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!

The enabler........

She knows who she is.  

It never fails.....when I visit my sister-in-law up at the lake house, we tend to go to knit shops; and we went to two new ones to boot.  I had no intention of buying anything!!

At KnitKnorth in Traverse City, MI, I picked up this beautiful "Crazy Yarn" from StoneHedge Mills.  It is a self-striping yarn and the pattern used is called "100 x Simple".  

These are my choices of yarns and they read "cool" colors.  I know....I just couldn't resist.

My sister-in-law and I will name her here......Maria (the enabler) .....chose colors that read warm.

I think we quilters just get caught up in all the beautiful colors when we go into knit shops.  I certainly know that is my problem when I go into a quilt shop. 

Anyways,I thought I would show the progress after knitting up each ball of yarn.  Here I have one skein down, three to go.  You should have been there for this shot.   As I was setting up the skeins of yarn, one of them decided to roll down the paddle board.  I figured it would stop at the end.  No.....it dropped off onto the sandy beach.  Did it stop there?  No.  It decided to continue to roll into the water.  That would have been a great photo op except there was a bit of an ebb and tide and I was watching my skein slowly drift out from shore.  I had to hustle to get it before getting more than my shoes wet.  Oh well.  That was cause for a little excitement!

Here we are at two skeins down and two to go. The white row is my provisional row and is removed at the end of the process.  

Three down and one to go.  It wasn't as easy as you would think when it came to trying to figure out if you should start your next skein in the middle or the outside of the skein,   Hard to imagine what the colors will look like side by side.  

Here I have knitted all four skeins and taken the provisional row off and loaded it onto another set of needles.  

The kitchener stitch attached the two ends.

The next two pictures are the front and back AFTER blocking the scarf.

There sure ended up being a lot of colors in this scarf.  I figured there were between 6-8 colors per skein.  

Even though we are still having some very warm weather, I thought I would model the scarf.  Not that I am wishing Winter here too soon, but I can't wait to wear this one.  It is 100% merino wool and I am loving it.  

Now to get back to quilting

Turn for the better......

With the ways things were going the other day, things could only go up.

I decided to make my grandson a couple little pillowcases for his nappy pillow.

Of course, they had to be Minions.

He loved them.  In fact, my daughter said she probably wouldn't get him to use the white pillowcases anymore.  :D

Then my daughter and I did some peach jam.  We did about 31 - 8 oz jars.  

Yes....it tastes wonderful.  I had to try it out right away. 

Got the binding on my Christmas quilt, washed and dried it;  and I do have to say that I am liking it a little more than I was.  

I started to cut out a challenge quilt and have some of the blocks up on a design wall; but .....because it is a challenge, I can't show pictures just yet.  Oh....that's going to be hard for me.  

Then today I decided to get a customer quilt on the Millie  and did a free motion design called "loopy clams".  It worked up pretty quick.  So now that one is done, too. 

Those are 5" scrappy stars.  

Here's some close ups. 

....and here is the backing.  

So...yes...things are looking up a little.  It always feels good to get some things accomplished.  

I am glad to have this stuff done and out of the way, so that I can enjoy the holiday weekend.

You all have a great holiday weekend, too.  

Seriously?

This quilt has been on my "list" since I quilted it and was not happy with the red quilting thread on the white backing.  You can see what I had  to say about that here.

This project is OLD.  The blocks were won as a block lotto a few years ago and I finally decided to start finishing up some UFOs.  So, the binding has been cut for some time.  

But......

I am 6 1/2 inches short!!!  How can that be?  I don't usually do that.  I used this red fabric for all my alternate blocks, the binding on this quilt and another quilt.  

Hmmmm......did I maybe use the wrong binding for the wrong quilt?

Ughhhh......

I searched high and low for any left overs and there are none; and that is probably because I am getting rid of any small pieces of fabric as I use them up in a quilt so  that I can pare down my stash a bit.  So, I added a piece that was  a close match.  Nothing like making this quilt even more undesirable for me.  

Then to top it off, I was going to sew on a binding (my daughter supplied this one) to one of her quilts that I had quilted for her quite a while ago. She hadn't gotten to it, so I thought I would help out.  It, too, is too small for the quilt.  Thank goodness I measured it BEFORE starting to sew it on the quilt.  Even though it is black....there are so many shades of black that I didn't want to add some of my fabrics, so she is hunting to see if she has anymore.  

I guess I just wasn't meant to do binding today.  

Ya know....it's just been one of those days today.  We washed windows this morning and it has been raining all afternoon.  

Maybe I should just wait until tomorrow before trying anything else.  

Intense!

This quilt was loaded onto my Millie just a couple of days ago.  

It is a paper pieced courthouse steps with the center piece being only 1/2" square.

With it having so many straight lines, I chose the panto Espresso to compliment those straight lines with lots of swirls and curves.

Let me tell you....this panto is intense!  If you let your mind wander, you start taking a path you have already been on and then there is some ripping to do.  Ask me how I know!

Spent a good amount of time ripping last night because while stitching my mind was wandering about "things".  Did the "rippit"last night and decided to start fresh this morning.  

So today I was determined to stay focused.

Here are a couple of good shots of the stitching.  

As usual, my customer has great backings for her quilts.

With the white Glide on top and white Fil-Tec on the bottom, the texture really shows up well without detracting from the great piecing.   

So here is the completed quilt with no more ripping today....thank goodness.  

I think she will like it.  

Now to work on something  mindless (easy).  My brain needs a break!