 Our annual family beach vacation is, sadly, over. We had (almost) all of the family there with some of my best friends and got some great news. I'm going to be a Great Aunt of a little girl to be born in November. It will be Mom's first Great-Grandchild and everyone is beyond excited! What wasn't exciting was the weather. We had one beautiful beach day and one nice pool day. Otherwise it was gray and windy. I did get a daily walk on the beach for a free dermabrasion and a session of grounding. I also got to binge watch the last season of Mrs. Maisel, ate some fresh Mahi that Chris and James caught, read some books and played games.  On the way home Saturday we got in a fun visit to the Outer Banks Aquarium before heading home to unpack and do laundry. Beach week is always a great kick off to the summer.  I wasn't really in a maker mood last week. I was feeling more social. But I did get 3 chemo hats made. These could be "regular" hats but I use a super soft polyester yarn and, for that reason, donate them to specifically be chemo hats. Most of the yarn is Hobby Lobby yarn that I got on clearance for $1 a skein. I work with whatever colors I can get.  I started a 4th hat in the Divine Hat pattern. I ran out of the pale color and thought I had more at home. I didn't, so I'm finishing it off with the darker color. I hope it will look OK. I know that, at least, it will feel good on a sensitive scalp.  Yesterday, after Chris and I ran some errands and laundry was finished, I loaded 2 veterans quilts to get myself back in the groove.
This week I want to get the binding on the firefighter quilt and table runner and get started on the goldfinch quilt. Both need to be done before August 1. Depending on when you read this, there may still be time to enter all of the giveaways from last week. The winners will be announced Wednesday!
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  the 6th "dude blanket", as I've taken to calling them, is about half done. So far all the ones I've made have been given to men so now I've made it some sort of rule. This one is my favorite though, so there's a possibility that I keep it. I will not take this too the beach because it's too big.  I'm madly in love with this baby blanket that I'm making for donation. There are lots of ends to weave in but I do it as I go along so it doesn't bother me. I'll make it long enough to get in 4 of the wide blue stripes and then it will have a white border. The white is really white, not the dull white that shows in this photo. I jsut found out this week that I'm going to be a Great Aunt. I'll show Mom and Dad this photo and see if they might want one like it. We'll know the gender next week, I think. By the way, that Yarn Bee 2nd Chance yarn is really nice. It's 100% recycled and works perfectly with the normal Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn.  I got this far along on the summer top before realizing that I just don't like it. I don't like how it's going to drape. So I'm going to take it apart and start over.  I've narrowed down to one of these 2 projects and I will be taking this to the beach to get my SIL's opinion and assistance.  In the past month between meeting and such, I've finished 2 more chemo hats. These are super soft and made with 100% polyester yarn. The one on the right is a new pattern and looks a little wonky but it actually looks good on.  I started a new hat last week with a new pattern and I don't like it. I'll take it back to the last round of increases and make up a new stitch pattern for it. I'll take my hat bag on vacation because hats are so easy to work on while talking to people. They are quite mindless and don't take up a lot of space.
I don't expect to actually do a lot of crochet next week. I will have 4 friends there along with my family and I'd rather spend time with all of them. But we might have a rainy day or two for some inside activities.  I didn't get any quilting done yesterday because it was dyeing day and we had company last night so I thought I'd take a moment to check in on the 3 crochet projects. This is the 7th of the big blankets that I've been making and I'm near the end of the 2nd (of 7) skeins. At this point, this is a lovely mindless project to work on.  My little gray/purple top is moving along a lot faster than I anticipated. The blue stitch marker is where I started in the last session and I got about 4" stitched in one evening. That's much more progress than I anticipated. The brown stitch markers on the right edge mark every 10 rows so that I can make sure that I make the front and back identical. It appears that I might run out of yarn on this one. This yarn is still available but it does have dye lots and I bought mine over a year ago. I'll contact some of the vendors to see if I can get a matching dye lot. If not, I'm thinking that I might get a different, but complementary, color to do the mesh stitch yoke. I'm going to keep going until it gets to the length where the mesh starts and see where I stand on yarn and then I'll make a decision.  The baby blanket has been a little more of a pain. The original plan was to use the light turquoise Caron cake for one of the colors but when I started using it I realized that, although both yarns are worsted weight, the Caron yarn is much lighter than the Hobby Lobby yarm.  I went to the yarnchives and found this Hobby Lobby yarn that's almost turquoise and thought it might work. It doesn't. It's got a little yellow in it and it looks dingy with the white and navy.  Then I remembered this medium blue yarn that I got at the recent Hobby Lobby clearance. It's a 100% recycled yarn that is pretty indistinguishable from I Love This Yarn.
I'm back in business with this project and I'm really happy to be back on my 3 project rotation schedule. The boys left this morning for Myrtle Beach. I'm having lunch with my Mom and cousin and the drinks this evening with friends but I should be able to get in a little quilting in between. Now that's I'm mostly over my cold funk, it seemed like a great idea to start some new projects. This time crochet projects.  I like to have multiple crochet projects going using different size hooks. I find it less stressful on my hands if I work with different hooks each day. After finishing 2 projects at the beach, I only had this one big blanket project to work on. Now that my head is clear and I can do simple math again, it was time to start a couple of new projects.  The first one is this tunic using a 3 weight yarn. The pattern called for a J hook but a G hook is what I am using to get the proper gauge. My top will be shorter but it's still going to take a while. Maybe it will be done by the end of summer to wear next year. The third project needed to be something pretty simple so that meant a baby quilt in worsted weight yarn. I picked this stripe blanket from Daisy Farm Crafts. Now I'm all set for my crochet projects for several weeks.  Last night was our quilt club meeting and I brought home 8 more quilt tops to quilt! I now have 14 ready to be quilted.
Time to get busy! We haven't exactly eradicated this nonsense from the house yet but I did make it through Tuesday without taking a nap. I really wanted one but I held on in the hopes of a really good night's sleep. I had a teleconference with my doctor yesterday, on another matter, and she had the same thing and went through pretty much the same symptoms and duration as us. She's 20 year younger so I have a little better attitude about the whole thing. The weather here has turned beautiful and the pollen is flying. I want to be over the illness soon so I can distinguish virus from allergy in the coming days. I did sit out in the sun for a while yesterday and it felt great!  While I was out I walked up to the bird box and discovered that we have our first clutch of Bluebird eggs! That's something fun to look forward to in the coming weeks.  Back in the sick ward, I haven't had the energy to do much of anything except for a very little crochet. I had a ball of yarn leftover from the last baby blanket so I used it to make some newborn hats. These two are made from the free Vintage Vibes Baby Beanie pattern. They are easy and fast.  Another great free pattern for a newborn hat is the Vintage Pearl Baby Hat. The pattern calls for pearls to be sewn in after the fact but I'm not doing that. I feel sure it would be rejected as unsafe. These 4 hats used up the rest of the baby blanket yarn.  The 4 hats were clearly feminine so I thought I should do at least one little boy hat and I used a BagoDay YouTube tutorial to make this one. I think it turned out a little big so I may need to adjust the pattern a little for my tension.  Finally I went back to a giant ball of Feels Like Butta yarn that I'm working through making men's slouchy chemo hats. I think I can get 2 more from this ball of yarn. This is the Avery Brimless Beanie and it's a purchase pattern.
That's it. That's 5 days of accomplishments! If all goes well today I'll get 2 rooms vacuumed and maybe make some cookies. I want to get back to the dye studio very soon. I miss it!  You thought you would see a finished bear today didn't you? Well, it's close! Mom and I had dentist appointments yesterday morning. I came home from that and procrastinated for a couple of hours and then buckled down to get working on it. I will finish it tonight because I have to deliver it tomorrow! Meanwhile, I've worked on this blanket some at the beach and have been working on it each evening since I got home. I finished it last night after I got tired of the bear.  I got the pattern for this one on Etsy from Nancy Said. It's a nice one to work on because there are 2 sections that alternate so I didn't get bored doing row after row of the same pattern. There's a sedge stitch section and a section with alternating SC and DC2TOG/DC rows. The yarn is EYB Babe Freckles that I got on sale at a shop on Maine last summer. It's a 3 weight and very soft.  The border is two rows. One is alternating DC and CH1/SK1. I did the final row different from the pattern alternating DC in the DC and DC2TOG in the CH1 spaces. It worked out OK but I think it needs to be blocked.  It finished about 29" x 35". I'm going to wet it and block it before I send it off for donation. I will probably make this one again because it was so fast and easy.
I have almost a full skein of yarn left so I'm going to use it for some baby hats before I start a new donation project. Tomorrow will be bear day!  The miracle isn't about finishing my quilt. The miracle is that I woke up early enough to see the sunrise! This NEVER happens. I'm not an early morning girl but yesterday something woke me and I'm glad it did.  I spent most of my creative time yesterday working on the quilt and I made great progress. I only have 3 borders left to do and there's no reason I can't get them done today. There's a 2" black, 1" orange and 6" print. No block piecing required. I also learned that my new cell phone camera has a wonderful trick. I took this photo with the quilt on the floor and me standing above at an angle. The camera popped up a yellow rhomboid outlining the quilt so, just for fun, I clicked that to see what would happen. This happened! This little feature is going to save me a lot of editing time in the future! Today is our last day and my goal is to finish this quilt top and take a walk.  Off and on, all week, I've been working on the baby quilt. It was all I had to work on last night and I'm close to the body of the blanket being done. Then I just have to do the border. FYI, this is an awful photo. The blanket is white.  Here's a close up of the stitch pattern. Kim and I have also spent a lot of time looking for my next crochet garment project. I think I have it narrowed down to a couple of projects. I'll figure it out when I get home and can peruse the yarn options.  The weather word for yesterday and today is WINDY which you can see from the surf. When I went for my walk I walked into the wind so that the walk back would be easier. I walked farther than I planned because I wanted to see the wind surfers that were way ahead of me. I haven't decided it I admire them or if I think they were crazy. Maybe both!
We're leaving tomorrow so I'll have a final update Monday. It's been a great week. We've both relaxed a lot and have had a great week finishing procrastination projects.  I was so close to finishing the sweater that I just had to power through and get it done yesterday. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. It fits well and I know I will use it a lot next fall and winter. It's too late to use it now because this is a very warm sweater. Here are a few notes: Pattern is a YouTube tutorial from LaDria LaVey. The hexi cardi is very popular right now and there are dozens of version on YouTube and other sources but I thought hers was a little more stylish than some of the others. The yarn is Jeans from Lion Brand. It's a 4 weight acrylic and very soft. It's a little splitty and this dark mottled colorway is a little hard to see stitches. I tried a couple of other patterns with this yarn first but got frustrated trying to see stitches. A granny style cardi was a perfect solution. I used a J-6mm hook. I made a number of adjustments as I went along to alter for size and sleeve length. With this pattern, changes are easy to do on the fly.  The front edge has bobbles and I used my trim stitches to draw the front edge up a little. Again, it was easy to adjust on the fly. Now I can go home this weekend and look through my little stash of garment yarn and pick something new to make. While here, I have the baby quilt to get back to.  But that's not all! I also made some good progress on the firefighter quilt. The pinwheel borders are together. I need to do some measuring and make some coping borders so that these will fit. It was late enough last night when I finished these that I thought it was a little late to be doing math. This will be my project for today.  But it wasn't all inside work. I didn't take as long a walk yesterday but we did get out for a walk on the beach once and went out other times just to feel the sand. It was warmer, about 70 but the wind has really kicked up. For exercise, it was yoga day. Today it's supposed to be about 72 with pretty high winds. I am planning for a long walk in between quilt sewing sessions.
It was a great day!  Yesterday we had a high of 69 but not so much sun. It still made for a more pleasant walk. I headed east this time toward the pier. It was about an hour to the piece and back. There were lots of shore birds and gulls out today. I love watching the fast moving shore birds on the surf. I was a little surprised that my camera caught this one as well as it did because it was really booking.  If this guy looks annoyed it's because he should be. There were 3 young women on the beach who thought it would be a good idea to offer one of the gulls a chip. Of course about 15 of them flew in, scared the women and they screamed and chased the gulls away. This one landed right in front of me without a snack. He was indignant.  It was a great sewing and crochet day as well. I got all of the pinwheel blocks made so today I will cut the background pieces for the pinwheel border. After the pinwheels there will be a narrow black border and a narrow orange border before the last border of the fabric at the top. It's coming together nicely I think.  The hexagon sweater is making great progress! I got the back seam done and wove in a couple dozen ends and I've started the bottom hem. I am going to really love this sweater and look forward to wearing it in the fall. I know I'm a little lates to wear it this season.
I would say that I'm confident that I can finish both of these before I leave Sunday but I don't want to jinx myself. So I'll just say that it's possible to finish both of these before Sunday.  Depending on whether you are following Kim's weather app or mine, the high yesterday was either 59 or 63. It was a beautiful day and I got in a long walk to the West end of the island and from here I could see over to Hammocks Beach State Park, which, I think, is only accessible by kayak or boat. I probably looked ridiculous on the beach because I decided that a 2 hours walk was the perfect opportunity to test out my new hiking boots. But at the beach no one really cares. The boots performed great with no rubbed spots on my feet or ankles. I'll need a few more test runs before we go to Maine in August. Most everyone was bundled up pretty good on the beach but there was one family in shorts and swimsuits. I'd bet money that they were Canadians. I cheered them on.  I thought I'd share a couple of photos of our set up here. This is the place where we are staying. On Emerald Isle, about half the houses are duplexes and ours is one. We are in the unit on the West side, closest to the camera. The couple on the other side is from Massachusetts. It's a very comfortable house with great natural light. Being West facing I expect that this unit is pretty hot in July and August.  We picked this house because it had such a nice sewing table! Yesterday Kim finished the red jacket that you see hanging on the back of one of the chairs and she undid the ribbing and a few rows on her white sweater, to shorten it. The raveled yarn made a pretty wool waterfall.  She helped me fit my hexagon sweater Monday so I finished off the body yesterday morning and will seam the back and start the ribbing today. It's very possible that I can finish this sweater before we leave. That would be really nice. I've decided that this is my before breakfast project.  After breakfast I got back to the quilt and made the 4 corner pinwheels. Here you can see the firefighter themed fabric that will be the background for the pinwheel border. The 14 small pinwheels are cut out and I've start sewing them together. I should be able to finish those blocks today.  On my walk yesterday I decided to "shop" for the house I would want and I picked this one. I love all the big windows and I can't imagine what it would cost. Certainly more than we could afford! But a girl can dream.
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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