We interrupt this blog....

Knitting and sewing might be kind of slow for a while. Why?



The latest Jamie and Claire novel, "An Echo in the Bone" came out on Tuesday and I picked up a copy at the library yesterday. Sorry for the glare -- that shiny library cover is hard to photograph. I love this series! If you like 18th century historical fiction and/or tall, red-haired Highlanders, check it out. The first in the series is "Outlander". Be warned, these are for adult readers, there's sex, violence, betrayal, death and adult language in them. Some of the language is in Gaelic, though. ;-)

I have made progress on the second Mineral sock.



I hope to get it close to finished over the next couple of days. I'm going to a party today (if I'm not driving, I'll knit in the car on the way) and to my parents' house on Sunday. It wouldna be polite to take yon book wi' me and read it there, ken? [sorry, it's hard not to pick up the language from the book] I can knit and talk at the same time, however. ;-)

Boys night in....

The good, the bad and the ugly of my training and other stuff

The Good


Player piano between class and cafeteria

The Bad


Fire alarms: one at the training center Monday 10 minutes before we were done with class. The second at the mall on Tuesday, 10 minutes before I left after lunch. None since, thankfully.

The Ugly


Is this not the ugliest couch you've ever seen? To the upholsterer's credit, the patterns match really well.

Other good stuff

I got to spend a good bit of quality time with my friends Mark and Sarah and their kids. The three of us met freshman year at KSU and they got married after our sophomore year. They moved to MA after graduation and we've kept in touch, but we don't get to see each other very often. That's why I try to come to Boston for training as often as I can.

I had dinner at their house Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday Sarah and I went to her knitting group after dinner. Wednesday was Mark's birthday and I made them take me to Kimballs to get ice cream.


Yes, it was cold, but the ice cream was really good! [photo by Sarah]


There were goats there [photo by Sarah]

Tonight was one of Sarah's work-in-the-office days and her office is about 3 minutes from my training center. We went to a yarn shop after work/class. I might have picked up some yarn.


Queensland Collection Merino Spray in color 01

After the yarn shop, we went to a bead store and she stepped on the slippery slope of jewelry making. :) After that, we had a nice dinner together, just us girls.

I don't know if the goat picture counts as my critter picture, so I took a few pictures of Mark and Sarah's cats while I was visiting.


Butters has extra toes and likes to eat wool


Wolfgang has large feet, silky soft fur and likes to climb trees


He also has spooky, glowing eyes in the right light

The clean plate club

Warning: I'm traveling again and there will be nothing but crappy cell phone pictures until I get back home.

I'm in Boston again, so I had to make at least one trip to Legal Sea Foods. This plate used to be filled with wood-grilled sea scallops, mashed potatoes and steamed snap peas.


YUM!!!!!

I actually flew in on Saturday and drove up to Maine to visit my cousin, Annette. When we were kids we used to spend a couple of weeks at each others' houses during the summers, and were pen pals the rest of the year. We haven't kept in touch as well as we could have, but it was really great to see her and her mom and her youngest son. The older four kids are already grown and gone. Does she look like she has a couple of grandkids??



Yeah, time for me to quit the clean plate club, I think. :-( It was so good, though....

In less depressing news, I'm making progress on my second mineral sock:



The plan is to get together with my friend for knit night tomorrow, so I should make some more progress then. Never fear, I have other stuff to knit if I finish it.

Labor Day, indeed...

I'm late posting this but I was a bit burned out. Two of my coworkers and I worked nearly 20 hours over the "holiday" weekend. We had an upgrade scheduled for Saturday, which was bad enough, but then a series of problems burned us out and had us working again on Sunday. It was pretty awful, but at least we didn't have to back out the upgrade, which would have meant another lost weekend.

On the plus side. I finished my sock while I was there:



I started the second one, and have about 2" done, but I didn't take a picture of that.

I boxed up a bunch of stuff from my sewing room that I wasn't going to use to send to Iraq. I had some bigger pieces of fabric that once upon a time I'd planned to use to make clothes. I also sent a bunch of buttons, some marking tools (I had quite the collection of those) and a bunch of thread. The box weighed 9 pounds and I had to go two different post offices to send it. Apparently the one in Tower City has decided to close at random times, always when I want to go there.

I didn't get pictures of the box I sent, but I had helpers in the sewing room.


"Maybe you can send something from this box, Mama."


"This pile is mine, Mama."

My friend sent me this link. It looks very similar to my living room.


Blue


Max


Runt

I heard that Ripley was in it at some point, but didn't stay long enough to have her picture taken. The only one who hasn't checked out the cat trap is Princess Emma CrabbyPants. I guess she figures that's beneath her. ;-)

Did you miss me?

Yeah, it's been a while. There hasn't been a lot going on, really.

I think I forgot to post an injury update. I'm out of the boot now. My foot is still swollen and the only shoes that really fit are my tennis shoes. My big toe doesn't bend much, but that should improve in time. It's getting better. John got the cast off his hand and he's slowly getting more range of motion out of it, too.

I crafty news, I'm in the home stretch on my plain sock:



And I made another batch of grocery bags for my mom to pass out at her card party.



That pretty much covers it. Told you there wasn't much going on.

And in the cat picture arena, a couple of weeks ago, Emma was bad (not uncommon), so she got a time-out. Blue sat outside the door waiting for her. I'm sure he was standing guard or offering moral support, not taunting her.


"I don't know why she hates me."

Bonnie Hunter!

Bonnie Hunter was the speaker at my guild meeting on Tuesday. She was fantastic! She's such a nice person and a really excellent speaker. I was busy during the meeting folding (touching!) all the quilts in her trunk show (and I forgot my camera) so I didn't get any pictures at the meeting.

I have a few from the workshop, though. Here are (L-R) me, Bonnie and my best buddy Beth with the Sister's choice quilt we were making in the workshop:



Here are a couple of pictures of Bonnie's gorgeous Dear Jane at Sea quilt.




Close-up of H-6 Pie Sale, with storm at sea sashing

I just love this quilt. I love the pinks and chocolate indigoes she used. And the sashing really appeals to me. Of course I don't want to think about how many more pieces that added to the total. I'm guessing about 4000: 19 pieces (2 sashings + cornerstone) * 169 blocks = 3211, then you have to add the sashings and cornerstones around two outside edges and the points in the next border. She said she did the sashings and cornerstones as she went along. If I decide to do this, I have some catching up to do. Not to mention I have no idea what I'd do with the triangles I've already done. Maybe I'll save this setting for the "next" Dear Jane. Yeah, right.....

On to the workshop. I started with my backgrounds and points pre-cut and a box of 2.5" strips:



I added a couple more strips on the "non-dark" side of the box after this picture was taken. I pulled the top strips from the piles and made a few 9-patch blocks out of them, like so:



I tried (and failed already, but not in that block) to make sure I didn't have the same background pieces twice in one block. I still haven't decided if I'm going to fix that one. It wouldn't bother me so much if they weren't right next to each other . I'm not sure I love the individual blocks, but I think they look better when you put a bunch of them together:


Can you find the block with the duplicate backgrounds?

I have a long way to go to finish the other 65 blocks. I'm not sure when I'll get to it. I have some other projects I need to work on. Not the least of which is my Dear Jane, if I'm ever going to acheive my goal of having it half done at the end of the year. I'll have to average 1.2 units (block, triangle or corner) a week through the end of the year to get there. I'm having some doubts about that, now. Some of the other goals are just Not Gonna Happen.

Have you ever seen such a cutie-patootie 17-year-old?


"Ahhhh, Papa's lap...."

Catching up again

Okay, I know it's been a while since my last post. I haven't been overly productive since I got back from Orlando. But I have some stuff to share anyway.

I forgot to post this picture from my trip.



That's Buckeye the concrete sheep outside the Sip & Knit yarn shop in Maitland. The owner is from Ohio, thus the name. She has a very impressive collection of sheep inside the shop, too. Worth a visit if you're in the area.

Last Friday at work I got an token of the company's appreciation for a project I worked on.



It's a pretty crystal award, but to be honest, I didn't do *that* much work on the project. It was a big team and everyone got one. A nice gesture, anyway.

Another work-related item. I work in an old office building. Actually, it's three buildings that are interconnected on some floors but not others. I swear it was designed by M.C. Escher. There are people who've worked there for 30 years who haven't figured it out, so I don't feel bad when I get lost. Especially since they keep changing it. Evidence of that seen here:


There *used* to be a door here

I had to work from home on Saturday, and during some of the down time, I cut fabric for the Sister's Choice workshop with Bonnie Hunter on Wednesday, but I'll save that for another post.

On Sunday I baked Bonnie's Banana Bread to take to class.



I had enough thawed frozen bananas to make 3 loaves, so I did. If you make 1.5 times the recipe in your 4.5 qt KitchenAid mixer, be prepared for it to be very full! After I mixed the batter, I divided it up to make 3 different flavors. The one on the left has pecans. the one on the right is plain and the round one in the middle has blueberries in it. The loaf-shaped ones are in the fridge waiting for class. I ran out of loaf pans, which is why the one in the middle is round. Apologies to my classmates, but that one isn't going to class with me. I'm pretty sure it will be gone by Wednesday. YUM!!!


Guess what?? I finished my striped, two at a time socks!





That's the basic sock pattern from Knitting Circles Around Socks, by Antje Gillingham in Adriafil Knitcol yarn, color 044. I'm happy with them. John pointed out that they don't match, but I don't care. I'm okay with fraternal twin socks. I like having both socks finished at the same time. Her second book has instructions for doing them toe-up, which I might have to try.

I was on call for work last week. The one night I actually had to get up in the middle of the night to check a server, I found this scene downstairs.


"Aren't we cute??"