A few years ago I sent my mom a beautiful set of red Signature needles for Mother's Day. Who knew that would turn into a relationship between the lovely Signature people and my mom?
See here...
You're Yella!
The blocks for the purple quilt are done, or most of them are. I've some extra strips and ran out of purple. The LQS didn't have any in the right shade, so I ordered some more. Because it totally makes sense that I ordered more fabric to finish a quilt that I started in order to use up the scraps from another quilt, right? (To be fair, I only ordered half a yard and I'll use it all.) In the meantime, the quilt shop did have yellow, though in a slightly darker shade than I'd used for the test picture. I used about half of what I bought, but I am happy nonetheless.
I took a silks class on Saturday and flew on the trapeze today, but despite the incredible soreness, I put the time during the Red Carpet walk and Oscar ceremony (which I have never before watched in it's entirety) to good use. I did a lot of twitching around and I now have enough of these fabrics (and some that I thought might work but didn't, darn online ordering) to make several more quilts in this color scheme. I've got the backing fabric already, but I'm going to work on that later. Now, I'm going back to Hanami, which has been ignored for days.
While I'm Waiting
The new fabrics arrived yesterday - the large scale bird print on yellow, a yellow diagonal, birds and trees on white, and they're perfect. Now I need the yellow, which I'm going to go get this weekend at the local quilt shop, which I do like to support. As I've said before, they're heavier on traditional prints and I lean in a different direction, but they've got a great selection of solids and batiks.
In the meantime, I had a bunch of scraps from the last quilt I made and I was getting really sick of the string quilt I'd started with them. I like the look, but paper foundation piecing isn't really my thing. And then I saw something online that I figured I could do without nearly as much fuss.
So I did. And the scraps from that quilt will make a second since I had so much of the solid. My iPhone takes crummy pictures, I think since I went running with it and sweated all over the darn thing. Son't sweat on your phone. Anyway. The two blocks in the left-most column are done and squared up, the others have been strip pieced to get the scrappy columns but haven't been sewn to the solid yet. I like it. And there's a little girl who has a knit blanket from me, but not a quilt and she's about to move into a big girl bed. I think she might like this.
Waiting
While I'm waiting for new fabric to arrive (the local quilt shop is a bit of a drive and my working hours are such that it's easier to buy online than in person, especially if I'm looking for something in particular), I decided to change things up a bit...
This is the quilt as it stands on the wall...the white is stuff I had in stash, some of it already in 2.5 inch wide strips. I'd need to cut more to the right length and cut some of the longer ones down to five inches from 8.5 inches to fit the short ends. But I think the quilt needs more yellow and I wondered if a pale yellow instead of white might be a nice contrast to the bold colors, while keeping with K's color scheme.
I pulled a solid fat quarter out and played with a layout. I think I like it better than the white - it softens things without taking away from the energy of the prints. Anyone else like this better?
In the works
The last three or five weeks have been crazy - life is much easier on deployment with a regular-ish schedule and not a lot of distractions. After the maintenance phase, things come fast and furious. In the five weeks since we're returned from the holiday leave period, we've completed navigation, seamanship, engineering and a set of combat systems qualifications. We're about halfway to completing all of our pre-deployment qualifications and we leave in about five months. It doesn't get any easier that the last few weeks, but this long weekend has been nice.
To begin with, I spent all of Saturday and Sunday cleaning the house, which was beginning to resemble The Black Hole of Calcutta. I did the kitchen, three loads of laundry, and a ton of other stuff. I made some strawberry syrup to add to soda, and pea shoot pesto, half of which I added to some quinoa and the rest of which I'll freeze.Saturday evening, two of us invaded the home of a third friend with food (hence the pesto dish) and a wheel of quilting cottons and worked out some color schemes for her due-in-June daughter. Or at least we tried.
Moose thought we were laying out a new form of blanket for him. This is the Moose I saved at the end of the year, now fat, sleek and utterly content in his new home. He is happy to be snuggled for a bit and then just hang out in the room. We did get him moved from the ottoman off and on and long enough for K to make a couple of choices color scheme-wise...one is sort of sunny...(no idea why the size is weird.)
And the other is light but not quite Easter Egg/baby pastel.
I made sure she knew this was just color guidance because I wanted a general idea of the colors she really likes - she'd have been happy with anything but the theme I saw while she was picking and choosing was really focused on the yellows, oranges with bits of pink and green. So, one NCIS marathon later...
We have a beginning. This is pulled from fabric I had in stash, but the print I really liked was just a fat eighth and I need a little more green and pink for balance, and nothing in the stash works with these shades. The colors here aren't very accurate - the tangerine of the large dots and a set of small flowers seems to blend with the dark pinks, which they don't do in person. I'll have to get a picture during the day. I need to replace some of the diagonals, too.
Trying Again
My sewing mojo has been fairly strong, though I admit there are a dozen + half-finished string blocks waiting for attention. My knitting mojo, aside from a spate of mini sweaters in the days leading to Christmas, has been non-existant for a while. I think I may have found the answer...
Hanami. My friend Lorri has decided to dive into lack knitting with Hanami and it's been on my list of things to knit since I saw it a few years ago. So, I decided to join her in the process. It's good to have someone to commiserate with over the pain of having to move stitch markers and moving lifelines.
I'm adding silver lined beads throughout the shawl because I had to break them out for the cast on and it seemed silly to put them back after I'd seen a few on Ravelry that were accented well with beads.
I've just started the second repeat of the initial pattern and am not hating it, so hopefully this project will stick. If not, Lorri will probably stick me and that's good enough motivation to continue!
Gunner
When we went into the shipyards, we sent our 25mm chain guns off to be refurbished. We got them back onboard a couple of weeks ago.
We had to take it for a test drive, of course...
Not a Navy SEAL
This guy and some buddies were swimming around near the ship the other day while we were out running the boats. Every once in a while they'd pause in their diving and just hang out watching us, not unlike the way we were watching them. We've seen a couple of pods of dolphins and lots of whales, some surfacing just feet in front of the ship. I'd love to get a picture of them but when they're that close I'm more concerned about stopping the ship and not hitting the big lugs than I am about pulling the camera out. Whales and ships don't mix, and while ships win in just about any encounter, it's not something any of us want. Avoidance is the name of the game.
Belated Christmas Present
This year my brother had no idea what to get me for Christmas...a problem all of us had for each other for some reason. I told him to make me something. As some of you may recall, he decided to start knitting last fall so that he could send hats to my ship for Christmas. I requested that his first hat be set aside for me, and it was...you can see it here. He decided that since I got his first hat, I should get his first scarf, too.
And here it is, delivered shortly after he finished it during our weekend in Oregon. What I love is that you can see his progression...he's only made hats before and his tension is lovely, but flat knitting has it's own challenges. The scarf has lovely character and you can see his improvement over five feet or so of knitting. It's the perfect length to wear doubled or draped and it works with most of my winter coats. It's warm in San Diego lately, but I'l be back in DC for next winter, so I'll get lots of wear out of it then!
