Moving Along

The Oregon Autumn Cardigan is moving along. I've passed the armholes, where the fronts are divided from the back. You can see the motifs on the right side are a bit higher than on the left. That's normal with knitting in the round. (It's called a jog.) When I cut the steek and pick up stitches for the button and buttonhole bands, they will line up. If I were knitting a pullover with these motifs, I would have the new round start under the arm, where it's not too obvious.

I put the body stitches at the armhole on waste yarn and cast on new stitches for a steek above them. I'm about 1" above the waste yarn now, but I have all the stitches back on one needle now, so it's harder to get another good photo.

Meanwhile, the new book is moving along. I wanted to include Pam, the new character, in it, so I did a photo shoot this week to add her to an existing story I plan to use in it.

Stay tuned for more information about that.

Charlie's brother, Jim, came back from Arizona this week and stopped in 

Bend on his way to his home in Florence. He arrived on Tuesday and left the next day to stop to visit a friend who lives north of us. While he was here, we took the pups to Good Dog Trail for a hike and some off-leash time. We finally found the easy way to get to the river.

The current isn't too strong there, and the pups went into the water to get a drink. (It's so much tastier than the filtered water we bring from home.) It isn't warm enough to swim yet, though.

This part of the trail is really beautiful, and it was a lovely day.

I had my Walk for a Dog app running, but I must have accidentally paused it. When I realized it was paused, we had already gone on, so there's a gap.

Jim was keeping track of our hike with his watch, though. When we got back to the car, it said we had gone about 3.3 miles. It also keeps track of steps. That reminded me that my new hearing aids have that capability, too. I just have to remember to turn on my phone and the Bluetooth before I take my hearing aids out of the charger.

Jim has moved along, but we're planning to have a joint camping trip or two this summer.

We had some spinach ravioli this week. We have a new basil plant, so I cut some leaves up to sprinkle on top with some tiny tomatoes, a splash of olive oil, salt and pepper, and a little Parmesan.

Also moving along are our bulbs. These are the hyacinths. (The fence needs to be replaced. One of our neighbors drove over it when everything was covered with snow and he was trying to help us with his snowblower.)

We have dwarf/miniature daffodils, too. We think the squirrels ate our regular daffodils.

The tulips are coming up, but it's a bit early for them to bud yet. Our lilac bushes have little leaf buds.

I did get the binding strips for Daphne's quilt sewn together and pressed. I'll be all ready to sew the binding on the quilt when it's ready. I didn't get her doll sent off yet, but I have it all ready to go, and there's plenty of time. I hope to do that today.

Meanwhile, Zachary is enjoying his new quilt.

You can just see a bit of his head sticking out at the top.

Now moving along to finish Charlie's T-shirt quilt.

I have a lot of difficulty responding to comments to my blog posts because of technical issues beyond my control (my lack of understanding of how things work). Message me on Facebook, Ravelry or Spoutible if you need information.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart". Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of any of our books, including Emil, Mariah or Classic Tales Retold, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Still working on the Oregon Cardigan.

What's on my loom: Still in its corner under the windows, not warped, but dusted, at least.

What's on my sewing machine: Binding for Daphne's quilt.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: We needed warming up, so this week's story is about how the weather gets hot in the summer. Why is that? What can we do to cool off? Here's Heat Wave.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Listening to After Death by Dean Koontz. I'm still reading Elfen Königin by Holly Black, translated from English.

What's in my wine glass: SpiceRack Zinfandel 2019. We've had this before Nice!

What's my tip of the week: As we're in an election year, we're beginning to get requests for money disguised as polls. They tend to go through a series of questions designed to get you to say "yes" (i.e., "Do you agree that....) and then they ask you for money. Watch out for polls that are actually dirty tricks, though. You may get a poll that starts out just asking you about yourself (gender, race, age, etc.) and if you plan to vote, which candidate you would vote for if the election were held today, and so on, like a normal poll. That's fine, but then they might go on and ask if you would be more likely to vote for Candidate X if you knew (list of admirable things about the candidate) and would you still want to vote for Candidate Y if you knew (list of unsubstantiated negative charges and rumors). This happened to me, and I reported it to the campaigns of X and Y, as well as to the local political parties. Then I complained directly to the polling agency. This is a cheap version of mud-slinging commercials. Don't fall for it! There are also artificial intelligence recordings that duplicate the voice of a well-known person or candidate telling you not to vote or not to vote by mail. These should be reported, as well.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes. 

Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook is available from the BookBabyBookshop and other booksellers worldwide. Poems included are Valentine's Day, Keeping Pets, Back to School, Victor the Vulture, The Week Before Christmas, Insomnia and Veronika's Vocabulary Verses.

The stories in Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are also still available from booksellers. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The three stories in Mariah are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less. 

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 or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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Starting Over

Remember that nightgown I was making for Daphne's new doll, Elizabeth? Well, it's finished. 

Here's how it looks in back, with two dainty off-white buttons and a ribbon to tighten up the neckline.

Don't remember the eyelets in the beginning of the project I shared last week? Well, there's a story behind that. 

I was having a hard time with the project. I was using a 2.25mm needle size and lace weight yarn, to try to make the dress/nightgown smaller to fit this doll. After about 1/2", I discovered I had 36 sts on the needle instead of the called-for 46. I ripped out and CO again. Then, as I got a way down the yoke, I wasn't happy with the size, which looked too big. Not wanting to start over again, I was contemplating putting ribbon around the neck to make it smaller, which would have required picking up the neck stitches to make eyelets for a ribbon to go through. I wanted to knit it in the round after joining the underarms to avoid having a seam in the back. I got the stitches on two circular needles and joined my work, but it was leaving big gaps in the lace at the underarms. I thought I might be able to fix that afterwards, too, so I soldiered on.

Then I was busy Tuesday morning and not paying attention to Sandy when I happened to glance out the window. He had my knitting out in the backyard! It was my fault for leaving it unattended, but he hasn't stolen anything more than a tissue for some time, so I had started to trust him. Big mistake! The yarn I finally retrieved looked like this. It took another couple of hours before I found my knitting on the needles.

Fortunately, I had two center-pull balls of the lace-weight yarn I was using, so I started over. This time I used smaller (2.0mm) needles, counted my stitches after the CO to make sure I had the right number, worked an eyelet row as Row 2 as K1, (K2tog, YO) across and ending with K1. When I joined the underarms, I put the two circular needles together and switched the last stitch on the first needle with the first stitch on the second needle, repeating that at the other underarm. That made the connection tight. The rest went very fast this time.

I finished it Thursday evening. I blocked it long, so it would look more like a nightgown. It's easy to do that with lace. I'm very happy with the result. Now if I want, I can untangle that mess of yarn and wash it. Maybe it will be useable for something. The pattern is the Eugenie Dress. My Ravelry project page for the nightie is here. I made notes there of everything I did to get the dress to fit this smaller doll and work in the round instead of flat.

On Friday, I got Elizabeth dressed for her trip across the country. I'll send her off this week. Here she is in the little tea dress she came with.

She will stay warm with her little princess coat with its dainty covered buttons and her hat with its little broach. She also has a little embroidered pocketbook, but I left that in the bag with the corgis.

You can imagine her on the train with her two corgis in their crates as she orders tea and biscuits from the porter. I was very impressed with the workmanship on the clothes and shoes, and so very happy she had panties! The doll is Ruby Red Siblies Limited Edition Elizabeth. She is supposed to be Elizabeth II as a child.

After the nightie was done, I got back to working on my Oregon Autumn Cardigan. It's coming along and is fun to work on. I'm almost done working the second chart. There are two more rows, then I'll check measurements. For the smallest size, I'm supposed to work through Row 12 on the chart a second time.

I dropped off Daphne's quilt at the quilter on Thursday. She may have it done in time for me to sew on the binding and send it off for Daphne's birthday, but if not, at least the doll will be there in time, and I can send a photo of the quilt. In the meantime, I have the binding ready to sew together and should have it ready to go when I get the quilt back.

We had a lovely day on Tuesday, and cold, rainy/snowy weather was predicted for later in the week, so we went to Good Dog Trail for a hike. It's an off-leash area, so the pups really enjoy running back and forth along the trail.

They never go too far from us, and they tend to stay together.

There are always other dogs to greet, mostly bigger ones. Occasionally we pause to catch our breath. It was pretty warm for this time of year, especially in the sun, so I'm sure the running made them feel hot.

Here's the route from the hike using the Walk for a Dog app from WoofTrax.

It's mostly still cold, though. We've had a fire in the fireplace every night.

It rained on Wednesday and started snowing that night as I was coming home from choir practice. It snowed off and on all day on Thursday. Fortunately the roads were clear when I drove to the quilter's home in the afternoon. The snow had melted by Sunday.

We had some tangerines that had dried so much they were hard to get out of their peels. I hate to waste food, so I cut them open and scraped out the flesh with my fingers. They were a squishy mess when I got through, but I ran them in the blender with egg, honey and oil and mixed the liquid with flour and baking powder. The result was this yummy Tangerine Coffee Cake, just in time for National Coffee Cake Day on Sunday.

Here's the recipe.

A very happy birthday today to Zachary! (We're having an eclipse in your honor.)

I have a lot of difficulty responding to comments to my blog posts because of technical issues beyond my control (my lack of understanding of how things work). Message me on Facebook, Ravelry or Spoutible if you need information.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart". Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of any of our books, including Emil, Mariah or Classic Tales Retold, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Finished the Eugenie Nightie for Elizabeth, and now back to the Oregon Cardigan.

What's on my loom: Still in its corner under the windows, but not warped, but dusted.

What's on my sewing machine: Binding for Daphne's quilt.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: This is another reedited rerun, this time from August 2019. The dolls use the ice cream machine to make ice cream and notice that it expands while freezing. Why is that? Find out in Ice Cream Social.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished listening to Jan Karon's At Home in Mitford. I plan to listen to more from this series. Just finished listening to Andy Wier's Artemis last night. I'm still trying to decide which book in my queue to listen to next. For my physical-book reading, I'm still reading Elfen Königin by Holly Black, translated from English.

What's in my wine glass: Usuku Chenin Blanc 2019 from the Western Cape, South Africa. I still don't have much sense of smell, but the mouth feel is what I would call "buttery."

What's my tip of the week: If you enjoy knitting but feel frustrated because you have to start a project over again or even just rip out several rows, try to think of it as having that fun all over again, but this time you know to avoid that mistake.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes. 

Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook is available from the BookBabyBookshop and other booksellers worldwide. Poems included are Valentine's Day, Keeping Pets, Back to School, Victor the Vulture, The Week Before Christmas, Insomnia and Veronika's Vocabulary Verses.

The stories in Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are also still available from booksellers. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The three stories in Mariah are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less. 

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 or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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The End of a Chapter

Daphne's quilt top is done. On Thursday, I'll drop it off with the quilter.

Zachary's quilt arrived safely his home. I had bought extra insurance, because I didn't feel safe about sending all that work off across the country without it. I haven't had the Post Office lose anything yet, though.

I finished a few more inches of the Oregon Autumn Cardigan this week.

Now that Daphne's quilt is finished, I have her new doll to dress. I'm knitting her a nightgown, but I have to downsize from the pattern, because the doll is 70% of the size, so I'm using smaller needles and lace-weight yarn.

This will give you an idea of what the doll looks like. She is supposed to be Elizabeth II as a child with two of her long line of Corgis.

Monday was Sandy's "Gotcha Day." It has been one year since we picked him up.

He has been a very busy boy this week, but he was always sleeping when I grabbed my phone to get a photo. (He's so cute when he sleeps.) He really enjoys the day bed in my workroom, where I have been spending a lot of time sewing.

We did manage to get a few walks in during the week, but we had a lot of rain, so we mostly stayed on the trails.

Sunday was Easter, of course. The choir sang for two services. There was one note in the anthem where they needed me. (I'm a specialist, like the triangle player, except that I can produce other notes.) The choir is a great bunch of people, and I enjoy spending time with them.

Our older son, Tim, sent this Easter photo of himself with his step-granddaughter. She's a cutie!

I did some cooking this week, as usual. One of our breakfasts was pancakes.

Ha! This wasn't the end of the chapter! April Fools!

I have a lot of difficulty responding to comments to my blog posts because of technical issues beyond my control (my lack of understanding of how things work). Message me on Facebook, Ravelry or Spoutible if you need information.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart". Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of any of our books, including Emil, Mariah or Classic Tales Retold, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Still the Oregon Cardigan. (I'll be on this one for a while), but now also the nightgown for Elizabeth.

What's on my loom: Back in it's corner, but not warped yet.

What's on my sewing machine: Daphne's quilt binding.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: In this reedited rerun from July 2019, Veronika Sews, we go to a quilt show and then the fabric store with Veronika. Then she lets Charlotte help her make a dress. Here, Veronika is teaching Charlotte how to thread the needle of the sewing machine.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished listening to All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer. Now listening to Jan Karon's At Home in Mitford. I listened to several from this series years ago and really enjoyed them. For my physical-book reading, I'm still reading Elfen Königin by Holly Black, translated from English.

What's in my wine glass: Bruno Pinot Noir 2021.

What's my tip of the week: When I sew borders on a quilt that's bigger than the width of the fabric, I cut the selvedges off at the same place on each piece, then I sew two pieces together end-to-end with a 1/4" seam. I put the quilt top down on the floor folded in half with the two edges that will get the border together. Then I measure with the border fabric I just pieced down the middle of the quilt top and mark where to stop sewing. I fold the end over at my mark and press it. Then I pin the fabric to the quilt and sew it. When I'm done sewing, I trim off the extra and use it to measure how much I'll be cutting off of the other border. The reason I measure down the middle is because the edges can get stretched, so the middle is a more accurate measure. I may have some easing, but by sewing with the looser side underneath, it takes care of itself. Both sides will be essentially the same length, too.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes. 

Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook is available from the BookBabyBookshop and other booksellers worldwide. Poems included are Valentine's Day, Keeping Pets, Back to School, Victor the Vulture, The Week Before Christmas, Insomnia and Veronika's Vocabulary Verses.

The stories in Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are also still available from booksellers. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The three stories in Mariah are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less. 

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 or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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