Stoneview

Finito!

Dan's quilt is all finished. The ties are all tied and it's even been washed and dried and handed over. I think he quite likes it.

While we were out running errands yesterday we came across quite a strange sight. We were rounding the corner in the parking lot looking for a spot when we saw these odd disembodied heads poking out of a snow bank. Apparently there's a little beauty shop in near the bird store we visit and the employees must have had a slow day. Surely they didn't think this was a good way to attract business?

Flip that quilt

Yesterday I worked on the quilt pretty much all day long. I ironed and sewed the backing and then pinned the top to the back. I never really am able to square my top with my back and this is one reason I tie my quilts rather than quilting them. I really need a quilting class!

I sewed around the edge leaving a gap about 24 inches wide along one edge. With the batting on top I rolled the whole thing inwards towards that gap and then turned it right side out, unrolling it carefully. I started pinning at the center and working outward. After that Gwen helped me start threading the ties and just as Jason got home with Chinese take-out for dinner I started clipping the thread and making knots. Almost there!

Dwarven Battle Helm

For Christmas I had planned to knit the boys each a Dwarven Battle Helm (or Bonnet as the pattern says but Daniel objects to this term). The one with the red beard would be for Chris and the blond beard for Daniel. I chickened out and knit ordinary hats instead but made the mistake of showing them the pattern which apparently both of them really like. Here's the beginning of a helm for Daniel.

On the edge

Yesterday I managed to get the borders onto the quilt top. Making progress!

Autumn Blaze

There comes a point when I just want to finish a project and get it off the needles. I started the Autumn Blaze scarf back in September and because the stitch pattern hurts my hands it quickly became the car knitting project so I could work on it in little ten minutes spurts. This week I hit my limit and it was time to finish this puppy up, achy hands or no. It really only took a couple hours to get it done and I took advantage of the sunny day to get a few photos in before the snow descends tomorrow. The pattern is Holding Hands Feeding Ducks. I used size 5 needles and 2 skeins of Manos in color number 104.

Chi

Last spring I bought a "black" (washed up to a lovely chocolate brown imho) fleece at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival. I thought I'd best get busy spinning this up so I know if I'd like to ask for it again. This is Chi's roving which is a Romney/Cormo whether. I have about 5 pounds so certainly enough to make a sweater. Yesterday I filled up the first bobbin of singles.

Minty Fresh

Last time I ordered soap supplies I picked up some peppermint essential oil and making a soap with spearmint and peppermint combined has been on my todo list for a couple months now. When Debbi asked if I'd demo soap making for her daughter's chemistry project I jumped at the chance. Sometimes a little nudge is just what you need. I'd also recently read that most soapers are using about 5 times as much essential oil as I do so I wanted to gradually increase the amount and see how much more my particular recipe can take. I'll be trying out this new batch of soap this week to see how it liked it. It worked beautifully though I admit I was cautious and only increased total essential oil by about %10.

Marching orders

The results from the vet are back and Gwen has an early stage of kidney disease. It's very treatable but she doesn't even need medicine just yet. Right now all we need to do is get her onto a low protein diet. It's fairly pricey stuff so even though it would be safe for all the cats to eat it we are going to attempt to feed it just to Gwen. This should make her stomach feel better and she might even gain weight. I popped out this morning to pick up a bag before yoga class so that we can start her on it right away. It's by the same folks that make our current cat food so we are hoping we won't have any trouble with the switch.

Gwen has an owie on her toe

When the kids were little they had a game called Busytown based on the Richard Scary books. One of their favorite parts was the Kitty doctor who would bandage Elephant's owies with endless bandaids. Every kid seems to love bandaids and they can never get enough of them. Yesterday I discovered an owie on Gwen's paw as I was taking closeup photos of her toes. I had no idea older cats can get ingrown toenails but so the vet informeed me yesterday afternoon when he squeezed her in to have a look. I was so appalled that I'd clearly missed this for some time that I didn't look further but she did have two. He says their nails can just get mishapen with age and we need to cut them more frequently now. Thankfully I caught it soon enough that there's no infection so now that the nails are clipped and removed it should heal up quickly. The bad news is that she's dropped another pound since last year. This is the second year in a row our girl has lost weight so we ran a panel of tests to make sure there's nothing wrong. I should hear back on those today.

Top o' the mornin'

There was no sewing Tuesday while I was glued to the TV watching all the inaugural buzz but yesterday I was back at it. I spent rather longer than necessary finishing up the center of the quilt top because I sewed the center strip to the wrong side of the first half and had to rip that out and correct it before putting together the second half and attaching that. Next I'll be adding three sets of borders- a narrow border of birch goes on first, then a wider border in gold and finally the widest border last in the crane fabric. I think I ought to have gone with plain black as that third border but someone is a bit impatient so I think it's impractical to buy more of the plain because I'd have to wash, dry and iron before I could get to that last border.

Beet red

I've currently got several cookbooks from the library, vegetarian, vegetables, flexitarian and so on. I almost never cook directly from a recipe anymore but these have given me some good ideas. Given that tooth/gum saga is still continuing I'm still trying to cook things that are fairly soft and not too irritating. I goofed and put crushed red pepper in this but it was otherwise quite successful. We have some penne pasta, boiled beets dressed with lemon juice, beet greens sauteed with fennel, garlic, crushed red pepper and olive oil, crumbled goat cheese, lemon juice and zest and a dollop of creme fraiche to top it off. The inspiriation was a pasta dish with the beets and creme fraiche all stirred together in an unappetizing pink mess but I'm quite pleased with my version where things are cooked separately and then layered together. Toasted walnuts would have been lovely on this but that's crunchy so I'll skip them until next time.

Chinon Moebius

I was up fairly early yesterday morning and finished closing the moebius while watching the morning news. This is handspun singles from hand-dyed corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms in the chinon colorway, approximately light worsted weight though I didn't do a WPI measurement. The is Rainbow Moebius available at Etsy here. Since I used handspun and my gauge was different I made a few modifications. I used size 6 needles and knit 32 repeats before beginning to close the moebius.

Lazy Sunday

Yesterday morning we spent quietly watching the snow fall. Winnie is still trying to snuggle up with Gwen and be friends. Gwen is still just NOT having it. I finished up the last of my basic dough for the week (from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes at Day) and made some chocolate "croissaints". Since this dough doesn't have all the butter you'd find in a true croissant it's a bit healthier. I rolled it out, cut it into squares and filled each one with a little dark Dove chocolate piece. I baked them off at 400F for 20 minutes and then drizzled with icing made of confectioner's sugar, a splash of milk and a drizzle of vanilla. Delish!

I spent the afternoon and evening working on closing up the Chinon moebius.

A trip around the world

Yesterday I cross cut the panels into strips of squares and laid those out to preview the quilt. I called Daniel in to decide what to use as the center square. We tried a crane and a birch and opted for the birch. I stitched together the first half of the quilt top as well as the center strip.

Are we there yet?

I'm still knitting away on the Chinon moebius but it's not done yet. I think it needs to be longer still before I close it up.

A stitch in time

Today I put together the panels for Dan's quilt. Here they are layed out atop one another to show the color sequence. Next they'll need to be ironed and cross cut in preparation for assembling the quilt top.

Quilt Prep

  Last summer I bought material for a new quilt for Daniel. The last one is all primary colors and he's really outgrown the middle school style patterns. Finding "guy" fabrics at the fabric store was quite a challenge but I managed to assemble a set I was fairly happy with. The quilt fell off my radar and the fabric waited patiently on the shelf until a few days ago when Daniel came to me with the old one complained about the batting being all bunched up along the edges and would I make him a new one. He didn't seem surprised at all that I had fabric already waiting and he quite likes the blue the green batik and the black (especially that green) but as he plans to use the solid side he doesn't much care what I put on the quilted side. Harrumph. I'd already washed and dried the fabric so I spent all day yesterday ironing, tearing strips and then ironing those. I even squeezed in a trip to the fabric store to purchase batting and material for a green back (or in Dan's case front) of the quilt. This will be a strip-pieced Trip Around the World quilt in twin size (I've got a little booklet of instructions but it's essentially the same as this tutorial).

on bread and bobbins

I made some cinnamon bread this week that disappeared in a flash. The basic dough from "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" was rolled out, spread with butter, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and rolled up and left to rise in bread pans. Before baking I brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with a touch of cinnamon sugar.

My new lazy kate has also arrived and was quickly assembled despite the lack of instructions. I'm not crazy about the twine it comes with for tension and I need to wax the tension knob as it doesn't fit in it's hole very well but it does fit the bobbins readily. I may pick up some fishing line or waxed cord to use in place of the twine.

The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round

but the wheels on my car were going wibble wobble wibble. Last month my car developed a little shimmy that made the steering wheel shake. Gradually it worsened and on New Year's Day it became particularly noticeable. We thought it might be ice in the wheel wells but Jason did mention the possibility of new tires. Over the following week it got much worse and we did finally find time to take it in for a checkup. The verdict was new tires and the garage didn't waste any time in making that happen. We had the car back by mid-afternoon with brand spankin' new tires and a steady freddy steering wheel again.

Snow Day

Yesterday while the snow came down I knit a bit more on the Chinon moebius but I also made up a batch of bread dough a la "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" and I finally got 'round to making some cleanser with borax, vinegar and lime essential oil. Store bought products seem to be more and more irritating to my lungs of late and I'm hoping this homemade version will  be more gentle. I cleaned the kitchen with it and Jason used it upstairs in the bathroom and so far it seems much better.

ETA: The recipe is- 2 cups hot water, 2 tablespoons vinegar, 1 tablespoon borax and 3 ml lime essential oil. Borax can be found in the laundry section at your grocery store and it's also available from Brambleberry where I bought the lime EO and the dropper with which to measure it (droppers are in the soapmaking hardware section on the website).

There's no time like the present

I've learned that projects seem to fly off the needles much more quickly if I do them while they are still calling my name. With that in mind I didn't wait long to cast on the Chinon Moebius and it's moving right along. I need 22 of those ridges before I'm done.

Getting to like you...

My goal this week was to put the larger drive band on the new wheel and try out the jumbo head. I had ordered some Corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms in Chinon with thoughts of spinning singles for a Rainbow Moebius.  I'd been lucky enough to snag a pattern in the giveway over at Oiyi's crafts last month and the pattern arrived a day or two before Christmas. Mine won't really be a rainbow but it should be warm and cozy. The singles are very soft indeed and they spun up really quickly.

We have to stop meating like this

I've been searching for awhile now for a good local source of naturally raised meat. We loved the pig we got from Walter but we really want more variety. Last month while check the Eat Wild directory again I stumbled across the Chestnut Farms meat CSA. This is ideal for us because you pay by the month and you get an assortment of meats as well as the opportunity to buy fresh eggs when you pick up. This is our first allotment of lamb, pork, beef, sausage and chicken. Naturally raised meat is not cheap and I think in general we Americans tend to eat too much meat so I am considering using only this meat supplemented with fish and then eating vegetarian meals the rest of the month. Our allotment is 10 pounds a month and until the fall that'll be split between three people.

Thanking my lucky stars

Thank My Lucky Starts hat. This is the Topper-down hat pattern by Lynn H of ColorJoy. I've used a worsted alpaca with size 5 needles for the stockinette and size 4 needles for the rib. I snagged these buttons out of the Ravelry Button Addicts swap box a few months ago. I had thought I'd stitch on a little star nebula with my cute little buttons but codeine muddled my brain so it's more of a star X.

The root of the matter

My morning yesterday was spent with the endodontist who performed a root canal on the offending tooth whose crown cracked in half just before Christmas. It was not fun but it certainly wasn't as bad as most folks made it out to be. This tooth has been a problem child since I was a teen and I sincerely hope it will behave better after this. The procedure went smoothly but for the discovery that I had 4 roots rather than the usual 3 for this tooth so it took a wee bit longer than expected. It's quite sore but should be better in a day or two and she did tell the truth about the temperature sensitivity being gone now. Next week we start the business with the new crown.