The rain finally stopped and yesterday we were able to get outside. It was overcast and really windy but we walked the neighborhood road down to the Wilson Pond dam and then, in the afternoon, we walked a neighborhood trail. Laura's watch says we walked nearly 20,000 steps. In between those 2 walks I sat and worked on the baby blanket. I finished the orange section and started another dark blue section. I know it looks green but it's really a dark marine blue. Laura started sewing a veterans quilt kit that I cut for her. I also lost to Ian at scrabble and cribbage. Even though I lost at scrabble I was really proud of the highest scoring word: piques for 44 points. As you can see, we could not get out on the kayaks yesterday. This photo was taken near dinner time when the sun finally peeked out for a few minutes. We hope to get out on the water today after a morning hike. Chris was supposed to go on a guided river fishing trip but the water is too high from all the rain. He hopes to reschedule for next week.
Even though the weather isn't perfect, we are having a lovely time. I'll get to yesterday's weather and activities in a minute but I thought I'd start with an update on my crochet projects. I brought 3 things to work on and the first is the baby blanket for my nephew and his wife. She picked the pattern and the colors and I love how it's coming together. I purchased way too much of this yarn so there might be a second blanket in a different pattern. If she doesn't want a second blanket it can always be donated. The second project is my purple hexagon sweater. I'm finally making real progress on this one. It won't be long before I can sew sleeve seam and add the cuffs. Lastly I brought my hat bag. I've been wanting to try a side to side hat pattern and, so far, I really like it. I made the first green one and was happy enough with it that I decided to use the rest of the green yarn and make another, larger, one. The first one is kid size. Both of these will be donated and were just practice for the 2 hats I want to make out of the loud lime/navy yarn. Those hats will be for my SIL's grandchildren. The hats are their school colors. I have other hat yarns just in case I run out of things to crochet.....but that's not likely! I did start some sewing but I forgot to take photos. Today it's going to be rainy so there will be lots of sewing. Forget about today's rain because yesterday morning was spectacular! We went out for some paddling for a couple of hours and got back about an hour before the clouds rolled in. Here's a picture of our cabin from the water. It's our third year staying here and we just love it.
In the afternoon we drove to Bangor to pick up our friends. They flew into Boston and rented a car to the Bangor airport. It was a short 2 hour drive through beautiful countryside to pick them up. Today, as I said earlier, is a rain day. So the exercise will be inside and using my normal daily app and then I'll head into town to see about getting my wheels realigned and, maybe, check out the local quilt shop and show Laura around. I expect that Chris and Ian might eventually end up at the local pub. Otherwise it's reading and sewing day and I can't complain about that! This is the 7th blanket that I've made with this pattern and line of yarn. It seems a little insane but I love the yarn and bought a ton of it on clearance and I'm going to keep making blankets until it's all gone. I think I only have yarn left for 1 or 2 more blankets. I will not start another until the weather cools down. This one got a little hot to work on but I wanted to finish it before vacation as I want to use the project bag for my travel projects. I've been calling this my "dude" blanket because, so far, I've given them all to men in my family. But this one has a more feminine look so I'll probably give it to a deserving woman. Maybe someone not in the family but someone that has done good things for me. Here are all the details: Cascade Cartwheel Yarn, 6 balls Pattern from BagODay Crochet, pattern repeat is 8 stitches plus 3 I used a K hook and chained 131 stitches (with an L hook), all of the others have been 147 stitches but I wanted this one a little smaller. 6 balls made a blanket that finished 46 x 64 and that's plenty big. The best part is that on the last row I had this much yarn left!
The holiday weekend was very productive for me! Aside from Mom's quilt, I also wrapped up this blanket. In all fairness, it was close to being done. The blanket is square, the narrow top is due to the camera angle. I intended this one to be a donation baby blanket but I think it ended up being a bit big at 34 x 44. I'll donate it and I'm confident that they will find the perfect home for it. I love how it turned out. The pattern is Woodland Heather Baby Blanket. It's free from Daisy Farm Crafts. I used Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn and an I (5.5mm) hook and cast on 95 stitches. The resulting blanket is sturdy (from the stitch) and very soft. Now I can start new projects! First up is a baby blanket for my new Great Niece arriving in November. I'm making another Daisy Farm Crafts pattern called Even Squares Baby Blanket. My niece picked the colors on the left and I'm trying Brava Worsted for the first time for this project. So far, so good. It's really soft. I worked up a swatch testing 3 stitches. The bottom row uses the stitches from the pattern. The middle row is double crochet and the top row is half double crochet. I like the half double crochet best so that's what I'm using. I mentioned before that I was not going to finish the tank top that I was working on so I put that project in time out until I think of something else to make with the yarn. Instead I started the project that I really wanted to do anyway. This will be another hexagon cardigan. I gave Mom the blue one so this one will be for me. When I did the last one it worked really well to make both halves at the same time so I'm doing that again.
I still have the big blanket going so will alternate these 3, switching each evening and they should keep me busy for several weeks. I really enjoy working the voting precinct on election days and this time we had a particularly great crew. Our chief was serving her first stint as chief and she was fabulously organized. Two of my former coworkers were also volunteers. There were only 2 downsides: I had to get up at 4 am and the day was SLOW. We have a small precinct anyway, at 1444 registered voters, and this was just a Republican House of Delegates primary with a very popular incumbent. We knew the turnout was going to be low and were expecting about 5%. In the end we got about 12%, not counting early and absentee voters. That's a good turnout but it was still slow! But, on the upside, I was able to finish one chemo hat, start and finish a man's winter hat and start one more. I don't like to waste time! I have some single skeins 4 weight yarns that I want to use and I'm finding that using 2 strands in my favorite bulky man's hat pattern is a great way to work through them. In November we should be much busier with Virginia Senate and Delegate elections. I've been slowly plugging away at the crochet. I'm not doing a lot because I've been working on the Goldfinch and, frankly, it's kind of warm to be crocheting a big blanket. But I'm slowly making progress on this one. I'm on ball 5 of 7. I made this one a tad narrower than the others so it might not use all 7 balls. I love how the baby blanket is looking. I just have one more white stripe section and then the border to do. This one is turning out a little big so it might be a toddler blanket. I'll let the charity decide but it should be done soon. To be perfectly honest, one reason that I haven't been crocheting is that I'm avoiding this project. I work on my projects alternately and I dread working on this because I dont think I'm going to like it. My SIL had convinced me to finish it anyway but she' not here to stay on me and I've lost interest again. I've decided to shelve it for now and work on the one garment that I really want to make, another hexie cardigan for winter. I ordered the yarn I want to use and will get started as soon as it arrives. The new one will be dark purple and I'm giving the blue one to Mom. Now I'm excited to crochet again. I also started last night on the next section of the Goldfinch.
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! 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! |
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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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