The Doodle-head:

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Learning lessons while knitting

Yesterday after work I went to one of my local yarn shops and purchased some Koigu (KPPPS) yarn in a yummy not-quite-chartreuse color (yes, it's true, I do not have a huge yarn stash, at least not for sock knitting, and given my huge cross stitch and quilting stashes, I'm trying to keep it that way for now - besides, some of these yarns are really expensive, yikes!).

Before dinner, I got my sock pattern book out and began casting on. I happily began knitting my rounds, carefully following the pattern. Then it was time to make dinner, and so I put my knitting down. Afterwards, I picked it up again, and apparently I forgot to look at what I was doing. I must have turned the work, because I started noticing that the pattern wasn't matching up... I checked, and yes, I was definitely doing the pattern correctly, but at the same time, I was not. Lesson learned: check, check, check your work when you pick it back up and make sure you're knitting the correct side and in the correct direction!

I chatted with my fellow quilter at work yesterday morning (the one who took the machine quilting class with me). We compared notes (she's been practicing while I have not), and it got me all fired up again to practice as soon as I got home (aren't friends great for that?). I picked up my muslin and batting and played around with a quilt pattern drawn directly on the fabric, then with some more "doodling". I have a good ways to go, but I really feel that I'm getting better and a little more comfortable with moving the quilt with my hands vs. the machine.

After practicing a bit, I worked on the t-shirt quilt for a short time. I found a really cool t-shirt quilt online that had borders around each t-shirt block and then additional fabrics to make it look as if the blocks had shadows. It was the best-looking t-shirt quilt I've seen, and of course, I have NO idea where I found it. But I did make note of the idea, and I'm going to do that when piecing Hollywood's quilt. Currently, I have all of the t-shirts fused to interfacing and cut into 12½ inch squares. I've just started piecing the borders to these squares, and I love the results so far. I'll try to post a pic this weekend.

Thanks everyone for your comments! Oh, and Tammie, I both use the quilts I make and I give them away. Up until recently, most of the quilts I made were given away, but I've actually made quite a few in the past year or two that I kept for myself (or gave to my husband). I haven't made any wallhangings yet. They are just so nice to snuggle under in the winter or even in the summer, when C likes it a little cooler in the house than I do. :)

It's game night, and I'm torn between wanting to knit, quilt, and play videogames. C told my mom and dad the other day that I'd be tickled to have two heads and several extra arms. You know, I think he's right. :)

Oh, and we've just finished watching the Lost season finale and the Battlestar Galactica mid-season finale. WOW! I was very impressed with both, and I'm depressed that we have to wait until 2009 for both to resume. We're watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel on DVDs to help get us through the summer. Fortunately, we'll also have Eureka and Stargate Atlantis in another month or so.