Spring Has Sprung

It has been another crazy week. Besides my spring cleaning, Ellen and I got together to watch Mary Sorensen's hand-appliqué DVD.

I got out my almost-finished block. This is the cardinal design she uses in this wonderful instructional DVD. I took her class a few years ago, and had already finished this one, so now I'm making a female cardinal facing the other way. We don't get cardinals here, and I miss seeing their bright plumage. Ellen will be going back to Florida soon, and I'll miss her, so it was fun to get together to work on appliqué. 

Of course, Common Threads met on Thursday. Susan is back in town. She was working on some boot toppers.

Karan is also finishing up some boot toppers, almost the same pattern. 

Kay is working on one of those ruffled scarves. 

Georgette, our needlepoint queen, was working on her needlepoint. 

Julie has been making progress on the ladybug sweater for her granddaughter. (More pattern details are in my blog from two weeks ago.)

Karan brought her finished shawlette to show. She has made two of these.

Joanie was continuing to work on her James Bond Baby Sweater. (I couldn't find this patten online. I'll try to get information next time I see her.)

Susan always has a new kind of project to show us. This is a scarf made with Hot Spots. 

You iron on the little glue dots, using a stencil to get the shape you want. Then you rub on colored foil, and it comes off as little dots on the fabric.

Susan has also been experimenting with Eco-colour. 

You place plants and flowers on special fabric already prepared for dyeing, fold the fabric over and hammer it until the juices color the fabric. I think I've seen something similar on Simply Quilts a few years ago.

My Madison cardigan is coming along. The body is finished and one sleeve is done. While working on the sleeves, I blocked the body. I don't have enough blocking mats to do the whole thing at once, but it will take some time for the sleeves anyway.

The yarn is Knit Picks' City Tweed HW in "Romance." It's lovely, soft yarn, with merino and alpaca. When I took the pieces out of the wash water, I realized they had grown quite a bit, as sometimes happens with certain yarns and knitted patterns. After rolling them up in a towel to get rid of the excess moisture, I put the pieces down on my blocking mats and pinned them to the size and shape in the diagram that came with the pattern, patting the knitted fabric in place to fit. The pieces went right back into size and shape.

We had more snow, but between storms, we found time to hike with the pups. There isn't enough snow on the ground to snowshoe without walking or driving a long way, but our local trails have only a little snow, and not much mud, and the weather has been warm in the daytime. 

On Sunday we went to the opera in Salt Lake City. We saw Turandot. It was good, as usual.

I've been lamenting the lack of a good photo of Zachary. His parents finally found a way to "hamper" his constant motion to get this photo.

What's on my needles: Madison cardigan, working on the second sleeve. "Green Tea" socks, no progress this week, because the Madison is so portable. When I finish the Madison, I plan to start the BSJ for BS2, a little brother or sister for Soren, due in August. 

What's on my loom: Waffle scarf, no progress this week, but I'll have to get on it so I can get the warp off and make some rugs. I'm inspired to weave again.

What's on my Featherweight: Soren's I-spy quilt, no progress this week. I also want to get this finished, so I can start another quilt. I have several planned and one to finish that's already started. I have the Lincoln's Log Cabin quilt kit from Connecting Threads, recently added to my pipeline, but I have others to finish first.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Listening to Debbie Macomber's 1105 Yakima Street. It has a lot of characters and is more like a soap opera than her "Blossom Street" series, not my favorite kind of book, and having to learn all the characters after not reading the previous books has been a challenge, but I'll finish it. I have to find out how it comes out. I'm still watching "Top-Down Icelandic Sweater" with Ragga Eiriksdótir and Joe Cunningham's "Pattern-Free Quiltmaking," both classes from Craftsy. I also picked up the weaving video download from Interweave, "Weave a Good Rug" by Tom Knisely. (The link goes to the DVD, but I got the downloaded version.) The Interweave downloaded videos are good. You can't ask questions or make notes in the video, as with the Craftsy classes, but you can stop and go back or repeat something, and you have lifetime access to them.

What's my app of the week: Public Radio Player from Public Radio Exchange.   

What's in my wine glass: Alice White Shiraz 2012. Good value 

What's my tip of the week: As described above, when you block knitted garments that need to fit, don't just block to shape. You have to block to size as well. The Christmas Waffle sweater could have fit a tall man with a 50" chest when it came out of the water, but it blocked to a perfect fit for my DH' more petite 40" chest. 

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.