I thought I'd recap my recent activities with some crappy pictures! We had city wide garage sales this last weekend. Since I'm too much of a pack rat to actually get rid of some stuff, I chose instead to embark on an insane baking biathlon. I baked 24 (count them 24) dozen kringlas. UTTER MADNESS!! I mixed up two double batches of kringla dough in my HUGE metal mixing bowl (one double batch at a time!) and then piled them into another big bowl so I could use the huge bowl for lefse. Meanwhile, I had my two biggest pots on the stove boiling 10 pounds of russet potatoes that I would later cool and rice twice. Keep in mind that this was all happening at about 2300 and would continue until 0500 when I would then shower, change clothes, load my car and then DRIVE 40 miles to get home! I was facing the Point Of No Return where I knew what I was in for and now HAD to continue and finish lest I waste all those ingredients, however many POUNDS of it there was! I just stood there for a moment and laughed to myself like a crazy person at how pathetic and ridiculous my situation was at that moment! In the end I sold the first 16 dozen kringla that I made and baked another 8 dozen at my parents' house. I also mixed up the lefse dough (about 72 pieces worth) and cooked it in their kitchen which was actually kind of nice because I think it is a rare treat to eat lefse hot off the griddle. I was also quite proud of myself that I cooked it all by myself which I have never done in all my life. When I was a little girl, I would stand on a chair in front of the stove with the lefse stick and Mother would roll it out and I would flip. Now that I am older and Mother is just OLD ;) we have switched jobs, but Mom was working that morning so I rolled and flipped myself. It CAN be done if you're not babysitting or watching anything else in the kitchen. You are steadily busy and I always get a sore lower back after rolling/stooping for 3 hours.





Lately for some reason, I've felt the need to do some fabric de-stashing. I've had this lovely blue and white lithograph fabric (about 12 yards of it--MUST HOARD!). I was going to be home where there is a great open space to work on blankies and where Mom's Elna sewing machine is! I backed it with some navy broadcloth and machine quilted it 6 inches apart in lengthwise running stitches. It turned out to be a nice light spring blanket. I am pleased. I was hoping to have some scraps of batting to use for Mari bases...





Did someone say Mari? Normally I would say this is a crappy blurred picture, but it is actually an accurate picture of what my eyeballs were capable of seeing at the time. DeeDee and I worked for almost 8 hours on Temari balls twice this week, pausing only for fluids and PRN bathroom breaks. My mother had some batting leftovers that were too small to use for anything but too big that you wanted to throw them out, so we even did some recycling while we were at it. DeeDee made all from scratch temari this time! She picked her own noisemakers and had a charming idea about putting personalized tokens or charms inside!

This last Thursday was the monthly meeting of the area spinners and weavers. We met at the MacNider Museum (on the LAWN and I was already internally whining about the heat) and one member had her floor loom set up for an overshot weaving demonstration. I stopped in to see my beloved puppets before I left.

I hit the library before I went home. No new or exciting knitting books. And shame on me, but I saw this growing in the lawn of the library and couldn't help but swipe it! I absolutely LOVE Lillies of the Valley! This tiny little stalk was so delicately fragrant!

When I was little, my mother used to play the piano and we'd sing all kinds of songs. We learned a lot of Norwegian songs and hymns growing up. We had piano music for The Sound Of Music and Hans Christian Andersen and Sunday School songs. One of my mother's favorites was 'White Choral Bells'. "White choral bells upon a slender stalk, lillies of the valley deck my garden walk. Oh don't you wish that you could hear them ring? That will only happen when the fairies sing." HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOM!

Tartan Temari

We forced Melissa to come to Temari night last night! She and her husband were in charge of the catering (Hardees and Wendy's! Num Num!) and once we'd each had sustenance, we began work on a new Temari. She wrapped her ball in black sewing thread and learned how to measure her ball and plot her lines. This ball is only divided into 4ths so you can really see the thread 'ribbons' against the black. She has also gone through the idea books and has found a few stitched patterns that she likes so we will try those next time. I do know one thing though, soon we'll have to get together to have just a Mari dummy making party because I'm quickly running out of finished bases!

Here is the Temari I finished last night. It is wrapped in a chocolate brown sewing thread, and then I divided it into 4ths to show Melissa how to do hers. I chose some really bland yet stunning martha blues and greens and then did a simple wrapped design but did one strand of color at a time for a woven look. I think it looks more like a plaid Temari though! Oh well. I am going to lie down for one hour and then go to Hobby Lobby to see what their metallic thread and perle cotton inventory has to offer!

I finished a pair of socks this week too. This is some lovely variegated 100% wool yarn I got at Joann Fabrics of all places! I made them with 3 skeins but of course I bought 4, as well as 4 of a blue/grey colorway. Oh well. I'm sure I can use the leftovers for something. It is a lovely 2 ply of irregular thick and thin singles. It looks very homespun while it knits up and was just a pleasure to work with! These were knit ankle down (cuff 48 stitches) on size US 6 double pointed needles.

These are lovely TV/bed socks and will be cozy and warm...but did I mention that I turned my air on once already this week? I'm going to have to put these away for a few months before I'll get to enjoy them!

Temari Action Shots!

Here is the wrapped and marked ball. That is a styrofoam ball that I hollowed out slightly, put a jingle bell inside, wrapped in quilt batting, wrapped with yarn, and then DeeDee wrapped it with an entire spool of sewing thread. She has measured and plotted north and south poles, measured and divided the ball into thirds, and wrapped and anchored an equator and longitude lines. She is ready to begin the design work, but it looks as if she's still thinking about the colors....


Here she has begun anchoring her colored perle cotton threads that she will wind around the ball in her chosen design. Note the position of her right thumb and forefinger. Your hands get SO tired from gripping and pulling the needles! I have some awesome 4 inch needles that are great for going through the entire thickness of the ball and I have some INDISPENSIBLE little needle grippers! They're the size of a 50c piece and are to needles what those rubber kitchen grippy things are to pickle jars! They are a must for this kind of work!



Here you can see quite a few rows of the work in progress. The nice thing about a wrapped ball is that you don't have to cut your thread as you work the design. You anchor the end of the thread and just wind directly off the skein so the work goes quite quickly. Again, note the position of her fingers! Your hands are sore the next day from gripping the thread and holding the work tight!



Here she is anchoring a color she is finished with. Note the gynormous needle.

And here is the finished object!

Here is a nice little Temari tutorial to give you a better idea of what we're so nuts about making!

Such a wondrous and colorful gathering of perle cotton, styrofoam balls, and sewing thread can only mean ONE thing: Temari balls! DeeDee has been asking and asking to start a Temari ball. I had a few yarn wrapped Temari balls ready for decoration and we just started there. First we had to agonize over the COLORS which is always the worst part. She then wound her chosen spool of sewing thread onto the base and got some practice anchoring her thread and learning how her stitches would behave. We used a paper strip to make her measurements and divisions on the ball as well as establishing her two poles.

That is where we picked up this week. She learned how to stitch her latitude and longitude lines and made further measurements to mark the wrapping. She agreed that the measuring/marking was the most tedious and frustrating part. We began wrapping with the perle cotton and the metallics and she was off! I watched her start the first few rows and then she worked on her own! We also just started doing actual embroidery stitching on a ball. She has 2 more that are marked with the stitching already begun and she recently took her final and was excited to have time to work on these!

This is the Temari I finished that night. It is wrapped in a spool of martha blue thread that I have been dying to use on a ball. This ball was divided into fourths and stitched with two woven spindle shapes. It has a wide obi belt so you can't see where my spindles overlapped a bit! I have had SO much fun showing someone else how to make these! The two we have made so far are the simplest to make but you can still see how beautiful even the simplest ones are. I need to be making these for my nieces, but I think I want to keep these! I look forward to revisiting different techniques as DeeDee learns, and I'm excited about learning the more complex ones!

DeeDee's WIP is a deep purple divided into eighths and will be 8 single spindles in shades of purple and rust--and the first one looked SO good! I can't wait to see it when she is finished!

I finished two more box bags. This time I used a strip of vintage copper/silver mesh fabric I got at The Cancer Garage Sale for 75c! I was so afraid to press it for fear of melting it. I backed it with a very grainy muslin before piecing it. I had two colors of this metallic cotton so I decided to make a sister set. Quite LITERALLY a sister set because the red one will of course go to my sister Lisa and the sage one will go to me. Kinda reminds you of that Overbeck painting, Italia und Germania, doesn't it? I saw that in Munich and bought a postcard of it because I just thought, "Katie and Lisa" when I saw it. So here is my rendering of Overbeck's "Italia und Germania" in box bags.


My sister and her husband are currently touring Italy. They are enjoying a memorable one month on the continent where they have been joined by our parents and a first cousin. How wonderful to share the experiences of a place like Italy with the ones you love! They write on their blog about their daily adventures of train platforms, pidgeons, asiago cheese, sweat, Duomo, etc. All the things you'd expect to hear about Italy. I enjoy checking in and reading about what they are up to.

More Box Bags

I finished some Christmas gifts last night! (These, however, are Christmas gifts that I didn't finish for this LAST Christmas!) I have 3 more bags cut out that have just INSPIRED me (more on those later) but I have to go foraging at Joann's for trim and some more felt interfacing before I can finish those. My sewing machine had been being kind of naughty tension-wise, but then my mother took it all apart and showed me a trick with threading the bottom bobbin. I have to say that a casing-less bobbin is the greatest thing to ever happen to sewing machines!

Butterfly Gals

Two of my dearest friends are nuts about butterflies. I was dinking around in Walmart and came across this fabric for only $4.96/yard and got the purple/blue for DeeDee since half of her house has purple accents (she is also a big tie dye-er so the fabric was an added bonus!) and the orange/gold for Melissa (but I forgot to take a picture of Melissa's after I gave it to her!). While in the store, I casually asked Melissa which colorway she liked better and quick had it cut while she went to the bathroom but I think she saw me on her way back! Anyhoo, the talented and lovely Amy Butler has some glorious sewing patterns (and simply EDIBLE fabrics!) and one of my absolute favorites is her Messenger Bag pattern! Mom and I both take a Messenger Bag on every trip we go on because you can put all the stuff you acquire throughout the day in it and your hands are free. It has lots of handy pockets for maps, tickets, chapstick, etc. My mother has made about 12 of these in different fabrics. This fabric was a sturdy cotton twill weave and just perfect for this project.

Temari Time

I went over to DeeDee's house last night to work on Temari balls. I had made one for her as a wedding gift a while back and I don't think I have made one since! She has always been interested in making them and we started work on a wrapped ball last night. I had forgotten how time consuming they are and how daunting they must be to a beginner. She was able to get her ball wrapped in thread and mark a north and south pole before we called it quits. I couldn't wait to keep working on mine and I stayed up all night and just finished it! I had had this color combination in mind for a while. I was inspired by the embroidery on this purse I bought in Limerick for 5 Euros. I was shopping in a "Penney's" store and it was one of my favorite souvenirs from that trip to Ireland! Temari balls are Japanese and usually made or given on New Years Eve by a mother to a daughter or an aunt to a niece. I have grand schemes to make one every year for my nieces, but that will mean a lot of catch up work! My one niece has already been around for 5 New Year's and the other has been around for 1, so I have a few I need to make already! I like the wrapped designs because there is not nearly as much stitching and they work up fairly quickly.

2 and counting...

I finished my second pair of wrist warmers from Grandma's bridal crown beads. I was home for the holiday and had Mom scan me in a wedding picture and it was indeed the crown of her veil. We also deduced that the uncut piece of lace yardage I have was the border of the veil itself. Now what to do with that? I am very pleased with the way these are turning out. I'm doing a lot of perle cotton de-stashing for this endeavor as well since it IS "Use What You Have Month". This is the "Lilac" version of the Perdita pattern and I started, finished, and blocked these last night while sitting up watching movies. I then took a break from Perdita to work a little on Mrs. Beeton. I'll soon have more wrist warmers than I know what to do with!

I made these cookies last year and based this picture on an email I had received, but the email involved chocolate bunnies. I couldn't resist. I am off work for 2 days and heading home to my parents' house but not before I do my compulsory dinking around here for 2 or so hours. I will try to make a batch of frosted Easter sugar cookies to put in the freezer since this will likely be the last time I bake these before the fall. I am looking forward to 2 quiet days at home with the folks. I have some new movies for tonight's Film Festival and some new knitting patterns for my mother. It is nice to not have to be anywhere or do anything for a day or two. Bliss.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Eggs Gone Wild!!!

Instead of having Knit Night tonight, we all got together at DeeDee's to work on some dyed eggs for Easter. I brought over my box of dyes and my styluses, egg blowers, candles, polyeurathane, and plenty of paper towels and we had at it for a few hours. Everyone brought some eggs and some craic and we had a great time hunkered down around DeeDee's coffee table! Melissa had a tragic moment when she finished her first egg, held it up with a proud exclaim of, "Ta-da!" only to DROP it on the coffee table moments later! She still managed to crank out a few more. We were really careful to examine the eggs for any hairline cracks in the shell before starting work and we didn't lose a single one in the blowing process! I have got at least 6 other colors and I really should mix them up for next time (violet, dark red, bright red, bright pink, light blue, light green, etc.). I kind of wanted to come home and work on my latest wrist warmer for a bit, but my hands are still blue and I'm afraid I might stain the thread!

One pair down...

I finished the first pair! If you look really closely you'll notice that I simply set the buttons on and haven't yet actually stitched them! This pair took 100 beads and I think I'm going to try to make a few pair of the Lilac variety because they won't use as many beads. I really would like to make enough for my mother, her sister, her sister in law, my sister, my sister in law, and my 3 female cousins, and of course me! You DO realize that is 9 pair in total. And you DO realize that in about 3 weeks or so I will be shaking my fists at the sky and cursing the day I made this promise to myself and to Grandma! Oh well. I am SO very proud of these and I would certainly like the lily of the valley variety for myself because they are my favorite of all flowers (besides pansies, of course). This first pair will go to my mother. "...and the best pair, of course, went to Mother."

Jessica's Baby

There is a gal on my floor who is pregnant and due in June. I got to visiting with her the other day and was asking if she knew if it was a boy or a girl and she didn't know. At that moment I slipped into a parallel dimension because I could still hear her talking and everything but all I could think of was this ball of yellow and very unisex cotton yarn and this pattern from Mason Dixon Knitting. It was a really simple pattern but I got to about 4 rows before I had to cast off and ran...out...of...yarn. Blast. So I already screwed up April (Use What You Have Month) and went to Hobby Lobby to get another ball of yarn to finish the project. I couldn't find a pattern for a hat and just made one up. I'll use the remainder to make a bib from Mason Dixon Knitting. I really liked the ribbon for the tie closure. I'm going to give this to her the next time I see her!

Baby Hat-Using Bernat Cottontots Worsted Cotton Yarn

CO 45 st. onto 3 dpn's, size 8. K in ss til work measures 3". *K2tog, k3* repeat from * 8 times. K one round. *K2tog, k2*, repeat 8 times. K one round. *K2tog, k1*, repeat 8 times. K one round. K2tog 9 times. Pull tail through all stitches and break yarn.

I like candy. A lot.

This is another of the items I got from my grandpa's house. It is just a lovely and humble little blue pottery plate! It is chipped in places but I think it is just so charming! I think it will look very nice on the table covered in kringlas or linzers or some such thing. I especially like it covered with festive Lindt chocolate! This is MY personal Easter stash! Everyone else will have to settle for Reese's Peanut Butter and Snicker Eggs. The Lindt can be consumed only with special dispensation from me!

Perdita-WIP

I surprise myself from time to time. I have all kinds of tins and boxes and bags and pouches that hold unfinished projects or raw materials for designated projects all over my house. They are not ordinary containers either. They are fabulous, glorious, decorative, and personal vessels to contain said items. I have begun work on a pair of Perdita wristwarmers using beads salvaged from what I think might be the crown of my late grandma's disintegrating bridal veil. I've had the floss and some ho-hum store bought beads for this project for some time now, but I was struck with inspiration when I came across this veil and began a pair. I was walking through my living room when I noticed the work on the needles laid across it's home (the tin) and thought, "What a great picture that would make!" The work matches Elizabeth's dress perfectly! And how fitting since the first pair will go to my mother who is another great Elizabeth! I bought that tin for a quarter at the Cancer Garage sale this year and absolutely fell in LOVE with it! It's a souvenir biscuit tin from ERII's coronation on June 2, 1953. I love how you can see thistles, shamrocks, and Tudor roses all over it!

Yippi-kai-yay!

I have always wanted cowboy pajamas. Don't ask me why. But I can't wear button up pajama shirts because I always feel like I am being choked. Again, don't ask me why. But I found this wonderfully tacky red fabric with cowboy heads on them a while back and made myself some pants (aka Loungewear). They are so deliciously cowboy too! They have their names next to each cowboy (Slim, Tex, Leroy, Luke, etc.)! My 5 year old niece is going through a MAJOR horse phase and she just LOVES these pants! Every time I am with her and wearing them, she will point to the different cowboys and ask, "What is HIS name? What is HIS name?" And I am STILL kicking myself because a few weeks ago I found some PINK fabric from the same designer with cowGIRLS on it (Josie, Mary Jo, Ellen, Liz, etc.) and I DIDN'T (can you BELIEVE it?!?) buy any. That is why it is always best to be an impulse buyer when it comes to fabric. I FIRMLY believe this! I will see fabric and have a small stroke in the store and snap up a LOT of it (lately I've been limiting myself to 1/2 yards for the stash and I think that is very healthy, but I also believe in buying YARDAGE because I won't know IN THE STORE what I'm going to do with it but I know some day I will have an idea and will use it and it will be FABULOUS in whatever I do with it--I often will sit up in the middle of the night out of a dead sleep with the "inspiration" and make some notes--it's also useful to keep a pad and pencil next to your bed for this purpose. I'm sick. I know. And I'm also done with this parenthesis rant!) So anyways, I was loitering in Hobby Lobby with the gift certificate that my late grandpa Maynerd gave me for Christmas burning a hole in my pocket and I happened across this HORSE fabric from the same designer and bought 1 yard of it. In a way I'm glad I passed on the cowgirl fabric because my niece loved this EVEN more! And thank goodness for little girls because they are short and you can make a pair of pants for them in under 1 yard! I bought a pattern and made them about 4 sizes too big in the waist and just cinched them up with elastic and hemmed them up by at least 5 inches because I have a feeling that she will wear them for a long time! She was so excited as I was cutting them out and it was a lovely opportunity to show her how to lay the fabric out, how to read a pattern and the cutting diagram, etc. She will be a sewer. I have a child's sewing machine that I bought when she was 3 months old with a real needle and everything and I'm just biting my fist for the day I can give it to her when I'm assured she won't majorly injure herself! And now she has her own pants and she is able to recognize letters and words and now I'm going to make HER tell ME what the horses' names on her pants are! And it felt so good to sew again! It had been awhile and it was a JOY to sew on my mother's Elna machine because it corners like it's on RAILS!

I Heart Cannibals!

We all went to my grandpa's house this weekend to collect the things we wanted for ourselves before the auctioneer got there to appraise everything. I came home with far more things than I can find homes for, but I will always treasure them. One thing in particular was this pile of scraps we found in the trunk in Grandma's closet. She had cut these pieces off of old clothes and I so wish I could ask her where they came from! There is a sizeable piece of needle tatted lace, some crocheted lace on some cotton fabric (I wonder if it was a pillowcase at one time), a lace collar that has hook and eyes still sewn on (what would have been hooked onto it? And WHO has a neck that small?!?) and a beaded yoke or headband. Most of it is machine stitched onto the accompanying fabric which makes me wonder exactly how old it is. And the airy lace at the far right is one big circle. It seems to have been stitched in gores, but I'll bet it was just cut off the hem of a skirt. So now I am just THINKING about what I could do with all this. I spend a lot of time just THINKING how to utilize raw materials. I'd like to incorporate them into something I'll use and will always remember that these pieces belonged to my grandmother, but I want to preserve them as well. These need to be made into "underwear drawer items". You know, something very pretty but kind of fragile that you put jewelery into or fragile things and then you put them in your underwear drawer. That's where the women in our family always keep things like that because I swear the underwear drawer is the safest place in the whole house! That beaded yoke/headband is disintegrating though. They are pearly glass beads stitched onto some stiffened crinolin and the crinolin is cracking in places. I think I will cut the beads off and use them for some Perdita wrist warmers. I'll have to see how many pairs I can get out of the beads, but that would be a nice gift for my sister and mother and sister in law and cousins and aunts, but I'll have to see how many beads are required for each pair. Oh I just LOVE starting new projects! And maybe I'm just sentimental, but I believe in carrying things with you from people in your life or from your past. I will have to get out some pictures, but I wonder if that yoke/headband wasn't from her bridal veil?

Tres Chic!

Ok, ok, so I started a new project. Hard to believe, eh? I ran across this Le' Slouch pattern online, was instantly enamored of it and spent the next 12 hours racking my brain taking mental inventory of any worsted weight in my stash. I remembered I had 2 skeins of Colinette Prism just WAITING to be made into something fabulous. I was a bit nervous because the pattern called for 200 yards of yarn and each skein had about 120 meters. I thought for sure I'd have a dreaded runt of a ball left over for the scrap heap, but I finished this hat in under one skein AND under 24 hours! I still have one skein left if someone I know wants a hat like this. I also have that skein of Mango Moon I bought not too long ago and maybe that would make a cute hat for someone! I really like this pattern and I've been thinking about making a hat for my niece from the yarn left over from her sweater. I couldn't follow the matching beret pattern to save my life, but this hat looks like it is shaped similarly and it would not be at all difficult to put some cable panels in amongst the seed stitch!