I sent it off immediately and it arrived a week later. As for the kit, overall it was fine, but I did notice that the threads had a tendency to knit more easily than the DMC that I have always cross stitched with.
I am not sure what my next project will be. I have a variety of fabrics available to me in my drawer. I have a large piece left over from the rabbit project, so Hardanger is a possibility, as well as some cuts suitable for a Christmas stocking. I need to look through my magazine stash and see if there’s something I had earmarked long ago. Stay tuned!
I’m looking forward to seeing what my fellow stitchers have been up to, take a peek your self!
I struggle to throw things in the trash. In my sewing room I have flattened cereal boxes (for templates), scrapbook papers my girls left behind nearly 15 years ago, bits and bobs of yarn (Christmas ornaments) and quilt battings (stuff those gingerbread boys)…and then there’s the fabric
Yes, it is all neatly boxed, waiting for … something! This past summer, after spending a day trying to manage the scraps I told myself, “You will not add more to these boxes, you will use scraps as you make them.”
I have been mildly successful at that since, mostly because I have decided that potholders are an amazing gift for anyone, especially when you can attach a label that declares them suitable for the grill or camping. No worries about getting them dirty, or keeping them clean…use them for the summer then throw them out! More than once someone has congratulated my on my great idea (cue hysterical laughter).
Some of these have a story, others not so much!
These came from the latest scraps from a Thimbleberries quilt kit my friend Nannette sent me while clearing stash. I took all those HST’s (100 of them) and turned them into three potholders. The top one has an orphan block from about 7 years ago; it finally found a use.
These are pretty nice, so I will likely gift them at Christmas.
The top group came from a special quilting project for a person diagnosed with cancer at our church. The colors and batiks requested weren’t in my stash, so I bought fat quarters, but wanted to use them up immediately. On a roll, I found enough bits in the stash drawer to make a second pair. The backs are linen left over from Girl #1’s honeymoon dress and a bit of gray twill left after making a skirt and a pair of shorts. That created a nice bit of space in the remnants drawer too. The bottom one is a grilling potholder, it is just random stuff left over from the top pairs. A quick rummage in those recycled berry containers gave me what was needed to fill in the holes. Ugly but quite serviceable.
There’s still some strips left from the Thimbleberries project, so I imagine that there will be at least one more pair of potholders to come. I expect inspiration to hit soon after the spring recital is in the books!
In my humble opinion Isabelle Kraemer is a genius. Her Mariechen pattern is hands down the best, most complete, and easiest pattern I have ever had the pleasure of knitting.
It all started with a package of KnitPicks Cotlin in Hydrangea that I purchased at least 5 years ago. I just couldn’t find a cardigan pattern that I wanted to use. I was interested in trying a top down knit, but most raglans were just too round looking, and I don’t really like how most raglan sleeves look with my shoulders.
I searched off and on for a couple of years, and then I spotted the Mariechen. The photos looked quite square in the shoulders, and I really liked the pattern, so I bought it. What a lovely surprise it was to be able to start the pattern and have NO questions about how to incorporate the design or exactly when and where to increase stitches.
It was an amazing knit, and I love my Mariechen! I will be looking for more of Ms. Kraemer’s patterns in the future.
Every spring we have this debate. DH thinks June is too hot for the cool season veggies, and is always wanting to start seedlings March 1, so they can be put out in April…and get snowed on. I can’t blame him, he grew up in Wichita, Kansas where it seems spring starts in earnest around the 1st of March. Not so here. We have had six inches of snow and school cancelled as late as May 21st!
This year, he has used considerable restraint, and only planted cabbage in the seedling pots on March 10. They are due to sprout any day now. Today or tomorrow I am going to get the peppers started. They like very warm soil, so we may have to use heating pads underneath to convince them it is indeed time to germinate.
There it is, the first seedling up!
The garden outside is still slumbering. We have had some good wet snow this month, which is providing very necessary moisture. We were able to dump over 130 bags of leaves on the garden last fall during a marathon afternoon collecting bags from the community dumping bins. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, with a big snow storm due in the next day, so people were motivated to get their lawns cleared before the storm. We could stuff 14 bags into the Subaru at a time, so made about 10 trips. There were so many bags that we would load, go home, unload in the car port and go right back. Exhausting, but so worth it to have the garden completely covered. The leaves captured every bit of moisture this winter, necessary because last summer was pretty dry.
In addition to the cabbage and peppers, we will also plant tomatoes. It is going to be a salsa year I think. With only two of us, the production needs have dropped considerably, but food is the best savings plan these days so we will at least replenish our stores, and enjoy a summer of salads and fresh veggies.
We are late to the instapot game, but we received one for Christmas, so I am exploring ways to make use of it. My attempts have been fairly limited, but I have found several things that work well with our meal preferences.
I started with Refried beans because they take a very long time and I find it difficult to get the beans just right. (I am impatient!) Using my traditional recipe and the guidelines for the Instantpot, I have come up with a winning combination!
Melt the bacon grease, add the spices and spoon the drained beans into the pan. I use a large slotted spoon and transfer the beans from the Instantpot directly to the sauce pan. When the fishing becomes less than ideal, I drain off a cup of bean broth (just in case) and remove the rest of the beans. Sure, I could use a colander, but why dirty another dish if you don’t have to. 😝
Smash the beans to the desired point (we like a few whole beans left) and add bean broth until you are happy with the consistency. Add salt to taste.
I divide this batch into 3-4 freezer bags and once cooled pop them in the freezer for Mexican dinner nights. There are just two of us, so I estimate that this batch provides about 10 servings.
I prefer the Instantpot for making these, because the beans are exactly the right softness and it takes less than an hour for them to cook. I can throw everything into the pot, set it, and forget about it until the timer goes off. Doing the “frying” takes just a few minutes, and I have sides for several meals.
Clean up is pretty painless too, with just the pot, the saucepan, a measuring cup, the masher and a slotted spoon. Much better than the multiple pots required for the stove top. Maybe not fair, but when I did them on the stove top, it took so long that I would double this batch, to make it worth all the monitoring and watching.
I have been on a bit of a blogging hiatus, only doing my SAL and HQAL posts for the past couple of years. I have missed it, but there just didn’t seem to be enough down time to manage more than a couple of posts each month.
A big reason for this “lack of time” was that my piano studio has grown to 60 students, and I had to figure out how to use my time. Is it better to have an even number of students each day, or to have one or two heavy days and a few open mornings? What’s the best ratio of home school to after school students, and when is quitting time? What extras should I offer my students, and how do I manage the unmotivated students?
I hadn’t really considered these things when I opened the studio; I was just hoping to get enough students to pay the monthly bills, and to enjoy not being on the road for work. That and the journey we faced until DH was diagnosed with AERD and got the right formulation of meds allowed the studio to grow haphazardly, without any real planning of what I wanted.
That changed this past summer, when I realized I was exhausted before the end of the school session, and was counting the days until vacation. I started with scheduling, which can become a complete nightmare very quickly. My solution was to set up a Google spreadsheet for the entire summer schedule, and announce the weeks I would be teaching in April, as well as the week that registration would open.
I did a rolling release, giving my families with three or more kids a 24 hour head start, then opening it for the families with two, and finally the singles. It worked amazingly well, and I only had to monitor the signups instead of negotiating with 34 families.
Another change I made was to reduce my evening options and limit my mornings. Now I stop teaching at 6:00 Monday-Wednesday, and at 5:00 on Thursday and Friday, and only teach Monday and Tuesday mornings. That makes for some very long days early in the week, but now I have a morning for appointments and two mornings that are not scheduled for anything regular.
I changed my make up policy this fall as well, creating another Google sheet for that schedule and sending it out with the fall information packet. I no longer remind people to sign up for makeups, as I have discovered that many of my families aren’t really concerned about $ lost because they missed a lesson.
Lots of small changes to make things more efficient. I still have work to do, but things are getting more manageable and streamlined, allowing me to concentrate on my students instead of the administration of the studio. Do I love teaching….absolutely! After all, who could resist this adorable crew!
It’s true – I have started a new project! I saw this several months ago, and thought it would make a nice spring table topper or something.
It took me a couple of months to get my templates cut…
Still more time passed before I finally purchased a charm pack in happy spring colors…
Once I was finally ready to begin, I realized that my templates were too large for my charm squares, so back to the drawing board. I did find a blog that had tutorials on this block and smaller templates. I printed off a set, then reduced them to 78% and that allowed me to get 6 honey combs on each 5 inch square.
I finally started prepping honey combs last evening, so I have this little bit of progress to show:
I encourage you to visit the rest of our group and see what they are up to:
This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another. If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.
In February I participated in a bags and wallet contest over at Pattern Review.com. I hadn’t intended to, but in mid February I realized that a new little wallet/purse was a perfect project for using up some material from a beloved suit that had hung in my closet since college graduation.
From the website: This handy wallet holds your essentials securely. There are two inner pockets suitable for bills, eight card pockets facing toward the center so they don’t slip out, and a zippered coin pocket. These are all secured with a magnetic clasp. The outside features a clear pocket with a snap closure, large enough for a cell phone or small notebook.
I used a chunk of the skirt, a fat quarter of quilting cotton, and some scraps of Liberty of London to make The Perfect DIY Wallet from SewCanShe.
I found the pattern instructions to be quite clear, and I enjoyed the project. I am looking forward to using this during the spring and summer. The strap turns the wallet into a purse, so it is quite versatile.
My only complaint is that the free instructions are constantly reloading, so that is a bit of a pain. If I decided to make another as a gift, I will buy the pattern and save myself the aggravation.
Last year DH and I celebrated our 35th wedding Anniversary, and I had been working on an anniversary quilt for us for quite a long time. I actually started it in 2022, but the blocks were very complex, and I found that I often didn’t have the energy to deal with so much detail. I kept putting it aside, but last summer finally buckled down and finished the blocks and got the top together. In addition to the pattern, I added some extra blocks to convert it into a queen sized quilt.
I was actually dreading the quilting, because I knew it needed some custom work not just a meander, and that is NOT my forte. I looked for months, and finally landed on some videos by a long arm quilter showing how she planned and quilted her version of Alaska. While I wasn’t up to trying her pattern exactly, it did help me get started. Over Christmas break DH contributed to the cause by picking up a folding table at Menards, which extended my sewing area and made manhandling the quilt on my domestic much easier. I finally finished it the first week of January.
Another break and then I pulled out my scraps and pieced the binding together. That completed, I was motivated to get the binding sewn on and then stitched down. (I actually enjoy hand stitching the binding, so that was fun.)
We had a wicked cold snap in early February and added the quilt over the down comforter…it was…heavenly! We are looking forward to using it this summer when the down comforter is too hot. Our Alaska quilt will be just right!
Have you ever made something for you to a special anniversary or event?
I have made big progress again this time. It’s a happy sad situation; I’m happy to be closing in on a finish for this piece, but sad because my intended gifted passed away unexpectedly about 10 days ago. I am racing to finish it now, hoping that her husband will find some comfort in having it. A very unexpected outcome.
Sewing Etc. 