“tagged”?

Impera Magna, over at The Adventures of the Empress of the Universe, was tagged to answer 11 questions and then posed eleven more for anyone who wanted to answer them.

I thought they were a bit of fun so here goes (I’ve reordered the questions, Freda, I hope that’s okay!):

1.  How long have you been quilting?
DD and I bought fabric and cut out our first (string) quilt (with scissors) in March 2010.

I bought a rotary cutter soon after and we cut out pieces and began Elizabeth Hartman’s Modern Sampler Quilt in April 2010 but it didn’t get finished until we began to take classes in 2011.

So, I guess the short answer is just over two years, but we have been taking it seriously for about fifteen months!

2.  What quilting/sewing tools do you find most useful?   
I would have to say my sewing machine closely followed by a stitch ripper, my rotary cutter and cutting mat. And scissors – I have four pairs in different parts of my sewing room and another pair on my quilting frame in the garage; almost all the scissors are paired with an empty container for throw-away scraps (there are other scrap bins for usable scraps).

3.  Do you belong to a quilt guild?  
DD and attended the inaugural meeting of the Sydney Modern Quilt Guild last October but have not been able to attend either of the two meetings since.

4.  Do you have a local quilt shop?  
Four – I attend weekly classes at one of them!

5.  Do you quilt your own quilts or quilt "by check"?  
So far I have quilted all of the quilts we have made – either on my sewing machine or on the quilting frame. I can’t see this changing in the near future.

6.  How many finished quilts do you have in your home?  
Three. The first two quilts we made (both seen above) for DD’s sons; and this one which belongs to the “Caring Hearts Community Quilting Group”.

7. What's the farthest you've been from home?
England, in 1983. WM and I plan a return visit to the UK in 2017 to celebrate our 60th birthdays and 40th wedding anniversary.

8. I'm going to take you out to dinner and I'm paying... where are we going and what will we have?  
Lobster please!

9. When was the last time you bought fabric?  
Tuesday – the local chain store has a discount of 30% off all fabric; this included a discount on the clearance stock which was already marked down to $4 a metre (normally $12.99-$19.99 a metre). I went to buy one and a half metres of fabric to line the bag we are starting in class next week; there was 1.9 metres on the bolt; the other fabric had 3.8 metres on the bolt and I bought the lot! At $2.40 a metre, I can never have enough neutral fabric!

10. Thread... more than 100 spools or less?  
Way less. I used to buy a different coloured thread for every project, now I have only white, black, charcoal, two tones of grey, two tones of beige and a spool of brown. Of course, I still have part-spools in other colours but way under 100 spools.

Come back tomorrow when I’ll answer the 11th question!

the kindness of stitchers

At the end of April, It was my privilege to collect items donated to Australian Inland Mission, the charity of the month over at Knit4Charities. These items will be taken by a local pastor to Aboriginal communities in central Australia.

Twenty-eight fabulous stitchers from around Australia contributed a total of 264 items, which DD and I enjoyed sorting and photographing last Saturday. The items were knitted, crocheted and sewn.

blankets

hats and wristwarmers

ponchos, bears, socks and slippers (and a sweet little baby set)

scarves and pants

and sweaters (jumpers, cardigans, shrugs and vests)

Thank you all so much! And thanks, Pam, for starting the group.

brought to you by the colour yellow

The colour of the month for May for the Rainbow Scraps Challenge over at SoScrappy was yellow.

I always seem to leave it till the last minute to get my blocks done but here they are:

three four patch:

one string:

seven improv:

and one “Wonky Windows”

-- a total of twelve blocks made on Thursday and Friday.

I now have a total of 44 improv blocks so I am well on my way to having my first scrappy rainbow quilt top started! I think I need 56 for what I have in mind, so only need twelve more – hopefully I’ll have them by the end of June or July!

On the other end of the scale, I have only nine Wonky Window blocks. Given that they are only five inch blocks, I think it will be a while before we see those made up into a quilt!

look what’s on my design wall

My design wall was put up temporarily several months ago -- with tape.

A couple of weeks ago it fell down.

Last weekend, while we were in the hardware store, WM and I found the pieces we needed for a more permanent solution: shower curtain rings and eyelets.

Yesterday afternoon, WM turned a flannel-backed tablecloth into this:


And I did this:


There are twenty ten-inch blocks here and another four to be sewn on the back.

All I have to do to finish this top is sew the blocks together then add a border. I’m thinking of a zigzag in half square triangles which will echo both the zigzag made by the Log Cabin blocks and the HSTs in the centre of each block.

What do you think (I really want to know)?

happy mail day

Yesterday an unexpected parcel arrived in the post. I was very curious when I recognised the name of the sender; why was I receiving a parcel from her? I hadn't entered any "soft and smooshy" give-away that I could remember.

Had she decided to contribute to the donations for Australian Inland Mission (one of the April Charities of the Month over at Knit4Charities)? That didn’t seem likely so I hurriedly opened the packet and read the enclosed letter.

Here’s what I received:

Thanks, Anorina, I love it – all the more because it was totally unexpected!

It’s almost too pretty to stick pins in!

good news and a warning!

WM and I arrived home around 6pm on Monday – I can’t believe it’s Thursday already. Where did this week go? Oh yes, washing (laundry for my American friends), a full-body massage (on Tuesday), knitting, reading blog posts and making art!

The good news, great news in fact, is that we now have our internet connected to another provider and it is fast enough for me to download your blog posts, even if they are photo-heavy! Even better news for me is that I can now watch the videos from my art course: which, of course, has inspired me to do some art work of my own! Nothing I want to share yet (sorry) but fun none-the-less.

The days have been warm and sunny so I have taken to spending a couple of hours in front of the computer catching up with blogs while the sun shines into my sewing room. Then I take my pencils and art journal outside; I have my lunch out there too.

When the shadows start taking over the backyard I move inside again, this time into the lounge (living) room on the western side of the house where I sit with my Kindle and read for a while before I turn on the television and knit. Ah, retired life: there’s nothing like it!

And now for the warning. I have checked this and this is not a hoax. It is so serious that the Australian government has actually set up a site which will check people’s computers as they log on! To keep it brief, cybercriminals have hacked into millions of computers around the world and infected them so that as of 9 July 2012 they will no longer be able to connect to the internet. These criminals have been found and arrested but there are millions of computer users at risk. You can read more about it at Hoax Slayer (the site I use when I want to check if something is a hoax or not).

Now, I’m sure you’ll want to check if your computer is affected (or infected). Go to this page and it will give you the site for your area; for my fellow Aussies the site is http://dns-ok.gov.au/. It took me less than five seconds to find out my computer doesn’t seem to have been affected.

Please, friends, I don’t do chain emails and I don’t pass on hoax emails. This one is genuine -- check your computer before it’s too late.

Happy Mothers’ Day

This is my first Mothers’ Day (in 27 years) without DD who is away with her family visiting her in-laws. This will be DD’s MIL’s first Mother’s Day with her grandsons so it’s only fair that I should share the love since I see them nearly every week!

WM and I are spending Mothers’ Day with my mother – this is the first time she has had Mothers’ Day at home with any of her children in many years. So everyone is happy and spending time with someone.

taken at mum and dad's 50th anniversary celebration June 2006

Wherever you are, I wish you happiness and peace this Mothers’ Day.

on and off the needles

Firstly, thank you all for your kind comments and emails regarding my internet fiasco! I really appreciated each and every one of them. Yesterday, I spent over an hour (knitting and) watching a fourteen minute video from my course. I watched two minutes of the second video in half an hour – time to give up when it gets that slow!

I have been knitting and sewing as well as spending a lot of time on the computer. Today the knitted objects have the limelight.

I have continued to knit cowls and mitts for the charities I support.

I indulged my interest in stranded colour-work to use up some of the left-overs from previous cowls.

As winter approaches I appreciate having a roof over my head and a warm bed to sleep in and I really feel for the homeless and less fortunate at this time of year.

I also couldn’t restrain myself from seeing how this yarn knitted up. DD won a ball of novelty yarn, Carmen by Mondial (Italian), at the Knitters’ Guild meeting last month. I didn’t take a photo of the ball but here is a snippet of the yarn – it’s basically variegated blue tape with little dangling yellow pieces every couple of inches. The second picture is the detail of the knitted yarn.

DD gave the ball to me because she doesn’t have the patience to knit novelty yarns. The vendor at the meeting claimed that a scarf could be knitted from one ball.
As you can see, it’s a very small scarf even knitted on needles one size larger than recommended (6.5mm - 10.5 US). This one is approximately 10cm (4”) wide and (90cm) 36” long. Ah well, some young girl will probably like it.

Mothers’ Day is approaching and I found myself wondering about a gift for my mother. I have already knitted a pair of striped socks which she knows about but have added a second pair. I hope she likes them because they are fraternal not identical!

On Tuesday evening, I foolishly thought I could get another pair finished before Sunday. A cuff-down pair with baby cable rib and a gusset heel (instead of my usual hourglass heel).I am using Cleckheaton Cocoon (70% wool – 30% polyamide). This is the first sock at the time of writing.

Do you think I can get them finished given that WM and I are leaving for northern NSW this afternoon and will be at mum's late morning tomorrow?

an apology for my absence from commenting on your blog

Yes, I was absent from the blogging world from the beginning of March until about the middle of April. This was mostly due to my interest in family history. I spent so much time researching on the computer that I didn’t have any more time to read blogs or write posts for my own blog.

When I returned to the blogosphere, I tried to catch up with people’s blogs; I really did. I’ve just had a really busy weekend and am trying to catch on posts written since last Thursday. Because of the large number of blogs I have been following, four days away from reading blogs means 73 blogs to catch up with – and some of those bloggers posted more than once in four days.

But, here’s the rub. Our internet provider has taken on more customers in our area than they can comfortably service, resulting in slower and slower internet downloading time for us. In effect, they have 87 people on a 45 seater bus! This slow download time means that our brand-new modem gets frustrated and tries to reconnect (or something like that) which just makes the situation worse. Our speed is so slow that SIL noted that we had slightly better speeds than dial-up!

We have contacted our ISP and they have finally admitted (after two years of trying to get answers) the problem. But they assure us that it will all be resolved on 4 June! After that assurance (about a month ago) the speed got slower and slower. We live only 400m from the exchange and should have excellent service but we have anything but!

Let me give you an example: I tried to open a video on the online art course WM gave me for my birthday. I tried in the middle of the day when most of the people in the neighbourhood are at work or school. It took me 45 minutes to buffer 8 minutes of a 16 minute video, and when I tried to watch the video, Jane sounded like she had the worst stammer in the world. In fact, it took eighteen seconds for her to say two one-syllable words!

But what does this have to do with you and your blogs, dear readers? Well, my internet connection is so slow I can’t use my Blogger Reading List properly so I have to open my browser and type the name of your blog. Then I go off and play a game of “Free Cell” while I wait for your blog to download to my computer. Heaven help me if I want to leave a comment and you a use Blogger and have word verification – it take about two minutes form the time I click “post comment” to the time I can read those dreaded verifications! If you are still using verification, please consider turning it off. Blogger is quite good at catching spam comments (it hasn’t missed any of mine yet) and you can always use comment moderation to make sure you only get comments worth reading.

Anyway, back to the point: It has taken me half an hour to catch up on two blogs this morning and I can’t do this for another seventy-one blogs: who has that kind of time to spend on the internet?

WM and I have done what we should have done a long time ago: we have changed providers. However this may take up to three weeks. In the meantime, our current provider must have found out that we are jumping ship, our speeds are slower than ever!

My apologies to you all. When I move into the 21st century I will just pick up where you are; there's no way I can catch up with all those missed posts. See you on your blog then!

"Dotty Bright" has a back

In my post of Friday 28th April, I showed you this finished top.

Well, Dotty now has a backing.

The panel down the quilt back was made with the same fabric in different colour ways:

And when I’ve finished playing with my Scrappy Log Cabin blocks, I plan on basting and quilting Dotty!

…now you don’t

Last week I posted about this unfinished quilt top that was donated to our community quilting group.

Nearly everyone who commented agreed with me that it should become two quilts.

But I went even further. I decided that the top section would be more cohesive if I took the sashing off and used the same sashing between all the scrappy string sections to give it a more cohesive look.

So now that top section look like this:

I am storing those sections of joined strings like this:

Neat, hey?

Unfortunately, I can’t go any further with either of these two quilt tops because I don’t have enough scraps to complete a single (twin) quilt top with the darker fabrics or a baby quilt with the lighter fabrics.

But,that’s okay, I’ve bought some light neutral fabric so I can get back to my Scrappy Log Cabin blocks.

And it’s a new month, so there'll be blocks in a new colour in the very near future.

Now back to the quilters’ triangle: the sewing machine, the ironing board and the cutting table!

birthday goodies

My birthday was last Wednesday (ANZAC Day). I always feel like it’s more important to post about our national day of commemoration but in “real life” we do celebrate my birthday.

We had lunch at a local restaurant with MIL, DD, SIL and the Grandboys. WM and I shared a seafood platter which was delicious and very filling. No one had room for dessert!

I was blessed with some lovely gifts. Here is my “haul”, first the books:


and a new iPod Nano in the colour of my choice; this picture is about twice the size of the real thing!

I also received an online art course: Supplies Me with the vivacious Jane Davenport.

Thank you to my wonderful family.

“quick-to-knit” v. “concentration required”. Discuss.

Over the past few weeks I have been knitting, on average, an article a day. Of course, these are small articles: fingerless mitts, which I knit on metal dpns (hard on my hands due to their inflexibility), alternated with cowls, which I knit on wooden circulars.

Generally I knit these to my own “go-to” patterns. Both are knitted in the round. The fingerless mitts are mostly in stocking (stockinet) stitch which means, except for the ribbing, there is no need to purl so they are very fast to knit.

The cowls have been started and finished with a garter stitch edge and have three rounds of garter stitch for every three or four rounds of stocking stitch simply because I liked the look (and the garter stitch edge means they don’t roll).

Then I started knitting the Alexstraza Cowl (Ravelry link) designed by Robbyn Kenyon. I love the look of the cowl and it knitted up beautifully.

But it took me three days to knit, which got me thinking: is it a productive use of my time to spend three days on one item when I could knit three items in that time frame?

You see, winter is rapidly approaching in this part of the world. The charities for whom I knit are mostly involved with caring for the homeless and disadvantaged. I have deadlines to meet but no obligation to send any specified number of items. So, should I knit three cowls and warm three people or knit one cowl that requires concentration and constant tinking? I love the process of knitting, even simple stocking stitch; and I get a little frustrated with patterns that require constant attention (because I knit in front of the television). But I also get great joy from conquering a pattern and doing something different – variety is, after all, the spice of life.

Tell me please, I really want to know (even if you’re not a knitter, the principle is the same for any craft): what would you do?