Out and About

Here's my progress on the Kevät sweater.

Kevät means "Spring" in Finnish, but I doubt I'll "finish" it before Summer, as that season will soon be here. If it doesn't look as if I've made much progress this week  it's because I ended up frogging eight rounds. I found out when communicating with my DIL who is making the same sweater that there was supposed to be a repeat of Rounds 1-14, as plainly indicated on the chart...in red. (See photo)

If you can't see the red line between Rounds 14 and 15 on the chart, it's because I printed the instructions in B&W. Here's how it's supposed to look.

I've been having a difficult time reading the chart anyway, because the background for the chart is so dark. Now I've enlarged the chart and printed it again, with the line for the repeats filled in. Fortunately, the top part of the chart starts out the same as the repeated section, so I didn't have more rounds to frog. Now I'm almost back to where I started.

It has been a busy week, with the camping trip to Suttle Lake. We had a good time, although it was very cold at night. We have two new batteries now, so we were able to run the heater as needed during the night.

We took the dog stroller around the lake when we hiked the trail. It's about 3 1/2 miles. Rocky walked nearly 2 1/4 miles of it, although broken up by a couple of periods of riding in the stroller.

Imagine our surprise when we notice another stroller coming towards us! As they got closer, we saw that the stroller also held a dog. We had a nice chat with the dog's two-leggeds.

We returned home on Thursday and spent a couple of days unloading the trailer and doing laundry.

Most of Saturday afternoon was taken up repairing the gate to our backyard. DH needed someone to hold the gate upright while he reinstalled the bolts, which didn't want to go through all three holes...because they weren't lined up properly. It was difficult to line them up, because we couldn't see the hole in the post between the two pieces of wood. Eventually it worked, but it was a very tedious process.

We have ordered a daybed and a smaller table for my workroom, so it can double as a guest room, besides being a cozy place to work. The mattress pads have already arrived.

Sunday WE WENT TO A REAL IN-PERSON PARTY!!!! It was an end-of-the-year get-together. It was for the choir members and their spouses. It's strange to have a party to celebrate the end of a year like the one we have had. There were people I had only met during Zoom sessions and others I hadn't seen at all for a year. Everyone was vaccinated, and it was outdoors, so it was very safe. Our hosts both sing in the choir. The husband has a Finnish Goshawk, which he brought out to show off. He uses his bird to hunt rabbits, but since the bird only weighs about 1 1/2 lbs, he doesn't bring back the local rabbits, which are 7-8 lbs. each. He just tags them and flies off, sort of like keeping score or like the falconer's version of catch-and-release. This was the only photo I took during the delightful afternoon and evening.

Our peonies are blooming. We brought this one inside to keep us company.

Where's my blog: As you may know, the entity that notifies people when a blog they follow posts will discontinue notifications in July. This motivated me to link my blog to Bloglovin', as I did some time ago with The Doll's Storybook. If you are following my blog want to continue following after July, I recommend you go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Still the Kevät sweater (see above), the Brioche Shawl Feathers shawl and the new dish mat.

What's on my sewing machine: Waiting.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. No more progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: "Best Buds." Billy and Emil are best friends, but they enjoy the company of the girls, too.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer on Chirp. While we were camping, we also listened to one episode of The Cisco Kid, complete with commercials from back when we were kids. Just downloaded The Rose Code by Kate Quinn, a new author for me, from Audible.

What's in my wine glass: Radford Dale Nudity 2018 Syrah Voor Paardeberg with no added sulfites, very nice!

What's my tip of the week: A basil plant prefers 80-90ºF, some direct sun every day and standing water around the roots to be fully happy, but as long as the temperature doesn't go below 50ºF or the plant is put into an insulated bag or box or covered up with a blanket (with something holding the blanket away from the leaves), it will survive.

Where's my book: Mariah: Stories from the Doll's Storybook is available from Amazon worldwide. Also available from BookBaby, Barnes & Noble and other booksellers. Royalties go to support pediatric cancer research and treatment. The three stories in the book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with few changes. The stories (and links to them) are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

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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Peggy Visits the Frog Pond

On the bright side, the first appliqué block of the First Ladies Quilt, the "Martha Washington Wreath," is finished.



There will be two of these, and I have started the second one. I'm using the needleturn method. My local quilt shop, Davidene's Quilt Shop, is having a class in Eleanor Burns' Tales of First Ladies. The next class is next month. (See last week's post for the first pieced blocks for this quilt.)

I've also made some progress on the paper-pieced Pine Burr quilt. Here's the second of 16 blocks. (I haven't removed the paper yet.)

The grey fabric in the big triangles will also be used in the borders. I had bought 1/2 yard of it on sale at Elaine's Quilt Block, a quilt shop in Salt Lake City. Then I decided I needed more, but they didn't have any. However, they were able to give me the name of the line of fabric. After an online search, I found some at an Easy shop, No Place Like Home Quilt Shop. In two days I had an extra three yards. I couldn't have found it without the help of the nice ladies at Elaine's!

The local quilt guild met Thursday evening, and we had a demo on paper piecing. Saturday I put into use what I had learned and finished the block in less than a day, about three times faster than the first one. (More about the quilt guild meeting later.)

There's a Spin-in in the Knit Picks Knitting Community scheduled for the end of this month. Here's what I'll be spinning:

There are two braids of hand-painted roving from Greenwood Fibers. The one on the left is Polwarth in "Lavender Hedgerow" and on the right is Heathered BFL in "Jingle Bells." I purchased both from Wasatch & Wool in Park City, our own Local Yarn Shop. The fiber in the package is a gift from a friend, a souvenir from New Zealand, from a small supplier. It's Merino sliver.

So far, so good. Now here's the part where Peggy dons her swim fins and walks slowly down to the frog pond....

The Brick Cardigan was coming along great. I had the decreases finished, the short rows turned out almost invisible. Then I tried it on. It was very loose in the neck, clearly too soon to start the ribbing, although that was next in the pattern. That would have been easy enough to fix, but it was also too snug at the armpits.

If you've been following this project, you'll remember that I tightened the gauge to get a firmer fabric and went up a size in the pattern. I thought I had enough rows in the yoke based on my gauge, but clearly I didn't. (It's the math.)

So, off to the frog pond. (For anyone who is a nonknitter or new to knitting, frogging is where you rip out your knitting, as in "rippit, rippit," or what the frog says.)

I'm back on track, but planning on working the decreases every other right-side row until I have about three inches of yoke. Then I'll evaluate how it's going. At some point, I'll change my decreases to every right-side row if I need to, which is what I expect.


More on the bright side, as I was ripping it out, I noticed a mistake I had made in the pattern. One of my cables went over to the left instead of to the right. I could have fixed it later, but it's much easier this way. Here's my mistake, which I left behind in the frog pond:


Common Threads met at Georgette's on Thursday morning. Lynda picked me up. I had planned to walk, because Georgette lives right up the street, and DGD was using my car to take Joanie to the doctor, but Lynda offered to pick me up, because she was going right by my house.

Lynda was making a scarf to go with the hat she showed off last time.


Janet had some news: She has been asked to allow her baby blanket out of Weepaca to be on display at The Wool Cabin (a yarn shop in Salt Lake City)! She's working on another one now. She's a beautiful knitter, although she considers herself to be "a quilter," which she also does well.

Thursday evening was our monthly quilt guild meeting, where Dianne did her demo of paper piecing.



She had been working on a kit she bought several years ago at The Stitchin' Post in Sisters, Oregon. (Unfortunately, the kit is no longer available.) She demonstrated how she does paper piecing using this kit. It depicts the Sisters mountains that give the town where The Stitching' Post quilt shop is located its name.


This part goes under the mountains:


The demonstration was followed by lots of show-and-tell. The group had watched a demonstration of Hawaiian appliqué last month, and several people brought their projects that resulted from the meeting.


It's great meeting in a quilt shop, where we can be inspired by the lovely fabrics.


Linda's heart quilt was great for a February meeting:


Besides the heart quilt, Linda was finishing up a churn dash quilt.


Jill is finishing up this Easter egg quilt.


This star quilt is almost a miniature.


It wasn't supposed to snow until Saturday, so DH and I had planned to go on a hike on Friday, but it snowed. (Boo, Weatherman!) The planned hike had to be moved to a location that wouldn't be muddy and changed into more of a walk. At least the pups got to run off-leash for a while.

This is absolutely not normal snow for February, or even March, in the mountains of Utah. We usually need snowshoes to walk this trail this time of year, and there is no ground to be seen. I wonder where our snow went....

What's on my needles: Brick Cardigan, working on the yoke...again. Also the second Martha Washington's Wreath appliqué block for my First Ladies quilt.

What's on my Featherweight: Pine Burr, second block finished, third in the planning stage.

What's on my loom: Still some warp for another scarf, but still folded up.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished Threading the Needle by Marie Bostwick, from Audible. Now listening to A Second Chance, Vol 3: The Chronicles of St. Mary's by Jodi Taylor. Also reading Charlotte Collins by Jennifer Becton on the Nook app.

What's in my wine glass: C K Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon wild reed Canyon 2012. A lovely wine.

What's my tip of the week: When frogging (see definition above), I like to rip until I get to the row/round before the one where I want to start, then take out the last row/round of stitches one at a time by inserting the needle into the middle of each stitch in that row/round, then pull the stitch above out of it. It's so much easier to pick up the sts and have them facing the right way on the needle while the yarn you're removing is still in them.

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.

She Completes Me

Mary Tudor is finished!

It was 68 days from start to finish, and I was obsessed. Nothing got in my way! She and I had some adventures along the way, though, some of them during the last week of construction.

I don't know what happened, but my math was off for the sleeves, and they came out too long:

With knitting, many things can be fixed without frogging your project. Here's how I fixed the sleeves: First I picked up the sts right about where I wanted the cuff to start.

While doing the first sleeve, I discovered it wasn't as easy to come up with useable sts when there are two colors in a round. After ending up in a real mess, I finally got the cuff knit and everything was OK, but I lost one round of sts.  I used what I learned on the second sleeve, which went much faster. This time I picked up the sts where I wanted, as before, but instead of taking out the row below, I knit one round, then removed a round of sts two rounds below, leaving the extra round until I made sure my sts were stable and I wasn't going to pull out sts I needed:

Then I knit the cuff, following the chart from the top down.

I needed a single button and thought I would pick it up on the way back from the veterinarian’s office on Saturday. When I got to the yarn shop, though, it was 100 degrees in the shade, and even with the windows and sun roof open and parked in the shade, I didn’t want to leave the pups more than five minutes. I popped my head in the door, saw there was only one employee winding yarn and four people waiting, so I left and went home. Going through the box of buttons my DBIL had given me after his wife died, I found this great gem:

It was meant to be! After sewing the button in place, I trimmed the steeks and sewed them down with a row of cross stitches.

Even here in the mountains of Utah, it's getting too warm to do too much heavy knitting. I promise my quilting readers more quilting next week...but first I have to clean up my studio! Then the first thing I'll do is make that house block for the Habitat for Humanity quilt.

We got some hiking in last week and then had a quiet Independence Day with the pups. Soren enjoyed his second birthday at the beach. (We'll be seeing him soon when we go to greet his baby brother.)

What's on my needles: Cat Bordhi's "Bavarian Twisted Stitch" socks from her book, Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles and getting back to my Mr. Foster. Finally!

What's on my Featherweight: Back to Delectable Pathways, still working on the hand appliqué for the last panel. Also ready to start a house block for a quilt for Habitat for Humanity.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished James Patterson's 2nd Chance, from the library through the Overdrive app. Now listening to Beauty and the Werewolf by Mercedes Lackey, one of the Elemental Masters series. Still looking forward to Dean Koontz's The City, as soon as I get my Audible credit for July. Reading Black Diamond Death by Cheryl Bradshaw from Book Bub on the iBooks app.

What's my app of the week: Public Radio from PRX. We can't get radio here in the mountains, but with internet, we have Public Radio whenever we want.

What's in my wine glass: Corbett Canyon Merlot in the big bottle to finish the holiday weekend. Nice finish!

What's my tip of the week:  Make ice tea using solar power. I use salsa bottles, because they make pouring easy. Fill the bottle, add two tea bags and place in the sun until the tea is the color you like. I put a black lid on for regular tea and a yellow one for decaf. You can use a gallon jar if making tea for a crowd.

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.

Cutting Up

Two months into my Mary Tudor cardigan I thought I had the sleeves done, when I discovered a major oopsie while taking this photo:

Do you see it? (Sleeve cap on the left sleeve, to your right in the photo.)

The chart symbols for two of the colors are two different sizes of circles, not very obvious with the sun in your eyes. I was happily knitting on the front deck, paying attention to the decreases for the sleeve cap (and my exciting audiobook), and didn't notice my mistake, not even when I blocked the sleeves. Since I was already working on the collar when I discovered the mistake, I finished that before ripping out the top of the left sleeve. Here's how the collar looks,

The collar, cuffs bottom border and front bands are all garter stitch colorwork, something I've never done before. It was a bit of a challenge, because when you work back and forth, like the collar and front bands, it's easy enough to knit across the front, but then on the back side, you have to switch the yarns every time you change colors, bringing the old color to the front and the new color to the back. For knitting in the round, like the cuffs and bottom band, you have to purl every other round, exchanging the two yarns every time you work with the other color. I got used to doing this in the round and had some difficulty switching to knitting every row, back and forth. Moving the yarn to the front always seems to trigger the purl impulse. I finally got the hang of it. Here's what it looks like. The wrong side is shown on the right in the photo, and the right side, folded over, on the left. 

Now that I'm done with the collar, I'm reknitting the sleeve cap. Fortunately, I didn't have to take out much. I got ready to reknit the incorrect part of the sleeve cap by picking up the sts on the last correct round. (I'm using two circular needles.)

I have plenty of yarn, so I decided to cut off the incorrect part of the sleeve cap right above the picked-up sts.

I could have just frogged it (rip-it, rip-it, for nonknitters), but I had already blocked the sleeves, which caused the sts to cling to each other, making it slower going, and, as I said, saving this little bit of yarn wasn't important. The red squirrels (Chickarees) are building nests for their babies now, so I'll just let them have it. I've been knitting on the sleeve cap and only have about 2.5" to go to BO. If I need to shorten the sleeves, I'll do it pretty much the same way, except that I'll have to remove the yarn below the length I want. Instead of cutting it off, I'll just snip one strand of each color in the top round I want to remove after picking up the sts in the last correct round. (I'll post photos when I get to that.) You can't frog from where you started knitting up, only from where you stopped knitting down.

In quilting news, Vintage Stitchers met this week at Rebecca's. Rebecca has finished her appliqué table runner. 

Barbara is working on this great peacock appliqué:

She also just finished this great Christmas quilt top:

Carol has finished this great charm quilt:

The back is almost as interesting as the front:

(That stripe is three strips of Kaffe Fassett fabrics.)

Zachary and his family have been watching the World Cup games. I get to post lots of photos of Miss Daphne, but it's hard to get photos of Master Zachary because he's a man with moves. This was a good one, though. Maybe both kiddos will play soccer when they get a little older.

What's on my needles: Mary Tudor cardigan, collar done and reknitting the second sleeve cap.

What's on my Featherweight: Back to Delectable Pathways, still working on the hand appliqué for the last panel.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished James Patterson's 3rd Degree and now reading his 2nd Chance, out of order, but that's how they became available from the library through the Overdrive app. Looking forward to Dean Koontz's The City, which comes out tomorrow. Still reading Pursuit and Persuasion by Sally Wright from Book Bub on the Kindle app.

What's my app of the week: Reminders. I tell Siri to remind me to take the yarn out of the freezer after four days. She never sleeps!

What's in my wine glass: Green Fin 2012 California Red

What's my tip of the week:  If you don't have a phone that takes photos, take your camera with you everywhere. You never know when you're going to see something you want to remember! With digital photography, you don't have to worry about wasting film. I even take a photo of the shopping list before I got grocery shopping with DH. That way, we each have the same list. He pushes the cart (he likes to drive), and I go around with a hand basket. We can call each other if we get separated. If I want to have a record of a book, a pattern or a yarn, I can get a photo and look it up later. Also great for candid shots of the pups or local wildlife.

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.