Walls

We don't have a lot of wall space in this house.

I like the walls for "hosting" some of the quilts from my collection. My "Peggy's Sistine Chapel" quilt (pattern from Mary Sorensen "Delectable Pathways") is finally up on the wall, but not where I had planned. I wanted to put it up over the stairs, but DH says it's too close to time to move to go through the trouble of using a ladder on the stairs. However, little Johan had pulled down the quilt I had on the wall in the hallway, and I hadn't put it up again, so it seemed like the perfect solution. Here's a closeup.

All the appliqué is needleturn, and the quilting is hand. The Delectable Mountain blocks are paper-pieced by machine, but the pattern has regular piecing as an option, and there is an identical but smaller version, in case you want to go to all the work but not end up with something so big (59" X 79" for the larger size, or 38" X 51" for the smaller size). Mary has some great DVDs that teach needleturn appliqué. Her website is maryappliques.com.

The reason there isn't a lot of wall space is because we have so many windows. My friend Cleo has spent her "life" surrounded by walls of glass, so her walls are entirely windows.

You may have seen Cleo in photos of the dolls. She's just the right size for them.

Cleo is a paperweight. (Remember when we used to need those?) She was given to me about 1952 by Aunt Gertrude, a lady in her 90s who used to tell me tales of her youth, which included a story about riding four horses, all at once, through the streets of Paris.

After her life as a paperweight, Cleo was a pet for a succession of well-loved dolls. The Götz girls love her. She was named after the goldfish in Pinocchio.

Aunt Gertrude was a special friend. She often invited us to the Hotel Vendome, where she lived, in Boston, for dinner on Sundays after church. We would eat vichyssoise and use finger bowls and cloth napkins. Sometimes I would order a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (not really on the menu), and the waiter would arrive with it on a silver platter with a silver lid over it. He always had a cloth napkin over his arm, and he would unveil my sandwich for me by lifting the lid and winking at me, grinning with his teeth sparkling white against his almost ebony skin. He called me, “Madmoiselle!” 

Along the lines of food, we had pizza at The Pie in Salt Lake City before going to see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Pioneer Theater Wednesday evening.

The walls at The Pie are decorated with graffiti, some of which you can see behind our pizza. We're going to miss the theater and opera here when we move...and the pizza.

Speaking of moving—and walls—here's a look at where my loom used to be.

We plan to get one of those pod things to fill up with our stuff and have hauled away to Bend. Then we can live in our house like in a hotel with cooking privileges while we show the house to prospective buyers. I took another load to stuff down to Savers in Salt Lake City on Saturday. Tuesday I'm taking a load of quilting magazines to Davidene's Quilt Shop. We plan to have a garage sale.

With all the moving stuff, some of the residents have come out of hiding. This little guy was probably living in our walls.

Lotte says, "That's OK. We can read the book together."

While cleaning up the living room, I decided I should host Common Threads one last time. Margareth was working on this appliqué project...for the wall.

She plans to take my schefflera plant, which is huge. She has a vaulted ceiling. Lynda left with my Thanksgiving cactus and one of our cacti.

What's on my needles: Still the Coastal Skies, a little more progress made.

What's on my Featherweight: Still fabric and miscellaneous things to sort through.

What's in my hoop: Still the Spring Flowers quilt, but a lot of progress made this week.

What's on my wheel: Stanzi is put away but this week I added some fiber (“Frog Prince” from AlohaBlu) for Tour de Fleece, just in case I’m where I can spin when it’s time. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to The Whispering Room by Dean Koontz, with the next one in the series due out soon.

What's in my wine glass: Bolla Romagna Sangiovese 2015, good with spaghetti and other Italian food.

What's my tip of the week: There are few things more disconcerting than needing toilet paper and there's only one sheet on the roll. Rather than nag family members to replace the paper, I like to keep an extra roll handy on the back of the toilet. When that one is installed, I get another one to replace it first opportunity.

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.

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.