Monday, October 6, 2014

Blocks, Boxes and Boxtrolls

There has been lots of progress since my last regular blog post. The latest quilt top finished:


The border gave me a little excitement. This is what I had planned:


It would have been fine, but after cutting out most of the pieces for the outer border, I discovered...oops!...the "2.88" on the remnant tag was the price, not the yardage. It was Monday, and Davidene's (our local quilt shop) was closed, so I made a quick trip to Elaine's Quilt Block in Salt Lake City, "quick" being relative. I came up with this.


Elaine's has a great selection, and their staff is so knowledgeable and helpful. This was one of the fabrics a staff member pulled out for me to try. I wanted a similar color to the first fabric, and a pattern that would disguise the seams required to make the notches.

I've decided to call the new quilt "Crystal Stars." (I was going to call it "Ocular Migraine," which DH thought was perfect, but I that was rather negative for such a pretty quilt.) Friday I picked up backing for it, this time at Davidene's.


The backing reminds me of toffee. The top is based on Connecting Threads "Sumptuous" quilt kit. The colors in the kit don't exactly go with my bedroom, and it wasn't available as a pattern, so I reverse-engineered it from photos. Most of the fabrics are from Connecting Threads, though, so I don't feel too guilty about copying. If I had it to do over, however, I would have made the double Flying Geese (the ones that point at each other) as quarter-square-triangle units. These are the units I used:

There were also some plain blocks.

The Habitat For Humanity quilt went off to the Overall Ball, held Saturday night:


The label on the back ended up looking nice:


I haven't heard what it went for, but the person who invited us to make it ended up with it. She said someone from out-of-town was bidding on it, and she couldn't have it leave Park City! They were going to have a professional photographer there to take photos. I'll post one if they share them with me..

In knitting news, I've made two squares for an afghan some of us are making for Susan's family:


Knitters/crocheters, there's still time to participate, if you want. My Mr. Foster is also coming along. I caught him monkeying around, even though his brain is still just a bag of fluff in my knitting bag. Not that all that fluff will make much difference.

I had a rough time with the mouth, but cherylbwaters on the Knitting Community had posted a link to a video by Cat Bordhi showing how to do a wrap-and-turn (W&T) that's less visible.
Tuesday I got to chauffeur Joanie around. She had a hair appointment and also wanted to visit a friend who was in the hospital (the one who usually drives her around). We stopped in at the Wool Cabin to make some small purchases.


I picked up some yarn to augment my leftovers that will be used to make a couple of bunnies from the patterns from Little Cotton Rabbits. You can see some of the FOs from their line of patterns on the left wall in the photo. There's an elephant, a fox and a bunny. (We also both fell in love with the Aran pullover on the wall!)

Vintage Stitchers met at my house last week. Barbara had this cute baby quilt:


Marilyn and Brenda had taken a class using their embroidery machines. They made tissue-box covers. The stitching reminded me of Sashiko. Here's Marilyn doing a Boxtroll imitation:


Common Threads met at my house the following week. (I'm trying to do my hosting duty before the snow falls and we can't park our cars on the road in our neighborhood.) Ginny showed off this skirt she made as a gift for a dance teacher.


Sunday we had the Blessing of the Animals in honor of the Feast Day of St. Francis. Rocky and Sunny bless us in so many ways, so they deserve a blessing. All the nonhuman participants this year were canines, so it was a Dog Day Afternoon for all of us.
We got to use our fireplace for the first time this season. Rocky says it's sweater time, and he's enjoying the sweater I made for him for last winter:


We went to see DS2's film "The Boxtrolls" the day it opened. I'm biased, of course, but I think it's the best movie Laika has produced so far. Great for kids and adults, with good messages throughout. Some critics have said it was too scary. For them, perhaps, but several friends of mine who took grandkids as young as five said the kids were excited, but not scared. Here's a photo of the crew. DS2 is on the far left in a lime green jacket.
We stayed for the credits, of course. It's blurry, but if you find the longest title (left side), DS2's name is to the right of that. His title is listed as "Senior Technical Director."
However, this is the best thing he has produced so far, IMHO. (Also our DDIL2, who, I assume, was taking the photo.)
(Our sons love their mother so much, one of them married a quilter and the other married a knitter. Like our daughter, also a knitter, they're so much fun to talk to and share ideas with. Lucky me!)


What's on my needles: Progress on my Mr. F.

What's on my Featherweight: The backing to the Crystal Stars quilt.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Listened to The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. (I kept seeing Bogie, Greenstreet and Lorre in their respective parts.) Just started listening to Julie Klassen's The Dancing Master. Still reading Joseph Lallo's The Book of Deacon from Book Bub.

What's my app of the week: BackTube. I haven't had much time with it yet, but you can download videos (like quilting and knitting) from YouTube and play back over and over offline. There's some advertising, but otherwise it seems to do what it's supposed to do.

What's in my wine glass: Trader Joe's Petite Reserve Merlot 2011. I've rarely had a bad wine form TJ's, and this was as good as it gets.

What's my tip of the week: Nothing takes out a stain caused by red wine like a slosh of white wine. While we're on it, if you're quilting and prick your finger, you can get the dabs of blood out with your own spit. (Only if it's your blood, so I hear.)

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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