Dog Days of Summer

Vintage Stitchers met at Marilyn's. She met us at the door wearing this apron Barbara made for her:

She was working on a quilt for fall that will include this machine-appliquéd pumpkin block: 

Rebecca is using some lovely fabrics to make a Drunkard's Path quilt using the hand-appliqué method.

Carol didn't like her Dresden Plate blocks, so she cut them into squares for this table runner:

Julie has been working on a Storm at Sea quilt, but it's for someone else, so she did't want me to publish a photo. You'll just have to image it huge, but without the borders Eleanor Burns used in her version.

I finished my Uintas Shawl. Here's what it looked like hot off the needles:

Here it is blocking: 

My Ravelry project page is here. I wrote up extensive notes about the project, and they're on that page, if you decide to make this shawl. The pattern, Washington Park Shawl, is available through Ravelry. It was designed by Debbi Stone for the Rose City Yarn Crawl in March, and presented as a mystery KAL. My DDIL2 gave me the pattern as a gift. I picked some Knit Picks Palette from my stash. I chose Sky and Whirlpool, two skeins of each. Although they were different dye lots, it didn't matter in this project. You could make this using four different colors, although I only had 2 g left from the ball I used for the border, cutting it rather close to finish with one 50 g ball of yarn. It ended up 65" wide and 24.5" from the top to the tip of one of the points close to the center.

In family news, our Sunny celebrated Dog Day last week by pretending to be a cat. She caught and tried to eat the mouse we have been trying to evict from our house all summer. The mouse (not in photo) was not available for comment, as it died at the scene, but we were able to keep Sunny from eating it. From now on, our girl dog will be known by her Native American/Chinese name: Mousie-Tongue.

And today (August 31st) is our Rocky's 11th birthday. Happy birthday, Rocky!

What's on my needles: Pink Monkey Socks, Fair Isle Flower Socks. Maybe this week I'll CO the March of the Fiber Animals Cardigan for DH. September 1st is my goal for CO. 

What's on my Featherweight: First Ladies Quilt. Still.

What's on my wheel: Languishing.

What's on my loom: Multi-scrap scarf, no progress since before the trip.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished Georgette Heyer's Penhallow, one of her mysteries. The victim was so evil, I wanted to kill him myself. No happy-ever-after for anyone, but delicious dark humor. Then I listened to Gerald and Elizabeth by D. E. Stevenson, one of my favorite authors. I read the book years ago, but had forgotten how it went. A delightful story. Now listening to Mercedes Lackey's Blood Red. All of these were from Audible. Finished James Patterson and Maxine Paetro's Private in iBooks. It was very good. Now reading Restless Hearts by Mona Ingram on the Kindle app.

What's in my wine glass: Beringer's Pinot Grigio, a nice choice for hot weather.

What's my tip of the week: Need a design wall you can put away when you aren't using it? I use a queen-size Warm & Natural batt with a hem at the top and bottom for battens that can be used to support and keep the batt flat. I hook the top batten over hooks on a closet in my work room. When not in use, it can be rolled up and stored. You don't need to use pins for small blocks, especially if you aren't walking by closely. Not all quilt batting holds together this well, so be careful in your choice.

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.