Buckaroo

The FOs are piling up like cord wood around here. Here's a jacket that's been underway, oh, about a year. What was the pattern? I can't remember any more. Simplicity or Butterick? It's hung in a closet needing only hems and buttons for so long that the pattern and everything else about it has long ago been filed away.

The incentive to finish was the extremely lame Spirit Week ongoing at the library. I refuse to wear a Hawaiian shirt or a funny hat to work, but by golly, I had a bark cloth cowboy-print jacket to wear for Cowboy Day.

I have a feeling that I may slightly resemble Scarlett O'Hara wearing the drapes, but that's just too bad.

The buttons are cool, and I've been waiting for the right project for them.

They're carved wood half-barrel shapes. I found them several years back at a Long Grove, Illinois shop selling crafts from the Baltic Countries

Over the weekend, I was all ready to churn out a couple small holiday gift items. Except for the lack of one spool of turquoise thread, I might have had more finished objects to show. On Sunday I actually made a 30 mile round trip to buy that spool of thread. I'm afraid I am leaving a substantial carbon footprint. I can't help it--I live miles and miles away from everything.

OK, this brings us to the beginning of November and I've signed on to NaBloPoMo. I'm really going to try to post every day in the coming month. Of course most of it will be drivel, but that's what most people have come to expect from me, I'm sure.

Anyway, we'll see how long I last.

Halloween-y

Welcome to Halloween in the exurbs--big yards, few houses, long driveways. Decidedly not child-friendly.

The only feasible way to do Trick or Treat is to load the kids in the lawn tractor or ATV (tastefully trimmed out for the season) and head out. And it's only little kids. Once kids here reach a certain age, they catch on to the fact that this is LOUSY Trick or Treat territory. Much better prospects can be had in town, where houses are packed in much more densely.

The weather was pretty nice. We stationed ourselves at the end of the driveway (to spare the kids the loooooong walk to the house) and doled out the treats.

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So glad I had the camera at hand when this hard-to-believe scenario below played out today. Normally we have a lot of skirmishes, standoffs, glowers, and passive aggressive &%$*. But all was sweetness and light this morning, if only for a brief moment or two.

Friday Night 2.0

Quilting on Crossed Kayaks is done. There isn't much original and challenging about a simple meander pattern, but it gets the job done and relatively quickly too.

I love my square-tiled kitchen floor--just perfect for blocking quilts.

The binding is made and ready to go too. This quilt was always intended to be a stash buster and I'm doing my best--the binding is from fabric at least 12 years old, from back in my days at The Quilt Shop Which Shall Not Be Mentioned. It still had the yardage slip pinned to the edge.

Binding will be sewn on tomorrow and then onto final handwork. Progress!

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This has been a techno week for me. On Tuesday, the library sent me to a presentation by Stephen Abram, VP for Innovation (love that title) of our library automation software company. Of course an interesting concept would be actually innovating the software into a bit more user-friendly and agile format, but that's WAAAAAY another topic. The topic of his presentation was Attracting and Engaging the Millennial Customer.

That means people born from 1977 to 1994. Supposedly their brains are wired differently, having been raised on MTV and all.

Stephen Abram himself operated a bit like MTV, throwing so many ideas and concepts at us about going to meet these Millennials where they live. The upshot of all this is that I've spent the last couple days playing with facebook--setting up an account for me, a library group, joining other groups, and writing on people's walls. Very fun!

Is much library work getting done here? Not sure, but Lucy has her own app on my facebook sidebar, and I can do some virtual petting with her. Anyone else on facebook? If so, stop by and say hi--I'm under my actual name.

In the same vein, I spent some time tonight adding most of the rest of my quilting and needlework books to LibraryThing. Selections from that display on the right sidebar here, and apparently I can bring those into facebook too. Must explore that tomorrow.

They call all this Library 2.0. Heady stuff: those Millennials will have to run to keep up with me. LOL

Whining

Ah, retirement. Will I ever get there? I am very jealous of someone's being able to go from this to the gloriousness above in less than two weeks. This would take months for me. Obviously the answer is cutting loose from the 9 to 5 five days a week.

Some nights I come home with great resolve to sew and somehow it never happens. Or I sit down to knit and within 15 minutes I'm literally falling asleep over the stitches.

Nights like that are not good nights for lace knitting. At least I'm smart enough to realize that.

So Good to Be Home...

Travel is great but enough was enough.

After the four-day quilt retreat followed by a four day library conference, I was very, very glad to be home and to be relatively unscheduled for the weekend. I now have all the central quilting done on Crossed Kayaks (only the borders to go), and all the Delectable Mountains blocks are pressed, ready for trimming.

There was also time for some domesticity. For some odd reason, comfort food seemed appealing--I made "from scratch" mac and cheese (the first time in a good ten years) and an apple pie.

And--LATE BREAKING NEWS!! Look what is now in my hot little hands:

My Seams friend Judy, who faithfully treks to join us every month all the way from Evanston, Illinois, trolled and found Liberated Quiltmaking for me at a Milwaukee-area Half Price Books location. I don't understand how she did it either, but find it she did. Judy truly has her fingers on the pulse of commerce. And check it out--Amazon advertises copies for $74.99 and up. Mine was a mere $12.49.

A huge yay for Half Price Books and an even bigger one for Judy.

La Bella Vita

I love it when I'm in a strange town and hear there's an Open Knitting Night at the LYS.

While we were in Mineral Point, we got to knit with the locals at the wonderful La Bella Vita. Owner Molly Walz offers coffee, tea, and wine, and was most welcoming to Renee, Lori, and I.


I loved this--a mom and two daughters were working hard on their projects.


I get very excited when I see kids jumping into the fiber arts. And look how this child was dressed:


Burgundy velvet jacket and spriggy lawn blouse. How cute! And note the ring she's wearing. Why didn't my mother dress me like that? Mineral Point is definitely a place apart.

Renee and I were working on socks with yarn bought at this very shop last spring. And we realized we were in the presence of greatness--the actual Sandy of Sandy's Palette--the dyer of that very sock yarn.


As luck would have it, she had brought new yarn with her. Renee and I each bought a couple skeins and Molly taught us to wind the skeins into cakes.



I was really pleased with these colors--subtle enough so that patterned socks, maybe even lace ones , should work well.

And here was a terrific buy: Briggs and Little Heritage wool tweed. $5 a skein.


Cheap! I bought enough for a sweater for only $35. Not bad. And the ball-winding was part of the service.

I'm putting a swift and ball winder on my Santa list for sure.

La Bella Vita also sells vintage clothing and accessories and must-haves for the home, like lavender dryer sheets and geranium dishwashing liquid. Molly merchandises it all so well--shoppers just want to linger and poke around for another hour or so.

Comfort Zone

First--I'm sorry for not posting pictures that explained themselves as well as they might have. Many questions from interested quilters! No, I haven't discovered a new way to piece putzy, tiny blocks. There's no secret. The tiny blocks are paper-pieced where possible. I should have included this picture.


Makes more sense, doesn't it?

I'm back from the Wisconsin Library Association Conference. It was held in Green Bay, and it was my first quality time in that city. I have to admit I am not as rabidly wrapped up in the Green Bay Packers as most Wisconsinites are. (If you want to irritate lots of folks around here on a fall Sunday, say something like, "Oh, are the Packers playing today?" LOL)

But I have only good things to say about the Packers' home town.

The frozen tundra is still nicely thawed in mid-October, making it very comfortable for walking around. As one might expect of a major league sports town (even one as small as Green Bay) there are some excellent restaurants. And the hotel offered free happy hour every night. Lots of librarians were definitely kicking up their heels just a bit.

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Last week at my retreat, it was fun to see several of my buddies moving away from their usual style of quilting. One person who is a charter member of the Dear Jane movement has produced these zoomy quilts in the last year.




Another of our group, who also usually sticks with the traditional


is working on this:


And look at this from a quilter who normally gravitates to brights:


It's so good to explore new things.

I've been exploring the artsy side of quilting the last few years and it's been fun. I'm sure I'm not finished with art quilts. But I'm feeling the pull to dive back into traditional quilts. Maybe I'm inspired because we stopped at Primitive Gatherings on the way back from Green Bay. What a shop! Gorgeous quilt samples, most available in kits and exquisite wool quilts and table toppers. The pictures do not do justice to the samples!

In the meantime, there are several quilts to finish before I dare consider any new projects. Oh, and a wedding dress too.

Must stay focused...

Mineral Point

I'm back from a great retreat at the Jones Mansion in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. It was a gorgeous fall weekend, the kind that makes you wish October could just stretch out forever.

Mineral Point is an area of very early settlement in Wisconsin--lead mines attracted lots of Cornish miners and early Wisconsin state government was centered in this area. Much of the town hasn't been modernized significantly, lending a funky and authentic antique charm to everything. The ambiance is great but I just love getting away with my friends--lots of wine and chocolate, and lots of inspiration from them, all very accomplished quilters, and by golly, I got things done too.

I got a good start on the Crossed Kayaks quilt--all the ditch quilting is completed. But I got tired of slinging it around in a fairly cramped spot at the retreat and set it aside to attend to at home.

One day was declared my Day of Discipline. I brought out the small putzy blocks I'm working on for a friend.




This block took several mind-numbing hours to make. I finished this and a second block and decided I had hit the wall on this project too.

So I set to work on my Kansas Troubles/Delectable Mountains and completed ALL 100 blocks by Sunday noon. The blocks aren't pressed or trimmed, but they're sewn.

I haven't looked at these blocks on the design wall at all--I'm hoping they won't be totally chaotic visually. As much as I'm dying to see how they all play together, tomorrow I'm headed out once again--to Green Bay, Wisconsin and the annual state library conference. Back Friday for what I hope is a totally unstructured weekend. I have more to share about the retreat and I WILL get to that.

Pinned

Some accomplishments to report but they aren't of the overly photogenic variety.

Serendipity is pinned and ready to quilt.


And Crossed Kayaks now has its border--in the great tradition of just getting on with it, I went with a scrappy pieced border. At the Glen retreat in June, I had made a pieced border--blue and brown checkerboard. The general consensus was that it looked worse than no border at all. Sigh.

For better or worse, it's now done.


It's also pinned and ready to quilt.

Those checkerboard strips will be part of something eventually, but at the pace I work, who knows when?

Tonight I also spent packing up my gear. Wednesday after work I'll be heading to Mineral Point, Wisconsin for a long weekend's retreat at the Jones Mansion with about a dozen extremely congenial fellow quilters. Whooo Hoo!!

I plan to get a lot accomplished. The main projects will be:

1. A good start on the quilting of Crossed Kayaks.
2. The Delectable Mountains quilt-in-a-box. There's a long way to go on this one.


3. The super secret tiny block project. A deadline is approaching on this one. Argh.


4. Sock knitting.
5. Maybe the white shawl, but I'm leaning against taking it. Trying to concentrate on this in a group setting might be a mistake.

Anybody Game??

National Blog Posting Month 2007

Who's up for it?

Comparisons and New Beginnings

After last weekend's journey into the dark side of human nature, as evidenced at garage sales, and the dark side of religion, well illustrated at the Necedah Shrine, we're back solidly in the comfort zone--talking needlework. And what a relief!

Yes! I have finished knitting to show. But Lucy had to get in on the act and made it a bit hard to get pictures.


I kind of gave up on the artsy on-the-foot shot.

These socks are the Garter Rib, from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch.


I predicted a Halloween finish when I started these last January, and I wasn't too far off. The yarn is Trekking XXL. I love this yarn, although it's fine and makes for a lot of knitting in a sock. It may have taken me more than a few months to make these, but you know what? They were made entirely in FOUND TIME--doctor's office waiting rooms, car trips, meetings. Accomplishing something tangible like this in odd bits of time--that's pretty much priceless, I'd say.

Here's a shot of my first pair of Trekking socks, knit last year on US 1s.


Being lazy, I decided to make the second pair with slightly bigger needles to see what I could get away with. US 2s.

I have to say I like the socks on the size 1s better--softer and denser.


With the size 1 needles, it's necessary to cast on 72 stitches, where with the size 2s, I could get away with 64 stitches. In any worthy endeavor, extra effort pays off, I guess.

And I have started a new pair.


These are the Waffle Rib, also from Sensational Knitted Socks. I bought this artisan yarn (Sandy's Palette Sock) at Mineral Point last spring. This is a heavier yarn than the Trekking. perhaps I could have gotten away with size 3 needles, but I've learned my lesson. These are 2s. I predict these will go fairly fast (although with me, "fast" can be a relative term...). I have a library conference coming up in a couple weeks and I plan to knit my way through it.

But wait--there's more! Last weekend on the Necedah trip, I started Caroline's wedding shawl.


This pattern is called Shoulder Shawl in Syrian Pattern and it's from the book Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby. This is my first venture into Rowan Kidsilk Haze--a mohair silk blend that is gorgeous but scary stuff. Fine and thin and slippery. If I have to do much unknitting on this, Tonya will hear the caterwauling all the way over in Paris.

So far I LOVE it--it's like a pile of soapsuds in my lap. Wish me luck. If I can acquit myself well on this, I'll have more courage to cut into that wedding dress fabric.

Necedah, Continued

Yet another later edit--I'm hoping pictures load correctly now. What is going on with Blogger??
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Before my weekend trip there, I had been trying to recall if Necedah was the home of a religious site of some sort. I thought I remembered a write-up in the paper a couple years ago. And sure enough, I saw signs directing to the shrine. We were intrigued, so Deb and I went to take a look.

It's officially called The Shrine of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, Mediatrix of World Peace, but is also just known as the Necedah Shrine. The grounds consist of a welcome center and a walkway around a series of glassed-in grottoes featuring statues of many saints and biblical figures--Michael the Archangel, Joan of Arc, Mother Cabrini, St. Ann, Francis of Assisi, and a particularly gruesome Crucifixion scene, among others.

We've learned that this is the site of a series of alleged apparitions of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to a farm woman in 1950. The "messages" she received were of the heavy anti-Communist and fire and brimstone variety. The apparitions, and the farm woman who claimed to have seen them, were discounted and discredited by the local church authorities and the hierarchy from the beginning.

Some of the visions involved, um, a spaceship coming to transport the faithful, a spaceship driven by a 1,200 year old man.

Still, the woman had her devotees who built the shrine and maintained it over the years.

The followers had ambition--they planned and began construction on a large church. Now, nearly 60 years later, many of the original adherents have died off. And the interdicts of the institutional Church have taken their toll. The construction has long since been abandoned. The whole place has pretty much fallen off the mainstream radar and makes for some sad and incongruous scenery.

The site is now maintained by a group called the Old Catholics--a schismatic group who firmly hold to the old ways, apparently sometimes skirting civil law to do it. They see satanic influence in Church modernization, expect the end of the world imminently , and still rail against "godless Communists", immodest dress, and uppity women.

The rhetoric definitely ventured into "Mary as goddess" territory. The welcome center was full of the sort of materials that depict dead fetuses and apocalyptic imagery.

Some religious sites are full of a sense of peace and welcome. This place was not like that. Unsettling would be a word I'd use. I won't go back.