more on life's happenings

So what have I been up to since the last post? 

Knitted some more on my sweater.  I've got most of the body knitted and as usual with stockinette it is all curled up and not very photogenic.

Cooked up and dehydrated some ground beef we found on sale to make backpacker's gravel for camping and such.

Starting to finish our remodel of our travel trailer.  We have one bed frame installed but can't seem to get to the other because life is interfering.

Hubby's mother entered hospice and has passed away.  The dear lady is now without pain for which we are all very thankful.

We decided to trade our diesel pick-up truck in that we tow the trailer with for a gasoline powered one.  That will lower our one-n-only payment.  The good news is the loan isn't for any longer than what was left on the diesel.  A little monetary breathing room would be nice.

We've been kicking around the earth boxes idea.  The cost is way more than we can afford so I've been looking at DIY clones of earth boxes.  I think we will use that guy's idea with the wicking system that I saw in this video.  We are hoping to get some kind of garden this year because it is still very dry here.  So unless we get a lot more rain this spring, things don't look good for crops or forage for animals.  The watershed ponds are still dry.

That's about it except our anniversary rolled around this month.  We went to Emporia, KS and picked up Sister Suzy.  Then, the three of us played in the hot-tub and heated swimming pool for two day at the hotel.

I hope everyone has a good day!

Judy

startitis

My terminal case of startitis has been flaring-up.  I have started three shawls and a sweater.  The shawls need to be frogged and put back in the yarn stash.  The sweater looks like a keeper even though I have restarted it twice.  I have bought the yarn for a matching set of mitts and balaclava for Sister Suzy.  I have the patterns printed and everything in a bag together.  As much snow as we have had in the last week I should have got them done two weeks ago. : >)

I have two quilts I've started and lost the inspiration to finish.  Got two more planned but haven't looked in the fabric stash yet.

I need to knuckle down again and get something finished.  Otherwise, the projects start piling up and my monkey-mind gets to driving me crazier than I already am.

Been cooking and canning up a storm.  The grocery store had all the ingredients for salsa on sale so I went nuts and bought enough to do 24 pints.  Only this time I dehydrated the salsa after I made it and the salsa fits in a 1/2-gallon ice cream container.  The stuff tastes great after re-hydrating which was a concern when I came up with the idea.  Made Hubby two kinds of pickled jalapeños with the leftover peppers.  The recipes say to let the jars set for a couple of weeks before trying so I'm not going to publish the recipes until we have tasted them.  Cabbage was on sale, also, so we picked up two heads.  I want to dehydrate them to make up a soup blend of vegetables to have handy for when I want to make a quick soup.  If it turns out well I may get more cabbage.

My desire to wear clean clothes says I need to start the laundry so back to the salt mines!

Everybody have a good day!

Judy

tossed nine patch quilt

This is the fourth quilt I made for the girls.  It is called tossed nine patch and this you-tube video was the inspiration for it.

Sister Suzy wanted this one for herself.

I cut 5-inch square patches.  I used the dark-purple print in the border for the center blocks.  Then I used random purple squares for the outside corners and random green squares for the four inside blocks of the nine patch.

I had to add a fourth inside border on each end because the center of the quilt wasn't long enough to fill the space for a 48" by 72" quilt.  I cut a small diamond stencil that fit on-point and using my washable quilt pencil drew around the stencil for the quilting of that border.   As you can see I used stitch-in-the-ditch for most of the quilt and put a big X in all the larger blocks to make sure the batting didn't shift or bunch in those squares.

One of the things I did differently for this quilt was useing up a bunch of scrap batting that was the same weight or loft.  By spraying the backing well with the spray adhesive it was easy to butt the pieces of batting up against each other and get complete coverage without any shifting or bunching.  The quilt will have to be washed several times to see if I have enough quilting to hold some of the smaller pieces in place. I plan to try it again with another quilt with higher loft scraps.

I decided to go with big squares for the backing on this one.

And here is the label so it can go to it's new home with Sister Suzy.

As a Side note:  I was off-line for about a week as Hubby rebuilt my computer and him trying to get all the bugs worked out.  He ended up having to replace the new motherboard he installed because Windows 7 would not recognize the video card on that board.  The computer is still choking every once in a while so he has some more fine tuning to do.  So my access may still be spotty for a while.

I hope everybody is having a good day!

Judy

Xs and Os quilt

This is the third quilt I made for the girls.

The pattern is called Xs and Os.  The inspiration for the quilt came from a You Tube video by the Missouri Star Quilt Co.  I didn't want to make too deep of borders so I used four and a half blocks across the width of the quilt and alternated the placement of the half-block on each row. Which really made the Xs and Os stand out.  I discovered that after I had the quilt laid out so the light and dark blocks are bunched in areas. (You know, one of those, I wonder what this would look like ideas?)

Figuring out how I was going to pull off the way I wanted the quilting to look was a bit of a challenge.

I had to over-quilt some of my stitching in the ditch to have continuous lines of quilting instead of stopping and starting a lot. I originally planned for the dark red to be the outside border and binding but after measuring and some calculations I discovered I didn't have enough fabric so I reversed my layout of the border.

For the back I decided I wanted to do strips of fabric.

I didn't take a close-up of the label but it's there in the lower right-hand corner!  LOL!

Have a good day!

Judy

appi slopes helix hat

Sister Suzy's hat to match her Helix Mitts.

I had her look at several hat patterns and this is the one she liked the best. It is Appi Slopes by Melissa Mall.  I found it on Ravelry. 

If I knit it again I will make the crown shallower by about two inches. (Start the decreases for the top sooner.)

Making the bill was interesting. The direction say to cut the bill from plastic and wrap in duct tape.  So I cut the bill from an old plastic binder and wrapped it in red duct tape.

I used red for the bill and duct tape because I was worried that the bill would show through the knitting. 

Everyone have a good day!

Judy

Blogger's spam filter

Just for kicks and grins I decided to look to see what was in Blogger's spam filter for comments on my blog.  I found some comments in there from the last of October to the first part of November that should have been sent to comment moderation.  Makes you wonder about the flakiness of the programing.  It, also, makes me ask the question; do you really need a spam filter if you have comment moderation turned on?

I promise to do better and look in there on a more regular basis from now on. :>)

Have a good day!

Judy

helix fingerless mitts

I asked Sister Suzy if she would like a pair of fingerless mitts.  She was agreeable.  After looking over several patterns I settled on a simple pattern but wanted to make one row stripes.  I started in and ripped it out because making jog-less stripes for one row wasn't happening for me.  I did some research on how to do helix knitting. (I saw the pattern and thought it was cool.)  By using TECHknitter's tutorial and reading Kristin Briney pattern Walking Stripes carefully, I figured out how to do helix knitting on circular needles.  This is a documentation of how to set up helix knitting on a circular needle vs. 4 double-pointed needles.

First off knit your cuff the length you want.  I used Magic Loop and the pattern calls for one-inch cuffs in 1x1 ribbing.  Then to help me visualize the knitting being on four double-pointed needles I placed stitch-markers about halfway on each side.  Then I added the three additional colors I wanted to use between the stitch markers.

By the way, I only cast on 42 stitches instead of the 48 called for in the pattern.  So I had two sections of ten stitches and two sections of eleven stitches. I wanted the mitts to be seven inches around not eight.

The pattern tells you to go to the third needle and pick up the purple yarn in this case and knit to the last three stitches of the blue yarn.   To get to the purple section I slipped the blue yarn back onto the left-hand needle.

Then I knit the purple yarn to the last three stitches of blue yarn.  Slipping the last three stitches.

The directions then tell you to turn the work and knit section two to the last three stitches of the purple yarn.  To get to section two, I slipped everything from the right needle on to the left needle.

Then I knit the yellow yarn to the last three stitches of the purple yarn.

The directions next tell you to turn the work again and pick up the yarn on your first needle and knit to the last three stitches of the yellow.  So I slipped all the stitches on the right needle back onto the left needle and got out a smaller double-pointed needle and slipped all the yellow stitches in section 2 on to the double-pointed needle.

At this point you are asking the question, "Why didn't you just start out on double-pointed needles in the first place and save yourself all this hassle?"  The answer to that question is, I do not have any US #4 double-pointed needles.  I have every other size but those.  That shall be remedied when I get to town and can shop at the Twist for some HiyaHiya needles.

Then you knit to the last three stitches of yellow.

Now you slip the nine stitches remaining on your left-needle on to your right-needle.  You are now ready to pick up the yarn at the end of the row (blue at this point) and start knitting until you are within three stitches of the last color you knitted the round before.  Drop the yarn you are using and slip nine stitches and pick up the yarn at the end of the slipped stitches.  Then rinse and repeat until you are ready to start the thumb gusset.  You are not to twist any yarn in the back like intarsia because this type of knitting does not create any holes.

I tried moving the thumb gusset around on the mitt and I couldn't avoid slipping stitches through the thumb area, probably because I cast-on 42 instead of 48.  I decided to start my thumb gussets where the yellow stripe starts.  I only had to knit one extra round to get all the slipped stitches out of the thumb area.  A note to self: pale yellow yarn doesn't work; it looks like a dirty white with the rest of the knitting.

So this is what the finished mitts look like.

I thought the directions for finishing the helix were pretty understandable as written so I didn't worry about translating them to Magic Loop.  I wish I had made the portion above the thumb about 1/2-inch longer so it covered more of Sister Suzy's fingers.  Nice fun little knit and I learned something new!

Have a good day!

Judy