Sock Summit Was a Blast or Knitters Are Wonderful People

I managed to drag my fatigued carcass to the Sock Summit last weekend at the Portland Convention Center. I actually didn't start knitting 'til after class registration for the Summit was closed but I finagled my way in by volunteering.

I had mentioned on Ravelry that I was going to go, and asked if anyone wanted to meet for lunch since I'm a local yokel to Portland. After all, people from all over the world showed at the Summit. None of my friends were able to make it but an online buddy, Joanna, asked me if I'd take pictures and write something up for her to be posted at www.nerdabout.com. So I did. What I didn't expect was a link from the article to MY blog. Wow. Maybe I should update this thing more often!

Here's me with team Ravelry at the Summit. Note the finger puppet representation of Bob, Ravelry's boston terrier mascot. I saw them walking down the hallway of the Convention Center and dashed out from behind the desk to snag them so all of us volunteers could take pictures with them. They were very gracious about it.

As a general update, yes, The Beast, otherwise known as the Bass Quilt and/or commission quilt is still in progress. I'm taking a break from thread painting and am feeling like starting the Mariner's Compass sashing blocks this weekend is a good plan.

On the needles right now is my fourth sock, giving me a whopping two pair of handknit. I lucked out and spotted a copy of Knitting circles around socks knit two at a time on circular needles by Antje Gillingham at the library so I snatched it and ran to the self checkout machines. It seems rather elementary since I already use two circs to knit socks. Now I know a way to avoid having to seam or graft anything on a sock. Yay!

My plans have changed slightly for next year's ichthyosis conference. Quilts are lovely and people appreciate them but I think hand knit socks will be very treasured by folks with ichthyosis. Any of us who have it on the bottoms of our feet tend to have the skin crack and get raw during temperature extremes, though children have an especially rough time as often their skin cannot accomdate growth as quickly as it should so the feet and palms crack. My feet didn't stop cracking regularly 'til I reached my whopping final height of 5'1" around age 15. So, hand knit socks it is for the fundraiser raffle. I expect I'll be making strictly tube socks in generic man/woman/child sizes so they can fit anyone. But they'll still be more comfortable than store bought. Who knows, maybe I'll start a sock knitting revolution among the ichthyosis community.

Now this next tidbit is extremely important to me. Only once in my 37 years have I been somewhere amongst a large crowd of people for a significant amount of time and not had anyone stare at me or ask my about my skin. The first time was at the ichthyosis convention in Atlanta, GA in 2006. The second time was at the Sock Summit. I cannot express how marvelous it is to be able to walk through a crowd and have no one give me a second glance. I understand that for most people, seeing someone affected all over with ichthyosis is a rare occurence and it's natural to be curious. I however, am quite used to what ichthyosis looks and feels like but I'm not sure that I'll ever completley adjust to having people stare at me or unintentionally make me uncomfortable by asking personal questions about my medical issues. So. There it is. Knitters rock. Well, knitters, spinners, dyers, crocheters, designers, instructors, and all those other lovely folks that were at the Summit. Thank you so very much, you gave me a wonderful gift.

Now back to the Summit dishing.

I met some fantastic people, one of whom immediately comes to mind and that's Rita from Yarn Hollow. She noticed me drooling over one of the drop spindles and put some roving in my hands and that was it. I was a goner. I now have what I need to learn to spin yarn using a drop spindle. Wheee! By the way, the lusciously colored stuff you see in the photo to the far left is roving. It becomes yarn by using a spindle to rotate the fiber as you squeeze it down to the thickness you want. While it takes a bit of practice, it's not too difficult and yes, it is another lovely thing that one can do while sitting down. I really do need to stop acquiring more hobbies. Really! I can sort of blame this on Rita though, which I will happily do. I don't think she minds, though.

I did even get to meet Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot who is a knitter, author and all around nifty person. She probably thinks I'm a crazy stalker lady as I handed her a thank you card as I never would have discovered hand knit socks without reading her works. I also met Tina Newton, founder of Blue Moon Fiber arts and apparently Stephanie's partner in crime. Fun! On a side note, I seem to be magnetically drawn to Tina's yarn as when looking through my stash, it seems like a quarter of it is hers. Mine. Mine now at least but created by her and her marvelous assistants but now in my posession as I have purchased more in the past few months than I can really justify when going over the finances. It's worth it.

I got to meet some of the other wonderful folks at Blue Moon such as Debra and JoAnn. I met oodles and oodles of fantastic knitters and I was so pleased to meet a great number of male fiber artists. You know you're out there, we know you're out there but sometimes it's hard to find you because there are so many women crowded around. There's always more room for fiber fans. Really! Whether it's knitting or quilting or crochet or cross stitch, the more, the merrier is always true. Especially if you let me raid your stash.

Life returns to normal, whatever that is

Commencement is done and the in-laws have returned to their respective homes. I did a bump on a log imitation for a week before I finally had enough energy to get up and move. It's really embarrassing to have 70 year old relatives exhaust you from running around. That's ok though, it was even more embarrassing in May when my 82 year old grandmother was leaving me in the dust.

One of the first things I did after the family left was to set my sewing machine up to continue with the thread embroidery. I had put it away and JR moved my sewing table out into the shed for the duration of the visit so that we'd have enough room in the living room for everyone to sit down. It was an odd experience to not have my machine right there. In fact, within 24 hours of it being put up, I felt like I was missing something very important.

Mind you, I don't even sew every day. I plain and simply can't do it. But there's a big difference between, "Maybe I'll feel up to it this afternoon." and "OMG! IT'S NOT THERE! AUUUUGH!" Yes indeedy, I was having my own personal version of the Charlie Brown scream.

The machine got put back in the little shrine of a sewing area I have in the living room. I threaded it and set it up to start back on the thread embroidery. Then I got out the house block and started looking for spots that I needed to touch up. At first I was torn, how was I going to visibly but non-permanently mark the spots I needed to work on? Then I had an epiphany.

Painter's tape

I love painter's tape for a variety of reasons and very few of them have to do with painting. I put it on the wall before I put up double stick tape to mount a bulletin board or coat hook so that if some day I wish to move things around, I can take off the adhesive without removing a chunk of wall with it. I wish I could claim I thought of this handy trick but the truth is I saw it on some home dec show years ago.

The cool thing about painter's tape is that the adhesive is very lightweight so that it doesn't leave a residue when you peel it off. That's why painters use it. It allows them to paint something and when they have to paint in another color up to the edge of the first color, they can protect the work they've already done.

The house block ended up with a bajillion little pieces of painter's tape all over the foliage section.
I had already gotten a bunch of areas fixed by the time I took this picture, but I thought folks would get a kick out of seeing it anyway. Here's a closeup:
Yes, that is a pin you see securing the tape. The tape wasn't going to stick for more than an hour or two without help. I'm sure you're now wondering "why not just use the pin to mark the spot?" I'll tell you why, dear readers. Because I stabbed myself waaaay too many times 'cause I couldn't see the stinking pins! Thus, the big blob of tape was my way to tell myself "Watch hands! Sharp pointy things are right here!" I still stab myself, but not as frequently.

After I finished touching up the foliage above the house, I started working on painting the foliage at the base of the house. Once that's done, then I'll work on the foliage framing the whole block, then paint the house itself. Then I have fish to paint and then! excitement! excitement! I get to start drafting the Mariner's Compass blocks that will fill the corners of the quilt. Once the Mariner's Compass blocks are done, I'll be putting all the blocks together with some borders and then finally! quilting the whole thing. I have no idea how long it'll take me, but I'm still learning and having fun with it. This will though, be my very last comission. Ever. If I agree to take a commission ever again, please have me hauled away to the funny farm. I believe my father's words when I told him I'd accepted the commission was, "God, you're nuts!" My husband's reaction was somewhat similar though less politely phrased. Ahem.

Idle hands are well, boring

As you might have guessed, I don't do well without having something to do with my hands at almost all times. I've found I tend to scratch a lot more, which is bad for anyone but especially bad if you have ichthyosis. Also I tend to get real twitchy. Thus, while the in-laws were here I did some more knitting and a little bit of tatting.

I didn't finish anything but I had fun playing with yarn. In fact, I was having so much fun that I recently volunteered to test a pattern for someone on Ravelry.
Sheila asked for volunteers on the Ravelry site so I sent her a message saying something along the lines of, "I could be a tester for newb factor. If I can follow it, anyone can since I'm very new to knitting. I've made a scarf, hat, and dishcloth." So she took me up on it. I'm excited 'cause I'll get a nifty pair of socks out of it.

The tatting is hanging out in its bag in the bedroom where the hubby is sleeping before his graveyard shift tonight, so pics of that today. Sandy, a buddy of mine from my online quilting group, sent me a bunch of old Workbasket magazines. Those things are great because they have tatting, crochet and knitting patterns in them. Sadly, Workbasket stopped being published in the very early 1990's. Fortunately, many people kept their copies. One of those people was Sandy's mom. Thank you, Sandy's mom! In return I am sending Sandy some tatted motifs for her efforts of digging around 'til she found the stuff and then shipping it off to me. Hopefully I will have pictures soon.

Until then, be safe and do stuff that makes you happy. Hopefully the two aren't mutually exclusive!

He did it!

My husband holding his diploma for a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics. Need I say more? We are so happy!

Pictures!

We never did find the digital camera so last week we broke down and bought a new one. I figure that means any day now I'll stumble across the other one.

Here I am holding the house section. Supposedly taking a picture of the quilt being held by the maker is good for documentation purposes. Quilting + documention = good thing.



I took a few more photos closer up so you can see what I'm doing with it.
The upper right corner

Here is the lower right corner.


I was pretty unsure about whether or not the green all around each part of the trees looked ok so I took it with me to a counseling session. Considering I pay my counselor to be honest with me and I trust her sense of color I figured she'd be honest with me. She liked it. A lot. At least, I think so as her jaw dropped and she said nothing for a few seconds. She said the thread work gave it a bit of a stained glass appearance.

As long as the person receiving the quilt likes it, I'm happy. Plus I want them to be able to toss this sucker in the washing machine if they want to, though Linda said if it were hers, she's hang it on the wall in her living room. I think she was dropping hints, don't you? If I have any remaining sanity by the time I'm done I might make her a very small wall hanging. Emphasis should be on the words "small" and "very."

My additional latest insanity is knitting. As previously mentioned, I joined www.ravelry.com. That site is very addictive! After I had finished my afghan and the wrap that there is a picture of in a previous post, I kept on going with more projects.

I made a dog toy. Nope, no pictures of that 'cause it already has holes in it. That's ok, it's for the dogs so holes are perfectly acceptable.

Then I decided I wanted to make myself a sweater. It takes so much freakin' yarn to crochet a sweater and it takes 1/3 less yarn to knit one of the same dimensions, thus I thought learning to knit might be a good thing, So I'm teaching myself. I knit a scarf many years ago but I've pretty much had to relearn what little I'd known.

I made this hat first. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is fairly well known in the knitting world. Her books are a hilarious read for anyone who likes to make things. She's also a prolific blogger. She suggests that many people get sick of working on a scarf long before it's done and a hat is a good first project. It's not that big but big enough that by the time you've made on of proper dimensions for yourself, you have the hang of the knit and purl stitch and you're not yet sick unto death of the thing.

This hat was made with a knit 2 purl 2 stitch. I think it needs a flower added.

This is a washcloth/dishrag/whatever you want to call it. You can find the pattern here for free.
http://knitalittlemore.blogspot.com/2008/03/introducing-bubbles_11.html

I have noticed that knitters tend to be very generous about sharing their patterns. I admire this, I really do. I'm one of those people that has a horrible time trying to follow a pattern so once I'm confident about how to make something, I tend to just wing it and do my own thing. That means that if someone likes something I've done, they're welcome to copy it to make one for themselves but I really can't help them if they want a pattern from me. My cooking is a lot like that too, which might explain why my meatloaf is always a tad different.

I've been trying to add to my repertoire of things I can do when I'm hurting so I don't feel like I'm a useless lump. Between the tatting, crocheting, and knitting, I think I'm pretty well covered now. Today I will most likely be playing with yarn while waiting at the airport for my in-laws to arrive. JR is going through commencement this coming Saturday so we have relatives coming from Florida and Ohio. I'm thrilled, one that he's done with his bachelor's and two, 'cause I love my in-laws and don't get to see them often.

Enjoy your day and WEAR SUNBLOCK!

The Thread Hits the Fan. . . and the fabric

All the greenery is now on the house block. Whoopee! You wouldn't believe how long the happy dance lasted when that happened. Or maybe you would. Anyway, I secured tear away interfacing to the entire house block, which by the way, measures 41" x 36" untrimmed and without borders.

Interfacing can perform a variety of functions. It can help a garment retain shape, say for a shirt collar staying firm. It can be used to secure one piece of fabric on top of another. It can also be used to temporarily keep the fabric stiff so that when sewing through the fabric, the fabric doesn't get pushed down into the throat plate of the sewing machine. That's what I'm using it for right now because this step of construction involves making sure every piece of each block is secured with thread. If this were a paper collage, it'd be the sealant part. When I've finished stitching around the fabric, then I will tear off the interfacing from the back side. Technically I could leave it on but it wouldn't make for a very soft quilt if I did.

The original plan was to secure the pieces with monofilament thread. At some point in the past, there was a genius yet sadomasochistic quilter. Maybe it wasn't a quilter, maybe it was a tailor, but the genius and sadomasochist part still hold true. Monofilament is nearly invisible thread. If you thought "Isn't that just fishing line?" then you're right. How appropriate for a quilt with two very large fish on it. Anyway, having a thread that can secure things and be invisible is a great idea. In reality, this stuff is awful to work with. My machine decided to throw a hissy and refused to work with it. It created huge snarls of thread under the test fabric and thank all the higher powers of creation that I did work with test fabric instead of the blocks! It broke titanium coated needles. I fiddled with top thread tension and bobbin tension over and over and after two hours of frustration I decided that monofilament was no longer an option and the creator of said technique had a wonderful idea but to actually follow through with it on his or her own work and then tell others they should use it too was extremely cruel.

At that point I knew instead of thread painting throughout the blocks as an embellishment was going to have to be ramped up. The whole thing was going to have to be thread painted. I ran off to the fabric shop to get even more coordinating threads. By the way, in case you are ever doing this, the trick on picking thread is to pick things that are darker than the fabric you want it to go with. The darker colors tend to be skipped over a bit more by the eye so it's not as obvious that it's thread and not fabric. If you are not closely looking at the block, it blends beautifully. If you're closely looking at the block, "Gee, look at that, there's darker thread around everything."

This doesn't really add more time to the construction process because I was going to be going over everything anyway. It does make it more nerve wracking because now if I am not in precise control of the fabric moving under the needle at all times, I will have to do some dreaded "frogging." Rip it, rip it, rip it.

Spring Has Sprung

Spring has sprung at least in this part of Oregon. JR's been keeping the windows open to air out the apartment so I've been freezing to death. Thus, I broke out my yarn and a crochet hook and made myself this mobius wrap.

A few of my quilting buddies have mentioned http://www.ravelry.com/ so I decided to take a peek and ended up joining. It's an online community that welcomes folks to chat about everything plus share their yarn related projects made via knitting or crocheting and such. I love looking at all the eye candy. Many people contribute patterns of their own creation and most people take the time to show where their pattern came from. It has a bunch of handy tools, one of which lets you mark a project as something you'd like to make in the future. I, of course, have already marked more than I'll be able to make should I live to see the year 2109.

Another fantastic find I made is Yarnia. It's a shop that allows you to create your own yarn. You pick the strands you want to be spun on a cone together. The yarn isn't worsted (meaning twisted/wrapped) but because it's all wound on with the same tension, it isn't difficult to crochet (or knit) with. The prices are unbelievable, anywhere from 1/3 - 2/3 less than what you'd pay anywhere else. Pretty exciting stuff! Between Yarnia and Ravelry, I'm sure I'll be able to get into tons of trouble for several years.

The outdoor gazebo with the fireplace is now proudly placed on the house block of the bass quilt. I was puzzled by what I should do with the part that looks to be glass enclosing the fire, so I decided some grey would do the trick. I'm still adding greenery... snip snip snip, look at here, move it there, nudge it a little more then voilà! Time to set the adhesive with and iron and pray I don't change my mind.

I'm hyperventilating at the thought of starting the thread painting. That means it's that much closer to being done, and OMG, what if I mess it up so bad I have to remake a block? AUGH! The torment! Those of you that lean towards prayer or meditation, please thing good thoughts for me. I'll lose my remaining marbles.

In May I will be taking a class to learn how to use Jodi Barrows' Square in a Square block construction method. Sharon Rice, owner of the LQS (local quilt shop) Sharon's Attic just down the road from me, learned the method from Jodi herself. Apparently in her home alone, Jodi has over 2,000 completed quilts. No, that's not a typo. Two thousand quilts. Yes, some of them are miniatures but still, that's a thousand and several hundred more than most quilters get done in their lifetime. So maybe after I learn this method, my production speed will be upped a bit. One can only hope!

Lastly, another new find is Knittn' Kitten. They are a craft supply resale shop. Whodathunk you can get great stuff like fabric, yarn, thread, notions, beads and so forth at faboo prices? I'm in heaven!

The owners comb through thrift stores, estate sales, flea markets and garage sales to stock their store but better yet, you can bring in stuff that makes you wonder what you had planned for it when you bought it. You'll get a reasonable price for it and know that it will find a happy home with another crafter that will actually use it! I went through all my clothing patterns and took a bunch in. I know I can't be the only sewer out there that bought patterns from three different companies all for the same style dress. There are only two things that bum me out about Knittin' Kitten, they're closed two days a week (Sunday and Monday) and they don't do online sales. Though their stock changes so drastically, no online sales kinda makes sense. Oh, they also have some glorious vintage linens and quilts.

Feel free to drop me a line and tell me what you're working on!

The water has arrived!

Here are the photos I promised a mere 14 days ago, lol! The lake has finally been filled and now all that remains is to add the gazebo with the outdoor fireplace and more foliage. Then all the components of the centerpiece will be done. I'm posting the photos sequentially to the construction process.


Grass, the retaining wall and some barkdust.

I realized there was barkdust around the house foundation so I added that in as well as the rocky shoreline of the lake.


Finally, the lake itself. I painted the lake fabric just as I did the sky fabric. Believe it or not, the water was much more challenging than the skyline. The paint looks much darker when it's wet. This piece of fabric was first painted with water diluted layers of yellow and blue, then let dry, then painted again with a second layer of straight paint. I added a teensy bit of shimmer to the first layer but it isn't apparent after having added the second layer of paint.

I will be thread painting to add some more detail to the entire picture. Actually to all three, both this piece and the two fish. I still am going to add more trees around the side and bottom of this piece to give it a more framed look with a bit of an overhead view.

Small sections of my sewing tables are starting to become visible again as more of the fabric is landed on the project instead of waiting its turn for placement. Instead of pieces of fabric spread out so I can grab what I need as I need it, there will soon be spools of thread and wound bobbins of differing colors as I thread paint the project. I bought a second bobbin case for my machine so I can switch the cases instead of taking out a bobbin, loading a new one, adjusting tension etc.

I did decide not to trapunto any part of the house block. Because there are so many small pieces for the foliage, I'd not be able to trim out the batting inbetween leaves. I do think I'll still trapunto the fish though not until after I've secured all pieces with monofil and then thread painted them.