First off, meet Jane:
As mentioned in my last post I acquired her when my grandmother, Janalee (or Jane for short) passed away this fall. I wasn't able to take the serger back to school with me so I was unable to test her out till now and she is wonderful!!
My curtains are all finished and hung. Now my room glows pink for most of the day. One of my housemates even said you can see pink from under the door.
Ravelympics went well. I finished Mrs. Darcy on Saturday afternoon right before the Olympics were over. It only took 3 of the 4 skeins I bought so I have 220 yds. left to do something else with. The pattern was not particularly challenging for me to knit for the Olympics, but with the new job I was unsure of how much time I would be able to work on it. The woman who was knitting my dress for Ravelympics was not as successful, she currently has the project listed as hibernating :-(.
I had 2 knitting issues at the end of the Olympics proving that knitting on little sleep isn't helpful. While I was trying to finish Mrs. Darcy I sewed on the buttons in the wrong spots. (The colour in the above picture is more accurate).
My second mishap was more of a denial issue. I started knitting the Skew socks when Mrs. Darcy only needed the ends woven in. I only had one colour of sock yarn wound into a ball already and I needed to head to work so I decided it would have to work. Well it didn't. The skew socks are wonderful because they show off the colours so well and this yarn just didn't do the pattern justice. I knew that long before I got this far on the sock but I just kept knitting.
I've since restarted the socks, after roping Timm into helping me wind some of my other sock yarn and this yarn is looking A LOT better. I'm excited about it, I'm on the heel of the first sock already (Friday nights at work are slow). I should have pictures of the sock and hopefully a finished Francis Revisited soon!
Last weekend I was in the mood to cook and made a few tasting things in time for Timm to be here for a few days. One of which was a recipe for Black Bean Soup with Jalapeno Salsa that I found in Real Simple Magazine.
The soup was good.
The salsa was delicious.
And together they were awesome!
Lately, the thing that's been keeping me busy the most (other than work) has been sewing. It's a nice change since I haven't sewn much for myself since last May. I took a Period Patterning class last spring and made an 1870's corset, petticoat and three piece outfit on a deadline. This burnt me out on sewing for the summer and then I worked in the costume shop again once school started so all my sewing time was for shows.
Wednesday, I started working on my quilt again. The quilt was a block-a-month promotion at a quilt store in Indiana two years ago. Granny bought me the block each month and mailed them to me. She offered to buy me all the fabric to finish the top of the quilt if I would actually make the whole thing. I told her I would and at Christmas 2008 she sent me all of the fabric. I had sewn 3 of the blocks shortly after receiving them, but never gotten back to it. Because I haven't been sewing a whole lot lately I thought the quilt blocks would be a good way to ease back into things with some instant gratification. Here are a few of the blocks.
Between Wednesday and the start of the Oscars tonight, I finished all 12 of the blocks. The next step is to make them into Big Star blocks. I cut the fabric for these and sewed the first one tonight during the Oscars.
I never saw the sample that I'm sewing, so each new fabric added is exciting to me. I don't have any backing for the quilt and I've looked around a little bit to get a few ideas. All of the fabrics are Victorianesque so I'm trying to find something that will go style and colour-wise.
Next time more pictures and a short blurb about knit night at Whole Foods last week!
