Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three Pairs of Socks

 I have a dream of only wearing hand-knit socks, knit by me in all sorts of fun and funky colors and patterns.  That dream is not yet a reality, but...

I just finished my third pair of shortie socks.

I am in Pittsburgh for a few weeks and both my mother and my mother-in-law are bothered that these socks aren't identical.  I am absolutely unbothered by that and since they are my socks, we're all good.

I made these socks from a single cone of Laines du Nord Watercolor Sock yarn.  

The label says the color is Brown/Blue.  Than confused me until I looked online and found that it's a nickname for Brown/Blue/ Green/Yellow.  The longer name fits the color better than the nickname.

Both pair of shortie socks I have made before were knit from the ankle to the heel to the toe.  For these socks, I knit starting at the toe (Turkish cast on) 

then heel (wrap & turn)  

then ankle (super-stretchy cast off) using a pattern that shall remain nameless.  It was a free pattern online and if you've never knit this type of sock before, the pattern does not explain enough to help you complete the sock.  I *might* have cussed a wee bit when knitting the first wrap & turn heel.  Fortunately my daughter and her wife are both expert knitters and my dear friend is a knitting pattern writer and yarn shop owner.  I'm surrounded by knitting GENIUSES.  

With their help, I finished the first sock and then was able to knit the second sock by checking my notes.  I will knit this type of sock again and don't want to discourage you from these techniques; simply use a more instructional pattern or take a class at your local yarn shop.

I am itching to cast on another pair of socks, but first I want to finish grandson #four's sweater.  I have half a sleeve and the neckband left.  Then I can start a new pair of socks. 

Maybe I'll do two-color socks with a pretty pattern?  Or color block socks?  So many choices!

Finished: Forever USA Wool Table Mat

I went to a retreat at Primitive Gatherings in Wisconsin in late June.  One of our projects was a wool mat, Forever USA.  Starting so late in June made finishing in time for the Fourth of July nearly impossible for me.  I didn't want it to end up as a neglected UFO, however, so I kept working on it until it was finished.

I'm new to wool applique so this is far from perfect, but I learned a whole lot.  I picked up a copy of Wool, Needle & Thread when I was at the retreat, and that book helped me a lot.

This season of life is really busy for me as I'm out of town at least a week every month hanging out with my mom.  I don't want to let the things that are important to me fall away, though, so I try to stitch a little every morning with my first cup of tea.  I've been watching a course on Great Courses about Greek mythology (yes, because of the new Odyssey movie coming out).  A little bit of information is sticking in my brain, a little bit of stitching is getting done, and I find I've been able to stitch most days!

I promised myself that I'd start another hand-stitching project so I pulled out something completely irrational to work on next.  

These are two-inch 4-patches and one-inch hand appliqued pink circles.  

It's a good thing that there are a lot of Greek gods to learn about because this is going to take FOREVER!

How Quickly Can You Quilt a Quilt?

I often tell my students "The best thing that ever happened to machine quilting is Pinterest.  Also, the worst thing that ever happened to machine quilting is Pinterest."  So many pretty pictures of perfect machine quilting make us think that all quilting has to be complex and time consuming!

Last weekend I taught "Quick E2E Free-Motion Quilting Designs" class to a longarm quilting group from Quilters' Corner at Middlebury Sew & Vac (virtually), because sometimes you just need to hold the layers of a quilt together.

I pulled out a Suitable for Framing quilt top from my Color Blocks, vol. 1 Scrap Quilting Class and mounted it on my longarm.

Yes, I floated the quilt; don't judge.  There are pros and cons to doing so, but this was to showcase quick quilting, right?

I decided to stitch a simple wiggle across the quilt every two inches.  Fortunately the blocks were made up of two-inch squares and each sashing and border was four inches.  It was pretty easy to eyeball the quilting without any marking at all!

I knew I wanted my wiggles to run from the top to the bottom of the quilt so I mounted the quilt sideways.  I could quilt horizontally but end up with vertical wiggles!

I bound up this scrappy quilt using leftover blue binding strips.  The quilt was finishing in a no time at all and is ready to be loved (and laundered) as it will be gifted to my friend's new grandbaby.

A New Ta-Da! for my Toes

 I had some Passenger Princess time last week while we drove to check on our parents and I finished my latest pair of socks!

I make short socks because having anything above my ankles makes my legs swell (thanks, heart failure!).  These are wool so they work great as shortie socks with sneakers in the summer and also with some of my funky Fluevogs in the winter.  

My go-to pattern is Rye by Tin Can Knits.  The original pattern has garter stitch detailing down the front, but I don't have any time for that nonsense (Garter in the round?  Heck no! If you know, you know).  I've adapted the pattern to fit my feet and can pick up any ball of sock yarn and make myself the perfect pair of socks.

Not willing to leave good enough alone, I want to try something new so I cast on socks using Twice Sheared Sheep's pattern.  They are toe-up and I already learned Turkish cast on.  

I look forward to the day when I have a full drawer of hand-knit socks to match all of my funky outfits and shoes.  Fortunately, funky-colored sock yarn is easy to find when you buy from indie dyers.

Bomb Pop: Machine Quilting on my Home Sewing Machine

 I purchased the Bomb Pop pattern and fabric at Primitive Gatherings in June so I'd have something to stitch in the evenings when I wasn't working on retreat projects like Grand Old Flag and Forever USA.  I pieced Bomb Pop in an evening and a morning, then basted it while I had those big, beautiful, free-of-clutter tables in the Gathering retreat center.  I jumped right into machine quilting it when I got home.

If you've known me for any length of time, you won't be surprised that I chose ribbon candy for the quilting design in the white strips.  I didn't the red and blue strips to feel unloved, so I quilted them too, but with a wiggle instead of ribbon candy.  I like the contrast of the dense quilting next to the sparse quilting.

I chose white thread for the entire quilt.  Yes, some of my stitch in the ditch shows on the blue and red and I DON'T CARE.  Is that wrong?  I may make this quilt again and quilt it with invisible thread just to see if no-show stitch-in-the-ditch makes a ginormous difference, but I'm completely at peace with how I quilted this quilt.

During the quilting, my bobbin thread decided to get fussy so I had to break out my seam ripper to unpick about 5 blocks of stitching.  The joy of less than perfect tension is that it's super easy to pick out!

I filmed a short video showing how I quilted this quilt.  You can watch it HERE.

I'm in the habit of immediately machine binding my quilts.  The hour I spend doing that instead of letting my unbound quilts stack up keeps me sane.  Looking at a chair full of unbound quilts would make me feel completely out of control!  I've done it before; I know what I'm avoiding.

Like most of the northeast United States, we had ghastly hot temperatures last weekend.  I went outside to try and take some good photos and immediately remembered why I just had central air conditioning installed. I quickly snapped one photo of this quilt and here it is:

I have no particular recipient in mind for this quilt.  If no one comes to mind, I'll take it and some other quilts to give to my local police officers.