Done With Sundance, Back to Fiber Fun!

The official Sundance Film Festival is over for this year.

DH and I still have one volunteer shift to do tonight. After the festival is over, Sundance puts on two free screenings of one or two of the best films. We're working that. Then it's all over for another year. While watching the lobby during a film or guarding the door to the Green Room, I managed to get some knitting done. The first sleeve (second version) is finished, and I have several inches done on the second sleeve.

The one thing I didn't do much of last week was sleep.

Vintage Stitchers met on schedule. Janet brought several items for show-and-tell, like this cute machine appliqué. 

Janet also worked on this appliqué project, using a machine buttonhole stitch. 

While not working on it, she pieced this B&W and purple quilt top...

...and this modern quilt top. 

She says she's entered a new "modern" stage. She has been using modern fabrics and traditional patterns, but has recently become drawn to more modern patterns. It will be interesting to see what she does.

Ellen came back Tuesday night. I picked her and Brenda up at Ellen's daughter's house so we could drive to the meeting together. She had this hand appliqué to show off. 

I worked on appliquéing some leaves on the last panel of my Delectable Pathways quilt. 

After the meeting, we stopped at Barnes & Noble so Brenda could pick up a book she had ordered. I had bought a 2-qt. slow cooker and had been looking for a vegetarian cookbook for it. The one I was considering was Vegan Slow Cooking for Two or Just for You by Kathy Hester. They had it at B&N, so I was able to look at it. It looked pretty good, so I bought it.

From there, we went to Elaine's Quilt Block, so Ellen could pick up some light, neutral fabric for background for blocks for her "Home Sweet Home" quilt. It's the book I used for the quilt over my mantle. Remember this?

I had given my book to Ellen, along with the templates I had made. Now she's making the full-size quilt with all nine blocks. 

While Ellen and Brenda were looking, I thought I would see if they had any fabric that would be good for the I-spy quilts I'm working on. In the sale room, I found this great fabric:

I'm cutting the squares at 4 1/2", and they will be 4" finished. If I cut a 4 1/2 square from these, the cut includes all of the light blue border around each image. This makes alternate images unusable at this size, but I was able to get enough to finish what I needed. Here are all my I-spy squares cut out. 

The piles on the right are for Zachary, and the ones on the left are for Soren. Many are the same fabrics, but where I only had one of a kind, I tried to pick what would be most relevant to each boy.

I went stash-diving and came up with some fabric for sashing and cornerstones for Zachary's quilt. I hope to start piecing it this week.

On a different note, DH bought us participation in the National Geographic Genographic Project.

My results have come back, and we're still waiting for his, although we mailed them at the same time. 

It turns out I'm 43% Northern European, 37% Mediterranean and 17% Southwest Asian (today's India, Tajikistan, Iran, etc.; most Europeans have this). The populations I'm most like are British Isles and German. No surprise there, but I have quite a bit more Mediterranean than typical for British and slightly more than typical for German populations. My percentage of Southwest Asian is typical for both groups. The real surprise came when it was broken down into haplogroups. My first branch (about 30,000 yrs. ago) is U5, which is almost exclusively Scandinavian, primarily Finnish. (!) This is especially interesting because DH is half Finnish. It means that our kids carry more Finnish-type genes than we thought. Somewhere between 22,000 and 4,000 yrs. ago, people from this group migrated either to Europe or South Asia. The next branch is U5A. The largest population with this lineage is Slovenia, although it is found in Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Lebanon and India. I'm specifically U5a1b. All of this is on my mother's side. Women don't get results from the paternal side, because it's carried on the Y chromosome. However, it means I'm more German than I thought. The only German ancestors I knew about already were on my father's side. I'm providing the project with information that might help them with continuing studies. I read some of the comments made by people in the U5a1b group, and they are mostly from the British Isles and Germany, but some of them mentioned coming from the US's deep south, as my parents did. I was a little disappointed that I didn't seem to have any race other than Caucasian in me. That would have been even more interesting.

Maybe you skipped over my little dissertation, and that's OK. To reward you for tuning in, though, here's some cuteness: Soren was riding the monorail during a recent trip to Seattle. Clearly he prefers his book to really drinking in the experience. Maybe he's going to be a proofreader when he grows up!

What's on my needles: "Green Tea" socks for me, second sock. Dogwood Blossoms still holding, and Christmas Waffle sweater moving along, with the second sleeve (second version) underway.

What's on my loom: Belated Christmas present scarves, holding. I hope to make some progress this week. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Listing to Phantoms by Dean Koontz, from Audible. Still reading Pemberly to Waterloo by Anna Elliot in iBooks, bought through Book Bub. Also listening to the Fiber Hooligan podcast and the Knit Picks podcast, as usual.

What's my app of the week: It has to be the Messages app. I've found I'm using it more all the time, as I get used to a phone service that doesn't charge for texting. It really came in handy during the film festival.

What's in my wine glass: Bogle Vineyards Petite Sirah, 2011. Very nice. (My wine steward doesn't buy bad wine.)

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.

The Sundance Knitter/Quilter

Sundance has taken up a lot of my time this week. We start each shift with a meeting. Here are some of my fellow volunteers at the meeting.

Sunday was especially time-consuming. The last film Sunday night was three hours long, which meant I got home at nearly 2:00 AM! I have seen three films so far, and they have all been good. When I'm not working in the theater, I often have time to knit, keeping an eye on the patrons who come and go during a film or during the meeting before my 8-hr. shift starts (or 9-hr. Sunday). 

However, I managed to fit in the Common Threads meeting at Georgette's. Margareth was working on a pullover that she was going to have to adjust to fit, so she and I did some math together. (It's always better to do math with a friend.) Several people were working on scarves. 

Georgette had to do some repairs to a couple of beautiful needlepoint pillows she had made. (Georgette is our needlepoint specialist. 

The purchased I-spy squares arrived. Here they are, ready to be cut to 4 1/2". 

Both sets of purchased I-spy squares appear to be identical, but it doesn't matter, since I'm making two. I suggest if you order two packages for the same quilt, you should let the vendor (in my case, Piecemaker Quilts) know that you need them all to be different. Now I've found more 4 1/2" I-spy squares at the bottom of a bin in my stash. However, some of those are not really worth using. I'll put aside any I can't use (I don't plan on making bed-size quilts!!!!) for a potential future baby. 

I managed to work on the Christmas Waffle sweater. I wasn't liking how the first sleeve was coming out, because it was constructed top-down, while the body was bottom-up. There's a slight difference in the top and the bottom of the pattern rounds, and that was bothering me.

I stuffed some tissue inside the sleeve and took this closeup, so you can see what I mean. The holes in the waffle pattern look like little hearts right-side-up. (They look like upside-down hearts upside-down.)

I also didn't like putting in decreases with the pattern. I think it's easier to make increases fit into a pattern of this type. There were some other things I was unhappy about, besides the fact that I was knitting more tightly, they mostly had to do with the confusion of jumping around in the pattern copy. I was hating the process. I decided to try making a sleeve bottom-up, without taking out the other sleeve, almost done. I also wrote out the instructions (sort of short-hand) to eliminate jumping around. I'm liking it better. 

Sooooo…I'm off to the frog pond for that first try on the sleeve. But looking at the bright side: I get to have that fun all over again, and this time I'll know I"m doing it right, so it will be more fun.

What's on my needles: "Green Tea" socks for me, second sock past the gusset.  Dogwood Blossoms holding, and Christmas Waffle sweater moving along, with the first sleeve almost done (second version).

What's on my loom: Belated Christmas present scarves, making progress. I have 24" done on the first scarf. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Just finished The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey, from Audible and ready to start something else. Dragonseye by Anne McCaffrey was deleted by the library so I'm back to reading Pemberly to Waterloo by Anna Elliot in iBooks, bought through Book Bub until the first book becomes available again. Also listening to the Fiber Hooligan podcast and the Knit Picks podcast, as usual.

What's my app of the week: It has to be the new Sundance Film Festival app. I can check information on films, answer questions for patrons about scheduling, etc. It also has the e-waitlist function built in. It has been useful for answering questions asked by patrons when I'm on duty. 

What's in my wine glass: Twisted Old Vine Zinfandel 2011 vintage, by Twisted Vinyards. One of my personal favorites. 

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.

Confessions of an Obsessive Project Starter

I'm really, really, trying to finish up some UFOs before starting any new projects. However, with two grandsons coming up on second birthdays, I'm under the gun to make two I-spy quilts. 

This week I started cutting out 4.5" squares for both quilts. So far, I have 31 cut for each. I need 25 more. I have fabric for a few more, but needed to find additional fabrics with pictures of everyday objects for the boys to recognize and name as they learn language. You may remember the I-spy quilt I made for Daphne:

It was backed with some Dr. Seuss fabric and a panel with The Cat in the Hat, Daphne's favorite book at the time. I managed to find an Etsy shop that had packs of 24 5" squares of I-spy fabrics, so I ordered two packs.  

I'm still making an effort to complete UFOs, though. I'm on the third panel of the Delectable Pathways quilt, and this week I finished sewing the stems down and cutting out the leaves. 

Now for the Christmas Waffle sweater for DH. Well, here's what's been happening. I've been making progress on the first sleeve, but with growing discontent. The body is worked from the bottom up. The sleeves are worked from the top down. With many motifs there isn't much difference, but for the waffle stripe (at least from close-up), there is a definite direction. I don't know if you can tell here, but the lace part makes little triangles that point down. On the sleeve, worked from the top down, they point up. Not a big deal unless you look closely, especially with such dark yarn. (I used a flash for this photo, but I don't have that much light when I'm knitting.)

Then there's the issue with the process. I haven't been enjoying working on the sleeve. My lack of enjoyment has transferred into a tighter gauge (not a huge difference, but still). It has been hard to keep track of the decreases, on the dark yarn, and hard to fit them into the pattern. It's also difficult to count sts because of the dark yarn and the YOs. In addition, the instructions for the Waffle Stripe are in one place, the Tunisian Stripe is in two additional places, and how you put it all together is elsewhere, not to mention there's a separate page for the sleeve shaping. Flipping through pages can be annoying. Even though I have the pattern pretty much memorized by now, I still like to keep track of where I am, so I don't have to find a good light late at night to "read" my knitting. All this means I haven't been enjoying it. Now this knitter isn't entirely about the process, but it's an important part of my knitting fun. Last night I finally decided I might need to REBOOT. I haven't frogged the first sleeve yet, but I started a new one from the bottom up, and I'm finding I'm enjoying it much more. It's also going faster. I already have the ribbing and three stripes done. I'm keeping track of the increases with stitch markers. I also wrote out the pattern, row-by-row, so I can keep track of where I am in the pattern without flipping through pages.

I received a Knit Picks order last week. My Christmas/birthday shopping spree included my choice of items from my wish list on Knit Picks. I decided on Wool of the Andes Bulky for rugs.

The colors are (top, from left) Avocado, Navy, Bluebird, Yonder, Cadet, Silver, (bottom, from left) Bare (2), Caribou, Chocolate, Coal (2). However, I have to finish the scarves on my loom before I can warp for more rugs. (One of the nice things about weaving is you have to finish what's on the loom before you can warp for a new project, unless you have more than one loom.)

Soren's Green Pastures cardigan is finished and ready to go into the mail.

Vintage Stitchers met at Diane's on Thursday. Joanie and I braved a blizzard to get there and back. Here are some of Diane's wonderful quilts, displayed on the walls.

Carol was there. She has continued to make Mother Bear Project bears. This one is all done except for the face.

Barbara was having knee-replacement surgery, so we missed her, but Rebecca says she's recuperating well.

While at Vintage Stitchers, I sewed the buttons on the cardigan for Soren and then worked on the Delectable Pathways appliqué quilt panel.

This week will be busy. Sundance starts on Thursday. We pick up our uniforms on Tuesday, DH works Thursday afternoon and evening, and my first shift is Friday. I should be able to take a portable project along to work on when I have a job that isn't inside the theater. I pledge to keep my nose to the grindstone to finish my UFOs. Watch this space!

What's on my needles: "Green Tea" socks for me, second sock past the gusset. Dogwood Blossoms holding, and Christmas Waffle sweater moving along.

What's on my loom: Belated Christmas present scarves, making progress. I have 18" done on the first scarf. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey, then Emily Goes to Exeter by M. Beaton, and now I'm on The Gates of Sleep, also by Mercedes Lackey, all from Audible. Reading Dragonseye by Anne McCaffrey from the library on the Kindle app, checked out using the Overdrive app. Also listening to the Fiber Hooligan podcast and the Knit Picks podcast.

What's my app of the week: I have to mention The Recipe Box again, now that I've used it more. http://therecipeboxapp.com/. I've been adding my favorite recipes to it. I love that it doesn't turn itself off while I'm cooking. (Now, if I can get my cooking to stop turning family off....)

What's in my wine glass: Tres Pinos "Three Pines Cuvée" red wine, 2011 vintage. Very nice!

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.

Holiday Fun, Part Deux

From Wisconsin, we drove 10 hours to Peru, Indiana, just north of Kokomo to visit DS1 and DDIL1.

DS1 and DDIL1 had her grandkids to visit, so it was a full house, with four adults, three kids and four dogs. The kids have grown up a lot since we saw them last. We visited the library in Peru to get books for Kyle, the youngest. I was amazed with how many more books they have than our tiny library does!

Kyle took a liking to Sunny. She liked him, too.

I got some funny money for yarn and fabric for Christmas and birthday. DDIL Patty and I went to Little Scraps, the quilt shop in Kokomo, and picked up some bargains in the last hours of their end-of-the-year sale. (I wrote about them during my last visit.) This is my haul from Little Scraps. (My yarn money went to Knit Picks, and my order may be waiting for me when I pick up the mail.)

They have moved things around a little since my last visit, but the same nice ladies run the shop. (The brown fabric with the rose hips on it is a different color way of the same fabric I used in my hexagon quilt. That one had a cheddar background. This was all they had left, so I had to snatch it.)

We had a nice New Year's Day dinner, with black-eyed peas, broiled salmon, veggies, brown rice and bread. 

We used our DVR at home to watch the Rose Bowl game by accessing it through the Dish app and feeding it from DS1's computer to the TV. 

They brought out a heater to keep the old people warm. Their dogs liked it, too. Here's Odie, enjoying the heat.

I finally got to take a photo of the appliqué quilt I made a few years ago and gave to our Son and DDIL as a Christmas present s couple of years ago. It's hanging on the wall in the computer/workroom

The border fabric was a challenge fabric for one of the last activities of our now-defunct Silver Queen Quilters Quilt Guild. We were required to use five fabrics. We had size requirements, too, but any techniques were acceptable, including embellishments and embroidery. I used googly eyes, and spangles for castanets. I used the peppers wearing sombreros in the challenge fabric as an inspiration for the song, "La Cucaracha."

I'm trying to get photos of all the quilts I made back before I started taking photos. (Not all of them are in my possession.)

While traveling, I've been making progress on the Green Tea Socks. Here's the first sock. The second one is moving along. 

We hit the road again on Friday, after a great visit with DS1 and DDIL1, trying to dodge snow storms on our way home. 

What's on my needles: "Green Tea" socks for me, second sock progressing well.  Dogwood Blossoms and Christmas Waffle sweater moving along.

What's on my loom: Christmas present scarves, ready to continue.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: I'm still listening to The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey from Audible. Reading Dragonseye by Anne McCaffrey from the library on the Kindle app, checked out using the Overdrive app. Also listening to the Fiber Hooligan podcast and the Knit Picks podcast.

What's my app of the week: This week it was a tie, a nice change from having to rack my brain for a choice. Dropbox. Useful for sharing videos with friends and family. I needed it to send the videos of Daphne's recital to her parents. Or maybe Dish, which allowed us to watch a game on a channel the kids didn't have. (Various travel apps also were in contention.)

What's in my wine glass: Green Fin California Red Table Wine 2012. Good value!

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.