Category Archives: Knitting

I’m not allowing myself to do anymore knitting for awhile. When I start knitting something, it’s the only thing I do…ever. I finished my poncho this past weekend, and when I brought it to my crafty girls group this week, people were amazed that I had it done already. THAT’S BECAUSE I’VE DONE NOTHING ELSE SINCE I STARTED IT! I’m not fast, I just have no life. But it is finished, and it’s nice to wear around the house.

And now, since I’m no longer letting myself start any new knitting projects, I’ve actually gotten some work finished on my new wedding quilt. Today I sewed three finished blocks together. That was a big accomplishment. For months, I only had one actual block completly done. Now I can start to see just what the top is really going to look like:

It needs to be ironed pretty bad right now, but I’d like to wait and do that when I get a strip of six blocks done before I do that work. I’m real pleased with how it’s starting to look. Now if I can just get a lot of work finished with it this weekend when we’re on our 12 hour trip to North Carolina. As long as it doesn’t make me carsick, I should do pretty well!

I’ve been spending a lot of my free time working on projects, but lately, none of it’s been my quilting. I’ll get to that in just a bit. First though, I figured since I’ve been so stalled out my quilting, I’d at least profile some of the work that I could be doing instead. Shortly after I started the Wedding Spectaularrr quilt almost two years ago, I decided that I wanted to make myself a quilt in the same pattern, but in different colors. I got several stars done, but after I started piecing the top of Wedding Spectaularrr together, I put it away, and I haven’t worked on it much since.

As usual, it’s one of those projects that just doesn’t get attention because it doesn’t have priority over the quilts that are going to be gifts. I stopped working on this one, because I needed to devote all of my attention to finishing Wedding Spectaularrr. But until I get an extra moment for quilting, it sits in a basket, waiting for me to get bored with whatever else I’m working on for the minute.
In the meantime though, I’ve been knitting. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again–I really don’t like knitting that much, but there’s something about it that makes me need to do it. It’s not that I hate it, and don’t have fun with it, but it’s not nearly as fun as quilting is to me. But despite that statement, I’ve been busy. Last week I threw together this:

I found the pattern on the Lion Brand Yarn website. They actually have some pretty good patterns there. I thought this one was really simple–I finished it in only a couple of hours, and that’s pretty good for me.
And then finally, although I had started (and intended to finish) a knitted poncho a few weeks ago, I abandoned it and started a new one in better colors.

I’m not giving up on this one now, and it’s also partially to blame on why I’ve not done any quilting yet this week. Ben and I are driving to North Carolina for a friend’s wedding reception (in simpler terms, it’s a hog roast) and I’d like to wear it to that. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it actually turns out!

I had been thinking last week about how much fun I have when my friends that quilt or knit meet up and do our things together. Maybe it was part inspiration from the Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation book that Ben gave me for Christmas, and maybe it’s a little of just wanting to see my friends more often, but starting tonight we have a crafty girls group. We decided that it wasn’t going to be just a quilt or knit-specific group, since most of us do more than one of them. I’m excited though for everyone to get here–it should be a lot of fun.
I am finding it frustrating though, that it never seems that I’m able to get a project done lately. I guess it’s that I’ve started things that all take more than just a couple of days to finish (and in some cases, no less than months). But I have been busy. I started knitting a poncho (not really because I wanted a poncho, but more because I’m trying to learn how to actually use patterns to knit… it’s not going extremely well right now). I doubt I’ll use it for much more than around the house wear when I finish it.

I’ve also been trying to get through as much the wedding quilt for our friends Laura and Steve. The blocks are getting bigger, and when you lay them out, you can start to see what the pattern is going to look like:

It’s making me itchy to finish the rest of the blocks so that I can sew the whole thing together. But hand piecing 30 blocks with 81 squares in each takes up a lot of time. It’ll be worth it in the end though. Here’s still what’s left to be sewn together:

And with all of that going on, I finally got some pictures from the Wedding Spectacularrr quilt printed up, and I’m working on scrapbooking them in my quilt book. I’m not a huge fan of scrapbooking, and it kinda drives me crazy since it takes so long to make one page nice, but I figure that I worked so hard on the quilt, I might as well take the time to make a history of it.

The computer is finally back to normal again, and I have pictures to prove that I have actually been working! The current wedding quilt is coming along so nicely right now. I got a ton of piecing done this weekend when Ben and I were stuck in the house being sickies (which I still am). I keep looking at my bag of squares to sew and thinking just how much I have to go, even with all of the fabric not cut yet. It took me over a year to do the Wedding Spectacularrrr quilt, and this one’s got a lot more piecing and quilting than that one did. As of this Friday, the 8th, I have exactly one year.

There’s a lot more to do, isn’t there?
But during the time when I’m not working on that, I’ve been keeping myself busy with the knitting. I finally finished the blue scarf that I ripped out and started again, and I’ve also started a fuzzy orange one. I love the color orange, and have no idea when I’ll ever use an orange scarf, but it’s fun anyway.

and….

If nothing else, I’ll be able to wear that one for Halloween.
And finally, after several weeks of stress, I finally recieved my new quilt rack. Finally! I’m really happy with it too, but I found out, that there really wasn’t a good place to put it in my house. Its location is still somewhat to be determined, but for now its sitting at the end of the hallway, just inside our office.

The green quilt on the front is the first I ever made, for my now husband as a high school graduation present. It took me a year and a half into his time at college to actually finish it. The one behind it is a quilt titled “Bloom,” made by my Granny. She’s the recipient of the blue, yellow and green quilt I’m working on. Which, by the way, is still causing me major stress and headaches, since I still haven’t decided how to finish quilting it. I figured some time away from it would help me.
Whew! That was a long post!