Happy Halloween!!

As this is posting, I will be out trick or treating with my grandsons, but I did want to share some of my Halloween vignette's before the holiday has come and gone.   

My cat is back in the days when I was soley tole painting.  

This one is one of my most recent quilts.  

I love folk art.  

Dabbling in needlepunch.  

My most recent purchase was this eerie  tree.  

 Wool work and some more tole painting. 

I have been enjoying my Halloween decorations since September.  I thought I would put them up for my youngest grandson so that he could enjoy them, but all he said was  "those are scary".  So much for that!

He's not so scared now though.  I had to convince him all my ghosts, witches, and pumpkins were smiling, so they are not "scary".  

In the meantime, I have pieced together a challenge quilt along with my mini group.  Of course, I can't share it yet until the big reveal.  Here are the taupe fabrics that I used for the challege.

So, Halloween is going to come and go and you won't hear from me for a few days because I am leaving for Texas.  

We will be heading to the Houston quilt show  AND we will be visiting  whatever we can that is associated with Chip and Joanna Gaines (Fixer Upper) in Waco.  For sure we will be visiting their store, Magnolia,  and checking out their great cupcakes, too.  

I will have lots to report when I get back; and most likely lots of purchases, too. 

Have a wonderful first week of November.  

Getting my mojo back......

The SpinDrift shawl is completed and blocked.

This yarn is so luxurious.  I wish you could feel it.  

I wish, too, that you could see the number of beads I added to the eyelet edge.  It just sparkles!

On completing this shawl and prior to blocking it, I felt the need to get my knitting needles and crochet hooks in order. My plan was to put the  knitting away for awhile now and get back to sewing.  I think there were about four different places in my house that I was storing needles....in the original storage area in my old craft room (I moved my sewing room into one of the kid's rooms once they moved out), in a basket with yarn in it, in the new sewing room  and some needles still in projects waiting to be completed.  

I had been saving this needle bag tutorial from YouTube for awhile and this seemed like the time to dust off the machine and make one so that I could store all my needles in one place.  

This is what I came up with.

It holds my 14" needles with no problem.  

Once I started getting all the needles corralled, I was compelled to clean out a couple of my craft drawers.  Then that lead to my going through my yarn stash.  All I wanted to do was put my needles in their new case; and all of a sudden this turned into a whole days job!

I have to say though that I got all my unfinished projects organized (there really aren't that many knitting projects) and loaded onto my Ravelry account.  The extra "good" yarn even got put into my Ravelry stash.  

I came across a yarn of my mothers that  looked as though she had started to make a dish cloth, so I ended up making two trying to use up her yarn.

  

These type of cloths don't take that long to make.  

On the quilting scene, I threw  this 48" sq.  Fall lap top on the long arm.  This was a quicky.

It will be off to the owner this weekend.  

I have a couple more weeks to go before heading off to Houston.  Hmmm....what can I get done?

Feeling like a slug......

I have been on a bit of a forced hiatus from the long arm the last few weeks and I think that is why I am feeling like a slug, but I have been managing to get some knitting in. 

This PurlSoho  slouch hat was a breeze to make.  

It still needs blocking at this point.  

Then I needed to just "start" a shawl that my sister-in-law and I are doing together.  We are going to take them  along on a trip next month.  Oh...by the way....it's to the Houston Quilt show.  Yikes!  I am so excited about that!!  Then to top THAT off, we are taking a side trip down to Waco to visit Magnolia.  Do you know about Magnolia?  Ohhhhh....you should!  (I stand corrected......we will be going "up" to Waco from Houston.  :D  )  Stay tuned for the adventures of Thelma and Louise!

Anyways, I was just to get this started but got carried away with one of my colors.  Instead of changing yarns for the next stripe, I kept knitting away and then realized  I had to rip it out.  So my reasoning was to use up the yarn that I had ripped out so that I wasn't traveling with this huge "nest" of thread.  Anyways....it kind of took me a ways into the shawl before that was cleaned up.  It is now packed up and ready for the trip.  This is going to be lovely when done.  

Then to keep my hands busy,  I pulled out a shawl that I had in hibernation due to the fact that I had so much quilting to do. (I am rolling my eyes here since I still have a lot of quilting to do but it is funny how things work out).

Since I haven't been sewing, I felt I could work on this a bit.  I am adding square seed beads to the eyelet edge of this shawl.  I am running out of my beads, so had to order more, but this one is  coming along nicely.  In fact, I only have one more row of eyelet to go and then I will be binding off in six rows.  YES!!!  

Even though I haven't been quilting, I did have a customer drop off a quilt this past weekend.  I thought maybe I could manage this one as she just wanted a simple panto done on it.  So Emma's quilt did get done. 

Emma and her mom requested that I  use the popcorn panto on it with ivory So Fine thread on top and ivory Omni thread in the bobbin.  My Millie made doing this quilt really easy.  I feel fortunate to have such a good machine to make my sewing life so much easier.  

Hopefully soon, I will be in full swing with the quilting.

I guess I am not such a slug, but when it is quilting that I would rather be doing and I see my pile sitting there not getting done....oh well.  I should be happy that all this knitting is getting done and my yarn stash isn't growing like my fabric stash has grown in the past.

Happy knitting or quilting or whatever you are accomplishing!