A Scattered Squee

I haven't been around here much.

2012-01-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

And I haven't made it to any PMQG meetings recently. I started teaching Thursday late afternoon and early evening, which makes it harder to get to meetings. Also, I've been extra-tired recently because I'm *drumroll* 7 months pregnant.

Please ignore the ridiculous look on my face and the fact that I'm standing in the cereal aisle at Target. Also, it has already been pointed out to me that vertical stripes would be more slimming. :)

Apple Rings

2011-11-11T21:05:00.000-08:00

I ordered an apple peeler / corer / slicer from amazon. It got here Tuesday, but I haven't had a chance to test it out until today.

It's awesome. You stick an apple on the little fork thing and turn the crank and out comes apple peel strings, a core, and perfectly sliced apple rings. It took me less than an hour to fill the whole dehydrator, which fit somewhere between 25 and 30 apples (I forgot to count them). An hour includes the time it took me to dig the dehydrator out of the cabinet, wash everything, and get everything set up.

I've got a billion apple rings dehydrating right now. I'm very excited.

The dehydrator was a wedding present from a friend of my dad's. This is the first time we've used it, although it was one of the first wedding gifts we got.

And then there were apples.

2011-11-04T19:54:00.000-07:00

I started with two of these three boxes of apples.

Last time I canned applesauce, it involved peeling and coring all the apples. Peeling that many apples is a pain in the ass, so I tried to avoid that this year. I decided that if I cored them and then ran them through my Vitamix blender, I would be able to not peel them. I don't peel apples that I put into smoothies, so it seemed like a reasonable idea. I blended about half the apples, then brought the sauce to boiling. I had slightly over 7 quarts. It tastes pretty darn good!

Here's the results from canning today!

Tomato Canning Exploits

2011-11-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm canning tomatoes and (hopefully) applesauce. I may also be finishing up applesauce tomorrow.

I started off the day by making a batch of roasted tomato sauce. This is going to get frozen rather than canned. I couldn't find a roasted tomato sauce recipe for canning in a water bath. The recipes I found that addressed this said it was a bad idea because of the olive oil in the recipe. Frozen is fine. I have a silicon baking thing for tiny cakes where each hole holds about 8oz of liquid. This is a fabulous size for single-serve soups and such. We have frozen chicken veggie soup, lentil soup, and some spaghetti sauce (made with our CSA and all my garden tomatoes) already in the freezer. We like tomato sauce on spaghetti squash... in fact, that's probably what we're having for dinner tonight, since we have a large spaghetti squash sitting around.

Here's the tomatoes, onions, and carrots after roasting for an hour. Mmmmm....

I blended everything up and boiled it for about an hour to thicken it up.

It looks and smells extremely tasty.

Next up is herbed seasoned tomatoes. My tomatoes are ginormous, so I quartered them rather than halving them and it seems to have worked out pretty well. These are awesome to throw in any recipes that call for canned tomatoes. Apparently canned tomatoes leach BPA from the lining of the can. I feel safer using my home-canned tomatoes.

This is what they look like once they're canned.

They've got basil, oregano, thyme, sage, and garlic powder in the jars.

I canned 12 pints and then ran out of pint jars. I decided not to do any quarts of whole / quartered tomatoes because I don't think we make many recipes that use a quart of tomatoes at once.

I also did a big batch of plain tomato sauce. This is just a base that I can use for making more interesting spaghetti sauce later on. I ran the rest of the tomatoes through my Vitamix blender in batches so I wouldn't have to take the skins off or remove the seeds. This is what I started with (it's about 10 quarts of liquified tomatoes). The pot is next to a 2 cup measuring cup for scale.

I boiled the sauce down to about 6 quarts. Here's what it looked like at the end:

I ended up with 6 quarts of plain sauce.

On to the apples!

Fall Canning!

2011-11-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy term. Not much crafting has gone on and not much WILL go on until it's over (mid December). Luckily that gives me a week or two to get some Christmas crafting done.

I did score on produce today thanks to a friend who emailed me a coupon for the Pumpkin Patch (out on Sauvie Island, for those of you who are local). Right now, almost all their produce is on sale and then is an additional 20% off. We also had a 10% off total purchase coupon. They close for the season on Sunday, so if anyone is interested in heading out there, let me know and I'll email you the 10% off coupon.

Apples were $0.69 / pound. I got about 50 pounds and B, who came with me, got another 25. We're going to can applesauce (for me) and apple butter (for her). I'm excited as I used up my last jar of applesauce a few weeks ago. This will also give me a chance to try out the new wedding-gift dehydrator, which will be awesome.

I also got two 20 pound boxes of tomatoes (tomatoes in November? What a weird year...) for $15 a box. It's a bit more expensive than what I paid for tomatoes last time I canned them ($0.49 / pound), but those were pick-your-own and it was a much better year for tomatoes. We used up all our canned tomatoes pretty quickly and I haven't been able to do more because the last two seasons have been pretty crappy for tomatoes. These tomatoes don't look supreme, but they're definitely good enough to make some stewed tomatoes and some sauce.

All the candy was buy one, get one free, so I bought a few. Halloween gummi worms or chocolate peanut clusters, anyone?

The goal is to start canning tomatoes tomorrow and continue on Friday, and to get the apples canned Friday and Saturday. It'll be busy, but hopefully worth it. I may head back out and get more apples on Saturday depending on how things are going. Apples will keep for a little while, so I could dehydrate and can a few more next week. Tomatoes have to be processed ASAP.

Honeymoon

2011-09-01T13:14:00.000-07:00

And after the wedding, we left on our Honeymoon. We decided to go on a cruise to Alaska for several reasons. We chose Alaska because my mother had been on an Alaskan cruise and enjoyed it a lot. We decided on a cruise because I didn't want to have to actually plan much of the trip.

The cruise left from Seattle. We had one fairly rough day at sea, which we spent mostly in bed, napping. Except for the sea sickness, that day was pretty darn enjoyable.

Our first stop was in Juneau. We went whale watching. We saw whales, including one who was breaching. That's when they fling themselves out of the water and crash back down, presumably to impress other whales. It's apparently unusual to see them do that in Alaka. Normally, they reserve that behavior for Hawaii, where they are getting busy with the mating. I didn't take any pictures of whales because, having whale watched before, I knew the pictures would all look like water with little black dots ("Oh look! It's a tail!").

In Juneau, we also visited Mendenhall Glacier. We were going to hike up to the waterfall that can be seen over Mike's shoulder, but the trail was completely flooded out. As in entirely submerged under water. We viewed the glacier from the viewpoint instead. I thought we needed quite a bit more time at the glacier. We didn't have time to go through the visitor center other than watching their 7 minute movie on glaciers.

Our next stop was Skagway. We went on an early morning train ride up into the mountains. Lots of very nice scenery, but the weather was a little overcast, so my pictures are mostly of trees with fog. We did see a bear! It was sort of meandering along beside the tracks. I happened to see it because I spent a lot of time looking down at the ground near-ish to the train looking for squirrels (never saw any). I'm not sure many other people on the train actually saw the bear because they were all looking off into the distance at scenery. The bear was right next to the train and looked up at me as we rolled on by. Closest I've ever been to a bear, by far.

Here we are, on a platform on the train. In the background, you can see trees with fog.

That afternoon, we went ziplining. The zipline people took us up into the rainforest and we went on 5 different ziplines. There wasn't particularly different, exciting things to be seen from the zipline that couldn't be seen from the ground, but we did finally see our first squirrels.

There were also salmon spawning. We saw these from the train, then walked back through the town to find them after ziplining. I was exhausted at the end of this day.

We spent a morning in Glacier Bay. We had a balcony room, which meant that we could hang out on the balcony and admire the glaciers. They were huge and blue and made all sorts of cracking, popping noises.

Here's another glacier off in the distance. There's no sense of scale in Alaska. You can tell that things are "big", but there's really no way to see how big they are. For example, the glacier behind us in the picture above is something like 250 feet tall.

Next stop, Ketchikan. We went on a tour of Totem Bight Park. There were totem poles. The tour guide was very good. After the totem poles, we went to a lumberjack show, which was pretty corny but entertaining. And that was it for Ketchikan.

The last stop was Victoria, BC. We were there at night and saw Butchart Gardens and the Butterfly Gardens. I would totally go back to Butchart Garden to see it in the daylight. It was quite dark by the time we got to the end. All of the butterflies were roosting, which made them easier to photograph, but not quite so exciting to watch. I don't highly recommend butterfly gardens after sundown.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable trip. We ate very well on the ship. I fell asleep every time I stopped moving because the rocking of the boat was just very soothing. We only had the one day of roughish weather and other than that, sea sickness wasn't much of a problem. Beautiful scenery was always just outside our door and could be viewed from bed while reading a book. What more could you want?

Major updates.

2011-09-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've been very remiss about updating this blog. It's partially because I haven't been crafting, but mostly because I just haven't thought about it when I have been crafting. Also, I got married and went on a honeymoon and just got back at the beginning of this week.

One of the first things I made was a purple petticoat to go under my wedding dress. It involved 180 yards of chiffon strips from this website. I never could have done it without chiffon pre-cut into strips. Also, without my ruffler foot, purchased specifically for this occasion. This was actually the second ruffler foot I bought for the project. The first was from amazon and was much cheaper, but didn't work well with my machine. Even with ruffler feet and pre-cut chiffon strips, the project probably took easily 30 hours. But it was worth it.

We got married in the Peninsula Park Rose Garden, so I didn't want to do a lot of flowers. Instead, I had my bridesmaids carry pinwheels. A lot of R&D went into these pinwheels and they would have made a great project to post about on here. However, I didn't and that's that. I don't even have any pictures of them in development or production. They were fabulous and sturdy and they spun, which was what I needed them to do.

Here's me and the groom. I also made my veil, which involved hand-sewing a string of pearly beads to the bottom of two layers of shimmery veil stuff. Quite time consuming, but easy to do while sitting and watching a movie.

Here's a portion of the ceremony. We're in the middle of the chalice ceremony where we pour both of our cups into one and then drink from it.

We had a fabulous cake made by Pastrygirl in Portland. The wedding theme was squirrels and pinwheels. The cake was delicious.

In the picture below, you can also see my tie-dyed napkins stamped with a squirrel, our names, and the date. These were our wedding favors. We had about 55 guests and I had dyed about 90 napkins.. and we only came home with 6 or so, so they seemed to be pretty popular.

We also had pizza catered by the Girasole wood-fired pizza food cart. The food was great. There were three different kinds of pizza, antipasto skewers, and roasted veggies. Also, beer, lemonade and a variety of interesting sodas. Girasole was awesome to work with and I highly recommend them.

Rather than having people sign a guest book, I had them sign quilt squares. Eventually, I'll be putting these together into our wedding quilt.

It was a fun wedding for me to be at, which was the overall goal. I wanted to have people and things that I enjoyed and to not be stressed out. It worked out fabulously well, mostly thanks to my excellent friends who helped me with everything.

The most difficult part so far has been remembering to say "husband" rather than "boyfriend". I suppose I'll get used to it someday. :)

Another batch of soap

2011-07-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

A friend was interested in making soap with me, so this morning she came over and we whipped up a batch. I wanted to make a shampoo bar, but since it was the first time I was going to try that recipe, I thought we had better start with one that I was pretty sure would work well.

We made another batch of sudsy all-vegetable, scented with 2 oz of lavender essential oil. No color. It seemed to work correctly. We got it to trace and poured it into one of my blue plastic "soap molds".

After she left, I started a batch of shampoo bar. It's this recipe from the Crunchy Chicken blog. It's a very small recipe compared to the sudsy all-veg, so it definitely won't fill one of the molds, but hopefully it'll be fine. I'm scenting it with 1 oz of Vanilla lace fragrance oil.

Gratuitous rodent picture

2011-01-04T14:24:00.000-08:00

Pipsqueak and The Chin

New Laundry Detergent

2011-01-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

I've finally almost used up the gelatinous "liquid" detergent I made up back in August. No more liquid detergents for me! It's all powdered from now on, baby.

I tried Laundry Detergent #9 this time. It's very similar to Becky Ann's recipe (thanks for commenting, btw!), but adds some more soap and baking soda (both of which I have a lot of). I had about 2.5 cups of washing soda, so I decreased the recipe from the website to the following:

4 cups Borax

2.5 cups Baking Soda
2.5 cups Washing Soda
2.5 cups Bar soap (grated)

I chopped up a bar of Ivory soap, a tiny bar of hotel soap we had laying around, and two bars of my Castille Soap. Then I ran them all through the food processor (which is very small, so I did one bar at a time). The Ivory is a very dry, crumbly soap and turns to powder easily. My homemade Castille soap is wetter and more flexible and doesn't powder when food processed. I discovered that if I added some of the dry ingredients to the food processor with the soap, it then chopped up into tiny little crumbles pretty easily.

You use 1/8 cup of powder per full load. This means that with my tiny little apartment washing machine, I should probably use about a tablespoon. At that rate, this batch of detergent should last me till next year. I also have to burn through the rest of the "liquid" detergent and then a bottle of store-bought detergent that my dad gave me that didn't work well in his new HE washer.

Blocking

2010-12-15T22:07:00.000-08:00

I blocked my first knitting project yesterday. To block knitting, you get it wet, stretch it into the shape you want it, then let it dry. You take something that looks like this:

Do this to it:

And eventually end up with something like this:

Soapy results

2010-11-15T11:25:00.001-08:00

The lavender soap that I added the blue dye to is in the back. It was peachy when we poured it into the molds, but has become a lovely purple color. I think it's close to the perfect color for lavender soap.

In the front is the Crisco soap. It didn't harden as much as the others, in fact it's still roughly the consistency of fudge. My online resources say that Crisco soap is a hard soap, so I may have screwed this one up somehow. My alternate plan for this soap is to redissolve it in hot water and make it into a liquid soap (like for soap dispensers and dish soap). I'm sure it'll be good for either that or as laundry detergent.

Here's a closeup of the weirdly fudgelike Crisco soap. It might dry out still.. maybe..

This is the Tahitian Vanilla scented soap that's supposed to turn dark brown as it cures.

The shea butter soap looks lovely. It's a nice golden brown color with little flecks in it. I'm not sure about the pink spots, but they sort of generally blend in. This mold was somewhat poorly shaped for a soap mold, so we have blocks of soap that sort of look like brownies.

The white soap in the back is the peppermint castille soap. It looks pretty much like generic soap. TD cut these two soaps (and the lavender one). He did a much better job than I did - these actually look like bars of soap.

The bright pink one is the jasmine soap. I'm concerned that the color may transfer to skin when the soap is used. We'll find out in another couple weeks when the soap can be used. It has to cure for several weeks to complete the saponification process. If you use it too early, there's still lye left in it and it's really harsh (to the point of burning you if it's way too early).

I spent the morning designing a label to put on the bars so that they look a little more like gifts. If anyone has any idea on how to package soap so it looks nice as Christmas presents, let me know.

Crisco soap

2010-11-11T12:47:00.001-08:00

So I'd bought a 6 pound can of Crisco to make soap with. I'm not sure what I was thinking - I only had one soap recipe that called for Crisco and we never eat the stuff. This morning, I decided to make up one last batch of soap using Crisco.

Turns out that you can make soap using only Crisco and lye. Turns out that multiplying the recipe by 1.67 exactly used up my remaining Crisco and lye.

The Crisco soap is destined to become laundry detergent. Since I put 5 pounds of Crisco into the recipe, I should get out roughly enough laundry soap to last me until I die.

Soap Making

2010-11-10T16:37:00.000-08:00

TD and I decided to make soap to give as Christmas gifts this year. I didn't can enough this past summer to go around.

I took a soap making class through PCC a few months ago. Then, one day a few weeks ago, I abruptly decided that we should try it. I bought the supplies and today we're off and running.

The one problem with the calculations below is that some of the measurements are in fl oz, while all of the ingredients are added by weight. Total cost of all ingredients purchased: $141.33

From Costco:

$8.99 for 160 fl oz Canola oil = $0.056 / fl oz

$17.89 for 170 oz olive oil = $0.105 / fl oz

$6.99 for 96 oz Crisco = $0.073 / oz

From Mountainrose Herbs:

$11.00 for 16 oz Shea Butter = $0.687 / oz

$21.00 for 128 fl oz Coconut oil = $0.164 / fl oz

$23 for 128 fl oz Palm kernel oil = $0.179 / fl oz

From the True Value Hardware across the street:

$3.99 for 16 oz 100% lye drain cleaner = $0.25 / oz

From Sweetcakes soapmaking supplies:

$7.99 for 2 oz peppermint = $4.00 / oz

$12.50 for 2 oz lavender = $6.25 / oz

$6.00 for 2 oz jasmine fragrance = $3.00 / oz

$7.00 for 2 oz Tahitian vanilla = $3.50 / oz

$7.00 for 2 oz Vanilla lace = $3.50 / oz

The basic idea of soap is pretty simple. You mix melted fats and/or oils with a strong base (lye) and it chemically modifies the triglycerides into soap molecules. As the chemical reaction proceeds and the mixture cools down, it gets opaque and thick like pudding. This condition is called "trace" (you can see traces of your stir marks).

Roughly 95-100 degree F lye being poured into warm oil of same temp.

Using a stick blender to mix the lye into the fats.

After some mixing, but before trace.

I don't have a trace picture, but if you look on the surface of this poured soap, you'll see bumps because it was solid enough to partially hold its shape.

We have a 1/4 batch of Rachel's "tried and true" soap from the Miller Soap website. We scented it with 1 oz of Tahitian Vanilla fragrance oil, which smells very floral. The Sweetcakes website that I ordered the fragrance oil from says that this particular one turns dark brown, so we didn't try to color it. It's been poured into a black plastic Thai restaurant take-out box. This batch cost $6.41 to make.

The second batch we made up was a full batch of Sudsy All-Vegetable soap. I tried mixing it with a hand blender and it gets to trace lots faster than stirring by hand (which we did with the first batch. This batch is colored a horrible pink (we were trying for purple, but the dye we have doesn't seem to work well) and is scented with 1 oz Jasmine Fragrance. Overall, it kind of reminds me of hotels. Total cost: $16.44.

Third, we have a recipe that I got in a handout from the class I took. I tried to color it blue and ended up with a weird gray right after I added the dye, which slowly changed to a peach color as the mixture cooled. I give up on these dyes. It's originally from Rainbow Meadow, but I can't find the exact recipe on their website. Total cost: $21.65. I'm reproducing the recipe below for my own reference:

28 oz coconut oil

18 oz palm oil

42 oz olive oil

12.7 oz lye dissolved in 33 oz water

1 oz lavender fragrance

Let fat and lye cool to 92 deg F, then mix until at trace.

Next, I found a recipe containing Shea Butter, which costs $15.03. This one's scented with Vanilla Lace.

Last is a batch of Favorite Castille II (which it turns out is soap made from mostly olive oil; who knew?) scented with 0.75 oz peppermint essential oil. It costs $18.26.

I've been gone so long, blogger forgot who I am...

2010-10-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

I had to sign back into blogger today when I tried to get to this blog to post it. My web browser also didn't remember the website and autofill it for me. This obviously means that I've been away too long. I'd blame the school year starting back up, but really I think it was my newfound motivation and level of accomplishment. When I accomplish more, I spend less time on my computer. When I spend less time on my computer, it doesn't occur to me to blog about things.

In other exciting news, I'm an aunt! My brother and his wife had a little girl. I've been crafting things for her for months now. Here's a few of my recent finishes.

Set of Dr Seuss burp cloths - they're not into pink for a girl, so I went with unisex, but fun.

Matching Dr Seuss bib that needs a velcro dot for the closure.

Set of wipies that are made with bamboo / hemp fleece on one side and hemp / organic cotton fleece on the other side. One of them is softer than the other (I think it's the hemp / cotton), but both are really nice. They're serged around the edges because I got a serger! It's this one. I picked it based on the amazon.com reviews. So far, I love it.

Another set of owl burp cloths that I made for my childhood best friend who just had her second child, a girl. They were expecting a boy so I thought I'd make some cheerful slightly-pink owl accessories for her.

A knitted baby sweater based on the Helena pattern by Alison Green Will on Ravelry. It's made with this hand painted sock yarn from knitpicks.com.

Here it is from the back.

I decided to make the smallest size, which seemed like a good idea at the time. It's smaller, so I'll finish it faster, right? Well, it turned out so small that the baby will only be able to wear it for about 2 weeks, and who puts a tie-on sweater on a newborn? Oh well. It'll look cute on a teddy bear for years to come.

After I finished that sweater project, I needed a new knitting project. I decided to make hats with really bulky yarn. Here's what I ended up with.

It's probably sturdy enough to be a flower pot.

Rags was unimpressed.

I didn't take pictures of the stuff I tie-dyed recently. For some reason, I always forget to photograph that particular craft. I did a bunch of bamboo socks for baby, a few other random baby things I had lying around, and then swiped a few of TD's white cotton undershirts (I'm not sure if he likes them better or worse now that they're blue and purple).

I also forgot to take pictures of the two wetbags I made (also for baby). They're based mostly on this tutorial. My brother and his wife had registered for this on amazon.com, but I decided that I could make the same thing for way cheaper. I ended up making two: a roughly 8"x11" one and a larger one with an outer non-waterproof pocket. They're lined with PUL fabric, which is a waterproof (but apparently breathable) fabric that people use for making cloth diapers. It was a little irritating to sew because it sticks to the sewing machine, but it wasn't too bad. The worst part was putting in the zippers. Zippers are my nemesis.

I mailed all the baby stuff off to my brother and baby on Friday. Hopefully they will actually use some of it. I forgot to mail out this hat that I'd made for her quite a while back. I'll have to send another package... but that's ok - I got a onesie that says "My Aunt Rocks" that I have to send her, too.

I went to the October Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting. Twice, actually. The first time was two weeks ago, which didn't really work out well since the meeting was this past week. There was a pretty cool art show on the street next to PCNA, though. I bought a headband that I'm fairly happy with and I enjoyed looking at the art.

I'd hurried and stressed about having my pincushion ready for the swap at the meeting. I got it done the night before I went to the meeting (for the first time), then brought it home and it sat inside its paper bag for another two weeks. Sadly, I didn't take a picture of it at any point.. The one that I got in the swap is pictured on the PMQG website. It's the colorful round one that's the third one down. I'm insanely pleased with it.

I'm sure there have been other crafts that I've finished. I just have to think about it and search around the house for unphotographed crafts to snap pictures of and post about.

Sharon;s baby beanie

2010-09-08T12:35:00.001-07:00

Sharon's baby beanie, originally uploaded by A Scattered Squee.

I made a second tiny hat from the same pattern as this other tiny hat that I made for my upcoming niece. They're both from the Bananahead Baby Beanie pattern from ravelry.com

My friend Sharon (who I know from grad school) is having a baby and I saw her and her husband this past weekend. I whipped up a quick baby hat last week before I saw them.

Chinese waves dishcloth

2010-09-08T12:34:00.001-07:00

chinese waves dishcloth, originally uploaded by A Scattered Squee.

I decided that we should transition from using sponges to using washable dishcloths. I feel like the sponges harbor icky things because they don't get run through the dishwasher often enough. I can just throw dishcloths in the laundry when I wash the dishtowels and I think it'll keep them cleaner. It hopefully will be a more ecologically sustainable way to keep my counters clean.

Also, I get to try different knitting patterns out on a relatively small scale.

Moo's fingerless mitts

2010-09-08T12:26:00.001-07:00

Moo's fingerless mitts, originally uploaded by A Scattered Squee. They're Sashka Macievich's Twin Leaf Fingerless Gloves from Ravelry.com

I'm really into knitting right now. This is the first fingerless mitt that I finished (I've finished both of them at this point). It's for my mother. She likes red.

However, I just saw her this past weekend and I'm worried that her hands are way too small for these. I may have to make a smaller pair for her.

The mitts match this Strangling Vine Lace Scarf:

BugPack

2010-08-27T10:06:00.001-07:00

I bought a pattern for a small backpack way back when I started sewing again (so about a year ago, now). I never posted about it on here because it was finished before I started the blog.

I love it. I carry it with me when I need a larger bag than just my purse. For example, I take it with me when I go to the Portland Saturday Market in case I make a purchase.

I had formulated this plan to make a smaller version for my friend's son. He's just turned 3 and she's pregnant with his little brother. I thought that baby bro will probably be getting a lot of attention and presents in the near future, so I'd make a few things for big bro.

I ended up making it just about the same size that mine was. I was going to cut it down, but just sort of didn't do it for some reason. I made the pocket on the front more 3-D so it could be filled with important treasures. It also has a sort of pockety thing on the inside that fits a little stainless steel water bottle I found for him at a garage sale. I couldn't get a good picture of that part because it's too dark inside the backpack.

I need to go get some cool buttons for the pocket and top flap and a drawstring for the top, but other than that it's finished. I whipped it out in one amazing evening of sewing productivity. I'm very pleased with it. I hope he likes it.

Halloween Wave Quilt

2010-08-26T12:52:00.001-07:00

To appease Ciara, here's pictures of my completed New Wave Quilt from Elizabeth's pattern on Oh, Fransson!. I hadn't posted them yet for two reasons: first, because it's a gift quilt and I wanted to give it to the person before I posted pictures of it online, and second, because my boyfriend was supposed to hold it for me while I took pictures and we kept forgetting.

So here's a picture I took of it on my own. It's a lot harder to photograph an entire quilt (even a lap-sized one) when no one is holding it.

It's smaller than the real New Wave quilt because I didn't have enough different Halloween fabrics. I also decided to not trim the edges straight and did the binding around the points of the diamond shapes. It wasn't all that hard and I think it looks cool.

One of my friends had asked if I would make her a quilt if she bought the fabric. I agreed, but then we never got around to shopping for the fabric. She had mentioned that she would be interested in a Halloween themed quilt and I already had all this fabric on hand (for what, I have no idea - why on earth would I have purchased this much Halloween fabric??). It took me only slightly over a day to whip the quilt up from start to finish.

Part of the reason it was so easy was because I had one of Jill's (Made On Main Street) fabulous acrylic templates. It makes this pattern super easy to cut out and once cut, it's fast to sew together. Here's her etsy shop, although she doesn't have a New Wave template posted.

After I finished the quilt, I had a bunch of fabric left over that I wanted to use (including bias-cut binding that I really didn't want to go to waste). I've been really into these pieced hexagons recently (from this potholder tutorial originally), but the triangles are a pain in the butt to cut using a regular rectangular ruler. Jill made me more fabulous templates for 45 and 60 degree triangles, which made it totally easy. I think I'll make an entire quilt from them next.

In keeping with the theme of angled binding, I decided to finish the pillow as a hexagon rather than making it square (like I did with my couch cushion pillow). This pillow is stuffed with random batting and fabric scraps that I'd saved for stuffing the dog bed. Rags will just have to wait for more scraps to come his way.

Quilt and pillow are headed to their intended recipient this evening, so I'll report back on how she likes them.

Baby Sweater

2010-08-25T17:07:00.001-07:00

Baby Sweater, originally uploaded by A Scattered Squee.

I knitted a whole sweater!

Note to self: check gauge more carefully before starting sweater project. This sweater won't fit the baby until it's about 2.

Laundry Detergent Woes

2010-08-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

I was running low on my homemade laundry detergent so I decided it was time to mix up another batch. I made a dry version the first time and it seemed to work fine. In the interest of testing different types, I decided to make a liquid type this time. I'd saved the big jug that our last purchased laundry detergent came in so that I could give it a try.

I (mostly) followed a recipe from this website again. I went with recipe #1.

The worst part of the experience last time was grating the soap. Ivory soap falls into tiny particles at the least provocation, but the Kirks Castille soap that I'd purchased especially for this project last time does not grate well. I figured I'd outsmart the soap by using technology, so out came the food processor.

Turns out that entire bars of soap cannot be processed in a 2-cup food processor. After judiciously chopping a bar into eighths, it more-or-less processed into powder or small chunks (with a few larger chunks left). I figured that, since the first direction is to dissolve the soap in hot water, the chunks would dissolve more easily than I could food process them.

Wrong. If you boil water containing a lot of dissolved soap, you get a pot that quickly fills with bubbles and threatens to boil over. Soap-water must be simmered. At a simmer, grated soap and small pieces dissolve quickly. Larger pieces take forever.

This is what my soap-water looked like after it had been simmering for about 20 minutes. Note to self: next time, grate the soap entirely. It's worth the extra time.

The recipe calls for 2 cups of grated soap. One bar of Kirk's produced slightly less than 1 cup, so I food processed 2 bars of that, then did a bar of Ivory so I'd have plenty. This gave me around 2.5 cups of grated soap. I dissolved it in water, then brought it to a boil and added 2 cups of washing soda and 2 cups of borax.

At this point, I think I should have added more water. I probably boiled off a substantial amount of it while simmering and, although I did add more during the simmering process, once I added the washing soda and borax, I had something nearly the consistency of ice cream. It was really hard to mix the washing soda and borax in, so at least one of them had not fully dissolved when I poured the mixture through a funnel into the detergent container. There were dry clumps of white stuff at the bottom of my pot.

I added about 2.5 quarts of hot tap water and shook up the mixture well inside the detergent container. Fabulous. Laundry detergent. Or is it....

The next morning when I looked at it, the entire thing had solidified into one large mass of solid whitish soap-stuff. I guess I used too much soap and not enough water. Or something.

It's been hot-hot-hot here the past couple of days, so my first thought of heating a pot of water and re-liquifying the detergent seemed like a profoundly unpleasant idea. But how else does one heat an entire container of laundry detergent? One leaves it on the front porch in the sun in the 95 degree weather!

Sitting outside for the entire day liquified the detergent to the point where I was able to add another quart of water and mix it in. I left it on the porch to think about its misdeeds.

Apparently it didn't feel in the least bit sorry because it was solid again the next morning. I left it to warm and then filled the rest of the bottle up with hot water. It seemed liquid enough.

However, I appear to have been thwarted again. After cooling, the detergent is oddly gelatinous and too thick to pour out of the container. There's no more room to add additional water, so I'm going to pour it into a bucket (which is actually what the website advises originally) and see if I can use it as a sort of laundry jelly.

Go check out this giveaway...

2010-08-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

Normally I don't cross-post giveaways because it irritates me. However, there's a chance for a really awesome prize here and I wanted to share it.

Isn't this thing cool? It's like a whole room in a box.

Lovely Little Handmades is having a giveaway for a cutting board, which if you win, you will then be entered into the Original Scrapbox drawing for a Limited Edition Workbox.

If I had more disposable income, I'd have one of these already.

QUILT-a-long

2010-08-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

Christina from A Few Scraps is doing a quilt-a-long. It's actually a quilt-a-long, too... not just a piece-a-long. We're going to follow along free motion quilting a project. I'm excited!

Baby Hat!

2010-08-12T12:48:00.001-07:00

Baby Hat!, originally uploaded by A Scattered Squee.

My first real completed knitting project (ignoring the two scarves, which were really just practice). The pattern is "Bananahead's Baby Beanie" by vibegrrl. I downloaded it from Ravelry.com.

The yarn is currently a mystery. I got it at Fabric Depot with a 40% off coupon. I thought I saved the tag, but now it's disappeared.

edited to add: I found the tag - it's Queensland Collection Haze made from 60% corn viscose and 40% cotton. Weird.

It's for my will-be-born-in-November niece.

Rampant Productivity

2010-08-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, I get on a productive streak. This time, the productive streak was caused by my quilting friend Ciara, who stayed over last week. She brought over these awesome teal and green fabrics with which we made a pillowcase that she is giving as a gift. She left me the fabric we didn't use in the pillowcase and I was so inspired that I made a pillowcase of my own.

The two pictures above are the front and back of the pillowcase. I made the hexagonal side first (based on this tutorial from Jaybird quilts), then used the rest of my sewn together strips as the border for the square side. It matches nothing in my living room except for the potholder pictured below.

Then, being in a hexagonal sort of a mood, I made this potholder using a bag of strips that Ciara had left me from another quilt. The back looks the same as the front except that the center didn't quite match up as well.

And it's not just me that's being productive. My eggplants and tomatoes are getting in on the action, too! I'm so proud of them.

Monkey Ball!

2010-08-01T13:14:00.001-07:00

Monkey Ball!, originally uploaded by A Scattered Squee.

I made a ball to go with the Sock Monkey Quilt for my upcoming niece. It's made of paper pieced pentagons using this tutorial. I stuffed it fairly firmly with batting scraps. I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Bumblebees

2010-07-18T16:28:00.001-07:00

There's a family of bumblebees that has set up house next to the stairs onto our back patio. I caught one in a mason jar so I could take its picture and try to identify the species.

I think that it's Bombus caliginosus, B. vosnesenskii, or B vandykei. All of those species are found in Oregon and they all look pretty similar to me.

After reading about bumblebee nests, I've learned that they normally only live in them for a couple of months. We're planning on leaving our bumblebees alone until they move on.

A bounty of peas

2010-07-01T09:31:00.001-07:00

Well, bounty might be stretching it... but a smallish bowl of peas, anyhow. From my garden!

Completed, but not posted

2010-06-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

I participated in a pincushion swap. After reading my partner's blog, I decided she liked hexagons and found a picture of a pincushion that looked pretty cool.

I cut up random pieces of batting into a billion tiny pieces and used that as stuffing. I actually sent it to my partner about a week ago and she got it already so I know she likes it.

My grandmother commissioned me (with money exchanged, even) to sew her 8 placemats for her TV trays. This was sometime back in March or April. I decided that I really had to finish them.

She got the package earlier this week and sent me back a thank you card with more money. She loves them.

Pioneer woman I am not.

2010-06-18T21:40:00.001-07:00

Today I took this (21.5 lbs of U-pick strawberries Groveland Acres; there were 2 other containers full):

And made it into this (there's another shelf as well):

and this:

So why am I not pioneer woman? I tried something new this time - making jam without adding pectin (which is the thing that makes jams gel). I made the jam with apples instead. Sounded like a good idea... no added sugar, no pectin to buy. The directions said to cook it for 30-35 minutes until it got to the gelling stage (220 degrees). I cooked that stupid jam for an hour and a half but it refused to go above 210 degrees. I canned it anyhow. It'll probably be very loose jam.

Here's the run-down of what got made:

1. 14 jars of low-sugar strawberry jam

2. 6 pint jars of strawberry lemonade concentrate canned and 3 pint jars in the fridge from a second half-batch (that's what the drink pictured above is! You dilute the concentrate 1:1 with soda water. It's quite tasty)

3. 7 jars of full-sugar strawberry rhubarb jam

4. 7 jars of low-sugar strawberry with the left-over rhubarb added (1.5 cups rhubarb + 4.5 cups strawberry)

5. 7 jars of over-cooked, yet under-gelled no sugar added jam

A pretty good day's work.

Kitten

2010-06-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

I dropped Kitten off at the vet this morning with very bad feelings... she wasn't eating and she'd been grinding her teeth every time I syringe fed her so I figured her teeth were just AWFUL.

The vet called a couple hours later and said that he hadn't anesthetized her but had looked at her teeth somewhat and didn't think that was the major problem. He thinks she's not eating because the antibiotics and the metacam are upsetting her tummy. Apparently degu grind their teeth when they're nauseous or having gut discomfort... so while the problem probably still is with her teeth, he doesn't think that's a life threatening problem at this time.

He doesn't want to put her under anesthesia until she's eating again (not eating IS a life threatening problem...), so he took her off the antibiotics AND the metacam and put her on something that starts with an R that's supposed to help with her upset tummy and get her bowels moving. We are going to try her on that and probiotics, but no antibiotic or metacam, over the weekend. Hopefully she'll perk up again and start eating. If she does, she can go in and have her teeth evaluated. If not.... but hopefully she'll start eating again.

Poor baby. I really thought that this morning was my last day with her. I'm glad to have her home again.

Kitten the degu

2010-06-17T22:43:00.001-07:00

Kitten is worse. In fact, tomorrow may be her last day.

I took her to the exotic specialist vet on Tuesday because her sneezing hadn't cleared up, she was losing her appetite (or ability) to eat even soft food, and she was losing weight. She's seen this vet before, back when she had tooth problems over Christmas. He's very knowledgeable.

He prescribed her chloramphenicol, which is apparently a good antibiotic for anaerobic bacteria, such as those that might infect the root of a tooth. However, either the antibiotic or her illness has caused her to stop eating all together. She won't even eat a Cheerio, which have been a favorite treat.

They're squeezing us in at the vet tomorrow for general anesthesia and tooth evaluation... but if they don't find anything, there's really nothing else to be done for her.

Actual accomplishments

2010-06-14T19:36:00.000-07:00

I don't feel like I've accomplished much recently that was noteworthy. However, today I got some important things done.

1. I made laundry detergent. Becky Ann thoughtfully commented on one of my hypoallergenic diet posts with a link to her homemade laundry detergent blog entry. I found all the ingredients today and mixed up a batch. Well, two really. I edited the recipe slightly based on information found on other websites like this one. Most of the recipes look pretty similar with slightly different amounts of the various ingredients. I used:

2 bars of soap, grated (one bar Ivory, one bar Kirk's original coco castille soap)

2 cups Borax

2 cups washing soda

I'm storing this combo in the big plastic container that we get Costco pretzels in. There's room for about 25 batches of the size above. I don't think I have strong enough arms to grate that much soap (the Kirk's was way more challenging to grate).

2. I finished a new bag for myself! The outside is batik strips from a second jelly roll that I got for the River quilt, but which I didn't end up using.

The pattern is called Sonoma Swing Bag byPink Sand Beach Designs. The pattern was quite clear except for one section about sewing the lining to the zipper. At that step, the picture could have been clearer (it's black and white and it was sort of difficult to tell what was happening). However, the bag went together correctly and I quite like the way it turned out.

I lined it with hedgehogs!! It has two small pockets on one side of the lining and a divider down the center, which I added myself. I didn't think there were enough internal pockets. I should have made the divider slightly narrower as it sort of bows to one side or the other, but I think it'll work fine.

I made a little zipper pouch to use as a wallet, but I think I'm going to have to replace that as the zipper is sort of funky. I really needed a smaller zipper.

Spring to Finish... fail.

2010-06-01T15:53:00.000-07:00

Well, May is over, and so is the Spring to Finish not-contest. Here's how I did:

1. Paintbox quilt (needs to be quilted and bound) <-- yup. It still does, in fact, need to be quilted and bound.

2. Cherish Nature quilt (just started) <-- I made some progress on this, but it's not even close to done. I haven't finished the top yet, much less quilted it.

3. Happy Stacker baby toy (x2) <-- I actually gave up on this. I decided it was too hard.

4. Pinwheel quilt (assuming that all the blocks are published by then) <-- They are all published, but they aren't all done.

5. Sock Monkey baby quilt <-- A finish! Whoo-hoo!

In my defense, I have done a lot of other things. I've been working on placemats and a matching quilt for my Grandmother. I sewed some napkins for my mom for Mother's day. I am slowly plugging away at my wonky star blocks. And I've made some excellent progress on the sweater I'm knitting (I'm taking a class).

I blame my total lack of completion on the fact that the weather refuses to behave as if it's spring... so how can I possibly spring anywhere?

Kitten's vet visits

2010-05-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

Those of you who are totally uninterested in my rodents can skip this entire post. I'm summarizing what's happened during the course of Kitten's sneezing illness so that I have a record of it later.

Kitten's sneezing hasn't resolved. Sometimes she seems to be sneezing less and sometimes more, but it hasn't gone away and I don't feel like she's eating at her regular level. Here's what we've done so far:

Visit 1 (5/18): Vet listens to her lungs, takes her temperature, looks at her teeth, gives her 0.02 mL Baytril 2x daily.

Phone call (5/21): Baytril hasn't eliminated sneezing, but it might be somewhat better. Vet recommends 1 mL Benadryl 3x daily over the weekend.

Visit 2 (5/25): Benadryl hasn't eliminated sneezing, but it might be somewhat better. Vet gives her a cortisone shot and says she should show marked improvement in 24 hours if it's allergies.

Visit 3 (5/28): Cortisone shot hasn't eliminated sneezing, but it might be somewhat better. Originally, you could hear her wheezing from over a foot away, now you have to hold her up to your ear to hear the wheezing although she does sneeze periodically. Vet tries:

-blowing air into her nostrils via a syringe (no needle) to try to dislodge any foreign bodies that might be stuck up there.

-nose drops, then blowing more air.

-sticking goo into a tube (like a paper towel tube but slightly wider in diameter) and X-raying her. He actually got pretty good pictures, both top and side. I was immensely impressed that he managed to x-ray her without general anesthesia. Vet notes that she has swallowed a lot of air (probably due to the stress of the other things he'd done at that point), but says her heart, lungs, airway and what we can see of her teeth look good (she moved slightly, so the teeth are sort of blurry).

-looks at molars with an ear scope for the second time because I ask if it could be her teeth (again). He says that based on his exam and the x-ray, he doesn't think it's her teeth.

So at this point, we're on doxycycline in case it's some sort of infection that's resistant to the baytril (sort of unlikely because none of my goos have HAD baytril before... while they have had doxy). We've pretty much eliminated allergies based on the lack of major improvement with benadryl and cortisone. There's no major problems visible via x-ray. My poor vet is pretty confounded... but is also totally awesome. We were in his office for over an HOUR yesterday and he didn't charge me for the visit, only for the x-ray and the meds.

Hopefully the new antibiotics will kick whatever this is...

Screw you; let me sleep.

2010-05-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

While I was taking pictures of Kitten, I snapped one of The Chin. She's nocturnal and so was somewhat disgruntled by the flash.

A general update

2010-05-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

This morning started out with a phone call from the vet saying that I'd missed Kitten's follow-up appointment. I had it on my calendar, but I had it in at the wrong time. Luckily they had space following my appointment, so I was able to bring her in without messing up their schedule too much.

The vet gave her a cortisone shot because he thinks her sneezing may be due to allergies. If so, she should show dramatic improvement in the next 24 hours. We have our paws crossed.

Rags has big plans for today. He's resting up.

I'm hoping that his plans include cleaning up my sewing area (also known as the kitchen table).

If he does some of the cleaning, I can work on my knitting homework.

Sick Degu

2010-05-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

One of my degus, Kitten, is sick. She's sneezing and wheezing and seems to be having trouble eating her regular degu food. She's on antibiotics, but they haven't fixed the problem.... in fact, she doesn't seem to have improved at all, really. I'm calling the vet tomorrow to see if there is something else I can give her instead (or in addition to). Everyone send good wishes to Kitten.

On a positive degu note, this is Dora. She's very photogenic.

We have a winner(s)!

2010-05-20T23:06:00.001-07:00

Thanks to everyone who swung on by, checked out my blog and left me a giveaway comment. Here are the winners of my jam and weirdo fabric giveaway. Winners have also been emailed.

1. Shannon, who said: First, peach, second cranberry pear. Surprise me with the fabric. Thanks so much.

A jar of peach jam and a set of mystery fabrics will be headed to Shannon shortly.

2. A Family of Boys, who said: Mmm..pear jam, oh wait, pear raspberry. Oh, no the boys want the cranberry pear. Ok, we'd love any kind because we love the homemade jams and my stash is gone from last summer.

Pear or possibly pear raspberry jam is headed to these boys... with the second mystery fabric set

3. Jingle, who said: Oh, how fun! I would go with Cranberry Pear first, and pear second. Your FQ's are hilarious! (Or rather, the way you speak of them is hilarious! LOL!) I would go with the vaguely flowered option! jinglesells at gmail dot com

Cran-pear jam and vaguely flowered fabrics will hopefully be enjoyed by Jingle.

Congratulations to these winners, and a big thank you to everyone who entered!

For those of you who commented about being interested in making jam, I will be posting about my canning exploits later this summer (once there's actually fruit that's ripe). I'll probably do more jam giveaways just on the blog for people who actually read it. I bet I can even find more horrific fabrics to give away with them.

Baby Quilts...

2010-05-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

My brother and his wife are having a baby. This is the second time they've been pregnant; the first time, they lost the baby 7 months into the pregnancy. I started a quilt for that baby (River), but hadn't finished it when I got the news that she had died. I haven't looked at the quilt since. It didn't seem right to finish it and give it to some other baby when I had made it for her, but it really didn't seem right to throw it away. I still haven't decided what to do with it, so for the time being it's in a drawer.

When I found out that they were pregnant again, I decided to make a new quilt. I debated whether I should start a quilt now, wait until they were further along in the pregnancy, or maybe even wait until the baby was born. On the one hand, it seemed like it might somehow be bad luck to finish a quilt before we knew if the baby would be ok... but on the other hand, I didn't want to go into this pregnancy feeling like a cloud of doom is hanging over it. I decided that I would make the quilt.

The last several times I've seen my sister-in-law, she's been wearing these silly sock monkey slippers that she got at Target. She loves them. She wears them all the time. When I found out they were having another baby and started thinking about a quilt, that was what popped into my head: sock monkeys.

The quilt's square, about 40" on a side. Because my brother lives in Florida, I wanted to make a fairly lightweight quilt so I used flannel instead of batting. I wanted the quilt to still be cuddly, so I backed it with flannel as well.

I will always miss never having gotten to know River.

Excellent day for the mail, today.

2010-05-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

Not to distract those of you who are here to enter my giveaway (scroll down; it's there, I promise), but I got two awesome packages in the mail today and had to share them.

First off, I won Sheila C's Mother's Day Giveaway and my prize arrived in the mail. Her blog is called "My empty nest is full of cat hair," which has to win some sort of prize for awesome blog titles.

In addition to the charm pack and 2 fat quarters that she was offering as a prize, she also sent me a package of quilting needles, a little magnifying glass (it's that clear thing on the bottom left) and a cute log-cabin quilted pin! I'm so pleased to have won her giveaway.

For those of you who are surfing here from SMS giveaway day, Sheila is also offering a really cute bag pattern and some FQs for a giveaway prize. Go check it out!

But that's not all I got in the mail today! I also got my squares for an iSpy fabric swap that I participated in. It seems like forever ago that I started cutting out squares, but I did send mine in really early and I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of my squares.

I got 200 squares of different fabrics back and can't fit them into a picture to show you, but here's a sampling of them (the ones on the tops of the bundles).

Now to figure out what to do with them!

Giveaway!

2010-05-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

Having been the recipient of several giveaways, I decided to participate in Sew, Mama, Sew's May giveaway day. Since there are roughly four of you who read the blog, you've all got a pretty darn good shot at winning.

I'm giving away a jar of my homemade jam to the lucky winner(s) of my giveaway. If you're local and I don't have to ship... for instance, if you're a PMQG member and will be at the next meeting, I'll throw in a jar of something else as well. I'm guessing that most of you found this blog via the PMQG website anyhow, so I also thought I'd giveaway a little bitta fabric.

Your jam choices are as follows:

Pear-raspberry, pear, cranberry pear, and peach

As a side note, all of these jam choices are pretty damn tasty. The peach jam is lowest in added sugar (if that's a concern) and tastes the "fruitiest". The pear jam is the sweetest, followed by pear-raspberry (which is a lovely color with suspended raspberry seeds). The cranberry-pear is much more tart.

In order to be the grateful recipient of my fabulous jam, you must also be willing to accept one of the following sets of weird-o fat quarters that I think I must have gotten on ebay one night after a couple of glasses of wine. Include which set of fabrics you are least appalled by and I will send those to you along with your jammy winnings.

3 vaguely flowered FQs, 3 orange FQs

4 really weird, somewhat child-oriented FQs

If you're interested in winning a jar of jam, comment below with your top two flavor choices. I'll draw three responses (assuming there are more than that) and those commenters will win either their first or second choice... hopefully. If you don't get choice 1 or 2, we'll work something out.

~~Comments must be made before noon (PST) on Friday, May 21. I'll draw sometime Friday night and mail out (or make arrangements to deliver) sometime early the next week.~~

Comments must be made before 9 pm (PST) on THURSDAY, May 20. This gives me time to get in touch with people and mail things out before the SMS deadline of May 24.

Thanks for reading!!

Allergy Update - Hypoallergenic Diet, Day 3

2010-05-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

Not as itchy last night, but doesn't seem like I'm trending back towards normal.

Breakfast: oatmeal with maple syrup

Lunch: Lentils; a hard-boiled egg (technically not allowed on the Hypo diet, but whatev)

Dinner: Rice, with a little butter, and baked cabbage

I'm headed to the pharmacy this morning for a new allergy prescription. Hopefully it works better than the one I'm on now.

Potholder Pass 3

2010-05-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

I finished my potholders for the potholder pass several days ago, but hadn't posted pictures yet. Here they are. The only request that I got from my partner was "Pink!", so this is what I came up with. The pink fabric has glitter in it, but you can't see it unless you're fairly close up.

I got a couple fat quarters (pink!) and am planning on mailing this out tonight.

On a non-potholder note, I won a giveaway! The Fat Quarter Shop blog, The Jolly Jabber, had a giveaway for two Pretty Little Books. I won a copy of Pretty Little Pillows and it arrived in my mailbox today. I'm so excited! I haven't looked through it yet, but the pillows just on the front are pretty neat. I'll post a review once I get through it.

Allergy Update - Hypoallergenic Diet, Day 2

2010-05-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

Last night was not a happy night. Very itchy. However, I'm not giving up hope. It's too early in the diet to be able to tell anything and I read in several places about a sort of "rebound" effect on histamine levels after the allergen was removed.

Breakfast: oatmeal with a dash of maple syrup
Lunch: lentils
Dinner: baked cabbage, which was really pretty awesome. I'm definitely going to make this again. The cabbage was very tender and surprisingly sweet.

I ended up eating half a head of cabbage during the course of the evening. According to this website, a whole head of cabbage contains 290 calories. This website helpfully adds that there are 4 calories in one leaf, but then goes on to list other more useful measurements. I think mine was a large (7" diameter) cabbage, which contains a grand total of 300 calories.

One cup of boiled lentils contains 230 calories. I may have eaten a cup. I was kind of in a hurry to get to work, so I didn't have time to eat too much lunch.

Oatmeal is a bit more challenging to figure out (also, I've gotten way off topic from allergies here.. ). A 1 cup serving contains 147 calories. But is that 1 cup before or after cooking? It must be after cooking because 1 cup uncooked oatmeal would make at least 1.5 cups cooked... which would require a really large cereal bowl. I started with 2/3 cup, so I probably ended up with nearly a cup of cooked oatmeal. I probably added about 100 calories worth of maple syrup, based on the info on the back of the bottle.

This gives me a calorie count of 637 for yesterday. The weird thing is that I wasn't hungry the whole day, except for right before dinner. Apparently hypoallergenic diets are also good for weight loss.

Allergy Update - Hypoallergenic Diet, Day 1

2010-05-12T09:02:00.001-07:00

Yesterday involved the following foods:

breakfast: plain oatmeal

lunch: brown rice and red lentils with frozen peas, a cut up avocado and a little salt

Avocados are actually quite high in salicylates, which I didn't realize when I put it in my lunch. I did feel possibly a bit more itchy after lunch, so ditched the avocado for dinner.

dinner: more rice and lentils and a bowl of homemade apple-pear sauce (sort of cheating because apples are higher in salicylates than pears are, but both were cooked and peeled)

I felt like I might have been less itchy when I went to bed. I didn't take Benadryl, which I have every night for the past week or so.

TD is not excited that I'm back on the hypoallergenic diet because it means that I won't be cooking dinner for him (unless he's interested in rice and lentils, which he really isn't). He's also irritated that I decided to go back on it while we still have a lot of food in the house. If it works, I'm sure he'll get over the irritation because I'll be a lot less whiny.

Potholder Pass 3

2010-05-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

I got my potholders from the Potholder Pass yesterday! Thank you, Tracy from CA!

The beige fabric has butterflies on it, which are very cute.. and there is four pieces of bonus fabric in lovely springy colors. I was very excited to get my package and am off to post about it on the potholder pass Flickr group.

Allergies, revisited

2010-05-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

My allergies have not resolved. I'm no longer using shampoo or toothpaste, although that's not as gross as it sounds because I'm doing both things with baking soda (really! it works!). I'm double rinsing all the laundry and we switched laundry detergents to one that doesn't seem to bother my skin when applied to my inner arm. I've looked at all the ingredients in all my lotions and have discarded any that appeared suspicious and am now using only Aveeno, which doesn't make me break out in little red dots.

Despite all of those changes, my allergies are getting worse. I'm taking generic OTC Zyrtec and an asthma medication that my doctor prescribed me. I'm also taking Benadryl before bed because I get so itchy.

My new theory is that it's a food. Having changed all the outside-the-body chemicals that I can think of, this is the best option of those remaining. Other options include an allergy to one of my animals, but I'm not getting rid of them, so I'm going to test the food theory first.

Supporting this idea is the observation that directly after I finished eating left-over Indian food this evening, my nose started running and I started coughing. Now, about 40 minutes post-Indian food, I'm getting very itchy in a variety of different places. I haven't changed clothes or done anything that seems likely to have caused an allergy outbreak.

I'm starting a new elimination diet tomorrow. It's going to be a pain in the butt because I'm trying to combine the hypoallergenic diet I tried last time combined with a low salicylate diet. Unfortunately, the two diets are almost entirely non-overlapping. The hypoallergenic diet excludes a lot of things, but most fruits and vegetables are ok. The low salicylate diet excludes most fruits and vegetables, but a lot of other foods are acceptable. I went through and combined both lists and here's my acceptable foods for the next 10 days:

bananas

ripe, peeled pears

cabbage

lentils

green (but not yellow) split peas

dried beans

lettuce

celery

malt vinegar

salt

possibly either sunflower or saffllower oil

rice

turkey

fish

As far as I can tell, there are no actual meals that can be made of foods off of this list. My plan is to make rice and beans and then just whine a lot over the next 10 days. If I see an improvement in 10 days, I'll start adding foods back in one at a time to see if there's any effect. If there's no improvement in 10 days, I'm going back in to see the doctor to get better drugs.

Giant cone of thread!!

2010-04-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Fabric Depot is having a 50% off sale on Gutermann thread today and Saturday. Since that's the thread I use, I'm headed out to get some (as soon as the boyfriend changes out of his PJs).

I'm looking for giant cones of thread (3000m) because they're the most economical and there's just a few colors that I use over and over for my piecing (and a good chunk of my quilting). White, off-white, grey, and black. Giant cones cost around $23, which means $12 for 3000m once it's 50% off. I'm excited.

I did, however, have to construct a giant cone holder.

The thread is sitting on top of an old degu toy that they chewed all the other parts off of (I washed it well with vinegar before putting my thread on it). Yes, that is a wire coathanger duct taped to the back of my sewing machine.. but I needed something to hold the thread up above the machine so it wouldn't get tangled.

Love U Baby Quilt

2010-04-29T10:48:00.001-07:00

Love U Baby Quilt Top, originally uploaded by A Scattered Squee.

Tuesday, I made a quilt.

I had bought a charm pack of Love U fabric at some point in the past (I'm sure it was either on sale or I used a 40% off coupon at Fabric Depot) and, while rummaging through my stash, I came across it and decided to make it into a quilt.

It's based on this stacked coins tutorial, but doesn't exactly follow the pattern. I didn't buy any new fabric specifically for this quilt, which pleases me. The back is a piece of flannel that I bought as a remnant a while back (love remnants!!).

I took advantage of literally 5 minutes of sun to run the quilt out and take some pictures. The lawn was pretty wet, but luckily it's a light quilt so it didn't bend the grass over and get muddy.

The one disappointment is that I forgot to adjust my tension before I quilted, so it's got a few places where you can see loops pulled through from the top.

Construction details:

Piecing thread: Guterman 100% cotton in a cream or light beige color.

Batting: probably warm&natural cotton - used a left-over section.

Quilting thread: white Guterman 100% poly - I didn't have any white cotton thread.

Tension: forgot to increase. Whoops. Live and learn.

PMQG sewing night

2010-04-24T21:52:00.001-07:00

Tonight was the Portland Modern Quilt Guild's sewing night at Modern Domestic. It's a way fun place. They have all the supplies there, you just bring your project and work on it. And they have NICE equipment.

I brought the tiny pinwheels that are going to be the sashing of my pinwheel party quilt. There's 24 of the little buggers and they're a pain in the butt to sew together. I had already done 8 of them (blue and purple); tonight I completed the other 16 (red, orange, yellow and green). I did a pretty good job matching the points, but it's tough.

It was really cool to see everyone else's projects. I didn't really need any of Mod Domestic's supplies, but it was totally worth the cost to just hang out and sew with a bunch of neat ladies. I'm really looking forward to doing it again.

I also got to rummage through Mod Domestic's scrap bin and I found TWO pieces of fabric with squirrels on them! Heaven!

Spring Potholders

2010-04-20T14:15:00.001-07:00

Spring Potholders, outside, originally uploaded by A Scattered Squee.

The Portland Modern Quilt Guild is holding a potholder swap at its next meeting. I decided to use up some of the leftover fabric from the Spring Quilt that I gave my grandmother.

The large square piece was the first one I finished (and was originally going to be the only one), but at 10" square, it's really too large to be a potholder. It has two layers of Insul-brite insulating batting inside it, which makes it pretty stiff.

The two smaller heart-shaped potholders actually work as potholders. They only have one layer of Insul-brite and one layer of regular batting, which makes them more flexible.

I debated whether I should wait to post this until after the swap, but decided that it wouldn't matter either way. The potholders are going to be chosen while inside a paper bag so how could it matter if someone saw mine early?

Pinwheel Quilt-A-Long

2010-04-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

I finally got started on my quilt for the Twiddletails Pinwheel Quilt-A-Long on Saturday. I had an excellent day of sewing tiny pinwheels.

Those are a few of the best pictures of my pinwheel blocks. I've finished all 8 blocks for which patterns are currently posted.

There are also going to be twenty-four TRULY tiny 2" pinwheels in the sashing and border. I've done 4 of those (the blue ones). 2" pinwheels are very time consuming for the size of the piece you end up with. It's very fussy getting all the seams ironed open and getting the points in the center to match up.

Spring to Finish!

2010-04-19T21:23:00.001-07:00

Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio is holding a "finish your projects" challenge. The goal is to encourage everyone to finish some of the projects that they currently have started. It runs from now until the end of May.

Here's my list:

1. Paintbox quilt (needs to be quilted and bound)

2. Cherish Nature quilt (just started)

3. Happy Stacker baby toy (x2)

4. Pinwheel quilt (assuming that all the blocks are published by then)

5. Sock Monkey baby quilt

I'll have to think about what my reward will be if I get all of these done...

Spring Quilt - Completed!

2010-04-17T20:37:00.001-07:00

I brought my spring quilt on the flight down to my Grandmother's last weekend. She lives in the Bay Area, so it's a pretty short flight, but I had over an hour in the airport waiting, then an hour and a half on the plane, then I finished the binding that evening.

Granny greatly admired the quilt, so I left it with her. It's got a somewhat thicker batting in it than the first quilt I made for her, and it's a little bigger. It's nice for her to keep on her bed or to nap on the couch with. The other one works as a lap quilt for when she's sitting in her rocking chair watching TV.

I forgot to take pictures of it before I left, so my mother took some for me. Here's what I ended up with for the quilting. You can see the pattern pretty well on the purple block. All the solid blocks are quilted with the same overlapping heart pattern. You can't see the quilting at all on the patterned areas.

I had to wash it twice to get the marks out from the fabric marker I used used to trace the quilting patterns. I used a blue washable marker (which came out very well, but which didn't last for the whole quilt and kept drying out) and a green mechanical chalk pencil (which was the one that didn't wash out easily). The washable marker marked well and came out easily, but I could do about one block's worth of pattern before I had to stop and turn it upside down to rest for a while and get the ink flowing again. The mechanical pencil was harder to mark with and didn't come out as well, but also lasted much longer. I need to try other marking utensils because I'm not all that happy with either of these.

It's backed with part of a sheet that I bought at Goodwill. The binding is short pieces from the same jelly roll as the patterned fabric - four different colors of the same print.

It's about 45" wide and 65" long.

Construction details:

Piecing thread: Gutterman 100% cotton in a cream or light beige color.

Piecing needle: size 75 quilting needle (now my standard - I love these needles).

Batting: probably warm&white cotton - I used two left-over sections of batting from other projects. I think they were both the same kind, but I'm not 100% sure

Quilting needle: same.

Quilting thread: same.

Tension: increased to about 6.

Scrap usage

2010-04-13T10:55:00.001-07:00

One of the things that I really like about quilting is its history as a way to use up every little scrap of fabric. That appeals to the part of me that recycles, has a worm compost bin and uses fluorecent light bulbs.

When I quilt, I save all the scraps. They get divided into three groups: scraps larger than 2.5" square, scraps smaller than 2.5" in at least one dimension (a 1" x 18" strip would fall into this category), and scraps that seem too small to be worthwhile sewing into anything (tiny triangles, strips cut off when straightening edges, bits of batting).

I store the tiniest of pieces in plastic grocery bags and use them for stuffing.

I used the first bag I collected to stuff a poinsettia pillow I made for my aunt and uncle for Christmas. I filled a second bag and when the third got full, I decided I needed to make the next project to stuff.

The new dog bed is made of 2 pieces of fabric that I got at Goodwill (the brown flower top and the weird brown-and-purple mushroom fabric I used for the sides) and a piece I got free from a friend (purple bottom fabric you can't see). I'm going to make a removable cover for it (someday) so that I'll be able to take that part off and wash it.

It's roughly 24" x 36" and the sides are about 3" high. I didn't calculate exactly how much volume is in something this size. I thought that two stuffed grocery bags full of scraps would fill it up.

Nope. Nowhere close. I ended up leaving an opening on the side so I could continue stuffing it as I produce tiny scraps. I just added some more this morning, and TD (who was straightening my fabric for me) added some bits last night.

Rags is quite pleased with it really. He doesn't seem to mind that it's a bit lumpy and understuffed.

Check out this giveaway

2010-04-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

I Have A Notion (IHAN) is doing an amazing giveaway the whole month. There's still time to sign up for ALL the drawings, too!

Check out:

Blog Link: http://www.ihaveanotion.blogspot.com/
Website Link : http://ihavea-notion.com/store/

It's spring!

2010-04-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

I mentioned the spring quilt using the Eden fabric line in an earlier post. Posting about it seems to have motivated me to actually get started on it. After a great deal of thought, I decided on this design:

I had considered several other designs, including one that was very similar to this one except that each solid was associated with one of the prints rather than being all together.

I like the way this turned out, but I think it's interesting how much more pronounced the solid colors are than the prints. I had figured that the prints would stand out more than the solids because of their interesting patterns, but the large solid blocks are the part of the quilt that draws the eye.

The assembly of this quilt required a lot of organization. The longest section of each print is the center of one block, which means that each of the four corners of the block have a different solid. It was sort of challenging to keep everything organized enough to get the right solids in the correct corner of each block. Of course, I'm so naturally organized that this wasn't a problem and I didn't have to rip out a single seam (NOT).

The white is Kona snow that I'd bought as a remnant. It was a weird 60" wide piece of fabric, but it worked great for this application because I didn't have to sew many pieces together to make the border.

Here's a close-up of the border. I was originally going to put a border of squares around the whole thing, but the central part ended up being a lot more square than I had pictured, so I just added squares onto two ends to make it longer compared to its width.

One of the things that I had wanted to do with this quilt was to practice my free-motion technique by doing some sort of cool design in each of the blocks. I bought this plastic stencil that happily fits just inside my print blocks. I tried to take a picture of the actual quilting, but the thread blends in too well. If you look at the picture above (of the border) you can barely see the quilting.

I'm still trying to decide how to quilt the solid areas. Should I use the same cream colored thread that I'm using for the prints? It'll really show up on those bright solid colors, so all my mistakes will show badly. I think that contrasting quilting will also make the solid colors stick out even MORE which really isn't my goal. The alternative is to use a matching thread color for each of the blocks, but the back is a white fabric with little pastel flowers on it, so colors will really show up on that. I could try using the cream in my bobbin and the solid for the top thread, but I'm afraid that if my tension isn't perfect, dots of the wrong color will show up on the wrong side and just look stupid. I'll probably have to try several variations and see what I like best. Any thoughts?

I haven't decided how I'm going to quilt the borders yet. It's a work in progress. It does make my kitchen feel very much like spring, though.

Mmmmmmm

2010-04-03T10:27:00.001-07:00

A lovely way to start the morning.

In progress

2010-04-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

Right now, I have a TON of quilts in progress.

My paintbox quilt top is finished. I need to piece a back for it and get it quilted, but I haven't felt like doing the quilting part yet. This is mostly because I'm not sure HOW I'm going to quilt it. I want to do something more interesting than just an overall stipple. I'd really like to do something in each of the squares, but I'm not sure how that would look.

I have fabric all picked out for a very springy quilt from Moda's "Eden" fabric line. I keep changing my mind about the design. I have a jelly roll of Eden and jelly roll strips from a pastel solid roll. I keep almost starting it, then changing my mind... but if I don't get it going soon, it won't be spring anymore!

I just bought fabric (sshhhhh, don't tell my boyfriend) from "Cherish Nature" for an entirely different quilt. It's going to be awesome, but it is one more project to get working on.

Instead of working on any of these projects that I've actually purchased fabric for, I'm once again sewing tiny scrap pieces together to make blocks. I just find this type of quilting to be very relaxing because I don't have to worry about perfect 1/4" seams or cutting blocks out straight on the grain or making sure things don't get out of order. It also appeals to my sense of economy and using up all the tiny little pieces.

The first one I started is a maverick star quilt based on the tutorial on Quiltville.com. I think they're very cool looking, but I'm not sure what I'll do with them to put them together into a finished quilt. Sashing? No sashing?

But, I couldn't even get that one done because as I was digging through my bag of scraps, there were a ton of long ones. I thought I could sew these together into blocks, then cut them into triangles and sew them back together again to make interesting patterns. Here's what I came up with (although all the blocks aren't pictured - I have 13 of them):

I love doing quilts like this, but they do end up a little... busy. This one is also going to have blocks that are a similar scrappy concept but are formatted as smaller squares separated into a 2x2 grid by a thin sashing. Sashing on this guy is going to be black so as to use up the strips I already had cut to use as sashing for the paintbox quilt (which ended up not having sashing in it).

New dog bed!

2010-03-31T10:44:00.000-07:00

It's not a quilt, but I'm pleased with the way it came out. I'm
filling it with fabric scraps and bits of batting, but I don't have
quite enough to fill it yet. Rags likes it pretty well as is, though.

Paintbox Quilt-A-Long - Blocks finished!!

2010-03-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

The real Paintbox Quilt-A-Long has us making 80 squares. But since I got behind and then ran out of different batik fabrics to use, I decided to stop where I was. That ended up being 64 squares.

In the original version, the blocks all are separated by sashing, but because of my catastrophic cutting error, some of the blocks have black borders on two sides. Some of the blocks don't. I was going to use black sashing, but that wouldn't work with black borders on some of the blocks. I tried it just above and below the blocks, separating each row, and really didn't like it. I liked what it looked like without sashing much better.

I have the blocks all sewn together in rows and my goal for tonight is to get this part of the top completed. Next, I decide whether I'm going to put a border (or two) on it, or leave it as is.

I won a contest!

2010-03-22T22:07:00.000-07:00

I won a free yard of fabric a couple weeks ago from Sew, Mama, Sew. I meant to post about it, but then my laptop broke and by the time I got it back, I had forgotten about it.

I chose this lovely mushroom fabric. The current plan is to make a grocery bag out of it, but the plan may not come to fruition for a while.

Allergies, resolved?

2010-03-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

My father came up to visit yesterday. We talked about allergies. He's allergic to aspirin and so is at least one of his siblings. I knew that... the part that I'd forgotten about is that he's allergic to aspirin derivatives when applied to the skin. For instance, shampoo with salicylic acid (aspirin is a compound called a salicylate) gives his head and shoulders hives.

I don't take aspirin because I thought I might have that allergy. I had nasal surgery a number of years ago to remove a family of polyps; they may have been caused by an allergy to ibuprofen. Ibuprofen and aspirin both belong to the family of NSAID painkillers. Apparently there's some sort of inherited condition that predisposes a person to be allergic to NSAIDS, develop nasal polyps, and have something else happen that I've forgotten about it. It obviously runs in my family.

Hypothesis 4: Salicylates applied to the skin in a personal hygiene product.

Supporting Evidence: Detailed above.

Experiment: I crushed up a baby aspirin and mixed it with a little water to make a paste. Then I applied this to my inner arm in one of my home allergy tests.

Results: About 10-15 minutes later, after I rinsed the aspirin residue off my arm, I developed an itchy rash in that area. It went away after another 10 or 15 minutes, but for the next hour of so I had vague itchies around various parts of my body (salicylates can be absorbed by the skin and cause a systemic reaction) and my tongue felt weird.

Based on this result, I went around the house looking at labels to find anything containing "salicyl-" ingredients. Lo and behold, one of the lotions that I really liked and was using all the time contained benzyl salicylate. Also, my California Baby shampoo has willow bark extract in it. Willow is what aspirin was originally derived from.

None of my other lotions seem to be problematic, but I'm going to stick with the California Baby lotion (no willow bark) for a little while until I get another lotion. My dad says he uses Aveeno and has no problems with it.

I'm also going to keep going on the hypoallergenic diet just in case there's a food aspect as well... but the foods that contain salicylates are numerous and varied (and include most fruits and vegetables), so if I'm allergic to it in food I'm just doomed.

Allergies

2010-03-15T20:07:00.002-07:00

I've decided that the cause of my itchiness is not the baking soda I was using to wash my hair. Itching didn't seem to change whether I used baking soda or some other random food product. This means that 1) I can use baking soda again and 2) I'm allergic to something else.

I had purchased California Baby shampoo, which is supposed to be hypoallergenic and mild and such. I've used it the last three times I've washed my hair. I think I'm going to trade off between that and the baking soda. So hair washing problem: solved.

This leaves me with a larger, more difficult problem - what AM I allergic to?

Hypothesis 1: Laundry detergent.

Supporting Evidence: We use a granular detergent and I know that it doesn't always rinse completely out because I've seen granules at the end of wash cycles. We have a teeny, tiny washer so it's possible that I've been using way too much detergent and putting in too many clothes to prevent full rinsing.

Experiment 1: Change laundry detergents and start double-rinsing everything. Also, add vinegar to the rinse to help remove old detergent build-up.

Results so far: Inconclusive. Some things after double-rinsing didn't seem to make me itch, while other things still did. It may take more than one laundering to fully remove any build-up of old detergent, so this experiment is still in progress. My three-or-four-times-laundered PJs don't seem to make me itch much.

Experiment 2: Do a home allergy test by applying a paste of old detergent to the skin of my inner arm.

Results: Small amount of redness and itching apparent. There was definitely more than the new detergent or vinegar, my control.

Hypothesis 2: Food.

Supporting Evidence: None, except that the rash doesn't seem to appear in the areas I would expect if it was an allergy to laundry detergent. I would imagine that the rash would be worst in areas that are closely contacted by clothes (waistband, underwear, socks), but that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. I've also never had an allergy to any other foods before.

Experiment: Eliminate all the usual suspects as far as food allergens. This includes dairy, wheat, soy, caffeine, chocolate, alcohol, and basically any other food that's fun to eat. Here's a complete list if you're interested.

Results: I started the diet on Thursday, so it's been 5 days so far. Basically this is how we ate over the summer: lots of veggies, with rice and quinoa as the major grains. I haven't had any major cravings, although I would like to eat some things that aren't on my list (yogurt is the biggest one). No major changes noted.

Hypothesis 3: The degu.

Supporting Evidence: I'm allergic to rats and mice; degu are also rodents.

Experiment: Home allergy test done by rubbing a degu on the skin. I vigorously applied Vu to my stomach, including some small scratches with her claws.

Results: There was a small amount of redness and itchiness, especially around the scratches. However, it's hard to say whether this was due to the degu-ness of the application or the scratches themselves.

Being an excellent scientist, I'm doing all three of these experiments at once so that I can change as many variables as possible. I'm working on the theory that I can take everything out and get rid of the allergies (the goal), then add things back in one at a time until I figure it out. It was way more important to get rid of the itchiness than to do a well-designed experiment.

Complicating interpretation of the results is the fact that I've started to take allergy meds. I wanted to sort of rest and reset my immune system with the idea that maybe it will stop over-reacting to whatever the allergen is once stop taking them. I'm going to take them for a week, while continuing with the hypoallergenic diet and change in laundry detergent / technique. After a week, I'll stop and see if the itchies come back.

River quilting

2010-03-13T09:20:00.001-08:00

I had this idea in my mind that I was going to quilt feathers all around the border of my River Quilt. I read about quilting them and practiced on some crappy scraps of fabric. Then I drew out a feather on one section of the border and quilted away!

The quilting isn't marvelous, but I was pretty darn pleased with the quality of it. Most of the lines went where I wanted them to and the stitches were somewhat even (trending towards too small because I was moving very slowly). It took me probably a good hour to do roughly a foot and a half of feather. Here's what it looked like:

Once it was done, I decided that I didn't really like it. It wasn't the quality of the quilting, it was just sort of distracting running through the pink border. It made the pink sort of muddier and I didn't like the way it looked. You can decide for yourself:

I spent the next couple of hours ripping out the stitching for the feather. I'm going with a simpler quilting design that doesn't go through the pink border.

Finish!

2010-03-11T11:28:00.000-08:00

I finished hand-sewing the binding onto my blue quilt on Monday, but my laptop was out of commission so I couldn't post pictures about it until today.

Here's the entire quilt so that you can admire the wide variety of totally random fabrics that went into it.

And here's one including my helpful quilt holder.

I quilted it in little spirals, which I thought looked sort of like wind or water and were therefore appropriate for a blue quilt. It's the biggest quilt that I've quilted so far - roughly 60" x 80". It wasn't that bad to manipulate through my machine during free motion quilting, but it sure did use up a lot of thread! I had to go buy more half-way through quilting it because I ran out.

I waffled on the binding for quite a while. I considered about 8 different fabrics and finally narrowed it down to this one and a solid blue one. The solid blue one was just too boring. It's a pretty bold choice of binding for me and I'm not sure that I *love* it, but it was good to try a binding that stands out. I like how the red-and-blue brings out the bright colors in the other fabrics, but I don't have a very good picture that shows the binding in relation to the whole quilt.

Construction details:

Piecing thread: I was doing this as a leader / ender project, so it's pieced with whatever thread I was using for the "real" project I was working on.

Piecing needle: variable for the same reason.

Batting: warm&white cotton

Quilting needle: size 75 quilting needle

Quilting thread: blue variegated Signature size 40 cotton thread; same thread as for the river quilt. This is why I ran out half-way through.

Tension: increased to about 6.

Assembling a quilt sandwich

2010-03-04T17:04:00.000-08:00

Every tutorial I've ever seen on assembling a quilt sandwich tells you to lay the backing out on a hard surface: your giant, attractively tiled kitchen floor; those several large folding tables that you keep stored in your ample basement; your living room's reclaimed oak or ecologically-responsible bamboo floor. For those of us who live in smallish apartments with crappy wall-to-wall carpet, this doesn't work well.

I've been assembling quilt sandwiches in my kitchen. At the widest point with available floor space (i.e. not under the table), it measures about 5' across. This works fine for putting together small or lap-size quilts. Larger quilts have to be assembled in the living room, where there is floor space, but where there is also carpet. The backs of quilts assembled in my living room have up-till-now contained puckers and wrinkles because I couldn't get them to stay flat.

I was thinking about putting together the quilt sandwich for my blue quilt and wondering where I could go to lay it out on a hard floor (my mother's house? school? the grocery store?) when it occurred to me that all I really needed was tent stakes. Well, not literally tent stakes, but that idea: something to hold the backing fabric stretched out on the living room floor.

I decided to try using my largest size of safety pins. I stabbed them through the backing fabric and into the woven part at the back of the carpet. It actually held quite well.

I didn't take a picture of just the backing fabric for the blue quilt because it's large enough that, in order to fit it all into the frame, you wouldn't be able to see the safety pins. Here's a smaller-size reproduction:

If you look carefully, you can see the pins at the top and sides of the fabric. I "staked" the backing down, then went back and repositioned the pins to pull any loose areas tighter.

After pinning, the back seemed to be quite flat. I'll post after I finish quilting with a pucker-and-wrinkle-report.

Blue Quilt

2010-03-04T16:53:00.001-08:00

I decided to follow Bonnie Hunter's advice and always "find one more unit to leave under the presser foot as you chain piece." She recently published a book called "Leaders and Enders" which talks about how to sew the blocks for one quilt in between sewing other projects. At least, I'm assuming that's what the book says. I don't actually have the book... but I think she posted about it on her blog or it used to be somewhere on her website or something. I can't find it now, but I got the basic idea down: have a simple piecing project that can start or finish a chain piecing series.

I pulled blues out of my bin of 4.5"x4.5" blocks and started sewing them together into 9-patches. I started this project a number of months ago and it's been sort of plugging along while I've been working on other things. Finally, I finished sewing all my 9-patches, then I made them "disappear" in order to make things a little more interesting.

I carefully arranged them all (on a friend's living room floor) in a pleasing pattern and labeled each block (130 total) with a little piece of masking tape so I wouldn't screw up the order. I finished sewing them all together during Quilting and Eating Day with Ciara.

Here's the end result, after being pinned into a quilt sandwich in my living room.

It's very blue.

Needle Types

2010-03-03T10:24:00.000-08:00

I found an article about choosing an appropriate needle size in the October, 2006 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine. I tried to find the article on their website, but I think it's probably too old. It includes a very simple table on pg 82 titled "Task and Coordinating Machine-Needle Sizes."

I've reproduced the table below:

I've been using quilting needles for all of my piecing and quilting. I bought a multi-pack with sizes 75 and 90. I'm using the 75s most often, but I haven't been quilting or piecing anything too complex or thick.

Tonight's food-applied-to-hair experiment

2010-03-02T23:02:00.000-08:00

Yogurt. Plain. Non-fat.

The reasoning is that dairy has fats in it that will interact with the hair oils and enable them to be washed out. Based on that reasoning, NON-fat yogurt might not be the best test subject, but it's what's in the fridge.

Post-shower P.S.: Washing your hair with yogurt feels exactly how you would expect it to feel. Except colder because it comes right out of the fridge.

I applied about 3T of yogurt to dry hair and worked it in, then left it there for a couple of minutes while I brushed my teeth. It rinsed out easily, but my hair feels pretty oily still, so I'm guessing that it didn't work.

Salt Water Wash

2010-03-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

In my reading of no 'poo info, I recently discovered that none of the acid washes are supposed to do much for degreasing hair. They are more for conditioning. Since I have more than enough personally-produced hair conditioner, I am going to skip the acid washes that I had mentioned in the last post. Unfortunately, that's about all of the things that I was planning on trying.

I thought I'd give salt water a try tonight. I have vague memories of my hair not looking totally greasy after a day swimming at the beach, so I took some of my pickling salt ("made with just salt" according to the box) and mixed it with some water and gave it a shot. I used probably between 1 and 2 tbsp mixed with about a cup of water. I stirred until it was mostly dissolved, then rubbed it into wet hair very well.

Pluses:

-it's easy to tell when it's rinsed out - the water doesn't taste salty anymore.

-there's no way I'm allergic to this... and the only other thing I used tonight was Ivory soap.

-it's dirt cheap.

Minuses:

-my hair didn't really FEEL degreased in the shower. However, I also skipped my normal face cleanser and my face feels nice and soft and not oily.. so maybe there's a chance that it'll work. I'll have to see tomorrow when my hair is dry.

River quilt

2010-02-26T15:49:00.001-08:00

I posted a picture of my river quilt from my phone, then realized that I hadn't posted about it before, even though I have pictures I took of it earlier.

The pattern that I based this quilt off of is from the Better Homes and Gardens American Patchwork and Quilting magazine (August, 2007). I bought it for $.50 at the thrift store down the street. The original quilt is called "paint by number" and is made out of rainbow batik fabrics. It really caught my eye, since I love bright colors and batik fabrics. The style is called a bargello quilt.

I decided that it would be easy to do with pre-cut strips, so I bought two pre-cut rolls of batik fabrics on sale at Fabric Depot.

I didn't end up using any strips from the round roll at the top, and I used slightly more than half of the strips from the bottom roll.

The basic idea of this type of quilt is that you sew strips together, then you cut them the other direction into strips of various widths. After rearranging them, a wave sort of pattern emerges, which is pretty cool. I arranged the blue and green strips from this roll from light blue to dark blue then merging into dark green and back to light green. Here's a picture of the strips getting sewn together.

This quilt wasn't particularly challenging to put together, but it got a little tedious because it's a lot of really long straight seams. However, it looked awesome once I got the top put together.

The narrow pink border was a fat quarter that I just happened to pick up because it was on sale and I thought it was a cool color. The greenish border is from a piece of fabric that I got as a remnant a couple months ago.

I just picked up the backing fabric yesterday at Fabric Depot, which is currently having a 50% off sale on selected bali batik fabrics. Seemed like the perfect time. I also got fabric for the twiddletails quilt-a-long pinwheel quilt that I'll be starting soon.

I decided to quilt it by sewing through each diagonal set of squares. I thought the flowing lines of quilting would emphasize the "rivery" look of the quilt. Here's a close-up of what I mean:

I am currently in the process of deciding how I'm going to quilt the border. I considered doing feathers, but I'm not sure that I'm good enough at free motion quilting yet to have them come out nicely. I'm very happy with the rest of the quilt and I don't want to be disappointed with the border.

Construction details:

Piecing thread: mostly Gutermann 100% polyester thread, but switched to 100% cotton

Piecing needle: size 75 quilting needle, which worked great on the batiks

Batting: warm&white cotton

Quilting needle: same as above

Quilting thread: blue variegated Signature size 40 cotton thread

Tension: increased to close to 7 based on a practice sandwich I made up. I've never moved my tension that much before; normally I'm afraid to touch it!

No shampoo

2010-02-25T17:37:00.002-08:00

Grapefruit juice was a total failure. I don't think it took any oil out of my hair at all and TD said it smelled funny. By today (day 2 after washing), it was intolerable looking and I had to wash again.

I gave the BS/ACV another try, washing my hair separately to try to minimize allergic reactions. I used Ivory soap. After showering, I put on clothes that had previously not made me itch. I'm now awaiting any itching data.

River quilt

2010-02-25T17:37:00.001-08:00

I got backing fabric (on sale) and started quilting this one today.
It's going to look awesome!

No shampoo

2010-02-24T10:32:00.000-08:00

This post is entirely about my attempts to stop using shampoo. If you're not interested, stop reading now.

I stumbled upon this blog one day while looking for... something.

The idea of not using shampoo seemed like an interesting concept for several reasons. First, I have very oily hair. In the couple of weeks prior to me discovering that blog, several people had made comments to me about how washing your hair all the time would make it more oily. Apparently those comments had seeped into my brain somewhere. Second, I'm trying to cut down on random potentially-toxic chemicals applied to my body. For example, we don't use fabric softener any more; I bought these static-reducing dryer balls (which work pretty darn well, really). Third, it sounded like an interesting science experiment and I am, to the depths of my soul, a scientist.

My previous hair care routine had been to wash my hair in the morning with shampoo and (most of the time) conditioner. By the second morning, it is usually looking a little oily. When I was working full-time, I washed it every morning because by the end of the second day, it's pretty limp and nasty looking.

The most basic "recipe" for no 'poo use calls for a baking soda wash with a vinegar rinse. Often apple cider vinegar is recommended because it's less harsh than regular white vinegar. I decided I would start with this. Being scientific, I actually measured out 1 tablespoon of BS and mixed it with a measured cup of water. It's always best to start with known quantities. I was quite impressed with the results of the first wash. My hair looked clean, it felt clean, and it smelled very slightly, but interestingly of ACV. I felt like my hair looked better on the second day post-wash compared to washing with shampoo, however it was a subtle change.

Unfortunately, I started getting itchy after a few days or a week (or possibly slightly longer - this is why I should blog about things AS they are happening, rather than after the fact). At the time, I blamed this on some antibiotics I was taking. However, after I finished the antibiotics, the itchiness didn't seem to totally go away. It's very sporadic and I'm not sure what's causing it. My top two culprits are BS/ACV or the laundry detergent we're using. My head gets itchy, which is likely caused by my hair-cleansing regime, but my body also gets itchy particularly where the waistband of my pants sits.

I tried an experiment to determine if it was the BS/ACV. I washed my hair only using the shower sprayer (that we normally use to wash the dog - but I'm sure he doesn't mind). I didn't get body-itchies, but my neck and shoulders, where my wet braid touched, seemed more itchy than they should have. However, we have to account for a 30% placebo effect here (but in reverse). Because I went into this experiment thinking that it could be the BS, did that make it more likely that I would be itchy in only those areas?

A piece of evidence refuting the BS/ACV = itchy hypothesis: I came home and changed my clothes and immediately became quite itchy over most of my upper body. Was it because the shirt and pants that I put on had been in a load of laundry that hadn't rinsed completely? We have a very small washing machine and sometimes I think all the soap doesn't get rinsed out completely.

So now, with one supporting and one refuting piece of evidence, I'm back where I started. I've decided to change BOTH of my potential variables (bad science, I know) and see if the itchiness goes away. We got environmentally-safe, hypo-allergenic laundry detergent that I'm going to start using. I am also going to try alternatives to BS/ACV for hair washing. If it's the BS, then the itchiness should go away immediately upon ceasing its use. If it's the laundry detergent, then I may have flare-ups while I wait for all my clothes to cycle through a round of washing with the new detergent. A third variable is the mystery bar of greenish soap that we started using. I'm going to use only Ivory soap to remove that as a variable. I'm a bit more concerned with eliminating the itchies than with carrying out a well-designed experiment.

One consequence of this whole itchy drama is that I need to find alternatives for BS/ACV hair care. Here's what I've tried so far:

-conditioner only: made my hair very flat and heavy, probably because it was a fairly heavy conditioner. I should try this again with a different conditioner, but I don't want to buy anything for this project yet. Cutting down costs is part of the fun.

-lemon juice rinse: left hair fairly flat and limp. Also, it was hard to keep out of my eyes. Maybe fresh lemon juice would work differently (I used the kind you buy in a bottle).

-applesauce: didn't work at all. Apples are acidic (which I didn't know until I started canning), which makes them useful as a shampoo. However, this didn't work for me: my hair was very greasy-looking and heavy as soon as it dried. Also, applesauce makes a terrific mess in the shower and is really hard to rinse out.

-soap: this is supposed to strip less oils from the hair, so it's not quite as bad as shampoo. However, it's fairly harsh at oil removal. It worked ok, but I probably didn't use enough. It was sort of challenging to work up a lather in my hands, then try to apply it evenly to my head - it didn't seem like I had enough.

Today, I'm going to try grapefruit juice (fresh-squeezed). Mostly this is because we have two elderly grapefruits that need to be used up. The one grapefruit I tried from that group wasn't particularly tasty, so the rest haven't been eaten. Now, one of them gets to be used for this cause.

Things that I'm going to try in the future:
-coffee: it's quite acidic and has the side effect of darkening hair (and maybe covering grey hairs??)
-rosemary: boil a bunch of it in water, then use it as a rinse once it's cooled.
-yogurt: sounds gross and like it'll make a terrible mess.
-beer: seems like a waste of perfectly good beer, but if it works I could buy a really cheap kind.
-tomato sauce: I canned plain tomato sauce last summer (tomatoes boiled, then run through the food mill). It's also an acid and should work like lemon juice

What does "modern quilting" mean to me?

2010-02-13T14:02:00.001-08:00

Members of the Modern Quilt Guild are discussing this question on their blogs. Apparently it's quite a heated issue, which I was previously entirely unaware of. Admittedly, I've only been quilting since the summer so I'm probably not up on quilting controversies. I mean, who outside the quilting community would even think there was such a thing as a quilting controversy?

I believe that I am a modern quilter because I am a member of a modern society. As such, everything that I engage in is a modern activity. I don't harvest my own cotton, weave cloth, then stitch it together. I don't make quilts using scraps of fabric that I have saved from sewing my own clothes, or cut from those clothes when they've worn out. I don't hand sew by candle light after I've finished cooking dinner on my wood-burning stove and washing dishes in a dishpan.

However, everything that I do as a quilter builds on things that my quilting ancestors did. I cut out pieces of cotton fabric and sew it together with thread. At a very basic level, that's what quilting is, so that makes me a traditional quilter. I use a rotary cutter, mat, an iron that produces its own steam, and an electricity-powered sewing machine. That makes me a modern quilter.

I think the choice to see oneself as a "modern quilter" is just that - a choice. If you want to believe that you are a modern vs a traditional quilter, go ahead. But I firmly believe that these aren't two separate categories, they're just aspects of the same whole. Sir Isaac Newton said, "If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Whatever personal twists I bring to the art of quilting makes my quilting modern, but my modern quilting is founded on the work of generations of traditional quilters, who were also "modern quilters" in their time.

Produce Rug

2010-02-13T10:06:00.000-08:00

I bought a Farmer John's Market fat quarter pack from Fabric Depot on sale before Christmas. They were either on sale already or I used a 40% off coupon, so they weren't too expensive. I made a set of produce napkins by cutting each fat quarter into a 17" square, then following this pattern to finish the edges and make mitered corners. I love the finished napkins; they're bright and cheerful and match our food.

Since I started with fat quarters, I ended up with a strip about 5" wide cut off one end after making the napkins. I stored these for a while, then decided I was going to make them into a rug for the kitchen. I trimmed all the strips to 4.5", then tried a couple of different arrangements until I found one I liked.

I added the dark green from my stash (I had made some poinsettia pillows using it). The backing is a weird green print that looks sort of like a random mottle or a batik from far away, but if you look at it closely you notice that it's evergreen trees. I bought it as a remnant and it just exactly fit my rug as backing.

I wanted a very simple quilting pattern because the focus is entirely on the fabrics. I sewed together a few left-over strips of a bamboo batting that I used for a quilt for my mother. It only needs to be quilted every 8", so I decided on a crosshatch pattern of parallel lines. I drew the lines on with chalk using my rotary cutting ruler.

Ignore the dog hair in this picture. He's decided that I made the rug so that the kitchen floor is more comfortable for him to lay on.

I'm not sure how well this rug will wear, but it should wash up fine and at least last for longer than the cheap IKEA woven rug that was in there.

Projects in Process

2010-02-03T12:46:00.001-08:00

Here's my second set of blocks for the paintbox quilt-a-long. The colors look slightly off in the picture because there's no sun today, so I took the picture using my camera flash. It seems to have bleached some parts out and made other parts look odd.

For instance, the solid color in the first two blocks in the second row is actually brown, not red. Admittedly, it's a reddish brown, but it's not nearly as red as it looks in the picture. The green in the bottom row is also much brighter - almost a neon color. It reminds me of the 80's.

I finished my first knitting project! It was with Vanna's Choice yarn in a sort of mottled purple color. I bought it because it looked easy to use. I can't find the label anymore.

It's knit on size 9 needles with a k2p2 pattern. I didn't realize that this was going to be quite so firm when I made it. The scarf is slightly stiff because I think I should have used larger needles. It's like a scarf made out of the ribbing of an extremely thick sweater.

I went to Twisted and bought yarn the other day. I hadn't been in the store before and I had a little extra time before my Thai cooking class. There were TONS of different sock yarns, which is very exciting.

I bought this lovely rainbow yarn and am knitting my second scarf ever. It's slightly odd looking because I was trying a sort of checkerboard pattern (k4p4 for 10 rows, then reverse). TD says it looks like the edges have points. I'll have to see how I feel about it once it's done.

I believe I ordered this yarn from Joann online at the same time I ordered something else. Maybe it was on sale.

The colors are really nice, but the yarn seems slightly itchy. I'm not sure I'm going to like the socks when they're done. I'll have to try this toe on without anything under it and see if it's tolerable.

Paintbox Quilt-A-Long

2010-01-29T11:00:00.001-08:00

I'm participating in Oh, Fransson's Paintbox Quilt-A-Long. I ordered Kona roll-ups (which look like these, but were different colors) in several different colors from Fabric Depot when they were on mega-sale, but by the time I placed my order, they were temporarily out of stock. Lucky for me, they came back into stock, but I started out a bit behind.

The paintbox quilt blocks are supposed to be monochromatic with a solid and a print fabric in each block. I don't have enough print fabrics in my stash to make this work, which is the second reason I was behind. I didn't want to go out and buy new fabrics for this quilt because TD already thinks I have a fabric addiction.

And then, in steps my fabulous quilting friend CJ! She had ordered a bunch of fat quarters of various batik fabrics for me for Christmas. Apparently they took a while to get here, then I didn't see her for a bit, but we finally got together for a happy hour recently. I decided that they would be perfect for the paintbox quilt.

Here's the fabrics I'm working with, matched with solids from my Kona roll.

It's an interesting selection of colors, really. I'm not 100% sure how I like all the pairings, but some of them make me very happy.

The paintbox quilt instructions call for 40 different prints and 40 different solids. I don't have 40 different batiks, so I decided to use each batik twice paired with two different solid colors. I tried to use as wide a variety of solid colors as possible to get the "paintbox" look, which is supposed to be fairly rainbow-y.

Here's what my completed blocks look like right now. The goal is to complete 8 blocks per week. The week prior to January 11 was week 1. That means that by February 1 (this coming Monday - 4 sewing days from now), I should have completed 32 blocks. Right now, I have 16 blocks, so I'm halfway there.

So why do some of the blocks have black in them?

Well, sadly, this is due to a quilt fail on my part. The instructions said to cut the solid fabrics into strips 1.25" wide. I read that as 1.75" wide. This isn't a problem until the very last set of strips. They're just not quite long enough, and I don't have enough of the solid colors left to cut new strips.

I do have extra batik fabric, which meant that those blocks turned out as planned. I just couldn't bring myself to recut all the strips I'd already cut, so I had to come up with a something else. I was planning on sashing the blocks with black anyhow (I love the way bright colors look with a black background), so I decided that I'd just replace the too-short solid strips with black and not do a sashing. Or maybe I'll just do a sashing across the quilt and turn all those blocks with black edges so that they're upright so it will look like a complete sashing. Regardless, it's going to be substantially different than everyone else's paintbox quilt. Well, I wouldn't want to be too ordinary.

Wishes...

2010-01-28T21:30:00.000-08:00

Does this mean that both our wishes won't come true?

Terrarium Class

2010-01-23T21:54:00.000-08:00

My friend C and I took a class in terrarium building today at the Portland Nursery. It wasn't quite what I expected, but it was fun and we came home with little decorative terrariums with tiny things in them.

Sadly, one of the mushrooms seems to have fallen to its death in the second picture.

Divine Hat

2010-01-23T21:30:00.000-08:00

I was at Jo-Ann Fabrics the other day because I had a 50% off one item coupon and I wanted to get a set of knitting needles. I'd found the needles I wanted online, but they didn't have them in the store (disappointing). It seemed silly to leave without using my coupon at all, so I decided to get a skein of yarn.

I ended up choosing a lovely yarn for a hat pattern I found on ravelry.com. It worked up very fast and was a fun pattern that didn't require a lot of brain cells to figure out. Here's the finished divine hat with the band from the yarn.

Here it is seen with more light. All the color variations are in the one skein of yarn. The background color is black, but there are places in the yarn that are very bright while other places are totally black. It was a very neat yarn color-wise to work with. It's a boucle, so it's quite a bumpy yarn. It worked very well for this pattern because it doesn't require that you locate every stitch - most of the stitches are made between 2 stitches rather than actually in a stitch.

Plants!

2010-01-23T15:54:00.000-08:00

Portland nursery had a 30% off sale on pots and houseplants. I love my
new fern and its pretty pot. It's going in the living room on the
small table between our two couches.

Crocheted socks

2010-01-21T22:00:00.001-08:00

I like crafts involving string. Always have. My mother taught me to crochet when I was a pretty little kid; my first few projects looked like they were crocheted by nest-building rats. I remember riding in the car (on vacation somewhere, possibly?) and crocheting. I would make my mom do the second row because that's the hardest one. I'd do the first row, hand it off, then finish up whatever fabulous (often triangular) project I was making.

Fast forward ... we'll say .. several years. It'd been a while since I crocheted anything of consequence, but apparently it's like riding a bike. You get it out of storage, pump up the tires, then fall off a couple of times while you remember exactly how this thing works.

This brings us to the matter of project selection. There's really only a certain number of scarves that any one person can utilize. I mean, once you've gifted scarves to everyone you know, what do you DO with any more? Because I've also taken up quilting, making afghans seemed like somewhat of a duplication of effort. And really, I like my quilted blankets a heck of a lot more than I ever liked crocheted ones (too many air holes). I found an awesome book of crocheted hats at the fabric store and my best school friend bought it for me. However, there is also a limit on hat-usage which is similar to that on scarf-usage.

Considering the matter further, I decided on socks. Socks are an excellent project. They're small, so they finish up quickly which leaves one with a feeling of having actually accomplished something. They are something that one individual (say, myself) can actually rationalize having many pairs of. They are also something that everyone uses, so I can give them out as gifts.

I started with regular worsted weight yarn. This is really too thick to make socks unless you want to wear them sort of as slippers. They are also fairly textured on the bottom because the yarn is so thick, which makes them fairly unique to walk on.

Then, I discovered sock yarn. Even having crocheted for my entire life, I didn't realize there was such a thing as sock yarn. Apparently knitting socks has become quite popular recently, too... there's TONS of different options. I got several sock yarns and took off with them.

I started with this pattern. I'm using it mostly unmodified although the instructors for starting the heel make NO sense to me. I had to toss out that part and just mark where I want the center of the heel to be. I tried it a couple of times and even read through all the comments, but just couldn't get it to work.

Here's one of my pairs of socks, with the back of the dog at the top to make the socks look more colorful and attractive. I love the way the color looks almost like it's stripey on each sock. And the stripes match!

Then, another picture which shows the color a bit better.

This was some brand of Sox yarn. It's quite thin, which means that it doesn't feel like walking on marbles. They fit well, except the heel is maybe a little wide. I'm going to work on that in later sock editions.

I have several other sock yarns that I'm going to work up in the near future.

A scrappy quilt

2010-01-19T21:30:00.000-08:00

One of the things that my father and I have in common is that, as a first step in developing new hobbies, we buy books and read them. However, the internet now gives me immediate access to more hobby-related knowledge than I can shake a stick at. I learned most of what I know about quilting from reading blogs and I taught myself to knit the other night by watching youtube videos.

One of the quilting blogs that I found early on was Quiltville.com. I was really struck by the idea that I'd paid as much per yard for my scraps as I had for the pieces I cut out of them. I'm also on a mega-kick to try to reduce my environmental impact, so the idea of NOT throwing those little pieces away really hit home.

I started sewing them together randomly, based on this Quiltville tutorial and several similar things that I saw on now-unremembered blogs. It was AWESOME. I didn't have to worry about perfectly cutting or piecing things. I just got to pick out fabrics and sew them together. Additionally, each time I picked up a fabric, I got to remember where it came from and if it had a history.

I made a bunch of blocks, then assembled them all into this quilt:

The sashing is plain black cotton and the blocks at the intersections are various pieces of the fabrics that I used in the scrap blocks. The borders have the same fabrics in them as well.

I didn't want to buy yardage for the back of the quilt, so I rummaged about and came up with several totally unrelated fabrics that all happened to have black in them. Good enough. I had to creatively piece them together in order to make a section large enough to cover the back. Good thing that I had made extra scrap blocks for the back section.

You can't see the patterns on these backing fabrics very well in this picture, but the center piece is a geometric pattern, bordered by a print with sewing tools above and school supplies below. The next print on either side is an awful large flower print, but it actually went pretty well with the others. These are bordered by brightly colored fish below and a text-based multicolored design that says "craft". Really the ONLY thing these fabrics have in common is that they have a black background. However, once they were all together, I loved them. So does my mother, who got this quilt for Christmas.

Sadly, pictures taken with my cell phone don't seem to display this quilt to it's best advantage. It's much brighter and more exciting in person.

Genetic influence on crafting abilities

2010-01-19T21:25:00.000-08:00

My father recently took a road trip through the Southwestern states. While he was there, he admired many Navaho blankets / rugs / etc. When he came home, he bought a book on Navaho weaving, built a loom, and started production.

I think it's totally awesome.

Flannel Leaf Quilt

2010-01-19T21:07:00.000-08:00

One night, as I was laying in bed daydreaming about quilting things (um, yes. I do this. Fairly frequently, actually), I had a brilliant idea. I could use batik fabric to make fall-colored leaves, then quilt the veins and the stems. On a black background, the colors of the batiks would really stand out and look awesome.

I made no progress on the idea until CJ and I went to a quilt show in Vancouver. We walked in and were immediately distracted by shiny things. $45 later, we turned around and LO! there was a book with *batik flannel*! I mean, what could be better? It's BATIK! AND it's flannel!

I ended up spending a lot of money at this booth. First, I bought a set of fat quarters that were in fall leaf colors. I coveted a quilt kit made of other, more brightly colored batik flannels, but managed to hold off on buying it. I managed to hold off on buying it for HOURS. It was, in fact, the last thing that I bought before leaving the quilt show.

But this post is not about that quilt (which I haven't started yet) - it's about my batik flannel fall leaf quilt.

Upon searching for a leaf pattern, I discovered that my falling leaf idea is far from unique. However, I have yet to see it executed in batik flannel, so I think I'm still ahead of the game.

This is the overall plan I came up. It with alternates large and small leaves in a black background with the leaves rotated various directions so as to make them look like they're blowing around. The large leaves are 9"x9", while the small leaves are 6"x6" with a black border to bring them up to 9". The colored squares around the outside will be a random mix of all the batiks used in the leaves.

This is roughly what the I have planned for the quilting inside and outside the leaves. I want the background quilting in the black to be sort of reminiscent of blowing wind and I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet... but since I haven't even finished the quilt top yet, I'm not too worried.

Here are the leaves that I have finished so far. The colors don't show very well (it's a cell phone picture); they're MUCH brighter in person. My favorites are the lower-right leaf and the middle-top leaf. They're a bright orange-with-red batik that has darker reddish sections. It looks the most "fall leafy" to me. I also really like the yellow-and-green leaves. The other ones will make fabulous background leaves and allow the bright ones to really stand out. I haven't sewn any of the small leaves yet.

Tiny hats

2010-01-17T19:39:00.001-08:00

I'm making tiny hats to donate to the hospital for premature babies. This is one of my smallest hats being worn by a wii remote (for scale).

This is the current collection of tiny hats. The hat seen in the previous picture on the Wii remote is the hat on the far right of the picture.

The yellow-orange yarn is something that I got for 50% off because the label had fallen off of it. It's very soft, but I don't know what's in it. The multi-colored yarn is sock yarn. I have a pair of socks I crocheted in that same yarn, which are awesome. I'll post about them later.

Valentine's Pillow

2010-01-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

I bought three quilting magazines recently. I read through them. Then I read through each of them again. Then I paged through and looked at the pretty pictures. I scrutinized the quilting. I perused the ads. I looked through them before bed. I've had each of them several weeks now and have probably gone through each of them 8 or 10 times. I feel that I've gotten my money's worth.

I decided that I wanted to make a Valentine's pillow for my Grandmother. She doesn't really need any pillows, but I just gave her a quilt for Christmas, so I needed another idea. A pillow seemed relatively easy - a small-scale project. I got a pillow form and decided to make a removable case so that I could make other cases for other holidays.

I had originally picked out a pieced and quilted design (it was a heart with flowers coming out the top), then I saw this quilt in one of my quilting magazines. It's

an applique design, which I haven't done much of. However, one of the blocks seemed like it would make an excellent Valentine's pillow, without being TOO heart-y or red-and-pink. I had ordered some Steam-A-Seam, which I had seen a lot of and tried out at a quilt expo that my quilting friend CJ and I went to. It's pretty easy to use. It's sticky on one side, so it doesn't move around when you're trying to cut out the fabric to be appliqued. After positioning it on the background fabric, it permanently irons on and doesn't need to be additionally sewn on around the edges. I was skeptical of this last bit and planned to sew around the edges anyhow. Turns out that I didn't need to. They're totally glued down. Turns out that's a good thing because most of the pieces are pretty small. If I'd had to zig-zag around the edges, I think I would have lost some of the definition of the shapes or the edges would have looked frayed.

The only problem was that the hearts in the pattern are larger than the sheets of fusible web. I had to do the hearts separately as two halves, then stick them together on the fabric. The stickiness of the fusible web helped immensely, but when I tried it the first time, I cut two of the same side of the heart. It's only sticky on one side, so that wasn't going to work. It was also slightly difficult to get both ends to line up because the web can distort slightly as you pull on it. That doesn't seem to have affected my finished product, though.

Here's my end result. I echo quilted around the heart (which took WAY longer than I thought it was going to. Who knew it was so time consuming to go around a heart over and over? I made tiny little loop-d-loops inside the heart around the strawberries. It sort of makes the strawberries, stems and leaves look puffed out, which I like. The stems are a very tiny little weird slanted zig-zag that my machine does. I didn't have any green embroidery floss and didn't want to buy a whole thing of it just for this project.

The ruffle was sort of a pain in the ass. I had originally envisioned it as being entirely red. However, I was using fabric I had purchased as remnants for the entire project and the red piece I had was too small. If I had made the ruffles narrow enough so that I could have made the correct length, they would have been much more narrow than I wanted them. I decided to use the rest of the blue remnant as well. I like the way it turned out color-wise. I also was reminded why I don't often sew ruffles on things - the gathering and the sewing and the pinning and the resewing... it's a bit irritating.

All-in-all a success.

A Scattered Squee, it is.

2010-01-16T11:28:00.000-08:00

I like the idea of blogging. I enjoy putting thoughts "out there" in the world, whether or not someone actually reads them. It's a very freeing exercise. However, that's not the major reason that I decided to start a blog.

I'm getting back in touch with my creative side. After way too long of doing (and being) school, both as a student and as a teacher, I finally have a schedule that allows me time off. When I've had time off before, I feel like I've wasted a lot of it. I spent a good deal of ti

me sitting on my butt and dicking around on the internet. "Dicking around" in this instance is defined as "several hours of activity that produce no useful result and can't even be accurate described to someone else because of their entirely limited range of accomplishment."

I decided, when I quit my job teaching high school, that I wasn't going to d

o that anymore. That might have been slightly ambitious. I still spend a good quantity of time dicking around online. However, I'm trying to temper that with actually accomplishing things. To that end, I've taken up several hobbies:

1. Quilting.

2. Crochet / knitting

3. Canning

4. Tie-dye

This is in addition to my activities involving my family of furries:

6 Degu - Dora, Imogene and Isabelle are pictured above. Kitten, Deja and Vu were later additions and are not pictured.

Rags, my faithful mutt. I've had him for roughly 10 years. He's about 12.

The Chin, the most recent addition to the family. Apparently there's some deeper meaning to her name because it relates to some movie or webcomic or something. I just thought it was that we were totally uncreative when it came to naming animals and should probably never be trusted naming a child.

"We" includes myself and my boyfriend, TD. We live together in slightly organized chaos with the furrballs. Our two bedroom apartment has one bedroom for us and one bedroom for the rodents. The dog's "bedroom" is his crate, which sits by the bed. It's covered with a blanket (to make it cozy for him) and several random shelves we had lying around (to make it into a bedside table for TD).

The area formerly known as the dining area has been converted into my crafting area. Right now, the kitchen table is roughly half covered with fabric, pattern pieces, and sewing implements of mass destruction. The reason that it's not entirely covered is that TD has this silly idea that meals (especially dinner) should be eaten at the kitchen table. I cater to this delusion by cleaning one end of the table off at dinner time so we can eat.

Back to the reason I am starting this blog. I need a record for my creative endeavors. Based on what I know about my attention span, I should be able to remember what projects I've completed for about 3 days. I can remember details such as ingredients or patterns or who got a project as a gift for about a half hour. If I want any sort of crafting institutional memory, it has to be written down. And I've lost the ability to write legibly since college, so "written down" actually means "typed".

For instance, I made several different types of pear jam (I do remember that they all had pears in them). I know I made plain pear jam. That one's easy. The raspberry pear jam and the cranberry pear jam were also both easy to identify: raspberry seeds and cranberry seeds look different from each other and also from pears. Then I made a mystery jam. It's basically a pear jam, but it has raisins in it. I remember boiling the raisins in wine, then draining them and adding them to the jam. I have a vague memory that there were supposed to be spices added to the jam, but that I forgot them. Or maybe I didn't. I don't really recall... after all, it was the fourth type of pear jam I made that day. At the time I thought, "I don't need to put labels on these right now, there's only four of them. I'll remember what they are." Yeah. Right. Now I have Mystery Possibly Unspiced Raisin Pear Jam. I can't find the recipe for it in any of my canning books. That means I probably found the recipe online... which means it could be ANYWHERE. If I'd blogged about it, I would know what it was. I might even be able to figure out if I had, in fact, left out important spices.

So that's the point. Create memory of things that I do and create so that I remember what I've done. Enjoy.