Changes

It was time for some changes at my house again. The 75 gallon water heater was beginning to make some very odd noises when it heated up the water. And I really didn't need a 75 gallon water heater anyway. It was what came with the house and I gather we had to have one because of the tub that also came with the house.

The water tank was huge, but compared to the wine cooler my husband had brought with us from California it looked pretty small.

The wine cooler will go to my daughter's house at some point this summer. In the meantime, it is living in my garage. And once both of them were out of the Utility Room, there was room for a tankless hot water heater and the water softener I've been wanting since I moved into this extremely hard water area.

So there it all is, taking up a lot less space than the other equipment. The washer and dryer are in that room too, on the other wall. I did some laundry this morning and there is a lot more room in there now.



Take care all.

On My Needles - May 10, 2013

I'm knitting in addition to quilting and getting ready to quilt. I actually swatched for this project, which is rather funny considering what the project is and what the pattern said.

The pattern said that you could use any yarn with it, although the size would change depending on what you used. They were using what sounded like a fingering (sock) yarn and size 4 needles.

The yarn I picked out is a $1 a ball yarn from Big Lots. I've got no idea what it is made of. I think it is either sport weight or DK.

I started with size 9 circular needles because this thing is going to get big and it will be big fast. That was too loose, so I tried a size 5 needle. Better but still rather floppy. This shows the project begun with a size 2 circular. All of the needles were by different manufacturers and that turned out to be interesting in itself. But that is a different post.

They yarn is really nice to work with. Right now it is self striping and trying to make little patterns. That won't last long once the numbers of stitches doubles and triples. I'm adding 4 stitches every other row. It feels soft and rather silky. And the colors are so pretty. There will be blocks of islet rows later in the project. This yarn is somewhat different from what I expected knitted up, but I think it won't matter because the "lace" blocks aren't all that complicated.

Take care all.

Free Motion Quilting and the Feeling of Success When Something is Finished

I haven't been blogging much. There hasn't been much to blog about except medical issues and those are as boring to write about as they must be to read about. On the medical side I decided to go a more aggressive route with my back, leg and knee issues. I'm seeing my chiropractor 3 times this week and next week, and it is already showing signs of making me a lot stronger. I got the asthma under control and am no longer using the rescue inhaler on a schedule. The nebulizer got packed away several weeks ago. So I'm not as tired all the time as I was.

The result is progress in some of my projects. Two of them are now up on the walls where I can enjoy them on a daily basis.

The Class Quilt from the Free Motion Craftsy class taught by Ann Petersen is now in my bedroom where  I can see it when I first wake up in the morning. It probably won't be the only quilt that hangs there, but it was the project that taught me that I could free motion quilt. The only thing I wish is that I'd had the guts to use thread that showed.

But I probably have gotten there. I've bought both of Leah Day's new classes at Craftsy, and I'm going to be doing the second one first. I ordered the fabric for the tote bag panels this morning from JoAnn's online store because I'm not physically strong enough to go shopping for it. It probably isn't as dark fabric as the ones Leah is using in her class, but dark enough that the white thread is going to show.

Meanwhile I've watched the first class and I might watch the second one soon, but this will be a class where I follow along. The only thing I'm not sure about is if I watch the entire thing first and then go back. That is what I did with Ann Petersen's class once I decided to make the project, and I know that does work for me.

I put my braid quilt up in the Computer Room. Right over the desk. This is an extremely strange colorway for me to have done. The fabrics really are that pale. But when I had gotten part of the braids together I realized just how much I liked the look so I didn't use any of the darker fabrics I had and just kept going. It was so unusual for me that I had to buy the border and backing fabric after the braids were done.

It is also the first quilt I ever did completely with a machine. I had pieced by machine before, but never did any quilting by machine. This wasn't free motion. It was actually all walking foot quilting, again mainly from an Ann Petersen class. Not sure which one to credit for this.

Leah Day said in her blog today how she is taking two sewing classes from two different Craftsy teachers and how what they teach is so different, but how they are illuminating things for her because she is taking both of them. I feel that way as well. I've taken quilting classes from several Craftsy teachers, and they have all been very good classes from excellent teachers.

Take care all.

Daily Life

In some ways I've been quite active and quite busy. I've finished the binding on the Class Quilt and just have to get the bottom of the rod pocket sewn. I've been online and I've ordered a couple of extra long circular needles. I seem to have decided I like the 40 inch length. I know that one can do magic loop on things other than socks, but only if the needle length is long enough. I've got a size 9 and a size 10 coming.

I finished the scarf I was making. One ball of the yarn was enough for the scarf. I wanted to see how it would look finished.

The yarn doesn't take great pictures. It is actually quite metallic. The color changes make it a very interesting fabric. Don't know if I will ever wear this thing, but there is a charity that I might give it too. Some teenaged kid just might fall in love with it. It is actually quite pretty.

I'm wondering if I am a process person rather than a project person. I do have to enjoy the process or I'm just not interested.

I have gotten out of the house quite a bit, and not just to doctor's appointments. I've even been to the bank and I've paid my County taxes. I went to Big Lots yesterday and just enjoyed being there even though it made me very tired.

But mostly, I've been dealing with pain, and with walking, and just getting the tasks of daily life done. Today I had to wash my sheets and remake my bed. Doing that is a kind of success story. It was almost as hard as I thought it might be, but not quite and it got done. I'll need to get my recycling and my trash cans out to the curb tonight. They collect the trash in the middle of the night. The recycling can get collected as early as 5:30 am, or as late as noon, so it also needs to go out before I go to bed.

I have one envelope to mail, and mail to pick up. Some of  the time I can walk there. Some of the time I need to drive to get to the mailbox. And today, I've added the task of going to the supermarket for a few things and picking up gas while I'm out. Maybe I'll go out to eat too. I think I'd like that.

Just loads of daily life, and once in a while the ability to make something beautiful to fill my soul.

Take care all.

Quilting Again

I have been staring at the Class Quilt at my sewing machine since March. That was when the second round of being sick started this winter. I had done everything that needed to be done to put the binding on the quilt, except actually do the machine sewing on the binding. And then I just didn't have the energy to sit at the machine. Part of me was afraid I'd never get there.

Last week I had some work done in the house. One of the things I did was to put up the curtain rod that will hold the class quilt. I had the bar put up so I could put other quilts on it as other quilts got made. I've been looking at that empty bar for almost a week now.

Yesterday I was free all morning. And I sat down at the machine. Literally 30 seconds after I started sewing I realized how happy I was to be there. It took four sessions to finish putting the binding on.

The first two were pretty easy. The third was one of those disasters that just happen when it has been a long time since one has done something. Sewing the two ends of the binding strips together became a major disaster. I ripped out the first attempt because everything was twisted.

I had to rip out the second attempt too because something got sewn into the seam that should not have been there, but the third attempt, on the fourth session went like a dream. The machine part of the rod pocket is in place on the back and the machine part of the binding is in place on the front. Now it is all hand sewing while I watch TV over the next couple of days.

I'll be linking to The Free Motion Quilting Project and to Fiber Artist Journey.

Take care all.

This and That for Random Thursday

I'm feeling rather random today. I'm doing laundry this morning. I'm not dressed and it is almost 10 am. I'm resting in between bouts of doing the stuff I need to do, so dressing is waiting.

Spring has sprung in East Central PA. The Lehigh Valley is full of flowers and plants. The trees are blooming. My crab apple has bloomed for the first time in 9 years. It always has some blooms, but this time, the entire tree is blooming. Maybe the hard winter has something to do with that.

As usual I have a wonderful front garden. My daughter has added stuff every year for the last 4 or 5, most recently some perennials she found at a local garage sale. Spring has always been great in the front of the house (the only place where I plant because my community takes care of the rest), Summer, not so much. But either this year or next year that is going to change. We've been working on it for the last two years and I think we just might be done.

But I don't have pictures because my walking just isn't good enough for me to get out there with a camera and take them.

And that is the real bummer. I started walking, bit by bit, with my walker in January. In February I got sick. I got so weak I ended up using a cane full time, even in the house. The walker let me walk further outside than I could without it, but most of the time I was able to just walk. Using a cane all the time just makes me so tired. And so tired means I don't get to enjoy the Spring as much as I expected to. All very frustrating.

Take care all.

Knitting, Crochet and Decisions, Decisions

Once I finished the sock I decided I wanted to do some really easy projects. I had gotten two balls of the kinds of yarn that makes ruffle scarves. One from Walmart, and one, for just $1 at Big Lots. I went online to see how to knit them, and noticed that there were also crochet videos. It was pretty obvious that crochet would have been a whole lot easier for someone who knits continental.

I started with the Big Lots ball. I have no idea who's yarn this was in the beginning but it made up into a very pretty scarf. It is long enough to make a simple knot but not long enough to double.

My daughter chose to take both of these home with her.

I used the same crochet system to make the second ball. It is a name brand, Red Heart Sashay. It made up thicker and longer than the $1 ball. Equally pretty but in a different way.

Both of these projects were extremely quick. The problem is that once you start you can't put the project down. I needed to back off after about 3 or 4 inches because I hadn't gotten the stitch onto my needle correctly. And the entire thing ripped out. So once you start, you need to continue for about an hour.

Outside of that this is extremely easy to do, and the results are very nice.

I'm now working on a shawl. There is a problem with it because it is obvious to me that once I finish the two ends of the triangle will not match.

I got the pattern online. basically you start at one of the points of the triangle, and knit until you almost run out of yarn and then do a special bind off. I didn't realize that I couldn't see both points in the picture. The person who came up with the pattern probably didn't care that the points didn't match. She was designing for other reasons. But I will care. Again, this is a $1 ball of yarn from Big Lots. Don't have a clue what brand it originally was. It is fun to knit and I like the openness of the stitch pattern. But I am going to care about the points, so I'm going to put these stitches on some waste yarn, and I'm going to start something else with one of the other 5 balls of this stuff that I have. It is obvious after having knitting as much as I have that there is a lot of yardage in the ball.

I won't try to rip the knitting because, once again, I'm dealing with a yarn that doesn't rip very well. And I've got so much of this stuff, it just isn't worth the aggravation to even try to rip it out.

Take care all.