Cyborg Ferrets

My next sewing project is to make a two sided heavy duty flag for the high school robotics team. This logo, a "cyborg ferret", is a large part of the design but I don't have a pattern yet or much direction. I have learned that one of the eyes will be lit by battery powered LEDs so I'll need to make a small pocket behind the eye to carry the weight. There are quite a few things I will need to figure out along the way. 

Thanksgiving in New Mexico

Quite a few years ago, I started out planning a trip to Arizona and ended up going to Spain. I'm sure other people do this - Dave and I talked about going to Mexico for Christmas and, after looking at airfares and schedules, we bought tickets to Albuquerque over Thanksgiving.

Ray had several half days of school before a 4 day weekend so we didn't mind having him miss a few days of classes. It is his senior year and he stays caught up, even though he is pretty good at turning in his assignments at the last minute. :-)

We rented a car and drove up to Los Alamos and Santa Fe. We focused on science, history, art and Mexican food. It was a great trip!

Golden Leaves Socks

These are for Jazmin. It is a sock club pattern, so I suggested the pattern, and I laid out a few skeins of yarn for her to choose the color. They look pretty white in the pictures but the color is called Silver Lining and it is really light grey with the natural and lovely variegation that occurs with hand dyed yarn. 

Golden Leaves by Cookie A.

Wapiti Shawl

My friend, Luanne, gave me this yarn for my birthday. It is so soft! Since it is lightweight, I thought it would make up to be a nice shawl to wear as a scarf.

Pattern: Wapiti Shawl

Yarn: Quince and Co. Piper

It measures 52" across and 23" deep, which seems large for a scarf, but it wraps nicely around the neck and is lighter than a feather. It's lovely.

Portland

Here I am with my two sisters, Alicia and Anita. They cooked up a weekend trip to Portland, Oregon and I was so happy to join them there. I drove down (the snowstorm that was predicted did not show up, thank goodness) and we stayed together at a hotel in the Nob Hill neighborhood. We had the best time! We just walked around, went shopping and ate in a few cool restaurants. We didn't get to half of the places we had talked about seeing so I guess that means we will have to plan another trip soon. 

Portland always seems like such a vibrant city to me. There are lots of people out and about on the streets and sidewalks, with a friendly bustle in the air. Businesses are mixed in with some of the residential areas so it has a real walkable quality to it. I think I could spend a few weeks there easily if there was a decent place to stay.  

Friendship Socks

I might be getting tired of knitting socks. This is my 21st pair since February and my sock drawer is full and I have too much yarn and I'm just not feeling it right now. 

However, this is how it goes. I got this yarn in the mail and, though I liked it, I wasn't over the moon or anything. Luanne was here and we had planned her visit so we could open this sock club package together and the pattern we both liked best was called Friendship. Cookie had some sentiment in mind when she commissioned the dyeing of the yarn - silver and gold blended together to represent the old Girl Scout song - "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other's gold." Sorry for the ear worm.

Cookie put some thought into the stitch design as well. I'll quote her. 

"The Friendship socks feature intricate intertwining cables in diverging and converging paths. These symbolize friendship to me -- whatever paths you may take, you’ll still be together."

 

So, these socks that I don't need because I have too many pair, made with yarn that I didn't need because I had too much already, became a new favorite pair because of friendship. Friends and family, after all, are pretty much the only important things. Socks are not at all important, but these turned into kind of an art piece and they fit well and are a good neutral color.

Mona Socks

These socks slipped through the cracks (of the blog). I posted them on Ravelry when they were finished in early June but forgot to get them loaded up here.

The pattern is Mona by Cookie A., my favorite sock designer. I've knit so many of her patterns already but there are so many more that I like. The sock club keeps new yarn and patterns rolling in every month but I think I won't sign up again for the club next year. I seem to have enough yarn in my drawer and patterns in my queue and, lord knows, plenty of pretty socks to wear already. I'm glad the weather has finally cooled off. It's been months of shorty cotton socks and now it is time for wool. 

Wine Spill

Not everything that is pictured on the blog lives happily ever after. Red wine leaves a tough stain so the new pillow didn't stay pristine very long. It's no big deal, really. The front was spared. 

Keeping it real...

Clamshell Pillow

I have always appreciated clamshell quilts but a whole quilt seemed a little too ambitious. Making a pillow is a great way to try out something new and still get it finished in a reasonable amount of time.

I had a charm pack of Malka Dubrawsky's Simple Marks so the 5" square became my starting point. I drew a cardboard template, traced around it on the back of the fabric and cut out the shells with a seam allowance. Then I used aluminum foil to iron the piece around the template, which gave me the precise curved shapes that I needed for the pillow top. They were hand stitched together and then hand quilted with Perle cotton and embroidery floss. The rest of the finishing was by machine.

Rainbow Hats

The rainbow yarn was a gift.

The rainbow baby hats will be donated.

Passing it on.

Cassis Shawlette

Here is a finished project from the archives. It isn't that old, just a couple of months, but I'm glad I took some pictures before I sent it off in the mail.

My friend and I were looking around a new-to-us yarn store in Oregon and we saw a version of this pretty pattern hanging up on display. The design is called Cassis Shawlette. I get used to looking at images online but it was nice to see something in real life. I bought the yarn that day and it turned out pretty much as it was supposed to.

I didn't take any modeled photos or include anything that shows the scale but it is not real big and she will wear it around her neck like a scarf.

Bijou Sunprint Quilt

About a year ago, I contacted Holly DeGroot and got her permission to use one of her designs after I saw this quilt that she had made. I had some of the same fabrics that she had used (Sunprint) and some of the Collage fabric pictured above. I figured out the pattern based on her photographs. The triangles are paper pieced and I tried to make the blocks as big as possible using the fat quarters I had to work with. 

I was inspired at the time so I sewed up the blocks pretty quickly. They sat untrimmed and neglected for a good many months until I finally resolved to finish what I started.

I think the pictures tell the story so I will omit the narration of borders, backing binding, etc. For the quilting, I did some funky FMQ by machine on the main part and some hand stitching with Perle cotton on the borders. The finished size is 68" x 83", before washing. It's the size I usually make as it fits well on the floor of my studio and isn't too big to wrestle with.