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.