot of cold weather so having warm socks to keep my tooties warm has been wonderful.

After my first so-so
result, I tried again to make socks and came up with a better result. At least these two are both the same size. That's progress, I think. :-) They're still not quite what I'm looking for, but they definitely are wearable and will be used -- either by me or someone. I'm now working on another pair of sock. I made a few alterations to the pattern and I think these will fit better. We'll see....


I haven't been to stitch group for a while. We met only once in November because the second meeting would have been Thanksgiving. The group had a Christmas party in early December, but I wasn't feeling up to par so I didn't go. Then last week, the weather was too cold for me to get out. I'm holding out hope for next week's meeting. The forecast...at least at this point...says we'll be in the 30's so there's hope that I'll be able to make it. I sure miss those evenings of stitching and talking.


Well, this is pretty much my life in a nutshell. I'll try to be more diligent about posting this year. I'm pretty sure it won't be on a regular basis, but I think I can do better than once every 3-4 months!


Until we meet again, stay warm and stay safe.
Amy

Motivation...or the lack thereof

Where have I been recently? It sure isn't updating my blog nor is it working on the quilt. For some reason, I have no motivation to work on it. To be honest, though, I hit this same point with just about all of my projects especially the bigger ones. I'm not tired of the quilt and I'm not tired of working on it, but my mind keeps whirling ahead to the next project. How do I stop that from happening? A long time ago, I realized that I can't start a new project until the one I am currently working on is finished (or I acknowledge that I have lost interest in it and put it away for a future time). This quilt is about 2/3 finished so I don't know why I can't seem to focus on finishing it. Anybody have suggestions? I am going to try to work on it some this afternoon or evening. Maybe I can get it to the 3/4 finished point. I had hoped to have it finished for the last SWAN meeting and now it doesn't look like it will be ready for this week's meeting, either. Darn it!

I have enjoyed a couple of nice lunches with friends in recent weeks. It's always a pleasure to spend time with good friends. If those friends would retire, too, then we could spend long lunches instead of rushing to finish so they can go back to work. All in good time, I suppose.

Think I'll try to rummage around and hopefully find some motivation to get back to work on the quilt. Wish me luck!

Later,
Amy

Modern Quilting Bee?

Quilting bee. That phrase conjures up an image of several women sitting around a quilt and adding their stitches to make a finished product. The frame is usually set up in one of the women's living room (parlor?) and conversation flows around the group. I never had the opportunity to visit an old-time quilting bee, but my mom did participate in something similar when I was a kid. She was a member of the local extension homemakers club (anyone need a description of what that was?) and occasionally they would make a quilt to have in reserve for a family in need or if one of the members needed one for a special occasion. These ladies gathered once a month in a local church basement where they set up the quilting frame and set to it with their needles and thread. Very similar to my mental image of a quilting bee.

I suspect there are still what I view as traditional quilting bees held around the country, but I belong to what I have come to view as a "modern" quilting bee. What I refer to is the stitch group to which I belong. Last Thursday evening was the first of the July gatherings and while we all work on different projects, the conversation flows just as freely as I imagine occurred in the old-fashioned version. For approximately the first 20 minutes after we gathered last week, there were three separate conversations going on. Then gradually those conversations ended and others began. Sometimes as a group we are "Chatty Cathy" and other times we are heads down and working on our projects with only occasional conversations.

No matter the shape of the conversation on any given evening, we do visit with each other -- a lot! Since I'm the newbie of the group, I'm still learning more about these folks. After gatherings like last week when there was an abundance of conversation, I come home and spend a while reflecting on the group and how much I enjoy being with them. What a great group of dedicated stitchers!

Quilt update: I now have about a third of the alternate blocks finished. I've run out of black fabric so I'm going to have to do some shopping. Darn it! :-) The only bad thing about fabric shopping is I always manage to find lots of other things I absolutely have to have and spend more money than I should. I need the fabric, though, so I guess I'll just bite the bullet and write a large check.

My stitching awaits. Til next time...
Amy

Turned the corner

Turning the corner is not at all like "going round the bend" so you, my snarky friends, will just have to find something else to say about my title!

I have turned the corner on my quilt, though. I have finished the 36 whirligig blocks and have started on the alternate blocks. So far, I think I have finished five of the alternates. When I get a few more finished, I'll post photos of both kinds so we all can get an idea of what the finished product might look like.

While I was finishing the additional whirligig blocks, I lost some of the callus that had built up on my "under finger." That's the finger held underneath the quilt and gets stabbed with a needle with each quilting stitch that is taken. This photo shows what my callus looks like. The callus is on the tip of my left index finger. I tried to put a marker showing the callus, but my photo editing skills are a bit sketchy. You get the idea, though. And yes, behind my hand is the back side of one of the completed alternate blocks. A quick tip: My finger can get really sore while I'm building up the callus. One way I deal with that is to go at it slowly in the beginning. Maybe quilt for an hour and then take a break for a few hours. Another thing I stumbled across this spring is a way to help get the soreness out of the area while the callus is building. One time, I stabbed a bit too hard and actually drew blood. I didn't want to take a chance of infection, but the spot wasn't bad enough for a bandage. So I grabbed the Neosporin and applied a very, very thin film over the tip of my finger. I let it sit like that for five or ten minutes (obviously, I couldn't do anything during this time...other than read). Then I wiped off the excess Neosporin and went about my business of doing something other than quilting for the rest of the day. Surprise! Surprise! All the soreness was gone by the next morning. Now, at the end of each day of heavy quilting, I put Neosporin on my finger just before going to bed and it feels fine the next day. Another happy accident!

This quilt is turning out to be more of a pleasure to work on than I thought it would. I'm excited to see what it turns out like. You see, I don't plan out my quilts. The closest I come to planning is to take the size of the block and multiply it by whatever it takes to make the quilt approximately 85" x 100". The whirligig quilt will be approximately 80" x 90" (hence the need for 72 blocks - 36 whirligig and 36 alternate). And that, my dear blog friends, is the extent of my planning. I know that each whirligig block will be attached to an alternate block, but I don't plan which blocks will go together. As a matter of fact, what I typically do is dump all the blocks into a garbage bag and pull one out when I need it. Definitely random placement!

Back to quilting and the Kindle. Stay as cool as possible in this hot, humid weather. Until next time...

Amy

Back on track...almost

I'm finally back to where I was three weeks ago -- only six more blocks to go to complete the first half of the quilt. Yes, the set-back I experienced a couple of weeks ago when I found myself four blocks short has been rectified. I pieced six new bocks, they have been appliqued to the background fabric, layered with batting and backing fabric and are now ready for quilting. I am about half finished quilting the border of one. With luck, it will be finished before I go to bed tonight or at the latest sometime tomorrow. Maybe I can have half of them (three) done by stitch night this Thursday.

In full disclosure, I must admit that I could have been finished with those additional six blocks before now, but I got a new gadget/toy! Anybody who knows me well, knows that I like gadgets. My new gadget is a Kindle e-reader from Amazon.com. I am an avid reader and find myself spending a lot of money on books. The problem with that is that eventually space becomes an issue. And I have always been concerned with the killing of trees for my reading pleasure. I find that I love reading on the Kindle. So far I have not purchased a book. Why should I? There are thousands and thousands of free books available. The free books are ones whose copyright has expired, but that translates into mainly the classics. I mean, heck, I can get a free copy of War and Peace! I could, but I probably won't. I wasn't interested in reading the book in paper form (too long!) and I doubt that electronic format will make it any better. On the other hand, maybe I will read it! One of the advantages of the Kindle, or just about any other e-reader, is that you can be reading several books at the same time. I can read a chapter or two of one book and then switch to another book and read some of it. When I go back to the original book, Kindle remembers where I stopped and goes directly to that page. I like the portability of carrying a thousand or more books around with me in a small electronic device. Needless to say, I've been playing with my new toy and not stitching as much. But it's so much fun to play with toys!

Back to readi.....er......uh.....back to stitching. Yeah, that's what I meant......stitching! :-)

Amy